Essay On Identity And Obligation

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*If having an obligation depends on one accepting an identity, but one can temporarily violate that identity and obligation, to what extent does one actually assume that identity? Korsgaard has claimed that an action will be accepted as a reason due to being intrinsically fit to be a something, given the identity in question. Presumably the same can be said of an obligation. An action is prohibited by an identity if it is intrinsically unfit, given the identity in question, to be performed. But if this is the case, how could it be so easy for someone to fail to fulfill their obligations? If the intrinsic fittingness or unfittingness of an action is what determines whether it will be accepted or rejected as a reason, this implies that the action 's intrinsic properties are obvious to the agent. In failing to fulfil a duty, it seems that an agent must either not recognize that their action is unfit to be performed, which would indicate that the act is not intrinsically unfit, or else they do not genuinely ascribe to the identity that prohibits it. *Korsgaard has already attempted to alleviate this concern, and has admitted that individuals can go from having an identity, to losing an identity, to regaining it. The question that she does not sufficiently address, however, is whether the obligations created by those identities can temporarily pop out of existence as well. It seems that, on her view, the existence of reason and obligation are too dependent on an agent 's acceptance of their identity. There are many cases where this seems implausible. For instance, imagine that a mother decides that she no longer cares about her motherly obligations to care and provide for her child. In so far as she remains the legal guardian of her child, it seems that she has an obligation to not abandon her child regardless of whether shes identifies as a mother or not. The only way she could be relieved of the duties her identity as a mother generates is if she relinquishes her role as guardian to another person. But this would require more than a simple rejection of identity, which suggests that obligation can exist independently of one 's acceptance of the identity it is attached to. *It is problematic to claim that obligation stems something as subjective as identity, because it seems extremely intuitive that people can retain obligations even if they do not recognize them. To offer another example, perhaps an individual no longer self-identifies as a Canadian citizen, even though they continue to live within Canadian borders. As a result, Canadian law ceases to inform which desires they accept as reasons, or which actions they ought to abstain from as a matter of duty. If they become a thief and steal whatever they desire, no one would accept the justification that, as a person who no longer identifies as Canadian, the Canadian law no longer applies from him. Most would agree that he is still accountable for violating an obligation to respect the property of others. Claiming that obligations are connected to or related to identities seems reasonable, but it is unclear that Korsgaard is entitled to the claim that they are produced by identities. Korsgaard discusses a potential problem for her view, which is that what laws a person self-legislates is a product of which identities they accept. This brings into question whether there can be moral obligation, or whether “there are particular ways in which we must think of our identities” (113).What action …show more content…
This means that identities can be relinquished by individuals, which in turn means that an identity can stop being normative for us if we stop accepting the reasons and duties it ascribes as compelling. However, Korsgaard asserts, it is necessary that one has a notion of one 's practical identity (120). According to her argument, there is reason to adopt a practical identity because, without it, one completely lack reasons for acting in any way. This reason is derived from one 's identity as a human, not from any specific practical identities one possesses. As such, she thinks that so long as we value our human identity, which she claims is the same as a moral identity, we have a reason to act in accordance with our particular identities. Our human identity simply is our moral identity because “valuing humanity in your own person rationally requires valuing it in the persons of others”

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