责任的误读与责任理性的恢复

当前,"责任政府"不仅是国民心中热切的政治期待,而且也正式成为政府的政治承诺.然而,为什么目前会出现"责任政府"的提法?责任在我国是否已经构成为问题?何谓责任?责任的重要意义是什么?责任与价值观之间的内在联系是什么?建立"责任政府"的具体含义是什么?……正是在提出上述问题并希望予以合理回答的过程中,我们发现,在有关责任的问题上,我们原有的认识是远远不够的,而且更为甚者,我们已在不自觉中陷入到因误读而形成的预设性责任幻觉之中.本文并不打算探讨一般的责任理性问题,而仅想在追问责任的内涵、意义、价值观特征等方面为责任理性的恢复做些概念上的准备.     

Value and Obligation Once More

In Understanding Moral Obligation (2012), Robert Stern sets out to provide a fresh interpretation of the role of autonomy in Kant's moral philosophy and attempts to rectify J. B. Schneewind's standard account in The Invention of Autonomy (1998). While Stern agrees that Kant's resort to autonomy is at the basis of a constructivist account of moral obligation, he claims that autonomy plays no role in Kant's theory of value, such that, in this respect, Kant remains a realist. Accordingly, Stern characterizes Kant's moral philosophy as a “hybrid” view because he sees it as involving a compromise between realism with regard to value and constructivism with regard to obligation. Stern's interpretation relies on a sharp distinction between value and obligation. The purpose of the present article is to question Stern's reliance on that rigid distinction, which involves intermixing theoretical and practical reason and assumes a distorted view of human agency.     

The Obligation Dilemma

I motivate a dilemma to show that nothing can be obligatory for anyone regardless of whether determinism or indeterminism (the falsity of determinism) is true. The deterministic horn, to which prime attention is directed, exploits the thesis that obligation requires freedom to do otherwise. Since determinism precludes such freedom, it precludes obligation too. The indeterministic horn allows for freedom to do otherwise but assumes the burden of addressing whether indeterministically caused choices or actions are too much of a matter of luck to be obligatory for anyone. I critically discuss a response to the deterministic horn that invokes the distinction between alternatives compatible with determinism (weak alternatives) and those incompatible with determinism (strong alternatives).     

Moral Obligation and Everyday Advice

Abstract

Alfred Schütz’s investigation of the temporal structure of consciousness in The Phenomenology of the Social World leads him to conceive action as antecedently projected behaviour. Schütz presents his conception of action as resolving a problem in Weber’s discussion of meaningful behaviour in the opening pages of Economy and Society. It serves that aim well, but also has independent value. The antecedently projected form of action necessitates a biographical conception of human agency. Schütz’s conception of action thus reinstates the biographical nature of agency ignored in contemporary analytical philosophy of action. Furthermore, Marx is committed to exactly this conception of action. It founds his further claim that action and history mutually presuppose one another.     

Obligation,Responsibility, and History

I argue that, each of the following, appropriately clarified to yield a noteworthy thesis, is true. (1) Moral obligation can affect moral responsibility. (2) Obligation succumbs to changes in responsibility. (3) Obligation is immune from changes in responsibility.     

Authentic Springs of Action and Obligation

What is the connection between action that is caused by inauthentic antecedent springs of action, such as surreptitiously engineered-in desires and beliefs, and moral obligation? If, for example, an agent performs an action that derives from such antecedent springs can it be that the agent is not obligated to perform this action owing to the inauthenticity of its causal antecedents? I defend an affirmative response, assuming that we morally ought to bring about the states of affairs that occur in the intrinsically best worlds accessible to us and that a version of attitudinal hedonism is the axiology for ranking worlds.