ethics as anthropology human nature, pragmatism and moral reflection in

8/14/2019 ETHICS as ANTHROPOLOGY Human Nature, Pragmatism and Moral Reflection In

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ETHICS AS ANTHROPOLOGY

Human nature, pragmatism and moral reflection in Kant and James

Sarin Marchetti Sapienza Universit di Roma

That is what makes him [James] a good philosopher;

he was a real human being - Wittgenstein to Drury

1. In what follows Ill try to explore a way in which philosophical anthropology can inform

ethical theory; by investigating the positions of Kant and James Ill try to bring to light a

way of thinking moral reflection as instructed by the concept of human being that is

overlooked in the contemporary debate. My interest here is in fact neither historical, nor

exegetical, but theoretical: in discussing Kant and James I hope to present some interesting

hints about the role *pragmatism* can play in the understanding of the place of the notion

of human being in ethical reflection. By investigating how ethical inquiry can be shaped bythe notion of human being from the pragmatist perspective as we can found it pictured in

Kants Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpointand James Principles of Psychology, one which

proposes the primacy of agency and the refusal of any metaphysical foundation for what

regards the characterization of the human point of view that is relevant for ethics, it

emerges an interesting image of ethics as anthropology. A pragmatist approach to both

anthropology and ethics can solve the tension that is usually credited between these two

alleged distinguished areas of though without blurring their respective physiognomies.

2. Pragmatism can be read as a way to bridge the is-ought gap, a narration of which could

run as follows. In doing philosophy, which means among other things reading books, we

are often lead astray by words. In what interest us today, ethics, such a deflection is


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represented in our search for precise moral words that assures us that were really talking

about ethical matters. However, one can describe an account as an ethical one even if she

does not encounter words like good, right or virtue; that is one can speak about ethics

without using a vocabulary containing those very words that are usually taken to picture a

discourse as a moral one. The problem to which the is-ought gap gives voice is that you

cannot derive ethical conclusions from factual premises because in no factual description of

a certain situation could figure those very normative features relevant for ethics. What is

presupposed by this picture, however, can be and has been challenged: we can describe a

certain situation, for example one of extreme poverty or malnutrition, without using

normative moral words and nonetheless we can read it as ethicallyrelevant for example, by

being horrified or moved to improve it. Now this idea, recently explored at depth by those

philosopher who consider themselves influenced by the thought and teaching ofWittgenstein, can be read as a challenge to the is-ought gap on which most contemporary

moral philosophy lies, and in this talk Ill try to sketch a pragmatic variety of response which

proposes a peculiar account of such a fact about moral reflection. In particular, one

stressing the idea according to which a certain description of human beings, apparently

belonging to what could be loosely called anthropology, can be ethicallyrelevant.

3. The problem of placing anthropology in ethical reflection, as we are introducing it, is that

what anthropology gives us is a factual description of human beings, while ethics deals with

normative notions such as those of duties, imperatives and principles. The first tells us what

there is, the second very roughly what should be. That of values is a somewhat puzzling

notion since it both indicate a state of things and its moral worth, but without entering in

the intricate meta-ethical debate about the metaphysics of values that will however be

touched indirectly in our discourse and emerge from its narrative we can treat them as

primary ethical ingredients. So according to the widely accepted view the one whichdefends the is-ought gap, by merely describing how human beings are we cannot derive

any information that is relevant for ethics, if not by pointing out those very features of

human beings whose development would count as a valutation of their bearers. In this

picture ethics can profit from anthropological considerations, but only in an external way:

that is by picking from it some materials and arrange them according to itsownprinciples.


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Pragmatism refuses to accept such a picture of moral though since it lies on a paltry

conception of both anthropology and ethics, one in which they are presented as

independent inquiries into different aspect of reality, broadly conceived. But this forces

some among our convictions and experiences about the nature and scope of such inquiries.

In fact picturing ethical reflection as one among human activities means conceiving moral

though as something that has a certain shape in virtue of its being the expression ofhuman

cravings and questionings about their conducts, characters or visions. However,

contemporary analytical meta-ethics tend to expunge such a human dimension by shaping

the inquiry into the foundation of moral thought as dependent on the analysis of the

meaning of moral terms, the rationality of moral reasoning or the consistency of moral

claims with broadly scientific ones. It is not that such investigations are unimportant for the

articulation of a moral position, but we must pay attention to the role they play in thehuman moral life they should represent. Even if these inquiries throw light on the

understanding and unraveling of our moral activities and practices, if we want to understand

these last as humanones we must not conceal the anthropological assumptions about the

peculiar humanpoint of view embedded in those very inquiries. For example, the inquiry

concerning the role of virtues in the cognitivist/non-cognitivist debate about the nature of

moral judgments should in first instance describe with care how their exercise expresses a

particular humanpoint of view on the situation under judgment1.

