Person:

Korsgaard, Christine

Starting from the debate over whether practical reasons are mental states or the facts to which those mental states are a response, this chapter argues that being motivated by a practical reason must be a reflexive form of motivation, that is, a response to a certain content that at the same time involves consciousness of the appropriateness of responding to that content in just that way. This feature of practical reasons is captured only by Kant and Aristotle's accounts of action. For both, the object of choice and the locus of moral value is an act done for the sake of an end. The adoption of a Kantian maxim or an Aristotelian logos is a form of motivation that expresses the agent's endorsement of doing a certain act for a certain end, and so expresses her endorsement of the appropriateness of her own motivation.

Plato and Kant advance a "Constitutional Model" of the soul, in which reason and passion have different functional roles in the generation of motivation, as opposed to Hume's "Combat Model" in which they are portrayed as independent sources of motivation struggling for control. The Constitutional Model makes it possible to explain what makes an action different from an event. What makes an action attributable to a person and therefore what makes it an action, is that it issues from the person's constitution and therefore from the person as a whole, rather than from some force working on or in the person. This implies an account of what makes an action good: it is chosen in a way that unifies the person into a constitutional system. Platonic justice and Kant's categorical imperative are shown to be normative standards for action because they are internal standards of action.

Aristotle believes that an agent lacks virtue unless she enjoys the performance of virtuous actions, while Kant claims that the person who does her duty despite contrary inclinations exhibits a moral worth that the person who acts from inclination lacks. Despite these differences, this chapter argues that Aristotle and Kant share a distinctive view of the object of human choice and locus of moral value: that what we choose, and what has moral value, are not mere acts, but actions: acts done for the sake of ends. Morally good actions embody a kind of intrinsic value that inspires us to do them from duty (in Kant) or for the sake of the noble (in Aristotle). The chapter traces the difference in their attitudes about doing one's duty with pleasure to a difference in their attitudes towards pleasure itself: Aristotle sees it as a perception of the good, while Kant thinks of it as mere feeling.

In Nicomachean Ethics 1.7, Aristotle claims that to discover the human good we must identify the function of a human being. He argues that the human function is rational activity. Our good is therefore rational activity performed well, which Aristotle takes to mean in accordance with virtue. This argument has been criticized at almost every point. This chapter defends Aristotle's argument from these criticisms. Drawing on the account of form and matter in Aristotle's Metaphysics, it argues that “function” does not mean purpose but rather a way of functioning — how a thing does what it does. The way human beings do things is by making rational choices. The human good or happiness is not merely a result of rational choice, but consists in it, because a rational action or activity is one whose principle expresses the agent's conception of what is worth doing for the sake of what.