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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 281 intellect particularly with regard to moral demands. This means that her actions express genuine preferences that are motivated and guided by moral principles in two ways. First, she naturally develops relationships with others that elicit mutual trust, affection, respect, etc., or their opposites; and interprets these relationships, actions, emotions, and individuals with the help of the strictly impartial vocabulary of concepts and principles her moral theory supplies. Thus she view people's actions, her own included, as right or wrong, wellintended or maleficent, honorable or shameful, and so on; and people themselves, herself included, as accordingly judicious or partial, benevolent or malevolent, virtuous or vicious, innocent or corrupt, generous or spiteful, good or bad, and so on. That is, she recognizes the terms and principles of her moral theory to apply to her experience. Second, these morally theory-laden judgments reinforce some affectively, perceptually or conceptually motivating states at the expense of others and some behavioral dispositions at the expense of others. Thus, for example, her judgment that she is selfish makes her feel ashamed, and so motivates her to behave unselfishly; her judgment that others are beneficent disposes her to reciprocate; her judgment that another is suffering makes her feel compassion, and so moves her to render aid; her judgment that injustice is being done moves her to right it. That is, her morally theory-laden experiences reinforce or undermine her moral training. In Chapter VIII.6 below I elaborate this conception of moral integrity at greater length, and in Chapter IX below I say more about how certain morally theory-laden experiences might undermine an agent's moral training. On the above account, it would be misleading to deny that an agent has a conscious commitment to his moral theory; for its concepts and principles saturate his interpretation of morally appropriate behavior, of his own emotions and actions, and of himself and other people. He thinks of them as, for example, friends, responsible agents, rational beings, loved ones, etc. and responds to them accordingly. But it would be similarly misleading to object, as Blum, Williams, and other Anti-Rationalists such as Wolf and Stocker do, that his moral theory alienates him from the objects of his moral concern. For it is only with the aid of his moral theory that he is able to recognize situations as being those in which compassion, for example, is appropriate. Without his moral theory, he would lack the concept of a person as good, valuable, a friend, or deserving of aid or respect. Without these concepts, it is unclear what would cause him to feel compassion for her. We have seen that compassion presupposes empathy and sympathy with another's inner states, and that both presuppose our ability to modally imagine those states to ourselves - and so to interpret and identify conceptually the other's inner states as states of pain or suffering; indeed, pain or suffering to which empathic and sympathetic responses are appropriate. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
