GIBBARD. Morality as Consistency in Living. Korsgaard's Kantian Lectures

Morality as Consistency in Living: Korsgaard's Kantian LecturesReview by: by Allan GibbardEthics, Vol. 110, No. 1 (October 1999), pp. 140-164Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/233207 .

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REVIEW ESSAYS

Morality as Consistency in Living:Korsgaard’s Kantian Lectures*

Allan Gibbard

We all confront ‘‘the normative question’’: told, say, not to cheat when Icould get rich by cheating, I can ask why; why forgo wealth for honesty?Any answer can prompt a further why—and so I face a regress of whys.How, we must ask, could any answer end this regress? And a specter ofunmasking can haunt our thinking: rival versions of the Modern Scien-tific World View tell us what accepting a must consists in and offer psy-chosocial etiologies of this motivation-laden state. The moral skeptic,writes Christine Korsgaard in The Sources of Normativity, ‘‘thinks that oncewe see what is really behind morality, we won’t care about it any more’’(p. 13).

Kant, though, discovered a way to terminate the regress of whys andface down the specter of unmasking—so maintains Korsgaard. His ethicsof autonomy is ‘‘the logical consequence of the theory of normativityshared by Hume, Mill, and Williams’’ (p. 51), and it is the only ethic‘‘consistent with the metaphysics of the modern world’’ (p. 5). Kors-gaard, though, is far from a simple mouthpiece of Kant; she reworksKant in an extended argument, starting from the plight of anyone whoreflects on what to do and why. She writes with eloquence, clarity, andhumanity, showing Kantian doctrines as flowing from a perplexity we caneach accept as our own. The upshot constitutes a modern classic in ethi-cal thought.

A frustrating classic, though, at least for me: Korsgaard’s startingpoints I find correct and illuminating; she presents ‘‘the normative prob-lem’’ as one that lies in wait for anyone who reflects and acts. Moral re-

140

Ethics 110 (October 1999): 140–164q 1999 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0014-1704/2000/11001-0006$02.00

* A review of Christine M. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, with commentary byG. A. Cohen, Raymond Geuss, Thomas Nagel, and Bernard Williams with a reply by Kors-gaard; edited by Onora O’Neill with an introduction by her (New York: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1996). All references in the text are to this work. These stem from Korsgaard’s1992 Tanner Lectures and commentary on them at Clare Hall, Cambridge. Work on thisreview was supported by a National Foundations for the Humanities Fellowship and anAmerican Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, at the Centre for Philosophy of Naturaland Social Science, London School of Economics.



alism of a metaphysical kind she rightly rejects: ‘‘The assumption of arealm of inherently normative entities or objective values is not neededto explain the existence of normative concepts’’ (p. 47). Normative ques-tions, instead, are practical, questions of ‘‘what to think, what to like,what to say, what to do, and what to be’’—and why (p. 9). ‘‘Moral prop-erties are projections of human dispositions,’’ she writes (p. 91), andthough I find this projection metaphor misleading, I very much acceptthe claim behind it: that moral statements express practical states ofmind—policies for living and the like. This is the doctrine I call expressiv-ism. The quest for reasons to act stems, Korsgaard tells us, from ‘‘thereflective structure of human consciousness’’ (p. 104), from our ‘‘capac-ity to distance ourselves’’ from our mental activities, from our desires andplans, ‘‘and call them into question’’ (p. 93). Hence our why questionsand the whole regress of whys, and hence our quest to terminate theregress in an unconditional answer, ‘‘one that makes it impossible, un-necessary, or incoherent to ask why again’’ (p. 33). Practical thinking, shebelieves, can give rise to practical arguments, showing the commitmentsthat acting carries with it.

These starting points will be controversial, but not with me; I ap-plaud. My topic will be not whether her starting points are right orwrong, but what follows from them. Korsgaard thinks that what follows isan elaborate Kantian package; I think that what follows is somethingmore modest.

Acting at all, for any reason whatsoever, commits you to far-reachingconsequences: that is what Korsgaard sets out to demonstrate. Any re-flective agent, it turns out, must embrace the moral law and act as a Citi-zen of a Kingdom of Ends. Korsgaard’s argument is rich and difficult,and though I’ll attempt a reading, I very much can’t feel assured that I’mgetting it right. There seem, though, to be three chief stages, deriving(i) the Categorical Imperative, then (ii) the moral law, and, as a bit of anafterthought, (iii) duties to others. The Categorical Imperative isn’t itselfthe moral law, and the moral law has content apart from how we musttreat others. I’ll spend much of this essay struggling with what these self-commands are supposed to be, and how the derivation might run.

I. SUBSTANCE AND LOGIC

Korsgaard regards herself as in one sense a moral realist, but anotherkind of moral realism she rejects. The ‘‘substantive’’ moral realist thinks,wrongly, that the moral life is ‘‘the application of theoretical knowledgeto the solution of human problems,’’ knowledge of the right and thegood (p. 44). Instead, she insists, thinking about obligation is a matterof thinking what to do and why. Another, procedural form of moral re-alism, though, is perfectly fine: ‘‘The procedural moral realist thinks thatthere are answers to moral questions because there are correct proceduresfor arriving at them. But the substantive moral realist thinks that there

Gibbard Morality as Consistency in Living 141



are correct procedures for answering moral questions because there aremoral truths or facts which exist independently of those procedures, andwhich those procedures track’’ (p. 36). This last Korsgaard rejects.

Korsgaard, then, distinguishes the two forms of moral realism by twodistinct features. First, the ‘‘substantive’’ moral realist appeals to meta-physics, to ‘‘theoretical’’ investigation of a nonnatural realm of norma-tive properties, which parallel the natural properties studied by science.In place of sense perception, he employs a sense-like power of intuition,a power, as it were, to sense the layout of nonnatural entities. The ‘‘pro-cedural’’ moral realist holds that moral thinking is practical, not theo-retical; it is thinking what to do. This we can call the contrast between ametaphysical moral realist and an expressivist, who, in Korsgaard’s ver-sion, contends that moral claims express one’s reflective endorsement ofpolicies for living. Moral reflection, says Korsgaard, ‘‘is practical and nottheoretical: it is reflection about what to do, not reflection about what isto be found in the normative part of the world’’ (p. 116). The secondcontrast is the substantive/procedural contrast proper. The substantival-ist terminates the regress of whys with substantive principles; the proce-duralist, with a procedure.

Substantivalism needn’t go with metaphysical moral realism—or ifthe two must stand or fall together, that would need to be shown. On myown view, metaphysical moral realism has all the defects that Korsgaardcharges it has.1 But rejecting it doesn’t establish proceduralism. BothKorsgaard and the proceduralist recognize that the regress of whys mustterminate somehow.2 Korsgaard thinks that the regress ends with a pro-cedure, with ‘‘reflective endorsement’’ somehow tied to ‘‘autonomy’’ andthe Categorical Imperative. We need to ask whether procedures claimany advantage, as why-stoppers, over substantive principles—those sub-stantive principles that seem most evident, those policies for living thatwe find most clearly unproblematic. This is a distinct issue from theone that pits Korsgaard’s expressivism against a gratuitous, metaphysicalmoral realism.3

142 Ethics October 1999

1. Whether historical intuitionists have been metaphysical moral realists may be adifficult question. Ronald Dworkin derides metaphysical realism as the ‘‘moron’’ theory anddenies that anyone has ever attempted this explanatory strategy. See his ‘‘Objectivity andTruth: You’d Better Believe It,’’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 25 (1996): 87–139, pp. 103–5.

2. This needn’t disallow a form of coherentism: the regress might come to an endnot with one or more principles that are fully self-evident, but with a set of mutually rein-forcing considerations, each with some degree of self-evidence.

3. Many other issues too can be labeled ones of moral ‘‘realism’’ vs. ‘‘antirealism,’’but I must leave these aside. ‘‘Realism’’ might be the claim that moral claims are true orfalse. If truth is minimal, so that ‘It’s true that torture is wrong’ just means that torture iswrong, an expressivist can agree (see Paul Horwich, Truth [Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell,1990]). ‘‘Realism’’ might also be the claim that moral truths, or some of them, hold inde-pendently of us. Again, an expresssivist can agree. Suppose, for instance, the ‘‘moral realist’’proclaims, ‘‘It is a fact, independent of us, that kicking dogs for fun is wrong.’’ This, the



What makes a principle of action substantive, as opposed to proce-dural, formal, or logical? Thinking what to do is disciplined thinking,subject to formal requirements of its own, a logic of its own. This claimthat a logic governs action is characteristically Kantian, and to me itseems utterly right. There is, for instance, something incoherent aboutthe following set of thoughts:

i) Let me spend the whole morning at the beach,ii) Let me spend the whole morning writing,iii) I can’t write at the beach.

