Bennett Eckert-Kuang

I defend pluralist metaethical constitutivism: practical norms governing an agent are grounded in her kind of rational agency. Kinds of rational agency are defined in terms of reasons explanations: to be a given kind of rational agent is for one’s actions to admit of certain forms of reasons explanation. Unlike extant, ‘monist’ constitutivists, pluralists need not say that there are constitutive standards of rational agency as such—just that there are constitutive standards of our kind of agency. They can thus admit the possibility of ‘minimal’ agents whose agency cannot ground any practical norms, retaining the virtues of monist constitutivism without its costs.

Purely instrumental agents can reason about how to realize their ends, but not about which ends to pursue. They can do one thing in order to do another but cannot choose their final ends for reasons. Some have argued that such agents are impossible, and that the success of moral constitutivism depends on their impossibility. Moral constitutivists hope to ground moral norms in the nature of rational agency as such. But if purely instrumental agents are possible, then rational agency is too thin to ground moral norms. I argue that purely instrumental agents are possible, but their possibility by itself does not refute moral constitutivism. Moral constitutivists might embrace a pluralist form of constitutivism, according to which practical norms for an agent are grounded in the nature of her kind of agency, not in the nature of rational agency as such. This pluralist variant of constitutivism, however, faces problems of its own. I leave open whether pluralism fares any better overall than extant versions of moral constitutivism.

Duties to oneself are central to Kant's moral thought. Indeed, in his Lectures on Ethics, he claims that they “take first place, and are the most important of all” (LE: 27:341). Despite this, Kant is not clear about what they are or why they are ‘the most important.’ What is it for a duty to be owed to oneself? And in what sense do such duties ‘take first place’? I answer these questions: a duty to oneself is a self-legislated duty, and they ‘take first place’ in that all ethical duties are, fundamentally, duties to oneself. Based on a close reading of Kant's “Apparent Antinomy” regarding duties to oneself in The Doctrine of Virtue §§1–3, I argue that Kant holds that (1) a duty is owed to its legislator, and (2) all duties are self-legislated. I then argue that this interpretation is further supported by Kant's understanding of the Categorical Imperative as a “principle of autonomy” in the Groundwork (G: 4:433). I conclude by offering an interpretation of the Categorical Imperative on which even though all duties are ultimately owed to oneself, there remains an important sense in which some duties are owed to others as well.