(to be published in: Maureen Sie, Bert van den Brink
& Marc Slors (eds.)
Reasons of Ones
Own, Aldershot (Ashgate) 2004)
Albert W. Musschenga
Most people, includingNot only
moral philosophers, are
convinced that a
person but almost everyone firmly believes that people should
be able and willing to justify theirhis or her judgements, decisions and actions,
especially when they affect others. We want to be able to count onhave an
interest in the rationality, reliability, and integrity of those
we are dealing with, and we ourselves wantprefer to be known as
rational, responsible and reliable persons. Unwillingness to justify ones actions is seen as
disrespectSomeone who is not willing to justify his actions,
will be accused of lacking respect for other personsones fellows. Essentially, then, Jjustification is therefore
essentially a social, public enterprise. It presupposes an
audience, a public, even when it takes place in foro
interno. Justification is also public in that it draws from
the shared resources of a particular community.
The
nature and the limits of justification are much- debated topics in moral philosophy.
Principlists and casuists or particularists differ in opinion about the nature
of justification. The growing insight in the cognitive and rational under-determination
of choices puts the issue of the limits of
justification on the agenda of moral philosophy. A widely recognised nichearea where of
underdetermination is
rampant is that ofare choices between incommensurable
options. If Joseph Raz (1997)were right when saying
argues that such
choices are wide-spread,. If he is right it means that would
imply that a large areamuch of our practical
life falls outside the domain where rational discussion is possible.
I am convinced that this
phenomenon of rational under-determination confronts us, not
with the limits of justification as such, but with the limits of a
view on justification in which it is essentially tied up with taking an impersonal public,
impartial perspective. David Wiggins , in his article( Universalizsability,
Impartiality, Truth, 1987, p. 82) argues that there
is a connection between the moral perspective and the intersubjective, and
between the intersubjective and the public perspective (1987, p. 82) (1987, p. 82).
In his view a public is an audience situated in a particular time and place. In
speaking about formal constraints on the concept of right, John Rawls, in ( A Theory of
Justice, 1972, p. 133) distinguishesmakes a
distinction between the condition that principles are to be
universal in application from
the condition and that of publicity. The last onePublicity arises naturally from a contractarian
standpoint. The parties assume that they are choosing principles for a public
conception of justice. They suppose that everyone will know about these
principles all that he would know if their acceptance were the result of an
agreement. ( ....) The point of
the publicity condition is to have the parties evaluate conceptions of justice
as publicly acknowledged and fully effective moral constitutions of social
life (1972, p. 133) (1972, p.
133).
Rawls is undoubtedly right
that the condition of publicity arises naturally from a contractarian
standpoint. His suggestion that this condition is confined to principles of
justice is wrong. Every justification is public in the sense that it is
addressed to a public. When principles for the basic structure of society are the
subject of justification, the public comprises all members of that society. Thus, dDepending on the nature
of the subject however,
the forum to which public justification is addressed, may be smaller
or larger than the whole of a society. This implies that questions on the
agenda of public justification need not be public in the sense of
political. Even the choice of the destination of a familys holidays,
can be the subject of a public justification. In my case the forum would
consist of my wife, my daughter, and myself.
My aim in this paper is a
modest one. I argue that also in the very niche of under-determination, that of
choices between incommensurable options, a kind of public justification is
possible. This justification has the shape of a narrative, told from the
personal perspective of the agents life-story. It makes use of what I will
call identity-constitutive reasons. The standard view on the aim of
justifying an action is: to convince the public that it was the right thing to
do, not only for the agent but for any other relevantly similar person in
relevantly similar circumstances. The justifier seeks agreement fromhopes and expects to get the
assent of other members of his community. The aim of narrative
justification is to show that an action coheres with the agents
self-narrative. Although narrative justification does not proceed from a public
point of view, it is still public in that it has to draw its reasons from the
public resources of a community.
In section one I deal with the phenomenon of incommensurability. In section two I introduce the distinction between identity-constitutive and identity-neutral reasons. Section three contains my view on narrative justification. I close, in section four, with discussing the relation between making the incommensurable commensurable and establishing unified agency.
