Philosobro

Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction is a critical strategy that challenges the belief that words and concepts possess stable meanings. Although its principles are simple and widely applicable, deconstruction is formidable because it threatens the very stability of meaning itself. This essay argues that through différance, inversion and subversion, Derrida shows that philosophy’s foundational concepts are unstable. By applying deconstruction to reason itself, the essay challenges reason’s claim to be philosophy’s secure foundation of truth and meaning. 

Derrida utilises the term différance to combine the meanings of the two words difference and deferral into a single term. When applied to specific words, différance exposes the unstable condition of the relationship between words and their meanings. To demonstrate this, consider the word “house”. Rather than being self-contained within the word, the meaning of “house” emerges through its difference from related words such as “shed”, “apartment”, “tent”, or “building”. However, those related words are not fixed either. They are themselves understood through their relations to further words. Derrida refers to this condition as deferral: the process by which meaning passes from one word to another, and from there to another again, ad infinitum, without ever becoming fully present in any single term (Derrida 1996, 441-49). 

Inversion and subversion further destabilise meaning by exposing the hierarchies within binary oppositions where one concept is privileged and its opposite subordinated. For example, in the binary opposition of strong and weak, “strong” is often treated as primary because it appears, at first glance, to be preferable. Inversion involves reversing a hierarchical opposition by temporarily privileging the term that has traditionally subordinated. This exposes the dependence of the primary term on the term it excludes. Subversion then destabilises the opposition itself by showing that each term depends on the other for its meaning (Lawlor 2023, sec. 5). Using the term “reason” as an example, reason can be positioned in a binary with a range of other terms which it appears to oppose: reason / madness, reason / emotion and reason / faith – to list just a few. In these three examples, reason is often understood to be hierarchically superior. Through inversion and subversion, these hierarchies are first reversed and then destabilised, showing that reason cannot be cleanly separated from the terms it excludes. 

In the opposition of reason/madness, by temporarily privileging madness, it is revealed that reason only defines itself as sane, coherent, and logical by excluding madness as irrational, incoherent, and illogical. This destabilises the opposition by showing that madness is not external to reason, but part of the boundary through which reason defines itself. The inversion of the reason / emotion opposition reveals that reason is not a pure and self-contained concept, but dependent on emotion for its direction and value. Reason can be understood as an individual’s capacity to think, judge and form conclusions through logic and rigor. In order for an individual to utilise their faculty of reason, they must be sufficiently motivated to do so. Without motivation, there is no cause to utilise reason. Motivation, then, is prior to reason. Since motivation involves affective concern for some end or value, reason depends on emotion to give it direction. Emotion therefore is not reason’s inferior opposite but a condition for its possibility. 

Finally, in the reason / faith opposition, reason might be regarded as superior because it is logical, rigorous, evidence-based, and impartial. Faith, by contrast, is treated as inferior because it entails belief in things that cannot be fully demonstrated through reason or empirical evidence. When this opposition is inverted, however, reason can be presented as dependent on faith-like trust. Valid reasoning frequently leads philosophers to simultaneously incompatible conclusions, yet philosophers continue to treat reason as the proper judge of truth. For instance, one line of reasoning can conclude that the Universe must have a single point of origin, whereas another robust line of reasoning concludes the Universe is infinite. If valid reason can lead to incompatible conclusions, then it does not follow that reason itself contains innate authority. This reveals a circular dependence: reason cannot justify its own authority without first assuming that reason is authoritative. Thus, reason’s authority depends on a faith-like commitment.

This deconstruction of the meaning of reason can result in multiple conclusions, ranging from moderate to radical. A moderate conclusion is simply pointing out how reason appears dependent on the very terms it traditionally subordinates. A more ambitious conclusion would be to reject reason’s privileged status entirely: if reason depends on the very terms it subordinates, then its claim to superiority as logical, rigorous, evidence-based, and impartial is no longer secure. 

Given that deconstruction can be applied to virtually all concepts involving a binary such as truth / error, and good / evil, deconstruction threatens to undermine the foundations which philosophy depends on. However, such a radical conclusion is open to the criticism that deconstruction moves too quickly from the instability of particular meanings to much larger claims about rhetoric and metaphysics without sufficient warrant (Culler 1982, 246). By pointing out that the concept of reason has an unstable boundary with its opposites, the traditional meaning of the term reason dissolves, but this alone does not automatically necessitate that reason itself collapses. It remains plausible that reason has unstable conceptual boundaries without losing its usefulness as a tool for thought. Suppose this is correct, and reason survives as a valuable mode of thinking in spite of its conceptual identity breaking down. Reason then takes the form of an abstract phenomena that resists a clear definition and an understanding of exactly what its capabilities and limits are. In this state, reason no longer presents with the power and potency of its traditional understanding. Without its former prestige, it remains difficult to hold reason as the single secure foundation from which philosophy grounds truth and meaning.

This aligns with the broader critique of what Derrida calls logocentrism: the privileging of reason, logic, speech and rational ordering in western philosophy. If logos cannot be fully stabilised, then philosophy can no longer claim that reason gives it direct access to secure truth and meaning (Reynolds n.d., sec. 2a). Logocentrism prevails throughout modern academia, but it also presents as a common popular ideal throughout society today with intuition, relating and functions involving emotion and feeling are subordinated to reason and rationality. Logos is undoubtedly useful, but once deconstruction undermines its authority, there is no reason why it should be exalted to the heights in which it is. This realisation may be catastrophic to philosophy, but for society in general, the deflation of logos and the liberation of other functions such as feeling may lead to a more balanced mode of understanding ourselves and the world.

Bibliography

Culler, Jonathan. 1982. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 

Derrida, Jacques. 1996. “Différance” In The Continental Philosophy Reader, edited by Richard Kearney and Mara Rainwater, 438-464. London: Routledge.

Lawlor, Leonard. 2023. “Jacques Derrida.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/derrida/ 

Reynolds, Jack. n.d. “Jacques Derrida” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed May 26, 2026. https://iep.utm.edu/derrida/

Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology attempts to explain how objects become meaningful within consciousness. To this end, he conceives the transcendental ego as the condition through which objects are unified and made meaningful within experience. This essay argues that Heidegger undermines Husserl’s transcendental ego by illustrating how meaning is already encountered in the world before reflective consciousness occurs, thus removing the necessity of a transcendental ego. In The Vienna Lecture, Husserl proposes phenomenology as a mode of inquiry concerned with the structures of consciousness through which the world is experienced. To access this mode of inquiry, he introduces the phenomenological reduction, or epoché, in which the natural attitude of science and philosophy is bracketed in order to examine experience as it appears within consciousness. Husserl argues that experience is structured intentionally, meaning that every instance of consciousness can only be understood as consciousness of something. Husserl argues that experience is structured intentionally, meaning that every instance of consciousness is consciousness of something. Husserl argues that experience is structured intentionally, meaning that every instance of consciousness can only be understood as consciousness of something. Every intentional experience contains both an act (noesis) and an object (noema) as it appears within experience. A tree, for example, always appears in consciousness through a noetic act: it is seen, remembered, or imagined (Husserl 1996, 15–18). Husserl argues that intentional experiences are not isolated phenomena, but are unified within a continuous stream of consciousness belonging to the same enduring subject of experience. This means the separate experiences of first seeing a tree, and later remembering the tree, are all experiences of the same subject. Husserl understands the subject of experience not as the empirical self, but as the transcendental ego: the condition through which objects are constituted as meaningful within experience (Zahavi 2025, sec. 4). 

Through his concept of embodiment, Husserl argues that the transcendental ego experiences the world through the lived body (Leib). The body is not merely an object separate from the mind in the Cartesian sense; rather, it is both an object in the world and the medium through which the world is perceived and constituted as meaningful. Husserl points out that objects are never perceived in their totality, but always from a particular angle and distance. This shows that perception is always organised around the spatial position of the lived body, such that the body functions as the “zero-point” of perception: the constant point of reference from which spatial relations are experienced (Zahavi 2025, sec. 5). Objects can be perceived next to me, above me and so on. Perceptions are therefore organised through orientation to the lived body. In this sense, Husserl presents subjectivity as embodied, since the world is not constituted from a detached mental standpoint, but from the situated perspective of bodily experience. 

So far, Husserl has described phenomenology as if it were the-world-for-me, raising the question of how the world can be experienced as objective and how other subjects can be phenomenologically understood. Husserl argues that through empathy, others are encountered as behaving intentionally towards the world in much the same way as the self. While it is impossible to know the subjectivity of others with the certainty of self-knowledge, empathy presents the mindedness of others through observations such as their bodily movements, their facial expressions, behaviours, and so on. From this, Husserl infers that others are also centers of intentionality and represent their own perspectives of the world. Husserl argues that through intersubjectivity, the objectivity of the world is established. Empathy reveals multiple perspectives, each separate perspective experiences the same objects. In this view, the external world is no longer the-world-for-me, but objectively real through its availability to a plurality of subjects (Zahavi 2025, sec. 5).

Heidegger offers a criticism of Husserl’s phenomenology by arguing that the world is meaningfully encountered independently of a transcendental ego or reflective consciousness. For Husserl, the world becomes meaningful through conscious awareness, as the ego encounters objects through perception, memory, imagination, and other noetic acts. Husserl places the impetus on intentionality for constituting meaning, but as Heidegger points out, meaning presents at a more primordial level than intentionality. In ordinary existence, objects are not first encountered through intentional acts and then assigned meaning; rather, meaning is already present through practical engagement before reflective thought occurs (Wheeler 2025, sec. 2.1.1). Objects are meaningful insofar as they appear within contexts of use, relevance, and human activity. A hammer, for example, is encountered as meaningful through its relation to nails, wood, building, shelter, and so on. Heidegger argues that this kind of meaning does not require reflective awareness, since practical activity is often carried out transparently to awareness. A dancer who is performing on a stage might enter a flow-state in which she performs complex movements without any reflective awareness. According to Heidegger, reflective consciousness can emerge from an abrupt or unexpected break in the transparency of an activity such as a hammer malfunctioning or a costume tearing (Wheeler 2025, sec. 2.1.2). 