If I accept all three of these, I am then under pressure to revise what Iaccept—the same kind of pressure as I would be under with inconsistentbeliefs in prosaic fact.

Korsgaard and I agree on this, but we disagree sharply about thepowers of logical requirements to settle what to do. Korsgaard labels her-self a proceduralist, but she may be something much stronger. Is theright procedure, after all, just self-evident? What if I just don’t see that itis? Korsgaard says I must: ‘‘If you acknowledge the existence of any prac-tical reasons, then you must value your humanity as an end in itself’’(p. 125), and this commits me to the full package of enlightenment mo-rality (p. 123). ‘‘The price of denying that humanity is of value is com-plete practical normative skepticism’’ (p. 163). This price is exacted, itseems, with the full force of logic: anyone who reasons what to do andwhy must acknowledge moral claims, on pain of contradiction in hismaxims for action. This we might call a moral logicism: just as mathemati-cal logicists hold that mathematics is part of logic, so Korsgaard appearsto hold that morals are a part of the very logic of what to do.4


expressivist can say, just means ‘‘Kicking dogs for fun is wrong, and would be even if weregarded such fun as innocent.’’ Saying this expresses one’s reflective endorsement of op-posing kicking dogs for fun—even kicking dogs in the counterfactual circumstance thatno human reflectively endorses opposing it. Importantly, though, on this view, the seemingmetaphysics doesn’t explain the morals; it just restates moral stances and policies, perhapsin a misleading way. Nagel takes this view in his commentary (Sources, p. 205); see alsoSimon Blackburn, ‘‘Errors and the Phenomenology of Value,’’ in Morality and Objectivity:A Tribute to J. L. Mackie, ed. Ted Honderich (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985),pp. 1–22, p. 11, whose example this is; Allan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory ofNormative Judgment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 165– 66; andDworkin, p. 109. Alternatively, a ‘‘moral realist’’ might be someone who thinks that funda-mental moral truth extends beyond our powers to discover it. But some who regard them-selves as ‘‘normative realists’’ reject this possibility; see Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 139.

4. More precisely, she appears to think it a theorem of logic that any nonskepticalnormative claim whatsoever (when conjoined with the nonnormative facts) entails thewhole of morality. One might conceivably be a moral logicist in this sense and yet be ametaphysical moral realist, one who thinks that moral claims are ‘‘theoretical’’ claims;Locke might be an example. If so, one would think that the logic in question is the ordinarylogic of the ‘‘theoretical.’’ Korsgaard, as I say, is an expressivist; she thinks that moral claims



Perhaps, though, interpreting Korsgaard in this way is a mistake.Kant himself might appear sometimes to rest arguments on a necessitythat isn’t a pure matter of logic; a rational being, for instance, ‘‘necessar-ily wills that all his faculties should be developed.’’ Korsgaard concludessuch things as this: ‘‘Not every form of practical identity is contingent orrelative after all: moral identity is necessary’’ (p. 121). Perhaps this in-vokes some form of nonlogical necessity. But if so, that form of necessitywould have to be explained: What kind of inescapability is Korsgaardclaiming for morality? Much of her argument reads as if morality is sheerconsistency in one’s maxims. That is a strong claim, and it would be amarvelous boost to morality if she or anyone else could establish it. I’llbe reading Korsgaard as making this strong claim, and I’ll be askingwhether it’s a claim that we need—and whether anyone could makegood on it.5

II. SUBSTANTIVE MORAL GROUNDINGS

On my own view, logic does indeed yield requirements of consistency,not only in belief but in plan—but there are many possible ways of beingconsistent. Most of them would be crazy, and some are downright vicious.Consistency has real bite, to be sure: often we’ll find ourselves inconsis-tent, and then we’re in for rethinking. But consistency, I would insist, isno guarantee of truth: we can coherently disagree with someone we rec-ognize as fully consistent.6 Special creationists, for instance, are mistakenin their rejection of Darwinian evolution as accounting for the origins of


are ‘‘practical.’’ Hence if she is a moral logicist, then the logic that, according to her, entailsmorality is practical logic, the logic of what to do. I’ll use the term ‘moral logicism’ to meanthis doctrine. (G. A. Cohen too, in his commentary, may read Korsgaard as claiming logicalstatus for her arguments; he summarizes her crucial arguments on p. 185.)

5. Does moral logicism, according to Korsgaard, perhaps apply only to perfect dutiesand not to imperfect ones? Previous readings of Kant by Korsgaard fit reading her as amoral logicist for all duties. The crucial distinction for Kant is between duties of justice andduties of virtue. Duties of virtue stem from the ‘‘contradiction in the will’’ test (ChristineKorsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996],p. 83), and they involve ‘‘the free adoption of some end which pure practical reason di-rects,’’ namely humanity (ibid., p. 19). They are deduced from a feature of human beings,that we are purposive, that we act only for ends. On Korsgaard’s reading of Kant, I conclude,you are inconsistent if (i) you act, (ii) you are by your nature, you know, a being who onlyacts for ends, and (iii) you do not have humanity as your end. The inconsistency is one ofpure practical reason—or as I would put it, to be this way is to violate practical logic, thelogic of acting. This appears to fit Korsgaard’s own aspirations in these later lectures: Forduties of virtue as well as duties of justice, I read her as purporting to establish a theoremin practical logic. The papers from Creating the Kingdom of Ends cited in this note date from1985–89. See especially pp. 15–22, 82–84, and 176 –79.

6. Korsgaard too thinks there are many ways of being consistent; she thinks that whatto do depends partly on one’s inclinations (see ibid., p. 20). As I understand her, though,if your inclinations are worked into logically consistent ends which you endorse, there canbe nothing to criticize, and the rest of us can’t coherently disagree with your choice of ends.



our species. Often, their views are inconsistent or rooted in ignorance ofthe evidence, and in that case, contemplating more evidence and re-thinking in light of inconsistencies could lead a special creationist to cor-rect his views. Logic and evidence, nevertheless, won’t guarantee truth:there is no logical guarantee that one couldn’t be fully consistent andfully aware of the evidence, and still accept special creation. If one did,then no matter how consistent one’s views, one would be wrong. Or this,at least, is the view of any Darwinian like me, and it is a coherent view: wecan recognize that the rare special creationist might be consistent, andstill disagree.

A like view is available for thinking what to do. Imagine I’m a bingealcoholic: I get blind drunk every Saturday night, and often I end up injail, or wreck my car, or suffer other calamities. Now in all likelihoodwhen I take that first drink, I’m wrong on the facts or inconsistent in mypolicies for living. I’m kidding myself. And so heeding the facts and therequirements of practical consistency might lead me to change my mindon whether to drink; if I developed a formally coherent policy for living,then in light of what always happens once I begin to drink, this coherentpolicy might well include never drinking. Still, though, some possible,formally coherent policies for living do include weekend binges with alltheir consequences. Such a policy is terrible in its upshot, given my pro-clivities, but its defect isn’t formal inconsistency. The bite of logic issharp; the decision theoretic tradition, indeed, argues that formal coher-ence requires that one’s policy for living take the form of maximizing anindex of expected value.7 What constitutes ‘‘value,’’ though, I would in-sist, isn’t settled by requirements of practical consistency alone.8 Caligula,imagine, aims solely to maximize the suffering of others. That is a hor-rendous life policy, but it needn’t be formally inconsistent. We decentpeople might recognize such a policy as consistent, but still disagree withit; we are coherent to do so.

The view I’m adopting is Kantian in one respect: against Hume, itrecognizes a role for reasoning and logic in deciding how to live, a rolethat has genuine bite and that isn’t confined to thinking about the facts.In another way, though, the spirit of this view is Humean. Hume is sus-picious of any philosophy that claims to force us to strong, substantiveconclusions by sheer force of logic alone. In the realm of belief, what we


7. Peter Hammond presents perhaps the most refined argument to this effect,though most readers will find his presentation daunting; see his ‘‘Consequentialist Foun-dations for Expected Utility,’’ Theory and Decision 25 (1988): 25–78. Frank Ramsey, ‘‘Truthand Probability’’ (in his Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays [London: Rout-ledge & Kegan Paul, 1931]), and Leonard Savage, The Foundations of Statistics (New York:Wiley, 1954), are the classical arguments to this conclusion.

