III.

The basic contrast of this book, then, is between two conceptions of practical reason. As best I can, I want here to provide a brief sketch of the contrast. Herman has argued that one requirement of an adequate conception of morality is that the rightness of an action must be the nonaccidental result of its motive. This she (rightly) takes to be one of Kant's most fundamental points. If we combine this requirement with the claim that morality is based on practical reason, then the rightness of an action is both (i) the nonaccidental result of its motive and (ii) practically rational, all things considered. All Kantians, I think, would agree. Moreover, on the interpretation given here, the Aristotelian would as well. The difference between the Kantian and the Aristotelian conceptions of practical reason is in how they account for these two requirements and in what Korsgaard has called reflective endorsement.^[16]

Consider first the Kantian account. Here some comments by Herman are helpful. She makes an illuminating distinction between the end or object of an action and the motive for an action. The end or object of an action, she says, "is that state of affairs the agent intends his action to bring about."^[17] About motives, she says, "The motive of an action, what moves the agent to act for a certain object, is the way he takes the object of his action to be good, and hence reason-giving."^[18] Now consider how this distinction might shed light on how the rightness of an action could be the nonaccidental result of its motive and rational, all things considered.

Imagine a case in which three people—A, B, and C—all do the right thing from different motives—A from narrow self-interest, B from natural sympathy, and C from the Kantian sense of duty. Let us assume that the right thing to do in the context is to render aid to someone in distress. A takes the object of his action to be good as a means of promoting his own narrowly self-interested goals, and it is in this sense that he sees the object as giving him a reason for action. Perhaps the person in distress is someone

[16] . See Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity , 49–89.

[17] . Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment , 25.

[18] . Ibid.

likely to benefit him in some way. Though his action is right, its rightness is not the nonaccidental result of his motive. B takes the object of his action to be good simply because it relieves the distress of someone in need, and it is in this sense that it gives him a reason for action. There is no further motive of self-interest. However, the rightness of B's action is not the nonaccidental result of its motive. This is because B takes the fact that his action relieves the distress of someone in need as a sufficient condition for its goodness. But surely this is not a sufficient justification. For in some circumstances relieving the distress of someone might be wrong because of other considerations. If this is true, then B's action, while right, is not the result of full rationality, that is, rational, all things considered. It is this failure that shows that B's action is not the nonaccidental result of its motive. C, on the other hand, takes the object of his action as good because he believes that relieving distress in the circumstances is the right thing to do. This is because he believes that doing so is required by the categorical imperative, that is, rational, all things considered from an impartial point of view. Unlike A and B, the rightness of C's action, Herman claims, is both the nonaccidental result of his motive and rational, all things considered.

No doubt, the Kantian view is a very powerful one, one not to be taken lightly or dismissed with caricature. How does the Aristotelian view, as I construe it here, differ? The major differences are these. First, full rationality, on the Aristotelian view, is not achieved by an impartial decision procedure, and second, there are no norms, on the Aristotelian view, that are asymmetrical in their regulative functions. On the Kantian view, the dominant norm of practical reason is the concern that one's deliberations take a certain form, namely, the impartial employment of the CI procedure (categorical imperative decision procedure). It is the fact that deliberations take this form that guarantees that the rightness of an act is the nonaccidental result of its motive. But on the Aristotelian view there is no such procedure. Rather, norms are the various ways an agent has of caring about himself or herself and others and other things in the natural and social environment. Hence, on this view, norms are at once both psychological and ethical. How, then, does the Aristotelian view guarantee that the rightness of action is the nonaccidental result of its motive? Here the concept of integrity plays a crucial role. The most general answer is that the character of an agent of integrity is such that any form of caring is influenced and balanced by the need to make a place for the other forms of caring indicative of the agent's character. Different things appear as good within the agent's deliberative field because the agent cares about a variety of things in a variety of ways. Practical reason, then, is not the capacity to employ an impartial decision pro-

cedure. Rather, it is a complex capacity that assists a psychology in its movement toward the equilibrium of integrity. This involves not only means-end reasoning but other things as well. Among them is the capacity for meriological analysis (the ability to relate parts to wholes) and the exercise of imagination. In order to gain an intuitive understanding of this, consider the agent of integrity in the thick sense.

