Korsgaard's Morality And The Distinctiveness Of Human Environment

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Philosopher, Christine Korsgaard, assesses her idea of the capacity for normative self government, in her her short writing, Morality and the Distinctiveness of Human Action. In her writing she argues that a form of life, whether human or animal/insect, it is not one controlled by guidelines and principles but is one governed by instinct desire and emotion. Korsgaard makes her claim with examples and premises on intentions. Korsgaard claims that the essence of morality relies on the normative self government and believes that laws in society do not protect those who are citizens but those who share the interest that the laws were made to protect. Korsgaard 's first argument that I believe is strong is the premise that in society we …show more content…

Whereas people and certain things such as our heart pumping blood have purposes as well but just different types of purposes. Each purpose is determined at whatever the object, animal, or person’s intentions are. Each movement has a purpose or intention depending on how you look at it. I see this correlated to her argument of normative self governing because animals can not follow or create self governing laws just like humans because they serve different purposes and have different desires. Each animal however, does have their own morals that they follow depending on their desires. Some animals have different customs and things they find important in order to fulfill their intentions. At this rate the animal is aware of it’s purposes and how to achieve them. She believes that human beings are the only animals who live under the type of society where people follow a specific set of morals. When humans become aware of the morals they become aware of evaluations, consequences and self consciousness. As a Kantian, Korsgaard favors whether the end result will be beneficial. The reason she believes in intentions and desire is because of that fact that she believes in looking at the end goal in order to figure out the right and wrong

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