Commitment and reflection in moral life

ABSTRACT

On the view that Nicholas Adams advocates in ‘Alternatives to Moral Common Ground’, ethics is complicit in undermining the commitments that constitute our moral lives, because by forcing us to articulate those commitments they lose their hold on us. In this paper I take Adams’ views as a starting point to explore the idea that ethics might be complicit in undermining our moral lives. Aiming to shed light on the relation between reflection and commitment, I will do two things. First, I try to explain why ethics, as a reflective enterprise, undermines the unspoken hold our commitments have on us. Second, I will explore the idea that reflection is destructive in the sense that it falsifies our pre-reflective commitments.

KEYWORDS:

• Reflection
• commitment
• articulation
• Nicholas Adams
• Christine Korsgaard
• Bernard Williams

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I derive these terms from Bernard Williams, whose work is deeply sensitive to the “problem of reflection and commitment, or of an external view of one’s beliefs as opposed to an internal involvement with them.” See: Bernard Williams, ‘Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline,’ 192–193.

2. Adrian W. Moore, “Introduction,” xviii.

3. Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, 93.

4. For this insight, I am indebted to Akeel Bilgrami, “The Visibility of Value,” 917–943.

5. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, 93–94.

6. Bernard Williams, “Persons, character and morality,” 17–18.

7. Ibid., 18 (my italics).

8. One might worry that pity is an emotion and not, as these phrasings suggest, a virtue. However, like others working in emotion theory, I do think there is a deep distinction between emotions and virtues, since emotions can develop into character traits. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for pressing me on this point. See for an influential account of, specifically, pity as a virtue: Brian Carr, “Pity and Compassion as Social Virtues,” 411–429.

9. See for example: Linda Zagzebski, Exemplarist Moral Theory.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rob Compaijen

Rob Compaijen (1986) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Protestant Theological University. His research focuses on the role of detachment in ethics, paying special attention to the notion of objectivity and the (epistemological) role of affect in ethical life. He is also writing a book, in Dutch, on envy.