John J. Davenport

This dissertation develops a new account of the will as a motivational power of commitment or resolve, which contrasts with volition in the 'thin' sense as a mere decision to form an intention. After tracing the historical background of these concepts in Chapter I, Chapter II argues that will involves the capacity to motivate oneself "projectively" in devotion to causes and purposes for which one did not necessarily have an antecedent "desire." "Projective motivation" differs from three types of "desire"-- inarticulate appetites and generic urges, subjective inclinations and preferences for definite objects, and evaluative desires following from judgments that something is objectively 'good' for us--all of which arise from the sense that something is lacking in the agent. Projections do not share this teleological lack-structure, and are grounded in considerations other than the agent's well-being, such as the existential meaningfulness of pursuing ends, as distinct from realizing them. ;This concept helps resolve problems with eudaimonist moral psychologies. It also helps make sense of Kant's notions of spontaneity and autonomy, although moral motivation as Kant conceives it is only one form of projective motivation. Hence the usual teleological and deontic models do not exhaust all the kinds of motivation there are. Chapter III then argues that thinkers as divergent as Scotus, Levinas, Arendt, and Frankfurt implicitly appeal to the possibility of projective motivation. ;The last two chapters focus on Harry Frankfurt's hierarchical account of volitional "identification", comparing this notion to Heidegger's and Foucault's interpretations of 'care of the self.' Chapter IV distinguishes and reformulate five objections against Frankfurt's initial account of identification in terms of second-order desires; these objections point towards the need for a qualitative distinction between ordinary desires and the states which constitute identification. It then analyzes Frankfurt's later attempts to address these difficulties, and argues for a new account of identification in terms of 'higher-order projections.' Chapter V defends this new existential analysis against rival accounts of identification by Stump, Taylor, Watson, Velleman, Bransen, Buss, and Dennett.

This paper argues that eschatology is defined by a combination of sacred cosmogonic power and moral requirement. Moralizing religion is this combination, which claims to ground a distinctive kind of possibility (possible hereafter states). Eschatology has certain features that hold in all of its forms, with variations in whether the hereafter is conceived as a timeless and body-less eternity, or a more temporal and concrete existence. The paradigm for this analysis is found in Soren Kierkegaard's depiction of faith in Fear and Trembling.

Tradition must rank as one of the ten most important works within the hermeneutic tradition to be published in the 1990s, alongside recent books by Jean-Luc Nancy, Drucilla Cornell, Simon Critchley, John Caputo, Paul Ricoeur, and Jacques Derrida. In Tradition, Stephen Watson, who is influenced by Heidegger, Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, and Alasdair MacIntyre, works out a historical hermeneutics with obvious connections to their views, but that also stakes out a different position "between" their respective accounts of reason, interpretation, and tradition. This work builds on themes introduced in Watson's earlier collection of essays, such as his paper on "Between Truth and Method: Gadamer, Traditionality, and the Problem of Justification in Interpretative Practices." In the process, Watson also develops his innovative approaches to many particular figures in the history of modern philosophy, to their influence on and significance for one another, and most importantly, to an array of fundamental questions concerning the canons of reason, the status of personal subjects, and basic ethical concepts like friendship, character, and the good. It is in his treatment of these themes especially—and his general suspicion of transcendental methodology and universal principles—that we perhaps see the Aristotelian influences most clearly in this text. At the same time, Watson's is always a deconstructive version of Aristotelianism, refracted through his reading of Heidegger, whose notion of Erwiderung, or "reciprocal rejoinder" with past thinkers in the formation of new ideas is introduced on the first page and becomes the schema both for his analysis of tradition and his treatment of individual authors.