The agent of integrity in the thick sense is one who cares in a variety of ways, including those of self-interest, natural sympathy, and impartial respect for others. It is the fact that such an agent is both sympathetic and respectful that he is not narrowly self-interested. Hence, A (above) reasons badly because his sense of self-interest is not regulated by other concerns. The Aristotelian self-interested agent could not see rendering aid as good simply because it serves some narrow self-interest. Why? Because his character is such that he cares about things other than himself, and his practical reason is guided by a sense of good that employs the criterion of selfsufficiency. Remember that self-sufficiency is the concern that all goods that appear within an agent's deliberative field be included within a way of life. Moreover, this concern is at once both psychological and ethical. Thus, his concerns, guided by the criterion of self-sufficiency, do not allow him to reason egoistically, because the objects of his actions are not seen by him to be good in a way that allows for such practical reasoning. Not only is it false that actions that render aid have only instrumental value for him; they are intrinsically valued as parts of the life most worth living. This consideration reflects the criterion of finality. The Aristotelian agent's practical reasoning, then, is one in which he is moved by the imaginative projection of a life of a certain sort. Why is it that he is moved by such a thought? Because of his character, the kind of person he is, one who is caring in a variety of ways and whose evaluations are guided by a certain sense of good. Thus he does not act for the goal of eudaimonia in the sense of pursuing happiness but for those goods envisioned within a way of life in which they are most meaningfully secured and balanced. It is his character that makes the vision both intrinsically alluring and rational. It is not the thought that these goods are means to the life most worth living.

Now consider the Aristotelian conception of a naturally sympathetic agent. The Aristotelian agent would not see the case of relieving distress as good simply because it serves some narrow self-interest. Nor would the Aristotelian sympathetic agent see rendering aid as good simply because it relieves distress. He would be concerned that it also be consistent with all the other things with which he is concerned. That is, he would see it as good

because it relieves distress and it is consistent with the respect, love, and other concerns he has. Again, this concern reflects practical reason guided by a certain conception of good. But the concern would not be a concern that the agent's deliberations take a certain form, as on the Kantian view.^[19] Rather, it would be entirely because of the substance of what the agent is concerned about, guided by the criteria of finality and self-sufficiency. In both the case of self-interest and the case of natural sympathy, the rightness of the Aristotelian's action would be the nonaccidental result of its motive. This is because the Aristotelian's normative conception of self-interest and sympathy are regulated by the other norms of the agent's psychology. By this I mean that what such an agent sees as in his or her interest or as sympathetic is shaped by other considerations. Thus, on the Aristotelian view as understood here, it is substance, not form, that regulates substance. Moreover, the norms of this psychology are such that they are all symmetrical in their regulative functions—impartial respect notwithstanding.

The contrast between the Kantian and Aristotelian views should now stand out in greater relief in the way that they account for both the requirement that an act be the nonaccidental result of its motive and the requirement that a right act is rational, all things considered. On the Kantian view, agents reason from an impartial perspective and the CI procedure, and the capacity for such reasoning governs their natural inclinations, which might otherwise lead them to do the wrong thing. This perspective employs an asymmetrical regulative norm and informs agents of how their characters are to be formed. On the Aristotelian view, the reasoning of an agent is shaped by the fact that an agent has a certain core character, one that cares in a variety of ways about himself or herself and other things in the natural and social environment and is guided by a certain sense of good. This is what it means to assert that practical reason is character-relative. It is the imaginative projection of a life shaped by a set of priorities that ultimately determines how the agent sees the object of his or her action as good and reason-giving, and it is the fit between vision and character that ultimately constitutes full rationality. If we apply these thoughts to the agent of in-

[19] . Later I will consider a distinction between procedural constructions of Kant and nonprocedural, or substantive, constructions. I take Sherman to suggest a nonprocedural understanding of the categorical imperative, whereas Korsgaard endorses a procedural view. Allen Wood also defends a procedural understanding in "The Final Form of Kant's Practical Philosophy," Kant's "Metaphysics of Morals," Spindel Conference 1997, Southern Journal of Philosophy 36, supplement (1998): 1–20.

tegrity in the thick sense, we will get, or so I argue, a better account of the rightness of actions. Nothing about such projection, however, requires an impartial decision procedure, and I take it as a requirement of the Aristotelian view to show how this is possible.

I also argue that the Aristotelian view gives us a better account of reflective endorsement than does the Kantian account recently defended by Korsgaard in her Tanner Lectures. There she says:

"Reason" means reflective success. So if I decide that my desire is a reason to act, I must decide that on reflection I endorse that desire. And here we run into the problem. For how do I decide that? Is the claim that I look at the desire, and see that it is intrinsically normative, or that its object is? . . . Does the desire or its object inherit its normativity from something else? Then we must ask what makes that other thing normative, what makes it the source of a reason. And now of course the usual regress threatens. What brings such a course of reflection to a successful end?^[20]

The Kantian solution to the regress problem entails a view of what full practical rationality is in terms of a conception of what, on its view, is the widest possible reflective endorsement. Complete reflective endorsement is reached on this view by the employment of the CI procedure. This means that the widest possible reflective endorsement is from the impartial point of view of respect for self and others. On the Aristotelian view, the widest reflective endorsement is from the point of view of a life as a whole and how that life accommodates all the goods found by the agent to be intrinsically important (finality and self-sufficiency). This means that one cannot accept the results of the CI procedure until one can see how those results factor into a life as a whole, a way of life. It also means that should those results fail to integrate within a way of life the goods that appear as ends within the agent's own deliberative field, then acting from the point of view of the CI procedure is neither fully reflective nor fully rational. I say more about this notion of reflective endorsement in the following chapters.