Make Up Your Mind: Reflection and the Necessity of Agency

Abstract

Christine Korsgaard’s recent work focuses mainly on constitutivism about moral normativity and personal identity. In fact, she tries to show that those two things are subject to the same principle, which she identifies as Kant’s categorical imperative. Roughly put, the idea is that being a good person is the same as being good at being a person. The latter means that one generally succeeds at finding the right order among one’s desires and motives and this, Korsgaard seems to think, is possible only by adhering to the (i.e., Kant’s) moral law. Korsgaard’s argument is, of course, controversial. In this thesis, however, I will attempt to explain and defend rather than criticize it. One of the main reasons for this is that Korsgaard has not written many responses to criticisms, even though they at times raise real questions about her work. One such question, I believe and will try to show, is posed by David Enoch and is commonly known as the ‘shmagency objection’. After providing an in-depth interpretation of the different key elements and their connection in Korsgaard’s work, I will address Enoch’s objection. I will explore what arguments Korsgaardian constitutivism has at its disposal to counter Enoch’s critique, trying to explain why its best hope of showing the necessity of agency lies in what I will call ‘anthropological necessity’. That is, I will try to show that, according to Korsgaard, humans are reflective beings and that this analysis of human nature may help show why agency is necessary. In the last chapter, I will explore some potential criticisms and weaknesses of my Korsgaardian approach, such as a demandingness objection and a worry about alienation.