values and ontology problems and perspectives

Beatrice Centi, Wolfgang Huemer (Eds.) Values and Ontology

Problems and Perspectives

P H E N O M E N O L O G Y & M I N D

Herausgegeben von / Edited by

Arkadiusz Chrudzimski Wolfgang Huemer

Band 13 / Volume 13

Beatrice Centi, Wolfgang Huemer (Eds.)

Values and Ontology

Problems and Perspectives

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Foreword

Raising the question concerning the relation between values and ontology is tantamount to inquiring whether values are real, whether perception or experiences of values are possible, as well as to exploring the question of how and to what extent value objectivism and objective validity are tenable in ethics and aesthetics. These issues, which offer interesting problems for historical and conceptual analysis, have already been dealt with by early phenomenologists like Brentano, Meinong, Ehrenfels, exponents of Ge-staltpsychology like Khler, Husserl, Hartmann and French phenomenolo-gists like Merleau-Ponty. Ethics, as well as aesthetics, must contend with ontological problems in order to justify the possibility of value judgements and their motivational force in the various contexts in which practical rea-son is involved; these are issues concerning the constitution of the object and of subjectivity itself. The essays collected in this volume discuss one of the most crucial issues of contemporary debate which has recently witnessed a rebirth of interest in ontology and aim to investigate the relations interlinking ontology, ethics, and aesthetics.

The editors wish to thank their colleagues from foreign and Italian Uni-versities for contributing to this project promoted by the Department of Philosophy at the University of Parma in the context of a national research project.

Beatrice Centi and Wolfgang Huemer

Table of Contents

Introduction ................................................................................................ 7 BEATRICE CENTI

Practical Necessity: The Subjective Experience ...................................... 23

CARLA BAGNOLI Relations, Quasi-Assumptions and Material Aprioris: Reality and Values in Brentano, Meinong, Husserl ................................. 45

BEATRICE CENTI Value Facts and Value Experiences in Early Phenomenology ........................................................................ 105

MARIA E. REICHER Facts, Values, Emotions, and Perception ............................................... 137

FIORENZA TOCCAFONDI A Glimpse into the Sphere of Ideal Being: The Ontological Status of Values .......................................................... 155

ROBERTO POLI Brentano, Marty, and Meinong on Emotions and Values ...................... 171

ARKADIUSZ CHRUDZIMSKI How is the Pair of Contraries Activity and Passivity Envisaged in Husserlian Phenomenology? ............................................ 191

MARIA VILLELA-PETIT

Ethical and Ontological Dimensions of Merleau-Pontys Phenomenology of Perception................................................................. 213

MARA MELETTI BERTOLINI Experiencing Art Austrian Aesthetics between Psychology and Psychologism ................ 267

WOLFGANG HUEMER List of Contributors .............................................................................. 289 Index of Names .................................................................................... 293

Values and Ontology, Beatrice Centi and Wolfgang Huemer (eds), Frankfurt: ontos, 2009, pp. 722.

Introduction

BEATRICE CENTI The essays collected in this volume investigate the problem of objective validity in the ethical sphere from different standpoints, which are, how-ever, complementary and convergent in considering ethical action as a way of experiencing and thus of relating to reality, where the agent is involved in the complex of his own capacities of evaluation and apprehending of values. In particular, the very meaning of experiencing and also of the possibility of considering values as realities is explored.

Thus, on the one hand, the volume proposes to analyse the acceptations of the real in their historical evolution from the discussions on the term of intentional reference in Brentanos doctrine of intentionality which distinguish the thought of Meinong and Husserl, but also of Marty and Hartmann, inasmuch as they converge towards a notion of objectivity viewed as independence from the subject, which can also be seen as objectivity of values. In a clearly post-Kantian context, such a notion ex-cludes every form of substantialism; on the contrary, it implies an idea of the real above and beyond the conflict between idealism and realism as objective validity, as being valid regardless of its being affirmed and accepted and thus having the force to request and impose affirmation. It is from this point of view that values may also be intended as forms of re-ality. On the other hand, the different ways of experiencing including the experiencing of validity, viewed as the experiencing of the self-imposing force of what has value, of the force of moral obligation will be explored.

In refusing also the opposition between formalism and anti-formalism, these studies have aimed to focus on the issues involved in the interlace-ment between form and content, a crucial step in order to posit the prob-lem, considered to be anti-formalistic par excellence, of the reality of values. This problem can, however, be posited from the view point of

8 BEATRICE CENTI

formal but not formalistic ethics, and thus with full awareness of the inseparability of form and content; from a historical point of view, an example of this is represented by Husserls ethics, developed by analogy with an acceptation of formal ontology intending the real of which the subject of ethical action is part as a continuous taking form process. 1. To speak of ontology in these pages does not entail any reference to a substantialistic conception of the real or to an atomistic conception referring back to unrelated entities; thus there is no reference to a solipsis-tic subject, perhaps viewed as an aggregate, with a rational part detached from the other parts composing it atomistically. Indeed, in order to validate the experience of practical necessity, in the Kantian sense of the authority of practical reason, it is possible to resort to manners whereby, in the se-cond half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, the con-cept of normative force was investigated in the field of the philosophy of logic and cognitive theory in particular by Lotze, Windelband, Rickert, Frege, Brentano, Meinong, Marty, Husserl, and Hartmann. In these resear-ches, a notion of the word formal which differs from that pertaining to formal logic and in certain cases coincides with that of Kantian transcen-dental logic has evolved; a notion that has been interpreted in various ways, but all of these aim to signify the normative interprenetration of form and content.

In this historical perspective, the objectivity of Kantian practical reason is viewed as consisting in its force to become a subjective motive through respect, and therefore in its being perceived as valid, because, as Carla Bagnoli states, morality is the experience of being bound and necessitated and this can be linked to Husserls formal ethics. Indeed, for Husserl, the word formal certainly does not denote in the ethical sphere a void demand as opposed to the world of life, which is full of contents, but the process of evaluation and apprehending of what is absolutely due, albeit in a precise context, for every moment of time and for every subject, inas-much as both subject and object, while being mutually independent, are correlated.

In a different cultural ambit, being devoid of Kantian ascendency, as is that of Brentanos philosophy, the same issue of objective validity in ethics is posited as a problem of correctness and is dealt with from the point of

Introduction 9

view of a close link between feeling and judgement, which obliges us to approve what we feel as being correct. For this reason, Brentanos ethics is also a constant reference for Husserls, which finds in feeling, as well as in the reflection of rational pondering, the means to evaluate correctly and thus to discover the validity of the relations in which consist the objectivity of values, their so-being and not their being in a different way, and in this sense their being real, parallel to what occurs in cognitive processes.

If rational reflection is not opposite to the sentimental, psychological and cultural components of ethical action, but on the contrary it is considered to be interwoven with these; if ethical action is not considered separately from the context in which it takes place, but as part of this; and if the context is considered as a specific configuration of a form, as a variant of general structures, it is possible to justify the validity of determinate rela-tions such as those expressed by values. This is Husserls view of formal ethics, which correlate ethical action with states of affairs; this perspective is adopted, in the French phenomenological tradition, by Merleau-Ponty, for whom ethical behaviour that is voluntary and rational cannot be isolated in a world apart, different from the empirical world, but it takes shape in the global phenomenal field of perception and in the orientations that are outlined there. In this field, by way of the multiplication of diffe-rent viewpoints and by substituting one perspective with another, it is pos-sible to comprehend and exploit the polyvalence of the structures. As Mara Meletti underlines, manifold perspectives exhibit a form, which by its own force takes on diverse configurations, and which in this sense is indepen-dent of subjectivity, but it is engendered by the relationship of corporeal sensoriality and the surrounding world, and by their correspondence.

