Josep E. Corbi

A subject is a being who has a life to lead. In this paper, I explore the array of resources that are available to us (i.e., Westerners at the turn of the millennium) to articulate and assess our lives. Specifically, I shall reflect on the impact that such matters may have on our naturalist conviction that the world ultimately consists of a causal network where notions such as sense and value have no direct bearing. Sometend to assume that an implication of our naturalist world-view is that the notions of sense and value are inevitably relative to the subject’s desires and inclinations. This is, however, a line of reasoning that I would like to resist. For I am convinced that this approach unnecessarily restricts the number of resources to which we can legitimately appeal in order to lead our lives. This restriction will turn out to be quite serious because, as we shall see, it dramatically distorts our perception of the relevance that social ties may have in the life of a subject, as well as the conditions under which a human life may escape the absurd.

La claridad y la argumentación sirven de refugio frente a la charlatanería en el filosofar, pero quienes enfatizan tales principios metodológicos tienden a identificar la claridad con la literalidad y la argumentación con la formalización. En este trabajo, considero los límites de una elucidación filosófica de nuestras prácticas morales que descanse en tal identificación; para ello, examino la relevancia de la posición original de John Rawls para la determinación de los principios de la justicia y, en general, de los experimentos mentales para el estudio de la moralidad. La relevancia de la posición original depende, a mi entender, de un supuesto de concordancia según el cual, a menos que incurramos en algún error deliberativo, no puede haber discrepancia alguna entre nuestros juicios relativos a la justicia acerca de una situación hipotética y nuestros juicios cuando nos enfrentamos realmente a la misma. A lo largo del texto, trato de mostrar que tal supuesto es insostenible a partir del examen de una experiencia moral particular: a saber, la experiencia del soldado; y, para ello, revindico las virtudes deliberativas de la conciencia expresiva de ciertos hechos frente a una mera conciencia declarativa de los mismos; finalmente, extraigo algunas consecuencias de esta distinción para la definición de un estilo filosófico. Astress on clarity and argumentation may serve as a refuge against quackery, but often those who focus on such methodological principles tend to identify clarity with literalness and argumentation with formalization. My reflection upon the limits of a philosophical style inspired in such an identification is mainly concerned with the use of thought experiments in the elucidation of our moral practices and, more specifically, with the relevance of John Rawls' original position for the determination of the basic principles of justice. To this purpose, I emphasize that the relevance of the original position rests on a matching assumption according to which, if agents deliberate appropriately, there should not be any gap between our judgments concerning justice about a hypothetical situation and our judgments whenever we are actually confronted with it. I will, nevertheless, explore a particular moral experience, namely, that of the soldier, only to conclude that such an assumption is untenable. More specifically, I will defend the deliberative virtues of an expressive awareness of certain facts as opposed to a mere declarative awareness of them. In the last section, I will derive some implications of this distinction as to the articulation of a philosophical style.