Embodiment, intersubjectivity, and objectivity can also be accounted for prior to transcendental ego as the original source of meaning. The body engages meaningfully with objects in the world when they are encountered as practically significant. For instance, the body responds to a ladder as something climbable, or to music as something to dance to prior to reflective awareness. Similarly, others are not first encountered as mere physical bodies, but as meaningful beings disclosed through their actions, gestures, speech, and involvement in the world. This also provides an alternative to Husserl’s account of objectivity: rather than being constituted through the plurality of multiple perspectives, the world is already encountered as public and shared through contexts of common use (Wheeler 2025, secs. 2.2.1–2.2.2).

Husserl positioned the transcendental ego as the condition through which objects are constituted as meaningful within experience. However, Heidegger shows that meaning already appears through embodied practical engagement prior to reflective consciousness. Therefore, the transcendental ego is not the necessary foundation of meaningful experience. One possible counterargument in defence of Husserl’s transcendental ego is that it is perhaps wrongly equated with reflective consciousness. It is arguable that the ego need not be understood as something that manifests within reflection, but could instead be understood as an a priori condition of unity through which experiences are organised into a coherent first-person perspective. In this way, a transcendental argument can still be made that the ego is a necessary condition for there to be first-person experience at all, similar to Kant’s argument for the unity of apperception (Rohlf 2024, sec. 4.2). However, explaining this unifying principle as an ego, self, or similar entity remains problematic, since it unnecessarily transmutes a formal condition of experience into something that resembles a hidden subject behind experience.

Bibliography

Husserl, Edmund. 1996. “The Vienna Lecture” In The Continental Philosophy Reader, edited by Richard Kearney and Mara Rainwater, 15–22. London: Routledge

Husserl, Edmund. 1996. “Phenomenology” In The Continental Philosophy Reader, edited by Richard Kearney and Mara Rainwater, 3-14. London: Routledge.

Wheeler, Michael. 2025. “Martin Heidegger.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/ 

Zahavi, Dan. 2025. “Edmund Husserl.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/husserl/ 

Jean-Paul Sartre argues that through anguish, abandonment, and despair human existence is revealed to be characterised by radical freedom and radical responsibility. In the face of this, individuals must either accept this condition authentically or escape into bad faith. A critical reflection on Sartre’s project reveals that the lived experience of the existentialist often resembles that of individuals adhering to the traditional value systems he rejects, raising the question of whether his existentialism merely repackaged those systems in a different form. The essay will proceed first by explaining Sartre’s view that human beings possess no preordained essence and they must therefore determine their essence through their actions. It will then analyse what anguish, abandonment and despair reveal about human nature, including the roles of authenticity and bad faith in responding to these phenomena. Finally, it will critically assess whether Sartre’s framework, despite his rejection of traditional value systems, ultimately recreates their structure.

Before explaining how the phenomena of anguish, abandonment and despair reveal radical human freedom, Sartre’s view on the human condition as lacking predetermined essence must be analysed. For Sartre, the human condition is defined by the principle that existence precedes essence (Sartre 2007, 22). Sartre uses the term essence to refer to the defining nature or purpose of a thing. The essence of a watch can be thought of as something that tells the time while being strapped to the wrist. The essence of a bucket is to contain, transport and pour water. Sartre argues that the essences of these items precede their existence because their structure and purpose are determined prior to their creation. For human beings, no such predetermined function or role exists (Sartre 2007, 22-23). While humans exist as beings with agency, self-awareness, and the capacity for sustained, deliberate action, there is, by default, no preordained purpose to direct these faculties or give meaning to them. Many religious belief systems maintain that human beings are created by God who endows them with an essence such as a soul. Followers of these systems may identify with such essences and act in accordance with divine guidance taught through scriptures or from religious authorities. This view, sometimes called essentialism, has fallen out of favour for many in the West in the past few centuries. Sartre’s claim that existence precedes essence is a statement about the condition of such individuals, and much of his philosophical work is dedicated to reorienting them to an existence where essence must be created through deliberate action. 

Sartre’s claim that a person is “nothing other than what he makes of himself” (Sartre 2007, 22) follows directly from this condition. He argues that a human being’s identity is therefore determined through their actions, rather than any predetermined nature or purpose. In the absence of such an essence, there is no external standard or guidance that can determine how one ought to act or what one should become (Sartre 2007, 28-29). Each individual must instead determine this through their own choices. This condition constitutes what Sartre calls radical freedom: the inescapable necessity of choosing. From this freedom follows radical responsibility, as individuals must bear responsibility for the actions they choose and the values those actions express. Radical freedom and radical responsibility are therefore inseparable features of human existence, and are further disclosed in lived experience, first through what Sartre calls anguish.

When a person is confronted with the necessity of defining themselves and deliberating on what they ought to become, they encounter what Sartre calls anguish (Sartre 2007, 25-26). Anguish is the state that accompanies the recognition of the full responsibility that accompanies choice. For Sartre, every choice a person makes, the responsibility of that choice is the sole property of the decider alone. One may heed the advice of others, conform to social expectations, or act in accordance with their inclinations and emotions, yet in each case the responsibility for the choice remains their own. Here, anguish arises as an uneasiness or anxious affect that is, according to Sartre, inescapable. One cannot successfully evade anguish by simply avoiding difficult choices since abstaining from decisions also constitutes a choice. Moreover, one also encounters anguish from the realisation that their choices are implicit statements about the permissibility of such choices for others. Whether this implicit statement takes the form of a career choice, an apparently immoral action, or even a fashion statement, the implication of permissibility remains. Sartre illustrates anguish through the biblical example of Abraham, who is commanded by angels to sacrifice his son (Sartre 2007, 26). After receiving the command, Abraham is free to act in whichever way he chooses, and no external authority can relieve him of responsibility. He must bear the consequences of either sacrificing his son or disobeying God, as well as the implication of the permissibility of his choice.

Anguish first and foremost reveals that human beings are radically free and responsible for their actions, but also that they can either assume this condition authentically or fall into what Sartre calls bad faith. Freedom in this sense is a necessary and inescapable human condition. Sartre, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, says that “man is condemned to be free” (Sartre 2007, 29), stripping freedom of its often positive connotation and instead presenting it as a burden. Anguish arises from this burden as a sharp awareness of one’s responsibility that results from their choices and actions, particularly those of significant consequence. To assume this condition authentically is to accept one’s radical freedom and responsibility and to act in full awareness of it. On one hand, this involves confronting the full weight of one’s responsibility, but it also demands a heightened awareness of what one is choosing and affirming through their actions.

If authenticity means accepting radical freedom and responsibility, then attempts to avoid this responsibility often occur in what Sartre calls “bad faith”. An act of bad faith is not merely a lie one tells oneself in order to evade responsibility, since lying presupposes a division between one who knows the truth and one who is deceived. In bad faith, however, the same consciousness must both know and conceal the truth (Sartre 1956, 86-89). It is therefore a distinctive structure of consciousness in which one recognises a truth, namely, one’s own freedom and responsibility, yet refuses to properly acknowledge it or instead attempts to distance themselves from it. It is an attempt by a free being to escape the burden of their own freedom and responsibility. When bad faith arises in response to anguish, it is characterised by an individual acting as though their choices are determined by something other than themselves, while simultaneously concealing from themselves that they are the sole source of those choices. In Sartre’s play No Exit, audiences meet Joseph Garcin who, through his reluctance to take responsibility for his actions, demonstrates bad faith in anguish (Sartre, No Exit). In the play, Garcin is in hell contemplating the circumstances of his recent execution. He was tried and convicted as a deserter before being sentenced to death by firing squad. Prior to this, he worked as a journalist for a pacifist newspaper, and when war broke out, he chose to desert rather than fight. Instead of accepting responsibility for his decision, he attempts to disavow it by appealing to the notion that as a pacifist, he had no choice but to desert. In the eyes of his former comrades as well as Inez, his cohabitant in hell, he is considered a coward. Instead of accepting the responsibility for this label as the result of a choice he made, he attempts to resist it and seeks approval from Inez as he attempts to reinterpret his situation. Inez refuses his attempt. While not made explicit in the play, Garcin’s need for Inez’s approval suggests an underlying awareness of his responsibility, which he attempts to evade by appealing to his pacifism as though it determined his actions. In doing so, he exemplifies bad faith in anguish, evading responsibility for his choice.

Abandonment is the recognition that there is no God, value system, or justification available to ground or excuse human choices and actions. Sartre echoes Dostoevsky’s warning that “without God, everything is permissible” (Sartre 2007, 28-29) and suggests that humanity faces an existence where external justifications and excuses are unable to legislate their behaviour. The term ‘abandoned’ is fitting because it describes a condition in which all prior structures of value have collapsed, leaving behind a void where humans are alone without justification, excuses, or objective rules to guide them. This void is not merely the absence of God and the Christian value structures but of all modes of external justification. This is because any appeal to a value or principle presupposes a prior choice to adopt it over alternatives. If the authority of a value depends upon such a choice, then it cannot serve as an independent ground for action. Therefore, no value or principle can function as a justification that determines action independently of the individual. Actions made according to signs, symbols, or revelation are similarly constituted in that the choice to act according to them requires a free choice. Justification does not always take the form of a rational process of consulting values and deliberating the best course of action; it often occurs as backwards rationalisation. An individual who acted irrationally might seek to retroactively excuse their actions by claiming they were acting according to a poorly calibrated determining force such as their so-called human nature. This is untenable to Sartre, who claims if existence precedes essence, then humans have no fixed or given essence prior to their actions. A fixed ‘human nature’ would be exactly such an essence: something that determines or explains what humans are and how they act. Therefore, there is no human nature in the sense required to explain or justify action (Sartre 2007, 29). Sartre has undermined not only particular mechanisms humans have historically used to justify their actions, but also the fundamental process of justification itself. By pointing out that individuals always choose one justification over another establishes that humans still necessarily make that choice freely.

