Commentators do not take Socrates’ theses in the Hippias Minor seriously. They believe it is an aporetic dialogue and even that Socrates does not mean what he says. Hence they are unable to understand the presuppositions behind Socrates’ two interconnected theses: that those who do wrong and lie voluntarily are better than those who do wrong unintentionally, and that no one does wrong and lies voluntarily. Arguing that liars are better than the unenlightened, Socrates concludes that there are no liars. (...) Instead, there are only those who know and those who don’t. The unenlightened cannot lie, and alien volitions, desires, or emotions are unlikely to mislead and deceive those who know, i. e., the wise. Why, then, is a thinker like Socrates ready to defy the experience and moral convictions of his contemporaries and even our own to such an extent? (shrink)

This paper argues that non-cognitivism about moral judgements is compatible with moral realism. In order to reveal the possibility, and plausibility, of this hitherto under-explored position in metaethics, it surveys a series of four increasingly fine-grained formulations of the distinction between cognitivism and non-cognitivism. It argues that all but the last of these distinctions should be rejected, on the grounds that they lead advocates of non-cognitivism away from what initially motivated them to advocate non-cognitivism in the first place. (...) One significant pay-off of this reconceived formulation of the cognitivism/non-cognitivism distinction is that it reveals what it would take to properly appreciate the place of virtue ethics in contemporary metaethical debates. (shrink)

In the Protagoras, Socrates appears to affirm and defend a paradoxical doctrine: the unity of virtue. Plato scholars do not agree on how the doctrine should be understood. Some, following Vlastos (1972), take Socrates to hold that the virtues are biconditionally related, i.e. that anyone who has one of the virtues has them all. Others, following Penner (1973), take Socrates’ position to be that the names of the virtues all refer to the same thing, namely virtue. In this paper, I (...) argue that both of these interpretations are mistaken: the main thesis of the Protagoras is, very simply, that each of the virtues is a kind of knowledge or wisdom. (shrink)

Prior research has demonstrated that accountants differ from the general population on many personality traits. Understanding accountants’ personality traits is important when these characteristics may impact professional behavior or ability to work with members of the business community. Our study investigates the relationship between Machiavellianism, ethical orientation, anti-intellectualism, and social desirability response bias in Canadian accountants. We find that Canadian accountants score much higher on the Machiavellianism scale than U.S. accountants. Additionally, our results show a significant relationship between Machiavellianism (...) and relativism, idealism, anti-intellectualism, and social desirability response bias. Our results indicate that professional Canadian accountants may not share the same personality characteristics as U.S. accountants. We extend previous research investigating Canadian accountants, by explicitly recognizing the impact of social desirability response bias, and by including anti-intellectualism. (shrink)

Rachana Kamtekar offers a new understanding of Plato's account of the soul and its impact on our living well or badly, virtuously or viciously. She argues that throughout the dialogues Plato maintains that human beings have a natural desire for our own good, and that actions and conditions contrary to this desire are involuntary.

The question I address in the paper is “What is the ideal of MacIntyre’s moral philosophy? What is the telos of human nature?” Considering MacIntyre’s critique of modern culture, politics and philosophy, anti-intellectualism emerges as the main reason for his refutation of these values. So is it a reason for moral and political distortion that leads to the interpassivity of the modern self. Taking into account MacIntyre’s idea of characters I pinpoint the character of the philosopher as (...) a moral ideal of MacIntyre’s thought. For it is not only intellectual activity within any practice that enables us to develop our distinctively human nature but also philosophy that is the highest form of that kind of activity. From this point of view, it is crucial to grasp philosophy as a required way of life and the craft that enables us to be moral and political agents. (shrink)