Lets Ssuppose that I
have a discussion with a friend about the literary quality of the books of
Chaim Potok and John Le Carré two authors whom we both
appreciate. In our discussion, we concentrate on Potoks The
Chosen and Le Carrés The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Literary
quality is thus the covering value with respect to which we want to compare
the two books (Chang 1997, p. 5). In reflecting upon the concept of literary
quality we identify several criteria or contributory values (Chang 1997, p. 5)
such as suspense, vividness, emotional depth, imaginative force of the
language, richness of language, composition, and so on. Literary quality appears
to be a multi-criterial concept. Although we agree that one book is better than
the other with respect to some of these criteria, we are unable to come to a
conclusion about their overall quality. This is what Steven Lukes calls
overall incommensurability (1991, p. 34). Since my friend and I have
sufficient resourcescan afford to buy both books, this case of
incommensurability does not constitute a real problem of choice for us.
Suppose that I ask myself,: wWhich satisfies me more, at offers me
the most satisfaction, eating the best pizza Calzone I know in our
local pizzeria, or attending an organ concert by a famous organist on the
Hinsz-organ in the Dutch Reformed church in Leens, a village near my place of
birth.? Since I value both,
that question makes no sense for me. With respect to satisfaction, neither outweighs one of the
two activities is higher in value than the other, yet their value differs vastlywhile they
are also not of equal value. In this case we are confronted with
specific incommensurability (Lukes 1991, p. 34).
On the market we can exchange
everything. Money, as the medium of exchange, functions as the common
denominator. With the money I get by selling my old bike, I can buy one of
Potoks books. Although bothtwo
objects
both of which have a price, -- i.e. can be compared and ranked in economic value, -- nonetheless we can
still regard them as incommensurable if those of their properties which we deem
relevant,
are incommensurable. Lukes speaks here of relevant incommensurability (1991,
p. 34).
Those of you who, like me,
only go shopping for clothes when they need something, say, a suit, will know
the situation that you selectend up with
a couple of very diverse suits that you like and find appropriate to wear, e.g.
at work. Since you dont want to spend money on more than one suit, you have to
choose. Since all the remaining suits are roughly equal, reason cannot
determine my choice. One suit is not better than another. Usually it doesnt
take me much time to decide. For me, such a choice is trivial. Why should I
waste my energy and free time with endlessly comparing garments, when there is
no best choice possible? This is also what I used to say to my daughter when I
went out with her to buy her some clothes and she could not come to a decisionde. She was then too
young to quarrel with me about whether such choices are, or are not, rationally
underdetermined. But it was clear that such choices were weightier for her than
for me.
There are many situations in
which we have to choose between incommensurable options, whenre the choice is not
trivial as in the above examples, but of utmost importance. I regard the choice
between two diverse, career options as non-trivial. This
is, as Joseph Raz rightly remarks, a choice that one ought not be
indifferent about. If you are indifferent, you do not have a proper respect for
yourself (Raz 1985/6, p. 126). Jonathan Dancy explains in Moral Reasons why
we cannot be indifferent in such existential situations, why tossing a coin to
determine the choice would be inappropriate. When a choice between
incommensurable options is trivial, the pictures we can draw of
one option can be superimposed on that of the other, resulting in a single
picture which
showsing that the reasons in favour and those
against are equally salient. In existential situations the salience of the
features recommending or advising against are at odds with each other (Dancy
1993, p. 124).
In his later publications on
this subject Raz argues that it is the will that determines
the choice between incommensurable options. Reasons determine the rational eligibility
of options, the will, that is, the ability to choose and perform
intentional actions, steps in to determine the choice between
them. Agents can choose among them as they feel inclined, do what they want to
do or what they feel like doing. Although reason cannot determine the choice
between incommensurable options, this does not imply that justified choice is
impossible. Once eligibility is determined, justified choice is no longer
dependent on comparison between alternatives. The brute fact that you came to
realise that you want career A more than career B seems to make for Raz your
choice for A justified (Raz 1997, p.p. 126-7 f.). Although Raz recognises that these
are the kindsort of choices that
determine the kind of person you are and will be, he neglects, fails to comment on, overlooks???goes by
the fact that choices about, say, a career, are not isolated events in
someones life, but a
constitutivemake part of its continuing story.
