Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x24gv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-10T17:30:23.462Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Defective Actions and Tyrannical Souls: Korsgaard on Evil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2017

PETER BRIAN ROSE-BARRY
PETER BRIAN ROSE-BARRY*
Affiliation:
Saginaw Valley State University
*
*<pbbarry@svsu.edu>
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Christine Korsgaard’s Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity is an impressive endeavour to synthesize the ethics of Plato and Kant in a comprehensive account of action and agency that locates the key to understanding both in self-constitution. A purportedly comprehensive account of action and agency will fail on its own terms if it cannot adequately account for some morally salient phenomenon. Korsgaard’s account fails to adequately account for the possibility of evil actions and evil people. If self-constitution is key to action and agency, then we must abandon the Platonic and Kantian elements that Korsgaard endorses.

L’ouvrage de Christine Korsgaard intitulé Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity représente un remarquable travail de synthèse des éthiques platonicienne et kantienne qui, de manière exhaustive, rend compte de l’action et de l’agentivité sous le prisme de la constitution de soi. Toute tentative de saisie parfaite de l’action et de l’agentivité en termes propres ne saurait aboutir sans une prise en compte adéquate d’un quelconque phénomène moral saillant. L’approche de Korsgaard ne prend pas suffisamment en compte la possibilité du mal sous forme d’actions ou d’individus. Si la constitution de soi demeure centrale pour l’action et l’agentivité, alors il faudra mettre à l’écart les éléments platoniciens et kantiens que Korsgaard fait siens.

Keywords

evilKantian ethicsChristine KorsgaardPlatoself-constitutionagency
Type
Original Article/Article original
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 29 - 46
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barry, Peter Brian 2011 Evil and Moral Psychology. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Benn, Stanley 1985 Wickedness. Ethics 95 (4): 795–810.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Richard 2005 The Abuse of Evil: The Corruption of Politics and Religion Since 9/11. Malden: Polity.Google Scholar
Calder, Todd 2013 “Is Evil Just Very Wrong?” Philosophical Studies 163 (1): 177–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Card, Claudia 2002 The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Card, Claudia 2010 Confronting Evils: Terrorism, Torture, Genocide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cole, Philip 2006 The Myth of Evil. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Critch, Raymond 2013 “Principled Tyranny: Can Korsgaard Explain Evil Action?” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 21 (2): 277–287.Google Scholar
Davidson, Donald 1980 Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Feinberg, Joel 2003 Problems at the Roots of Law: Essays in Legal and Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Formosa, Paul 2008 “A Conception of Evil.” Journal of Value Inquiry 42 (2): 217–239.Google Scholar
Garrard, Eve 2002 “Evil as an Explanatory Concept.” The Monist 85 (2): 320–336.Google Scholar
Garrard, Eve 1998 “The Nature of Evil.” Philosophical Explorations: An International Journal of the Philosophy of Mind and Action 1 (1): 43–60.Google Scholar
Haybron, Daniel 2002 “Moral Monsters and Saints.” The Monist 85 (2): 260–284.Google Scholar
Kekes, John 2005 The Roots of Evil. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Korsgaard, Christine 2009 Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Korsgaard, Christine 1996 The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kramer, Matthew 2011 The Ethics of Capital Punishment: A Philosophical Investigation of Evil and Its Consequences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lavin, Douglas 2004 “Practical Reason and the Possibility of Error.” Ethics 114 (3): 424–457.Google Scholar
McKenna, Michael 1998 “The Limits of Evil and the Role of Moral Address: A Defense of Strawsonian Compatibilism.” Journal of Ethics 2 (2): 123–142.Google Scholar
Mele, Alfred 2003 Motivation and Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Midgley, Mary 2001 Wickedness. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Milton, John 1998 Paradise Lost, 2 nd edition, Fowler, Alastair, ed. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Morton, Adam 2004 On Evil. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Russell, Luke 2006 “Evil-Revivalism Versus Evil-Skepticism.” Journal of Value Inquiry 40 (1): 89–105.Google Scholar
Russell, Luke 2010 “Dispositional Accounts of Evil Personhood.” Philosophical Studies 149 (2): 231–250.Google Scholar
Russell, Luke 2014 Evil: A Philosophical Investigation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Matthew 2016 “Teleology and Normativity.” Oxford Studies in Metaethics Volume 11, Shafer-Landau, Russ, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 214–240.Google Scholar
Singer, Marcus 2004 “The Concept of Evil.” Philosophy 79 (2): 185–214.Google Scholar