Moral Deliberation and Desire Development: Herman on Alienation

Abstract

In chapter nine of The Practice of Moral Judgment (1996b) and her later article ‘Making Room for Character’ (1996a), Barbara Herman offers a distinctive and interesting response to a set of concerns involving the idea that Kantian ethics objectionably alienates us from personal relationships and commitments. Broadly speaking, these concerns take one of two general forms: some accounts emphasize the practical marginalization of personal interests and relationships, arguing that the Kantian's open-ended commitment to impartial overriding moral requirements threatens to leave the agent little or no practical room for the sorts of relationships and commitments that we think of as important in (or essential to) a recognizably human life. A related but more formal variant emphasizes the internal perspective of the agent and the structure rather than the scope of moral commitment. On this account, the problem is said to lie in the requirement that we are only to act on reasons justifiable from an impersonal universalizing point of view and the way in which this requirement precludes the kind of partial and personal reasons for action said to be essential to individual agency and a sense of self.