Joshua Wretzel

Pennsylvania State University, Philosophy, Faculty Member

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Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Ruprecht-Karls-Universitaet Heidelberg, 2016.
Fellow in Residence, Forschungskolleg Analytic German Idealism (FAGI), Universitaet Leipzig, 2014.
Research interests at the intersection of Kant, German Idealism, neo-Pragmatism, Philosophy of Mind, and Social and Political Philosophy.

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3 Constraint and the Ethical Agent Hegel Between Constructivism and Realism

Hegel and Contemporary Practical Philosophy, 2020

This paper concerns the question of constraint in practical reason, the matter of what sorts of t... more This paper concerns the question of constraint in practical reason, the matter of what sorts of things count as licit limitations on my ethical claimings and doings. On the one hand, constraints are a necessary feature of ethical life: insofar as we wish to uphold any notion of truth about the good, it must not be the case that we are able to claim whatever we like or may do whatever we wish, come what may. On the other hand, it matters what sort of thing does the constraining: insofar as we want to uphold any notion of autonomy in our sayings and doings, I must be the author of any practical claiming or doing of mine. I must commit myself , not be committed by another , to my practical holdings. So the question of constraint in practical cognition turns out to be a question of selfconstraint, how it may come to be that the limitations on my sayings and doings are themselves avowed as sayings and doings of mine. In a recent prominent debate on practical constraint, John McDowell and Robert B. Pippin express disagreement over the source of practical constraint, while agreeing, broadly, that the constraint must lie within the space of reasons (for it is only within the space of reasons, they hold, that constraints can constrain). McDowell argues that practical constraints are present to us as a form of receptivity shot through with spontaneity: they are empirical moral-situational facts available to those who are properly attuned to them. Such beings, McDowell says, are open to a "second nature" of moral reasons and purposes that "are there anyway" (McDowell 1994: 91 et passim). For this reason, we shall call McDowell's position (variously) a "realism" 1 or "second naturalism" about constraint in practical reason. Pippin, for his part, holds a contrasting, "constructivist" view. 2 He argues that constraint in practical cognition is a largely social affair, with one's practical holdings answerable to the constructed norms of a rational community at a sociohistorical moment. In what follows, I shall focus on the common historical infl uence underlying both views. As is well known, they both rely on a broadly Kantian/Hegelian outlook, underwriting their divergent views in a nevertheless common vocabulary of autonomy, spontaneity, reason, sociality, and cultivation (or Bildung). Conspicuously absent from their discussions, 15032-3424d-1pass-r04.indd 88

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