The interlacement of form and content, of form and matter can manifest itself in complex configurations, in articulated structures, which can be variously integrated. In this sense there is an important historical and theo-retical link between phenomenology and Gestaltpsychologie, in the way in which the problem of form and the relation of the whole with the parts is posited and in the way in which values and reality are connected. Towards the end of the 1930s Khlers work The Place of Value in a World of Facts is emblematic; his explicit criticism of the dichotomy between fact and value represents a finishing point and lies in various ways at the base of the theoretical perspectives discussed in these essays. In opposition to

10 BEATRICE CENTI

logical empiricism, which sets whatever is descriptive and factual, that is to say objective and neutral, against what is evaluative, Khler defends a more complex conception of the conformation of the real, where facts and values permeate one another. As demonstrated by Fiorenza Toccafondi, by value, Khler means all that implies a sense of requiredness as well as anything that deals with negative, positive, attractive, tempting, or repul-sive features of an object, situation, or event (p. 140); in this sense, there is a link between this definition of value and the concept of valence (Auf-forderung) developed by Lewin, emphasizing the value of invitation or the obstacle to certain actions given by certain objects, events and perceptual situations. Representing a long tradition of Gestaltism of the Berlin School, Khler holds that an object can possess the quality of value in itself, and not because it is invested with the interests of the subject that contemplates it: objects are connoted by an emotional component, by a degree of attraction or unpleasantness. These are tertiary qualities or expressive qualities, which have aroused so much interest in contemporary ethical debate. The subject is no neutral or contemplative observer, but often becomes part of situations with emotional implications. Experience consists not only of purely factual components, but of situations, structures and contexts having an orientation or tendency, an ought to be, a circum-stance that finds expression in both descriptive and evaluative concepts. Tertiary qualities, the properties of value, are thus for Khler objective Gestalt qualities in the field of perception, whose objectivity does not differ from that of secondary qualities; and, as with secondary qualities, tertiary qualities are relational properties dependent on the presence of a subject in relation to events and states of affairs and they are experienced directly. Therefore for Khler perception is not neutral but can be emotio-nal in itself, at the primary level of perception, disclosing to the perceiver the value of what is being perceived. In this sense Khler can speak of emotional perception, whereas values can be considered as properties of states of affairs in a realistic perspective in a perspective of phenomenal objectivity which considers them to be dependent both on states of affairs and on the characteristics of the perceiving subject. The analogy with secondary qualities also characterizes the reflection on the value of beauty, which in turn has its origins in issues implicit in Brentanos doctrine of intentionality, on which Twardowski has focused in particular in his

Introduction 11

distinction between object and content; as is shown in the essay by Wolfgang Huemer, an example of this is the aesthetics of Witasek, for whom content, as an immanent object, can express the peculiar reality, the quasi-existence, of properties such as beauty, precisely because they are analogous with secondary qualities.

If the concept of value has been historically considered as the most appropriate concept to offset the faults of abstraction and emptiness associated with ethical formalism traditionally considered to be of Kantian origin, but often in an acceptation of formalism that still needs to be liberated from certain historiographical constraints due, above all, to the interpretations of Hegel and Scheler it has also provided an interesting testing bench for the reflection on the real, which became intense in va-rious moments in the history of thought towards the close of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and which was obliged to contend with the question of the reality or non-reality of values. This is a question that has enabled us to discover new and more interesting accep-tations of formalism, both by way of the elaboration of the concepts of pure logic and formal ontology, and by way of the distinction between validity and values, and finally by way of the elaboration of notions of objective validity transversal to cognitive theory and ethics. In particular, the discussion on the relation between reality and the term of intentional reference, departing from Brentano, has presented significant ethical impli-cations mainly in Meinong and in Husserl. As demonstrated in Beatrice Centis essay, for Meinong value can also be termed as real on the strength of the analysis of the mental phenomenon of assumptions and of the elabo-ration of the concept of objective, as the expression of a wider accepta-tion of the real with respect to that of existence, the analysis and possible ethical valence of which form the subject matter of Maria Reichers essay. For Husserl, value can be considered as real inasmuch as it is possible to translate its formal ontology in ethical terms, that is to say, that complex acceptation of the real overcoming the opposition between the ideal and the real, which had always constituted the object of his studies as from the Logische Untersuchungen. The definition of what can be intended as real is a constant theme in 20th century philosophy, as illustrated by Roberto Poli, who with reference to Hartmann states that the sphere of ideal being does not only include formal (logical or mathematical) entities (p. 159),

12 BEATRICE CENTI

but also values; the same can be said for Meinongs theory of dignitatives and desideratives, which are as Reicher points out ideal objects of a higher order, like numbers or melodies. The possibility of conceiving of the formal, without considering it as being abstract or empty, but as having a content, emerges as a theoretical perspective which once again forms a link with Brentano and, in particular, with his analysis of the feeling of correctness (also dealt with in Arkadiusz Chrudzimskis essay), Meinongs theory of value, and Husserls formal ethics; once again, it reveals signify-cant correspondences with Gestalpsychologie, departing from Brentanos reflections on the whole and on the parts, for the impulse these have given to the study of the concept of form, which has become more and more suited to the elaboration of complex idealreal entities. Thus, as Poli states, underlining the anti-relativistic and critical approach vis--vis the skepticism which seems to be a common denominator among these philo-sophers, values will be studied as ideal entities, regardless of whether they are grasped by any subject.

In his essay, Chrudzimski focuses on the importance of Humes claim that emotions constitute the basis of our moral evaluations, but he also re-minds us that Brentano who nevertheless attributes great importance to feeling does not subscribe to the skeptical and relativistic implications inherent in Humes thought; and it is worth mentioning that Husserl, who also attributes the same importance to feeling, does not hold with Humes separation of facts and values. For Chrudzimski too, it is particularly signi-ficant that judgements and emotions should be interpreted by Brentano as mental states of a higher order. Like judgement, emotion is also a mental acceptance or rejection, but this time the acceptance or rejection has an emotional character (p. 173), a standpoint that has led many philosophers to ponder on the nature of what is being referred to in this case and which can be identified as a state of affairs. In Chrudzimskis opinion, Brentano anticipated here and in other texts ontological doctrines of Sachverhalte and Objective proposed by Stumpf and Meinong (p. 178); moreover, in this connection, Martys standpoint is interesting because he is convinced of the necessity to introduce mind independent truth-makers in the objec-tive world (p. 180); so, if there were to be such a thing as an objectively right emotion, then there must be objective values in the world. Therefore if, on the one hand, we have a line of thought that tends to advocate the

Introduction 13

independence of values and their objectivity, on the other hand we have a line of thought headed by Moore, whereby even if Hume demonstrated that no normative claims descend from a pure description, Moore observed that for every situation there seems to be a close correlation between its des-criptive properties and the normative truths regarding it. This line of thought is linked to the theme of supervenience, whereby normative pro-perties of a given situation supervene on its descriptive properties (p. 182), a perspective that is attuned to that of Marty, for whom objective values or states of values mean that all values attached to the objects in the world that provide us with truth-makers for our right emotions super-vene on the descriptive properties of these objects (p. 183). Marty intro-duced mind independent states of values in the role of truth-makers for our emotions. As Reicher reminds us, the same function of truth-makers of our true value judgements is attributed by Meinong to peculiar entities; the ob-jects of higher order supervene upon their inferior and qualities like being pleasant, beautiful or good are based upon inferior qualities, so that every object that has the appropriate inferior qualities is necessarily pleasant, beautiful or good. Analogous considerations apply in the case of desidera-tives, the expression Meinong uses to designate ethical objectives. More-over, something similar can be said also for the value of beauty, as is pointed out by Wolfgang Huemer in connection with Witaseks aesthetics, thanks to the interplay between an objects mode of giving itself in a sub-jective emotive reaction and the judgement of beauty. In addition to se-condary qualities and similar ones to these Witasek also holds that it is possible for aesthetic properties to emerge, depending on the interaction between the object that has the relevant properties and the subject perceiving it, because a presentation of an object arouses a positive or a negative emotion depending on the characteristics of the object. As Huemer explains, this means that it is the object that distinguishes aesthetic judgement from other forms of judgement and that it is the object that has the properties to arouse pleasure, but also that the ontological status of aesthetic values and properties are considered relevant only insofar as they become intentional objects of our aesthetic experiences (p. 268).