Several authors argue that a justifiable choice between
incommensurable options can be made by answering the question what kind of a
person I am/ or want to be and what kind of a life I want to
have (Kekes 1993, Taylor 1985). Taylor characterizses what that person
must do: as
makinge the incommensurable
commensurable. A comparison always presupposes a specific point of view. The
classical utilitarian calculator determining the relative value of two
alternatives by using a common denominator, makes a judgement from an impersonal
point of view. What Taylor means is that in a situation of choice between
incommensurable options commensuration has to take place, not from an allegedly
objective point of view, but from the particular, subjective,
point of view of the agent himself. Lukes calls this specific
commensurability (Lukes 1991, pp. 48f.-9). When reflecting
upon several career options, it is often not clear to an agent in which
direction he wants his
life to taketo go with his life. It does not help
him to focus upon the intrinsic merits of the respective options. He has to
find out whether for
example to becomeleading the
life of, say, a lawyer or of a professional musician fits into the
kind of life he wants to live. A career not only consumes a lot of your time
and energy, it also influences the kind of person you become and need to
become. The virtues of a good lawyer are not the same as those of a good
musician. To choose a career is to discover what is important for you, which of
your talents you want to develop.
While facingStanding
before an inevitable choice between incommensurable options it
makes no sense for an agent to ask what is, from an impersonal and objective, impartial
point of view, is the
best thing to do. If the issue at stake is non-trivial, he cannot display an
attitude of indifference. He has to seek reasons that can tip the balance in
favour of one of the options. The kind of reasons needed for that job areWhat kind of
reasons can do that job? Rreasons that do not
refer to intrinsic merits of an option,
but to facts about the meaning of an option, regarded from the perspective of
the agents life-plan or life-story.
Suppose that
one of your friends,you have a friend, Carla, who confesses
that she has a love affair with the husband of another friend of hers. Carla has not told
her own husband about the affairthis, and does not
intend to do so. You know this husband, a mere acquaintancebut he is
not a friend. Carla however means a lot to you; a close, she is a
great friend. But you dislike her lack of honesty and sincerity towards her husband. In
your view she is treating him badly, which he does not deserve. You find it
hard to stay friends with her when she continues this love affair. You feel
yourself standing beforefaced with a choice. If
you dont tell Carla what you really think of her behaviour and act as if
nothing has changed, you feel yourself, as it were, an accomplice to something
immoral. But if you tell Carla the truth and press her to be honest towith her husband about the
love affair, this will certainly mean the end toof your friendship. Both
options are supported by incommensurable values: the first one by the value of
friendship, the second one by the values of sincerity and honesty. If you
decide to tell your friend that you cannot longer be friends with her when she
keeps her love affair secret to her husband, she will undoubtedly ask you for
your reasons. As a friend, she also has a right to know your reasons. You then
will have to tell her that the values of sincerity and honesty are central to,
even constitutive of the kind of life you want to live. Your reasons are what I
call identity-constitutive reasons.
What then are identity-constitutive
reasons? [voor
mijn gevoel zit hier een hiaat in het betoog, waardoor het voor mij rommelig
wordt. Kun je hier niet beter even invoegen wat je gaat doen, namelijk jouw tegenstelling contrasteren met twee
andere tegenstellingen? Kunnen subjectieve en objectieve redenen beide òf identity-constitutive òf identity-neutral zijn?] It is quite
common to distinguish between subjective and objective reasons. Subjective
reasons refer to a persons interests. I can justify my buying a certain type
of carautomobile by referring to subjective
reasons. But if a couple justifies its decision to have an abortion, the public
will not accept it when they solely refer to subjective reasons. In public
justification one expects reasons to be objective. Objective reasons are based
upon shared values and principles. An objective reason is only then a reason
for action for someone if it refers to values, principles, projects or
relationships that he has recognised as valuable, as worthwhile. Thus, all objective reasons
that are reasons for action for someone, are in a sense
related to his values, projects, and so on.W That being so, what then
distinguishes someones identity-constitutive reasons from his other
identity-neutral reasons for action? I will try to answer this question by
confronting this distinction between identity-constitutive and identity-neutral
reasons with a more familiar one, that between agent-neutral and agent-relative
reasons.