8. Or again, more precisely, what I’m denying is this: that what constitutes values issettled, logically, by the requirements of practical consistency plus the facts of what aimsvarious people reflectively endorse.



accept and what we reject depends not only on heeding logic, but on ourproclivities to find some things more credible than others. If these pro-clivities go wrong, we come to the wrong beliefs, no matter how consis-tent we might be. Likewise, our judgments of how to live depend not juston a logic of what to do, but on our proclivities to ‘‘see’’ some eventuali-ties as goals to pursue, and others as dangers to shun. If our proclivitiesgo wrong, then we go wrong in our life policies, be they ever so consis-tent. Illogic isn’t the only way to be wrong.

What besides practical logic could do the job of getting our life poli-cies right? Substantive principles, one reply might be—and this reply issomewhat in the spirit of Clarke, Sidgwick, and other intuitionists. Take,for instance, what I’ll call the weak pleasure principle: ‘‘The fact that Iwould enjoy doing something weighs in favor of doing it.’’ This is a prac-tical principle: Accepting it amounts to a determination, whenever onewould enjoy doing something, to weigh this fact in favor of doing it. Onwhat basis can I accept the principle? I find the question puzzling; whatfurther basis do I need? True, nothing in the sheer logic of what to dodictates the principle; the principle is substantive. True, I might come toreject this principle, if I find it clear that there are exceptions. I couldthen look for deeper substantive principles that discriminate which plea-sures to seek—but I would then still be a substantivalist. And still, surely,indifference to all pleasure would be perverse. As Korsgaard says, ‘‘If youthink reasons and values are unreal, go and make a choice, and you willchange your mind’’ (p. 125). One real value you’ll find is the value ofpleasure.

I find in Korsgaard three objections to grounding moral reasoningon substance. One is that doing so requires a metaphysical moral real-ism; to this I have already spoken. Second, calling the principle self-evident, she charges, is no more than an expression of confidence—which can’t help anyone who doesn’t share this confidence. Realism,says Korsgaard, ‘‘refuses to answer the normative question. It is a way ofsaying that it cannot be done’’ (p. 39). This complaint targets moralsubstantivalism itself, not just metaphysical moral realism. What, then,Korsgaard’s worry seems to be, if you don’t confidently favor your ownpleasure? To this, though, the answer is clear: If you don’t, true enough,philosophical argument can’t make you.9 What you need is perhaps notphilosophy but therapy. Or perhaps you do need philosophy, but onlyin a negative way: you need to be disabused of some bogus philosophi-cal line that has led you to reject a goal you’d otherwise embrace withconfidence.


9. This is a theme in the commentaries: Cohen distinguishes forcing a morally alien-ated person into morality by sheer force of logic—which, he thinks, can’t be done by Kors-gaard or anyone else—from justifying a moral commitment one has by appeal to one’ssubstantive commitments. Moral argument, says Nagel, ‘‘is a matter of being faced with thealternatives, and having to decide which is more credible’’ (Sources, p. 208).



Third, though, a more serious worry: pleasure is easy but morality ishard. For morality you may have to die! Moral skepticism needn’t bepractical skepticism wholesale, a blanket doubt that anything at all isworth pursuing. It can focus on stringent moral demands as such, skep-tical that these can be founded on substantive grounds we’ll find unprob-lematic in the face of hard choices. This third challenge is fair enough,and I can offer no quick fix. One job of moral philosophers is to proposecandidate grounding principles for morality and display their virtues.Korsgaard herself works to explain the stringency of morality: Moral vio-lations threaten loss of one’s ‘‘practical identity’’ as a rational being. Andbecause, as Wittgenstein indicates, reasons are public, because of oursocial natures, my practical identity must be responsive to reasons of oth-ers. Korsgaard is eloquent in explaining what a practical identity is andwhy it matters. Now the considerations she offers, at this point in herargument, are available just as much to the substantivalist as to the pro-ceduralist. It’s a good question what can ground the stringency of moraldemands; this is the prime question of normative moral theory. Kors-gaard herself, though, offers some possible kinds of answers.

Korsgaard herself would think that the weak pleasure principlebadly misfires as an example of a self-evident substantive principle. First,not all pleasures are of value. Second, she can explain why pleasures dohave value when they do, proceeding without appeal to substantivebases. So Korsgaard maintains, and I return later to her treatment ofpleasure and its value. Before that, though, I examine the arguments shepresents as central to Kantian ethics.

III. REFLECTIVE SUBJECTIVISM

Like Kant, Korsgaard moves first to the Categorical Imperative—thoughwhat’s at stake at this stage in the argument I find puzzling. On a modestreading, a substantivalist can gladly accept the Categorical Imperative; itjust tells us to be consistent in our rationales for action. That’s fine, thesubstantivalist can say, but remember too, consistency won’t on its owncarry us to morality. Korsgaard, though, seems at times to be committedto a stronger position, one a substantivalist would reject; I’ll label it alogically constrained reflective subjectivism. This doctrine, as I’ll explain, doestell us what to do, and it might seem to follow from Korsgaard’s startingpoints—but to think this would be a mistake. And a good thing too, Iclaim, for some things this doctrine could tell us to do are vicious.

Begin, then, with the reflective agent, who has impulses that he canaccept or reject. On what basis can he do this? ‘‘According to Kant, aseach impulse to action presents itself to us, we should subject it to thetest of reflection, to see whether it really is a reason to act. Since a reasonis supposed to be intrinsically normative, we test a motive to see whetherit is a reason by seeing whether we should allow it to be a law to us’’(p. 89). So far, the substantivalist can applaud. (Her commentators in




the volume have their qualms, but these I’ll skip over, because my ownworries don’t come at this point.) A substantivalist who believes in prac-tical logic—that there is such a thing as consistency and inconsistencyin thoughts of what to do—can read ‘‘law’’ here just as a consistent ra-tionale for doing what one settles on doing. What, then, should theagent treat as a law? In asking this, the substantivalist will say, the buckmust stop with substantive groundings, axioms, for example, such asthat suffering is worth preventing. Korsgaard, though, insists on some-thing firmer, something that would have to satisfy an agent who ques-tioned even such things as this.

We see whether we should allow a motive to be a law to us, Korsgaardsays, ‘‘by asking whether the maxim of acting on it can be willed as a law’’(p. 89). The free will faces a problem: it ‘‘must have a law, but becausethe will is free, it must be its own law. And nothing determines what thatlaw must be. All that it has to be is a law’’ (p. 98). Thus, ‘‘if the action andthe purpose are related to one another so that the maxim can be willedas a law, then the maxim is good’’ (p. 108).

On one strained reading of these words, all this should still be ac-ceptable, even to a substantivalist: The only purely logical constraint onaction, we might agree, is that it fit a consistent policy for living that onemight adopt. But Korsgaard seems in these passages to be saying some-thing far stronger: that if an agent adopts a maxim and the maxim passesthis logical test, it is then satisfactory. Not every conceivable logically con-sistent maxim is good, to be sure, for some will have no appeal to anagent, and others will have their appeal but lose out to other maxims inthe agent’s reflective endorsement. But still, a maxim will be satisfactory,on this reading, if it satisfies both of two conditions: (i) it somehow en-capsulates an impulse to action that the agent actually has and reflec-tively endorses, and (ii) it can be willed as a law.

According to this logically constrained reflective subjectivism, re-flectively deciding to do something makes it the thing to do, so long asyour policies for action are logically consistent. Is this Korsgaard’s posi-tion? I’m not entirely sure; some passages in these lectures seem carefullycrafted to avoid forcing such a reading.10 The passages I have cited,though, do seem to commit her to this view, and we’ll need to keep ask-ing whether any plausible reading avoids it. Reading her this way doesgive sense to her rejection of substantivalism, and to her claim that thesource of normativity lies in the agent’s will. I’ll be finding later, more-over, that her main argument seems indeed to require this reading. With


10. At one point she may be rejecting it: ‘‘Certainly I am not saying that reflectiveendorsement—the mere fact of reflective endorsement—is enough to make an actionright’’ (ibid., p. 161). This still leaves it open, though, that all that’s further required is fullpractical consistency. Korsgaard, then, could say this and still be a logically constrainedreflective subjectivist.



some hesitation, then, I’ll mostly read Korsgaard as indeed just this: alogically constrained reflective subjectivist.

