Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T03:36:15.076Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Integration and authority: rescuing the ‘one thought too many’ problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Nicholas Smyth
Nicholas Smyth*
Affiliation:
Philosophy, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada
*
Emails: [email protected], [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Four decades ago, Bernard Williams accused Kantian moral theory of providing agents with ‘one thought too many’. The general consensus among contemporary Kantians is that this objection has been decisively answered. In this paper, I reconstruct the problem, showing that Williams was not principally concerned with how agents are to think in emergency situations, but rather with how moral theories are to be integrated into recognizably human lives. I show that various Kantian responses to Williams provide inadequate materials for solving this ‘integration problem’, and that they are correspondingly ill-positioned to account for the authority of morality, as Williams suspected all along.

Keywords

PhilosophymoralityKantBernard Williamsone thought too manyethics
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 48 , Issue 6 , December 2018 , pp. 812 - 830
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arpaly, Nomy. 2003. Unprincipled Virtue: An Inquiry Into Moral Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Baron, Marcia. 2008. “Virtue Ethics, Kantian Ethics, and the ‘One Thought Too Many’ Objection.” Kant's Ethics of Virtue 1(2): 245–277.Google Scholar
Filmer, Robert, and Sommerville, Johann P.. 1991. Sir Robert Filmer: Patriarcha and Other Writings. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511812644Google Scholar
Fried, Charles. 1970. An Anatomy of Values. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. 10.4159/harvard.9780674332485Google Scholar
Harcourt, Edward. 2009. “Velleman on Love and Ideals of Rational Humanity.” The Philosophical Quarterly 59(235): 349–356. 10.1111/phiq.2009.59.issue-235CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harman, Gilbert. 1999. “XIV-Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99(3): 315–331. 10.1111/paso.1999.99.issue-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Held, Virginia. 2007. “Feminism and Moral Theory.” Bioethics :An Introduction to the History, Methods, and Practice, edited byJecker, Nancy and Jonsen, Albet, 158–163. Sudbury: Jones and Bartlett.Google Scholar
Herman, Barbara. 1985. “The Practice of Moral Judgment.” The Journal of Philosophy 82(8): 414–436. 10.2307/2026397CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffman, M. L. 1990. Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hurley, Paul. 2009. Beyond Consequentialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199559305.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 1996. Kant: The Metaphysics of Morals. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511809644Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 1998. Critique of Pure Reason, edited by Guyer, Paul. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511804649CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 2011. Immanuel Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A German–English edition. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511973741CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kennett, Jeanette. 2008. “True and Proper Selves: Velleman on Love.” Ethics 118(2): 213–227. 10.1086/523747CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korsgaard, Christine M. 2009. Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199552795.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lazari-Radek, Katarzyna de, and Singer, Peter. 2016. The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Louden, Robert B. 1992. Morality and Moral Theory: A Reappraisal and Reaffirmation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195072921.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newey, Glen. 2008. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Hobbes and Leviathan. New York, NY: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noddings, Nel. 1998. “Thinking, Feeling, and Moral Imagination.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 22(1): 135–145. 10.1111/j.1475-4975.1998.tb00334.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Neill, Onora. 1989. Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant's Practical Philosophy. 41 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pettit, Phillip. 2015. “The Inescapability of Consequentialism.” Luck, Value, and Commitment: Themes from the Ethics of Bernard Williams, edited byHeuer, Ulrike and Lang, Gerald, 41–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ross, W. D. 2002. The Right and the Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/0199252653.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scherkoske, Greg. 2013. “Whither Integrity II: Integrity and Impartial Morality.” Philosophy Compass 8(1): 40–52. 10.1111/phco.2013.8.issue-1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slote, Michael A. 2013. From Enlightenment to Receptivity: Rethinking Our Values. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199970704.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smetana, J. G., and Braeges, J. L.. 2000. “The Development of Toddlers' Moral and Conventional Judgments.” Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 36: 329–346.Google Scholar
Stocker, Michael. 1976. “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories.” Journal of Philosophy 73(14): 453–466. 10.2307/2025782CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taurek, John M. 1977. “Should the Numbers count?.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 6(4): 293–316.Google ScholarPubMed
Timmermann, Jens. 2006. “Kant on Conscience, “Indirect” Duty, and Moral Error.” International Philosophical Quarterly 46(3): 293–308. 10.5840/ipq200646314CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Timmermann, Jens. 2009. Kant’s’ Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals’: A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511770760CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Bernard Arthur Owen. 1981b. Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers, 1973-1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9781139165860CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 1972. “Morality and the Emotions.” In Problems of the Self, 207–229. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 1981a. “Persons, Character, and Morality.” In Moral Luck, edited by Rachels, James, 1–19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9781139165860CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 1985. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. London: Fontana.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 2009. “The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and the Ambitions of Ethics.” In The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy, 277–296. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolf, Susan. 2012. “One Thought too Many: Love, Morality, and the Ordering of Commitment.” In Luck, Value, and Commitment: Themes From the Ethics of Bernard Williams, edited by Heuer, Ulrike and Lang, Gerald, 71–92. USA: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar