Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity

by Christine M. Korsgaard

Christine M. Korsgaard presents an account of the foundation of practical reason and moral obligation. Moral philosophy aspires to understand the fact that human actions, unlike the actions of the other animals, can be morally good or bad, right or wrong. Few moral philosophers, however, have exploited the idea that actions might be morally good or bad in virtue of being good or bad of their kind - good or bad as actions. Just as we need to know that it is the function of the heart to pump blood to know that a good heart is one that pumps blood successfully, so we need to know what the function of an action is in order to know what counts as a good or bad action. Drawing on the work of Plato, Aristotle, and Kant, Korsgaard proposes that the function of an action is to constitute the agency and therefore the identity of the person who does it. As rational beings, we are aware of, and therefore in control of, the principles that govern our actions. A good action is one that
constitutes its agent as the autonomous and efficacious cause of her own movements. These properties correspond, respectively, to Kant's two imperatives of practical reason. Conformity to the categorical imperative renders us autonomous, and conformity to the hypothetical imperative renders us efficacious. And in determining what effects we will have in the world, we are at the same time determining our own identities. Korsgaard develops a theory of action and of interaction, and of the form interaction must take if we are to have the integrity that, she argues, is essential for agency. On the basis of that theory, she argues that only morally good action can serve the function of action, which is self-constitution.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Anthropology

230 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2009

About the author

Christine M. Korsgaard is an American philosopher whose main academic interests are in moral philosophy and its history; the relation of issues in moral philosophy to issues in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and the theory of personal identity; the theory of personal relationships; and in normativity in general. She has taught at Yale, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Chicago; since 1991 she has been a professor at Harvard University.

Korsgaard received a B.A. from the University of Illinois and a Ph.D from Harvard where she was a student of John Rawls.

Reviews

[saml · Rating 4 out of 5]

really clear summation and exposition of a position which almost culminates korsgaard's oeuvre. very approachable. i would suck cock

[Ft. Sheridan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of interesting stuff, but CK gives kind of gappy arguments for a lot of her conclusions.

[Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Serious about the right things, but mistaken.

[Collide · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting interpretations and expansions of historical ideas are abundant in this book (especially her readings of Plato). Sadly, I can’t help but feel it falls short in being cohesive and interesting as a whole. It feels like this book is closer to being a “mere heap” of interesting ideas than something grander. Not necessarily the worst thing in the world, but it is quite ironic given what her main thesis is.

A side note is that I find her lack of engagement with current literature (or at least, current at the time) to be frustrating. She espouses quite interesting and plausible Aristotelian ideas… which people like Foot and Thompson had argued YEARS before this book was published. I understand Korsgaard is deservedly in a league of her own, but that does not excuse sloppy scholarship. To think you should only be in conversation with the most famous of philosophers is an obvious vice of which none of us should fall prey to.

[loafingcactus · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is well written, readable and brims with joy and love of philosophy. So many philosophers write as if they hate philosophy and gladly that is not the case here.

The arguments are also logical and in some ways innovative (though I don’t think the author would characterize her work as anything more than clarifying Kant), but ultimately I did not find them persuasive because of my ongoing vexation with what anyone has to say about free will.

First the author seems to walk back free-will: There is a kind of willing built in, so that even a plant that turns toward the light has will. The author of course recognizes that this is different from the self-reflective free will that a person hopes to have. But there are just no good arguments for that ever, and the author knows not to try to place a stake in the ground here.

Instead, the free-will of the person is going to come entirely from this concept of self-constitution (which in the forward walk becomes global constitution). But there is that problem that one is always “looking over your shoulder” at the prior causes of your actions. Kant goes for Eve breaking free of the prior causes at the apple and the author quotes the entire story but aside from the fact that this isn’t satisfactory for philosophy work, there is also the fact that each individual person has that looking over their shoulder experience.

So then the author walks free-will forward: Humanity as a whole has free-will if everyone recognizes each other’s reasons in some kind of global kumbaya. First off, this is terribly enticing to a spiritual-minded reader, particularly in the year of #Ferguson. However, it is also antithetical to every concept of morality and free will ever which suggests that my heaven is your hell and boom, humanity.

