The Value of AgencyThe Practice of Moral Judgment.Barbara Herman

Abstract

Barbara Herman's papers on Kantian ethics have been widely noted since "On the Value of Acting from the Motive of Duty" appeared in the Philosophical Review in 1981. Thus the contents of the present volume, consisting of eight previously published papers and two new ones, will not contain any great surprises for regular readers of this journal (which published two of them). But the final paper of this volume, "Leaving Deontology Behind," one of the new ones, does broach the issue of a theoretical and textual foundation for her approach to Kant, which Herman has not previously raised-in many of her previous papers Herman has preferred to begin with an issue defined by contemporary Kant interpretation or criticism of Kant and only hint at the deeper structure of her own approach, and having all the papers together allows one to see what an extensive and powerful approach to Kant's ethics Herman has been working out. Herman is interested in developing a timely interpretation of Kant's ethics, not merely in constructing a "Kantian" ethics inspired by some of Kant's ideas, but she is more interested in clarifying the philosophical content of rather than the textual basis for her interpretation and so does not present a work of detailed Kant scholarship. (In my view, her approach could only be strengthened by citing a wider range of texts.) Over the course of the volume, Herman succeeds in presenting an interpretation of Kant's ethics that shows it to be a powerful alternative to the empiricist utilitarian, Neoaristotelian virtue ethics, and postmodernist individualist or existentialist ethical theories which have enjoyed such prominence in recent years. On Herman's account, Kant's ethics makes more than enough room for the concerns for communal welfare, individual judgment and character, and individual conceptions