Giving reasons
Subtitle: interpersonal relationships and the conditions of autonomy
By: by Kyla Ebels Duggan
Published: 2007
Language: eng
Number of pages: 174
Description: I investigate how others should figure in our deliberations, asking why we have reasons to act on others' behalf and what these reasons are. I reject two standard approaches on the grounds that they yield implausible pictures of our regard for others, especially our intimates, and further put us in the wrong relationship to ourselves. The first, inspired by Hobbes' Leviathan , holds that you have reason to act on another's behalf just in case it is in your own interests to do so. The second, suggested by Harry Frankfurt and some contemporary feminists, is that you have reason to attend to the well-being of others only if and because you care about them. I argue that both approaches are incompatible with the close personal relationships that most of us value, and further put us in the wrong relationship to ourselves. I develop a Kantian approach, concluding that there is a sense in which acting for your own reasons rationally commits you to recognizing the reasons that others give you. I model my argument on Kant's political argument that we have a duty to leave the State of Nature and found a civil society. I claim that, similarly, we have obligations to stand to one another in a relationship that Kant calls the Moral Community. Within these relationships we recognize others as having the authority to create reasons for us by making choices of their own.

Taking the friendship that overlays marriage as a paradigm for Kant's Moral Community, I argue that this ideal involves the partners' reciprocal recognition of authority of two kinds. The first is selection authority: by choosing, your partner gives you reason to pursue his end with him, in preference to other equally worthwhile goals. The second is authority in judgment: a presumption that your partner's ends are well chosen. Finally, I discuss the role of the two kinds of authority in less intimate interactions, and explain how the model of marriage illuminates the force of our claims on one another in our moral relationships generally.
Notes: Thesis (Ph.D., Dept. of Philosophy)--Harvard University, 2007.

Includes bibliographical references.