According to
Thomas Nagel in The View from Nowhere, agent-neutral
reasons are reasons for action which are independent of the particular
perspective and system of preferences of the agent. They stem from values such
as pleasure and pain, satisfaction and frustration that are connected to the
objective point of view. Agent-relative
reasons stem from the subjective point of view, the perspective of a persons
own life, which, though they can be publicly recognised, do not in general
provide reasons for others and do not correspond to reasons that the interests
of others provide him. Nagel distinguishes three categories of values which
provide agent-relative reasons. The agents special relationships to his own
projects provide reasons of autonomy, his special relationship to his own
actions provide deontological reasons and his special relationships to
relatives and friends provide reasons of obligation. As will become clear in
the following, my distinction between identity-constitutive and
identity-neutral reasons cuts across Nagels distinction between agent-relative
and agent-neutral reasons (Nagel 1986, pp. 170 ff.).
Nagel
assigns the diverse categories of values to two
distinct points of view. My distinction between
identity-constitutive and identity-neutral reasons is different from Nagels
distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons in that it centres
upon the nature of the relationship
between the agent and certain values. My basic
distinction is between items (traits,
characteristics, conditions, etc.) that I
recognise as values, and items that I do not recognise as values. I do, and
do not, recognise as values. [zoiets bedoel je, geloof ik,
jouw Engelse zinnetje is logisch onmogelijk; je kunt namelijk niet zeggen: die waarde erken ik niet als waarde Wel: Sommigen zien dit als een waarde, ik ook of
ik niet] Only those
values provide an agent with reasons for action that he has recognised as
values. . One
has to The distinguish second
distinction I make is between a) judging something as valuable a process
in which I determine the general characteristics of an object, and b) valuing a process
in which I determine its desirability for me.[1] The observation that there are more things worthy of being valued which
might provide me with reasons for action than I, with my limited talents and
limited resources, can realise in my limited lifespan, necessitates making such
a distinction.1
Although I may come to recognise many things as intrinsically good, not all of
them can be equally important to me.[2]
No one can have a special relationship with all the values he recognises as
values. Everyone who thinks about what kind of a life he wants to lead,
will have to make some choices.
Like
everybody else, I will have to decide to dedicate my life to furthering some, values and projects rather than and not others values and projects.
These are the values and projects that constitute my identity. Before taking
such a decision, I will ask myself what kind of values and projects I (i) care about most and (ii) have the
talents and opportunities to actually serve.
Personal
projects are not just desires or preferences, they are responses to values
shared within a particular community. These values are thus not less
objective than other values.[3] . They do differ in
providing the agent special, identity-constitutive, reasons for action.[4] 2 Someone who dedicates his life to
preservation of nature, cannot be expected also to work with
the same intensity for homeless people. But he may recognise the values inspiring people to aid the homeless behind
helping the homeless as values. He can endorse these values, even
when he hasnt identified with them didnt dedicate his life to realising
them.
3. Narrative
explanation and narrative justification
Reasons for action
have different functions. They are used in justifying, guiding and explaining. Reasons to guide actions and reasons to justify actions
are two sides of a
coin. Deliberating
a decision one must make, or the stance one will take, one looks for reasons to
orientate ones
thought and action. While
justification relates to decisions made or judgements passed, and in that sense is backward-looking, guidance is
forward-looking.
The goal of explaining a decision
is not to seek assent, but to make the decision intelligible. Explanatory
reasons are sometimes identified with motives. Whether that is correct,
depends on ones concept of motives. In her Intention Elisabeth Anscombe
makes a distinction between backward-looking motives, and forward-looking
motives which can be redescribed as intentions (Anscombe 19582, pp. 20f-1). If I decide to
report myself as a witness of a murder, my intention is to advance that the
criminal is found and convicted. If the murderer is someone I know and hate, my
motives
will probably be hate.
