Traditional sources of morality—philosophical ethics, religious standards, and cultural values—are being questioned at a time when we most need morality’s direction. Research shows that though moral direction is vital to our identities, happiness, productivity and relationships, there is a decline in its development and use, especially among younger adults. This book argues that hermeneutic moral realism is the best hope for meeting the twenty-first century challenges of scientism, individualism, and postmodernism. In addition to providing a thorough understanding of moral realism, the volume also takes preliminary steps toward its application in important practical settings, including research, psychotherapy, politics, and publishing.

This volume introduces the methodological value of hermeneutic dialogue in the field of theoretical and philosophical psychology. It reflects on the works of Frank Richardson, who has made, and continues to make, seminal contributions to the field, as well as having influenced the work of many of the practitioners engaged in this field today. Each chapter explores a major topic of hermeneutic dialogue and is authored by a scholar whose work has been directly impacted by Richardson's life and research. The chapters illuminate a variety of issues in psychology, such as instrumentalism, individualism, relationality, social ontology, the wisdom of limits, neoliberalism, and the idea that theory is a form of praxis. All contributions in this volume illustrate aspects of theory as practice coming to expression in reflection on theoretical and philosophical psychology and trace some of the implications for psychology, political philosophy, social justice, community, human dignity, and transcendence. This book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of theoretical and philosophical psychology, philosophy of the mind, and personality theories.

Pushing back against the potential trivialization of moral psychology that would reduce it to emotional preferences, this book takes an enactivist, self-organizational, and hermeneutic approach to internal conflict between a basic exploratory drive motivating the search for actual truth, and opposing incentives to confabulate in the interest of conformity, authoritarianism, and cognitive dissonance, which often can lead to harmful worldviews. The result is a new possibility that ethical beliefs can have truth value and are not merely a result of ephemeral altruistic or cooperative feelings. It will interest moral and political psychologists, philosophers, social scientists, and all who are concerned with inner emotional conflicts driving ethical thinking beyond mere emotivism, and toward moral realism, albeit a fallibilist one requiring continual rethinking and self-reflection. It combines 'basic emotion' theories (such as Panksepp) with hermeneutic depth psychology. The result is a realist approach to moral thinking emphasizing coherence rather than foundationalist theory of knowledge.

Owen Flanagan argues in this book for a more psychologically realistic ethical reflection and spells out the ways in which psychology can enrich moral philosophy. Beginning with a discussion of such “moral saints” as Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Oskar Schindler, Flanagan charts a middle course between an ethics that is too realistic and socially parochial and one that is too idealistic, giving no weight to our natures.

This volume encompasses deeply critical dialogues that question how the field of psychology exists within and is shaped by the current neoliberal political context. Spanning from psychoanalysis to post-colonial theory, these far-reaching discussions consider how a greater ethical responsiveness to human experience and sociopolitical arrangements may reopen the borders of psychological discourse. With the understanding that psychology grows in the soil of neoliberal terrain and is a chief fertilizer for neoliberal expansion, the interviews in this book explore alternative possibilities for how this field of study might function. By offering their own unique responses regarding the current condition of their respective disciplines, these scholars critically consider the current conceptual frameworks that set the theoretical boundaries of psychology, and contemplate the ethical responsibility currently affecting the field. This book will prove essential for scholars and students across several disciplines including psychology, philosophy, ethics, and post-colonial and socio-cultural studies, as well as practising mental health professionals with an interest in the importance of psychological social theory.

What does morality have to do with psychology in a value-neutral, postmodern world? According to a provocative new book, everything. Taking exception with current ideas in the mainstream (including cultural, evolutionary, and neuropsychology) as straying from the discipline’s ethical foundations, Psychology as a Moral Science argues that psychological phenomena are inherently moral, and that psychology, as prescriptive and interventive practice, reflects specific moral principles. The book cites normative moral standards, as far back as Aristotle, that give human thoughts, feelings, and actions meaning, and posits psychology as one of the critical methods of organizing normative values in society; at the same time it carefully notes the discipline’s history of being sidetracked by overemphasis on theoretical constructs and physical causes—what the author terms “the psychologizing of morality.” This synthesis of ideas brings an essential unity to what can sometimes appear as a fragmented area of inquiry at odds with itself. The book’s “interpretive-pragmatic approach”: • Revisits core psychological concepts as supporting normative value systems. • Traces how psychology has shaped society’s view of morality. • Confronts the “naturalistic fallacy” in contemporary psychology. • Explains why moral science need not be separated from social science. • Addresses challenges and critiques to the author’s work from both formalist and relativist theories of morality. With its bold call to reason, Psychology as a Moral Science contains enough controversial ideas to spark great interest among researchers and scholars in psychology and the philosophy of science.

