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Reason and Love: A Non-Reductive Analysis of the Normativity of Agent-Relative Reasons Author(s): Theo Van Willigenburg Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Vol. 8, No. 1/2, Papers Presented at a Conference on Reasonable Partiality, (Amsterdam, October 2003) (Apr., 2005), pp. 45-62 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27504337 Accessed: 30/06/2010 07:49 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=springer. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. http://www.jstor.org Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 8: 45-62, 2005. DOI: 10.1007/sl0677-005-3299-z ? Springer 2005 THEO VAN WILLIGENBURG REASON AND LOVE: A NON-REDUCTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE NORMATIVITY OF AGENT-RELATIVE REASONS Accepted: 1 November 2004 ABSTRACT. Why do agent-relative reasons have authority over us, reflective creatures? Reductive accounts base the normativity of agent-relative reasons on agent-neutral consid erations like 'having parents caring especially for their own children serves best the interests of all children'. Such accounts, however, beg the question about the source of normativity of agent-relative ways of reason-giving. In this paper, I argue for a non-reductive account of the reflective necessity of agent-relative concerns. Such an account will reveal an important structural complexity of practical reasoning in general. Christine Korsgaard relates the ra tional binding force of practical reasons to the various identities or self-conceptions under which we value ourselves. The problem is that it is not clear why such self-conceptions would necessitate us rationally, given the fact that most of our identities are simply given. Perhaps, Harry Frankfurt is right in arguing that we are not only necessitated by reason, but also, and predominantly by what we love. I argue, however, that "the necessities of love" (in Frankfurt's phrase) are not to be separated from, but should be seen as belonging to the necessities of reason. Our loves, concerns and related identities provide for a specific and important structure to practical reflection. They function on the background of reasoning, having a specific default role: they would lose their character as concerns, if there was a need for them to be cited on the foreground of deliberation or if there was a need to justify them. This does not mean that our deep concerns cannot be scrutinised. They can only be scrutinised in an indirect way, however, which explains their role in grounding the normativity of agent-relative reasons. It appears that this account can provide for a viable interpretation of Korsgaard's argument about the foundational role of practical identities. KEY WORDS: agent-relativity, practical reasoning, normativity, necessities of love, Frank furt, Korsgaard INTRODUCTION In this paper, I pursue a search for the source(s) of the normativity of agent-relative reasons. By concentrating on agent-relative reasons, I aim at elucidating some of the complexities of practical reasoning in general. In particular, I will point out an important structural feature of practical reasoning that is easily overlooked. Agent-relative reasons, in distinction from agent-neutral ones, are rea sons the authority of which cannot be understood without an essential 46 T. V. WILLIGENBURG reference to the relationships or the projects of a particular agent. As they involve the identity of a specific actor, agent-relative reasons are only up to a certain degree shareable. Your reasons to care for those who are special to you or to strife for a project that is yours cannot be reasons that appeal to me in the same way, because I am not standing in this same special relation to the persons or projects involved.1 One might think that from the moral point of view agent-relative reasons must be problematic as they support forms of partiality and one-sidedness, while morality requires the impartiality that is given with the universaliza tion of one's reasons for action. Agent-relative reasons will surely not pass Kant's Categorical Imperative test, so one might think, as this test makes clear that reasons can only bind us authoritatively, if they take the form of a universal prescription that applies to everyone. However, many thinkers in the Kantian tradition (e.g. Korsgaard, 1996) nowadays argue that agent-relativist reasons for action are perfectly compatible with impartial moral requirements as long as these reasons are not excluded by principles for the general regulation of behaviour that no one motivated to achieve agreement about those principles would reasonably reject (Scanlon, 1998). In the Kantian line of thought, the notion of moral Tightness and wrongness is essentially grounded in the notion of respect for the typically human capacities of reflection and deliberation, i.e., the abilities to assess reasons and justifications and to come to a reasonable selection of the ways one wants to live. Given their reflective capacities, humans are capable of asking normative questions about the good and the beautiful, and they are capable of answering those questions. As such they come to value things, or to disvalue them. The human capacity for critical reflection is the source of what is taken as normative. Humans spread value around the world and given this capacity they are to be respected in the most profound, i.e. moral sense. This respect gives us reason to give some weight to the agent-relative concerns that others have. I have reason to encourage you, to be happy with you, or at least not to interfere in your agent-relative strivings, because I can understand why such ambitions and special relations are so important to you: I have ambitions and special relations myself too. I 1 I am focussing here on (1) project-dependent-reasons -what Nagel (1986, p. 165) calls "reasons of autonomy"-, and on (2) relationship-dependent reasons -what Nagel calls "special obligations". See for the similarity and difference between these reasons (Scheffler, 2004). I do not discuss (3) "deontological reasons" (Nagel, idem), which are constraints