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Abstract

We often use the term “attachment” to describe our emotional connectedness to objects in the world. We become attached to our careers, to our homes, to certain ideas, and perhaps most importantly, to other people. Interestingly, despite its import and ubiquity in our everyday lives, the topic of attachment per se has been largely ignored in the philosophy literature. I address this lacuna by identifying (a type of) attachment as a rich “mode of mattering” that can help to inform certain aspects of agency and emotion. First, drawing on insights from Ancient stoicism and developmental and clinical psychology, I suggest that the relevant form of attachment involves a felt need for its object and a particular relationship between the object and the attached agent’s sense of security. I then argue that these features serve to distinguish the attitude from the more philosophically familiar notion of caring. Finally, I show that recognizing this form of attachment as a distinct mode of mattering has important implications for understanding grief.

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Notes

  1. While attachment has received relatively little attention among philosophers, the phenomenon does play important theoretical and practical roles in developmental and clinical psychology, family law, and education. I devote some discussion to the first of these topics in later sections. Though I do not discuss the significance of attachment in family law or education, attachment is an important factor in adoption and custody decisions (Main et al. 2011) and in the development of pedagogical styles in early education (Bergin and Bergin 2009). My thanks to an anonymous reviewer from Philosophical Studies for prompting me to highlight these roles here.

  2. To my knowledge, there has been no sustained analysis of attachment in the philosophy literature. Theorists, however, have employed the term in discussions of emotions (Moll et al. 2008; Roberts 2003; Solomon 2001; Brentlinger 1989), psychopathy (Kennett 2002; McGeer 2008; Watson 2010), and the tension between certain relationships and the moral demand for impartiality (Herman 1991; Feltham 2011). In the first chapter of Value, Respect, and Attachment, Joseph Raz (2001) does not clearly define attachment, but he offers some interesting insights on how attachment relates to value and personal meaning. In Emotions, Robert C. Roberts (2003) suggests that attachment plays a role in certain emotions, and he describes it variously as liking (p. 130), caring (p. 143), and as “a special kind of concern” that is “especially relevant to one’s self-concept” (p. 260).

  3. See for example Keith Seddon’s (2005) introduction to Epictetus’s Handbook.

  4. The term translated as “attached” is a conjugated form of “prospaschein” (προσπάσχς). This is a compound word, consisting of the prefix “pros-” (meaning “toward”) and the verb “paschein” which has the same root as the noun “pathos” (the state of “feeling” or “suffering”).

  5. This echoes Dirk Baltzly’s point (2010) when he writes “…the view that one should be ‘apathetic,’ in its original Hellenistic sense, is not the view that you shouldn't care about anything, but rather the view that you should not be psychologically subject to anything—manipulated and moved by it, rather than yourself being actively and positively in command of your reactions and responses to things as they occur or are in prospect.”

  6. This notion, or something like it, also seems to have purchase in certain strands of Buddhism and Daoism. The earliest Buddhist teachings held that all life is suffering because we are attached to, or desire, worldly things, and such attachments inevitably lead to suffering. See for example, the Dīgha Nikāya (DN 31, 5; DN 34, 2.2, 4). Zhuangzi, one of the earliest exponents of Daoism, argued that in order to achieve a tranquil mind, one must be delivered from attachments (Graham 1981). The Daoist view of attachment is similar to that of the Buddhist’s. Both Buddhists and Daoists equate patheiac desires with suffering, and while Buddhists view relief from suffering as an end in itself, Daoists take issue with attachment because the emotional disturbance caused by patheiac desires interferes with the achievement of internal tranquility and harmony with the universe (Kupperman 2007, p. 121).

  7. One might think that any desire, if sufficiently strong, leaves one prone to suffering. As Frankfurt (1999) pointed out, however, many of our desires—even strong ones—seem to pass without much note. This typically occurs in cases in which we do not feel as though we will be harmed in any way by going without the desired object.

  8. See for example Frankfurt (1999) and Wiggins (1998).

  9. For more on the development of attachment theory, see Ainsworth (1969) and Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1980).

  10. For more on this point, see Bowlby (1969, pp. 308–309), Bretherton (1991, p. 19), Weiss (1991, p. 66), Mikulincer and Shaver (2007, pp. 57–58), Cassidy (2008, pp. 12–15).

  11. Notably, while psychologists have traditionally tended to reserve the term attachment for the infant-primary caregiver bond, the Bowlby–Ainsworth model has been, with some modification, extended to adult romantic partnerships as well. See for example Hazan and Shaver (1987), Rholes and Simpson (2004), Brumbaugh and Fraley (2006), Hazan et al. (2006), and Mikulincer and Shaver (2007). Even Bowlby, himself, though essentially concerned to investigate the infant-primary caregiver bond, suggests that attachment extends across one’s lifespan, taking the form of romantic relationships and other pair bonds in adulthood (1980). Views on which childhood and adult friends sometimes function as attachment figures are now more common in the psychology literature, though this domain of attachment has received little attention compared to infant-primary caregiver and romantic relations (See Mikulincer and Shaver 2007, esp. chp 1–3). It is far rarer to find attachment-theoretical frameworks that countenance inanimate objects and ideas as genuine attachment objects.

