This 2010 text pursues Adam Smith's views on moral judgement, humanitarian care, commerce, justice and international law both in historical context and through a twenty-first-century cosmopolitan lens, making this a major contribution not only to Smith studies but also to the history of cosmopolitan thought and to contemporary cosmopolitan discourse itself. Forman-Barzilai breaks ground, demonstrating the spatial texture of Smith's moral psychology and the ways he believed that physical, affective and cultural distance constrain the identities, connections and ethical (...) obligations of modern commercial people. Forman-Barzilai emphasizes his resistance to the sort of relativism, moral insularity and cultural chauvinism that too often accompany localist critiques of cosmopolitan thought today. This is a fascinating, revisionist study that integrates the perspectives of intellectual history, moral philosophy, political theory, cultural theory, international relations theory and political economy, and will appeal across the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

In this essay the author explores the relation between sympathy and proximity in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. The essay proceeds in two parts. First, the author demonstrates that Smith's description of our various attachments and affections, and the inevitable conflicts among them, draws us into the rich spatial texture of sympathetic response and stimulates further inquiry into a variety of spaces in which sympathetic activity takes place. In the second part, the author explores three such spaces-the physical, the (...) affective, and the historical/cultural-to critique the way that some contemporary moral and political theorists have appropriated Smith's account of sympathy as a tool for cosmopolitan aspirations. To what extent can Smith's sympathy model detach us from and get us beyond the partiality and particularity generated by our physical, affective, and cultural entanglements? (shrink)

In this essay the author explores the relation between sympathy and proximity in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. The essay proceeds in two parts. First, the author demonstrates that Smith’s description of our various attachments and affections, and the inevitable conflicts among them, draws us into the rich spatial texture of sympathetic response and stimulates further inquiry into a variety of spaces in which sympathetic activity takes place. In the second part, the author explores three such spaces—the physical, the (...) affective, and the historical/cultural—to critique the way that some contemporary moral and political theorists have appropriated Smith’s account of sympathy as a tool for cosmopolitan aspirations. To what extent can Smith’s sympathy model detach us from and get us beyond the partiality and particularity generated by our physical, affective, and cultural entanglements. (shrink)

In the Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith observed that we live in a fundamentally conflictual world. Although he held that we are creatures who sympathize, he also observed that our sympathy seems to be constrained by geographical limits. Accordingly, traditional theories of cosmopolitanism were implausible; yet, as a moral philosopher, Smith attempted to reconcile his bleak description of the world with his eagerness for international peace. Smith believed that commercial intercourse among self‐interested nations would emulate sympathy on a global (...) scale, balancing national wealth and international peace without a coercive apparatus to enforce compliance with international law. (shrink)

In this article, I address Rousseau's evolution as a political thinker between the years 1750 and 1753, during which time his critics challenged him to square the radical implications of his Discours sur les sciences et les arts with the realities of eighteenth-century European life. It was in the course of replying to his critics that Rousseau first adopted what I refer to as a more contextual orientation to political institutions. I argue that Rousseau's ostensibly Montesquieuian turn in the replies (...) sustained his claim in the Lettre a d'Alembert that theatre, the scourge of Geneva's republican simplicity, might nevertheless serve a useful function in Paris, where meurs, in Rousseau's estimation, had lapsed already to a point of irreversible corruption. I conclude that this contextual orientation to institutions guided much of Rousseau's subsequent thought about political reform in the modern republic. (shrink)