on what we are permitted to do in service of other reasons (e.g. in service of promoting the good). This does not mean, however, that I think that the agent-relative reasons I focus on just provide us with options and not with constraints (see Dancy, 1993, p. 167). I do not just have an option to favour those to whom I am closely related (parents, children, spouses, siblings etc), I often have an obligation to be partial. REASON AND LOVE 47 recognise your commitment as expressing our shared distinctively human capacity to take a special interest in things and persons. I recognise this as a capacity that expresses, as Christine Korsgaard (1996, p. 209) phrases it, our common humanity. "We should", Korsgaard says, "promote the ends of others not because we recognise the value of those ends, but rather out of respect for the humanity of those who have them." This means that from the moral point of view, agent-relative concerns are not only merely permitted, they also deserve to be nourished and protected. Agent-relative concerns are expressive of a shared humanity and as such they deserve encouragement and safeguarding (Willigenburg, 2002, pp. 184-188). This argument does not explain, however, why particular agent-relative reasons bind particular agents. Reasonable permissibility as such does not ground practical necessity. Why is it so that particular agent-relative reasons appeal to me in such a way that they have an authoritative say over me, while for you very different agent-relative reasons may have such an authoritative say. I make it as my special project to write a book on a philosophical topic, your goal is once to climb the Mount Everest, and others dedicate their life to the upbringing of their children. If the binding force of reasons is related to our reflective insight into their point (after seeing the forceful point of a reason we cannot circumvent it), why is it so that reflectiveness necessitates people in very different ways? Why are some agent-relative considerations authoritative for you in a reason giving way, and others not? What we are looking for are the rational grounds of agent-relative con siderations. Why do these considerations necessitate us in our practical deliberations? Pointing out that many of our agent-relative concerns sim ply push us in a particular direction does not provide for an answer. Most parents simply cannot ignore their child crying, a person in love cannot help longing for the presence of her lover, and one's desire for the com pletion of a life project may be overwhelming. But this lack of freedom is not what we are looking for, when we think of the necessitation involved in agent-relative reasons. What we are looking for is the lack of freedom that we have in view of the authority of what is 'reasonable', not the lack of freedom that we have because of the power of our desires, the intensity of our cravings or the overwhelming strength of our passions. The lack of freedom upon our being necessitated by reasons is not the result of com pulsion. Being captivated by conviction is different from being pressed by psychic forces. Being captivated by conviction results in a kind of un freedom that originates from our reflective nature. It is the unfreedom that is characteristic of the normativity, the sense of ought that is issued by rea sons. We are looking for the grounds of this kind of normativity as exerted by agent-relative reasons. 48 T. V. WILLIGENBURG Reductive Groundings One may argue that the normativity of agent-relative reasons can only be explained by reference to agent-neutral reasons, like T have to care for my daughter Suzy, because if all parents were to care well for their own children, this would serve best the interest of all children around the world.' The idea is that only agent-neutral reasons can establish the reasonableness, and thereby the rational force of agent-relative considerations. Partiality is reasonable, according to this line of thought, because it serves goals that are important as seen from an impartial point of view. The partial concerns of humans for their relatives and associates provide for an efficient division of labour that serves the well-being of all humans. Partial concerns moreover result in an effective engagement of the emotions of love that motivate people to make great sacrifices for those who are close to them, sacrifices they are not prepared to make for foreigners. Partiality is simply an effective and efficient way of attaining impartial goals. The problem of this reduction of the normativity of agent-relative reasons to the authority of agent-neutral ones is that it destroys the special agent relative kind of reason-giving that makes the father say: "Because it is my daughter Suzy !" and not "Because this will best serve the interest of children all around the world." Imagine the woman who says to her husband: "I love you, not because of who you are, but because our partial dedication to each other will in the end make the world a better place." It seems that this woman has not understood what agent-relative reasons are about. If we want to ground the normativity of agent-relative reasons, we need to do so in a non-reductive way. The question is: how can we do that? Practical Identities Why do particular agent-relative considerations matter to you in a reason-giving way? Why do such considerations rationally bind you? Why do they necessitate you as a deliberative creature? According to Christine Korsgaard (1996a, p. 101) this is because of your practical identities, i.e. the conceptions under which "you find your life to be worth living and your actions to be worth undertaking". As a father, scholar, lover, student, citizen, member of an ethnic group, or adherent of a religion certain things count to you and others not. Therefore, "all of these identities give rise to reasons and obligations. Your reasons express your identity, your nature; your obligations spring from what that identity forbids."