2. As Poli states, values will be studied as internal objects of specific types of experience (p. 159) and this also applies as much to Husserl it

14 BEATRICE CENTI

will be sufficient to consider the theme of the analogy between perception (Wahrnehmung) and perception of value (Wertnehmung) as to Brentano and Meinong, to Hartmann and Merleau-Ponty. Yet this is a theme that can be related to the particular phenomenon of experiencing the force of moral law, of its necessity, a theme isolated by Kant and to which Carla Bagnoli devotes her essay. The analysis of what is to be understood by the subjective experience of morality, in the light of the Constructivist inter-pretation of Kants philosophy advanced by John Rawls, reveals such an experience as being inextricably bound up with the conception of oneself as a rational agent. If moral obligations become authoritative through self-legislation, they do not exist prior to and independently of the activity of practical reason; in self-reflection reason acquires knowledge of the law-like form of the working of reason itself: moral law can oblige us only insofar as we represent it as an act of self-legislation (p. 31), which is the form of moral knowledge; the autonomy of reason does not simply refer to the origin of principles, but it concerns the logical form of the law (p. 33). As a reflection that binds agent and moral request, self-legislation has a subjective aspect, because it is reasoning that confers the structure of the law to moral requests; inasmuch as it demonstrates that rational will is a law in itself, it has an objective aspect. This explains the authority of morality and can be considered as the appeal to the Fact of Reason argument, a phenomenological argument, which points out that autono-my is inextricably bound up with the consciousness of freedom, and there is nothing further upon which to ground this consciousness []. It is called Fact because it is underivative (p. 35). Such a fact allows a subjective consciousness in this sense the argument is merely phenomenological which nevertheless enables us to understand the objectivity of the moral law. Thus Kant has already transcended the mere opposition between rea-lism and non-realism; the working of reason itself, which is a process, shows the structure of the will in its full autonomy, that is, in its validity and authority. Being rational is synonymous with being self-reflective and, as such, being able to proceed to the structuring of will in addition to that of cognition; as shown by the Constructivist approach, for the ratio essendi of morality to have objectivity, it must be related to its ratio cognoscendi, in the sense that self-legislation consists in taking the logical form of the law and being bound by it. The direct experience of the objectivity of

Introduction 15

practical reason is the experience of respect; this feeling expresses the con-sciousness that moral law is obligatory, and this is a form of experience, a direct experience of the objectivity, of acting rationally, of principled action.

Speaking of ethical objectivity is also tantamount to speaking of experience. This is demonstrated not only in Carla Bagnolis essay, but also in the essays by Maria Villela-Petit and Mara Meletti, dedicated in particular to the various ways of experiencing and to the wealth of nuances inherent in each of these, from corporeal experience and the different forms of sensitivity and sensitive receptiveness to the experience of the unitary flow of consciousness. Experiencing ultimately involves the detec-tion of a so-being and the apprehending of relations of validity interacting with the constitution of the experiencing subject; this is even more so in the case of practical necessitation, which always occurs in precise contexts and in which there is the interaction this is the evaluation process of the capacities of feeling and reasoning. Both the peculiar Kantian theme of respect and the theme of feeling, developed notably by Hume, Kant, and Brentano, have imposed on ethics a reconsideration of the connection bet-ween feeling and judgement and have prompted investigation on feeling itself as a form of experience, whether this be empirical feeling, or the feeling of values as an experience of validity itself. For this reason particu-lar attention has been dedicated in these essays to the involvement of both feeling and judgement in the evaluation process, a complex phenomenon in which the correlation of subject and object is a highly close one: let us con-sider, for example, the problem of the relation between secondary and terti-ary qualities and the participation also of emotional modes (such as the ex-periencing of joy), assumptive and imaginative, which render evaluation the object of a psychology of judgement and will, as well as a logic of feel-ing. Both the sphere of Gestaltpsychologie and that of phenomenology have provided us with tools for a more in depth examination of these the-mes, such as the qualitative analysis of experience according to the pheno-menological method advanced by Khler and the identification of possible forms of necessarity as Gestalt qualities of the perceptive field, regardless of subjective interests. As for Husserls phenomenology in general and its developments in particular in French philosophy, we may consider the relationship of the ethical agent with the context of his action, also from

16 BEATRICE CENTI

the point of view of the dynamics of passivity and activity, a significant issue not only as is well-known in the cognitive sphere, but also in the sphere of ethics and in the conception of the subject itself.

The essays by Villela-Petit and Meletti underline the fact that receptivity and activity are not opposed and that receptivity is no other than a prelimi-nary level of activity, whose acts of perception are never isolated or partial, but always included in a sensitive field pre-given to consciousness. The study of the life of consciousness in the alternation of activity and passivity is part of Villela-Petits more general effort to interpret Husserls transcen-dentalism as being interwoven with the life-world, so that, as Husserl states, the ontic meaning (Seinssinn) of the pre-given life-world is a sub-jective structure (Gebilde), it is the achievement of experiencing, pre-scientific life. In this life the meaning and the ontic validity (Seinsgeltung) of the world are built up of that particular world, that is, which is actually valid for individual experience (p. 194n); thus phenomenology seeks out the structures, the ultimate laws of the overall life of consciousness, at the heart of which is the ego, which is therefore not only at the heart of think-ing, but also of perceiving, judging, feeling and will. Passivity is not merely receptive but it is a living passivity that unifies experiences, placing them in correlation with one another, forming but also extending the syn-thesis of the lived experience which thus takes shape in the unitary com-plex of consciousness; in this sense, there is no form without content and syntheses already occur within the same sensitive experience an orga-nized field, not a chaos of sensations and not solely in the intellect. From the point of view of the denial of the dualism of activity and passivity and of matter and form, the ego, the individualized subject, cannot but emerge from the pre-given passivity. Moreover, the regularity of the associative links immanent to consciousness, regardless of the will of the subject, and presupposed by his acts, which have been stimulated by this regularity, is also given. From the ethical point of view, not only the context in which a person lives becomes important, but also the history of his life the inner field of the lived past experience with respect to which the person can know, evaluate and practically determine himself.

A persons rational reflexive capacities enable him to retrieve his perso-nal course of life, to act upon his own nature, upon what has become, by habit, character or circumstance, a (passive) second nature and to transform

Introduction 17

it in order to be able to act without constraint. This is a sequence of events in which, as far as both the individual and the community is concerned, active tension must always be reinstated vis--vis passivity, viewed also as a complex of egotistic motives.

In this context, the feeling of love deserves particular attention. This feeling whether intended as love for the person who is close to us or as love for humanity inspires a renewal of the person and makes him aspire towards good; with respect to this, spiritual activity itself becomes receptive, thus revealing even more patently the complexity of the continu-ous interplay between activity and passivity.

Consciousness is not an isolated entity, but a pre-given sensitive field, with its own organised structure. These themes, present in Husserls stu-dies on the connection between the body and the psyche, are taken up by Merleau-Ponty, for whom, as Meletti points out, what is given is given in an individual experience but also in structured configurations enabling its recognisability and communicability. A universal ground, in which perceptive differences as differences of Gestalt are rooted, is also given. Normativity is thus deep-rooted in common corporeal and behavioural structures that operate prior to every individual and historical differentia-tion, because evaluative and selective abilities are also proper to ante-pre-dicative life. Whereas the empirical body is intended as the cross-roads between generality and individuation, as the site of original sensorial syn-tony, the genesis of reflection from the antepredicative and impersonal life causes it to be embedded in a common naturality, in general and also evaluative modes of experiencing.

If the phenomenical field of perception operates as a global whole, having the power to orientate intentions, gestures, meanings and coordina-ting them in a unity, things do not appear as neutral objects but display meanings and values to which gestures and actions originally conform; and the multiplicity of perspectives can take account of complex cognitive behaviours, of motivated practical behaviours and choices.

This leads to go beyond the dichotomy between fact and value, already adumbrated despite his relationship with Hume in Brentanos concept of secondary reference, which can be a feeling or an evaluation, as well as a judgement, and in the analogies between objectivating and non-objecti-vating acts, which represents the most fruitful aspect of this Husserlian

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distinction. A wider notion of objectivity is possible, whereby descriptions can be interlaced with evaluations, a major theme in Husserls ethics and Gestaltism of the Berlin School elaborated by Khler, who was convinced that experience consists of structures and contexts having orientations supported by an intrinsic necessarity.

Behaviour and perceptive situation interrelate by way of a common form which perception configures, in the words of Merleau-Ponty, as an in-itself-for-me; any philosophy of substance generating dualisms becomes useless, inasmuch as unity of sense already manifests itself at a pre-catego-rial level. This is how Merleau-Ponty explicits the meaning of a material apriori, which he takes up from Scheler but it was also an important concept for Husserl, too as an apriori of forms that are self-regulated according to intrinsic norms also preceding scientifically established laws.