The primary purpose of government is to secure public goods that cannot be achieved by free markets. The Coordination Principle tells us to consolidate sovereign power in a single institution to overcome collective action problems that otherwise prevent secure provision of the relevant public goods. There are several public goods that require such coordination at the global level, chief among them being basic human rights. The claim that human rights require global coordination is supported in three main steps. First, I consider Pogge's and Habermas's analyses as alternatives to Hobbesian conceptions of justice. Second, I consider the core conventions of international law, which are in tension with the primacy of state sovereignty in the UN system. Third, I argue that the just war tradition does not limit just causes for war to self-defense; it supports saving innocent third parties from crimes against humanity as a just reason for war. While classical authors focused less on this issue, the point is especially clear in twentieth-century just war theories, such as those offered by the American Catholic bishops, Jean Elshtain, Brian Orend, and Michael Walzer. Against Walzer, I argue that we add intractable military tyranny to the list of horrors meriting intervention if other ad bellum conditions are met. But these results require us to reexamine the "just authority" of first resort to govern such interventions. The Coordination Principle implies that we should create a transnational federation with consolidated powers in place of a treaty organization requiring near-unanimity. But to be legitimate, such a global institution must also be directly answerable to the citizens of its member states. While the UN Security Council is inadequate on both counts, a federation of democracies with a directly elected executive and legislature could meet both conditions.

This article evaluates Emmanuel Levinas's novel "ethical metaphysics" of interpersonal relations from a religious perspective. Levinas presents a unique version of agape ethics that can be evaluated in terms of a number of the dilemmas that have traditionally attended Christian discussions of neighbor-love. Because Levinas's analysis makes our responsibility for other persons depend on their eschatological significance, it has the same problems that hamper all theories of neighbor-love that lack a sufficient role for reciprocity.

This essay argues that Mark C. Murphy's original contribution to natural law ethics succeeds in finding a way between older metaphysical and newer purely practical approaches in this genre. Murphy's reconstruction of the function argument, critique of subjectivist theories of well-being, and rigorous formulation of a flexible welfarist theory of value deserve careful attention. I defend Kant against Murphy's critique and argue that Murphy faces the problem of showing that all his basic goods are morally inviolable. Although I endorse Murphy's critique of radical virtue ethics, I raise objections to the basic moral norms he derives from his list of goods, and to the analysis of peace of mind and happiness as basic goods.

National Identity: Some Reflections on the Future of Europe,"(1) Habermas's specific theme is the `legitimation crisis' arising from the current situation within the European Community.(2) But the deeper philosophical point of the article is to develop a fundamental implication of Habermas's analysis of democracy in his new work, Between Facts and Norms (in which the article is included as an appendix):(3) Habermas argues that the normative content of democratic citizenship can be institutionalized without identity-formation in by a `national state' of the kind that still dominates our geopolitical landscape. The concept of democracy cannot be restricted to nationalist contexts; instead, by its very nature it points beyond such restrictions, and ultimately towards a global government that would ensure fundamental human rights worldwide. In the process, Habermas develops several ideas from his much earlier analyses of social integration and links them in revealing ways to his universalist conception of human rights. Finally, Habermas explicitly criticizes communitarian arguments that particularist criteria in immigration are permissible or required to maintain a political culture adequate for democratic citizenship.

Readers familiar with Harry Frankfurt’s argument that we do not need leeway-liberty (or the power to bring about alternative possible actions or intentions) to be morally responsible will probably also know that the most famous and popular response on behalf of leeway-libertarianism remains a dilemma posed in similar forms by David Widerker, Robert Kane, and Carl Ginet: either the agent retains significant residual leeway in Frankfurt-style cases, or these cases beg the question by presupposing causal determinism. In the last few years, there have been several different attempts to defend Frankfurtian critiques of PAP in response this dilemma. In a novel approach, Derk Pereboom and Michael McKenna present cases in which all deliberatively relevant or “robust” alternatives are blocked, but the agent’s act or decision is not determined. Pereboom and McKenna argue that any plausible leeway-condition on responsibility must characterize the required alternatives as robust in two ways: being voluntary performances and having a practical relevance accessible to the agent’s mind. I agree with the requirement of robustness, and argue that we can build this notion into a complex concept of agent-possibility, or “agentive-can.” However, I argue that both McKenna’s and Pereboom’s conceptions of robustness are too demanding: they exclude alternatives that are intuitively relevant. Moreover, I argue that the alternative of refraining from deciding, or voluntarily failing to decide, is robust in the right sense. In agreement with a tradition running from Ockham back through Scotus to Aquinas, I argue that this robust alternative is necessary for responsibility. If the Frankfurt-controller eliminates it, then the agent’s responsibility is undermined. In particular, I argue that Pereboom’s tax evasion cases do not refute this leeway-condition on moral responsibility.