(idem). So, in Korsgaard's picture obligation and identity are closely connected. There are certain things you cannot do without in a sense losing (part of) yourself ("I couldn't live with myself if I did that"). The conceptions under which REASON AND LOVE 49 we value ourselves are the source of practical reasons. They determine what you think is a good idea and what not. This applies not only to agent-relative reasons, but also to agent-neutral ones. For instance, the normativity of moral reasons is grounded, says Korsgaard, in our shared identity as deliberative creatures (our common humanity). For Korsgaard, there is, therefore, no important distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons. All practical reasons are expressive of our identities. At first glance, this picture is problematic, however. Korsgaard takes practical identities as the basis of what we think is worthwhile in our lives. But clearly, most of our identities are things that we simply happen to have. Being male or Dutch is not something I have chosen and one could argue that most of the other identities of mine are relative to the particular circumstances and social world in which I live and was brought up. But how could we be necessitated by what is a contingent fact? How might some self conception we just happen to have become a source of what is rationally irresistible? Korsgaard argues that as we endorse what contingently seems to be important in our lives, we, thereby, make it into something that we are necessitated by.2 By embracing the identities and concerns that we contingently stumble into in our lives, we make these into something that has importance and significance to us. But, says Korsgaard, we do not only embrace the identities that we happen to have, we may also come to question the normativity of one or another of our self-conceptions. Conflicts arising between self-conceptions may force you to give one of them up. In general, there may be circumstances that "may cause you to call the practical importance of an identity in question" (Korsgaard, 1996a, p. 120). Even so, the question remains on what basis we call an identity into question and what reason we have to discard this self-conception and not the other. "Rational reflection", says Korsgaard, "may bring you to discard a way of thinking of your practical identity as silly or jejune." (idem) But, how do we weigh the relative importance of different self-conceptions? Of course, we want to have an identity-conferring project or end that gives real worth to our lives. But how may we choose? If practical identities are the source of reasons for choice, what source of reasons is left to base our choice on, given that we choose among morally permissible conceptions? Identities in terms of which we find our life worth living encapsulate what matters to us. Is there any (other) source of reasons for thinking that some 2 "For Kant urges us to take things to be important because they are important to us. And this means that we must do so in full acceptance of the fact mat what specifically is important to us is at bottom contingent and conditional, determined by biological, psychological and historical conditions that themselves are neither justified nor unjustified, but simply mere. In a deep way, all of our particular values are ones we just happen to hold" (Korsgaard, 1996a, p. 242). 50 T. V. WELLIGENBURG identities are more worthwhile than others? Or is the only reason for giving up an identity or embracing one, just that we want to give it up or embrace it? But, why would this act of will result in the sense of ought that results from our insight in what we have conclusive reason to do? Is this really a form of rational necessitation? By the end of this article, I will show that Korsgaard's position on the role of practical identities in grounding normativity can be given a viable interpretation which solves this 'choice of identity' problem.3 But, in order to reach that point, we first need to discuss the most serious alternative to the rationalist position sketched so far. Captivated by Love Harry Frankfurt argues that what is involved in agent-relative concerns is not to be understood in terms of rational necessitation, but in terms of the ne cessities of love. "The necessities of love", says Frankfurt, "are not rational ... but volitional: love constraints the will rather than the understanding." (Frankfurt, 1999b, p. 141). If we see what is involved in loving persons, objects and ideals, we will come to understand the normative ground of agent-relative reasons. The Necessities of Love Love, says Frankfurt, is a mode of caring. To care about something is taking a special interest in it, being 'invested' in it in some way. To care about something is not identical to wanting it badly or preferring it strongly. I may want something that is very unlikely for me to get and, therefore, decide to give up my desire rather than hopelessly trying to satisfy it. But if I really were to care about what I want, it is likely that I would not give up my desire in order to avoid the pain of frustration. Also, caring about something differs from judging it to be valuable, say as something that qualifies to be pursued for its own sake. There are many things that I may acknowledge to be intrinsically valuable, without wanting to pursue them. There are many inherently valuable ways of spending your time and effort, but only some of these ways will be important to you in such a way that you can be said to care about what you do. To care about an end it to be committed to it, in the sense of having an active interest in establishing or sustaining that end, and nourishing one's desire for that end. Care involves a complex set of mental dispositions and states (cognitive, affective, volitional) by which a person identifies with what he cares about "in the sense that he makes himself 3 I made some preliminary moves in constructing a viable interpretation of Korsgaard's position in Willigenburg (2004, pp. 48-51). REASON AND LOVE 51 vulnerable to losses and susceptible to benefits depending upon whether what he cares about is diminished or enhanced." (Frankfurt, 1988a, p. 83). Now, says Frankfurt, "[A]mong the things we care about there are some that we cannot help caring about; and among the things that we cannot help caring about are thos