Suppose all Johns friends
think that he is happily married. A friend happens to run into John, exchanges some pleasantries
and inquires how he and his wife are doing. When meeting
one of them, this friend asks John how his wife is doing. HeJohn tells him that they
are going to be divorced. This friend is stupefiedflabbergasted and wants
to know why. John answers that he hates her. Hate is an understandable motive
for divorce. However, this answer does not satisfy Johns friend because it
does not fit into the image he has of John. A
simple statement of motive does not really explain my or our ones decision to
divorce. InFor such cases Ricoeur is right when he says
in a debate with Gadamer, criticizsing Anscombe rightly says that ... in
order for a motive to have explanatory force, it must be given in the form of a
kind of small autobiography. By that I mean that I must put my motive under the
rules of story-telling (Ricoeur 1991a, p. 227). John will have to tell his friend a story about how it
could happen that he, who seemed to be so happily married, came to hate his wife so thatdid develop
such strong and enduring feelings of hate against his wife, that a
divorce became
is now unavoidable.
In Ricoeurs theory of narrative,
stories have plots, aslike Aristotles argued in his Poetics prescribed. The
operation of emplotment is a synthesis of heterogeneous elements:-- events, incidents,
actions, discoveries, and so on, -- into the totality of a story. From a
temporal point of view, composing a story is drawing a configuration out of a
succession (Ricoeur 1991b, p. 21f). There is an analogy between the
role of narrative in practical reasoning and in the historical and social
sciences. Historians distinguish between chronicles and narratives.
Chronicles are chronological lists of events. Following Ricoeur, the philosopher
of history Hayden [Henry?]White
argues that the function of a story is to attach a meaning to an event (White
1984, pp. 22f-3.). Ricoeur says that
history is about peoples actions in the past. For reading actions, the same
hermeneutical principles apply as for reading a text (Ricoeur 1979). A
historical narrative should make clear the point of a certain course of events.
An event can be called historical only if it is more than a single, unique occurrence, something
unique. It has significance inasmuch as it adds something to the
development of a plot. The historical narrative does not impose a meaning on
events that are in themselves meaningless,. as iIt is an interpretation
of meaningful human experience and actions, for human experience as such has a
narrative structure.
The point of using narratives in practical argumentation is
analogous to the function of historical narratives in historical explanations.
A narrative can make the point of a subjects decisions and actions
understandable; it can explain why from the narrators point of view a decision
or an action was right and inevitable, from his point of
view. A narrative argument has succeeded when the audience shares
the conclusion which a person has presented as
the plot of the story. When John tells his friend how many times
his wife
has betrayed him with other men, and how deeply she has
humiliated him, this friend will come to understand how Johns came to develop an intense
hatered for her and why he
concluded that there was nothing left for him but to divorce from her.
The
usual view is that a narrative may explain why a decision or an action
was, from the agents point of view, right and inevitable. The narrative then
reveals the agents motivating reasons. However, I would suggestwant to defend
that a narrative is sometimes also able to justify an action. In such
cases the reasons that motivated an agent to do some action,act simultaneously also
justify itthat act. In my view, we need to distinguish
between two goals of justification. The first one is to establishing that an
action was the/a right thing to do; the second is to establishing whether an
action was done for the right reasons. In Kantian approaches you act for the
right reasons when the reasons that justify that action, are also the
reasons why you do it. However, when choosing between two incommensurable
options, your reasons for a particular choice cannot be the reasons that
justify that choice. Both options are equally supported by reasons. The only reasons that can tip the balance are identity-constitutive
reasons. Such reasons refer not just to the action you intend, but, much broader, to what you intend
with that action. At this point the narrative of your life comes to the fore. However, even if the person is honest, sincere and does not deceive
himself, and even
if a narrative is plausible succeeds to explain someones choice between two
incommensurable options the narrative does not necessarily also justify that
choice.
