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“The Predicament of Temporality: Williams’ challenge to Kant’s conception of practical reasonIn Marcel van Ackeren & Matthieu Queloz (eds.), Bernard Williams on Philosophy and History, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.This chapter argues that Williams’ criticisms of Kant’s account of morality should be viewed in light of their disagreement about the function of reason. This interpretation unearths a fundamental challenge, due to the tension between the temporal features of human agency and the allegedly categorical authority of some normative claims. This is a predicament central to any theory of practical reason. For Kant its root lies in human embodiment, finitude and fragility, and the remedy is the normat…Read more
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“The Ekstatic View of the Will: A critical notice of Tamar Schapiro, Feeling Like It: A Theory of Inclination and the Will” (review)Analysis 83 (4). 2023.[...] Schapiro’s new metaphor of ‘being drawn out of oneself’ is suggestive of alienation, even though it is supposed to apply at a different level. As much as in Korsgaard’s account of reflective endorsement, the problem of the agent’s dealing with their inclinations is treated as a solitary internal affair: what is staged is a psychodrama, that is, a drama that plays in the agent’s mind. The (social) world enters solely as backdrop scenery, and social roles and scripts are ultimately up for ch…Read more
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17Morality and the Emotions (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2011.Emotions shape our mental and social lives, but their relation to morality is problematic: are they sources of moral knowledge, or obstacles to morality? Fourteen original articles by leading scholars in moral psychology and philosophy of mind explore the relation between emotions and practical rationality, value, autonomy, and moral identity.
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45. Reason and EthicsIn Maria Cristina Amoretti & Nicla Vassallo (eds.), Reason and Rationality, Ontos Verlag. pp. 111-128. 2012.
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22Normative Isolation: The Dynamics of Power and Authority in GaslightingAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 97 (1): 146-171. 2023.Gaslighting is a form of domination which builds upon multiple and mutually reinforcing strategies that induce rational acquiescence. Such abusive strategies progressively insulate the victims and inflict a loss in self-respect, with powerful alienating effects. In arguing for these claims, I reject the views that gaslighting is an epistemic or structural wrong, or a moral wrong of instrumentalization. In contrast, I refocus on personal addresses that use, affect, and distort the very practice o…Read more
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68Defeaters and practical knowledgeSynthese 195 (7): 2855-2875. 2018.This paper situates the problem of defeaters in a larger debate about the source of normative authority. It argues in favour of a constructivist account of defeasibility, which appeals to the justificatory role of normative principles. The argument builds upon the critique of two recent attempts to deal with defeasibility: first, a particularist account, which disposes of moral principles on the ground that reasons are holistic; and second, a proceduralist view, which addresses the problem of de…Read more
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12Individual Responsibility under Systemic Corruption: A Coercion-Based ViewMoral Philosophy and Politics 10 (1): 95-117. 2023.Should officeholders be held individually responsible for submitting to systemically corrupt institutional practices? We draw a structural analogy between individual action under coercive threat and individual participation in systemic corruption, and we argue that officeholders who submit to corrupt institutional practices are not excused by the existence of a systemic coercive threat. Even when they have good personal reasons to accept the threat, they remain individually morally assessable an…Read more
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35Time in Action: The Temporal Structure of Rational Agency and Practical Thought (edited book)Routledge. 2022.This book explores the role of time in rational agency and practical reasoning. Agents are finite and often operate under severe time constraints. Action takes time and unfolds in time. While time is an ineliminable constituent of our experience of agency, it is both a theoretical and practical problem to explain whether and how time shapes rational agency and practical thought. The essays in this book are divided in three parts. Part I is devoted to the temporal structure of action and agency, …Read more
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3Immanuel KantIn Ludwig Siep, Heikki Ikäheimo & Michael Quante (eds.), Handbuch Anerkennung, Springer. pp. 115-119. 2018.
