This essay seeks to explain a morally important class of psychological incapacity—the class of what Bernard Williams has called “incapacities of character.” I argue for two main claims: (1) Caring is the underlying psychological disposition that gives rise to incapacities of character. (2) In competent, rational adults, caring is, in part, a cognitive and deliberative disposition. Caring is a mental state which disposes an agent to believe certain considerations to be good reasons for deliberation and action. And caring is a (...) mental state which structures an agent’s practical deliberation, by establishing presumptive boundaries on the landscape of possibilities over which her deliberative imagination ranges. Incapacities of character are a consequence of the structure which these presumptive boundaries give to an agent’s deliberation. (shrink)

In both theoretical and applied contexts the concept of autonomy has assumed increasing importance in recent normative philosophical discussion. Given various problems to be clarified or resolved the author characterizes the concept by first setting out conditions of adequacy. The author then links the notion of autonomy to the identification and critical reflection of an agent upon his first-order motivations. It is only when a person identifies with the influences that motivate him, assimilates them to himself, that he is autonomous. (...) In addition this process of identification must itself meet certain procedural constraints. (shrink)

What is that makes an act subject to either praise or blame? The question has often been taken to depend entirely on the free will debate for an answer, since it is widely agreed that an agent’s act is subject to praise or blame only if it was freely willed, but moral theory, action theory, and moral psychology are at least equally relevant to it. In the last quarter-century, following the lead of Harry Frankfurt’s (1971) seminal article “Freedom of the (...) Will and the Concept of a Person,” the interdisciplinary nature of the question has been emphasized by various authors. Going beyond the boundaries of the traditional free will debate, they have attempted to describe the requirements for agent accountability by appeal to theories of personality, rational agency, and ethical choice. The approach has been a breath of fresh air in the often-stagnant free will debate, bringing new considerations to bear and provoking new lines of argument, and it is an approach that we will adopt in this paper. In the following pages, we hope to show that an under-noticed phenomenon of moral psychology, inverse akrasia, exemplified by Huckleberry Finn, has something to contribute to the understanding of agency and accountability. After presenting the phenomenon in section I, we will move in section II to a quick survey of a family of Frankfurt-inspired views and a critique of them based on the phenomenon in sections III and IV. A new theory will be offered in section V, and potential objections addressed in the final section of the paper. (shrink)

The paper addresses the problem of authenticity from a point of view that diverges from the more usual social, political, or moral approaches, by focusing very explicitly on the internal psychological make-up of human agents in an attempt to identify the conditions that would enable us to use the colloquial phrase 'being true to ourselves' in a way that is philosophically tenable. First, it is argued that the most important and problematic condition is the requirement that agents can be the (...) source of normative constraints which they themselves should attempt to respect. In the main part of the paper an argument is developed against a more or less Humean interpretation of this crucial requirement, according to which agents can be the source of normative constraints because they have desires , and a more or less Kantian interpretation, according to which agents can be the source of normative constraints because they have the capacity to judge . The Humean account is unsatisfactory, because it fails to make sense of the normativity of the content of desires, and because it cannot account on its own for what makes a person's desires her own . The Kantian account is also unsatisfactory, because, although it can account for the difference between being true to someone else and being true to certain principles, it is unable to account for the difference between being true to oneself and being true to principles. In the final part I shall suggest a way out of this impasse by claiming that the intelligibility of the phenomenon of being true to oneself crucially depends on the, yet to be explored, possibility of developing an account of self-respect that involves both de se attitudes and the idea of ourselves being valuable entities. (shrink)

What is it for two or more people to be with one another or together? And what role do empathic psychological processes play, either as essential constituents or as typical elements? As I define it, to be genuinely with each other, persons must be jointly aware of their mutual openness to mutual relating. This means, I argue, that being with is a second-personal phenomenon in the sense I discuss in The Second-Person Standpoint. People who are with each other are in (...) one another's presence, where the latter is a matter of second-personal standing or authority, as in the divine presence or in the king's presence. To be with someone is, therefore, to give the other second-personal standing, implicitly, to claim it for oneself and, thus, to enter into a relation of mutual accountability. Second-personal relating, I argue, requires a distinctive form of empathy, projective empathy, through which we imaginatively occupy others' perspectives and view ourselves as if from their point of view. Projective empathy is thus an essential constituent of “being with.” But it is not the only form of empathy that being with typically involves. Further, I discuss ways in which emotional contagion, affect attunement, as well as projective empathy typically enter into the complex psychological (and ethical) phenomenon of being with another person. (shrink)

In this paper, I want to give an interpretation of Harry Frankfurt’s complex theory of the will with respect to the issue of “autonomy and necessity”. My central claim is that Frankfurt’s employment of the concept of the will is equivocal. He actually uses three distinct conceptions of the will without ever distinguishing them from one another. I shall introduce and justify such a clarifying tripartite distinction. Although my discussion will be limited to Frankfurt’s view of the will, this distinction (...) and the points made about its components can easily be generalized. In my opinion, then, such a tripartite distinction must form an essential part of any rich theory of the will.Both the first and the second conception of the will can readily be understood within the scope of the debate between compatibilism and incompatibilism. The third conception, however, transcends the framework of this classical opposition because the autonomy of this third kind of will positively requires necessity. Autonomy is not only compatible with necessity : according to the third conception, the former also intrinsically involves the latter. Although this conception of the will is somewhat unfamiliar and non-standard in the debate, I shall try to show that it captures an important fact about our volitional nature — a deep fact which is often overlooked or neglected. (shrink)

This paper undertakes a critical examination of recent philosophical discussions of the concept of individual autonomy. The paper is divided into two parts. Part I focusses on the work of joel feinberg, Gerald dworkin, Harry frankfurt and others, As well as their critics, In the development of the concept of autonomy itself (or its analogues). The suggestion defended is that autonomy is an important complement to freedom when the latter is construed only as the absence of restraints. Also considered is (...) the relation between autonomy and reason or rationality. In part ii, I examine various recent attempts to utilize the property of autonomy in moral and political theory. (shrink)

This collection of essays combines the discussion of abstract questions in moral and political theory with an attention to the normative dimension of current social and political controversies. There are essays on immigration, terrorism, toleration, political equality, the role of partiality in ethics, and the importance of tradition.