Reasons, Relations, and Commands: Reflections on Darwall

Abstract

Stephen Darwall describes the second-person standpoint as “the perspective you and I take up when we make and acknowledge claims on one another’s conduct and will” (3). Claims are apparently understood by Darwall to be sources of a distinctive kind of reason for action, which Darwall likewise refers to as second personal. “What makes a reason second-personal is that it is grounded in (de jure) authority relations that an addresser takes to hold between him and his addressee” (4). These distinctive, authority-based reasons are created by second-personal address, whereby a person with the relevant authority issues a demand to a specific addressee. Second-personal address purports to direct the addressee practically rather than merely epistemically; it generates immediate claims on the addressee’s will, rather than reporting epistemically on normative facts or relations that obtain independently of the issuance of the demand or claim (6–7). Darwall returns repeatedly in The Second-Person Standpoint to two paradigm examples that are meant to illustrate the distinctive features of second-personal address and second-personal reasons. The first is the example of a platoon sergeant ordering her troops to fall in (12). The command in this example, I take it, is meant to be a form of address to the troops, which gives rise to a reason for the troops to comply. This new reason does not derive from the sergeant’s epistemic authority in matters involving the conduct of the troops. It is not that they have reason to comply with the sergeant’s command because the sergeant is in a privileged position to identify their interests or to discern what it