However, in acknowledging such a closeness between ethics and anthropology we must pay

attention not to committing oneself to any more or less lofty reductionism of the former

to the latter, since that would mean reducing moral thought to a mere defense of a specific

anthropological image and thus violate the cornerstones of modern moral thought that

instead we feel prone to defend, that is the autonomy of ethics.

Our situation could be pictured as a dilemma: or we conceive morality as kept pure from

any human involvements, or we shape it on a certain picture of human beings that is hardlyjustified by nor arguable from it. To render this scenario less vague Ill hang some names to

1 This is how John McDowell suggests us to read Aristotles account of virtues, eudaimonia and

phronsis, one that is still very instructive for the contemporary meta-ethical debate (McDowell: 1996essays 1-3, 2009 essays 2-4).


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characterize its opposite horns: on the one part we have authors working in the path of

Hares logical prescriptivism who want to built up ethics solely on considerations about the

functioning of moral language and moral principles expressed through it, and on the other

we have authors working in the path of Singers rampant naturalism who conceive moral

reflection as the activity of justification of a certain arrangement of facts concerning non-

moral properties such as interests. A pragmatist approach to ethical reflection conceived

as an instance of a pragmatist approach to philosophical reflection as a whole refutes the

dilemma by re-defining its opposites: we can think ethical reflection as informed by the

notion of something like a human perspective without debunking the intuition about the

irreducibility of ethics to a descriptive activity on the model of sciences. Description, both of

the world and of ourselves, is a central concept in moral reflection; in the case that is

interesting for us today given the theme of the conference2

, descriptions of human beingsare ethically relevant only when their proper object is not the human beingper se, taken as a

very piece of the fabric of the world, but instead what the human beingmakes of herself.

Conceived in this way, we could be in agreement both with Hares emphasis on normativity

and with Singers emphasis on interests, but disagree with their respective picturing of these

notions: for what regards normativity we can accept its importance as a necessary feature of

ethical discourse and at the same time refute to conceive it as something which merely

supervenes on facts by orienting them as an external force, since we can picture the facts

relevant for ethics as already value-oriented by presenting them appropriately; for what

regards instead interests, we can refute to conceive them as mere brute materials on which

to apply a piece of moral reasoning from sideways-on by picturing them as the results of a

certain description of human beings whose articulation reveals the moral perimeter we want

to defend.

2 But the very same point can be made about our descriptions of the world, being ourselves ashuman beings one among the many things toward which our attention or gaze can align on. Thispoint will be shortly reprised in the presentation of both Kants and James positions, in which it willbe stressed that for what regards the descriptions of ourselves as human beings the peculiarity thathowever does not marks a moraldistance but only a difference consists in ourselves being both thesubject and the object of investigation. If in the case of the world what is at stake in moral reflectionis a human description of it, in the case of ourselves as human beings were those very authors of thedescriptions were under.


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I am labeling the moves about ethics and anthropology that I am advancing as pragmatics

since they refute a sharp division between facts at least those relevant for ethics, whose list,

as well see, cannot be given in advance and values by refuting the idea that a certain

descriptionof some facts about human beings is morally neutral. The description I have in

mind is the one that emerges from the peculiar inquiry Kant and James calls pragmatic

anthropology, and in presenting it the way I am doing, Im implicitly suggest some

conceptual re-definitions of both the notion of ethics and of anthropology when these two

areas of inquiry are investigated through a pragmatist approach. The philosophical movesthat I

am about to present are animated by a certainphilosophical pictureabout the nature of morality

that lies beneath them. Given the short time at my disposal, some of which has already gone

by these some necessary words of introduction, I will only be able to mock to some lines of

action through which those very moves proceed that however is in need of a broader anddeeper treatment. A selective use of Kant and James, to which I now pass, will help me to

articulate these thoughts and the picture animating them.