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37Feeling Wronged: The Value and Deontic Power of Moral DistressEthical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (1): 89-106. 2021.This paper argues that moral distress is a distinctive category of reactive attitudes that are taken to be part and parcel of the social dynamics for recognition. While moral distress does not demonstrate evidence of wrongdoing, it does emotionally articulate a demand for normative attention that is addressed to others as moral providers. The argument for this characterization of the deontic power of moral distress builds upon two examples in which the cognitive value of the victim’s emotional e…Read more
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1Ethical ConstructivismCambridge University Press. 2022.Ethical constructivism holds that truths about the relation between rationality, morality, and agency are best understood as constructed by correct reasoning, rather than discovered or invented. Unlike other metaphors used in metaethics, construction brings to light the generative and dynamic dimension of practical reason. On the resultant picture, practical reasoning is not only productive but also self-transforming, and socially empowering. The main task of this volume is to illustrate how con…Read more
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76The objective stance and the boundary problemEuropean Journal of Philosophy 29 (3): 646-663. 2021.European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 646-663, September 2021.
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7Complicità e responsabilità reciprocaSocietà Degli Individui 69 10-25. 2020.This article investigates the relation between complicity and moral responsibility.
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The spring of action: in butō improvisationIn Alessandro Bertinetto & Marcello Ruta (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Improvisation in the Arts, Routledge. 2021.This chapter discusses butō dance as an example of improvisation that challenges not only the extant philosophical definitions of improvisation, but also some fundamental presumptions about self-government and agency that are current in action theory. In the first part of the chapter, I identify the main features of butō improvisation, with regard to the nature of its basic movement, and the kind of subjectivity implicated in its generation. I then raise some questions regarding the philosophica…Read more
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Perché punire il colpevole? Un approccio filosofico alla responsabilità penaleIn Maria Zanichelli (ed.), Il diritto visto da fuori: scienziati, intellettuali, artisti si interrogano sul senso della giuridicità oggi, Zanichelli. pp. 19-28. 2020.A reflection on the justification of punishment.
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One Among Many: responsibility and alienation in mass actionIn Teresa Marques & Chiara Valentini (eds.), Collective Action, Philosophy and Law, Routledge. 2021.This chapter argues that some paradigmatic cases of collective action, called mass-action, build upon alienation. Individual alienation qualifies as a coordinative mechanism, which explains collective actions performed by large groups. Alienation requires individuals to detach from their personal stance, and bracket their personal attachments and motivations. Differently from strategic and normative coordinative devices, alienation bypasses strategic normative regulations, such as law and enforc…Read more
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1The practical significance of the categorical imperativeOxford Studies in Normative Ethics 11 (1): 177-198. 2021.On a standard interpretation, the aim of the formula of universal law is to provide a decision procedure for determining the deontic status of actions. By contrast, this chapter argues for the practical significance of the CI centering on Kant’s account of the dynamics of incentives. This approach avoids some widespread misconceptions about how the CI operates and false expectations about what it promises and delivers. In particular, it explains how it differs from deductive practical inferences…Read more
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1Disclaiming responsibility, voicing disagreements, negotiating boundariesOxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility 7 (1): 283-305. 2021.This essay introduces the novel category of “disclaimers” – distinctive normative acts which challenge third-party attributions of responsibility in a community governed by norms of mutual accountability. While the debate focuses on evasive and wrongful refusals to take responsibility for one’s wrongs, this essay argues that disclaimers are fundamental modes of exercising normative powers, whose main functions are demanding recognition, responding to wrongs, voicing disagreement, exiting alienat…Read more
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43Handbook of Legal Reasoning and Argumentation (edited book)Springer Verlag. 2011.This handbook offers a deep analysis of the main forms of legal reasoning and argumentation from both a logical-philosophical and legal perspective. These forms are covered in an exhaustive and critical fashion, and the handbook accordingly divides in three parts: the first one introduces and discusses the basic concepts of practical reasoning. The second one discusses the main general forms of reasoning and argumentation relevant for legal discourse. The third one looks at their application in …Read more
