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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 399 recognize in our moral principles those rational moral agents who, on the one hand, are deserving of such recognition; and, on the other, present challenges to our psychological capacity to extend those principles to all who in fact fall within their scope. In the example, Washington is precisely such an agent; and presents precisely such a challenge to Smith's and Vogeler's moral theories. So it is, after all, necessary to spell out what recognition requires for the practical application of a moral theory that must be protected from our pseudorational proclivity to bend it out of shape; these ruminations apply to all four of the criteria offered in this and the next section. In this context, then, the term "recognition," implies the specifically moral and practical inflection that the term "acknowledge," often considered equivalent in meaning, has in some contexts. To recognize something about a person in this sense requires certain practical reinforcements to the conditions spelled out in Chapter II and thereafter, to wit: (1.a) to acknowledge it verbally to oneself and to the person under appropriate circumstances; (1.b) to elaborate on it verbally to oneself and to the person under appropriate circumstances; (1.c) to facilitate verbal acknowledgment of and elaboration on it by oneself and others to the person under appropriate circumstances, such that (1.d) these verbal declarations call up the appropriate emotions of respect and acceptance in the speakers, and motivate the appropriate behavior. A moral theory that recognizes something about a person imposes these requirements of behavior on its proponents in the non-ideal case. That is, it requires them to express this recognition of others in their conduct toward them. (1) requires that, in the formulation of the descriptive laws and practical principles of conduct to which a community is expected to adhere, an adequate moral theory K must include all recognizably moral agents - i.e. rational agents at the very least - in its scope of application, whether or not particular agents agree with K theoretically. It states that all deserve equitable moral treatment - and, in particular, equal recognition for their particular moral theories. It precludes drawing the lines of the community of fully moral members to which K applies such that only one's moral allies and cohorts fall within it, whereas competitors, enemies, and strangers count as morally defective outsiders. Of (1), Postow objects that no theory can satisfy (1), "for to disagree with any rival theory is to regard as distorted some of the moral perceptions that © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
