In this article, I argue that we can have a plausible account of the experience of practical necessity, namely, the experience that some action is necessitated for someone, by referring to the philosophy of Wang Yangming, a Neo-Confucian philosopher in Ming Dynasty China. The experience of practical necessity, according to Wang, can be of two kinds: general and particular, both having their bases on human nature and related to the fulfillment of the self. I argue that this account fares better (...) than the non-reductionist account and other reductionist accounts, including Christine Korsgaard’s, which explains the experience in terms of the constitution of the self. (shrink)

In The Sources of Normativity Korsgaard introduces her conception of practical identities understood as the source of moral obligations. This conception forms a point of transition from Korsgaard’s theory of action to her solution to the problem of the authority of moral norms. In order to describe how universal categorical reasoning is compatible with the moral content of particular practical decisions, Korsgaard needs to show how our contingent practical identities can be reconciled with what she defines as the universally shared (...) identity that expresses our humanity. To make this reconciliation work, she devises an argument for the public shareability of reasons amended by her reinterpretation of the Kantian as if principle. I suggest that, in doing so, Korsgaard steps too far away from Kant’s architectonic approach to the question of why moral norms bind us, and that, consequently, the Korsgaardian reconciliation between the two kinds of identities, as it stands, cannot be accomplished. (shrink)

The conception of two kinds of practical identities, which Korsgaard introduces in the Sources of Normativity, helps her explain how universal categorical reasoning is compatible with the moral content of individual practical decisions. Based on this conception, she devises an interpretation of the Kantian as if principle amended by her argument for the public shareability of reasons. I suggest that, in doing so, Korsgaard steps too far away from Kant’s architectonic approach to the question of why moral norms bind us, (...) and that, as a result, the Korsgaardian explanation, as it stands, cannot be accomplished. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the way in which Korsgaard’s approach to obligation as springing from the reflective rejection of that which threatens one’s own identity can account for obligations towards others, without making the latter relative to obligations to oneself. To this end, I begin by stressing the role of reflexivity in ethical relationships, and show how this reflexivity is mediated by reference to law, which applies both to the self and to the other. On this basis, I then (...) argue that Korsgaard’s account of the interplay between practical and moral identity reflects the very structure of practical reason, which requires both a particular and a universal premise in order to issue practical reasons for action– and the corresponding obligations. Within this framework, I argue that Korsgaard’s solution to the problem outlined above lies in having stressed the shareable character of reasons such that it is neither your reason nor my reason that obligates me, but rather reason as such. This solution, however, requires a further argument aimed at clarifying what makes your reasons different from my own. (shrink)

In The Sources of Normativity and elsewhere, Korsgaard defends a Kantian ethical theory by arguing that valuing anything commits one to valuing humanity as the source of all value. I reconstruct Korsgaard’s influential argument to show how she can resist many of the objections that critics have raised. I also show how the argument fails because, at a crucial point, it begs the question in favor of the value of humanity. It thus fails for internal reasons that do not depend (...) on rejecting Korsgaard’s metaethical constructivism or her conception of rational agency. (shrink)