Abstract

In this dissertation I argue that responsibility for self is an important feature of human agency, crucial to the autonomy of individual agents as well as to joint deliberation and the sharing of ends in relations of love and friendship. I argue that the sort of 'selflessness' involved in extreme self-abnegating deference undermines responsibility for self, and that it compromises the capacity to enter into fully reciprocal interpersonal relationships. Responsibility for self, on my view, consists in a disposition to hold oneself answerable to others as such, a dialogical form of reflectiveness that is unavailable to those entrenched in a practice of granting unconditional authority to the will of another. ;In the first chapter, I argue that self-abnegating deference constitutes a pathology of individual agency, despite the fact that it is not generally recognized as such by proponents of mainstream reflective-endorsement views such as that developed by Harry Frankfurt. In the next two chapters, I argue that this pathology of individual agency engenders a related pathology of plural agency, compromising the deferential individual's ability to participate in collective forms of practical deliberation. I develop a model of joint practical deliberation that builds on Margaret Gilbert's analysis of "plural-subjects," and I illustrate how the process of coming to share reasons and ends is compromised by certain kinds of asymmetry in perceived practical authority. In the final chapter, I draw out some implications of the earlier arguments for our understanding of how ends come to be shared between lovers and close friends. I examine the commonly held view that lovers' identities merge in ways that render inapplicable the distinction between selflessness and self-interest. I argue that this view relies on an implausible picture of what it would be to share a practical perspective. I draw on elements of the first three chapters to explain how interests and ends can be self-responsibly shared in relations of love and friendship