The Constitution of Agency

The Constitution of Agency collects ten of Christine M. Korsgaard's papers on practical reason and moral psychology. In Part 1, The Principles of Practical Reason , Korsgaard defends the view that the principles of practical reason are constitutive principles of action. By governing our actions in accordance with Kant's categorical imperative and the principle of instrumental reason, she argues, we take control of our own movements and so render
ourselves active, self-determining beings. In Part II, Moral Virtue and Moral Psychology , Korsgaard takes up the question of the role of our more passive or receptive faculties - our emotions and responses - in
constituting our agency. She offers a reading of the Nicomachean Ethics based on the idea that our emotions are perceptions of good and evil, and argues that Aristotle and Kant share a distinctive view about the locus of moral value and the nature of human choice. In Part III, Other Reflections , Korsgaard takes up the question of how we come to view one another as moral agents in Hume's philosophy, and examines the possible clash between the agency of the state and that of
the individual that led to Kant's paradoxical views about revolution. And finally, she discusses her methodology in an account of what it means to be a constructivist moral philosopher.