4. Part of the problem of Kants readers consists in placing the Pragmatic Anthropology in

the broader context of his ethical thought since what is usually expected from it is a picture

of morality as a system of imperatives, only described from the part of the subject. In this

picture, suggested by Kant himself in some passages from the Grundlegung, anthropology

would be a mere application of a self-contained, aprioriand well-established moral system to

human beings, or at best the necessary knowledge of the particulars on which a moral system

can be built in splendid isolation from their content. Instead I suggest that the ethical

dimension of this part of Kants intellectual biography has to be found in its being a pragmatic

anthropology. In this acceptation, one which would be developed and enhanced by James,

anthropology is directly relevant for ethics not for assessing the condition for its factual

development, but because it gives us a description of human beings that is already ethicallyrelevant.

According to Kant, the principles of pure ethics, precisely because of their purity, have no

special connection with the human life. Such a connection can only be established by

bringing empirical knowledge of human nature into the picture, but we can conceive such a


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integration in two different ways: either externally or internally. In the former case,

according to the story narrated in the major ethical writings, anthropology is relevant for

ethics as long as it gives the materials and indicates the way in which an already formed

moral theory can apply to human beings, given their peculiar constitution; in such a

narration, a good representation of morality is in need of a good description of how human

beings are, but only because anthropology gives us information about the way freedom can

be grafted into human nature, in the same way as botany tells us how to cut the stem of a

rose in order to maintain it alive for the sake of some non-natural ethical or aesthetical

purposes we might have. Freedom is pictured here as a property of pure practical reason

with no connection with the contingencies of the human life and human beings if not in its

being conceived to rule their thoughts and conduct. In the latter case, instead, ethical

normative elements emerge from a certain that is pragmatic description of human beingsand their life: anthropology offers a description of human beings that pictures them in the

development of their moral life and morality is portrayed as one among the human

possibilities. The cultivation of our faculties, whose perfection is reached not through an

application of abstract moral concepts to the non-moral contingencies of human situations

but instead from the inside of our practices of liberty, portrays this pragmatic anthropology

as a moral anthropology3.

According to a pragmatic description of the mental life human beings are makers ofthemselves and not mere spectators of a nature that in a second step has to be moralized.

The inner dimension of interiority is described and thus shaped for the realization of some

interests or ideals, and so our psychological life must be described from the very beginning

as value-oriented. This, however, does not threaten the autonomy of morality, reducing

ethics to a certain metaphysical picture of the human being. In fact, by stressing on the

adjectivepragmatic, such an anthropology does not lay down in advance any given system of

values which a good person should realize to be labeled as such, but rather it gives the

3 Given the vast number of works dedicated to the analysis of the various meanings of the wordpragmatisher in reference to theAnthropologie, some of which has an ethical connotation, we suggest thereading of the essays collected in Jacobs and Kain (2003) with the annexed bibliography. Theinterpretation advanced and explored here is only sketchily acknowledged in the secondary literature,in particular by those interested in the connection between ethics and aesthetics in the late writings ofKant as the Kritik der Uteilskraft and theAnthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht itself.


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conditions for human being to appreciate moral saliencies and worth by providing a moral

psychology which stress the importance of the development and refinement of our

attention, perception and vision. Those very features of our psychology does not in turn

depend on a quasi-aristoteleanconception ofergonor areth, but rather they are teleological in

respect to those very actions and states of things whose realization we found worth, interesting,

important. From this pragmatic perspective the very meaning of ethical reflection changes,

given its internal connection to the moral life it express and articulates, a moral life whose

bulk is the interiority of human beings, pragmatically described.

A way to articulate these thoughts is by noticing that in Kant the human being is both the

subject and object of inquiry: if human beings were mere objects, we could treat them and

in particular their psychologies as raw data for our ethical inquiry, but since they are also

the very actors of inquiry, than they have to play a more engaged position in our account of

morality. In the Anthropology Kant points out that the normativity that is relevant for the

articulation of our ethical life is in fact not that one deduced from the point of view of

Reason that is the one we can attain only through a complete dismissal of everything that

is human and contingent but rather the one which express the point of view of the agent

engaged in the practices of world-making.