Jonathan Bennett, Nomy Arpaly, and others see in Huckleberry Finn's apparent praiseworthiness for not turning Jim in (even though this goes against his own moral judgments in the matter) a model for an improved, non-intellectualist approach to moral appraisal. I try to show – both on Aristotelian and on independent grounds – that these positions are fundamentally flawed. In the process, I try to show how Huck may be blameless for lacking what would have been a praiseworthy belief (...) (that I should help Jim), hence, blameless for not acting on this belief; but being ‘blamelessly unpraiseworthy’ is not the same thing as being praiseworthy. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to explicate the theological and epistemological elements of John Locke's moral philosophy as presented in the ‘Essay Concerning Human Understanding’ and ‘The Reasonableness of Christianity’. Many detractors hold that Locke's moral philosophy is internally inconsistent due to his seeming commitment to both the intellectualist position that divinely instituted morality admits of pure rational demonstration and the competing voluntarist claim that we must rely for our moral knowledge upon divine revelation. In this (...) paper I argue that Locke is guilty of no such contradiction. In doing so, I attempt to accommodate Locke's position in the ‘Essay’ that moral principles are demonstrable a priori with his views on the sanctity of Christian revelation. I then consider Locke's conception of moral ideas as a species of mixed modes, or arbitrarily constructed complex ideas, and attempt to navigate the mechanism whereby human understanding can recognize these ideas as conforming to, or straying from, divinely appointed natural law. I conclude that despite Locke's failure to actually provide a full-fledged moral theory, he lays a rationally coherent groundwork for the fulfilment of such a project that accommodates a-priori rational reflection and divine revelation as complementary paths to moral understanding. (shrink)

According to the standard reading of Anselm’s De casu diaboli 12 through 14, the angels are morally responsible only if their own wills are in a radical way within their own power. By giving to angels two wills, i.e., two basic inclinations or volitional dispositions, Anselm’s God yields to the angels room for a free choice—indeed imparts on them the necessity of such a choice: in the case where an angel’s own happiness is incommensurable with justice, the angel must choose (...) or “will” which disposition to act in accordance with. The standard reading thus takes Anselm to argue for a form of voluntarism. In this paper I argue that the underlying moral psychology of De casu diaboli is neither voluntarist nor intellectualist. A voluntarist reading renders Anselm’s views on motivation incoherent, whereas his views on the conditions of morally right action run afoul of crucial intellectualist assumptions. (shrink)

This paper aims at reconstructing the ethical issues raised by Spinoza's early Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Specifically, I argue that Spinoza takes issue with Descartes’ epistemology in order to support a form of “ethical intellectualism” in which knowledge is envisaged as both necessary and sufficient to reach the supreme good. First, I reconstruct how Descartes exploits the distinction between truth and certainty in his Discourse on the Method. On the one hand, this distinction acts as the (...) basis for Descartes’ epistemological rules while, on the other hand, it implies a “morale par provision” in which adequate knowledge is not strictly necessary to practice virtue. Second, I show that Spinoza rejects the distinction between truth and certainty and thus the methodological doubt. This move leads Spinoza to substitute the Cartesian Cogito with the idea of God as the only adequate standard of knowledge, through which the mind can attain the rules to reach the supreme good. Third, I demonstrate that in the Short Treatise Spinoza develops this view by equating intellect and will and thus maintaining that only adequate knowledge can help to contrast affects. However, I also insist that Spinoza's early epistemology is unable to explain why human beings drop conceive of the idea of God inadequately. Thus, I suggest that in his later writings Spinoza accounts for the insufficiency of adequate knowledge in opposing the power of the imagination and passions by reconnecting the nature of ideas with the mind's conatus. (shrink)

Refined intellectualism holds that although an agent’s actions always follow his rationally-produced choices of what is best, those choices can be influenced by non-rational motivational states. Through a contrast with the Protagoras, I argue that RI is not only clearly endorsed in the Phaedo but also central to the philosophical ethic defended in that dialogue. This result raises problems for prevailing developmentalist interpretations of Plato’s moral psychology.

