Ambivalence A Philosophical Exploration [Hardcover]

By an impressive combination of acute analysis, rich phenomenological description and interpretation of narratives, Razinsky brings our propensity to possess ambivalent feelings, desires and beliefs about objects to the center of philosophical research on subjectivity. In this excellent study, she claims ambivalence is a capacity of rational creatures to simultaneously have two opposing attitudes, revealing the ineradicable plurality of their selves and prompting them to live with it in the right way, rather than an inability to fix ones mind and make it consistent.The author has produced a bold and fiercely independent account of ambivalence; an account which is rich, nuanced and detailed. Razinsky adopts a framework which, broadly speaking, is both Wittgensteinian and phenomenological. She turns to such diverse authors as Sartre, Freud, Bernard Williams and Philip Koch and with a little help from these friends devises her own notion of ambivalence.The merit of this book lies in showing that ambivalence is often central to our capacity to act, care, and respond to reality. This implies that flourishing is often a matter of how a person shapes her ambivalence, rather than of whether she succeeds in avoiding ambivalence. Razinskys book is full of real life examples which make the arguments clearer and more convincing. The book is well written, interesting, surprising, and original.Hili Razinsky's philosophical exploration of ambivalence is not only about ambivalence: it might be read as a call for using more substantial, phenomenologically nuanced, and real-life faithful terms in contemporary analytic philosophy. Concepts, such as belief, desire or emotion, which are at the center of many philosophical discussions about subjectivity, are often difficult to project onto real subjects. They seem to be fossils that have already lost their vividness. Some of them are brought to life in Razinsky's book.One of the main strengths of this book is a detailed map of terms l31