Such a change of emphasis is very interesting because it throws new light on the whole

kantian characterization of human beings as torn between reason and nature. As Michel

Foucault showed us in his 1964 Introduction lAntropologie, Kants later work on

anthropology has deep intertwining with his critique period, not only for biographical

reasons the Antropology class was held by Kant for some 25 years from 1772 to his

retirement in 1797 but also because what is at stake in Kants anthropology is a

redefinition of the boundaries of the human that stands as an interesting even if

problematic alternative to the one offered in the first and second Critique. Leaving aside if

this alternative is at odds with the usual kantian moral picture, or if it is rather to beconsidered one of its declinations4 a very interesting topic not only for its own sake but

4 According to Foucault, the two are closely related, and not understandable separately: Kantsanthropology Il y aurait une certaine vrit critique de lhomme, fille de la critique des conditions de la vrit(Foucault 2008: 13); it dcrire non pas ce que lhomme est, mais ce quil il peut faire de lui-mme quoit il suffitdajouter que ce que le Gemt doit faire de lui-mme, cest le plus grand usage empirique possible de la raison


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also for the historiography of modern moral philosophy, it is worth asking what kind of

shape thisanthropology takes when characterizes aspragmatic. In the lectures Kant refuses

to picture human beings as mere observers of what nature makes of themselves, suggesting

a way in which their liberty is achieved through a good employment of their faculties: by

describing not what human being are, but what they make of themselves, in terms of what

we can expect from them when they are engaged in their everyday business of world-

making, we picture human beings as subjects and bearers of moral values and worth. To live

morally one must make something of herself according to some ideal of good life, in the

same manner as to live healthy one must make something of himself according some ideals

of an healthy life5. However, unlike the dietetic example, such ideals are not fixed in

advance: a good life does not consist in an activity of mere heuristic rule-following but is

instead an inventive practice in which we build up our life in accordance to some ideas ofperfection which should crown our activities where what count as success is broadly

described as an activity in accordance to reason. If what guides our practices of self-

constitution is an activity according to reason, in the Anthropology such reason is portrayed

not as an a-priori feature of our metaphysical constitution, but rather as one of the

possibilities of the human life when approached viaa pragmatic anthropology. The moral

ought [sollen ] depends from an anthropological can [knnen ], which is articulated as a daily

exercise [knstlicher Spiel/Ausbung ] of our capacities for the sake of action. The pragmatic

should, without doubt a throughout normative notion, is derived from a description of one

among the possible postures of our mind in respect to a certain situation, one which is

ethically relevant.

In both Kant and James the adjective pragmatic characterizes anthropology not as a

scholastic knowledge of but instead as the knowledge of the ways human beings learns to

(Foucault 2008: 39). Lhomme, dans lAnthropologie nest nihomo natura , ni sujet pur de libert; il est prisdans les syntheses dj opres de sa liaison avec le monde (Foucault 2008: 34).

5 Il y aussie unedlectation spirituelle [Geistesgenu gib] communiquer ses penses; mais on est rebut si cettecommunication est impose sans tre profitable comme nourriture pour lesprit (par example la rption identique decertains traits qui devraient tre spirituals ou drles, peut, par cette identit meme, nous devenir insupportable); dans ce

cas, on appelle par analogie dgut cet instinct naturel se librer, |bien que kw dgot ici ne relve que du sensinterne (Kant 2008: 115). Later on Kant employs the notion of psychological diet (2008: 134) tocharacterize such regimes of conduct through which we educate our faculties to their right exercise.


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encounter the world. Human beings, qua agents, needs moral anthropology throughout their

lives in order to continuously sharpen and refine their faculties; by organizing and

presenting relevant aspects of human experience to agents, anthropology allows them to

reflect better about what to do and thus about what kind of persons they are 6. The

pragmatic study of our inner faculties allows us a deeper understanding of the condition of

our experiencing, and above all of our moral experiencing. In the Anthropology Kant

reinterprets the sharp dualism he elaborated in the Critiquesbetween world-knowledge and

moral-knowledge. Hes still interested in defending the dualism, but now he presents it as

deriving from the two standpoints theoretical and practical we can take toward

experience, and not as a consequence of our metaphysical constitution: not all word-

knowledge will count as empirical moral knowledge, but many instances of world-

knowledge that at a first glance appear to be non-moral can suddenly acquire moralsignificance when placed in the right perspective. According to this pragmatic perspective it

is impossible to tell in advance which human aspect is resistant to moral assessment,

because as agents human beings are capable of determining which aspect of the world might

turn out to be morally relevant in the very making of their lives. I will now explore this idea

by briefly sketching two recurring topics discussed at length in Kants Anthropology that is

the notions of character and that of sound experiencing.

