Existential choices and practical reasoning

ABSTRACT

This paper develops an account of existential choices and their role in practical reasoning. In contrast to other views that attempt to make sense of existential choices as a type of rational choice, the proposed account takes them to be choices among the normative outlooks that determine the reasons we have, and as such are nonrational. According to the argument in the paper, existential choices bring to light a feature of all choices, that they are made against the backdrop of a normative outlook, which grounds the rationality of the choice but is not itself rationally determined.

KEYWORDS:

• Practical reason
• existentialism
• transformative choices

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Justin Tiehen and anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 See Paul (2014, 2015a) and Chang (2015a, 2017). In addition, my discussion here owes a lot to other discussions of the sort of choices I am describing in this paragraph. For example, Kane’s (1996, 74–78) discussion of “self-forming choices” which are choices we make in the face of equal reasons to act one way or another and that ultimately shape who we are; and Korsgaard’s (2009) discussion of self-constitution through the adoption of various practical identities.

2 See, for example, Paul (2015b, 493) and Chang (2015a, 238). While Paul (2015b) argues that transformative choices create a problem for standard theories of rational choice, following her work in Paul (2014), she attempts to make sense of transformative choices as both authentic and rational by presenting them as choices to discover who we will become.

3 Ullmann-Margalit (2006, 158).

4 Ullmann-Margalit (2006, 171).

5 Williams (1981, 105).

6 See for example the analysis of the alternatives in Finlay (2009).

7 The notion of a normative outlook being used here which includes motivational states and ways of seeing the world, which on the whole has normative or “directive significance” has a lot in common with Sartre’s view as developed by Webber (2018, 45).

8 Paul (2015b, 484).

9 See for example, Paul (2015b, 493).

10 See, for example, Paul (2014, 120).

11 Chang (2015a, 261–262).

12 Though I end up interpreting the situation differently, this example is drawn from Paul (2015a, 1–2).

13 Sartre (1947/2007).

14 Kierkegaard (1843/1987a; 1843/1987b; 1845/1988).

15 Some interpretations of Kierkegaard see the difference between the different types of lives as structural such that the aesthetic life lacks coherence and even the possibility of choice. See for example, the discussion in Kosch (2006, Chapter 5) and Davenport (2012, Chapter 3). In addition, the ‘choice’ between lives is sometimes not taken to be a strict choice since the possibility of choice requires that one be in the ethical mode of existence already (this is suggested by Kierkegaard (1843/1987b, 157–169.) The point I am making here is about the different ways in which a normative outlook can be organized and it is not meant to imply that the aesthetic life includes the same structural complexity as the ethical life. The focus here is on Kierkegaard’s account the different ways lives or normative outlooks may be organized. The aesthete’s life is organized around pleasure because they would repeatedly choose or opt for, in whatever sense is available to them, the pleasurable over things that may have other kinds of value.

16 Kierkegaard (1843/1983).

17 Sartre (1947/2007).

18 Sartre (1947/2007). See also, Kosch (2008).

19 While it doesn’t affect my argument here, there is disagreement among scholars about how to actually interpret Kierkegaard’s views on this point. MacIntyre (2001) influentially argues that there are no reasons for the ultimate choice among lives, there is no reason for Abraham to pick the religious life over the ethical life for example. A number of critics argue otherwise however (see the collection of essays in Davenport and Rudd (2001)). But Sartre’s interpretation we are supposing here fits somewhere in the middle between MacIntyre’s and some of these critics. For example, Piety (2001) criticizes McIntyre’s interpretation of the choice between the aesthetic and the ethical life by arguing that for Kierkegaard, there are reasons such as pursuing meaning or avoiding suffering or despair, that support the choice. Still, even while advancing this line of argument, Piety (2001, 70 fn 35) allows that such reasons are dependent on what I am calling here the person’s normative outlook. That is, she acknowledges that the reasons she imagines, to pursue meaning or avoid suffering or despair, are dependent on a person’s values or desires.

20 Paul (2015a).

21 See Chang (2015a).

22 See, for example, Chang (2015a, 279).

23 See, for example, Chang (2017, 9).

24 Chang (2017, 9). Chang uses the term “plump” to contrast selecting alternatives outside of the scope of rational agency with her account of the reason-creating powers of rational agency which is operative when the options are on a par. See also, Chang (2017, 20).

25 Chang (2017, 9). A lengthier discussion of existentialism can be found in Chang (2015b, 17).

26 He emphasizes that commitments determine the reasons we have while still maintaining a measure of rational indeterminacy, partly because we can change our commitments and partly because we may have commitments that come into conflict as in the case of the student. See for example, Sartre (1947/2007, 39). See, also, the discussion of this example in Webber (2018, 53).

27 Kemp (2015, 407) makes a similar point.

28 Chang (2017, 15).

29 For a similar framing these choices, see Ullmann-Margalit (2006).

30 The example of the choice of career between law and philosophy is discussed in Chang (2017, 15).

31 The clearest discussion of Chang’s hybrid account, where some reasons are grounded in the will and others are not is in Chang (2013, Section 3).

32 I am using the term “unmotivated desires” following Nagel (1970, 29). Unmotivated desires are those that do not arise as the result of reasoning from other desires. For example, my desire to go to the store may arise because I have a desire to bake a cake and I realize that I am out of sugar. The desire to go to the store is a motivated desire. On the other hand, my desire to avoid pain, for example, is an unmotivated desire (insofar as it doesn’t arise because of other desires I have and my reasoning from them.)

33 Hume (1777/1998, 293).

34 Sartre (1947/2007, 32).

35 On this priority of choice over desires in Sartre, see Webber (2018, 87).

36 Paul (2015a, 1–2).

37 Ullmann-Margalit (2006). There is also the set of desires of the agent as a whole which includes the past and future desires, this set may give another evaluation of the choice than the one based only on the desires before the choice is made.

38 The concept of sedimentation was incorporated into French existentialism by Merleau-Ponty (1945/2012) and Beauvoir (1945/2004b; 1944/2004a; 1947/1996). For an account of Beauvoir’s existentialism that assigns a central role to sedimentation, see Webber (2018). Prinz (2018) discusses Beauvoir’s work in the course of developing an empirically informed account of moral sedimentation.

39 See Webber (2018, 192).

40 The example is drawn from Garcia (2021).

41 Vargas (2020).

42 See the discussion in Vargas (2020, 402–406).

43 Beauvoir (1947/1996, Section III, Chapter 3). See, also, the discussion in Arp (2001, 100).

44 See, for example, Korsgaard (2009, 25).

45 He emphasizes that commitments determine the reasons we have while still maintaining a measure of rational indeterminacy, partly because we can change our commitments and partly because we may have commitments that come into conflict as in the case of the student. See for example, Sartre (1947/2007, 39).

46 For an example of the first, see Chang (2017, 9) and for an example of the second, Korsgaard (1997, 63).