I Fichte, Kant, and autonomy. We saw that Kant's argument for the Fundamental
Law of Pure Practical Reason (the Categorical Imperative) may depend upon
an assumption of freedom. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762--1814), an important
figure in post-Kantian German idealism, argued that this is a concept that
rational agents can get only by interaction with other rational agents that
involves reciprocal recognition (Anerkennung).
Fichte's thought proceeds along roughly the following lines. How, can a free agent be aware of itself ``as object''? Only by finding itself ``self-active'', since otherwise it will not be aware of itself as free. But how can it be aware of its own free activity? Only insofar as an agent is summoned to act by another being with an Aufforderung (summons). What is a summons? An essentially second-personal request, claim, demand, etc., that addresses a second-personal reason, that is, a reason that wouldn’t have existed but for the possibility of its being addressed and that presupposes an essentially second-personal authority to make claims or demands (and hold responsible).
There are several points here:
II Second-personal
reasons:
To see the difference between second-personal reasons and other reasons for acting, consider two different ways you might try to convince someone to move her foot from on top of yours. One would be to get her to see, perhaps through sympathy, the badness of your being in pain. Were the other to come to want you to be free of pain, she would see herself as having a reason to move her foot as a way of eliminating this bad state of the world. The reason would appear to be agent-neutral; it would seem to her to exist for anyone in a position to change the bad state.
Alternatively, you might lay a claim or put forward (a purportedly) valid demand. You might say something that asserts or implies your authority to claim or demand that she move her foot and that simultaneously expresses this demand. You might demand this as the person whose foot she is stepping on, or as a member of the moral community, which demands that people not step on one another’s feet (and who understand themselves as implicitly making this demand), or as both. Whichever, the reason you would address would be agent-relative rather than agent-neutral. It would be addressed to her as the person causing gratuitous pain to another person, something we persons normally assume we have the authority to demand that persons not do and that we normally understand ourselves, as members of the moral community, as actually demanding of one another. The reason would not be addressed to her as someone who is simply in a position to eliminate an agent-neutrally bad state. It would purport to be a reason for her to stop gratuitous pain she is causing, not for her to alter the regrettable state of someone’s pain or even of someone’s causing another pain. If she could stop, say, two others from causing gratuitous pain by the shocking spectacle of keeping her foot firmly planted on yours, this second, claim-based (hence second-personal) reason would not recommend that she do so.
What is important for our purposes is that someone can sensibly
accept this second reason for moving her foot, one embodied in your demand,
only if she also accepts your authority to demand this of her. That is just what it is to accept something as
a valid demand. And if she accepts that you
can demand that she move her foot, she must also accept that you will have
grounds for complaint or some other form of accountability-seeking response
if she doesn’t. Unlike the first reason, this
latter is second-personal in the sense that, although the first is conceptually
independent of the second-personal address involved in accountability, the
second is not. A second-personal reason
is one whose validity depends on presupposed authority (hence accountability)
relations between persons and, therefore, on the possibility of the reason’s
being addressed person-to-person. Reasons
addressed or presupposed in orders, requests, claims, reproaches, complaints,
demands, promises, contracts, givings of consent, commands, and so on, are
all second-personal in this sense. They simply
wouldn’t exist but for their role in second-personal address. And their second-personal character explains their
agent-relativity. Since second-personal reasons
always derive from agents’ relations to one another, they are invariably
agent-relative in some way or other; they apply to us from within the network
of these relations.
III Four interdefinable
notions
a. authority to make
a claims or demand of another;
b. authoritative (or valid) claim or demand;
c. second-personal reason for acting;
d. accountability (or responsibility)
to another.
IV Autonomy and the second-person standpoint
A summons (Aufforderung) is to another as an agent, “calling upon it to resolve to exercise its efficacy.” So in being aware of the summons, an agent is aware of herself as thus regarded. (31) So far, this might be no different from a third-personal, observer’s awareness. That one is seen as an agent, or even that one so sees oneself, is but another aspect of the way things are in the world anyway. What makes all the difference, in Fichte’s view, is that a summons addresses the agent second-personally. Therefore, in taking it up, the agent per force relates-to-the-other-relating-to-her-as-an-agent. She operates within a second-personal deliberative standpoint in which each person’s practical thought presupposes that each is a “you” to whom the other is a “you” in return. The presuppositions of intelligible second-personal thought require that each deliberate under the assumption that she (and her co-deliberator) are both agents. She simultaneously “posits” herself and the other as free and rational agents within her own deliberation. (9) As Fichte puts it, she grasps herself “in this identity of acting and being acted upon.” (23, see also 40) Moreover, as we shall see, Fichte argues that so to regard herself (and her co-deliberator), she must see both as sharing a common authority or second-personal status as free and rational agents to address irreducibly second-personal reasons.