Is this a bad thing? Much will depend on the power of the logic ofacting to constrain the will to what’s reasonable and morally decent;Korsgaard thinks these powers far greater than do I. Many maxims, wesubstantivalists think, can be willed as law which it would be a very badidea to will—even if one in fact does. The binge alcoholic chooses badly,even if his policies for living have perfect logical form, and likewise withCaligula. If we can’t derive something like the moral law as a theorem ofpractical logic, then logically constrained reflective subjectivism will de-clare maxims good that are repugnant. And in that case, we’ll reject theview—unless we think it somehow forced on us, which nothing we’veseen so far should lead us to think.

Reflective subjectivism goes beyond another set of claims that strikeme as entirely acceptable. Reflective endorsement is, in a sense, inescap-able; if you think about what to do and come to a conclusion, you havethereby reflectively endorsed your conclusion. And, we might say, youwill be acting autonomously, if autonomy is what you exercise if you re-flect fully on what to do. To reflect on what to do and come to a conclu-sion is an exercise of autonomy, and terminates in a reflective endorse-ment—to all this, who could object? And if I reflectively endorse, forinstance, my impulse to have fun by swimming, I thereby regard its object(fun) as of value.

Reflective subjectivism, though, involves something far stronger:that fun, it follows, is truly of value. Reflective endorsement of an im-pulse makes its object good. Korsgaard calls her view an ‘‘ethics of au-tonomy’’ and says, ‘‘The source of the normativity of moral claims mustbe found in the agent’s own will’’ (p. 19). ‘‘Autonomy is the source ofobligation, and in particular of our ability to obligate ourselves’’ (p. 91).What do these words mean? An expressivist can agree that the will is thesource of thinking oneself obligated; that to think oneself obligated is toreflectively accept a demand or requirement. It’s quite another claimthat the will is the source of validly being obligated. Is this last what Kors-gaard means by an ‘‘ethics of autonomy’’?

Korsgaard offers this further gloss on her position: ‘‘Were it not forour desires and inclinations . . . we would not find their objects good. . . .Kant saw that we take things to be important because they are importantto us—and he concluded that we must therefore take ourselves to beimportant’’ (p. 122). Think how this might work with an example: say,the value of biodiversity. The passage begins unobjectionably: ‘‘Were itnot for our desires and inclinations . . . we would not find their objectsgood.’’ Thinking biodiversity good consists in reflectively desiring it; thisis Korsgaard’s expressivism, which I accept. The next part I find multiplyambiguous: ‘‘We take things to be important because they are importantto us.’’ This could just be read as the empty claim that because we regard




things as important, we take them to be important. If, though, it is tolead us to think that we ourselves are important as the source of all im-portance, it must mean this: as an agent, I believe, ‘‘What makes biodi-versity important is the fact that I reflectively desire it.’’ For this, gener-alized, is the claim that what makes things important is that they are‘‘important to us,’’ in the sense that we consistently and reflectively de-sire them.

But if this is meant as a theorem in the logic of acting, it is fallacious.From the premise,

We wouldn’t think biodiversity important unless we reflectively de-sired it,

we can’t derive the conclusion,

Biodiversity wouldn’t be important unless we reflectively desired it.

The premise comes from Korsgaard’s version of expressivism: that think-ing biodiversity important consists in desiring it and reflectively endors-ing this desire. This is a conceptual claim, a metaethical claim, a claimabout the concept of being important. The second, though, seems to bea crucial claim of Korsgaard’s; it encapsulates the position I’m calling‘‘reflective subjectivism.’’ This is a claim not about the concept of beingimportant, but about what is important or isn’t. Expressivists since Ayerand Hare have striven to impress on us that expressivism does not entailsubjectivism. That humanity is the source of all valuing is fine, but doesvaluing make for value? An argument like this conflates the two.11

Even, though, if Korsgaard is a reflective subjectivist, and even if sheneeds to be in order to derive the value of humanity, she may not bedepending on this fallacy. The quick gloss on Kant that I have quoted ismore or less an afterthought, and it follows a far more elaborate argu-ment for the claim that we must value our humanity. I display this fal-lacious derivation of subjectivism from expressivism not because Kors-gaard clearly embraces it—it’s unclear whether she does when she’s notspeaking quickly—but to stress the contrast between expressivism andreflective subjectivism.

IV. PRACTICAL IDENTITY

Whatever the Categorical Imperative turns out to be, the moral law issomething further. It tells us to join in a Kingdom of Ends, a scheme that


11. As Nagel says in his commentary: ‘‘We do not make these things true by takingsome kind of leap’’ (ibid., p. 208). Hare, whom I read as an expressivist (see my ‘‘Hare’sAnalysis of ‘Ought’ and Its Implications,’’ in Hare and Critics: Essays in Moral Thinking, ed.D. Seanor and N. Fotion [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988]), has been at pains todistinguish his position from any form of subjectivism; see, e.g., R. M. Hare, Freedom andReason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 199. The distinction is central to my ownviews; see Wise Choices, pp. 153–54.



accommodates each person’s reasons with the reasons of others. As forjust what these rules of accommodation are, Korsgaard is noncommittal;that’s a question for elsewhere. Her core argument for the moral lawdeliberately leaves another loose end too, tied down in the following lec-ture: In her core argument, Korsgaard undertakes to show that if you actat all, you must value your own humanity. But a common misconceptionmust later be discredited to show that if you value your own humanity,you must value the humanity of others. What work the core argumentitself is doing will be one of my puzzles with these lectures.

The Categorical Imperative safely established, Korsgaard explainswhat still needs to be shown:

Any law is universal, but the argument I just gave doesn’t settle thequestion of the domain over which the law of free will must range.And there are various possibilities here. If the law is the law of act-ing on the desire of the moment, then the agent will treat eachdesire as a reason, and her conduct will be that of a wanton. If thelaw ranges over the agent’s whole life, then the agent will be somesort of egoist. It is only if the law ranges over every rational beingthat the resulting law will be the moral law. (P. 99)

What, then, is the ‘‘domain’’ of a law? The term might be read in eitherof two ways: First, the domain might be the set of situations the law ap-plies to, its domain of application. Does the law command just me at thismoment, in my actual situation? Does it command any reflective agent,at any time, in any possible situation? Or is its domain of applicationsomething in between? Consider the law, ‘‘Get yours and to hell withanyone else!’’ Thrasymachus accepts this with the widest possible do-main of application: ‘‘No matter who you are, when, and in what possiblesituation, get yours and give no intrinsic heed to anyone else!’’ This won’ttake him far toward the Kingdom of Ends. In the passage above, though,Korsgaard seems to have something else in mind, what we might call thelaw’s domain of concern. Does the law tell me to act for the sake of myselfjust now, or of all sentient beings at any time, or what? The wanton actson the narrowest kind of law; the good utilitarian on the widest. Kors-gaard’s examples favor this latter reading of ‘‘domain’’ as domain of con-cern, but we’ll have to ask which reading fits her argument. (And an-other worry: if the ‘‘domain’’ of a law is its domain of concern, and ifKorsgaard proves that one domain of my laws must be humanity in gen-eral, then we’re done. We don’t have the further worry that I might onlyneed to value my own humanity. We won’t then need the separate, Witt-gensteinian discrediting of private reasons that comes later.)

The argument Korsgaard seems to present as her central one drawson practical identity, ‘‘a description under which you find your life to beworth living and your actions to be worth undertaking’’ (p. 101). One ofyour practical identities, she argues, must be as a ‘‘human’’ in general, a




reflective chooser. From this she derives a requirement to value yourhumanity and obey the moral law. Her argument divides into roughlythese three steps; she argues that:

i) Acting at all requires some practical identity or other;ii) Any practical identity whatsoever entails the practical identity

of a human, as a reflective agent;iii) A human practical identity entails valuing one’s humanity, in a

sense that commits one to morality.

Korsgaard in this argument, I should remind you, doesn’t distinguishvaluing your own humanity from valuing humanity in general; later sheargues that she needn’t make this distinction.