Routledge International Handbook of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology is a compilation of works by leading scholars in theoretical and philosophical psychology that offers critical analyses of, and alternatives to, current theories and philosophies typically taken for granted in mainstream psychology. Within their chapters, the expert authors briefly describe accepted theories and philosophies before explaining their problems and exploring fresh, new ideas for practice and research. These alternative ideas offer thought-provoking ways of reinterpreting many aspects of human existence often studied by psychologists. Organized into five sections, the volume covers the discipline of psychology in general, various subdisciplines (e.g., positive psychology and human development), concepts of self and identity as well as research and practice. Together the chapters present a set of alternative ideas that have the potential to take the field of psychology in fruitful directions not anticipated in more traditional theory and research. This handbook will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of the theory, assumptions, and history of psychology.

The standard view of psychotherapy as a treatment for mental disorders can obscure how therapy functions as a social practice that promotes conceptions of human well-being. Building on the philosophy of Charles Taylor, Smith examines the link between therapy and ethics, and the roots of therapeutic aims in modern Western ideas about living well. This volume builds on a complementary volume (The Ethical Visions of Psychotherapy), to explore therapeutic conceptions of human flourishing. Smith illustrates how therapeutic aims implicitly promote ideas about a good life, even though therapists rarely tell their patients how they should live. Taylor’s history of the modern identity provides a framework to examine the historical and cultural origins of therapeutic ethics. Utilizing Taylor’s work on practical reasoning and ethical debate, Smith considers the prospects for dialogue between the divergent ethical visions promoted by different psychotherapies. A key text for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduate students, and professionals in the fields of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, theoretical psychology, and philosophy of mind.

Using COVID-19 as a base, this groundbreaking book brings together several renowned scholars to explore the concept of crisis, and how this global event has shaped the discipline of psychology. It engages directly with the challenges that psychology continues to face when theorizing societal issues of gender, race, class, history, and culture, while not disregarding "lived" experiences. This edited volume offers a set of pathways to rethink psychology beyond its current scope and history to become more apt to the conditions, needs, and demands of the 21st century. The book explores topics like resilience, interpersonal relationships, mistrust in the government, and access to healthcare. Dividing the book into three distinct sections, the contributors first examine the current crisis within psychology, then go on to explore how psychology theorizes the subject and the other in a social world of perpetual political, economic, cultural, and social crises, and lastly consider the role of crises in the creation of new theorizing. This is essential reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of theoretical and philosophical psychology, social psychology, community psychology, and developmental psychology.

Moral realists maintain that morality has a distinctive subject matter. Specifically, realists maintain that moral discourse is representational, that moral sentences express moral propositions - propositions that attribute moral properties to things. Non-cognitivists, in contrast, maintain that the realist imagery associated with morality is a fiction, a reification of our non-cognitive attitudes. The thought that there is a distinctively moral subject matter is regarded as something to be debunked by philosophical reflection on the way moral discourse mediates and makes public our noncognitive attitudes. The realist fiction might be understood as a philosophical misconception of a discourse that is not fundamentally representational but whose intent is rather practical. There is, however, another way to understand the realist fiction. Perhaps the subject matter of morality is a fiction that stands in no need of debunking, but is rather the means by which our attitudes are conveyed. Perhaps moral sentences express moral propositions, just as the realist maintains, but in accepting a moral sentence competent speakers do not believe the moral proposition expressed but rather adopt the relevant non-cognitive attitudes. Non-cognitivism, in its primary sense, is a claim about moral acceptance: the acceptance of a moral sentence is not moral belief but is some other attitude. Standardly, non-cognitivism has been linked to non-factualism - the claim that the content of a moral sentence does not consist in its expressing a moral proposition. Indeed, the terms 'non-cognitivism' and 'non-factualism' have been used interchangeably. But this misses an important possibility, since moral content may be representational but the acceptance of moral sentences might not be belief in the moral proposition expressed. This possibility constitutes a novel form of non-cognitivism, moral fictionalism. Whereas non-factualists seek to debunk the realist fiction of a moral subject matter, the moral fictionalist claims that that fiction stands in no need of debunking but is the means by which the non-cognitive attitudes involved in moral acceptance are conveyed by moral utterance. Moral fictionalism is non-cognitivism without a non-representational semantics.