Just as anguish reveals that humans are simultaneously radically free to act, and radically responsible for the consequences of their actions, abandonment reveals that the freedom-responsibility duality extends to include all possible justifications for such actions. The term abandonment serves as a vivid symbolic description of the lived experience of the newly minted existentialist. An individual who once found safety in the justifications of divine command or rational moral principles to choose for them realises that they were illusions. Upon realising, the structures they relied upon disappear leaving them completely alone to navigate the choices unassisted and vulnerable to the weight of the consequences. This imagery further exemplifies the words of Sartre when he declared “man is condemned to be free”. Just as radical freedom renders the individual as the sole author of their actions, without recourse to any external source of justification, radical freedom and radical responsibility is deepened. 

Freedom in the face of abandonment does not mean rejecting religion, reason, or intuition as guides, but recognising that they cannot decide what one should do on their own. Instead, it is up to the individual to choose how to interpret, understand and follow them, and to take responsibility for that choice. In this way, abandonment can be faced authentically. Sartre recalls meeting a Jesuit priest, who after experiencing a series of misfortunes including the death of his father, a heartbreak, and flunking out of military school, interpreted these events as a sign that he should join the order of Jesuits (Sartre 2007, 33-34). His choice to follow this sign could easily be seen as foolish or irrational in the eyes of another. In contrast, Sartre praises the man. In treating the sign as meaningful and acting upon it, he assumes full responsibility for the meaning he assigns to it. Abandonment in this sense also reveals that humans alone determine their meaning and create their own values. Abandonment means to stand firmly within one’s own reasons and values, to progress through life while following one’s own guiding light and to take responsibility for those values.

Where bad faith in anguish involves disavowing one’s freedom and responsibility in choosing, bad faith in abandonment involves disavowing one’s freedom and responsibility in justifying those choices. Bad faith in abandonment can be observed in any instance where one claims an inescapable obligation to act according to a particular value. In doing so, they misplace the responsibility for their actions onto the value itself, treating it as if it determines what must be done independently of their choice. No one can genuinely claim that a justification makes decisions for them; therefore, any decision they claim is supposedly necessitated by a value system is an instance of bad faith. Bad faith can also arise when appealing to one’s own personal nature. If a person behaves regrettably, they may blame their personal internal qualities such as a tendency towards anger believed to be inherited, stress caused by jet lag, or even their zodiac identity. All of these share a displaced responsibility in that they treat contingent features of the individual as determining their actions, rather than recognising that it is the individual who chooses how to respond to them, and is therefore responsible for justifying their behaviour.

Despair is the realisation that while one has freedom over their actions, they ultimately cannot control the outcomes of those actions (Sartre 2007, 34-35). An individual’s will inevitably encounters limitations as it pushes outwards into the world, restricting what they can influence. This resistance can arise from a wide range of phenomena. One may discover that their projects conflict with the desires of those of another person who, for one reason or another, acts to undermine them. Barriers can arise from social, economic, cultural or political realities or from circumstances that cannot be predicted or controlled. A person can act deliberately to bring about some end, but the force of the world is magnitudes more powerful such that humans will always and invariably encounter debilitating limitations and, as a result, despair. Because of the inescapability of limitations, despair is not a contingent psychological state, but a structural feature of human existence. 

Despair reveals that humans must act without any guarantee of success due to the limitations imposed by external reality (Sartre 2007, 36-37). To act in the face of despair, Sartre suggests that one must limit themselves to reckoning with only what lies within one’s control, or within a range of probabilities that favour their desired outcome. When the possibilities one’s actions are contending with are no longer within their ability to influence, Sartre advises that one should no longer rely on them. Persevering against unfavourable odds opens one up to sharpened experience of despair, as their designs are exposed to an increased likelihood of failure. Rather than fall into passivity and quietism, Sartre argues that one must rather act without hope, for no action necessarily requires a hopeful disposition in order to be carried out (Sartre 2007, 36). In this way one may separate themselves from an excess of despair. One can also face despair authentically without restraining from engaging with unfavourable probabilities. An individual might pursue a risky enterprise in full awareness of the decreased chance of success, and potentially damaging consequences should they fail. Provided they take responsibility for their potential failure, pushing against limitations can be a character developing experience. In cases where the enterprise is successful, it could bring prosperity to the individual or their community. Bad faith in light of despair can be seen in the behaviour of a gambler who knows the odds are against them, but relates to that knowledge in a distorted way. For instance, a gambler who is on a losing streak might then believe that they are due for a win. Their understanding of their odds is not reflected in their decisions, and they proceed as though the outcomes will favour them regardless.

Having outlined Sartre’s account of anguish, abandonment, and despair, a critical examination of his existentialism reveals that a number of elements in his framework appear to be reminiscent of structures from the traditional systems he rejects. In particular, his condition of radical freedom and responsibility is comparable to the concept of an essence, and shows phenomenological similarities to many aspects of the lived-experience of the followers of Christianity.

Sartre explicitly rejects the notion that humans possess a preordained essence but asserts that humans are radically free, radically responsible for their actions, and must define themselves through them. These qualities are universal in that they apply to all humans and are inescapable conditions of human existence. As a universal and inescapable condition structuring human existence, the question of whether radical freedom and responsibility can be considered an essence in its own right arises. In his example of a paper-knife, Sartre uses the term “essence” to refer to the characteristics or purpose that exist prior to its existence. A paper-knife’s essence precedes its existence because it is produced according to a prior specification of its function (Sartre 2007, 21). While Sartre denies that humans are created with a preordained function, he nevertheless maintains that all human existence takes place under the condition of being condemned to be free. Since this condition is universal and inescapable for all humans, and dictates a fundamental phenomenological construct within which human experiences will be shaped, it can be interpreted as functioning in a way analogous to an essence. Moreover, the condition of being condemned to be free does not arise from any factors contingent on an individual’s existence and is logically prior to any individual’s existence. Thus, essence as an analogy of the default human condition precedes the existence of each human. In interpreting the inescapable condition of human freedom in this way, a tension emerges as to whether Sartre can fully maintain the claim that existence precedes essence.

While Sartre rejects objective moral frameworks, his existentialism retains structural similarities to them such that the experience of a Sartrean existentialist as a moral agent resembles that of a Christian or of an individual adhering to a secular moral doctrine such as Kantian ethics. Sartre asserts that when an individual acts, they implicitly state that their action is permissible for others. The experience of this in practice aligns with the experience of a Kantian who adheres to the categorical imperative: “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law” (Kant 1785/1997, 4:421). Sartre and Kant are operating in fundamentally different frameworks: while Kant is espousing a normative principle, Sartre is offering a description of a phenomenological structure. Nevertheless, anguish in the Sartrean sense would likely present to the Kantian in similar force and form as it does to the existentialist since they both experience their actions as universal moral statements.

The experience of abandonment in the absence of external justification can also present clearly to a Christian who is faced with a complex moral decision in which divine guidance is unclear, conflicts with other guidance, or is absent entirely. For instance, a devout Christian might be forced to make a choice between forgiveness and justice. Consulting the Bible the Christian finds two contradictory values: “But I say unto you, that ye not resist evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” – (Matthew 5:39), and, “And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him; breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again.” – (Leviticus 24:19-20). This contradiction in guidance offers no guidance or justification for which the Christian can consult in choosing to act. They must nevertheless choose, and face responsibility for their choice. Thus, they are effectively abandoned in the Sartrean sense. 

The existentialist’s experience of anguish and abandonment has a structural resemblance to the experience of judgement in a theological belief system. While Christian theology externalises judgement as a divine function of God, in existentialism, judgement can be interpreted as an internal process whereby radical responsibility manifests as guilt following a severe moral error. In Crime and Punishment, Rodion Raskolnikov experiences guilt following a murder he commits, as though it were the wrath of God, despite believing he had sufficient justification for his actions (Dostoevsky 1866). When an existentialist deliberates on how to act, anguish and abandonment contain an implicit element of judgement that is also present in the experience of a Christian seeking to act in a manner that avoids the judgement and wrath of God.

While Jean-Paul Sartre explicitly omits normative claims, his framework nevertheless generates normativity indirectly through its account of radical freedom and responsibility. Humans are condemned to be free, fully responsible for their actions and unable to justify or excuse them through external systems. While these are not explicit moral prescriptions, such as the Bible’s commandments, they nevertheless load the individual with moral weight, insofar as one is forced to decide how to act while remaining fully answerable for those choices. In deliberating on how to act, the existentialist can be said to generate a form of self-contained normativity. 

Sartre’s existentialism presents human existence as radically free and, as a consequence, radically responsible for their actions. He argues that humans possess no preordained essence and instead must define their essence through their actions. Through the phenomena of anguish, abandonment, and despair, human freedom is revealed to be an inescapable condition, leading Sartre to claim that man is condemned to be free. A critical analysis of Sartre’s existentialism reveals that through expounding on radical freedom and responsibility, he describes the human condition such that it can be interpreted as an essence in that it is universal, inescapable, and defines humans in a precise way. Given that this condition necessarily applies to all humans, it is logically prior to their existence, and therefore precedes their existence. Additionally, by revealing the similarities between the lived experience of an existentialist and that of a person adhering to a traditional belief system, Sartre’s existentialism appears to reintroduce the structural features of the moral frameworks it seeks to reject. This raises the question of whether Sartre’s existentialism really departs from those frameworks, or simply repackages them in a different form. Despite this potential criticism, Sartre nevertheless contributes something truly novel through his conception of bad faith. It is possible to act in a manner that adheres to Christian morality or Kantian ethics which is compliant on the surface, yet covertly immoral. The value of bad faith is that it teaches an individual to recognize and expose the evasion of their responsibility before their conscience, thereby increasing their capacity for making more productive moral choices. 

