Arto Laitinen

A satisfactory theory of “strong evaluation” should manage to do two things: first of all, make sense of the distinction between impersonal ethical issues and personal orientation. Secondly, the deontic layer of reasons and norms should be taken into account, among other things because the central indicators of strong evaluation, namely praise and blame, presuppose norms and reasons as standards of praiseworthiness and blameworthiness. These two desiderata seem to pull in different directions. The suggested analysis of the deontic layer in terms of external, value-based reasons for action may make it seem even more difficult to allow for reasons of one’s own. I argue that there can be reasons of one’s own, depending on one’s orientations, commitments and the actual shape of one’s affective-conative responses. First I discuss the general reasons that decisions and commitments create, and general (stance-insensitive) reasons for making a commitment to X. These suffice as a reply to MacIntyre’s worry (9.2). Yet the picture can be developed further. Drawing on the idea of exclusionary reasons (introduced in 9.1), I discuss the general reasons for having an orientation of one’s own and the difference between an orientation to the good and a commitment to a good. The difference is the role they have as reasons for action. Commitments play a stronger role in practical reasoning because they are exclusionary reasons (9.3). Then I turn to non-uniformity and stance-sensitivity of reasons, and ask whether different people have stance-sensitive reasons to make different commitments (9.4). In the last section I analyze more closely the nature of personal resonance and the difference it may make (9.5).

In this chapter I discuss Taylor’s claim that strong evaluation is inevitable for human agency: without a framework of strong evaluations human agents would be in a crisis which Taylor calls, perhaps misleadingly, “an identity crisis”. With a broad brush I introduce some of the essential background in first three sections, and scrutinize the inevitability of strong evaluation more closely in the last three sections. I introduce first the distinction between the engaged perspective, which in Taylor’s view provides the correct approach to humans and values, and two kinds of disengaged perspectives (objectivist and subjectivist ones) (2.1). Taylor’s ideal typical distinction (engaged and disengaged) resembles Sellars’s (1963) distinction between manifest and scientific image, but Taylor takes the scientific worldview to be only one objectivist variant of disengaged views: the Cartesian view of mind is detached from the lifeworldly reality, and is a variant of a subjectivist disengaged view. There are many aspects to Taylor’s philosophical anthropology, based on such an engaged perspective. He defends many “human constants” related to humans as social, self-interpreting, embodied language animals. Although here the focus is merely on one of the human constants, namely on the claim that humans are essentially strong evaluators, I give a sketchy account of the essentials of the broader picture in section 2.2. Taylor uses transcendental argumentation in trying to show the inescapability of strong evaluation in human life. I will, following Nicholas Smith’s reconstruction, discuss Taylor’s reasons for adopting such argumentative strategy in relation to this issue, as opposed to socalled ordinary language philosophy, phenomenological description, hermeneutical interpretation, or strict Hegelian dialectics (2.3). The central point is that although we may want to stress the hermeneutical or interpretive nature of being-in-the-world, and the constitutive nature of human self-interpretations, the few human constants are true whether explicitly taken to be true or not: humans are self-interpreting animals, or strong evaluators, even though they may hold opposing theories in their self-interpretations (cf. Abbey 2000, 4). In a sense, Taylor’s label for his claim, which he terms a “transcendental argument”, may seem to make heavy weather of a simple point: without strong evaluation those aspects of life and experience which presuppose strong evaluation would not be possible. These aspects of life include more or less everything that is peculiarly human. The arguments try to bring into focus these dependencies: strong evaluations are inescapable for our lives as humans or as persons, as opposed to “mere” animals. To be fully outside the scope of strong evaluation is to be in a pathological state. Various disengaged theories of humans neglect this. These are theories of human agency, subjectivity, personhood or identity which have ignored this dimension of human life, or have not taken it to be essential. Taylor’s arguments are directed against such views. In this chapter I will clarify the nature of Taylor’s argument by distinguishing different concepts (human agency, personhood, subjectivity, selfhood, and identity) and asking what it is exactly that strong evaluation is necessary for (2.4). The notions of personhood and identity will be discussed in more detail in the next two chapters. The crucial point in Taylor’s argumentation is made by the claim that for someone capable of strong evaluation, the lack of a framework of strong evaluations involves them in a terrible, frightening crisis, an identity-crisis. I will distinguish several meanings of this claim and discuss their validity in 2.5. I suggest that some “identity-crises” are not at all what Taylor has in mind. But the point itself is valid: without a framework of strong evaluations, human agents would be in a state of crisis. In the last section, I defend Taylor’s view against possible counterexamples, posed by Owen Flanagan and Paul Johnston.

This article identifies and tries to solve five puzzles in Tuomela’s Collective Acceptance View of sociality and institutions. If it is framed in terms of collective acceptance of sentences as true for a group, and that need not mean objective truth, does collective acceptance shed any light on the ontology of institutions? Is it the CA-events or CA-states that have the possible ontological consequences for social reality? If theoretical claims about CA conflict, which ones should we revise? How to make sense of CA-states sometimes being intentions and sometimes beliefs? In cases where the related attitudes are there, but for some reason or another the corresponding activity does not take place, should we say that collective acceptance is whatever is needed (not merely attitudes, but also related actions) for the related ontological effect to take place? The article discusses these challenges and argues among other things that Tuomela’s account has the desired ontological relevance, but as Tuomela sees collective acceptance as an achievement-notion, only effective collective acceptance is collective acceptance at all.

L’idea guida di questo saggio è la combinazione dell’antica idea che le buone società sono quelle che consentono e promuovono la vita buona, la prosperità o il benessere dei cittadini, con l’idea moderna che i cittadini devono essere considerati individui autonomi. Le teorie del riconoscimento (recognition), a partire da Fichte e Hegel in poi, forniscono una promettente cornice teoretica per provare a considerare le persone come individui e, nel contempo, come membri dell’insieme sociale. Queste pagine cercano di delineare il modo in cui il riconoscimento interpersonale e istituzionale si presenta come una costituente e una precondizione nella vita dei moderni individui autonomi. Nella prima parte di questo saggio mi chiedo cosa sia il riconoscimento, specialmente nella sua forma interpersonale e istituzionale, continuando così il lavoro di analisi su questo concetto condotto insieme a Heikki Ikäheimo. Questo dibattito è ispirato in particolar modo dalle teorie del riconoscimento di Hegel, Axel Honneth, Charles Taylor e Nancy Fraser. Nella seconda parte provo a caratterizzare i contorni della vita buona, in particolare la vita buona di individui autonomi, e mi domando quali siano le precondizioni di cui essa necessita. Distinguerò cinque tipi di precondizioni: psicologica, materiale, culturale, intersoggettiva e istituzionale. La questione da esaminare è quale sia il ruolo del riconoscimento, così come viene definito nella prima parte, fra le suddette precondizioni. Inoltre, mi chiederò anche se il riconoscimento non sia soltanto un prerequisito, ma piuttosto un costituente o un ingrediente della vita buona. Alcuni dei miei commenti riguarderanno la differenza fra riconoscimento e redistribuzione nel dibattito fra la Fraser e Honneth.