First, then, acting requires a practical identity: ‘‘Unless you are com-mitted to some conception of your practical identity, you will lose yourgrip on yourself as having any reason to do one thing rather than an-other—and with it, your grip on yourself as having any reasons to liveand act at all’’ (p. 121). The term ‘practical identity’ suggests a focus ononeself, tying one’s sense of self-worth to standards of conduct. That thesheer logic of acting requires anything like this might seem dubious. Aconnoisseur may act from pride in his connoisseurship, from his self-image as a connoisseur, but children seek out pictures from straight lik-ing, and an adult might visit the Art Institute in the same spirit. Not allmotivations focus on maintaining a view of oneself as valuable, and areflective agent might conceivably have no self-focused, esteem-drivenmotives at all. Without these motives he wouldn’t, perhaps, be a normalmember of our species—but with Korsgaard, as I read her, we’re exam-ining the sheer logic of agency. Korsgaard also gives the need for practi-cal identity a more Kantian tone: ‘‘The reflective structure of humanconsciousness requires that you identify yourself with some law or prin-ciple which will govern your choices. It requires you to be a law to your-self’’ (p. 104). I have agreed that when the reflective agent stops to lookat a picture, he’s consistent only if his vague, implicit rationale fits somegeneral, consistent rationale that he doesn’t reject. Must he, though,‘‘identify himself’’ with this law? He does, to be sure, in a very thin sense:he allows that that’s the law for him to follow. Must he identify himselfwith a law in any stronger sense than this?

Perhaps, though, this thin sense is all that Korsgaard needs. Herrhetoric suggests to me a strong sense of identity, tied to one’s sense ofone’s own intrinsic worth—and this, I agree, is crucial to us of our spe-cies. Her official definition of ‘‘practical identity,’’ though, exacts onlythe thin reading: a ‘‘description under which you find . . . your actionsto be worth undertaking.’’ This seems fine: if you act, that commits youlogically to the claim that under some description, your act is worthundertaking. Perhaps you even need some implicit view of what somesuch description is, and reflection can call that view into question. And




this commits you logically to a description of yourself: you are a beingsuch that for you, acts of a certain kind are worth undertaking. Thechild eager to look at a picture book may little reflect, but logically sheis committed to the claim that she is a being such that looking at pic-tures, in these circumstances, is worth doing. In this thin sense, she’sclearly committed to ‘‘a conception of who she is which is normative forher’’ (p. 123).

We should ask, as we proceed, whether this thin reading gets Kors-gaard what she wants, or whether she needs the stronger reading, thereading tied to a sense of one’s worth. Either way, if she can proceed toderive enlightenment morality, that will be important. The reading tiedto self-esteem won’t apply to every conceivable reflective agent, but clearlyit applies to you and me, probably as men, or at least as men of a modernethos.12 If we ourselves are so inescapably committed to morality—ifthere’s no consistent pride to be had without pride in one’s moral de-cency—that is result enough to shake the world. A thin reading would ac-complish even more; it would meet the full ambitions of moral logicism,giving us a derivation that applies to any conceivable reflective agent.

V. SELF-WORTH

On, then, to step 2: that any practical identity whatsoever entails identi-fying with one’s humanity, that it entails a practical identity as a reflectivechooser. One reason for conforming to any particular practical identityis that, as established in step 1, you need some practical identity or other.But this, writes Korsgaard, ‘‘is not a reason that springs from one of thoseparticular practical identities. It is a reason that springs from your hu-manity itself, from your identity simply as a human being, a reflective ani-mal who needs reasons to act and to live. And so it is a reason you haveonly if you treat your humanity as a practical, normative, form of identity,that is, if you value yourself as a human being’’ (p. 121).

One aspect of Korsgaard’s argument will be controversial, but notwith me. It is transcendental: it takes something we can’t act without ac-cepting, derives a consequence, and then embraces the consequence. ‘‘Ishow you that rational action is possible only if human beings find theirown humanity to be valuable. But rational action is possible, and we arethe human beings in question. Therefore we find ourselves to be valu-


12. See, e.g., Claude Steele, ‘‘Race and the Schooling of Black Americans,’’ Atlantic269 (1992): 68–78. I of course don’t intend ‘‘men’’ to be confined to males; I need a termfor our own, terrestrial species. Esteem-tied identity isn’t, in Korsgaard’s sense, a ‘‘human’’universal, I’m saying; it isn’t something that any conceivable reflective agent would have.Whether it is universal among men is an important question, closely linked to the questionof which aspects of morality, as we know it in the wake of the worldwide diffusion of Euro-pean ways of thought, are universal among men. The capacity for esteem-tied identity mustclearly be universal among men; whether it is realized in all cultures is an important ques-tion for anthropology.



able. Therefore, of course, we are valuable’’ (p. 124). Even, though, ifthe argument goes through as intended, its conclusion doesn’t followlogically from its premises—that’s the worry.13 Mightn’t it be that al-though merely acting at all commits us to thinking that humanity hasvalue, in fact it doesn’t have value? Korsgaard, though, say I, has everyright to rely on such arguments. Suppose she is right, and in settlingwhether to act, I’ve settled whether to believe humanity valuable. I’llthen act and voice the conviction to which acting commits me: Humanityis valuable. What other conceivable access can I have, after all, to thequestion of whether humanity is valuable, but to reflect on what to do?The value of humanity or its lack isn’t a feature of nonnatural space,glimpsed by intuition. Thinking humanity valuable, if Korsgaard is right,is an inseparable part of thinking what to do and why. Whether to thinkhumanity valuable is just the question, whether to value humanity.

Must I, then, identify myself practically as a human, as a reflectivechooser in general? Proceed first with the strong reading of a practicalidentity as something I need, that I must act from a conception of my-self that I tie to a sense of my intrinsic worth. I tie my self-esteem, say, toa conception of myself as a brave, unflinching Achaean warrior; I valuebeing that way. Acting as befits an Achaean is one particular way of be-ing a reflective chooser—as living up to any particular, contingent iden-tity entails being a reflective chooser. Korsgaard’s argument seems tobe, then, that in valuing myself as a brave Achaean, I’m committed tovaluing myself as a reflective chooser. And so the more general form ofthe argument seems to be this; in a Kantian spirit, I’ll put it in terms ofimperatives you address yourself. The premise, ‘‘Value being a braveAchaean!’’ has the form, ‘‘Value X!’’ Next we have ‘‘X entails Y,’’ beinga brave Achaean entails being human. The conclusion is ‘‘Value Y!’’The validity of Korsgaard’s particular argument depends, it seems, onwhether this general form fits and is valid.

Why, though, couldn’t I think of reflective choice as a burden, onlymitigated by some admirable way that people like me handle it? As anascetic, to take a parallel, I might value being someone who resists thecravings of the flesh. I can’t be someone who does that without havingcravings of the flesh; am I then committed to valuing having these crav-ings? Am I committed to valuing this, though I share this feature withthe sensualist I despise? Return, then, to me as an Achaean: I value beingsomeone who deals with my reflective choices valorously; couldn’t I stilldisvalue the sheer state of being a reflective chooser?

The question is logically tricky. Perhaps the form of argument I’vedisplayed is valid, but much depends on the precise form of what Ivalue. Suppose it’s right that if I value something, I must value anythingit entails. What I value as an ascetic, though, could be this: resisting any


13. Cohen worries inconclusively about this transcendental step (Sources, p. 186).



cravings I might have. This doesn’t entail having any cravings at all, andso it doesn’t commit me to valuing having cravings. If, on the otherhand, what I value is resisting cravings in large numbers, then this, theargument-form tells us, commits me to valuing having those cravings—at least as an indispensable part of a valuable whole. Perhaps I mustvalue my cravings as opportunities to resist—though that’s backhandedvaluing. Transfer this logic chopping, then, to Korsgaard’s crucial ar-gument: Whether my particular practical identity as an Achaean warriorcommits me to a practical identity as human will depend, it seems, onthe exact form of the particular identity. I could value making whateverreflective choices I might make in a way that befits the brave Achaean.This doesn’t entail making any reflective choices at all, and so doesn’tcommit me to valuing my ‘‘humanity.’’ There is, then, a form my prac-tical identity could take that wouldn’t commit me to valuing my hu-manity. Is this the form the warrior’s identity is likely to take? The ques-tion seems ridiculous: the warrior on the field just assumes that he makesreflective choices, like anyone else, and against this background, he val-ues making them valorously. In this, does he value making reflectivechoices as such, something even the helot or tradesman does? It doesn’tseem that his thoughts commit him to this. Whether to put his values ina form that carries this entailment is a question that hasn’t arisen for him.