Values also emerge in the field of perception and we are able to perceive them from variously configured relations and in correspondence with a specific behavioural structure, intended as an open and remodulable form. Therefore it is possible to have ever more integrated perceptions, and ever more profound forms of apprehending of the real. Perceptive experi-ence always remodulable manifests a primitive dimension of intersub-jective communication, because perception is not the act of a single sub-ject, but it is the fundamental process whereby subjectivity and the world jointly acquire their configuration. The real is focused, with different end results depending on the organisation of the field, the variation of perspec-tives and the networks optically offering different landscapes. This pro-cess is facilitated by the perceivers aptitudes, by his corporeal and by his mental, cultural and social attitudes; thus what is perceived is not only an intended object as a term of cognition, but it is a unit of value, as in perception there are co-determining emotional, sentimental and evaluative factors. Therefore it is possible to have shared evaluations and values, inasmuch as they are not abstractly elaborated and imposed but they emerge from the shaping of the field of experience, from the process of configuration of the real with which we mutually relate via perception and the more complex attitudes this engenders. The forms of the real with their own particular structures emerge all the more clearly when the attitude of the person referring to these is more organized and differentiated being enriched with perspectives on the different levels of his life and natural

Introduction 19

and cultural, or passive and active, constitution. It is particularly significant how, by way of the concepts of the adequate power of vision of the real, of attitude and of perspective, it is possible to approach the phenomenolo-gical philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and that of Iris Murdoch, who comes from a totally different cultural context, but considers the possibility of links between cognitive and evaluative activity, between perceptive confi-guration and values, and considers the contribution of the imagination to the perceptive configuration of the real to be an important one.

The question of whether the psychological constitution of the subject variously referred to in the perspectives we have developed might imply psychologism, in the sense in which Husserl introduced the term and criticised it as the root of skepticism and relativism, becomes unavoidable. As Huemer reminds us, according to Brentano, always considering the experiencing subject also as the psychological subject does not necessarily entail a psychologistic conclusion. The analysis of the interaction between psychology and modes of experiencing enables us, on the contrary, to identify even more closely the wealth of such modes, departing from the experience of beauty, analogous to that of truth and good, but more appro-priate to signal the unyielding subjectivity of experiencing, inasmuch as this is interwoven with feeling and the experience of pleasure. However, also in the aesthetic experience it is possible to identify properties of the object analogous to secondary qualities, precisely because these are appre-hended by way of a merely subjective reaction. On the borderline between object and subject, a reality to which the value of beauty can be attributed and which can thus be considered to be of aesthetic importance, takes shape. This is a valence of experiencing which, on the one hand, is depen-dent on the conformation of the object, but on the other hand, on the con-formation of the subject, that is to say, ultimately on psychological laws that, being normative for all mankind, elude the criticism of psychologism, and enable a judgement of beauty to be valid for everyone, and the attribu-tion of the value of beauty to be objectively valid. An emotive experience thus reveals other aspects of the real and, as demonstrated by Witasek, taking up Brentanian issues from a standpoint based on Meinongs theory of objects, it is possible to have a form of aesthetic experience, not related to what exists and is perceptible through the senses, but which has the

20 BEATRICE CENTI

power to refer to what does not exist and yet, in a certain way, exists, to non-existent objects, to fictitious objects, to objects apprehended in the imagination. The aesthetic properties of objects are ideal, extra-objectual properties, and express the relations in which such objects consist and which are can be identified by way of feeling and in a determined psycho-logical order, which only allows the presentation of these relations and the experiencing of these, an experience objectively valid; the object urges the acknowledgement of characteristics that must elicit a subjective but objectively valid reaction for them to be considered as real. From the point of view of the Meinongian theory of the object, the psychological constitution of the subject and the most subtle modes of its experiencing not only find a place, without any implications of psychologism, but even complement each other: in fact, on the one hand, as Huemer points out, the term is beautiful in the judgment A is beautiful does not mean that A arouses pleasure, but rather refers to a property of an object A, which is completely in A and not relative to (the experiences of) a subject, and which can be grasped (it is anschaulich erfassbar) (p. 281); on the other hand, this is only possible by way of subjective experience regulated by psychological laws that found aesthetic norms. This is a valence of experiencing, which could be defined as quasi-universal and which enables us to find out other properties and more extensive boundaries of what is real. Even Ehrenfels, a subjectivist as far as ethical values are concerned, considers, as Reicher states, that it is possible to have a sort of value objectivism in the domain of aesthetics and that it is possible to speak of absolute beauty, if this is intended as a property of objects of our imagina-tion, of complexes of presentations, in general of immanent objects; more-over, aesthetic value properties are somehow directly perceived along with the sensory (and perhaps other) properties they supervene upon (p. 130). Significantly Reicher underlines how not only Brentano, a supporter of empirical psychology, takes it for granted that there are true genuine value judgements (p. 113), in his proposal of a type of strong value objectivism (p. 114), but also Meinong is inclined to value objectivism as early as the 1890s, when he devotes his studies to psychological and ethi-cal investigations concerning value. Meinong never identifies having value with being valued, but with the possibility of being valued; an object can have the property of having the ability to be the actual basis of a value

Introduction 21

feeling (p. 115), a dispositional property, independent of the existence of a subject that values the object and analogous to secondary properties. An object can arouse feelings in subjects of an appropriate nature under appropriate conditions (p. 116), and this is why it is possible to speak of dispositionalism as a version of objectivism in Meinong. Of great importance are value feelings in which the experience of value takes shape, because value feelings are said to present [prsentieren] values, just as cognitive states (perception, thoughts) present objects and states of affairs. Feelings thus get a quasi-cognitive function (p. 118) and are a means of apprehending values, a perspective that permits the justification of the action-motivating force of value recognition thanks to the interplay between feeling and cognition. The unitary path outlined by Reicher in Meinongs theory of value affords her the opportunity to underline how this ends with an explicit declination in the ethical sense of objectives, which are very close to what is nowadays commonly called states of affairs or facts (p. 119). In the field of emotional presentation, the dig-nitatives can correspond to the objects and the desideratives correspond to the objectives (thanks to their propositional structure, they are of the type that x ought to be done). Other entities have a propositional structure, the value facts, expressed in the form that x is good. In a Meinongian spirit, it is possible, for Reicher, to assume that there are value objects and va-lue objectives (p. 122). Although Meinong did not fully develop this as-pect of his philosophy, it detains the merit of having posited the issue of what type of entities the dignitatives and desideratives are, and how certain entities can be from an objectivist point of view the truthmakers of our true value judgments (p. 122). Also for Meinong there is the possibility of value experiences, which are perfectly compatible with his objectivist viewpoint, thanks to which Meinongs value theory is the most highly developed from an ontological point of view; moreover, he shares with Brentano and Ehrenfels (despite the latters opposition to ethical subjecti-vism, which matured in the debate on the possible value of the past and other non-existent objects) and with Husserl the idea that there is a connection between values and emotions as well as the Cognitivist conviction that there are true value judgments.

In the common perspective of a critical valence of the reality of values, the studies presented in this volume lay emphasis on modes of integration

22 BEATRICE CENTI

between cognition and evaluation, based on the ability to perceive the real in its multiple modes of configuration, to which correspond human capaci-ties of constitutive and self-constitutive interaction with the real. They are based on a wider notion of perception, which can also be a perception of values which, in turn, are present in a wider acceptation of the real; in this way, it is possible to speak of value objectivism and justify the way in which the apprehending of these can be objectively valid and constitute an ethical subject, inasmuch as the subjects action is normatively oriented by such an apprehending, and is capable of an action-motivating force.

It would seem possible to posit fundamental issues in the ethical domain, without necessarily having recourse to traditional dualisms that inevitably generate skeptical and relativistic conclusions, but in the light of correla-tive dynamics, that is to say, of modes of relation to the real, which root ethical action, evaluations, and values in the shaping of reality itself, both subjective and objective. Although explored from different points of view, these themes let emerge common problems and solutions, representing fecund issues of the philosophy in 20th century.

Values and Ontology, Beatrice Centi and Wolfgang Huemer (eds), Frankfurt: ontos, 2009, pp. 2343.

