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Show Chapter VIII. The Problem of Rational Final Ends 324 must be identified with the values that come from reason, and dissociate herself from any desires or actions that do not conform to them. But this assumption underestimates the role of action as expressive of the self. When I perform genuine action, there is a state of affairs that I envision as its outcome, intend to bring about, and work to bring about. The "I" in the preceding sentence is not neutral between reason and desire. Whichever source of motivation is causing the action is the one that, for that moment, expresses my self. If desire is motivating the action, and reason disapproves of it, then so much the worse, for the time being at least, for reason. And if the conflict persists over the long term, so much the worse for the unity of the self. Hence the problem of moral paralysis resurfaces in the form of a dilemma for the Platonic bipartite self: Which part of the self ought to have motivational priority on any particular occasion? And who - or what - ought to settle this question? If I act on my desires at the expense of reason, reason can reproach me with incontinence; or, at worst, Aristotelian self-indulgence. If my rational values take motivational precedence over my desires, the approval of conscience may be insignificant in the face of the frustration, regret, and alienation contingent upon ignoring the acknowledged demands 16 of desire. If I am unlucky enough to be torn by equally strong but conflicting tendencies from reason and desire, I may be as fully paralyzed as Buridan's Ass, and for much the same reason. If not, I will be in any case unable to exercise my agency in determining my behavior, and so will suffer the disquieting experience of being propelled into action by forces external to my 17 will, regardless of the course of action on which I finally embark. Under such conditions of perpetual internecine conflict, it is a wonder that we manage to do anything at all. And so for Watson's Platonic conception of the self, the practical problem of moral paralysis is not resolved but exacerbated. This conception fails to resolve the problem because it contains an unexplicated assumption about which feature of the self has rational authority - and therefore motivational priority. Hence his proposed solution to the problem of self-evaluation suffers accordingly. If reason and desire must vie for control of the self as the original picture seems to suggest, then to appeal to rational values to terminate the which one judges the world" is the point of view of a certain kind of self whose capacities for critical scrutiny are exercised as often on itself as on other objects. 16 Bernard Williams, "A Critique of Utilitarianism," in J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973); "Persons, Character, and Morality," in Rorty, op. cit. Note 8. W. D. Falk makes a similar point in "Morality, Self, and Others," in Judith J. Thomson and Gerald Dworkin, Eds., Ethics (New York: Harper and Row, 1958). 17 Frankfurt makes this point about intentional action without agency (op. cit. Note 1, page 16), without seeing its implications for the Humean model of rationality. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