A summons just is any address of a second-personal reason to another agent. Since it addresses the other as agent, a summons necessarily involves the addressing of reasons. “The rational being’s activity is by no means to be determined and necessitated by the summons in the way that . . . an effect is necessitated by its cause; rather the rational being is to determine itself in consequence of the summons.” (35) A summons attempts to give another agent reasons through by which she can freely determine herself through positing herself.
If the reasons one attempts to give are not second-personal, as, for example, in advice or in the case where you attempt to exhibit the badness of your being in pain, then only epistemic authority is presupposed by the addresser and acknowledged by the addressee. In pointing to non-second-personal reasons for acting, an advisor makes no direct claim on her advisee’s actions. Rather she makes a claim on his beliefs about what there is reason for him to do. She addresses him, therefore, not directly as an agent, but as a cognizer of practical reasons. She summons him, not to act, but only to believe that certain considerations provide reasons for him to act. If someone lays a claim, or makes a request, order, or demand, if, say, you ask someone to move her foot from on top of yours, then you address her directly as an agent. And if she takes up the address, she reflects back a reciprocal address (as someone who, like you, has the standing to address second-personal reasons as well). She posits herself in recognizing your self positing. Even a bare request addresses a second-personal reason that is additional to any non-second-personal reasons that might stand behind it, since it presupposes the authority to make the request.
Moreover, when one person addresses a putative second-personal reason to another who considers it in second-personal space, both presuppose as a condition of the intelligibility of their interaction that the addressee can act on the consideration if he accepts its validity, that is, if he accepts the other’s authority to address it. Pure second-personal address and uptake jointly presuppose that addresser and addressee alike are free to act on the addressed reasons. It follows that both presuppose they can act on second-personal reasons, reasons, that is, that are rooted, not in their respective relations to an independent order of fact and value, but simply in their respective authority in relation to each other to make claims and demands of one another. From the second-person standpoint, they see that they have a kind of freedom that is different from that involved in theoretical reasoning, or that would be involved in practical reasoning on the Moorean foil I sketched above. They see that they can act on reasons that are irreducibly second-personal. They must presuppose, therefore, that practical reasoning is, in this one respect at least, fundamentally different from theoretical reasoning and from the “Moorean foil” that models practical reasoning on theoretical reasoning.
IV The second-person standpoint,
the dignity of persons, and the CI
Fichte argues that second-personal address commits addresser and addressee to the “principle of right.” Here’s a turn on the argument. Second-personal address always presupposes that addresser and addressee share a common authority (dignity) as free and rational agents, and therefore commit both to the CI.
1. Addressing second-personal reasons presupposes that addressees can freely and rationally determine themselves by the addressed reasons. This is part of Fichte’s point. What enables a second-personal summons to give an agent a deliberative awareness of his free agency is that it presupposes that the addressee can freely decide to act on the second-personal reasons it addresses.
2. Addressing second-personal reasons presupposes, more specifically, that addressees can rationally accept these reasons (and the authority relations in which they are grounded). Thus, although second-personal reasons are always addressed to someone in some specific normative relation (even if only that of equal person), the addressee is more properly conceived of as a-rational-person-who-happens-to-stand-in-that-normative-relation. Here there are two points. The first, that second-personal address presupposes that the addressee can rationally accept the addressed reasons and the authority relations in which they are grounded follows from claim 1. The only way an agent can freely and rationally determine himself by a reason is by rationally accepting it as a reason and acting on it. And the only way an agent can accept a second-personal reason is by accepting the authority relations in which it is grounded.
The second point is that the addresser must also presuppose that the addressee can be expected to accept these things as a rational person and, therefore, that although second-personal reasons frequently invoke more specific normative relations, the reason is more properly conceived of as addressed to a-rational-person-who-happens-to-stand-in-that-putatively-normative relation. This follows from the nature of rational acceptance. It is not enough for the sergeant to presuppose that the private she addresses actually accepts her authority. The private cannot freely and rationally determine himself by the reason the sergeant purports to give him unless he rationally accepts it. And that he is himself a private, or that he actually accepts the sergeant’s authority over him, is irrelevant to whether he should accept this role. That depends rather on whether, as a rational person, he should accept this normative relation in general and, as a consequence, accept the sergeant’s authority should he occupy, as he does, the position of private.