Practical Necessity:

The Subjective Experience1

CARLA BAGNOLI Moral obligations appear to have a force that other kinds of obligations do not have: they seem inescapable, irresistible and overriding. Moreover, they seem to derive these qualities from nothing external to their own do-main. That is, moral obligations are inescapable and obligating per se and also without qualification. They seem to rest on no other condition but their being moral obligations. Apparently, the unconditionality of moral obligations sets them apart from other kinds of obligations, which similarly rule over conduct, such as the norms of etiquette or the rules of chess. These norms are binding and obligating only conditionally, that is, on the condition that one wants to behave properly or intends to play chess. By contrast, moral obligations are obligating also unconditionally, that is, even when the agent does not want to abide by morality.

How to account for these alleged features of moral obligations is one fundamental question about the justification of morality, and one tradi-tional answer to this question is that moral obligations derive their special authority from reason. On this prominent philosophical view, which ap-peals to the Kantian tradition, their normative force is akin to necessity, and it is the mark of objectivity in ethics. The idea of practical necessity is meant to capture both the external (constraining) and the internal (moti-vating) aspects of the special bindingness of moral obligations. The objec-tivity of morality is illusory, unless we are capable of showing that moral obligations work like instances of practical necessity.

1 I would like to thank Beatrice Centi and Robert Stern for their comments on earlier drafts.

24 CARLA BAGNOLI

These claims are, however, largely disputed. Some philosophers doubt that the criteria for the objectivity of morality should include necessity and unconditionality, and argue that to be compelling obligations must always be part of the agents deliberative set (Williams 1985). Others deny that moral obligations are unlike the norms of etiquette, or that they have a dig-nified status that accounts for a special kind of bindingness and inescapa-bility that distinguish them from any other kind of normative statement (Foot 1978, pp. 158173). It is thus an open question whether moral obli-gations really enjoy the unqualified normative authority that Kant attaches to them (Darwall 1990).

Even more problematic seems Kants project to ground the alleged un-qualified authority of moral obligations on reason. Many have objected that the rationalist project is hopeless and fruitless, and ultimately at odds with the scientific conception of the world (Mackie 1977). One reason for this kind of skepticism is that practical necessity appears to be of a differ-ent kind and rank than causal necessity; it is a special kind of causality that pertains to rational beings insofar as they are rational (Kant G, 4, p. 446).2 Skeptics argue that the special kind of force that moral obligations appear us to have is nothing but a subjective illusion created by the complex web of devices that attend to the enforcement of moral norms. It is no evidence that moral obligations exert a peculiar kind of authority. It could be, then, that the difficulty that philosophers face in offering a persuasive construal of the special bindingness of moral obligations depends on the fact that this is no problem at all. The claim that moral obligations carry a special nor-mative or motivational force is simply false, and rests on some confusion about the nature of moral discourse and of practices of social enforcement (Foot 1978, pp. 162ff; Mackie 1977). In fact the binding force of moral obligations is nothing but the impression that we feel ourselves unable to escape (Foot 1978, p. 162). The special kind of inescapability that Kant associates to moral obligations may turn out to be merely the reflection of the way morality is taught (Foot 1978, p. 162). There is nothing distinc-tively moral about this sort of psychological necessitation, except in the material sense that it concerns the training and the enforcement of moral customs.

2 Page references to Kants texts refer to the Prussian Academy edition.

Practical Necessity 25

Contrary to this Kantian dogma, skeptics also argue, we do not actually experience them as inescapable, irresistible or overriding. That things are not as the rationalist has it is just a fortunate fact of human life, because to accord moral obligations the sovereignty that Kant attributes to them would defeat and undermine all other projects and endeavors of ours, de-priving us of any reason to live our life (Wolf 1986). That is to say, giving up the unconditionality of moral obligations is a good thing, after all. There is nothing to lose in disabusing ourselves from the realist misconception of morality (Mackie 1977, Williams 1995a and 1995b).

My aim in this paper is to reject this conclusion by attacking the grounds on which the skeptical argument works. My argument will be that skepti-cism about practical necessity arises from an unsatisfactory conception of the subjective experience of morality and of the role that it is supposed to play in the argument for objectivity. Skeptical arguments often appeal to the subjective experience exactly to undermine Kants claim about practi-cal necessity. For instance, Philippa Foot writes that

there is no difficulty about the idea that we feel we have to behave morally, and given the psychological conditions of the learning of moral behaviour it is natural that we should have such feelings. What we cannot do is quote them in support of the doctrine of the categorical imperative (Foot 1978, pp. 162f);

subjective moral experiences is not proof of the reality of the categorical imperative. To think otherwise is to rely on an illusion as if trying to give the moral ought a magic force (Foot 1978, p. 167; cf. Anscombe 1958).

I will illustrate that the constructivist interpretation of Kant affords an alternative conception of moral experience, which deserves to be called moral in a peculiar sense, that is, not because it identifies a specific do-main of moral facts that are subjectively available to us via introspection or self-reflection. Rather, it is because it is inextricably bound up with the conception of oneself as a rational agent. I shall argue that Kants concep-tion of moral experience as the experience of ones autonomy and recogni-tion of others, offers decisive resources to respond to the skeptic and help us account for practical necessity as an ordinary basic phenomenon per-taining to our agency. In the closing section, I will briefly comment on the epistemological import of this view.

26 CARLA BAGNOLI

1. Practical Necessity as a Mark of Objectivity For the rationalist practical necessity names a complex cluster of moral phenomena that depend on the objectivity of morality insofar as it is authorized by reason. But it is disputable that practical necessity is a mark of ethical objectivity, and it is also questionable that we should take the as-piration of moral judgments to objectivity at face value. When addressing the issue of practical necessity as an aspect of objectivity, the main source of skepticism seems to be the causal efficacy of moral obligations. That is, if there is anything like practical necessity, and moral obligations might be thought to exert a special kind of causal pressure on us. If one ascribes objectivity to moral judgments about obligations, it seems as though one is committed to the view that there are normative properties that are directly efficacious, which commits one to a queer metaphysics. One has either to reject the claim that moral obligations are efficacious or to give up the claim that moral judgments are objective. But if we take practical necessity as an aspect of objectivity either move is ruled out.

A second source of skepticism about practical necessity as an aspect of ethical objectivity is that it seems hard to point a homogenous cluster of phenomena that exhibit enough unity and integrity to be referred to as moral experience. As the rationalist has it, moral experience is a no-tion internal to moral theory and not totally reducible to empirical psychol-ogy. It contains specifications of the relevant capacity of rational agents, and more specifically the capacity to be guided by norms. But even grant-ing the status of normative psychology, it is an open question whether there is anything further to investigate beyond the claims that there rational requirements and normative attitudes such as being in the grip of a norm (Gibbard 1990, p. 73, see also 5582; Railton 2006). That is, one may still object that there is nothing further to explain about moral obligations, be-sides the very general idea of recognizing that something is a reason (Scanlon 2003). The objection that reasons resist further explanation is es-pecially threatening when it concerns moral claims. If we cannot explain that moral obligations oblige us in virtue of their being moral, then it means that they are inert and their apparent force depends on external de-vices of enforcement and teaching.


It might seem that the question of the enforcement of morality is a rather different issue than the problem of the objectivity in ethics or the status of practical necessity. But for a rationalist, to say that morality gains authority via incentives and sanctions is to admit that it has no authority of its own. Moreover, for the rationalist the claim that moral objectivity lacks inde-pendent authority amounts to the claim that moral obligations lack objec-tivity. But should one take the inertia or inefficacy to show lack of auth-ority and objectivity?

I shall argue that we find important resources to address this question and enrich the current debate about practical necessity by re-reading John Rawls constructivist interpretation of Kant.

2. The Constructivist Account of Moral Obligation

Moral philosophy owes to John Rawls as much as to Kant the elaboration of Kantian Constructivism (Rawls 1980, 1989, 2000). Rawls lectures on moral philosophy brought Kantian ethics to the attention of analytic phi-losophers. Rawls interest in Kant is not primarily historical and exegetical, but political and philosophical. As he stated at the outset of Kantian Con-structivism, his task was to recover the Kantian roots of his theory of jus-tice as fairness and to develop independently his political constructivism (Rawls 1980, p. 303). While Rawls departed significantly from Kant, he also indicated some important philosophical reasons to reintroduce Kant in present ethical debates (ONeill 2003, pp. 347367). He represents Kant as steering a middle course between realism and skepticism (Rawls 1980, pp. 343346; cf. Korsgaard 2008). On his interpretation, it is precisely Kants complex conception of ethical objectivity that deserves attention and needs to be further understood.

