Presentation by Katharine Schweitzer

Location: Bowden Hall, Room 216
Date: 04.22.2011
Time: 4.15pm – 5.30pm

Abstract
Donna Haraway opens her most recent book When Species Meet (2008) by stating the main concerns that inspired the reflections contained therein. She writes, “Two questions guide this book: (1) Whom and what do I touch when I touch my dog? and (2) How is ‘becoming with’ a practice of becoming worldly?” Without a context in which to situate and interpret these animating investigations, the claim that Haraway’s project has relevancy to work being done in the academic sub-discipline of moral philosophy might seem like a far stretch. My paper aims to bring about an interspecies encounter between Haraway and contemporary ethical theorists concerning the task of attending to and coping with the non-innocence of daily practices involving the instrumental use of non-human animals. I elucidate Haraway’s contention that human beings ought to practice an ethics of discomfort and suggest ways in which moral philosophers might productively take up this claim in work on the virtue of moral response and on the psychological dimensions of well-being.