Many normative political theorists have engaged in the systematic collection and/or analysis of empirical data to inform the development of their arguments over the past several decades. Yet, the approach they employ has typically not been treated as a distinctive mode of theorizing. It has been mostly overlooked in surveys of normative political theory methods and methodologies, as well as by those critics who assert that political theory is too abstracted from actual political contestation. Our aim is to unearth this (...) grounded normative theory (GNT) approach – to identify its definitive practices and highlight its potential significance. We detail four overlapping commitments characteristic of GNT. These include commitments to expanding the comprehensiveness of input for normative arguments through original empirical research and/or analysis, recursivity in the development of normative claims, attentiveness to the systematic inclusion of a range of voices and ways of knowing, and accountability to those engaged by the theorist in empirical contexts. We discuss methodological distinctions within GNT, including between more- and less-solidaristic approaches. We discuss how GNT answers calls for theorists to engage more closely with empirical political dynamics and we consider responses to possible critiques. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Adam Smith contains essays by some of the most prominent philosophers and scholars working on Adam Smith today. It is a special issue of The Adam Smith Review, commemorating the 250th anniversary of Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. Introduction Part 1: Moral phenomenology 1. The virtue of TMS 1759 D.D. Raphael 2. The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the inner life Emma Rothschild 3. The standpoint of morality in Adam Smith and Hegel Angelica Nuzzo Part 2: Sympathy (...) and moral judgment 4. Smith and Rousseau in dialogue: sympathy, pitié, spectatorship and narrative Charles L. Griswold 5. Adam Smith’s concept of sympathy and its contemporary interpretations Bence Nanay 6. Smith’s ambivalence about honour Stephen Darwall 7. Sentiments and spectators: Adam Smith’s theory of moral judgment Geoffrey Sayre-McCord 8. Smith’s anti-cosmopolitanism Fonna Forman-Barzilai 9. Resentment and moral judgment in Smith and Butler Alice MacLachlan Part 3: Economics, religion, aesthetics and value theory 10. Adam Smith’s problems: individuality and the paradox of sympathy Robert Urquhart 11. Scepticism and naturalism in Adam Smith Ryan Patrick Hanley 12. Adam Smith’s solution to the paradox of tragedy Arby Ted Siraki 13. Smithian intrinsic value Patrick Frierson Memoir on Adam Smith’s life 14. Adam Smith’s smile: his years at Balliol College, 1740–6, in retrospect Ian Simpson Ross. (shrink)

In _Rawlsian Political Analysis: Rethinking the Microfoundations of Social Science, _Paul Clements develops a new, morally grounded model of political and social analysis as a critique of and improvement on both neoclassical economics and rational choice theory. What if practical reason is based not only on interests and ideas of the good, as these theories have it, but also on principles and sentiments of right? The answer, Clements argues, requires a radical reorientation of social science from the idea of interests (...) to the idea of social justice. According to Clements, systematic weaknesses in neoclassical economics and rational choice theory are due to their limited model of choice. According to such theories in the utilitarian tradition, all our practical decisions aim to maximize the satisfaction of our interests. These neo-utilitarian approaches focus on how we promote our interests, but Clements argues, our ideas of right, cognitively represented in principles, contribute independently and no less fundamentally to our practical decisions. The most significant challenge to utilitarianism in the last half century is found in John Rawls’s _Theory of Justice _and _Political Liberalism_, in which Rawls builds on Kant's concept of practical reason. Clements extends Rawls's moral theory and his critique of utilitarianism by arguing for social analysis based on the Kantian and Rawlsian model of choice. To illustrate the explanatory power of his model, he presents three detailed case studies: a program analysis of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, a political economy analysis of the causes of poverty in the Indian state of Bihar, and a problem-based analysis of the ethics and politics of climate change. He concludes by exploring the broad implications of social analysis grounded in a concept of social justice. “Paul Clements’s _Rawlsian Political Analysis _mounts an important intervention into the philosophy of the social sciences, challenging the tired fact/value, empirical/normative binaries that continue to impoverish social analysis. His insistence that social analysis must engage both facts and norms, the empirical and the normative, the good and the right, interest and principle—and that empirical social scientists must engage constructively on questions of autonomy and social justice—is noble and ultimately essential if social science is to justify its place in the years to come.” —_Fonna Forman-Barzilai, University of California, San Diego_. (shrink)

In perpetuating and exacerbating restricted access to essential medicines, current trade-related intellectual property rules on medicines may violate core human rights to health and medicines. In this light, there should be serious questions about their necessity, and their justification should be critically assessed from the perspective of human rights standards.

[1]: meha-haḳdamah ṿe-ʻad pereḳ 19 --.

