Christopher Gowans

Kant has long been taxed with an inability to explain the detailed normative content of our lives by making universalizability the sole arbiter of our values. Korsgaard addresses one form of this critique by defending a Kantian theory amended by a seemingly attractive conception of practical identities. Identities are dependent on the contingent circumstances of each person's world. Hence, obligations issuing from them differ from Kantian moral obligations in not applying to all persons. Still, Korsgaard takes Kantian autonomy to mean the normativity of all obligations is rooted in universalizability. The wealth of values informing our lives is thus said to be accommodated within a Kantian framework.After briefly explaining Korsgaard's understanding of practical identities and their role in her reformation of Kant's moral philosophy, I argue that she gives an inadequate explanation of how the obligations that arise from a person's practical identities derive their authority from the person's will. I then consider how her position might be developed to meet this objection in accordance with her allegiance to “constructivism” and I argue that the epistemic commitments of people's actual identities makes it unlikely that such a development could preserve Kantian autonomy as she interprets it.

"The book defends the thesis that the concept of self-cultivation philosophy is an informative interpretive framework for comprehending and reflecting on several philosophical outlooks in India, the Greco-Roman world and China. On the basis of an understanding of human nature and the place of human beings in the world, self-cultivation philosophies maintain that our lives can and should be substantially transformed from what is judged to be a problematic, untutored condition of human beings, our existential starting-point, into what is put forward as an ideal state of being. We are to do this by undertaking a set of therapeutic or spiritual exercises guided by some philosophical analysis. The self-cultivation philosophies in India are expressed in: the Bhagavad Gītā; the Sāṃkhya and Yoga philosophies of Īśvarakṛṣṇa and Patañjali; and teaching of the Buddha and his followers Buddhaghosa and Śāntideva. The philosophies originating in Greece, with subsequent development in the Roman period, are the most prominent Hellenistic approaches: the Epicureanism of Epicurus, Lucretius and Philodemus; the Stoicism of Chrysippus, Epictetus and Seneca; and Pyrrho and the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus. The self-cultivation philosophies from China are the early Confucian outlooks of Confucius, Mencius and Xunzi; the classical Daoist perspectives of the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi; and the Chan tradition of Bodhidharma, Huineng and Linji"--

It is often observed that there is little or no moral philosophy in classical Indian Buddhist thought. This is sometimes believed to be surprising since obviously there is an ethical teaching in Buddhism and clearly there are other forms of Buddhist philosophy. In my view, there is something that can plausibly be called moral philosophy in Indian Buddhism, but it is not quite what many people have expected because they have approached the issue from a specific understanding of philosophy that is too limited. I propose to defend this interpretation by reshaping Mark Siderits’ concept of fusion philosophy. The fusion I will propose reveals a form of moral philosophy that may be called self-cultivation philosophy. I will argue that this was a common activity in ancient Chinese, Greek and Indian cultures—including especially early Buddhist thought and practice.

I argue that persons are unlikely to have moral knowledge insofar as they lack certain moral virtues; that persons are commonly deficient in these virtues, and hence that they are regularly unlikely to have adequate moral knowledge. I propose a version of this argument that employs a broad conception of self-worth, a virtue found in a wide range of moral traditions that suppose a person would have an appropriate sense of self-worth in the face of tendencies both to overestimate and underestimate the value of one’s self. I begin by noting some distinctive features of this argument that distinguish it from more common arguments for moral skepticism. This is followed by an elucidation of the virtue of self-worth. I then consider some connections between self-worth and moral knowledge and, more briefly, the extent of self-worth among persons. Finally, I respond to the objection that the argument is incoherent because it presupposes moral knowledge that it later undermines.