Move on, then, to step 3. ‘‘It follows from this argument that humanbeings are valuable. Enlightenment morality is true’’ (p. 123). Supposethe warrior does value his humanity, in the technical sense that he val-ues being a reflective chooser as such. Being human, I’ve been saying,doesn’t by itself commit him to this; he can be a reflective chooser whosepride and the like are all invested elsewhere. But reflective choice seemsa plausible point on which to focus some of one’s sense of self-worth; whowould want not to be a reflective chooser? If pride in being a reflectivechooser as such entails pride in being morally decent, that in itself willbe an important theorem.

Korsgaard thinks that it does. ‘‘To value yourself just as a humanbeing is to have moral identity, as the Enlightenment understood it’’(p. 121). As I mentioned, though, a crucial aspect of morality she leavesaside for later treatment: that if you must value your own humanity, youmust value everyone’s. The Golden Rule isn’t what’s now been estab-lished. This aside, then, what does it mean to ‘‘treat your humanity as apractical, normative, form of identity’’ (p. 121)? The question isn’t whatthese words would suggest in ordinary rhetoric, but what has beenproved by Korsgaard’s argument: universal concern aside, what must anyperson do on pain of inconsistency in plan of life? Korsgaard’s later ar-gument that reasons must be shared does have clear import for morality,if it works. My puzzle is whether this later argument does all of her work,or whether the conclusion that I must value my own humanity has someforce of its own in bringing me to the moral law.




Here I’m genuinely puzzled. If valuing my humanity is taking pridein being a reflective chooser, how does that constrain what I do, what Ireflectively choose? Perhaps I must nurture my powers of reflectiveagency. There’s still the worry that I might take pride just in being a re-flective agent right now, not in the future—and there’s not much I cando to nurture my reflective agency at this very moment except to choosereflectively, in any way whatsoever. But combine this requirement withKorsgaard’s later arguments that my concern can’t be confined to myselfright now, and the requirement to nurture reflective agency will havesome teeth. Still, if that’s all we must do as human beings, then enlight-enment morality is far too narrow: we’ll need to oppose pain and seekfulfillment and enjoyment only when they affect our powers of reflectiveagency.

Korsgaard herself, of course, finds far more in ‘‘valuing humanity,’’so that anyone who values humanity will indeed oppose unbearable painand favor innocent pleasures and fulfillments. Valuing humanity as Kors-gaard pictures it, then, is surely an excellent thing—but if to fail to doall that’s in this package is to have inconsistent maxims, we need a system-atic characterization of the package, and a proof of how consistency inacting requires all that’s in it. One systematic view would be what I havecalled logically constrained reflective subjectivism. But whether or notKorsgaard embraces this position, it isn’t a view that follows from thereading I’m now examining. I value being a worthy Achaean in mychoices, but I needn’t value the way I’d be if I chose in some other way.What, I ask, if when battle called, I reflectively chose to turn the othercheek? I don’t now think that my doing so would make pacifism in anyway good. My humanity I would retain if, anachronistically, I choose asa Quaker tradesman, but in what manner must I, the brave Achaean,value this?

VI. ACTIONS WORTH UNDERTAKING

I have been examining Korsgaard’s argument on a strong reading of‘‘practical identity’’ as tying standards of conduct to a sense of my worth.But Korsgaard’s initial definition strictly read, I noted, offered a thinnerversion: your practical identity is ‘‘a description under which you findyour life to be worth living and your actions to be worth undertaking’’(p. 101). Acting with consistency does involve finding your acts to beworth undertaking; that seems unobjectionable. And your feelings to-ward your life and your actions must fit with this, we might say, or theywill have a content that is inconsistent with your plans of action. Notevery philosopher would allow this, but it is a rich and promising line ofthought that may well be right. From these materials, could we get a deri-vation of the moral law in some crucial aspect?

The target of the derivation is to conclude that, so long as I find myactions worth undertaking, then I must cherish my ‘‘humanity’’ as one




of my practical identities. A practical identity as a human will now involvefinding acts of a certain kind to be worth undertaking. What kind? Theordinary suggestions of the term ‘‘humanity’’ are clear in some ways andcontestable in others, but again, we are seeking a systematic characteriza-tion that plugs into a logical derivation.

Again, one systematic candidate is logically constrained reflectivesubjectivism. As an Achaean warrior, I find unflinching battle worth un-dertaking. I come to realize that, at base, it is worth undertaking becauseit is what I most deeply and reflectively want, because my thirst for battleproceeds from a practical identity. Realizing this, I note that the Quakertradesman’s goals of prosperity within the constraints of peaceful, hon-est dealing spring likewise from his practical identity. I haven’t yet con-cluded that I must value his humanity; that comes later. But perhaps Icome to realize that what I reflectively value is of value precisely becauseI value it—or because I value it in a way that proceeds from a deep con-ception of myself. Consistency then forces me to think, at least, that ifmy deep conception of myself were far different, if it were that of aQuaker tradesman, then my prosperity under constraints of peaceful,honest dealing would be of value. It’s a further step, perhaps, to say thathis prosperity is actually of value, but I have reached an important andsurprising conclusion, one that moves me part way to the Kingdom ofEnds. I know now that were I such an honest man of peace, my prosper-ing in peace and honest dealing would be of value. ‘‘Valuing my hu-manity’’ now means valuing things on the grounds that I, as a human,choose them.

This is a form of subjectivism, confined, perhaps, to consistent, re-flective desires that proceed from a deep conception of oneself. Thisview has its attractions; it may be the best view to take of what, at base,renders anything of value. I’m not at all sure; my previous worries arestill worries: If an argument that comes later doesn’t work, if we can’tshow that concern for like goals of others is logically mandatory, the viewwill allow knaves and fanatics whose identities are deep enough. The viewraises questions of coherence: can I see having fun, say, as valuable andreflectively endorse that view, and still think that, really, fun is valuableonly because of my reflective endorsement—or because it stems from adeep, normative view of myself? Our question now, though, isn’t whethersubjectivism is acceptable in this form, but whether it is logically manda-tory. Does finding your actions worth undertaking commit you to such aview, on pain of sheer practical inconsistency?

I think it is clear that it doesn’t. This form of subjectivism no morefollows from expressivism than does any other form. The Achaean war-rior tells himself, ‘‘Battle unflinchingly, with a deep sense that it’s worthdoing!’’ He may even hold his sense of worth responsible to this injunc-tion: ‘‘View myself as worthy if I battle unflinchingly, and unworthy if Idon’t.’’ Consistency doesn’t require him to generalize this to ‘‘Do what-




ever I view reflectively as worth doing!’’ The same goes for ‘‘Do whateverI view reflectively as worth doing, so long as doing so proceeds from stan-dards of worthiness that I reflectively endorse!’’ He can consistently re-ject these injunctions as they apply, say, to the hypothetical case of havingthe ethos of a Quaker tradesman.

We have canvassed, in this section and the last one, two readings of‘‘valuing your humanity’’: roughly, pride in being ‘‘human’’ and reflec-tive subjectivism. The first is some positive attitude, pride or somethingakin, in being a reflective chooser. The second is favoring the goals onereflectively adopts because or on the grounds that one reflectively adoptsthem. On the pride reading, none of the three steps of the argument hasstrictly logical force. (i) Thinking you have reasons doesn’t by itself com-mit you to thinking you have reasons that focus on your qualities as achooser. (ii) Pride in using certain standards of choice needn’t commityou to pride in being a reflective chooser in general, and (iii) pride inbeing a reflective chooser doesn’t commit you to anything approachingthe moral law. On the reflective subjectivist track, the steps go through,apart from the derivation of reflective subjectivism itself: (i) thinking youhave reasons—reflectively endorsing certain considerations—doesn’tcommit you to thinking that this reflective endorsement itself constitutesa reason.

