ISBN : 9780199394548
Georg Lukacs wrote that " Though Lukacs' concern was with the conditions for the possibility of art, his distinction also serves as an apt description of the way that Hegel and Hegelians have contrasted their own interpretations of self-determination with that of Kant. But it has always been difficult to see how elevation is possible without seclusion, or how rigidification can be avoided without making the boundaries of the self so malleable that its autonomy looks like a mere cover for the power of external forces. Yeomans explores Hegel's own attempts to grapple with this problem against the background of Kant's attempts, in his theory of virtue, to understand the way that morally autonomous agents can be robust individuals with qualitatively different projects, personal relations, and commitments that are nonetheless infused with a value that demands respect. In a reading that disentangles a number of different threads in Kant's approach, Yeomans shows how Hegel reweaves these threads around the central notions of talent and interest to produce a tapestry of self-determination. Yeomans argues that the result is a striking pluralism that identifies three qualitatively distinct forms of agency or accountability and sees each of these forms of agency as being embodied in different social groups in different ways. But there is nonetheless a dynamic unity to the forms because they can all be understood as practical attempts to solve the problem of autonomy, and each is thus worthy of respect even from the perspective of other solutions. "-Dean Moyar, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University "-Terry Pinkard, University Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown University
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: General Framework
Chapter 1: Virtue and Individuality
1. Virtue as the Individualization of Duty
2. Virtue as Duties that Persons have in Virtue of also Being Animals
3. Virtue as the Fight between Reason and the Inclinations
4. The Development of Talents as a Duty of Virtue
Chapter 2. The Empty Formalism Objection in the Context of Individualized Virtue
Chapter 3: Fichte and the Problem of Individual Effectiveness
Chapter 4: A Moral Psychology of Talents and Interests
1: Talents and Interests
2: Subjectivity and Objectivity
Part II: Experiments in Individuality
Chapter 5: The Changing Nature of Objective Content
1: The Distinctively Moral Form of Objective Content
2: Farmers
3: Soldiers
Chapter 6: Talents and the Shaping of Action
1: Talent and Intentional Self-Knowledge
2: Craft and Industrial Producers
3: Scholars
Chapter 7: The Concreteness of the Good
1: The Effectiveness of the Good
2: The Public Estate
3: Merchants
Part III: Conclusion
Chapter 8: Hegelian Self-Determination
1: The Reciprocal Inversion of Moral and Material Ends
2: Character as Medium and Process of Expression
3: Non-Empiricist Action Explanations
4: Objective Criteria and Deception
Index