Where Are You in the Conduct of Your Life as a Rational Agent?

Abstract

In Robert Stern's Presidential Address for the Aristotelian Society he exploits some of Iris Murdoch's work to address an aporia connected to the idea of free benevolent agency: benevolence seems to preclude choice about what to do, whereas free agency seems to require it. This is related to a more general aporia connected to the idea of rational agency: if you act rationally, the sheer rationality of what you do seems not to leave any room, or at least not the room that you might have wished for, for your own distinctive contribution to what you do. Stern's resolution of this aporia is to locate your distinctive contribution to what you do, not in your actually doing it, but in your attending to the reasons for doing it. I argue that there are problems with this resolution, one of which is that it is couched in ‘realist’ terms. I present an anti-realist alternative that draws on Bernard Williams' notion of a thick ethical concept. I explore similarities and dissimilarities between Stern's resolution and this alternative, and I counter an objection to the alternative, namely that it simply begs a critical question. I conclude that, while the alternative is not enough to refute Stern's position, it is a genuine alternative that deserves consideration.