Those
who are willing to justify their choices between incommensurable options want
to be recognizsed as serious and responsible persons
striving for a good and valuable life. They will only get recognition if the
identity-constitutive values they refer to in their justification are also
accepted as values by their audience. The normative power of these reasons does
not just stem from their role in constituting someones identity. The reasons need
to be morally acceptable. Imagine the owner of a company owner who is
searchinglooking
for a new manager. After conducting a series of interviews with
applicants, he ends up with two excellent, but quite diversefferent candidates. One
is male, the other is female. The two options he has to choose between,
are overall incommensurable. He decides to take the woman. He justifies his
decision by saying that he regards it as unfair that women are underrepresented
in managerial positions and that the struggle against that injustice is an
important aim in his hiring policy. In our (Dutch) society this a perfectly acceptable
story. Imagine
Imagine that in an
alternative scenario the owner concedes, after some pressure, that he preferred
the female candidate because she is a beautiful woman. Also,He adds to that that
he likes to be surrounded by beautiful women. He finds that there is nothing
wrong with his decision because she is as qualified as the male candidate. The
latter has no reason to complain about his decision. He has just the misfortune
of not being a beautiful woman.
The term decision and this applies also to the
term choice may refer to the outcome of a process of decision, as well as
to the act of deciding. A decision (as
outcome) may be justifiable although the decision (as action) is
unjustified. In our society it is
generally accepted that sexism is morally wrong. In a case like this, the object of moral disapproval is not the
directors decision (as outcome), but his motives and reasons. His character
is questioned. He did a not the right thing which he
presents as being the right thing for him to do, but he did it for the wrong
reasons. [you mean: his decision (as
outcome) was not wrong, but the (identity-constitutive) reasons that led him to the decision (as act) were? ik heb moeite
met He did a -- not the -- right thing
]
This conclusion needs a
further explication. In evaluating someones actions, we can either take his
subjective point of view, or the point of view of ones community, or both.
When discussing the rational eligibility of the option chosen by an agent, we
abstract from the agents point of view. We are then not interested in whether
the action coheres with his self-narrative. Paul Gauguins contemporaries may
have criticised him for leaving his wife and children. They were right, fFrom the point of view
their communitys morality
rightly so. If he repliedhad
countered
that he would not only have become unhappy by staying at home, but also would
have been disloyal to his calling as an artist, they would probably answersay that he didnt have
the right priorities. One should not sacrifice ones commitments
to ones wife and children for such a calling. They would criticise his
character, the person he had become. Even in situations that only
identity-constitutive reasons can tip the balance, these are not beyond moral
criticism. They can only publicly justify the decision as an act if they refer
to a communitys shared moral values and principles.
Some authors such
as Elijah Milgram claim that rendering competing considerations commensurable
is a central part of the process through which unified agency,
or the practical unity of the self, is achieved (Milgram 1997, p 162).
In this view, justifying decisions between incommensurable options also serves
the goal of proving that we have unified agency. I will end my paper with
discussing three cases which illustrate that making the incommensurable
commensurable not always requires, or results in, establishing unified agency.
The first onecase figures also in some of my other
publications (Musschenga 2001, 2002). Second or third-generation members of
ethnic-cultural groups in the Netherlands are often said to live between two
cultures. They experience conflicts and tensions between the norms and values
of Dutch culture and of that of their own group. This is especially the case
with children whose parents culture differs substantially from Dutch culture,
such as Turkish and especially Moroccan children. The experience of conflict
and tension is probably more intense among girls than among boys, because of
the great differences in ideas about the equality of the sexes between
traditional Turkish and Moroccan culture and mainstream Dutch culture. It often
happens that daughters leave their parents because they are not granted the
freedom and independence that is enjoyed by indigenous Dutch girls. Since
familial bonds are of great importance to the Turks and Moroccans, breaking
contact with the family or being expelled from the family constitutes a severe
emotional loss to these girls. They value and need their family as well as
their independence. That is why many girls try to avoid a situation in which a
breach with their family becomes unavoidable.inevitable. They decide not to choose between the Dutch way of
life and the way of life of their parents. Therefore they choose to submit at
home to the traditional authority of their father, while striving for
independence in the world outside. I assume that most of them are perfectly
able to justify their split existence. They regard living in two worlds as inevitablyescapably constitutive
of their identity as members of the second or third generations of immigrants.
