Sahar Heydari Fard / Blameworthy Saints
Sahar Heydari Fard / Blameworthy Saints
October 17, our department colloquium series welcomes Sahar Heydari Fard from The Ohio State University, who will discuss her work on social change and its moral dimensions. Her talk is "Blameworthy Saints: Stability, Change, and the Ethics of Collective Resistance."
Consider two people with the same commitment to democratic ideals. One believes that preserving fragile democratic norms and avoiding polarizing tactics is essential to safeguard the conditions of collective self-rule on which progress depends. The other believes that doing so shields injustice and blocks urgently needed change and turns to activism and direct action to force a public reckoning. History offers many examples of both stances being praised, even as their proponents meaningfully blame one another. I call this the Blameworthy Saints Phenomenon and use to expose a gap in the ethics of collective resistance. I argue that existing accounts lack the resources to capture the distinctive tension this phenomenon generates and the benefits it brings. I offer a structural diagnosis that locates the tension between the ethics of maintaining stability and the imperatives for change, and propose an alternative to standard functionalist theories of blame to fill this gap.