Reddit reviews Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity

I think the question "why should I do good?" can be interpreted in a couple of ways.

One might interpret the question as saying something like, "I don't give a shit about other people; convince me to do good instead of completely ignore the needs and wishes of others!" If you're in that kind of situation - if you don't actually care about anybody or anything but yourself - then I don't think I philosophy can do much to help you. Maybe you're a psychopath.

A different way to interpret the question is something like this: you may care very much about other people and try your best to be a nice and friendly person, but there are times when the demands of morality can be extremely daunting - you might find yourself in a situation where you feel morality requires you to risk your job, your fortune, your relationships, or even your life. In these situations, it's pretty understandable for someone to ask himself, "Should I sacrifice so much for this 'moral' compulsion I feel?"

How you understand morality can affect your answer to this question. If it turned out that the demands of "morality" were nothing more than what the majority of your culture currently expects you to do, then I think it would be quite reasonable to say, "If that's what morality is, then fuck morality! I'm not going to sacrifice my life (or job, relationships, etc.) just because people expect me to do such-and-such!" (EDIT: Note that I'm not saying it would then be reasonable to act like a total jerk. You might still continue to be a nice and generous person, but not because "morality" demands it.)

The question now becomes whether there is some explanation of morality which wouldn't give you that reaction.

This is basically what Christine Korsgaard calls 'the normative question'. I think she does a great job of articulating it in her book The Sources of Normativity. Her newer book Self-Constitution explores very similar themes. Maybe you will find them interesting.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/052155960X/ref=rdr_ext_sb_ti_sims_1

http://www.amazon.com/Self-Constitution-Identity-Integrity-Christine-Korsgaard/dp/0199552800/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418020161&sr=1-1&keywords=self-constitution

>why should I continue to strive to selfless?

Don't conflate being selfless with doing the good/right/moral thing. For example, in situations where fairness is a chief concern (like sharing a pie amongst a group of people), doing the right thing isn't a matter of being selfless, but is rather a matter of treating everybody equally - including yourself. Even in the situations I discussed above (where you might feel that morality requires you to make a huge sacrifice), I don't think being selfless is a good attitude to have.

A good book on the subject you bring up is Self-Constitution by Christine Korsgaard, a moral philosopher at Harvard. She argues that reason is the tool by which we determine whether our actions are good or bad, and that this process of reason is the constituting action of the creation of our own identities. That is to say, we are moral individuals to the extent that we use reason to make decisions about our actions. Conversely, when we allow our actions to be dictated by irrational animalistic emotional drives, we are acting outside the realm of reason and therefore outside of morality and outside of individuality. This perspective does not reject the value of emotional or sensible experience, but in fact argues that collection of information from the senses is necessary to make moral choices. Logic is the process by which sensible data is converted into moral choices. Emotion is excluded from the decision-making process, not from the information-gathering process. Logic is the tool by which we live morally in the universe, but as Spock said, "logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end."

Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:

Link: Self-Constitution


|Country|Link|
|:-----------|:------------|
|UK|amazon.co.uk|
|Spain|amazon.es|
|France|amazon.fr|
|Germany|amazon.de|
|Japan|amazon.co.jp|
|Canada|amazon.ca|
|Italy|amazon.it|
|China|amazon.cn|



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