Enneads I: 8.14 poses significant problems for scholars working in the Plotinian secondary literature. In that passage, Plotinus gives the impression that the body and not the soul is causally responsible for vice. The difficulty is that in many other sections of the same text, Plotinus makes it abundantly clear that the body, as matter, is a mere privation of being and therefore represents the lowest rung on the proverbial metaphysical ladder. A crucial aspect to Plotinus’s emanationism, however, is that (...) lower levels of a metaphysical hierarchy cannot causally influence higher ones and, thus, there is an inconsistency in the Egyptian’s magnum opus, or so it would seem. Scholars have sought to work through this paradox by positing that Plotinus is a “paleolithic Platonist” or Socratic. The advantage of this approach is that one may be able to resolve the tension by invoking Socrates’s eliminativist solution to the problem of weakness of will, as found in The Protagoras. In the following article, I argue that such attempts are not wrong-headed just underdetermined. They take up the standard reading of Socratic moral intellectualism, namely the “informational” interpretation and, therefore, fail to render a coherent view of Plotinus’s moral philosophy. The following paper, in contrast, utilizes a new reading of intellectualism advanced by Brickhouse and Smith, which, when subtended with a “powers approach” to causality, resolves the aforementioned, problematic passage of Enneads. (shrink)

Socrates' moral psychology is widely thought to be 'intellectualist' in the sense that, for Socrates, every ethical failure to do what is best is exclusively the result of some cognitive failure to apprehend what is best. Until publication of this book, the view that, for Socrates, emotions and desires have no role to play in causing such failure went unchallenged. This book argues against the orthodox view of Socratic intellectualism and offers in its place a comprehensive alternative account (...) that explains why Socrates believed that emotions, desires and appetites can influence human motivation and lead to error. Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith defend the study of Socrates' philosophy and offer an alternative interpretation of Socratic moral psychology. Their novel account of Socrates' conception of virtue and how it is acquired shows that Socratic moral psychology is considerably more sophisticated than scholars have supposed. (shrink)

Socrates' moral psychology is widely thought to be 'intellectualist' in the sense that, for Socrates, every ethical failure to do what is best is exclusively the result of some cognitive failure to apprehend what is best. Until publication of this book, the view that, for Socrates, emotions and desires have no role to play in causing such failure went unchallenged. This book argues against the orthodox view of Socratic intellectualism and offers in its place a comprehensive alternative account (...) that explains why Socrates believed that emotions, desires and appetites can influence human motivation and lead to error. Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith defend the study of Socrates' philosophy and offer an alternative interpretation of Socratic moral psychology. Their novel account of Socrates' conception of virtue and how it is acquired shows that Socratic moral psychology is considerably more sophisticated than scholars have supposed. (shrink)

This paper offers a genealogy of the ancient predecessors of Logic-Based Therapy. While LBT has an apparent affinity with Stoicism, I argue that LBT has a tripartite foundation in Socratic Rational Inquiry, Platonic philosophical psychology, and Aristotelean ethics. Secondly, I argue that LBT could help a client attain self-knowledge and “moral proprioception.” Given that LBT involves an examination of one’s belief system and a recognition of the subconscious faulty premises, it may implement a new, more adaptive understanding. By targeting (...) self-defeating habits of interpreting the world, LBT can give clients a new self-understanding that enables them to interact with others and avoid unfortunate life choices and ways of interacting with significant others. I offer a hypothetical case from fiction pointing to the way LBT could transform the character’s life. LBT may enrich other therapeutic modalities, such as psychoanalysis or psychiatry, but it achieves different goals. (shrink)

Moral encroachment holds that the epistemic justification of a belief can be affected by moral factors. If the belief might wrong a person or group more evidence is required to justify the belief. Moral encroachment thereby opposes evidentialism, and kindred views, which holds that epistemic justification is determined solely by factors pertaining to evidence and truth. In this essay I explain how beliefs such as ‘that woman is probably an administrative assistant’—based on the evidence that most women (...) employees at the firm are administrative assistants—motivate moral encroachment. I then describe weaknesses of moral encroachment. Finally I explain how we can countenance the moral properties of such beliefs without endorsing moral encroachment, and I argue that the moral status of such beliefs cannot be evaluated independently from the understanding in which they are embedded. (shrink)

This paper offers an intellectualist interpretation of Diotima’s speech in Plato’s Symposium. Diotima’s purpose, in discussing the lower lovers, is to critique their erōs as aimed at a goal it can never secure, immortality, and as focused on an inferior object, themselves. By contrast, in loving beauty, the philosopher gains a mortal sort of completion; in turning outside of himself, he also ceases to be preoccupied by his own incompleteness.

