Autonomy and the Value of Humanity Problems in Korsgaard's The Sources of Normativity

Joseph Abboud

Date of Award

2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Flakne, April

Keywords

Philosophy, Ethics, Moral Philosophy, Kant, Korsgaard

Area of Concentration

Philosophy

Abstract

Christine Korsgaard�s The Sources of Normativity attempts to defend two claims which are fundamentally incompatible: that all values and obligations arise from the autonomous resolutions of the reflective individual, and that the individual must value humanity in itself in order to have any values or reasons to act at all. Korsgaard�s need to move beyond Kant�s argument for the Categorical Imperative to her theory of practical identity shows that an individual�s conception of value is conditioned by her reflections on what makes her life worth living, rendering the construction of her system of values relative to the contingent contents of her life and the resolutions she makes with regards to them. To overcome the apparent relativity in her account of practical identity, Korsgaard argues that all human individuals ought to endorse the identity of being a human animal as such. However, by grounding practical identity on the autonomous resolutions of the individual, she undermines this attempt to ground the unconditional value of humanity. If the identity of being a human as such is only valuable if the individual freely endorses it, then it can only be a conditional value, contingent on the resolutions of the individual.

Rights

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