The emerging discipline of complexity science, applied to the social sciences, seeks to study the rise of human civilization as a part of a natural, evolving biological system that exploits energy resources to fuel its growth into a complex social system. In order to understand the whole system, the reductionist approach, typical to Western science, must be supplanted. The atomistic study of various scientific fields as separate mechanical parts of the system must be broadened, creating a more holistic view of (...) human culture as an integral part of larger universal process of evolution and creation. In this article I wish to integrate the various scientific fields, including physics, chronobiology, biology, evolutionary psychology, and the social sciences, to achieve a unified understanding of our cultural evolution. (shrink)

By integrating the entire body of research in human sexual dynamics, immune responses, and sociocultural behavior, we can conclude that the mass hysteria our society is currently experiencing originates in our evolved psychological adaptations to pandemic conditions [i]. A lack of hormonal balance [ii], due to a collapse in testosterone levels, may cause a disproportionate immune response that leads to the destruction of our cherished sociopolitical institutions—the very institutions that are design to protect human liberty and prosperity. What is playing (...) out at a societal level is similar to an excessive immune response that causes the body to attack itself: decreased testosterone causing the kind of auto-immune response that is more prevalent in females. [i] Barzilai, R.. Low Solar Activity, Winter Flu Conditions, Pandemics and Sex Wars: A Holistic View of Human Evolution. Science & Philosophy, 8. Doi: 10.23756/sp.v8i1.514 [ii] Barzilai, R.. Solar cycles, light, sex hormones and the life cycles of civilization: Toward integrated chronobiology. Science & Philosophy, 7. doi: 10.23756/sp.v7i2.483. (shrink)

Both decentralization of state law and cultural relativism have been fundamentally embedded in legal pluralism. As a scholarly trend in law and society, it has insightfully challenged the underpinnings of analytical positivist jurisprudence. Nevertheless, a theoretical concept of political power has significantly been missing in research on the plurality of legal practices in various jurisdictions. This Article aims to critically offer a theoretical concept of political power that takes legal decentralization and cultural relativism seriously and yet points to how and (...) where we should look into political power, assuming that legal pluralism itself may be a strategy of elites and nation-states amid globalization. First, the Article explores the contributions of legal pluralism, and its limits, in intellectually revolting against analytical positivist jurisprudence. Second, it explicates why a concept of political power has been missing, and why such a concept is required for better comprehension of legal pluralism. Third, it calls for a look into three sites of political power in the praxis of legal pluralism: politics of identities, non-ruling communities, and neo-liberal globalization. Last, the Article constructs a concept of political-legal transformations that enables us to unveil political power in the context of de-centralized legal pluralities. Power is produced in, resides in and is generated in the dynamic interactions between nation-states, localities and global agents. Transformative relations along these dimensions allow the nation-state to forfeit some elements of power, both in economics and in law, but they also enable it to maintain some essential ingredients of political power that are often veiled in the rhetoric of globalized pluralism. (shrink)

The current spread of coronavirus has caught our modern world by surprise, which leads to widespread panic, fear and confusion. However, if we view the unfolding of these events from a scientific historical perspective of past human evolution, we may discover the reoccurring patterns of the environmental conditions that give rise to such epidemics. Hence, we can figure out better methods to prepare and react to the infectious agents that spread diseases that have shaped the course of human history before. (...) Here, I propose a holistic view of human evolution, with an interdisciplinary approach that studies how cyclic variation in solar UV energy affects the evolution of viruses and shapes the symbiotic dynamics of human life on earth. (shrink)

In my work I argue that sexual differences in the brain seem to shape the ideological gulf between the respective social groups each side represents. And most significantly, it is the male sex hormone testosterone that is the primary hormone affecting our sexual evolution. Not only does testosterone fuel the passion for reproduction and play a critical role in the length of human lives, it is an integral component to the mechanism of human civilization—its triumphs and its tragedies. In order (...) to understand the forces that drive the life cycles of human cultures and form the engine of history, it is important to look at the most fundamental building blocks of human neuroscience. Our hormones are the impetus for our history. Hormones regulate and control the way the human mind perceives the world and forms social organizations and political order accordingly. Hormones drive waves of social mood, shaping the evolution of our social life, the fluctuations of religious doctrines, cultural crusades, and sexual norms. (shrink)

Are mystical experiences primarily formed by the mystic's cultural background and concepts, as modern day "constructivists" maintain, or do mystics in some way transcend language, belief, and culturally conditioned expectations? Do mystical experiences differ in the different religious traditions, as "pluralists" contend, or are they identical across cultures? Twelve contributors here attempt to answer these questions through close examination of a particular form of mystical experience, "Pure Consciousness"--the experience of being awake but devoid of intentional content for consciousness. The contributors (...) analyze pure consciousness and other mystical experiences from historical Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Jewish sources, as well as from modern mystics. They demonstrate that pure consciousness poses serious conceptual problems for a contructivist understanding of mysticism. Revealing the inconsistencies and inadequacies of current models, they make significant strides towards developing new models for the phenomenon of mysticism, breaking new ground for our understanding of mysticism and of human experience in general. (shrink)