On Moral Certainty, Justification and Practice presents a view of morality that is inspired by the later Wittgenstein. Hermann explores the ethical implications of Wittgenstein's remarks on doubt, justification, rule-following, certainty and training, offering an alternative to interpretations of Wittgenstein's work that view it as being intrinsically ethical. The book scrutinises cases in which doubt and justification do not make sense, and contrasts certain justificatory demands made by philosophers with the role of moral justification in concrete situations. It (...) offers an account of moral certainty, which is linked to a view of moral competence. Contrary to the views propounded by philosophers who emphasise the importance of moral principles, it is argued that moral agency is first and foremost a matter of having certain capacities. The book takes an anti-intellectualist stance and remains close to concrete practices. The practice-based view of morality it endorses has implications for moral education, intercultural moral dialogue and the prospects for moral agreement, change and progress. (shrink)

This paper gives a new and richer account of open-mindedness as a moral virtue. I argue that the main problem with existing accounts is that they derive the moral value of open-mindedness entirely from the epistemic role it plays in moral thought. This view is overly intellectualist. I argue that open-mindedness as a moral virtue promotes our flourishing alongside others in ways that are quite independent of its role in correcting our beliefs. I close my discussion (...) by distinguishing open-mindedness from what some might consider its equivalent: empathy and tolerance. (shrink)

Kant’s account of the feeling of moral respect has notoriously puzzled interpreters: on the one hand, moral action is supposed to be autonomous and, in particular, free of the mediation of any feeling on the other hand, the subject’s grasp of the law somehow involves the feeling of moral respect. I argue that moral respect for Kant is not, pace both the ‘intellectualists’ and ‘affectivists,’ an effect of the determination of the will by the law – (...) whether it be a mere effect or the motivating cause of action – but is instead identical to it. Drawing on Kant’s general account of feeling as the awareness of how representations and their objects harm or benefit our own powers, I argue that the identity between moral respect and the determination to action contains two elements. Moral respect is, first, a form of practical self-consciousness which constitutes the subject’s recognition of the moral law and thus of herself as intrinsically bound by it, i. e., as a moral agent. Second, respect is a capacity for receptive awareness of particular features of our environment as well as other persons insofar as they benefit and harm us as moral agents. Thereby moral respect affords us awareness in concreto of particular, morally-conditioned ends. In this way moral respect provides the key for a Kantian account of genuinely free practical receptivity. (shrink)

Skepticism about ethical expertise has grown common, raising concerns that bioethicists’ roles are inappropriate or depend on something other than expertise in ethics. While these roles may depend on skills other than those of expertise, overlooking the role of expertise in ethics distorts our conception of moral advising. This paper argues that motivations to reject ethical expertise often stem from concerns about elitism: either an intellectualist elitism, where some privileged elite have supposedly special access in virtue of expertise in (...) moral theory; or an authoritarian elitism, where our reliance on experts in ethics risks violation of autonomy and democracy. The paper sketches an anti-elitist conception of ethics expertise in bioethics as continuous with an anti-elitist conception of ethics expertise in common moral practice, undercutting the intellectualism, and then uses this anti-elitist conception to reject arguments that ethical expertise violates autonomy or democracy. An anti-elitist picture of ethical expertise both renders it consistent with our general moral practice and allows us to resist skeptical concerns. (shrink)

This paper defends an intellectualist interpretation of Diotima’s speech in Plato’s Symposium. I argue that Diotima’s purpose, in discussing the lower lovers, is to critique their erōs as aimed at a goal it can never secure, immortality, and as focused on an inferior object, themselves. By contrast, in loving the form of beauty, the philosopher gains a mortal sort of completion; in turning outside of himself, he also ceases to be preoccupied by his own incompleteness.

