Practice Job Talk: Vida Yao

Grace & Graciousness: Goodness in Loving the Bad

Grace is love that is not fully explained by the excellence of its objects. Indeed, as I will argue, one can experience forms of grace toward an object in full awareness of its bad qualities, and one’s love may even be partly grounded in, or enhanced by, one’s awareness of those qualities. Grace is conceptually and normatively puzzling: some argue that our desires and positive emotions, if intelligent responses at all, can be directed toward only those things that we take to be good; others emphasize the ethical or rational importance of always and only loving, or desiring the good. Moreover, there is the common everyday thought that love is an attitude that places, or ought to place, the beloved in a positive light. In contrast to these views, I argue that we should understand grace as a clear-eyed love for human nature, where this includes the bad aspects of that nature. I shall describe this attitude in a way that renders it familiar and phenomenologically salient, as well as describe its corresponding virtue, graciousness, as well as the other virtues possessed by those who readily exhibit grace towards others, such as self-esteem, humility, and solidarity with one’s fellow human beings.