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Show Chapter I. General Introduction to the Project: The Enterprise of Socratic Metaethics Buffeted and bruised by the currents of desire and longing for once to ride the wave, we may cast about for some buoyant device from which to chart a rational course; and, finding none, ask ourselves these questions: Do we at least have the capacity ever to do anything beyond what is comfortable, convenient, profitable, or gratifying? Can our conscious explanations for what we do ever be anything more than opportunistic ex post facto rationalizations for satisfying these familiar egocentric desires? If so, are we capable of distinguishing in ourselves those moments when we are in fact heeding the requirements of rationality, from those when we are merely rationalizing the temptations of opportunity? I am cautiously optimistic about the existence of a buoyant device - namely reason itself - that offers encouraging answers to all three questions. Without hard-wired, principled rational dispositions - to consistency, coherence, impartiality, impersonality, intellectual discrimination, foresight, deliberation, self-reflection, and self-control - that enable us to transcend the overwhelming attractions of comfort, convenience, profit, gratification … and self-deception, we would be incapable of acting even on these lesser motives. Or so I argue in this project. I take it as my main task to spell out in detail the ways in which these hard-wired, principled dispositions rationally structure the self; in effect, outfit human beings with high-caliber cognitive equipment we are not yet able to fully exploit. This task thus depends on a distinction between two different but related aspects of rationality. I describe as egocentric rationality action guided by considerations of comfort, convenience, profit, or gratification - in short, by principles spelled out in what I call the Humean conception of the self. In Volume I, I define, dissect and criticize in detail this desire-centered conception as formulated in late-twentieth century Anglo-American analytic philosophy. Chapter VI of Volume I defends the claim that "egocentric" is the correct description of this conception, against objections from its advocates. Although Volume I very often catalogues the shortcomings of this widely held view, it ultimately argues that the strengths of the Humean conception can be fully exploited only by situating it as a special case within a larger context. This larger context is given by principles of what I call transpersonal rationality, i.e. principles governing the hard-wired rational dispositions listed above. In Volume II, I analyze these principles as constitutive of what I call the Kantian conception of the self. I describe these principles as "transpersonal" because they direct our attention beyond the preoccupations and interests of the ego-self, including its particular, defining set of moral and theoretical |