Kant’s theory of moral action faces a serious difficulty concerning motivation: how do commands of pure practical reason solely move human agents to perform moral actions? In his response, Kant claims that human agents perform moral actions out of a feeling of respect for the moral law. However, attempts to accommodate a feeling of respect into Kant’s rigorously rationalist ethical theory have led to two diverging strands of interpretation in the secondary literature: intellectualism and affectivism. (...) Against this context, this paper proposes an interpretation of Kantian moral motivation with an appropriate place for the notion of respect within it to resolve the motivational problem concerning moral actions. According to the model of Kantian moral motivation that this paper develops, motivation to act morally takes place in two sequential stages, each involving the positive role of respect as a motive. By arguing for a positive role of the feeling of respect in the process of moral motivation, this model aligns with the affectivist school of interpretation. (shrink)

Drawing on a wide range of Kant's recorded thought beyond his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, this essay presents an overview of Kant's account of practical agency as embodied practical agency and argues against the intellectualized interpretations of Kant's account of practical agency presented by Christine Korsgaard and Henry Sidgwick. In both Kant's empirical-psychological and metaphysical descriptions of practical agency, he presents a recognizably human practical agent that is broader and deeper than the faculty of reason alone. This agent (...) chooses action from a reflective distance, but not from the complete affective distance of reason. We choose neither as reason alone, nor even as the sum of all of our ‘higher’ faculties, of cognition (including reason), feeling, and desire, in Kant's view. Instead, we choose as an agent that also has ‘lower’, ‘sensible’ faculties, of cognition (including sense), feeling, and desire, which together comprise our ‘sensibility’. These mental states of sensibility are not merely confused versions of our higher cognitions, feelings, or desires, and so different from them in degree only, but are instead distinct from our higher states in kind also; and these distinct sensible states are not dependent on our higher states and so on a commitment to the value of humanity, for example. For this reason, a choice in favour of sensible states and in opposition to the moral law need in no way undermine its own foundations and thus be incoherent, as Korsgaard and Sidgwick argue, but instead only immoral. Because Kant does not reduce the problem of immoral choice to one of insufficient reflection and ensuing confusion, he does not view moral progress in cognitive terms alone, whether in the form of a clearer understanding of the moral law, improved judgment in applying it, or deeper insight into our own nature as practical agents. Kant instead recognizes the crucial importance of cultivating our feelings and desires over the course of a lifetime both as a way to make ourselves worthy of the humanity within us directly and also as a way to facilitate future moral choices. (shrink)

Ido Geiger's paper ‘What it is the Use of the Universal Law Formula of the Categorical Imperative?’ is part of a growing trend in Kant scholarship, which stresses the significance of the rational competence of ordinary human beings. I argue that this approach needs to take into account that the common agent is an active reasoner who has the means to find out what she ought to do. The purpose of my paper is to show how universality already figures in (...) the active reasoning of pre-theoretical agents in the form of a common universalization test. I present textual evidence for this test, and argue that this conception does not present pre-theoretical moral cognition in an overly intellectualistic or mechanistic way. Finally, I discuss how, on the pre-theoretical level, universalization relates to humanity or a rational agent's special status. Universalization is present to common agents in the form of procedures or questions that we ask ourselves, humanity as an awareness of certain particularly blatant violat.. (shrink)

