The Ethics of Transformative Experience | Farbod Akhlaghi (Cambridge/Trinity College Dublin)

The Ethics of Transformative Experience

Farbod Akhlaghi (Cambridge/Trinity College Dublin)

What is morally at stake when we make transformative choices? This neglected question prompts another: are there ways of making transformative choices that are morally objectionable? In this paper, I argue against a common way we in fact engage with transformative choices. Edna Ullmann-Margalit, in a seminal paper, identifies not only the ‘opter’ – one facing a transformative choice for what it is – but the ‘drifter’: someone who makes ‘one’s big decisions conscious of their being decisions but not of their being big…[they carry] on with the business of his or her life, making incremental, stepwise decisions only’. Examining the techniques we often employ for extricating ourselves from opting, I argue that drifting is morally dangerous. We owe it to ourselves and others to not drift but to, in Ullmann-Margalit’s words, look such choices ‘straight in the eye’. Seeing why helps illuminate what is morally at stake when we face transformative choices in our lives.”