Rawls own plan is in many ways more modest than Kants original plan, because the key idea of political constructivism is to remain agnostic as to the ontological and epistemological import of moral claims. It is en-ough for Rawls purposes to show that the realist criteria of objectivity are simply unnecessary, not to prove that intuitionism or dogmatism is false (Rawls 1980, 356). Partly out of a mistaken overlap between Rawls con-structivism and Kants constructivism, Kantian costructivism has been

28 CARLA BAGNOLI

identified the claim that there are no moral truths or that they are the pro-ducts of the agents deliberation (Rawls 1980, pp. 351f; Darwall, Gibbard & Railton 1992). Under this anti-realist interpretation it is hard to see how anybody could possibly regard Kant as a constructivist. Indeed, such a reading would be utterly mysterious since Kant sets out to argue for the possibility of a priori practical laws and defends practical reason as a cog-nitive capacity (Kant G 4, p. 414; C2 5, p. 58).

The slip from constructivism to anti-realism is not totally surprising, however. One of the main aspects of novelty introduced by Rawls reading of Kant is a procedural interpretation of autonomy. It is thus easy to (mis-takenly) infer that constructivism simply amounts to proceduralism, the view that moral objectivity is the result of a hypothetical agreement reached by endorsing a given decision-procedure (Darwall, Gibbard & Railton 1992, pp. 1315). Moreover, it should be noted that in the analytic debates Kantian ethics has been routinely associated with formal pro-ceduralism, which takes of action as a mere outward performance (cf. Murdoch 1956). In such debates, Kantian objectivity is equated to inter-subjectivity and construed as an anti-realist notion.

However, the constructivist interpretation of Kant does not lead to an anti-realist reading, as so often critics presume (Kain 2004; Wood 2008; Hills 2008). What does Kants alleged constructivism contend, then? The basic claim of the constructivist interpretation is not that we create the mo-ral law, but that moral obligations become authoritative through self-legis-lation. While there are unconditional practical laws, moral obligations do not exist prior to and independently of the activity of practical reason. The scope of constructivism is thus limited to the way obligations are under-stood as binding by human agents.

This way of limiting the scope of constructivism is objectionable from two opposite interpretative perspectives. On the one hand, realists object that such a limitation reveals an intrinsic weakness of constructivism, which ultimately lapses into realism. The constructivist interpretation of the ratio cognoscendi of freedom under the guide of the moral law must presuppose the realist construal of its ratio essendi. This means that con-structivism does not really account for the objectivity of the moral law, which is either independently established or merely assumed.


On the other hand, anti-realists will object that this interpretation deflates the radicality of Kants claim that the concept of good and evil must be defined after and by means of the law (Kant C2, 5, p. 63). For the anti-realist this statement means that the moral concepts can be rendered pro-cedurally because they do not track any independent reality. As Schnee-wind writes, Moral goodness and badness is not prior to or independent of the moral law, but it is an outcome of its operation (Schneewind 1991, p. 305). There is no problem of moral contents prior to the adoption of the moral procedure.

The matter of contention between the realist and the anti-realist is thus the scope of the construction. I will argue that Kants Constructivism con-cerns the authority of the moral law, not its contents. Such contents hold for all rational beings, not only for human agents. They are in this respect like the contents of the laws of nature. Even when presented as a law of nature, however, the moral law is thought to be coming to be through the exercise of ones will (Kant G 4, p. 421, Engstrom 2009, p. 153, 6.4). (And yet it is true that Kant sometimes sounds a straightforward realist that moral laws resides in the nature of things). However, I disagree that the rejection of anti-realism justifies a straightforward realist interpretation of Kants ethics. Instead, my contention is that Kantian constructivism makes sense of Kants efforts to steer a midway between the realist pretense of a rationalist foundation of morality, and the skeptic denial that any justifica-tion would be possible. I take Kants constructivism to be a form of cogni-tivist irrealism (Bagnoli 2000, 2009a, 2009b).

To see why this constructivism is not realism in disguise, it is important to bear in mind Kants general argument about the heteronomy of all pre-vious foundational moral theories. Such theories fail to account for the ob-ligatoriness of morality because they trace the authority of moral obliga-tions in external sources. That is to say that they fail as theories of practical reason (Kant G 4, pp. 441444; C2 5, pp. 3541). The charge of heteron-omy indicates two sorts of mistakes, one metaphysical and one practical. First, heteronomous doctrines mistake the proper domain of reason, by in-verting the ontological relation between reason and its objects. The con-structivist procedural interpretation helps us capture the reason why this ontological inversion leads to heteronomy. The sentimentalist holds that moral sensibility determines our moral ends, and thus the commands of

30 CARLA BAGNOLI

reason can be only conditional upon the dictates of sensibility. The realist holds that we reason correctly when we track truths that are independent of the reasoning that leads us to them. But this is to say that the sole role of reason is to track an independent moral reality, and it thus amounts to denying that reason has any independent authority over its claims. This ex-plains the reason why dogmatic rationalism is heteronomous. Because of its realistic metaphysics, it misunderstands the practical role of reason and makes moral claims conditional upon external sources, hence reducing practical reasoning to instrumental reasoning (Kant G, 4, p. 441; Rawls 1980, pp. 343346; Rawls 1989, pp. 510513; cf. Wood 2006).

This general charge generates more specific arguments directed against sentimentalism and rationalist dogmatism, which I shall not examine. To establish my point, it is enough to register that Kant intends to reject the realist criteria of objectivity, not because he thought that they were un-necessarily demanding, but because he thought that they were too weak. His charge against the realist position is that it is, ultimately, a form of skepticism about the powers of practical reason, and it fails to provide mo-rality with any firm foundation. Realism does not provide a sufficient re-sponse to the skeptic challenge that morality claims no justified authority. In arguing for an alternative response, the task is not to weaken the criteria of realism, as anti-realism does, but to strengthen them. The constructivist alternative consists in vindicating the possibility of practical necessity, via its subjective experience.

3. Practical Necessity and Lawmaking

The constructivist claim is that the contents of the moral law that perfect beings know as laws of nature become authoritative cognitions for us, ani-mals endowed with reason, only when we represent them as self-legislated. Self-legislation accounts for the authority of the moral law, not for its contents. But the claim about self-legislation allows for contrasting inter-pretations. On the anti-realist interpretation, we create our laws (Schnee-wind 1991). On the Realist interpretation, we are not the legislators of the moral law, but only its executors (Ameriks 2003; Wood 2008). Neither in-terpretation is very appealing. The anti-realist interpretation clashes with


Kants own statements to the contrary (Kant G, 4, p. 414, 4, pp. 45455; C2 5, pp. 8182, 3233; MM 6, pp. 227f). But the Realist interpretation undermines Kants contention of the autonomy of reason.

The constructivist interpretation provides a third view between the two. While Kant holds that a principle cannot bind a rational agent unless it is one that the agent legislates, it does not follow that the agent is bound by requirements because she legislates them (Korsgaard 1996, pp. 234f; ONeill 2003; Reath 2006, pp. 92170, esp. 112; Korsgaard 2008, pp. 207229). The constructivist claim is that the moral law can oblige us only insofar as we represent it as an act of self-legislation. But this is not to say that the authority of the moral law rests on the agents own arbitrary decisions. Rather, the claim is that autonomy amounts to being governed by principles that are both law-like in form and universal in scope (Kant C2 5, p. 70).

Some interpreters have objected to constructivism that the autonomy of reason as self-legislation makes sense only after that we have recognized some obligations as valid (Larmore 2008, pp. 83f). This is to say that the constructivist hypothesis ultimately rests on realist grounds, and thus offers nothing new about the alleged ontology of moral obligations. The claim about self-legislation rests on a realist foundation about the validity of the law. More moderate critics trace realist and anti-realist strands in Kants ethics (Krasnoff 1999, Kain 2004, 2006). In both cases, however, the general claim is that Kants overall project is foundational or realist about moral ontology (Wood 1999, pp. 157, 114; Rauscher 2002; Ameriks 2003; Tiffany 2006; Johnson 2007; Wood 2008, p. 108; Hills 2008).