[Kiliyan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for my seminar on the book and I'm rather convinced that Korsgaard can explain the degrees of value to any action with the constitutive method she explains here. I think she could've gone deeper into the idea of practical identities, even if it's just to see how the identities we assume do not always work in conjunction with what it means to be a good person - according to the constitutive model at least. The driving force of the morality is Kant's work on practical rationality, which is - to me - the best formulated and argued piece in philosophical history that managed to explain morality. Using that, Korsgaard manages to go into detail and explain how individual actions can be further seen interacting within yourself and not just 'measuring' your hypothetical imperative against the categorical imperative.

It was also rather easy to read, but could have been structured a little bit better and a few critique points have not been foreseen and addressed beforehand.

[Bay Long · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like this book a lot. Korsgaard makes a strong case of constitutivism, although I always suspect it seems more persuasive than it really is because Korsgaard knows how to write a book in good conversational style (her essays are much harder to read). I enjoy most the comparative study of Kant, Aristotle, and Plato -- really fascinating!

[Socrates · Rating 5 out of 5]

没有精读康德、亚里士多德、柏拉图全集，不敢置评诠释。依我观察，Korsgaard先由一段原文给出直觉上不出错的复述，在复述中插入当代的、她的概念框架，最终支撑她的论点。不论诠释忠实度，她把三套跨年代的不同概念理论框架融贯成自圆其说的一家之言，人格同一性、规范性来源、文本诠释等问题寓诸一个有吸引力的自我构成理论，自我意识、理性、倾向、刺激的刻画完整清晰，引发不少思考。自我构成理论赋予读者绝对的自由，从始至终是古希腊伦理学的低语，“我该如何生活”，没有规训。

一章一段的论证结构可更严明，小例第七章，7.2.7对经济理性的引入讨论挺突兀，7.2.8小驳苏格拉底对灵魂冲突的强调、7.2.10说明Korsgaard的构成模型比冲突模型更优越，目的明确，在整体论证结构的位置不清。

[Bri · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF

I liked what I read of it, but considering I don't have a deep understanding of philosophical theory a lot of this book was difficult to digest. Perhaps I'll pick it back up in the future.

[Corey Woodfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the arguments were hard to follow. But I thought a lot of the content was great. Good insights about what it means to act and to be an agent

[Michael Kuhn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally have a good reason to believe that humans are inherently good.

[Διόνυσος Ελευθέριος · Rating 1 out of 5]

As if the disaster that has been my foray into contemporary moral theory has not been colorful enough, Christine Korsgaard’s Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity has somehow been able to add to the mix that includes, say, somewhat carefully argued flapdoodle, an almost unintelligbly argued flapdoodle. If this work is supposed to be groundbreaking, it’s because it has managed to bring the contemporary discussion of morality to wholly new lows. Korsgaard’s main thesis seems to be that human beings—who are agents—in constituting their identities well, are acting morally, or with integrity. However, and crucially, she seems to say that human action is both necessary and at the same time normative but this would seem to severely limit the concept of normativity that most philosophers have in mind when they use the term (and it also goes against the avowed Kantianism of her own project). If our action is necessary then how could we do otherwise? Perhaps the worst part of this book is that she superficially incorporates elements from Plato, Aristotle and Kant into what much of the time appears to be a hodgepodge moral description. It is chronically unclear throughout the book whether she is describing her vision of our moral universe, or arguing in favor of a particular brand of normativity. (Be all that as it may, some of my complaints may be unwarranted given the status of her whole corpus to date; I suspect that some of these problems may be mitigated by her other work, with all of which however, I am completely unfamiliar.)

[ScottEF · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is a powerful advance on her previous book, and makes a good case that constructivism/constitutionalism is the best hope for grounding truly objective moral norms, as well as (not coincidentally) explaining most of our actual intuitions about such norms. I fault her continuing assumption that the Formula of Universal Law is the foundational principle of such a morality, which like most other Kantians she just swallows hook line and sinker from the tradition; critics of rule-consequentialism have long ago pointed out that moral principles which work well (or don't generate contradictions in will) when everyone follows them often work terribly when not everyone is doing so. But otherwise this is cogently argued and insightful.

[Liz Harmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was so helpful to me. Korsgaard draws on Hume, Kant, Aristotle, and Plato, among others, to describe how a person is self-constituted. I found the moral philosophy at times very moving. I will not attempt to climb out of my depth to describe it in detail.

[laura]

oo! yeah!

[Eric Brandstedt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pull yourself together; read this book!