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Defective Actions and Tyrannical Souls: Korsgaard on Evil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2017

PETER BRIAN ROSE-BARRY
PETER BRIAN ROSE-BARRY*
Affiliation:
Saginaw Valley State University
*
*<[email protected]>
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Abstract

Christine Korsgaard’s Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity is an impressive endeavour to synthesize the ethics of Plato and Kant in a comprehensive account of action and agency that locates the key to understanding both in self-constitution. A purportedly comprehensive account of action and agency will fail on its own terms if it cannot adequately account for some morally salient phenomenon. Korsgaard’s account fails to adequately account for the possibility of evil actions and evil people. If self-constitution is key to action and agency, then we must abandon the Platonic and Kantian elements that Korsgaard endorses.

L’ouvrage de Christine Korsgaard intitulé Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity représente un remarquable travail de synthèse des éthiques platonicienne et kantienne qui, de manière exhaustive, rend compte de l’action et de l’agentivité sous le prisme de la constitution de soi. Toute tentative de saisie parfaite de l’action et de l’agentivité en termes propres ne saurait aboutir sans une prise en compte adéquate d’un quelconque phénomène moral saillant. L’approche de Korsgaard ne prend pas suffisamment en compte la possibilité du mal sous forme d’actions ou d’individus. Si la constitution de soi demeure centrale pour l’action et l’agentivité, alors il faudra mettre à l’écart les éléments platoniciens et kantiens que Korsgaard fait siens.

Keywords

evilKantian ethicsChristine KorsgaardPlatoself-constitutionagency
Type
Original Article/Article original
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 29 - 46
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Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2017 

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