Is there a more promising reading of Korsgaard’s argument frompractical identity? I hope so, but I haven’t found it. Clearly in her treat-ment of ‘‘practical identity,’’ Korsgaard brings to our attention impor-tant phenomena to explore, and things she says about it are intriguingand suggestive. Motivations that stem from a sense of one’s worth andfocus on what one does are powerful, I agree.14 If you have these moti-vations and reflectively endorse them, you thereby regard the question‘‘Who would I be then?’’ as specially deep and weighty. My worry is withKorsgaard’s further claim: that a reflective chooser, taken purely as a re-flective chooser, must so view matters. I’m open to the transcendentalform of her argument: acting does, I agree, carry logical commitments—but I don’t see how to argue that these by themselves carry us far towardmorality. I’m open to arguments that we ourselves must choose morally,as normal members of our species or of modern culture, on pain of in-consistency in our rationales for action. I’m open to Socratic forms ofargument that show this: resentment, for instance, which Korsgaard in-vokes, may well commit one to important aspects of morality. It may beinconsistent, for instance, for egoists to resent. Korsgaard, though, hasn’texplicitly shown us how to construct such a more modest, Socratic argu-


14. Geuss worries that these motivations might be egoistic, and Korsgaard replies(ibid., pp. 242–51). They are, to be sure, self-focused, but they aren’t, I would think, whatwe usually have in mind when we talk of self-interest, and it isn’t a clear intuitive datum thatconcerns of integrity aren’t properly moral concerns.



ment from practical identity, and it would require ingenuity at the veryleast, to do so. Her own ambitions, in any case, seem to reach farther.

VII. PLEASURE AND PAIN

The logic of acting doesn’t entail ‘‘valuing your humanity,’’ not in anysense that includes the lofty connotations of the phrase. It entails norequirements to be decent or even sensible. The promise, then, of amore solidly based alternative to substantivalism is vain. In particular, theweak pleasure principle, or something in its vicinity, is a principle itwould be crazy or perverse to reject. Hence if no plausible account of thevalue of pleasure is a theorem of practical logic, then the sheer logic ofacting isn’t enough, by itself, to guide us in how to live. Practical logicismfails—or so I have been maintaining.

Korsgaard, though, offers her own account of what’s wrong withpain and what’s good about pleasure, when pain indeed is bad or plea-sure is good. ‘‘If you don’t value your animal nature, you can value noth-ing’’ (p. 152), and valuing your animal nature includes a due regard forpleasures and pains. This, I take it, is a compressed, suggestive statementof a theorem of practical logic; Korsgaard I read as a logicist with regardto why pains are bad and pleasures are good, when they are.

If her treatment of pleasure and pain works, then practical logicismwill be a far more credible view than I have allowed. By practical logicism,I mean the view that all demands of reason on how to live stem from thefacts and practical logic alone. (The relevant facts crucially include thepsychological facts of what our impulses are and which ones we reflec-tively endorse.) When a way of life would be crazy, perverse, unduly self-denying, or unduly self-centered, then undertaking to live that way isincoherent; that is what the practical logicist claims. Such a claim is in-credible if an extreme asceticism, a blanket scorn for all innocent plea-sure, would be logically coherent in a plan for life. But Korsgaardsketches an argument that such a plan wouldn’t be coherent. If her ar-gument works, then some of the substantivalist’s strongest examples turnout after all to be friendly to Korsgaard’s position.

Though it is fairly brief, Korsgaard’s treatment of pain and pleasureis intriguing and subtle, insightful and even profound. I can’t do justiceto it, but I’ll summarize as best I can her view and my grounds for doubt.

Pleasure, argues Korsgaard, is ‘‘the perception of a reason,’’ just asis pain; pain, she says, is ‘‘your perception that you have a reason to changeyour condition’’ (p. 148). I have reason not to bang my thumb with ahammer: it injures my thumb, and this to some degree threatens my sur-vival. The pain in my thumb is a perception of this reason; I feel thebadness of the injury.

Pain isn’t always bad, though if I’m not misfeeling things, then thatwhich pains me is bad. To grieve a loved one, for instance, may be in norespect intrinsically bad, so long as the grief isn’t beyond bearing; I grieve




veridically in that the loss that I grieve is itself bad. (Thus the weak plea-sure principle needs revision at the very least; pleasure, say, in a snufffilm is in no way good.) What, then, of misperceptions of goods or bads,of pain in a phantom limb or pleasure in a Diet Coke? Does it follow thatwhen pain is misfelt it isn’t bad, or that the contrived mistasting of a drinkas sugary is a pleasure of no value however small?

Pain itself, Korsgaard answers, can be bad apart from the badness ofwhat pains us, and enjoyment itself can be good. When, then, is enjoy-ment and not just its object intrinsically good? Hedonists, of course,think always. An alternative view is that enjoyment is the perception (ormisperception) of a reason that is independent of the perception—andthis at first appears to be what Korsgaard is saying. But both views arewrong, she tells us.

Here I lose the thread, and I look forward to seeing a fuller workingout of Korsgaard’s treatment. The deep point, she tells us, is this: ‘‘It is apain to be in pain’’ (p. 154). We can feel averse to being in a state of feltaversion: When I’m horrified at a photo of concentration camp victims,I’m pained at their plight, but I’m also pained at my state in beingpained. ‘‘It is bad to look at a picture of something bad’’ (p. 155). Thereason that pain, then, is nearly always bad is that ‘‘the creatures whosuffer from it object to it’’ (p. 154). But how does this position work? Wehave already learned that paining me doesn’t make a thing bad. Rather,my pain, if veridical, is correctly perceiving that it’s bad. So even if I’maverse to feeling pained by the photo, this second-order aversion is ve-ridical only if my seeing the photo and feeling pained by it was, for somereason, itself bad. Not all being pained is bad, as shown by the case ofgrief. What, then, makes the difference between being pained in a waythat’s good and a way that’s bad?

We can’t rely on a substantive sense of plausibility to answer this; ouranswer must stem from the logic of what to seek or shun. If grief is goodbut horror bad, why is that? Pleasure and pain, Korsgaard tells us, are‘‘expressive of the value that an animal places on itself’’ (p. 152), but weneed to understand when this valuing is something to which an animal(or a human) is committed by the logic of what to do.

The reasons, Korsgaard seems to say, come down to survival. ‘‘A liv-ing thing is a thing for which the preservation of its identity is impera-tive’’ (p. 152). No one will doubt that survival greatly matters, but canthat be a matter of logic, the logic of what to do? To value anything youmust of course exist—but only for the moment, and injuring yourthumb doesn’t threaten that. The pain might mean, in a way, that youare ‘‘not yourself,’’ but the same might go for a drop of Dionysian ecstasy.There’s a difference, perhaps, but we need to learn more. And anyway,even to wish you were dead you must be alive, but that doesn’t make sucha wish logically incoherent. The value of survival, then, seems substan-tive, and not a matter of sheer logic.




‘‘A living thing is so designed as to maintain and reproduce itself,’’and Korsgaard at this point mentions natural selection (p. 149). But thiscan’t logically ground the value of pleasure. In the first place, natural‘‘design’’ is for survival only as needed for reproduction; the salmon is‘‘designed’’ to reproduce but not to survive after that. But the crucial,familiar point is this: our ‘‘design’’ may causally explain what we end updoing, but what to do is a different question; its answer doesn’t followlogically, all by itself, from how natural selection ‘‘designed’’ us. The lionis ‘‘designed,’’ when he takes over a pride, to kill the cubs his predecessorsired, and this motivation promotes his genetic reproduction; the lionessis sooner fertile and turns sooner to nurturing his own cub. Humanmales, alas, may under certain circumstances have analogous impulses,with a similar evolutionary shaping of emotional mechanisms.15 In astrictly positive, Darwinian sense, our ‘‘end’’ is reproduction, but thatdoesn’t settle whether to reproduce.

None of this precludes another kind of argument that Korsgaardmight offer: she might convince us Socratically that, in an extendedsense, it is survival that matters, and that this value stands behind largeparts of the demands of reason on how to live—including the demandsof morality. She might show that survival, including survival as an animal,somehow accounts for how it’s reasonable to live and how it isn’t, forwhat’s plausible in this realm. Working out her intriguing view of thevalue of pleasure and pain would be an important part of such a dem-onstration. I’d be amazed if such an argument worked, but I haven’truled it out. My point is that if this succeeded, it would be a substantivalistsuccess; it would trade on our sense of plausibility in matters of how tolive. It wouldn’t show that, as a theorem of practical logic, ‘‘If you don’tvalue your animal nature, you can value nothing’’ (p. 152).