What drives the realist objection is the supposition that constructivism is simply an epistemic argument that accounts for the ratio cognoscendi of freedom under the guise of the moral law. Ameriks, for instance, thinks that the argument behind both the anti-realist and the constructivist inter-pretation should be formulated in epistemic rather than metaphysical terms (Ameriks 2003, p. 270). According to the epistemic interpretation, constructivism reduces the way things are and the way we know of them, conflating the ratio essendi and cognoscendi of morality. This move threatens to be self-defeating, as the obligatoriness that human agents at-tach to the moral law is more than a mere subjective impression only if it is grounded independently of how human agents perceive of the law. Realists

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claim this dependency undermines the objectivity of morality. The auth-ority of the moral law has to rest on its validity, and the validity depends on how things are. In other words, the appeal to self-legislation serves some purpose only against the background of a realist ontology. Kants theory of human knowledge remains in crucial ways like knowledge of independent things, even though he is not a dogmatic rationalist (Ameriks 2003, p. 269). The key point in the defense of the realist interpretation is thus the worry that relaxing the realist metaphysics forecloses the possi-bility of unconditional and necessary practical laws. This same worry seems to be behind Patons claim that the justification of the categorical imperative can be based solely on a kind of direct insight (Paton 1947, p. 272).

However, the question remains whether moral knowledge depends for Kant on something merely human and internal, as it is for the Moral Sense School (cf. Schneewind 1991). The constructivist agenda is best seen as an articulated attempt to explain how it is that the moral law is a creation of reason (Beck 1965, p. 210). However, constructivists would disagree with the thrust and the details of he anti-realist argument. They would not endorse the view on which Kant holds that we can live in ac-cordance with an order that we impose on ourselves as a individuals (Schneewind 1991, p. 307). Contrary to both anti-realist and realist inter-pretations, their explanation rests on an account of the work of reason on itself. They do not dispute that Kants task is to offer a philosophical elu-cidation of a priori moral cognitions, but argue that moral knowledge is produced reflexively not intuitively (Beck 1965, p. 211; Korsgaard 1996, 2008; ONeill 1989).

This claim may be substantiated by an alternative construal of the dis-tinction between the ratio essendi and ratio cognoscendi of morality. The ratio essendi is not captured by hypostatizing an independent moral ontol-ogy, but by specifying the requirements of practical reason, that is, the idealized conditions of rationality under which the moral law would be a law of nature. The moral law counts as a law of nature for perfectly ra-tional agents who suffer no subjective limitations, that is, under ideal con-ditions of rationality. For such agents, thinking and acting morally would be a matter of course, since they would experience no obstacle because they would not be sensitive to natural incentives. Sadly, animals endowed


with reason are far away from such ideal standards of rationality. Does it mean that the moral law lacks any binding force for them? If this were so, then morality would have no objectivity, and would be proved a mere chi-mera. The question arises as to how to bring animals endowed with reason closer to this ideal standard of moral rationality. This is where the con-structivist interpretation proves most useful. It shows that in order for the ratio essendi of morality to have any objectivity, it must stand in a signifi-cant relation to its ratio cognoscendi. The order of such relation is inverted in respect to the realist interpretation. It is not that our apprehension of the moral law is justified by how things stand in a remote moral reality. Ra-ther, we can approximate the moral law, by our own distinctive cognitive tools; and more precisely, by attending at the form of the law. Self-legisla-tion is the form of moral knowledge. The role of the categorical imperative in the formula of humanity and the Kingdom of ends, is to bring the moral law closer to our intuition; that is, to make common moral cognitions more self-transparent. It does not bring knowledge of an independent moral re-ality, but it makes a bridge for defective and limited rational agents to understand the perfection of the moral reality. Perfection is thus repre-sented under the guise of the law. It is in this sense that the moral law serves as a ratio cognoscendi of freedom (C2 5, p. 4n).

The anti-realist reading points out that to defend ethical objectivity one does not need to rely on some knowledge of an independently existing moral standard (Schneewind 1991, p. 268). However, it focuses only on the expressive meaning of lawmaking, hence equating it to a demand or an imperative. This leads to treating Kantian ethics as a form of subjective voluntarism (Schneewind 1991, p. 294). The realist reading conceives of self-legislation as the subjective or cognitive aspect of the moral law as a law of nature, but it does not account for the subjective authority of moral obligations. The constructivist interpretation starts from the claim the au-tonomy of reason does not simply refer to the origin of principles, but it concerns the logical form of the law. It shares the cognitivist position that self-legislation captures the form of moral knowledge. It thus rejects the anti-realist suggestion that we create values and we make laws for our-selves. Anti-realism reduces practical reason to the executive aspect of the will. In contrast to it, constructivism insists that reason has laws of its own. Constructivists thus agree with the realists, against the anti-realists, that

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executive freedom is not sufficient for self-determination (Ameriks 2003, p. 271; Allison 2006, pp. 387393, 407).

The advantage of constructivism is apparent when we consider that the thesis of self-legislation fulfills two distinct roles (Reath 2006, p. 109). First, it accounts for the relation of authority between the agent and the moral demands. In this sense, it says that human agents are bound by spe-cific moral requirements insofar as they legislate them, that is, through the reasoning that makes such requirements into laws. Second, the thesis of self-legislation indicates the relation between practical reason and the cate-gorical imperative. In this case, the role of self-legislation is to point out that the rational will is a law to itself. The implication is that considerations about the nature of rational will are sufficient to give a principle that gov-erns its own activity. The anti-realist reading of the thesis of self-legisla-tion overlooks this second function, and thus interprets it narrowly as a substantive claim about agency. The Realist reading focuses exclusively on the second function of the thesis of self-legislation, and thus fails to ac-count for the subjective authority that moral requirements have for imper-fect agents. The constructivist interpretation comprises the two functions, which correspond to the subjective and the objective aspects of the au-tonomy claim respectively. It thus let emerge that the notion of self-legis-lation is importantly reflexive (Kant G 4: pp. 431, 438). That is, it applies to the principles of action rather than to individual agents who reason their way to the moral law. It is in this sense that the appeal to self-legislation is meant to elucidate the constitutive principles of the rational will, as op-posed to the will of any one rational agent (Korsgaard 1996, pp. 36, 233f; Reath 2006, pp. 112f; ONeill 1989, 2002).

Constructivism proposes an explanation of Kants contention that the will of a rational being can be a will of its own only under the idea of free-dom (Kant G 4, p. 448). But the realist must rest dissatisfied with this an-swer. As Ameriks objects,

If a being, qua thinking, is to have a will of its own, then this can be taken to mean that its judging acts (like all others) must have their absolute source in him. But this still does not show that he idea of such a rational will is anything more than a mere phantom. (Ameriks 2003, p. 171)


Even if to have such a will would be to have a will of its own, it does not follow that anyone actually has it (cf. Ameriks 2003, p 171). We must be shown that there is an independent necessity for such a structure of the will (Ameriks 2003, p. 172). How is the constructivist interpretation supposed to establish this?

4. Autonomy and the Fact of Reason

To answer this question, I believe that we should take into account the ar-gument from the Fact of Reason. This is a notoriously problematic ar-gument, which raises a host of foundational questions. One important is-sue, which I will set aside, is whether this argument can be reconciled with Kants original project of the Grounding, or it indicates that Kant changed mind about the feasibility of the deduction (cf. Ameriks 2003, pp. 161192; Beck 1960, pp. 166175; Beck 1965, pp. 200214). My only task is to identify the role that the argument from the Fact of Reason plays in the constructivist interpretation. My aim here is neither historical nor exegeti-cal; I want to show that the appeal to the Fact of Reason plays a funda-mental role in Kantian constructivism, and that constructivism takes place within a specific account of moral psychology.

The appeal to the Fact of Reason argument does not amount to a strict deduction, in the sense that it does not produce a linear argument from premises to conclusions. My interpretative suggestion is that it counts as a phenomenological argument, which points out that autonomy is inextri-cably bound up with the consciousness of freedom, and there is nothing further upon which to ground this consciousness (Kant C2 5, pp. 42f). It is called Fact (Faktum) because it is underivative. It is a fact exactly be-cause it is not an empirical or a pure intuition; it is a fact in contrast to what might be a consequence of a proof (Kant C2 5, pp. 31, 42f, 47, 55, 91, 104; LE 28, pp. 582, 773). It just is. The implication is that in defense of the objectivity of morality we cannot claim that there is a theoretical proof of our transcendental freedom. We should rest content with our sub-jective consciousness that this is so. To this extent, the appeal to the Fact of Reason is merely phenomenological, and it provides no proof. Yet it helps us to fully understand the objectivity of the moral law. In order to

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appreciate this role, we need to consider what kind of phenomenon the Fact of Reason purports to convey.