  12. Interestingly, attached infants typically seek more than mere proximity as well. Everyday experience—and even particular aspects of the Bowlby–Ainsworth model—seem to suggest as much. Infants want their primary caregivers to hold and play with them. They search for cues that it is okay to explore new environments, such as the mother’s reaffirming “Go ahead—it’s okay” gesture. They want to be picked up and comforted by their primary caregivers when feeling threatened or hurt. Also, a desire for engagement, as opposed to mere proximity, is especially salient in adults’ attitudes toward their attachment objects. Attached adult romantic partners, for example, desire sexual contact, conversation, and other sorts of playful or otherwise stimulating interaction with one another.

  13. Likewise, one can engage with an idea—e.g., the concept of infinity—by contemplating it.

  14. Security is derived from the Latin “se-” + “cura,” and literally translates as “free from care.”

  15. Bowlby may mean to capture no more than a feeling of physical safety here, but as will be clear, I use the term in a broader sense. I also leave room for the possibility that the sense of security at issue in this paper does not substantially differ from that of the Bowlby–Ainsworth view.

  16. While Frankfurt (1999) specifically stresses the non-emotive features of caring, in an earlier work, he does tie the notion of vulnerability to caring. He writes, “A person who cares about something… makes himself vulnerable to losses and susceptible to benefits depending upon whether what he cares about is diminished or enhanced” (1982, p. 260).

  17. See, for example, Bowlby (1969/1982, esp. chapter 12), Collins et al. (2006, p. 153), and Mikulincer and Shaver (2007, pp. 16–14).

  18. This isn’t to say that attachment plays no positive role in caring. Attachment psychologists have suggested that the “security-enhancing” features of interaction with an attachment figure can serve to facilitate and promote caregiving behaviors, empathy, and emotional attunement with others (see, for example, Schore 2003; Collins et al. 2006, p 163; Mikulincer and Shaver 2007, pp. 69–70).

  19. I have no strong objection to using the term “caring” in this way. One might suppose—though, to my mind, it seems something of a stretch to do so—that Blake sees the blanket as better (and not just Blake) only insofar as it has or lacks those features that pertain directly to his security. Relatedly, one might subscribe to a weaker conception of caring than the one that I articulated above—one that is more conducive to a purely “instrumental” attitude toward some object. Again, I have no strong objection to this usage, though I think there are reasons to preserve the distinction between this attitude and the richer sense of caring about an object for its own sake. For example, intuitively, we would think, should he find out about Olivia’s nefarious plotting and she pleaded, “Please don’t be mad—I only did it because I care so much about you,” Tim would be quite right in responding “You don’t care about me. You only care about yourself!”

  20. See for example, Roberts (2003), Solomon (2004), Bonanno et al. (2008), and Gustafson (1989).

  21. See Roberts (2003) for more on the intelligibility point and Cholbi (n.d.-a) for more on the connection between the rationality of grief and the griever’s relationship to the lost person. Robert Solomon (2004) suggests that one might not have the right to grieve absent an intimate connection between oneself and the deceased (p. 82). One might suppose that it is possible to have the relevant connection to someone without ever having met her. Think here of the masses who (seemingly) grieved over John F. Kennedy’s death. I remain agnostic about whether such cases reflect actual grief.

  22. See for example Jaworska (2007, p. 561) and Helm (2009, p. 60).

  23. See for example Solomon (2006).

  24. The idea that grief is, in some sense self-regarding, has been noted by a variety of theorists including, Ben-Ze’ev (2000), Solomon (2004, 2006) and Cholbi (n.d.-b). Notably, upon revisiting his “grief notes” shortly after his wife’s death, C.S. Lewis confessed, “They [Lewis’s notes] appall me. From the way I've been talking anyone would think that H.'s death mattered chiefly for its effect on myself. Her point of view seems to have dropped out of sight” (1961, p. 17).

  25. Psychologist Robert Weiss suggests that a central aspect of bereavement is the “removal of relational supports for the bereaved person’s functioning” (2008, p. 39).

  26. While feeling aimless—as when an agent can no longer direct her actions toward promoting the interests of a (greatly) cared-for object—might seem relevant to one’s felt security, this feeling differs from the disorientation one feels upon losing an attachment object. Losing a cared-for object might make one less certain about where to direct one’s agency, but losing an attachment object makes it more difficult to exercise one’s capacity for agency. Losing one of my ends is not the same as losing one of the resources with which I pursue and set ends in general. I am indebted to John Martin Fischer for this way of cashing out the distinction.

  27. John Bowlby suggested that grief in adults often mimics the emotional and behavioral profile of infants reacting to long-term separation from their primary caregivers (Bowlby 1980). The Bowlby–Ainsworth model of attachment has been very influential in accounts of grief in the psychology literature. See, for example, Parkes (1998) and Weiss (2008). Attachment theorists, including Bowlby, have tended to equate attachment with caring or love (see Bowlby 1969, p. 201; Bowlby 1980, p. 40; Parkes 2006, p. 5).

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank John Martin Fischer, David Shoemaker, Michael Cholbi, Michael Nelson, David Beglin, Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, Courtney Morris, the members of the UC Riverside Agency Workshop, and an anonymous referee for this journal for helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper. I am particularly indebted to Coleen Macnamara and Agnieszka Jaworska for detailed comments and insightful discussion on numerous drafts.

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Correspondence to Monique Lisa Wonderly.

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Wonderly, M.L. On being attached. Philos Stud 173, 223–242 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0487-0

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