Coping

Luc Bovens

Description

Coping is a collection of philosophical essays on how we deal with life’s challenges. We hope for better times, but what is hope, and is it a good thing to hope? How do we look back and make sense of our lives in the face of death? What is the nature of love, and how do we deal with its hardships? What makes for a genuine apology, and is there too much or too little apologizing in this world? Can we bring about changes in ourselves to adapt to our circumstances? How can we make sense of all the good advice—such as, count your blessings, don’t cry over spilled milk—that people have on offer?

Coping is a perfect companion text for a moral psychology course, a resilience course, or part of an ethics course. The material is written for readers who are new to philosophy and progresses in short self-contained sections. It draws on literature, music, podcasts, and news items. Each chapter has questions for discussion or essay writing and suggestions for material to explore the topic further.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Éthique et morale
• Philosophie générale
• Ethique et morale
• Ethics
• Philosophy
• Philosophie et théologie
• Moral Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: Open Book Publishers
• Date de parution: 02 décembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800642812
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

COPING

Coping
A Philosophical Guide
Luc Bovens
with illustrations by Fiorella Lavado





https://www.openbookpublishers.com
© 2021 Luc Bovens. Illustrations © Fiorella Lavado




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:
Luc Bovens. Illustrations by Fiorella Lavado. Coping: A Philosophical Guide . Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2021, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0268
In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit https:// doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0268#copyright . Further details about CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web
Digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://doi. org/10.11647/OBP.0268#resources
Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher.
ISBN Paperback: 9781800642782
ISBN Hardback: 9781800642799
ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781800642805
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781800642812
ISBN Digital ebook (azw3): 9781800642829
ISBN XML: 9781800642836
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0268
Cover photo by Fiorella Lavado, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Cover design by Anna Gatti.

Contents
Acknowledgments
vii
Author and Illustrator Biographies
ix
Why This Book?
1
1.
Hope
7
What Is Hope?
7
The Thing with Feathers
9
A Winning Strategy
12
A Subtle Glutton
14
Shameful Hopes
18
Neighborhood
21
Inner Strength
24
2.
Death
29
Eternal Life?
29
A Worthwhile Life
30
Dying well
34
A Good Future
37
Attitudes of Others
39
3.
Love
45
Constancy
45
Models
48
Eros
51
Agape
55
Fusion
56
Love Lost
59
Cynical Models
61
4.
Reconciliation
69
A Genuine Apology
69
Mea Culpa
70
Sympathy and Remorse
74
Striving to Do Better
76
Humility
78
Forgiveness
79
Too Many Apologies
80
5.
Self-Management
85
Sour Grapes
85
Mind Control
87
Pretense
90
Self-Defeat
93
Self-Verification
97
6.
Counsel
103
Count your Blessings
103
Help Your Neighbor
106
Don’t Cry over Spilled Milk
108
Express Yourself
110
Eat Well
112
Final Words
117
Additional Teaching Materials
119
Discussion Questions
121
Links
129
Index
155

Acknowledgments
I am grateful for inspiration, discussion, comments, encouragement, and editorial assistance from Boatemaa Agyeman-Mensah, Susanne Burri, Alex Campbell, Andrew Chignell, Christina Easton, Alex Esposito, Hayden Graham, Nicole Hassoun, Ian Hower, Josh Mannix, Adrienne Martin, Michael Milona, Pavel Nitchovski, Graham Oddie, Bryson Penley, Diana Popescu, Michael Prinzing, Wlodek Rabinowicz, David Rönnegard, Ben Schwartz, Alice Spiehler, Katie Stockdale, Alex Voorhoeve, and Ruth Weintraub.
I want to thank two anonymous referees for their helpful reports, Alison Gray for excellent proofreading and editorial work, and the Open Book Publishers team, in particular Alessandra Tosi, for making the process efficient and enjoyable.
My research was supported by fellowships from the University Center of Human Values in Princeton University and from the Hope and Optimism Initiative in Cornell University and Notre Dame University, which was funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, and by research leaves from the London School of Economics and Political Science and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Office of Research Development, the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, and the Parr Center for Ethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill provided financial contributions toward publication.

Author and Illustrator Biographies
Luc Bovens is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he teaches in the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program. He is a joint author with Stephan Hartmann of Bayesian Epistemology (Oxford University Press 2003) and has collaborated with Fiorella Lavado on the TESS (Teaching Ethics with Short Stories) website (2018). His current interests are in moral psychology and philosophy & public policy. He has held previous appointments in the University of Colorado at Boulder (1990–2003) and in the London School of Economics and Political Science (2004–2017).
Fiorella Lavado is a Peruvian British artist living and working in London. She has collaborated with scientists, philosophers, and journalists on various art projects, finding the intersection between art and science a rich source of inspiration. Her work has been exhibited in prestigious institutions such as the Royal Astronomical Society in London, the Schering Foundation in Berlin, and the Benaki Museum in Athens.

Why This Book?

© 2021 Luc Bovens, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0268.11
You have probably heard Reinhold Niebuhr’s serenity prayer in some version or other: ‘God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.’ It’s clever and touching, but there is a bit of a false dichotomy. There is often very little we can do to make changes to the world, and yet we do not just simply sit back and accept. There is something in the space between courage and serenity. We try to cope and there are a range of strategies to make the world around us easier to bear and, dare I say, even enjoyable.
I cover six themes: hope, death, love, reconciliation, self-management , and counsel . Clinging to hope is one way to cope. Hoping for better times keeps us in the game. And even in the face of death , hope does not dissipate and comes in many hues. From the end of life, we move to