Bibliography

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. 1992. Crime and Punishment. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Vintage.

The Holy Bible, King James Version.

Kant, Immanuel. 1997. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1956. Being and Nothingness. Translated by Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. 2007. Existentialism Is a Humanism. Translated by Carol Macomber. Edited by John Kulka. New Haven: Yale University Press. 

Sartre, Jean-Paul. n.d. No Exit. Accessed via https://ia600303.us.archive.org/13/items/NoExit/NoExit.pdf

Thomas Reid’s philosophy is a defence of common-sense principles against the scepticism that emerged during the early modern period of philosophy. For Reid, a belief counts as common sense if it is immediately believed upon being understood, cannot coherently be denied, and is required for ordinary human life and practical functioning (Nichols 2024, sec. 1.1). The belief in the existence and epistemic accessibility of external objects is one such principle. The common-sense beliefs that Reid identifies are not conclusions arrived at through inference; rather, he positions them instead as the necessary requirements for knowledge to be possible and treats them as the first principles of his inquiry. His strategy is not to provide indubitable justification for them but to undermine the rival position of representationalism and the way of ideas which he sees as positing unwarranted scepticism on common-sense. While some of his arguments against representationalism and the way of ideas are valid, exempting common-sense principles from the burden of proof cannot be justified. As a result, Reid’s strategy appears to beg the question against the sceptic by treating common-sense principles as epistemically authoritative without providing an independent justification.

The way of ideas refers to a theory of perception according to which the immediate objects of awareness are ideas or mental representations rather than external objects themselves (Nichols 2024, sec 3.1). In this context, the term ideas denotes mental contents generally, including both conceptual and perceptual states. The way of ideas posits that we never directly experience the world itself, only representations of it that present in mental states. The way of ideas is endorsed in some way by many of the great early modern figures including Descartes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume. 

Reid’s strategy is to show how the way of ideas inevitably collapses into skepticism. If the way of ideas is true, then the immediate objects of perception are ideas. For knowledge to be possible, this means that perceiving an idea either (A) makes us aware of what it represents, (B) allows us to make an inference to the external world, or, (C) has no connection to an external world of objects because there is no distinction between ideas and objects.

For (A), when we perceive a representation brought about by a mental state, in order to claim we are aware of the object it corresponds to, there must be a justification that what we are experiencing necessarily represents the object as it exists. This justification cannot be given, only failed attempts according to Reid. The same problem of justification arises for (B), if we are directly aware of only our mental representations, making an inference from experiences to the external world goes beyond what experience permits. Both (A) and (B) appear to lead to scepticism. In both cases, there is no account for how it is possible to have knowledge of the external world. For Reid, this scepticism is self-undermining. If the mind has no access to an external world, it would not be possible to have any knowledge at all.

As to (C), Reid understands this as amounting to idealism. By definition, idealism is incompatible with the view that there are mind independent objects which Reid considers foundationally implausible. Because of its incompatibility with common-sense principles, Reid rejects (C).

Reid reassembles Newton’s first law of motion into a formulation that functions as a golden rule in his critique of the way of ideas: “No more causes, nor any other causes of natural effects ought to be admitted, but such as are both true, and are sufficient for explaining their appearances” (Nichols 2024, sec 1.2). If representationalism posits ideas as the intermediary between experience and external objects, Reid holds this is a violation of the law. He argues that ideas are posited unnecessarily and yield no explanatory gain. The only entities required in the explanation of the experience of an external object are the experience and the object itself. Adding the third element of ideas goes beyond what sufficiency demands.

Reid’s philosophy hinges on the privileged status of common-sense principles being immune to the burden of proof. Throughout history, there have been many examples of prima facie beliefs which, while widely considered to be common-sense, have eventually been overturned by newer ideas. The heliocentrism revolution and the discovery of evolution by natural selection can be counted as examples. The view that there are observable external objects has not been convincingly overthrown in a manner of the aforementioned examples; however, the possibility of this occurring at the hands of an ingenious new idea in the future cannot be overlooked. If this possibility can be admitted, then no privileged status should be given to Reid’s common-sense principles, and the burden of proof should be applied to them.

If the burden of proof is placed on the existence and epistemic availability of external objects, then the claim must face the entire epistemic process Reid attempts to undermine. Reid’s repurposed formulation of Newton’s first law would now work against the claim. In the case of explaining the experience of an external object, Reid would say the experience, and the object are sufficient elements for an explanation (Nichols 2024, sec. 3.1). Beyond minimal sufficiency, Newton’s law requires that any entities posited must be qualified as ‘true’. The existence of experience qualifies as true because it is self-evident and undoubtable. However, in the epistemic tradition of the early modern period, the existence of external objects is subject to unresolved scepticism. The uncertainty alone disqualifies the ‘true’ status of the existence of external objects, ultimately disqualifying them from being used as an element in an explanation according to Newton’s principle.

Reid’s common sense philosophy ultimately fails at the first layer. As long as the possibility for common-sense principles to be toppled by a better idea is open, there is no cause for exalting them with the status of being beyond the necessity of justification. Once pulled into doubt, they do not survive the rigor of early modern epistemology. Reid does offer a valid criticism of the way of ideas by showing that when the mind is taken to either become aware of, or infer, the external world, knowledge itself becomes impossible. While this critique is intended as an endorsement for common-sense, once common-sense is pulled into doubt it reads more like an argument showing that idealism is the only way representationalism can avoid scepticism. 

In the early modern period of philosophy, the study of metaphysics was approached with the assumption that reason alone is sufficient for delivering necessary truths about reality. This assumption was later undermined by David Hume who brought the rational justification of any metaphysical claims that extend beyond experience into question. Hume’s philosophy thus posed a serious challenge to the possibility of a priori metaphysics. Immanuel Kant’s transcendental idealism addresses Hume’s challenge by reconceiving metaphysics within the a priori conditions required for experience to exist at all. Transcendental idealism succeeds in this regard, but Kant’s use of the term metaphysics invites interpretation as to whether or not it is used correctly.

In the rationalist tradition that preceded Kant, it was widely accepted that reason alone could reveal necessary universal truths about the structure of reality using intuition and deduction. (Markie and Folescu 2023). In mathematics, it can be immediately intuited that 2 + 2 = 4, and from this intuition, further mathematical truths can be deduced. Since mathematical truths delivered by intuition and deduction are necessarily true, rationalists extended the same reasoning to metaphysical ideas believing that reason can reveal necessary truths about the structure of reality. This belief was dramatically defeated by Hume’s critique of the idea of necessity. Hume accepted that a priori truths such as those in mathematics, geometry and logic are necessarily true as relations of ideas but necessity cannot be established as an objective feature of the world. According to Hume, knowledge of the objective world can only be grounded by sense experience (Morris and Brown 2023). Hume argued that necessity is never directly experienced, and what are often interpreted as necessary connections are nothing more than habitual customs supplied by the imagination. For Hume, the only beliefs that are rationally justified are those that are justified by direct sense experience or a priori relations of ideas. Since traditional rationalist metaphysical concepts cannot be observed in sense experience, Hume asserted that they should be discarded. Kant took Hume’s boundary of restricting metaphysical cognitions to sense experience as an inescapable problem. Transcendental idealism is Kant’s attempt to use pure reason to determine the possibility, conditions, and limits of a priori metaphysics, while maintaining experience as the boundary of what can be known.

Transcendental idealism is a system of a priori metaphysics with a crucial caveat: all possible a priori metaphysical judgments are limited to appearances, and things-in-themselves, or noumena, are unknowable. While remaining true to Humean position that all knowledge is grounded in experience, Kant’s key innovation is to extend a priori knowledge to include the necessary conditions that must be satisfied in order for experience of an object to occur (Rohlf 2024). The fact that we experience objects presupposes structures that sensation alone cannot supply. Any condition that must be presupposed by experience cannot itself be derived from experience. Therefore, the mind must contribute a priori conditions that make such experience possible. While a priori, the knowledge of the mind’s contributions to the experience of an object is not analytic in the manner of Hume’s relation of ideas; rather, it is synthetic, as it reveals new knowledge not contained in experience itself. 

Kant’s inquiry into the necessary conditions of experience reveals two forms through which the mind structures experience. By analysing the conditions that bring about the bare possibility of experience, Kant formulates the forms of intuition, and by assessing what must be the case for the experience of objects, he formulates the forms of understanding. The forms of intuition are the most basic conditions under which experiences can be given. Kant argues that no experience would be possible without the mind providing spatiotemporal ordering. Objects could not be represented in such a way to appear outside of us or next to one another unless space is presupposed by such appearances. For Kant, space represents the form of ‘outer intuition’. Conversely, the temporal ordering of experiences such as succession and duration presuppose time as the form of inner intuition. While the forms of intuition are necessary conditions of experience, they are not sufficient for accounting for all that experience encompasses. Specific objects that are given by sensibility require additional faculties in order for a precise and detailed experience of them to be coherent. 

The forms of understanding are articulated as twelve a priori categories which include concepts prominent in rationalist metaphysics such as necessity, causation and substance. Kant identifies these categories as necessary conditions for the coherence of objective experience. Unlike typical rationalist thinkers, Kant does not treat the concepts of the categories as metaphysical claims about things in themselves; instead, the categories are concepts that the understanding supplies to experience, which makes a unified objective experience possible. Without the categories, Kant argues that experience would be disconnected and unintelligible. Since the objects that we experience are represented with precise clarity and determinate structural features, and since the orderliness of such representation cannot come from things-in-themselves, Kant concludes that the mind must contribute the structuring principles to objects. In this way, Kant relocates metaphysics from things-in-themselves to the a priori conditions that make objective experience possible.

