This thesis explores reasons and disagreement in ethics, and their connection to personal identity. I begin by arguing that reasons are open; what gives them direction is how they feature in my life and weigh with me. Of course, this does not tell us what reasons are available to a person when they act. In this connection I argue against Bernard Williams’ internal reasons thesis, showing that there are occasions when we will want to say someone has a reason to act even though they are unable to see it. Continuing with Williams, I explore moral necessity, drawing also on the works of Winch, Rhees and Cordner, arguing that Williams too readily conflates psychological with ethical limits. In particular, the possibility of recanting what we took to be necessary should inform our view of moral necessity, since it can show that I had misconstrued the nature of the limits I took myself to have reached. Following this use of recantation, I explore narrative in detail, arguing that my narrative is partly constitutive of who I am. My agency is therefore interpretive. This has ramifications for thinkers such as Christine Korsgaard and Jonathan Dancy, whose work I explore in two excursuses. In different ways, both fail to appreciate the significance of our interpretive identities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/245145 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Gaff, Andrew Douglas |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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