Kant’s account of the freedom gained through virtue builds on the Socratic tradition. On the Socratic view, when morality is our end, nothing can hinder us from attaining satisfaction: we are self-sufficient and free since moral goodness is (as Kant says) “created by us, hence is in our power.” But when our end is the fulfillment of sensible desires, our satisfaction requires luck as well as the cooperation of others. For Kant, this means that happiness requires that we get other (...) people to work for our ends; and this requires, in turn, that we gain control over the things other people value so as to have influence over them. If this plan for happiness is not subordinated to morality, then what is most valuable to us will be precisely what others value. This is the root of the “passions” that make us evil and make us slaves whose satisfaction depends on others. But, significantly, this dependence is a moral slavery and hence does not signal a loss, or even diminishment of the kind of freedom required for moral responsibility. (shrink)

Hegel's discussion of the concept of “habit” appears at a crucial point in his Encyclopedia system, namely, in the transition from the topic of “nature” to the topic of “spirit” (Geist): it is through habit that the subject both distinguishes itself from its various sensory states as an absolute unity (the I) and, at the same time, preserves those sensory states as the content of sensory consciousness. By calling habit a “second nature,” Hegel highlights the fact that incipient spirit retains (...) a “moment” of the natural that marks a limitation compared to “pure thought” but that also makes perceptual consciousness possible. This makes Hegel's account analogous in important respects to John McDowell's “naturalism of second nature.” But Hegel's account of habit can be seen as a version of a Kantian synthesis of the productive imagination—and hence presupposes a given material that can become one's own by means of habit. This does not mean that Hegel falls into the Myth of the Given, but it does suggest that an appropriate account of second nature might be committed to something McDowell wants to deny: that nonconceptual states of consciousness play a role (even if not a justificatory role) in perception. (shrink)

For Kant, any authentic moral demands are wholly distinct from the demands of prudence. This has led critics to complain that Kantian moral demands are incompatible with our human nature as happiness-seekers. Kant’s defenders have pointed out, correctly, that Kant can and does assert that it is permissible, at least in principle, to pursue our own happiness. But this response does not eliminate the worry that a life organized around the pursuit of virtue might turn out to be one from (...) which we cannot expect any of this (permissible) happiness. To address this worry, Kant would need to establish that there is a kind of harmony between virtue and our own happiness that can give us confidence that aiming at morality does not require us to abandon our hope for happiness in this life. This paper aims to show that Kant—building on insights from Rousseau that Kant identifies with Cynicism—does offer an account of such a harmony between virtue and worldly happiness. (shrink)

One of the most exciting aspects of this journal, of which I am proud to be an executive editor, is that it has become a venue in which so many distinct fields can interact on a single question, that of consciousness. I know of no other question, or journal, which has brought together so many voices, from so many fields, to swirl around a single topic. It is exciting both to provide a forum and to be a part of this (...) debate. In this article I would like to bring the findings of my somewhat unusual but increasingly accepted field -- mysticism-- to the discussion, for I think they may offer some helpful insights about consciousness. Why? When a biologist seeks to understand a complex phenomenon, one key strategy is to look to at it in its simplest form. Probably the most famous is the humble bacterium E. coli. Its simple gene structure has allowed us to understand much of the gene functioning of complex species. Similarly many biologists have turned to the `memory' of the simple sea slug to understand our own more kaleidoscopic memory. Freud and Durkheim both used totemism, which they construed as the simplest form of religion, to understand the complexities of religious life. The methodological principle is: to understand something complex turn to its simple forms. (shrink)

