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Obligation as Self‐Determination: A Critique of Hegel and Korsgaard
Author(s) -
Shelton Mark
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
pacific philosophical quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.914
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1468-0114
pISSN - 0279-0750
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0114.00168
Subject(s) - obligation , moral obligation , hegelianism , epistemology , philosophy , order (exchange) , value (mathematics) , law and economics , sociology , law , political science , economics , computer science , finance , machine learning
In this paper I argue that both Hegel's and Korsgaard's attempts to ground moral obligation in the inherent necessity of committing to being a self‐determining agent fall short of accounting for the full strength of our considered sense of moral obligation. I examine the differences between their accounts in order to show that their efforts suffer from a common inadequacy, namely, overlooking that there are two distinct ways we can value things as self‐determining agents. I maintain that accounting for the actual stringency of moral judgment depends on explaining the superiority of one of these ways of valuing over the other.