VIII. PRIVATE AND PUBLIC REASONS

In her fourth and final lecture, Korsgaard rules out the autonomousknave. ‘‘In the last lecture . . . I took it for granted . . . that valuing one’shumanity amounts to having what I called ‘moral identity’.’’ But her deri-vation of morality has gone through, she allows, ‘‘only if we can concludethat valuing humanity in your own person somehow . . . involves valuingit in that of others’’ (p. 132). To philosophers steeped in current projectsof deriving morality and fending off egoism, this may seem the chief gapshe needed to span in the first place. ‘‘Consistency can force me to grantthat your humanity is normative for you just as mine is normative forme,’’ Korsgaard has a critic saying. ‘‘But it does not force me to share inyour reasons, or make your humanity normative for me. It could still be


15. See Martin Daly and Margot Wilson, The Truth about Cinderella: A Darwinian Viewof Parental Love (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998), on child abuse. It is important tostate their findings carefully, since as they stress, most stepparents are loving and nurturing.



true that I have my reasons and you have yours, and indeed that theyleave us eternally at odds’’ (p. 134). In Korsgaard’s view, though, thecritic will think this only because he harbors a misconception, a distortedview of the nature of reasons. Cast off the misconception, she may besaying, and we’ll see that the argument for moral identity worked allalong, that it took for granted only what all must grant.

Hobbesians, neo-Kantians, and others assume that reasons are ‘‘es-sentially private.’’ This, Korsgaard thinks, would rule out any satisfactoryderivation of morality whatsoever, her own included. But as Wittgen-stein’s private language argument allows us to see, reasons are ‘‘inher-ently sharable’’; they ‘‘are public in their very essence’’ (p. 135). ‘‘Whatboth enables us and forces us to share our reasons is, in a deep sense,our social nature’’ (p. 135). Acknowledge ‘‘that our reasons were nevermore than incidentally private in the first place’’ (p. 136), and the spec-ter of egoism dissolves in the light.

No one, in my experience, knows quite what Wittgenstein’s privatelanguage argument is, but everyone knows that it works: in some sense,we all know, there can be no private language.16 When I work out myreasons, I can do so only in a language I can share. Grant all this; hasegoism vanished?

I’m not sure; people differ in their accounts of what the private lan-guage argument shows. A frequent view of the matter, however, is this:when I think of such things as visions and visceral sensations, I can do soonly in a language in which I could, in principle, talk with others. I can’tname a sensation unless I could teach you that name and its meaning.Applied to reasons, this will mean that when I think through my reasonsto do one thing and avoid another, I must do so in a language that Icould at least teach you to share.

Suppose, then, I think of my reasons in my native English, a shared,public language that you too understand. Does this mean that we ‘‘shareour reasons’’ (p. 135)? In one sense, it certainly does: if you think youhave reason to enslave me if you can, you can tell me so, if you choose,and if I think I have reason to try to prevent you, then I can tell you that.What morality needs, though, is reasons we share in a different sense:roughly at least, that you have genuine reason to try to enslave me onlyif I have some reason to submit. (What morality requires more preciselyis perhaps, as Korsgaard suggests, an ideal of a ‘‘Kingdom of Ends’’: thatour reasons all feed into a scheme of accommodation that we all havereason, all told, to join.) From our ability to talk together about your


16. Korsgaard herself offers a form of the argument that doesn’t seem to work: Mean-ings and reasons are normative, one must be able to get things right or wrong, and normsrequire both a legislator and a citizen. ‘‘It takes two to make a reason.’’ But as she goes onto say, ‘‘Here the two are the two elements of reflective consciousness, the thinking self andthe acting self’’ (Sources, p. 138). It seems, then, that within a single human skin, the two ofme can do it all. If reasons stretch from me to you, some further argument is needed.



reasons and about mine, can we derive reasons we share in this strongsense?

A bereaved Kwakiutl chief sets off for mass slaughter in the villageacross the water; ‘‘Shall I mourn or shall they?’’17 We find his loss no rea-son to slaughter the innocent, but his talk of reasons is public enough.His victims understand, though they see every reason to resist—no king-dom of ends in this sad tale! I myself (perhaps unlike the victims) thinkthe chief wrong about what he has reason to do, but I would need somedemonstration that he or his victims botch the sheer logic of acting. Whymust reasons they could claim to each other to have all be reasons theymust think they have in common? ‘‘I have my reasons and you haveyours’’ is a statement in public language, however unsavory. ‘‘Nagel char-acterized the egoist as a practical solipsist and of course he is right,’’Korsgaard pronounces (p. 143). But he isn’t right if this means that anegoist can’t explain himself if he likes—or if he is, that needs furtherargument.

There may well be something to be gleaned, philosophically, fromthe pressures we face to share our reasoning. Korsgaard here identifiesan important topic. Notoriously, an egoist often will deny his own theory.If we all were consistent egoists, then, would we all lose the mental re-sources to think egoism through? Perhaps, but I don’t know how to showthis, or how to disprove it. And what would follow if this were so; is therea transcendental refutation of egoism to be had along these lines? Again,I don’t know. We do have public languages with words for reasons,though the Kingdom of Ends on Earth is nowhere at hand; does this allby itself entail that we are inconsistent in our thoughts of what to do?How would an argument that showed this go?

You can obligate me, Korsgaard argues, because you can ‘‘get undermy skin’’ and ‘‘intrude on my reflections’’ (p. 136). The egoist retortsthat, as Korsgaard puts it, ‘‘I am merely describing a deep psychologicalfact—that human beings are very susceptible to one another’s pres-sures. . . . But nothing I have said so far shows that we have to treat thedemands of others as reasons’’ (p. 141). Bullies, as Williams observes,don’t give me reason to obey, even if I can’t help myself (p. 217). In re-sponse, Korsgaard depicts how we can reason jointly on what we’re todo—say, on arranging an appointment. ‘‘Why shouldn’t language forceus to reason practically together, in just the same way that it forces us tothink together?’’ (p. 142). Again, though, we need proof that it does. Wecan reason together, and often we do, but does anything force us thatprecludes egoism? 18

Korsgaard does suggest how deeply difficult it would be to be a con-


17. My memory of an incident recounted in Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture (Bos-ton: Houghton Mifflin, 1934). Similar practices were known in Africa.

18. See Geuss’s commentary (Sources, pp. 197–98).



sistent egoist. For one thing, resentment has to go. To this considerationtwo responses are possible: like Hume at times, we can think that thereasonable view of matters is psychologically impossible to maintain. Orwe can exploit such facts as that the self-proclaimed egoist won’t forswearresentment, and use them Socratically to reason him out of egoism: sincethe hurtful, selfish acts of others are worth resenting, he comes to see,egoism isn’t a view to hold.

This last, however, is the approach of a logically constrained sub-stantivalist, not of a moral logicist. The moral logicist thinks that require-ments of consistency alone, in one’s plans for how to live and act, entailthe moral law, that moral requirements are inescapable in this verystrong sense. One of Korsgaard’s initial complaints with ‘‘substantivemoral realism’’ was that it preaches to the confident—and to be sure,some forms of it do. Moral substantivalists, though, have other resourcesbesides an initial, unshaken confidence in the whole of morality. (Think,e.g., of Sidgwick’s long treatise.) Substantivalists can look for deep, under-lying principles that are plausible, and aim to show that no coherentalternative to morality remains plausible on examination. Korsgaard’sinitial complaints seemed directed at this kind of ‘‘long, hard slog’’ sub-stantivalist too; even this deep substantivalist won’t demonstrate a kindof inescapability you’d recognize if you lacked the right sense of credi-bility. By the end of her argument, though, Korsgaard’s own road to en-lightenment morality is paved with the same brick. To my eye, this isn’t adefect: moral logicism doesn’t work, and so any philosophical treatmentof moral demands must make appeals, in the end, to our sense of plau-sibility. Korsgaard may manage this better than the substantivalists sheattacks—we’d have to see—but this is the game that she too must play.It isn’t the sheer logic of what to do that precludes egoism, though it is,perhaps, the implausibility of some of the things an egoist is committedto accepting.

Korsgaard’s lectures are full of insights that could fit well into amoral substantivalist’s way of thinking, insights I have no further spaceto explore. My complaints have been with moral logicism: her form ofmoral proceduralism, Korsgaard seems convinced, answers the norma-tive question with a force that no moral substantivalist could match. In-stead, I have argued, proceduralisms and substantivalisms alike must reston more than the sheer logic of what to do. Accepting any coherent viewof the sources of normativity requires finding some things credible andothers not. No surprise, perhaps—but even in the humanized form thatKorsgaard gives him, Kant thinks otherwise.




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GIBBARD. Morality as Consistency in Living. Korsgaard's Kantian Lectures