The concept of second nature plays a central role in McDowell's project of reconciling thought's external constraint with its spontaneity or autonomy: our conceptual capacities are natural in the sense that they are fully integrated into the natural world, but they are a second nature to us since they are not reducible to elements that are intelligible apart from those conceptual capacities. Rather than offering a theory of second nature and an account of how we acquire one, McDowell suggests that (...) Aristotle's account of ethical character formation as the acquisition of a second nature serves as a model that can reassure us that thought's autonomy does not threaten its naturalness. However, far from providing such reassurance, the Aristotelian model of second nature actually generates an anxiety about how the acquisition of such autonomous conceptual abilities could be possible. (shrink)

erkennung der Postmodernität: Hilfen für Historiker – und Historiker der Wissenschaften im Besonderen. Ausgehend von einer Unterscheidung zwischen der Postmodernit?t als einer von der Modernit?t durch eine breite Umkehr ihrer kulturellen Grundannahmen abgegrenzten historischen Ära und dem Postmodernismus – einer von den selbsternannten Postmodernisten in der frühen Postmodernität angenommenen intellektuellen Attitüde – thematisiert der Aufsatz zwei grundsätzliche Charakteristika der Postmodernität: Erstens die Umkehrung der kulturellen Rangfolge von Wissenschaft und Technik, worin Postmodernität und Postmodernismus übereinstimmen. Zweitens die Ablösung des Ideals eines (...) methodisch vorgehenden, uneigennützigen Wissenschaftlers, nicht durch ein fragmentiertes Subjekt, wie der Postmodernismus behauptet, sondern durch den einseitig interessierten Unternehmer, welcher unter Missachtung aller Regeln hartnäckig seine Eigeninteressen verfolgt. Diese Umkehr in Bedeutung und Rolle von Wissenschaft und Technologie, die um 1980 begann, ist ein Kennzeichen des Übergangs von der Modernit?t zur Postmodernität. Diese Umkehr ist primär zu erkennen als eine Ablehnung des Regelhaften, des methodischen Vorgehens – mit dem “Methodismus” als einer die Modernität auszeichnenden kulturellen Perspektive – aber auch als eine Ablehnung der Uneigennützigkeit, einer in der Modernität besonders wert geschätzten Geisteshaltung. Postmodernität konstituiert sich somit als diese Umwertung der Werte, die ihre Quelle im ich-fixierten, transgressiven und “risiko”-freudigen postmodernen Individuum und seinen anti-sozialen Annahmen in Bezug auf Persönlichkeit hat. In der Wissenschaftsgeschichte selbst findet sich daher seit circa 1980 ein entsprechender Wandel der wissenschaftlichen Aufmerksamkeit weg von der Wissenschaft und hin zur Technologie. Damit einhergeht eine erstaunliche Vermeidung sozialhistorischer Perspektivierung, wie sie sich nicht zuletzt in der Abkehr von kausalistischen “Einfluss”-Erklärungen zugunsten voluntaristischer “Ressourcen”-Erklärungen spiegelt.cognizing Postmodernity: Helps for Historians – of Science Especially. stmodernity, a historical era demarcated from modernity by a broad reversal in cultural presuppositions, is distinguished from postmodernism, an intellectual posture adopted by self-identified postmodernists early in postmodernity. Two principal features of postmodernity are addressed: first, the downgrading of science and the upgrading of technology in cultural rank – on which postmodernity and postmodernism are in accord; second, the displacement of the methodical, disinterested scientist, modernity's beau ideal, not by a fragmented subject as postmodernism claims, but by the single-minded entrepreneur, resourcefully pursuing his self-interest in disregard of all rules. The reversal in rank and role as between science and technology, setting in circa 1980, is a marker of the transition from modernity to postmodernity. That reversal is to be cognized primarily as rejection of rule-following, of proceeding methodically – ‘methodism’ being the cultural perspective that uniquely distinguished modernity – but also as rejection of disinterestedness, the quality of mind especially highly esteemed in modernity. Postmodernity is constituted by this transvaluation of values, whose well-spring is the egocentric, transgressive , postmodern personality and its anti-social presumptions regarding personhood. Within the history of science itself there has been since circa 1980 a corresponding turn of scholarly attention away from science to technology, and a growing distaste for social perspectives, reflected, i. a., in the rejection of causalist ‘influence’ explanations in favor of voluntarist ‘resource’ explanations. (shrink)

One of the most exciting aspects of this journal, of which I am proud to be an executive editor, is that it has become a venue in which so many distinct fields can interact on a single question, that of consciousness. I know of no other question, or journal, which has brought together so many voices, from so many fields, to swirl around a single topic. It is exciting both to provide a forum and to be a part of this (...) debate. In this article I would like to bring the findings of my somewhat unusual but increasingly accepted field -- mysticism-- to the discussion, for I think they may offer some helpful insights about consciousness. Why? When a biologist seeks to understand a complex phenomenon, one key strategy is to look to at it in its simplest form. Probably the most famous is the humble bacterium E. coli. Its simple gene structure has allowed us to understand much of the gene functioning of complex species. Similarly many biologists have turned to the `memory' of the simple sea slug to understand our own more kaleidoscopic memory. Freud and Durkheim both used totemism, which they construed as the simplest form of religion, to understand the complexities of religious life. The methodological principle is: to understand something complex turn to its simple forms. (shrink)