The Pragmatic Anthropology is divided in two parts: the Didactic or Doctrine of Elements(Elementarlehre ), and the Characteristic or Doctrine of Method (Methodenlehre ). The former,

subtitled on the art of knowing the interior as well as the exterior of man, is concerned

with the analysis of the three faculties theoretical, aesthetical and moral of human beings

from the part of their formation and use; while the latter subtitled on the art of knowing

the interior of man from his exterior, articulates the ways in which these are shaped as to

form a character. Kant in fact describes character as what men makes of himself (Kant

2008: 184): it indicates the way we conduct ourselves and thus represents the way we

articulate our agency. Its contents are the varieties of human practices as reveled in our

6 Precise and correct understanding will know to limit itself in regard to the range of knowledgeexpected of it, and that the man endowed with such understanding will use it modestly (Kant 2008:148).


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relations with others and the world. Anthropology presents the good exercise of our

faculties as emerging from such a varieties of practices, refuting an external standpoint from

which to assess their right exercise. By conceiving the normativity of agency as always

embedded in the practices through which human beings conduct themselves, anthropology

pictures human beings as the sources of ethical normativity. Kant writes that a human being

is moral in the measure in which she fully express her character through the good exercise

of her rational capacities, but such an exercise stems from a certain description of human

beings as capable offormingtheir character. In order to have a character, and so to be moral,

human beings must do something, and thus they must become certain kind of persons.

Character is portrayed as a conduct of thought: achieving a character means cultivating our

faculties according to a system of values that is always embedded in our ordinary practices.

Morality is always exercised and never founded:

Man must, therefore, be educated to the good. But he who is to educate him

is again a human who still finds himself in the crudity of nature. This human,

now, is expected to bring about what he himself is still in need of (Kant

2008: 256).

The same goes with the notion of virtue, whose exercise makes the character morally good.

In the Anthropology it is presented from the point of view of its practice and not of his

possess:

Virtueis moral strength in pursuit of one's duty, a duty which should never be a

matter of habit, but should always proceed, fresh and original, from one's mode of

thought (Kant 2008: 106).

Virtue, character and the moral life they envision are pictured as human possibilities whose

pursuit requires a never-ending engagement with our contingencies that takes the form of a


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discovery or invention. Kants treatment of genius as the exemplary originality of mans

talent (57-9) represents a limpid application of this pragmatic framework in which

anthropology lays down the conditions for our moral life.

To this image of character as something in the making, Kant juxtaposes one of experiencingon the same lines. The Anthropology follows the division of the faculties as portrayed in the

Critiques; however, the domain that it privileges is not that of where the faculties positively

manifest what they are, but rather it is the domain where they manifest their weakness and

danger of perishing. With the words of Foucault What is indicated, more than their nature

or plain forms of their activity, is the movement for which, to move away from their centre

and justification, they want to alienate themselves in the illegitimacy (2008: 43). This very

interesting change of emphasis portrays human beings in the middle of their struggles for

formation and self-education, and their faculties as something that is not merelygiven.The

good exercise of our faculties is reflected in the notion of sound experience. Kant struggles

to present a great varieties of ways in which our faculties (theoretical, aesthetical and moral)

can fail to achieve their proper perfection, that is fails to provide us with the kind of

knowledge they aims to. Both theoretical and practical judgment require the subjects being

experienced in the right way with the relevant particulars, and thus they can be impaired in a

varieties of ways according to the failing in grasping the proper experience. Such incapability,

whose casuistry is not determined in advance but only in the very assessment by judgment, isnot a non-moral psychological deficiency that can be uprooted by means of an external

moral warrants, but rather an already moral feature of what we make of ourselves. From the

pragmatic standpoint of anthropology every can implies ought, provided that the content of

such normative notions can be specified only in reference to the practices undergone by

agents. What counts as a sound experience, for example in the aesthetics domain, is one that

increases the possibility for its enjoyment, and thus if it is in the reach of human capacities,

its pursuit counts as a morally normative activity, one that should be promoted or blamed 7.

