The bounds of agency : an essay in revisionary metaphysics /
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Author / Creator: | Rovane, Carol A. (Carol Anne), 1955- |
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Imprint: | Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©1998. |
Description: | 1 online resource (viii, 260 pages) |
Language: | English |
Subject: | |
Format: | E-Resource Book |
URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11118504 |
Summary: | <p>The subject of personal identity is one of the most central and most contested and exciting in philosophy. Ever since Locke, psychological and bodily criteria have vied with one another in conflicting accounts of personal identity. Carol Rovane argues that, as things stand, the debate is unresolvable since both sides hold coherent positions that our common sense will embrace. Our very common sense, she maintains, is conflicted; so any resolution to the debate is bound to be revisionary. She boldly offers such a revisionary theory of personal identity by first inquiring into the nature of persons.<p>Rovane begins with a premise about the distinctive ethical nature of persons to which "all" substantive ethical doctrines, ranging from Kantian to egoist, can subscribe. From this starting point, she derives two startling metaphysical possibilities: there could be "group" persons composed of many human beings and "multiple" persons within a single human being. Her conclusion supports Locke's distinction between persons and human beings, but on altogether new grounds. These grounds lie in her radically normative analysis of the condition of personal identity, as the condition in which a certain normative commitment arises, namely, the commitment to achieve overall rational unity within a rational point of view. It is by virtue of this normative commitment that individual agents can engage one another specifically "as persons," and possess the distinctive ethical status of persons. |
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Physical Description: | 1 online resource (viii, 260 pages) |
Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-254) and index. |
ISBN: | 1400813239 9781400813230 0691017166 9780691017167 1282753339 9781282753334 |