While Kant uses metaphysical concepts from the rationalist tradition to explain how the mind unifies object experience, it is not clear whether these particular concepts are necessarily imposed by the mind onto experience, or that they have been merely chosen from a convenient library. It is possible that the real ordering processes are much more complicated, and not so easily explained in terms of concepts. It is also possible that they cannot be articulated at all. Regardless, the question of exactly how the mind structures object experience is less important than the simple realisation that, one way or another, the mind does. If the categories are ill-conceived, the conclusion that the mind contributes structure to object experience a priori remains unaffected, but at the expense of a lower-resolution version of transcendental idealism.

The question of whether the a priori conditions of experience amount to metaphysics hinges on what is considered an acceptable definition of metaphysics. Transcendental idealism is undoubtedly an exhaustive inquiry in the a priori conditions of experience. Kant does not introduce anything beyond what is given by experience and arrives at his complete system organically by investigating only what must necessarily be the case for experience to exist at all. While Kant positions these conditions as metaphysics, whether or not this is correct is a matter of semantics. Transcendental idealism could appropriately be called a theory of the a priori conditions under which experience is possible while either denying the possibility of metaphysics entirely, or restricting the term to speculations that go beyond what experience can justify.

Bibliography

Markie, Peter, and Mădălina Folescu. 2023. “Rationalism vs. Empiricism.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2023 Edition. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/

Morris, William Edward, and Charlotte R. Brown. 2023. “David Hume.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2023 edition. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/

Rohlf, Matthew. 2024. “Immanuel Kant.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2024 edition. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/

This essay outlines David Hume’s empiricism and bundle theory of the self and assesses in what ways can the latter be considered defensible. Hume’s empiricism is a radical form of scepticism that grounds all knowledge in experience. His bundle theory is a view of the self that follows as a necessary consequence of that scepticism. The concept of the self takes on many different forms in various religious traditions and philosophies. According to Hume, no belief in a particular concept of the self is justified when there is no direct impression of the conceptualised self as an object of experience. All the self amounts to in Hume’s view, is the continual flux of experiences united only by the natural relations of association of the mind. The view of a unified self that goes beyond this is, according to Hume, a fiction produced by the imagination. Hume’s bundle theory is defensible only within the empirical system Hume develops. In the broader picture of epistemology, bundle theory is defeated by the work of Kant who expands the boundaries of Hume’s empiricism to include knowledge of the necessary conditions of experience. In doing so, Kant adds additional synthetic a priori knowledge about the unity of experience that renders the bundle theory of the self obsolete. 

Empiricism emerged in force as a successful epistemological doctrine from the tradition known today as the British empiricism. Prior to this, empiricism appeared as a common general attitude rather than a comprehensive system. This attitude can be seen in the following sentiment from the pre-socratic philosopher Heraclitus: “the things of which there is sight, hearing, experience, these I prefer”  (Hankinson 2018). While not explicitly empirical, this sentiment does contain the spirit of empiricism. Aristotle offered a more methodological empiricism. He regarded the senses as reliable and believed they play a necessary role in the acquisition and development of knowledge. Things as they appear to the senses (ta phainomena), provide both the starting point for inquiry, and a guide for the success of inquiry. Aristotle’s use of ta phainomena goes beyond what later empiricists such as Hume would consider experience as it also includes reputable opinions. This makes it difficult to categorise Aristotle as an empiricist in the way the term is understood today. Instead, Aristotle can be understood as a genetic empiricist through which modern empiricists can trace their lineage to.

It was not until the early modern period that empiricism emerged as a systematic philosophical tradition. Locke marks the true beginning of that tradition. Locke produced the first polished theory of the mind grounded by the principle that all ideas originate from experience. He rejected the view that innate ideas exist and instead described the mind at birth as a blank slate. His aim was to demonstrate how experience alone can provide a coherent understanding of the world. He used his empiricism to challenge much of the rationalist metaphysics that were popular throughout the early-modern period. He rejected the cartesian notion that knowledge of a substantial self can be acquired through thinking alone and instead grounded the self within the continuity of personal identity over time (Gordon-Roth 2019). Hume adopted Locke’s starting point that all ideas have their origin in past experiences but radicalises it by relentlessly pushing it to logical conclusion. In doing so, he produced an extreme skepticism which not only undermines rationalist metaphysics, but also many of the conclusions that Locke’s version of empiricism appeared to support. Most notably, Locke’s view on personal identity.

The so-called copy principle can be considered to be the first principle in Hume’s empirical system and provides a good launching pad for discussing Hume’s system. Quoting directly from book one of Hume’s A Treatise on Human Nature, the copy principle is the rule “that all our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv’d from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent” (Hume 1739–40, 1.1.1). Hume uses the terms impressions and ideas to denote what he considers to be the distinctions to which all human experiences can be categorised. The kind of experiences that strike us forcefully with vividness and clarity Hume names impressions. Within the impression distinction, the qualities of objects that come to experience through the senses can be included. The visual quality of green, the bitter smell of coffee or the hardness of a solid wooden desk all represent simple impressions when they are forced upon experience independently of choice or will. Impressions can also come from what Hume calls reflection. These are impressions that arise from within the mind or body that strike experience with a similar degree of force as the impressions of sensation. Perceptions such as emotions, desires or pain can all be classed as impressions of reflection. After an impression has been sprung upon experience, a faint copy of its particular quality is created which can then be recalled by memory and used in thinking and imagination. Experiences of this kind are what Hume called ideas. 

The copy principle only applies to what Hume distinguishes as simple impressions and simple ideas. An impression or idea is said to be simple if it cannot be divided into smaller components. When presented with the impression of a particular shade of green, there is no possible further division that can be made without destroying the precise quality that constitutes the impression itself. Similarly, the sound of a single particular tone cannot be broken down without losing the distinctive character of that auditory impression. In Hume’s system, these simple impressions and their corresponding simple ideas, each with their precise and unique character, can be thought of as the indivisible units that constitute experience. In the copy principle, Hume is expressing that all of our simple ideas derive from the simple impressions acquired through sensation and reflection which they represent.The copy principle establishes Hume’s view of the absolute dependence the mind has on its prior experiences. The only ideas the mind has access to for thinking or imagining are those that have been derived from experiences that have in the past been impressed upon it through sensation or reflection. 

Impressions are typically not presented to experience in their simple form, but as complex clusters of qualities which the mind interprets to be a single complex entity. When looking at a pencil, its distinct sensory qualities of colour, shape, size and texture are all presented together as one item of perception. Although complex impressions are passively received as a conglomerate, they can be analysed and deconstructed into a collection of individual simple impressions. Each of which gives rise to a corresponding simple idea. Like impressions, the distinction of complex is also applied to ideas. The origin of complex ideas differs from that of complex impressions. While complex impressions are provided through sensation, the mind constructs complex ideas from simple ones by arranging and ordering them using what Hume calls principles of association. He identified three kinds of relations the mind uses to do this: resemblance, contiguity and causation (Hume 1739–40, 1.1.4). 

When one idea naturally leads the mind to another because the two share similar qualities, Hume would say that the ideas are related through resemblance. When listening to a song of a particular genre, the mind may immediately call to mind other songs of the same genre because of certain defining sounds or musical themes that are associated with that particular musical style. 

When we are exposed to a new idea, its resemblance to ideas already grasped by the mind naturally causes the mind to relate it accordingly. Resemblance is not a relation occurring between real things in the world, it is a cognitive function the mind uses to quickly move between similar ideas.

Contiguity is the association principle that connects perceptions based on their proximity in time and space. A relation of contiguity occurs when the perception of one object naturally calls to mind other objects located nearby. These associated perceptions can be taken together as a single complex idea. For example, a large room on a university campus filled with labelled books arranged in the same space is experienced as a library. The close conjunction of these perceptions leads the mind to associate them as a new complex idea rather than as a mere collection of individual perceptions.

The last of the three associations of ideas Hume identifies is causation. This relation occurs when the mind and imagination naturally relate ideas where one is expected to follow another. After getting caught in a rain storm and becoming wet, the mind naturally frames the idea of being caught in the rain as the cause of getting wet. Similarly, If a person drops a glass drinking cup onto a tiled floor and it smashes, an observer might say that the act of dropping the glass has caused it to smash. The relation of causality in both of these cases comes from the habitual expectation that one event regularly follows another. Crucially, Hume points out that the causal relationship only exists as an association of ideas in the mind despite the popular interpretation that causality is a necessary and real phenomenon in the external world. Hume argues that this belief in real world causal necessity comes from a projection of causality as an association of ideas onto objects in the external world. There is no real relationship beyond the basic conjunction of one event following another.

In summary, Hume’s empirical foundation emerges from the notion that all knowledge comes from experience. Experiences can be categorised into two distinctions. There are impressions which are the vivid and lively experiences provided by sensations and impressions. From impressions, the mind forms ideas which are faint copies of impressions used in thinking and imagination. Every simple idea the mind forms always comes from a simple impression. Finally, the mind forms complex ideas according to the three associations of ideas: resemblance, contiguity and causation. In Hume’s philosophy, the validity of ideas depends on how they originate within this foundation. Hume’s system grounds knowledge in observations supported by empirical evidence. The modern scientific method is distinctly Humean as it reaches its conclusion through rigorous processes such as experimentation and methodically eliminates hidden assumptions not grounded in observation. Ideas produced by means of intuition or associations of relation are not valid. Hume’s empiricism can be understood as a radical form of scepticism, and he uses it to destroy many of the popular philosophical ideas which were confidently held at the time including ideas pertaining to the self.