Assuming that there is moral progress, and assuming that the abolition of slavery is an example of it, how does moral progress occur? Is it mainly driven by specific individuals who have gained new moral insights, or by changes in the socio‐economic and epistemic conditions in which agents morally judge the norms and practices of their society, and act upon these judgements? In this paper, I argue that moral progress is a complex process in which changes (...) at the level of belief and changes at the level of institutions and social practices are deeply intertwined, and that changes in the socio‐economic and epistemic conditions of moral agency constitute the main motor of moral progress. I develop my view of moral progress by way of grappling with Michelle Moody‐Adams’ prominent philosophical account of it. My view is less intellectualistic and individualistic than hers, does not presuppose meta‐ethical moral realism, and blurs her distinction between moral progress in beliefs and moral progress in social practices. I point out the limits of humans to progress morally, which are partly grounded in our evolutionary history, and argue that moral progress is always of a ‘local’ nature. (shrink)

Despite Kant’s lasting influence on philosophical accounts of moral motivation, many details of his own position remain elusive. In the Critique of Practical Reason, for example, Kant argues that our recognition of the moral law’s authority must elicit both painful and pleasurable feelings in us. On reflection, however, it is unclear how these effects could motivate us to act from duty. As a result, Kant’s theory of moral sensibility comes under a skeptical threat: the possibility of a (...) morally motivating feeling seems incoherent. My aim in this paper is to reconstruct Kant’s theory in a way that overcomes this threat. By way of conclusion, I show how my reconstruction brings a new perspective to a long-standing dispute over intellectualist and affectivist views of moral motivation. (shrink)

This paper explores two perspectives in Husserl's recently published writings on ethics and axiology in order to sketch anew a phenomenological account of practical reason. The paper aims a) to show that a phenomenological account of moral intentionality i) transcends the disputes between intellectualist-emotivist and intellectualist-voluntarist disputes and ii) points toward a position in which practical reason has an emotive content or, conversely, the emotions have a cognitive content, and the paper aims b) to show that a phenomenological ethics (...) identifies universal human goods that are, nevertheless, specified differently in varying cultural contexts. (shrink)

In the modern debate in metaethics and moral psychology, moral rationalism is often presented as a view that cannot account for the intimate relation between moral behaviour on one hand and feelings, emotions, or desires on the other. Although there is no lack of references to the classic rationalists of the 18th century in the relevant discussions, the works of these writers are rarely ever examined detail. Yet, as the debate in Kant scholarship between “intellectualists” and “affectivists” (...) impressively shows, a more thorough analysis of what the classic rationalists actually have to say about moral motivation is suited to cast serious doubts on the idea that moral rationalism must crucially neglect the affective–conative side of human psychology. The aim of this paper is to analyse the conceptions of moral motivation that were embraced by Kant's rationalist predecessors—Clarke, Wolff, Burnet, Balguy, and Price—which have not attracted a similar amount of attention by specialists so far. The claim I will defend is that none of those early rationalists actually embraces the motivational thesis that is often taken to be characteristic of moral rationalism, a thesis I shall refer to as strong rationalism about (moral) motivation. (shrink)

According to a wide-spread opinion, the history of moral philosophy is divided into two major parts. Whereas ancient ethics is concerned with agent-relative prudential volitions, modern ethics is based upon agent-neutral moral obligations. The article questions this opposition by indicating that the mainstream of ancient ethics should rather be characterized by its typical theory of action. This theory doesn’t rest on prudential rationality but on the idea that a rational agent has to follow a number of non-arbitrary principles (...) which conduct his or her deliberating, choosing and acting. The model in question starts with an intellectualist concept of the will , and develops an account of human flourishing which is the basis of subtle further distinctions between relevant and incidental goods. Finally, it opens the possibility to bridge the gap between the issue of human flourishing and the Kantian concept of morality. (shrink)

This paper deals with the major concepts of Scanlon’s moral contractualism. It is possible to describe moral contractualism as the ability to identify priorities and moral reasons in deliberative action, that no one could reasonably reject. These capabilities require us to take into account the interests of others in our moral judgments. The result is that Scanlon overthrow the philosophy of Hobbes: morality is not originated from politics; on the contrary, politics is a function of morality. (...) His answer to the dilemma of Prichard is particularly persuasive, though the proof of the falsity of the skeptical position can only be dialectic and persuasive is its intellectualistic position on relations between reasons and desires, too. (shrink)