The other case is completelyrather different. Most
of the incommensurable options I discussed, are
non-trivial, comprehensive options that concern the direction of ones future
life. A different category of incommensurable options are dilemmas. Dilemmas
are conflicts, not
between ideals, but between moral requirements of
which neither overrides the other. A person involved in such a dilemma,
will act morally wrong whatever choice he makes. If the dilemma is non-trivial,
an agent usually will usually seek some reasons that might help him
in taking a decision. Imagine an intelligence officer who is taken prisoner on
a mission together with four of his helpers. He is tortured but did not reveal
anything valuable to the enemy. The enemy now threatens that they will kill the
four helpers if he does not give them all the information they *want.
This information is vital to his countrys military interests. The man decides
to sacrifice the helpers. He justifies this decision by saying that, being an
intelligence officer, it would be impossible for him to go on living whenif he had betrayed his
country. This is a typical identity-constitutive reason. Although many people
outside the spheres of army and intelligence may be inclined to say that they shwould have decided
differently, the decision is perfectly understandable and legitimate from the
officers point of view. Although the officer affirms by this decision the
central place of his military duties to his identity, the decision-making
process does not result in establishing unified agency. On the contrary, the
decision tears him up. Since tragic dilemmas are part and parcel of human
existence, and no-one will escape the burdens of guilt connected with decisions
he had to take, it does make sense to ask oneself what kind of guilt feelings
one can endure best. After deciding in a tragic dilemma, a person has to
restore his unified agency, which requires learning to cope with feelings of
guilt.
I end with a case in which
rendering competing considerations commensurable, though unavoidable, even
seems to destroy unified agency . It is the case of Sophies
Choice, a much- discussed
example in the literature
about dilemmas. Sophie arrives with her two children at a concentration camp. A
guard tells her that she must choose one of her children to be killed, and the
other will be send to the childrens barracks. If she refuses to choose, both
children will be killed. To illustrate the point I want to make, I need to
rewrite the story. Suppose that one of the children is weaker than the other.
His chances of surviving the concentration camp are therefore lower than that
of the other child. Confronted with such an immoral choice, a morally responsible agent
will force himself to take that fact into account. The rational thing to do is
to choose for the stronger child. Suppose that Sophie is a moral person. But
she is also a mother who always trieds to give the weaker child extra care. If she
decides for the stronger child, the very reason that justifies her decision,
which is also her reason, destroys her identity.
1 This insight is central to
objective pluralist theories which hold that the good is not one but
plural, that there are many, possibly conflicting, incommensurable,
values.
[2] Elisabeth
Anderson regards the distinction between value and importance to a person
as crucial to the theory of value (1993, p. 238).
[3] It is quite
common to distinguish between subjective and objective reasons. Subjective
reasons refer to a persons interests. I can justify my buying a certain type
of automobile by referring to subjective reasons. But if a couple justifies its
decision to have an abortion, the public will not accept it when they solely
refer to subjective reasons. In public justification one expects reasons to be
objective. Objective reasons are based upon shared values and principles.
However, not all objective reason are reasons for action. An objective reason
is only then a reason for action for someone if it refers to values,
principles, projects or relationships that himself has recognised as valuable, as worthwhile. Thus, all
objective reasons that are reasons for action for someone are in a sense
related to his values, projects, and so on
[4] I agree with
Christine Korsgaard in her The Reasons We Share when she says that the
agent-relative component of personal projects or ambitions as she prefers
to call them is not the source of subjective reasons. The act of
identification does not confer value upon the things an agent identifies with.
They already have value for him. But it does seem to motivate the agent to do a
lot of work he would otherwise not do (Korsgaard 1996, p. 288). The same
applies to my identity-constitutive reasons
2
I agree with Christine Korsgaard in her The Reasons We Share when she says
that the agent-relative component of personal projects or ambitions as
she prefers to call them is not the source of subjective reasons. The act of
identification does not confer value upon the things an agent identifies with.
They already have value for him. But it does seem to motivate the agent to do a
lot of work he would otherwise not do (Korsgaard 1996, p. 288).
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