In the early modern period, discussions about the self were central to some of the key philosophers of the time, but these conceptions, and the arguments used to justify them are untenable within Hume’s system. Descartes, like Hume, founded his philosophy on a radical scepticism. Hume’s system is grounded in the principle that all knowledge originates in experience, whereas Descartes’ scepticism extends even to experiences themselves and to the sensory faculties that generate them. By applying his method of radical, systematic doubt, Descartes argues that every belief about the external world, the body, and even mathematics could be mistaken. The certainty that he is thinking is the only piece of knowledge that survives this radical doubt. Even if all of his experiences were the product of an elaborate deception by a powerful God-like being, he could still be certain that he thinks, and therefore he exists (Nelson 2007). For Descartes, this is a satisfactory justification that the self exists. Hume however, disagrees. When Hume introspects, he does not perceive an enduring self, instead, all he encounters is a constant flux of perceptions. As he thinks and moves his eyes around, impressions appear and disappear. No matter where in experience he looks, he never experiences an impression of the self. Since, on Hume’s copy principle, all ideas come from impressions, and there are no impressions of the self, there is no way to empirically justify the cartesian picture of the self. 

Lockean personal identity also posits a notion of the self which is unacceptable in Hume’s empiricism. For Locke, a person is united by the continuity of their experience over a lifetime. He ties the notion of the self to the persistence of a single diachronic subject, where the unification of cognitive faculties such as thought, reflection and memory into a single stream of consciousness connects an individual’s past and present into one consistent and stable being in time (Gordon-Roth 2019). Hume argues that Locke’s assertion that these cognitive faculties considered together can be considered a singular entity is an error. Hume instead claims that the separate faculties represent a diversity of separate entities, and unifying them into a singular concept of the self is a fiction produced by the imagination. What is really occurring in Locke’s view according to Hume is mistakenly ascribing the idea of sameness to what is nothing more than a collection of diverse impressions with no necessary unifying connection (Hume 1739–40, 1.4.6).

In Hume’s empiricism, the notion of the self is confined only to the experience of a bundle of unconnected perceptions.The notion of a self that binds these perceptions together into the concept of a self comes only from the mind’s natural tendency to associate ideas. A habitual custom that does not amount to any ontologically valid existence outside of imagination. The question of whether or not this theory of the self is defensible depends entirely on what is meant by defensible. It is certainly defensible within Hume’s empirical foundation, as Hume has successfully shown that there are no impressions of the self, and since all knowledge comes from experience alone, there are no other valid means for positing a self independently of a mere bundle of perceptions. 

Despite the defensibility of Hume’s bundle theory in a strictly empirical sense, it is deeply unsatisfying. Generally, common intuitive beliefs in the self can be empirically reduced to customs used by the imagination, but in doing so, there is a sense that there is some crucial aspect of selfhood that has been left out. Hume himself was disturbed by this, in the appendix of book one part four, Hume expresses that while he is content in the epistemic rigor he applies to his philosophy, he is uneasy about his empiricism’s inability to offer a coherent account of how these experiences are unified a single enduring consciousness (Hume 1739–40, 1.4.7). This lack of unity of experiences is a serious dilemma for Hume’s bundle theory, and one that makes it difficult to endorse its overall defensibility. This dilemma would be resolved by the next great work in the canon of epistemology: Immanuel Kant’s transcendental idealism. 

Kant agreed with Hume’s conclusion that many of the rationalist views such as necessary causal connection and concepts of the self as a substance formulated using pure reason cannot be justified as metaphysical truths, but he argued that in analysing the necessary conditions that presuppose experience, we can access a new kind of knowledge. In order for experience to exist in the first place, there are certain conditions which must be met to make this possible. Without these conditions, experience itself could not exist. By analysing these conditions, we can deduce what Kant calls synthetic a priori knowledge (Grier n.d.). For Hume, a priori knowledge is limited to relations of ideas which are true by definition and independent of experience, but is incapable of producing new knowledge not already contained in an antecedent. Like a priori knowledge, synthetic a priori knowledge is gained independently of the objects of experience, but it reveals new knowledge in the form of the necessary conditions of that experience. Synthetic a priori knowledge is thus a tremendous innovation by Kant, and it pushes the boundaries of what can be known beyond the Humean picture. 

Kant’s transcendental idealism maintained experience as the ultimate boundary of what can be known. He divided reality into two domains: the realm of appearances, which he called the phenomenal, and the realm of things in themselves, or noumena. Since noumena lie beyond the limits of experience, Kant maintained that they are completely unknowable. By analysing the objects of the phenomenal realm, and the necessary synthetic a priori conditions that make those experiences possible, some of the concepts lost to Hume’s scepticism are regrounded. In Hume’s empiricism, it is impossible to gain knowledge of necessary connections such as those supposed in the idea of causality, as all knowledge comes from impressions and experience reveals only a constant conjunction of events, not any necessary connection between them. In Kant’s transcendental idealism, however, knowledge of causality can be acquired by understanding it as a necessary condition that brings about the flow of sequential events as they are experienced. When we experience events occurring in the world, we experience them as having a determinate temporal order. Kant argues that in order for this to be possible, the mind contributes causality as the principle governing this temporal ordering. In this sense, causality must exist as it makes experience of ordered events possible. This is still a far-cry from the archaic notion of perfect metaphysical causality of the rationalist tradition but it is a valid concept of causality whilst still maintaining the standard of strict epistemic rigor of Hume.

Kant also agrees with Hume that we cannot have knowledge of a substantial self because such a self never appears within experience. However, Kant rejects Hume’s conclusion that nothing more can be said about the self. By understanding the necessary conditions of experience, we can gain synthetic a priori knowledge of a unity of apperception. In other words, we can deduce knowledge of a necessary unity that binds experiences together into a single unified stream of consciousness. When we have thoughts and experiences, we are always aware that they are exclusively our own, and we ascribe the same thinking subject to them. Since we can distinguish our own thoughts and experiences from the objects we experience, experience itself must presuppose a unifying self-conscious standpoint under which those experiences are unified. Crucially, this unifying self-consciousness is not an object, or a thing in the world. It is a necessary condition that presupposes experience. In understanding the unity of apperception as a synthetic a priori deduction and not as an empirical observation, Kant provides a more detailed outline of the self without contradicting Hume and without reaching beyond what experience permits him to posit. Using only Hume’s empiricism, we are forced to accept that the self is nothing more than a bundle of perceptions. With Kant, the conclusion changes to the slightly more optimistic view that there must be an underlying unifying stand-point from which experiences are perceived. We could say that Kant’s view expresses that there must be a self, not as a thing-in-itself but as a necessary condition of experience.

In expanding the boundaries of knowledge from the confines of experiences themselves to include synthetic a priori deductions, he successfully liberates the idea of the self from a mere bundle of perceptions to a necessary condition of experience. Because of this success, Hume’s bundle theory cannot be said to be defensible. Rather than seeing Hume’s empiricism and consequential bundle theory as the final word on the matter of the self, his work can be better interpreted as a great clearing-away of faulty reasoning and unsubstantiated ideas about the self and bringing discussions back to a more sober and grounded position. Ironically, Hume and Kant’s rigorous epistemology creates a problem for further understanding of the self. Both Kant and Hume agree that the self cannot be known as an object. This is perhaps due to the fact that whatever the self is, it cannot be known in the absolute sense of the word. If the self cannot be known, then no rigorous epistemology that seeks to ground all beliefs in knowledge can ever be capable of understanding it. Hume famously destroyed the tradition of early modern rationalism, but in order to understand the self in the wake of this destruction, it might take the pure reason and free creativity of rationalism to do it.

Bibliography:

Bennett, Jonathan. “David Hume.” Early Modern Texts. https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/authors/hume

Grier, Michelle. n.d. “Kant: View of the Mind and Consciousness.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/kantview/

Gordon-Roth, Jessica. 2019. “Locke on Personal Identity.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2025 Edition. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-personal-identity/

Hankinson, R. J. 2018. “Empiricism in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/empiricism-ancient-medieval/

Nelson, Alan. 2007. “Descartes’ Epistemology.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/

The moral problem can be formalised as an inconsistent triad between cognitivism, internalism and the Humean theory of motivation and emotion. Cognitivism is the view that moral judgements are truth apt beliefs about the world. In this view, it is possible under certain circumstances that a moral judgement can be considered as a fact in much the same way as the sentence “Moscow is the capital of Russia” is a fact. Smith’s view of how moral judgements motivate the individuals that agree with them falls into the internalist view of motivation. Internalism holds that motivation is a fundamental property of moral judgements. A moral judgement is only valid if it necessarily motivates agents who believe in them to act.  The view that a moral judgement is both truth-apt and necessarily motivating becomes incoherent while holding to the view that beliefs cannot by themselves motivate action taken from the Humean theory of motivation and emotion (Hume, as cited in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2024). Hume’s theory holds that action is brought about by the combination of beliefs and motivations. If I believe there’s orange juice in the fridge and I’m thirsty, I’ll drink it. But if I’m not thirsty, knowing it’s there won’t make me drink it. Likewise, if I’m thirsty but don’t know there’s juice, my desire alone won’t lead me to act.

If cognitivism is true then moral judgements are beliefs. If the Humean theory of motivation and emotions is also true, then beliefs cannot motivate action. This seems to disqualify the internalist notion that moral judgements motivate actions. Smith’s solution to this is to maintain moral realism by holding onto cognitivism and internalism and rethinking the Humean theory of motivation and emotion. He does this by distinguishing between desires in a broad sense and so-called idealised desires, those which an agent would desire in a well-informed, rational, ideal state of mind, free from biases, hidden motives and impulses. The distinction can be outlined in a simple example. John is approached by a disagreeable colleague named Julie and accused of leaving an unwashed coffee mug in the sink of their shared kitchen. John realises that the coffee cup actually belongs to Julie. At this moment, John experiences a desire to vocally expose Julie’s mistake causing her embarrassment. This is a standard desire. The kind in which Hume would describe as a “slave of the passions” (Hume, as cited in James, 2019) and not necessarily connected to any rationality. By contrast, an idealised desire would result from a state of mind that is rational, well-informed, and uninfluenced by biases, irrational desires and impulses. In this state of mind, the individual would likely react to their accuser by maintaining professionalism, calmly informing them that they are mistaken and not indulge in belligerent or hubristic behaviour. 

