Cristian Mihut

Research Fellow

 

Project: Gentleness as Benevolent Attunement to Frailty

The project aims to motivate, articulate, and defend a novel account of gentleness. Gentleness seems to be a benevolent sensitivity to the vulnerabilities (or frailties) of others (persons and non- persons), an attunement that justifies and motivates preserving or maintaining the other’s distinctive integrity and wholeness. The project is broadly divided into two parts. In the first part, it seeks to articulate a schema for understanding gentleness, in part by drawing on theological, conceptual, and literary resources. In the second, it investigates the value of gentleness in part by highlighting some of the moral and epistemic capacities it fosters. If gentleness helps us see the axiological world with clearer eyes and motivates us to attend to the features of the world that require our safeguarding, then it seems that gentleness is a core virtue, one desirable for all, even for marginalized and oppressed people.

Bio: Cristian Mihut is a philosophy professor at Bethel University, Indiana. His main research interests lie in moral psychology, philosophy of religion, and theology.