This essay evaluates John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza's mature semi-compatibilist account of moral responsibility, focusingon their new theory of moderate reasons-responsiveness as a model of "moral sanity." This theory, presented in _Responsibility and Control_, solves many of the problems with Fischer's earlier weak reasons-responsiveness model, such as its unwanted implication that agents who are only erratically responsive to bizarre reasons can be responsible for their acts. But I argue that the new model still faces several problems. It does not allow sufficiently for non-psychotic agents (who are largely reasons-responsive) with localized beliefs and desires incompatible with full responsibility. Nor does it take into account that practical "fragmentation of the self" over time may also reduce competence, since moral sanity requires some minimum level of narrative unity in our plans and projects. Finally, I argue that actual-sequence accounts cannot adequately explain sane but weak-willed agency.

In contemporary philosophy, the will is often regarded as a sheer philosophical fiction. In Will as Commitment and Resolve, Davenport argues not only that the will is the central power of human agency that makes decisions and forms intentions but also that it includes the capacity to generate new motivation different in structure from prepurposive desires. The concept of "projective motivation" is the central innovation in Davenport's existential account of the everyday notion of striving will. Beginning with the contrast between "eastern" and "western" attitudes toward assertive willing, Davenport traces the lineage of the idea of projective motivation from NeoPlatonic and Christian conceptions of divine motivation to Scotus, Kant, Marx, Arendt, and Levinas. Rich with historical detail, this book includes an extended examination of Platonic and Aristotelian eudaimonist theories of human motivation. Drawing on contemporary critiques of egoism, Davenport argues that happiness is primarily a byproduct of activities and pursuits aimed at other agent-transcending goods for their own sake. In particular, the motives involved in virtue and in its practice as understood by Alasdair MacIntyre are projective rather than eudaimonist. This theory is supported by analyses of radical evil, accounts of intrinsic motivation in existential psychology, and contemporary theories of identity-forming commitment in analytic moral psychology. Following Viktor Frankl, Joseph Raz, and others, Davenport argues that Harry Frankfurt's conception of caring requires objective values worth caring about, which serve as rational grounds for projecting new final ends. The argument concludes with a taxonomy of values or goods, devotion to which can make life meaningful for us.

I will argue that there is a better position which is more religiously inclusive than "political liberalism" as conceived by Rawls or Audi, but which maintains a principled distance from Quinn's radical inclusivism. (2) In section I, I analyze Quinn's argument for radical inclusivism and pose an initial objection to it. In section II, I turn to the question of how democratic legitimation is to be conceived. After outlining the `civic virtue' or `deliberative' interpretation of democratic institutions now proposed by a large group of writers, I argue that this approach implies a sphere of public reason wider than in Rawls's or Audi's conceptions, and yet not as all-inclusive as Quinn's. In particular, any cogent deliberative theory of democracy implies certain conditions of public accessibility for political argument which exclude religious bases for political positions if these are grounded purely on revelation. The deliberative or `civic virtue' conception thus gives us a basis for an intermediate position between Rawlsian public reason and radical inclusivism. This intermediate revelation-excluding (RE) model of deliberative democracy depends on certain epistemic presuppositions, which help distinguish democracy from theocracy.

I have argued that like Harry Frankfurt, Augustine implicitly distinguishes between first-order desires and higher-order volitions; yet unlike Frankfurt, Augustineheld that the liberty to form different possible volitional identifications is essential to responsibility for our character. Like Frankfurt, Augustine recognizes that we can sometimes be responsible for the desires on which we act without being able to do or desire otherwise; but for Augustine, this is true only because such responsibility for inevitable desires and actions traces (at least in part) to responsibility for our volitional identifications, which in turn has leeway-libertarianconditions. However, David Hunt has interpreted Augustine’s account of divine foreknowledge as implying a type of source-incompatibilism that does not require alternative possible actions or intentions. Moreover, while Eleonore Stump’s account of Augustine on sanctification supports my interpretation, Augustine’s position on predestination in his latest writings may be incompatible with liberty of the higher-order will. I will argue against Hunt’s interpretation but admit that the leeway-libertarian has to reject the ‘no autonomy’ model in some of Augustine’s late writings.