3. Addressing second-personal demands or claims presupposes that the addressee is accountable to the addresser (among others) for free compliance. Accountability of some kind is built into the very idea of a demand or claim.[1] The concepts of claim, second-personal reason, and responsibility (accountability) all share the same irreducible idea of the authority to claim or demand. If A has the standing to demand certain conduct from B, then not only does B thereby have a reason to do what A demands; B also has a responsibility to A, such that if B does not freely comply, A can hold B responsible in some way. Exactly what this involves will vary with the case. In some cases, B may be responsible only for giving some account of his failure to comply, that is, for justifying his noncompliance to A. In others, various reactive attitudes or even legal coercive sanctions may be appropriate. But in any case, it is part of the very idea of A’s making a valid demand of B, that A has the authority to relate second-personally to B in ways: (i) that B might not otherwise want or choose, (ii) that A thereby has justification for, whether or not B wants or chooses it, and (iii) that A would not have justification for without the relevant authority.
4. Addressing a demand that someone act in some specific way therefore presupposes a distinction between a rightful notice of sanctions that such accountability might itself involve (which the addresser must suppose to be consistent with the addressee’s freely determining himself by the relevant second-personal reasons), on the one hand, and wrongfully attempting to determine someone by the mere threat of those same sanctions (coercion) or by some other nonrational means, on the other. Here we come to the heart of the matter. Call any form of relating to someone that one has standing to realize toward him by virtue of his failure to comply with a justified demand, whether or not he wants or chooses, a “sanction”. Then, by definition, the address of any second-personal reason will presuppose the standing to exact sanctions should the addressee fail to comply. This commits the addresser to a distinction between making an authorized demand on someone’s conduct (including with notice of sanctions for free noncompliance) in a way that (rightfully) recognizes the addressee as a free and rational being, on the one hand, and, on the other, wrongfully attempting to determine his will by a mere threat of the unwanted alternative in which the sanction consists (which notice of the sanctions would be if he lacked the relevant authority), or by some other nonrational means, on the other. It commits the addresser to the latter’s being a violation of the other as a free and rational person.
5. Addressing second-personal demands therefore presupposes as well that the addressee has the authority to demand that others not treat his rational nature as a mere means (as through coercion), and thus to claim that others relate to him only in ways that are consistent with second-personal reasons he can be expected to accept and determine himself by as a free and rational person. The presupposed distinction noted in 4 commits the addresser to the idea that “mere use” of his addressee’s reason, as with a threat, would violate the status he implicitly presupposes in his address. So the addresser is committed to recognizing that he must respect and treat the other as a free and rational person, which requires that he give the other second-personal standing and be accountable to him.
It is the assumption of authority understood as the standing to address second-personal reasons that generates this presupposition. In assuming such authority, one presupposes the standing to conduct oneself toward another in ways that, were one to lack it, would overstep one’s authority with respect to that person. And this commits one to the idea that the person also has an authority with respect to one that warrants the demand that one not overstep in these ways. It presupposes, that is, that he can demand that one not act threaten a would be sanction unless one has a relevant authority that can itself be justified to him (as mentioned above in 3).
6. Therefore, addressing second-personal reasons presupposes the dignity of persons. The address of any second-personal reason must presuppose that the addressee has a normative standing simply as a free and rational person, a standing that the addresser must assume he shares as well. Any pure second-personal address whatsoever is committed to the common capacity of addresser and addressee for second-personal, reciprocally recognizing address, and committed as well to their common authority to make demands of one another as free and rational persons, that is, to their having an equal dignity as persons.
We can therefore view autonomy of the will and the CI as stating a condition that practical laws that obligate one, that one is responsible for complying with, as a free and rational agent must satisfy. Any such law is something one would have to be able to follow by exercising the capacities that make one subject to it. But if that is so, then autonomy seems to follow.
[1] Thus Hart writes about commands, that they are to be “taken not only as a peremptory guide to action by those who are themselves commanded to act, but may be taken by them also as . . . rendering unobjectionable and permissible what would normally be resented, that is demands for conformity, or various forms of coercive pressure on others to conform. . . .” (H. L. A. Hart, “Commands and Authoritative Legal Reasons,” p. 103.) I am indebted to Rob Kar for this reference.