For Sellars, the possibility of empirical knowledge presupposes the existence of "sense impressions" in the perceiver, i.e., non-conceptual states of perceptual consciousness. But this role for sense impressions does not implicate Sellars' account in the Myth of the Given: sense impressions do not stand in a justificatory relation to instances of perceptual knowledge; their existence is rather a condition for the possibility of the acquisition of empirical concepts. Sellars suggests that learning empirical concepts presupposes that we can remember certain past (...) facts that we could not conceptualize at the time they obtained. And such memory presupposes, in turn, the existence of certain (past) non-conceptual sensory states that can be conceptualized. (shrink)

In Grassroots Spirituality, Robert Forman documents an important and profound shift in the nature of spirituality in North America, that strongly influences Europe as well. His exciting survey graphically illustrates the possibility of this "grassroots" movement shaping a creative era that responds to new and old needs of religiosity.

One of Leibniz’s more unusual philosophical projects is his presentation (in a series of unpublished drafts) of an argument for the conclusion that a time will necessarily come when “nothing would happen that had not happened before." Leibniz’s presentations of the argument for such a cyclical cosmology are all too brief, and his discussion of its implications is obscure. Moreover, the conclusion itself seems to be at odds with the main thrust of Leibniz’s own metaphysics. Despite this, we can discern (...) a serious and important point to Leibniz’s consideration of the doctrine, namely in what it suggests about the proper boundary between metaphysics and theology, on the one hand, and ordinary history (whether human or natural), on the other. And we can get a better sense of Leibniz purpose in the essays by considering them in the context of Leibniz's response to Thomas Burnet's "Telluris theoria sacra" (1681-89). Leibniz praises Burnet's history of earth for presenting a harmony between the principles of nature and grace, a harmony absent in the cosmogonies of Descartes and the Newtonians. But Leibniz also complains that Burnet misconceives the boundary between natural explanation and reflections on divine wisdom. And Leibniz's essays on cyclical cosmology suggest the alternative to Burnet's account: a natural history of the earth and its inhabitants should be radically autonomous from, even if ultimately harmonious with, theological principles. (shrink)

I am grateful for Mr Bagger's thoughtful remarks, as well as those of Professors Cousins, Smith, Katz, and Gimello at a recent American Academy of Religion panel devoted to The Problem of Pure Consciousness . But I cannot help but be struck by the tone of Mr Bagger's notice. As one colleague communicated to me after reading the piece, this is one of the most gratuitously rude pieces he had ever seen! If our book is really as bad as all (...) this, it makes one wonder why Religious Studies , or Mr Bagger, would bother to give it such attention, and whether it indicates how deeply we have touched a nerve in the contemporary debate. (shrink)

Kant frequently speaks as if all voluntary actions arise from our maxims as the subjective principles of our practical reason. But, as Michael Albrecht has pointed out, Kant also occasionally speaks as if it is only the rare person of “character” who acts according to principles or maxims. I argue that Kant’s seemingly contradictory claims on this front result from the fact that there are two fundamentally different ways that maxims of action can figure in the deliberation of the agent: (...) an agent can act on a maxim either because it promises agreeable results or because he deems it to be an intrinsically correct principle of action. Kant describes a maxim of the latter sort as “firm” and as indicative of “character” in the honorific sense. If the agent’s commitment to his maxim is instead conditional on its agreeable results, we can say he does not act “on principle” and in that sense does not act on maxims at all: rather than aiming at a set of results because the action that produces them conforms to his maxim, he acts according to his maxim because doing so promises (and only as long as it promises) the results he desires. Such an agent thus lacks the principled maxims of a person of character since his maxims are always for sale to the highest bidder. Kant allows that an evil person can approximate the ideal of a principled indifference to results, but claims that only morally good action can be wholly principled. This is also why maxims of action in conformity with duty can be acquired gradually through habituation whereas an authentically moral maxim must instead arise from a “revolution” in thought. (shrink)