Most recent texts in moral philosophy have either concentrated on practical moral issues or else, if theoretical, have tended toward one-sided presentations of recent, fashionable views. Discussions of applied ethics cannot go very far without revealing underlying philosophical assumptions about how deeper, more general issues are treated. Similarly, recent approaches to ethics are difficult to understand without a knowledge of the context of the historical views against which these approaches are reacting. The Nature of Moral Thinking will (...) satisfy the intellectually curious student, providing a solid and fair discussion of the classical philosophical questions about our moral thinking, surveying the main types of meta-ethical and normative ethical theories, while not excluding the more recent discussions of moral realism, of anti-realism, and of virtue morality. Francis Snare demonstrates that glib intellectualistic thinking about morality, especially in regard to relativism andsubjectivism, is seriously flawed. He also focuses attention on the question of whether particular theories of the origins of morality (for example, those of Nietzsche and Marx) undermine morality. All students and teachers of ethics and philosophy will find this book one of the most complete and detailed introductory-level surveys of the foundations of ethics with emphasis on the problems of the subjectivity, the relativity, and the origins of morality. (shrink)

In this paper I will analyze John McDowell’s broad account of practical rationality and moral reasons, which he mainly puts forward in his articles “Are moral requirements hypothetical imperatives?” (1978) and “Might there be external reasons?” (1995). My main aim is to argue that from a philosophical perspective, no less than from an empirical one, McDowell’s account of practical rationality is not a realistic one. From a philosophical point of view, I will argue that his intellectualist account is (...) not convincing; and if we consider his virtue-ethical ideal of practical rationality in light of the model of human cognition, we also realize that moral behavior is not immune to cognitive biases and does not always flow from robust traits of character like virtues. At the same time, this puts at stake his strong thesis of moral autonomy – the idea that with the ‘onset of reason’ moral beings are no longer determined by ‘first nature’ features. (shrink)

Psychological eudaimonism is the view that we are constituted by a desire to avoid the harmful. This entails that coming to see a prospective or actual object of pursuit as harmful to us will unseat our positive evaluative belief about that object. There is more than one way that such an 'unseating' of desire may be caused on an intellectualist picture. This paper arbitrates between two readings of Socrates' 'attack on laziness' in the Meno, with the aim of constructing a (...) model of moral education based on PE's implied moral psychology. In particular, we argue against the view that when we come to see - through prudential reasoning - that our blatant evaluative beliefs and desires disserve eudaimonism, we will no longer perceive their intentional objects as choice-worthy. We suggest, instead, that it is by experiencing shame that we cease to see the intentional objects of our evaluative beliefs and desires as worthy of pursuit. This form of 'hydraulic education' bypasses reason-responsiveness altogether. As such, it only allows for practical norms to be derived from the nature of agency indirectly, namely by enabling the use of discursive practical reasoning. (shrink)

Kant has little to say about moral frailty or weakness. But for his readers, the topic is a fruitful site of interpretive projection that deserves focus. How we approach it reveals much about Kant’s theory of motivation and his general metaphysics of mind as it relates to the practical philosophy. Prominent views on the subject range from affectivism, which holds that sensible incentives motivate weak action independently of reason’s activity, to intellectualism, which holds that weak actions are ultimately (...) grounded in reason, reflecting the subject’s true maxims. After briefly unpacking two well-known versions of each position, I will argue that neither can succeed. For in both cases, reason and sensibility are too dualistically opposed and insulated from one another to capture Kant’s view. I propose, instead, that we must completely reconsider the relationship between these capacities, and the role that sensible desire plays in light of our ability to reason. The result is a more desirable account of weakness that can both invoke the role that reason plays in determining human action, and appeal to strong sensible desires and their ability to disrupt our practical lives. (shrink)