Taking a moral example this double movement between anthropology and ethics appears

7 See 63-69 for an articulation of such a reading.


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even more clearly. Kant discusses courage (77)8 not as a property of disembodied or

minded-less actions, but rather as a certain description of human beings. He is not interested

in giving an abstract definition of it, but rather in describing the varieties of ways in which it

can be exhibited; only through such a description of human beings engaged in certain

activities it emerges a moral connotation of courage that marks the difference between a

(morally) good and a (morally) bad instance of it. The treatment of the morality of suicide

offers the best case in which such a dialectics is at play; judging if suicide driven by

considerations of courage is morally permissible requires investigating the soundness of the

experience provided by those considerations: acknowledging the point of view of the agent

in respect the relevant experience if for example it express a respect for the autonomy of

ones life threatened by an evil tyrant or rather a consuming grief for ones big frailty tells

us everything there is to know to judge such occurrence as morally permissible or not.

This way of presenting anthropology as an inquiry that is morally relevant brings to light an

image of ethics focused on what the self makes of herself through his thoughts and actions,

that is through those very features which brings her in a certain relationto herself. This idea,

articulated at length by Michel Foucault and his interlocutors as a theoretical instrument to

re-read the whole history of ethics9, can be presented as a central feature of pragmatism

intended as a moment in such an history, and in the last part of this talk I am about to sketch

the way James elaborates this idea in his 1890 masterpiece The Principles of Psychology.

5. The cornerstone of James pragmatic anthropology is a conception of human beings as

makers and not mere spectators of their psychological and moral lives. And this is not only

true for what regards complex patterns of activities, but also at the very level of their

elementary constitution. For James it is not possible to describe our mind and psychological

life without noticing how their good description is one form the point of view of the use

and in particular the moral use intended in the peculiar sense that is emerging from this

8 A similar point can be made in respect to other moral and non-moral notions; Kant discussespassions (80-6), imagination (34-6) and taste (67-71) by using this very same dialectic.

9 For a survey of this readings see Davidson (1986, 1998 and 2005).


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pragmatist perspective we make of them. The pragmatic motto our psychology is for the

sake of action can be read as a declination of the moral anthropology that we are presenting

in this talk. We can read The Principles of Psychologyas an exhibition of the varieties of ways in

which our mind very broadly conceived encounters the world by contributing to its

experiencing: it tells the many kinds of relationship we can entertain with experience, by

presenting the ways in which our interiority is prompted to respond in respect to our

thoughts and perceptions.

The importance of a serious inquiry into the very nature of our psychology is a condition for

the elaboration of a profitable moral position. James Principlesare in fact shot through with

the conviction that an accurate description of our very psychological makeup is relevant for

a full articulation of our ethical life. Ethics is intertwined with anthropology since it deals

with how we perceive and describe ourselves, and how much attentive and faithful we are to

our visions and reactions. Our moral life is portrayed by James as an activity of perception as

well as of choice: the attention and care we dedicate in our everyday experiencing and the

accuracy of the image we have of our inner life is something which we have to take notice,

develop and refine in order to become moral. Register what appears as valuablerequires in

the first instance a kind of re-appropriation of the space of subjectivity in which actions

define the boundaries of the human by shaping the psychological life animating such a

concept: the cultivation of our faculties

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for the sake of recovering from the moral blindnesstoward aspects of experience that can fail to touch us requires the acknowledgment of the

centrality of action in the shaping of our experiencing11. The character of our experiencing is

10 [I]f we survey the held of history and ask what feature all great periods of revival, of expansion ofthe human mind, display in common, we shall find, I think, simply this: that each and all of themhave said to the human being, 'The inmost nature of the reality is congenial to powerswhich youpossessNothing could be more absurd than to hope for the definitive triumph of any philosophywhich should refuse to legitimate, and to legitimate in an emphatic manner, the more powerful of ouremotional and practical tendenciesMoral creeds which speak to that impulse will be widelysuccessful in spite of Inconsistency, vagueness, and shadowy determination of expectancy. Manneeds a rule for his will, and will invent one if one be not given him. (James 1950 II: 314-5)

11 [T]he fons et origo of all reality, whether from the absolute or the practical point of view, is thussubjective, is ourselves. As bare logical thinkers, without emotional reaction, we give reality towhatever objects we think of, for they are really phenomena, or objects of our pausing thought, ifnothing more. But, as thinkers with emotional reaction, to give what seems to be a still higher degreeof reality to whatever things we select and emphasize and turn to WITH A WILL. These are ourliving realities [W]hatever things have intimate and continuous connection with my life are things


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directly relevant for ethical reflection since James conceived ethics not as an elaboration of a

systematic theory of virtues or rules, but rather as interested in the description of the

varieties of ethical stances human beings can take toward experience.