It is, indeed, a rather queer kind of fact, as it exhibits both subjective and objective aspects (Allison 1990, p. 232). Objectively, it establishes the va-lidity of the moral law and thus it shows the autonomy of the will; the ac-ceptance of the moral law as authoritative licenses a rational belief in our freedom for practical purposes, that is, in the representation that we should have of ourselves when we are deciding to act (Kant C2 5, pp. 5557.) Subjectively, it is the consciousness that the moral law is binding, and this is shown by the moral sentiment of respect. Respect names this subjective motive, and it qualifies as the only incentive that comes from reason alone, that is, the only moral incentive (Kant C2, 5, p. 76). The experience of re-spect is a direct experience of the objectivity of practical reason. This im-mediacy is exactly what makes respect a peculiar feeling, which differently than all other pathological feelings directly derives from reason (Kant C2, 5, pp. 7981). This subjective aspect indicates our consciousness of the moral constraints on our deliberation and thus testifies to our capacity to act for the sake of morality. The objectivity of pure practical reason cru-cially depends on the subjective experience of it.

Rawls attributes crucial importance to the Fact of Reason and thinks that it completes the constructivist argument by supplying an account of moral motivation (Rawls 2000, pp. 253272, 268, 273; cf. Kant C2, 5, p. 15). In recognizing the centrality of this argument within constructivism, Rawls registers a significant shift from Kants early moral psychology, and more precisely concerning the theory of the incentives (Rawls 2000, pp. 291308; cf. Guyer 1990; cf. Wood 1997). The very concept of pure practical reason is objective if it is applicable; and it is applicable if it becomes a subjective motive for us, animals endowed with reason.

Moral psychology plays a constitutive role in Kantian constructivism (Baldwin 2008, pp. 251, 254257). In Rawls view, the argument of the Fact of Reason points at the congruence between the deliverances of prac-tical reason and our moral experience. This congruence is an integral part of the vindication of practical reason (Rawls 1980, p. 340; Rawls 1989, pp. 523f). This is because our concept of freedom is practically but not speculatively sufficient. (Kant Lectures 28, p. 270). It would be to go beyond the practical to ask how freedom is possible (Lectures 28, p. 269).


Rather, we should attend at how pure practical reason affects our sensi-bility, and this is the subjective aspect o the Fact of Reason.

The subjective aspect, named respect, importantly account for the phe-nomenon of practical necessity. Reason works on the mind and sensibility of animals endowed by reason as a form of necessitation. It binds, curbs, obliges, and to this extent is experienced as an external constraint. But it is a mistake to think of the effects of reason in purely external terms, as if it were to issue only restraining orders. The role of reason is more basic and pervasive than that. It does not simply forbid us to take certain courses of action as immoral. More fundamentally, it allows us to undertake princi-pled action. It makes acting on principle possible. The experience of re-spect is not only negative, but also positive because it is the very experi-ence of acting rationally.

5. The Epistemological Import of Kants Constructivism

This account of the crucial role that respect plays in showing that morality is the condition of possibility of rational agency may also help assess the epistemological import of Kants phenomenological argument. Appeals to experience in the realist fashion focus on moral experience to vindicate the possibility of moral knowledge, which they interpret as gaining access to an independent moral reality. It is thus interesting to consider whether the argument of the Fact of Reason has any epistemological import.

There is a tendency to think that if Kants ethics is interpreted as offering a constructivist rather than a realist account of moral propositions, it thereby forgoes any ambition to account for knowledge. This result follows from describing Kantian constructivism as a form of hypothetical pro-ceduralism, according to which moral propositions are valid as a result of correct procedures of reasoning (Darwall et al. 1992). To be sure, a con-structivist interpretation of Kantian ethics does not encourage any founda-tionalist account of moral knowledge. It is incompatible with the view that moral propositions are grounded on reason in the way Intuitionism or other forms of rationalism require. Constructivism is also alternative to the view that Kants ethics is deductive or that we may derive moral propositions from a prefabricated deontological structure (Donagan 1977; Johnson

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2007). However, this only means that Kantian constructivism denies that we may acquire and retain knowledge by rational intuition or deduction from first principles. Recent defenses of Kantian constructivism are agnos-tic about the epistemological status of moral judgments, and refrain from offering a full-fledged account of knowledge, because they define them-selves by contrast to contemporary forms of foundationalism, which are based on naturalistic or special moral ontologies. However, a plausible in-terpretation of Kants ethics should account for the fact that Kant regarded moral judgments as having rational cognitions as their contents.

My last point is that Kantian constructivism not only makes sense of this aspect of Kants ethics, but it also presents a significant advantage over its realist and anti-realist counterparts. The constructivist emphasis on the re-flexive nature of the thesis of self-legislation points out that Kant has de-veloped not only a constructivist conception of practical reason, but a co-herentist account of its authentication (Rawls 1989, p. 523; ONeill 1989). I would like to specify in which sense the project is coherentist but it is not an endorsement of non-cognitivism.

To say that reason is self-authenticating means that it is structurally re-flexive (ONeill 1989, p. 173; Rawls 1989, pp. 517528). To depend on alien authorities would be a self-defeating move. Its acquisitions are not derivative, because any derivation would make them arbitrary and spuri-ous. But this is not to deny that reason is a cognitive capacity. As Engstrom points out, Kant is actually faced with the traditional epistemological question as to whether moral knowledge proceedes from first principles or toward them (Engstrom 2009, p. 245). His alternative answer is that moral knowledge consists in the reflexive work of reason over itself. The process from common cognition to philosophical examination is not a foundation in any of the two traditional senses stated above. Rather, it amounts to self-reflection. What does reason acquire in self-reflection? It acquires auth-ority and self-transparency, but it also acquires knowledge of the law-like form that underlies these achievements. Philosophical reflection makes this feature of common cognition explicit, but it is not knowledge of something else besides the workings of reason, lying as its foundations. It is not knowledge of the conditions of possibility and authority of reason. While the acquisitions of reason are negative in content, they are not trivial, be-


cause the activity of reason is thus shown to be legislative; they amount to the demand that agents act on principles (Kant G 4, p. 421).

But it would be a mistake to conclude that this reflexive exercise brings nothing new. On the contrary, in offering an account of the self-authenti-cating status of reason, Kant also uncovers the dialectic internal to the working of reason, which is a process. He thus account for the dynamic dimension of reasoning, which eludes both realist and anti-realist theories. Because the progress of reason is internal, and concerns the very structure of the will, it is perhaps not too fanciful to regard the main epistemological import of Kantian constructivism to be cast in terms of self-understanding (cf. Kitcher 2006, pp. 179199). Its task is not knowledge of some objects external to the will, but to elucidate the structure of the will, so as to ad-vance in our understanding of how we represent ourselves in thinking and acting. If the argument of the Fact of Reason works as I have illustrated, then we are at the same time advancing our understanding of how we must think and act, that is, under the law of freedom.

References

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Allison, Henry E. (2006): Kant and Freedom of the Will, in: P. Guyer (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy, Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 381415.

Ameriks, Karl (2003): On Two Non-Realist Interpretations of Kants Ethics, in: Interpreting Kants Critiques, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 263282.

Anscombe, Gertrude Elisabeth Margaret (1958): Modern Moral Philoso-phy, in: Virtue Ethics, R. Crisp and M. Slote, Oxford: Oxford Univer-sity Press, 1997, pp. 2644.

Bagnoli, Carla (2000): The Claim of Objectivity in Ethics, in G. Usberti (ed.), Modi delloggettivit, Milano: Bompiani, pp. 722.

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Bagnoli, Carla (2009b): Review of Korsgaard The Constitution of Agency, in: Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2009-6, on line at: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=16307.

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Darwall, Stephen (1990): Autonomist Internalism and the Justification of Morals, in: Nos 24, pp. 25768.

Darwall, Stephen, Allen Gibbard, and Peter Railton (1992): Toward Fin de Siecle Ethics: Some Trends, in: The Philosophical Review 101, pp. 115189. Reprinted in: S. Darwall, A. Gibbard, and P. Railton (eds.), Moral Discourse and Practice, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 347.

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