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36Practical Knowledge, Equal Standing, and Proper Reliance on OthersTheoria 86 (6): 821-842. 2020.According to a traditional account, moral cognition is an achievement gained over time by sharing a practice under the guidance and the example of the wise, in analogy with craft and apprenticeship. This model captures an important feature of practical reason, that is, its incompleteness, and highlights our dependence on others in obtaining moral knowledge, coherently with the socially extended mind agenda and recent findings in empirical psychology. However, insofar as it accords to exemplars’ …Read more
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16Constrained by Reason, Transformed by Love: Murdoch on the Standard of ProofIn Gary Browning (ed.), Murdoch on Truth and Love, Springer Verlag. pp. 63-88. 2018.According to Iris Murdoch, the chief experience in morality is loving attention. Her view calls into question the Kantian account of the standard of moral authority, and ultimately denies that reason might provide moral discernment, validate moral experience, or drive us toward moral progress. Like Kant, Murdoch defines the moral experience as the subjective experience of freedom, which resists any reductivist approach. Unlike Kant, she thinks that this free agency is unprincipled. Some of her a…Read more
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1Reasons in Moral PhilosophyIn Colin Aitken, Amalia Amaya, Kevin D. Ashley, Carla Bagnoli, Giorgio Bongiovanni, Bartosz Brożek, Cristiano Castelfranchi, Samuele Chilovi, Marcello Di Bello, Jaap Hage, Kenneth Einar Himma, Lewis A. Kornhauser, Emiliano Lorini, Fabrizio Macagno, Andrei Marmor, J. J. Moreso, Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco, Antonino Rotolo, Giovanni Sartor, Burkhard Schafer, Chiara Valentini, Bart Verheij, Douglas Walton & Wojciech Załuski (eds.), Handbook of Legal Reasoning and Argumentation, Springer Verlag. pp. 35-46. 2011.The concept of reason is pervasive in our ordinary practices, but there is a large and divisive disagreement about their role in the foundation and explanation of morality. Such disagreement depends on three related issues, which concern the definition of “moral reasons,” their sources and functions. This chapter first takes into account material and formal definitions of moral reasons and clarifies the role of reasons in the explanation and justification of intentional action. Second, it addres…Read more
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4ValuesIn Colin Aitken, Amalia Amaya, Kevin D. Ashley, Carla Bagnoli, Giorgio Bongiovanni, Bartosz Brożek, Cristiano Castelfranchi, Samuele Chilovi, Marcello Di Bello, Jaap Hage, Kenneth Einar Himma, Lewis A. Kornhauser, Emiliano Lorini, Fabrizio Macagno, Andrei Marmor, J. J. Moreso, Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco, Antonino Rotolo, Giovanni Sartor, Burkhard Schafer, Chiara Valentini, Bart Verheij, Douglas Walton & Wojciech Załuski (eds.), Handbook of Legal Reasoning and Argumentation, Springer Verlag. pp. 139-171. 2011.ValuingValuing is an important and ordinary endeavor, which pervades all our practices, activities, and institutions. The nature and criteria for valuing decisively depend on the alleged nature of values. First of all, are there values? If so, how to access them, and how do they inform our choices? Second, what kinds of value are there, and how do we identify them conceptually? Sections 1–2 identify these problems, which are the core of debates in meta-ethics and substantive theory, respectively…Read more
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Autonomy, Emotional Vulnerability and the Dynamics of PowerIn Sandrine Berges & Alberto L. Siani (eds.), Women Philosophers on Autonomy: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, Routledge. pp. 208-225. 2018.Traditionally, philosophers have focused on whether and how emotions threaten autonomy, insofar as they lie outside the sphere of rational agency. That is, they have conceptualized emotional vulnerability as passivity. Second, they have considered how emotions are insensitive to rational judgment, focusing on cases in which emotions are dissonant or recalcitrant. Third, in recognizing the motivational force of emotions, philosophers have tracked their negative impact on rational deliberation. In…Read more
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Il ruolo epistemico delle norme costitutiveIn Che fare? Nuove prospettive filosofiche sull’azione, . pp. 129-152. 2013.This chapter accounts for the epistemic role of constitutive norms of practical rationality from a Kantian constructivist perspective.
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Desideri e necessità: sull’incompletezza della ragione praticaIn M. Galletti (ed.), La mente morale. Persone, ragioni, virtù. pp. 83-99. 2014.This essay is a constructivist account of the role of desires in practical reasoning.
Carla Bagnoli
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
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University of Modena and Reggio EmiliaProfessor
Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Action |
Value Theory |
Normative Ethics |