Smith argues that moral judgements are beliefs about what we would do if we were in an ideal state of mind. In doing so, he appears to have resolved the tension between cognitivism and internalism by revising the Humean view that beliefs cannot motivate. The judgement “In an ideal state of mind, I would not desire to steal” is truth-apt in that it can be argued to be either true or not true and by specifying “In an ideal state of mind” it expresses the conditions in which one would be necessarily motivated to not steal. 

The problem I see with Smith’s solution stems from his view that moral judgements can be considered moral fact. In Smith’s view, when separate moral agents reasoning under ideal conditions (fully rational, informed, and free from bias) converge on the same moral judgement, their convergence reflects a moral fact. 

In A.J. Ayer’s critique of ethics, moral judgements cannot reflect real facts about the world because moral terms like ‘good’, and ‘wrong’ cannot be connected to any real property of the world. Ayer suggests that moral judgements are expressions of how one feels about a certain action. To say that stealing is wrong essentially only means to express that one does not like stealing. Smith’s view of moral judgements appear more like expressions of emotion than facts. This becomes apparent when I compare moral judgements with true facts. A true fact stands firm under attacks of scepticism. When the same scepticism is applied to moral judgements, their validity can invariably be brought into question.

Consider the following three facts.

1.  2 + 2 = 4. 

In order for me to doubt this fact, it requires an extreme form of Cartesian scepticism. 

2. Moscow is the capital of Russia. 

While this fact is easier to doubt than the previous fact, there is still little reason to be sceptical about this fact. 

3. ‘Stealing is wrong’ as converged upon by moral agents thinking under ideal conditions. 

There are readily apparent reasons for me to be sceptical of this judgement, even if I am thinking under ideal conditions. I can imagine a scene where a powerful malevolent force is in possession of the cure to a horrible disease. If this were true, I would have reason to doubt that “stealing is wrong” is a fact.

There is a fundamental difference between the first two facts, and the moral judgement. It is only possible to doubt the first two facts using extreme and sophisticated scepticism, whereas the moral judgement is highly vulnerable to attacks of scepticism, even to attacks made with tongue in cheek. This vulnerability is present in all moral judgements as there is always the possibility to formulate similar counter situations where a specific moral judgement is deemed inappropriate. True rigorous facts can only be toppled by titans like  Descartes’ mighty demon. For moral judgements however, only the devil’s advocate is needed. 

Moral judgements can be more easily compared to expressions of emotions than to facts. There is always an expression of emotion implicit in every moral judgement. “Stealing is wrong” can be interpreted as “Boo stealing” and “you should donate to charity” can be seen as “Hooray charity” Even the most rigorous rational imperatives are not exempt from this rule. There is no moral judgement that cannot be seen as an expression of emotion. 

Since moral judgements are fundamentally different from true facts, and are always expressions of emotion, I conclude that moral judgements are not facts and are expressions of emotion. Smith might have found a logical compatibility between cognitivism, internalism and Hume’s theory of motivation and emotion; he fails to solidify his position as moral realism.

Bibliography

Ayer, A.J. “A Critique of Ethics.” In Ethical Theory: An Anthology, edited by Russ Shafer-Landau, 17-23. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 2012.

Michael Smith, “Realism,” in Ethical Theory: An Anthology, 2nd ed., ed. Russ Shafer-Landau (Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 2012), 246-260.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. “Emotions in 17th and 18th Century Philosophy.” Accessed September 22, 2024. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emotions-17th18th/LD8Hume.html.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. “Skepticism.” Accessed September 22, 2024. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism/.

Deductive reasoning using moral principles has traditionally been considered the standard way in which moral judgements are reached. This view has been challenged by a group of thinkers known as particularists who claim that the principlist model is flawed. They propose a fundamentally different approach which does not include moral principles and instead uses a holistic assessment of all of the relevant factors present in a particular case to determine right action. 

The following essay contains a critical discussion of the particularist case against principlism. The essay will open with an explanation of principlism and the process of how moral judgements can be reached deductively using moral principles. Next, the particularist method of moral reasoning will be introduced and discussed. Following that, there will be an explanation of how moral judgements can be reached without the use of moral principles, and an alternative method will be outlined. The final argument against principlism discussed will be one derived from Saul Kripke’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s rule-following paradox. 

After the case against principlism has been made, the essay will then critically evaluate that case by revisiting the particularist arguments and offering critical commentary on them. The core argument made by this essay will be that while particularist arguments successfully demonstrate principlism to be unreliable, there is insufficient reason to suggest that it should be replaced by particularism. The problems with principlism that are exposed can be rectified without abandoning moral principles. Perhaps by taking the approach of Rossian generalism.

Principlism is the ethical view that moral principles should be used when making moral judgements. Gerald Dworkin defines principles as statements containing moral language, and when used in the context of a particular situation, produce a conclusion containing a direction on how one ought to act in that situation. Dworkin refers to the conclusions brought about by contextualizing moral principles as moral judgements. Moral judgements are law-like directives and they contain words such as ‘should’ and ‘ought’. There is a broad spectrum of different kinds of moral principles which one may consult when making moral judgements. These principles can originate from religious tenets such as the ten commandments or from normative ethical frameworks like Kantian ethics or utilitarianism. They can also be informal like a loose and unrefined personal code, or a cultural expectation to respect elders. To be a principlist is not to adhere to any particular ethical system or principle, it only requires that one uses moral principles when making a moral judgement. A moral judgement can be deductively concluded when moral principles, in conjunction with a particular situation, are written as premises in a syllogism. Here are two examples: 

Example 1 

P1 (principle): It is morally right to help those in need when it causes no harm to oneself. 

P2 (situation): A hungry homeless person asks Billy for food, and Billy has a sandwich that he intends to throw out. 

C (judgement): Billy should give the homeless person his sandwich.   

Example 2 

P1 (principle): It is morally right to fulfil one’s promises. 

P2 (situation): Sally has promised her brother to help him with his homework. 

C (judgement): Sally should help her brother with his homework. 

A group of philosophers known as particularists have offered a collection of arguments against principlism, and a fundamentally different approach to moral reasoning and the production of moral judgements. Particularism is the view that there are no fixed moral principles that can be applied universally. In order for a moral agent to make properly informed and accurate moral judgements, they must assess all of the relevant unique contextual factors relating to that particular case. A key particularist claim is that the principlist’s universal application of general moral principles inevitably leads to some cases where the moral judgement that is deductively concluded misses the mark.  

Such a case can be illustrated with a simple example. Tom is a principlist and firmly believes that a good person always follows their principles. One of his principles is the belief that one should always keep their friend’s secrets. Tom’s reason for this belief is quasi-Kantian. He believes that if people divulge their friends’ secrets, then nobody could be trusted to keep secrets. One day, Tom finds out that his friend Micheal has been involved in a hit and run incident causing serious harm to somebody. Michael left the scene of the incident in a hurry and has managed to completely evade any legal ramifications. Michael is an alcoholic, and appears to show little remorse for his actions. It is likely that he will drive while under the influence again. While he was disturbed by the actions of his friend, Tom ultimately decides to keep his friend’s secret. Several months later, while driving under influence, Michael is responsible for another accident. This time causing a fatality. In this unfortunate situation, Tom applied his principle and made the moral judgement to keep Michael’s secret. Had he chosen to report Michael to the authorities instead, it is probable that Michael would have never caused an innocent person to lose their life. Tom’s reasoning in this case highlights the pitfalls of principlism and what Jonathan Dancy calls atomism. 

According to Dancy, Tom’s reasoning represents the position of atomism, the view that a moral reason that applies in one case will invariably carry the same validity in all similar cases. Atomism holds that reasons and judgements are not contextual and should be applied consistently in all situations. Dancy rejects this and instead suggests that moral reasoning should be done while considering the perspective of holism, the view that a moral judgement should emerge from a contextual, individualized assessment of all the relevant factors involved in a given case. In order to determine which moral reasons are more relevant to a particular case, Dancy offers the concept of valency. The valency of a moral reason denotes its overall relevance to the case being examined. Factors that are more relevant in a particular case are given a positive valency, and less relevant or irrelevant factors are given a negative valency. In different situations, the valency of a specific reason changes. The view that honesty is a virtue has high positive valency in the case of communicating with a friend or spouse. If there is a murderer at the door asking where he can find your friend, then the valency of honesty is extremely negative. Valency can be used to weigh moral reasons against one another in order to determine which moral reasons should be heeded and which should be cast aside when making a judgement in a specific case.    

Returning to the case of Tom and Michael, the key relevant factors at play are: 1. the principle of keeping a friend’s secrets, and 2. that Michael has caused harm to someone and could cause harm to more people in the future. If a particularist were in Tom’s position, they would likely determine that Michael’s actions, and the danger he presents has a higher positive valency than the view that they should keep their friend’s secret. Based on this assessment, they would likely make a moral judgement to report Michael to the authorities. 

Gerald Dworkin offers some useful discussions about the manner in which people morally reason which can be used as part of a larger particularist argument against principlism. Dworkin suggests that an absence of moral principles does not necessarily mean that individuals cannot arrive at good moral judgements. Dworkin provides commentary on points made by Hastings Rashdall against so-called philosophical intuitionism which bears a resemblance to modern particularism. Rashdall is skeptical of the view that moral principles are not required in moral reasoning. He claims that without the use of general moral principles, moral judgements could become arbitrary. Dworkin responds by questioning the assumption that a lack of principles necessitates arbitrary moral judgements. He doubts there is any reason to suggest that such decisions would be impulsive or otherwise arbitrary. He uses this argument – that there is a lack of evidence to draw strong conclusions – very liberally in this discussion. Rashdall asserts that in order to guide one’s moral decision-making process, there must be a principle or rules to serve as guides. After a moral judgement is reached, it should be clear post-hoc how that judgement was deduced. Dworkin again points out that this assertion is an assumption. He suggests that just because moral principles are used in justifications post-hoc, that does not necessarily mean those same principles were used in the process of reasoning. Rashdall’s next point is that in order for morality to be taught, moral principles are required. Dworkin responds by pointing out that effective learning is done through other means such as socialization and observation and believes those are feasible methods of moral education as well. 