But then, what kind of psychology that is anthropology is relevant for ethics? Jamesconceived psychological states as directly relevant for the articulation of the moral life of the

subject who entertain them. According to his philosophy of psychology the analysis of mind

from a pragmatic standpoint allows a clarification and improvement of our cognitive and

affective life. By investigating the nature of our psychology we attain a clearer picture of

ourselves and a better grasp of the character of experiencing that is relevant for ethics.

Attention and interest, the two simplest features of the mind, are presented as the sources of

moral, epistemological and metaphysical claims: they do not only explain experience, butcreate and justify it. Things are not considered real until they are noticed, selected, or found

interesting and important; the concept of reality does not come into play without active

intervention from our part, and thus not before we describe the existence of an experience

as meaningful and desirable. James introduces the topic of interest as the fundamental

principle of perception:

[M]illions of items of the outward order are present to my senses which never properly

enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interestfor me.My experience is what

I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind without selective

interest, experience is an utter chaos. Interest alone gives accent and emphasis, light and

shade, background and foreground intelligible perspective, in a word. (I, p. 402)

Our moral life consists in the enrichment of our experiences by being attentive to the many

aspects of reality that could touch us. Giving an exhaustive description of reality, one in

of whose reality I cannot doubt. Whatever things fail to establish this connection are things which arepractically no better for me than if they existed not at all. (James 1950 II: 295-6)


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which there is space for ethical knowledge, requires in the first place acknowledging that

experiencing depends on a certain stance we can take toward it, one in which we take care

and refine our capacities of world-making. As James writes in the Principles

To sustain a representation, to think, is, in short the only moral act, for the

impulsive and the obstructed, for sane and lunatics alike (James 1950 II: 566).

Thinking is a moral act, because by an act of thought we decide what to attend and what to

ignore. A moral problem could take the form of getting the proper experience before the

mind so to be capable to act in the relevant ways. The existence of values in experience ismade possible by the very nature of attention: by an act of attention we describe certain

states of things as valuableliving options for us, and focus on particular interests and features

of the world that otherwise would be lost as ground noises. Their reality and truth relies on

the importance and interest they have in organizing our experience. With the words of James

My experience is what I agree to attend to, Only those items which I noticeshape my

mind without selective interest, experience is a utterly chaos. Interest alone

gives accent and emphasis, light and shade, background and foreground

intelligible perspectives, in a word (James 1950 I: 402).

Failing to account for these aspects of reality means being blind and unresponsive to them.

This is an ethical problem as much as an epistemic one: it means failing to acknowledge the

source and the character of our relationship with the world and avoiding the burdens of

responsibility that such a recognition implies.

6. As a concluding remark I want to address the question about the relevance of such a

conception of anthropology for the contemporary moral debate. The shattered ideas I


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presented in this paper as inspired from a certain reading of two classics, once enriched and

systematized, could be very useful if framed in the contemporary debate about the nature of

moral thought. What I have suggested through my reading of Kant and James is that the

notion of human being can be relevant for ethics if we renounce to concentrate to what

human beings are, and investigate what human beings make of themselves. This means

renouncing to ground ethics on a given conception of human nature without renouncing the

idea according to which ethics has a certain shape in virtue of its being a certain human

practice. From such a perspective we can uncover a space for subjectivity which results as

the outcome of a work on ourselves in terms of a development and elaboration of a mental

life that is ethically connoted one attentive to the richness of experience toward which we

could be morally blind, and aware of the burdens it has in it being justified from within its

practices of world-making.

REFERENCES

A. Davidson (1986):Archeology, Genealogy, Ethics, in Foucault: A Critical Reader (ed. by David

Couzens Hoy), Blackwell.

A. Davidson (1998): Foucault and his Interlocutors, University of Chicago Press.

A. Davidson (2005): Ethics as Ascetics, in The Cambridge Companion to Foucault (ed. by Gary

Gutting), Cambridge University Press

M. Foucault (2008): Introduction lAnthropologie, in Kant (2008).

B. Jacobs and P. Kain (2003): Essays on Kants Anthropology, Cambridge University Press.

W. James (1950): Principles of Psychology, Dover.

I. Kant (2008) Anthropologie dun point de vue pragmamatique(ed. by Michel Foucault), Vrin.

J. McDowell (1996):Mind, Value and Reality, Harvard.

J. McDowell (2009) The Engaged Intellect, Harvard.

ethics as anthropology human nature, pragmatism and moral reflection in

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