A key point Dworkin makes is that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that people use deductive reasoning at all when coming to moral judgements. He does not seek to offer any evidence of his own, but uses that fact to suggest that it is possible that there are other ways in which humans can make moral judgements. Dworkin offers some alternative models for moral reasoning that do not include the strict use of moral principles. He first discusses what he calls the model of prototypes. This method of reasoning includes comparing a typical example of a certain concept, object or category to a similar one in order to develop an understanding of a new instance based on a typical example. For instance, the prototype of a car has typical car-like features such as four wheels, an engine, a windscreen and so on. This prototypical car can then be used to make sense of something similar like a van or a truck as it can be understood as an extension of the concept of a car.  

Prototypes can be used in the same way to morally reason. Instead of relying on deductive reasoning using principles, Dworkin suggests that prototypical examples of previous instances can be used to determine moral judgements in cases that bear a similar resemblance. For instance, a prototypical example of cheating might include features like a willful bending of the rules, gaining an unfair advantage, and the use of deception. Prototypes can contain judgement-based features such as unfair, or wrong. A prototype can then be used to reach a moral judgement on a specific case by relating it to the prototype. The prototype of cheating just devised can be used to understand a case where an individual searches through their teacher’s laptop to find answers to the test in order to pass without studying, or a case where an athlete used banned performance enhancing drugs before an upcoming game. Both of these cases exhibit a willful bending of the rules, gaining an unfair advantage, and the use of deception qualifying them for a negative moral judgement. This process completely circumvents moral principles. In addition to prototypes, Dworkin outlines several additional models of moral reasoning that do not require moral principles such as so-called paradigm case reasoning and analogical reasoning among others.  

Principlism can be attacked on a more fundamental level by assessing Saul Kripke’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s rule-following paradox and the impact it has on moral principles. The rule-following paradox can be described as a seemingly contradictory inability for rules to provide definitive instructions, despite the fact that giving instructions is their intended function. In order for a rule to be followed, it must first be interpreted. This presents the problem because there is no clear guidance on how to properly interpret a rule meaning multiple and even contradictory interpretations are always possible. An example to illustrate this could be a rule that states “use appropriate language” in the context of writing an essay. This rule can be logically interpreted to mean a number of different things. It could mean: use correct grammar, offensive language must not be used, use a formal academic tone, use the language that the person marking it speaks. By itself, the rule does not explicitly explain what to do. 

Moral principles are affected in the same way. Without external factors providing context, the meaning of specific moral principles is not clear. Different people can logically interpret the same moral principle in vastly different ways. To illustrate this, consider the following examples of moral principles. In both of these examples, there are key terms which can be logically interpreted to have different meanings. 

Example 1: All people should be treated with equality. 

Interpretation A: Equality means that all people should be held by the same moral standard and abide by the same laws. Whenever somebody breaks the law, the same penalty should be imposed on them.  

Interpretation B: Equality means that all people should enjoy equal opportunities and have access to equal government resources.    

In the first example, equality has a negative meaning and is concerned with justice and punishment. In the second example it has a positive meaning and pertains to the welfare of disadvantaged people. 

Example 2: One should do no harm. 

Interpretation A: One should not cause direct harm to another person through their actions.   

Interpretation B: One should not cause harm to another person in any way, including through their own actions, or indirectly. 

In this example the scope of what harm includes changes. In the first example, it appears that causing indirect harm to others is permissible as it has not been explicitly forbidden. 

The rule-following paradox highlights the inherit subjective element present in all moral principles. It shows how different factors such as context and personal interpretation can lead to inconsistent moral judgements. This questions the reliability of moral principles generally and potentially undermines principlism. Since moral principles are always subjectively interpreted and applied inconsistently, perhaps they should not be relied on as the primary means of moral reasoning.  

Together, the views of Dancy and Kripke demonstrate that deductive reasoning using moral principles is not a consistently reliable method of reaching moral judgements. The views of Dancy demonstrate that what is a good moral reason in one case does not necessarily mean it will apply in other cases. Kripke’s interpretation of the rule-following paradox undermines the reliability of moral principles by showing that there is no objective guide on how to interpret them leading to inconsistent applications of them. Dancy’s concepts of holism and valency coupled with Dworkin’s various alternative methods for arriving at moral judgements without principles provides what could be a viable alternative to principlism.  

These views contain good reasons to be critical of the reliability of deductive reasoning using moral principles, but they fail to provide a good reason for why particularism would be a suitable alternative. The problems these arguments present for principlism can be sufficiently addressed without discarding moral principles altogether.  

Kripke’s interpretation of the rule-following paradox does not force the conclusion that moral principles should not be used. It can be appropriately interpreted as a serious warning to moral agents that moral principles on their own do not offer objective guidance, and effective interpretation is always required. It can caution moral agents to be aware of what factors are motivating their interpretations of principles, and whether those factors have the potential to negatively impact their interpretations. If a moral agent is making a genuine moral effort, an awareness of the rule-following paradox will sharpen their moral reasoning skills. In this view, the rule-following paradox can be seen as lending strength to principlism. 

It is true that even the most careful deductive reasoning using appropriate moral principles sometimes leads to incorrect moral judgements, sometimes with devastating consequences. It is possible that if a particularist found themselves in the same moral conundrum, the flexibility of their reasoning might have allowed them to make the correct moral judgement and avoid the negative consequences. This does not automatically qualify particularism as it is possible for principlism to incorporate a similar degree of flexibility. In Brad Hooker’s critique of particularism, he discusses Rossian generalism, a view which can be considered a middle-ground between particularism and principlism. Rossian Generalism regards moral principles not as absolute dictums but looser obligations referred to as prima-facie duties. Prima-facie duties serve as guidelines that can be omitted when a moral agent believes they are inappropriate or insufficient for the situation at hand. Prima-facie duties can be weighed against each other and compared in the similar manner as reasons with differing valences can be compared in particularism. This allows for more flexibility than rigid principlism but with the safeguard of using moral principles as guidelines. 

Many of the problems that both particularism and principlism present to moral agents are sidestepped by the Rossian generalist. For instance, the task of moral education can become difficult within the particularist framework. For a principlist, moral education comes in the form of teaching explicitly worded moral principles, the reasons why one should hold those principles, what the consequences are if they do not follow those principles and so on. Particularists do not have such a convenient way of communicating moral reasons. Particularist moral reasons are much more abstract and require effort to properly articulate. When teaching morality, a Rossian generalist can do so by articulating a moral principle with the aside that it is an optional guideline and not an absolute universal command. 

A Rossian generalist is not tied down to any specific moral principle or reason in the same way that a rigid principlist such as a Kantian is. A Rossian generalist will always have options such as in the typical cliche moral conundrums which trap those that subscribe to common normative ethical views. If a murderer knocks on the door of a Rossian generalist’s house enquiring about the location of their friend, the Rossian generalist will have no qualms about lying. If the Rossian generalist finds themselves holding the lever in the unfortunate trolley problem scenario, normally, they would be ethically bound to cause no harm, but given that causing not harming one individual would consequently harm many, the Rossian generalist could cast aside the ‘do no harm’ principle in favor of the ‘the greatest good for greatest number of people’ principle based on the requirements of the situation at hand.  

Hooker argues that a Rossian Generalist is more trustworthy than a particularist. This is because one can never know what reasons a particularist will honor when making a moral judgement. Particularists can be unpredictable, and this can cause problems when engaging them in sensitive relationships such as a business or romantic relationship. Rossian generalists have a degree of the same uncertainty as there is no guarantee that they will act according to specific moral principles. At the very least, moral principles play some role in their reasoning. This does not guarantee consistency, but it allows for more predictability than the particularist. This leads to a tentative conclusion that a society consisting of Rossian generalists would be more desirable than a society consisting of particularists. If trust is considered to be a primary desirable quality in a person, then it follows that a partial adherence to moral principles in Rossian generalism would provide a greater foundation for trusting interpersonal relationships than particularism. 

Rossian generalism is generally able to achieve what particularism sets out to achieve, but since it uses moral principles instead of a series of individual case analyses, it does so with less effort on behalf of the moral agent. A pitfall of the Rossian generalist strategy is that by loosening moral principles to optional guidelines, the consistent guidance of clear moral principles is forfeited. This pitfall is also present in particularism. 

After critically evaluating the particularist case against principlism, there appears to be insufficient reason to conclude that principlism ought to be replaced by particularism. The particularist arguments point out many problems inherent to the principlist strategy, but these problems can be adequately rectified without the need of being replaced by a fundamentally different system in particularism. Rossian generalism proves to be a viable middle ground between the flexibility of particularism and the simplicity and clarity of principlism. Particularism is a very clever and ambitious idea but it is simply not necessary.

References:

Jonathan Dancy, “Unprincipled Morality,” in Ethical Theory: An Anthology, ed. Russ Shafer-Landau (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 772-775.

Jonathan Dancy, “Moral Particularism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2017 Edition, ed. Edward N. Zalta, accessed September 1, 2024, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-particularism/.

Gerald Dworkin, “Unprincipled Ethics,” in Ethical Theory: An Anthology, ed. Russ Shafer-Landau (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 786-794.

Andrew Hamilton, “Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Meaning,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed September 1, 2024, https://iep.utm.edu/kripkes-wittgenstein/.

Brad Hooker, “Moral Particularism: Wrong and Bad,” in Moral Particularism, edited by Brad Hooker and Margaret Olivia Little, 1-22. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

P. Vayrynen, B. Hooker, & M. Little (2002), “Moral Particularism,” The Philosophical Review, 111(3), 478-. https://doi.org/10.2307/3182563.