Carla Bagnoli (Modena): 'Orientation in Moral Thinking'
This paper argues for the significance of ‘orientation’ and ‘re-orientation’ as central metaphors of moral agency. By refocusing on orientation rather than vision, this study evidences the novelty of Murdoch’s model of agency and the full import of her critique of the narrow account of moral agency. It also puts in a different perspective her dialectical relation to Kant and his composite legacy in analytic ethics. Like Kant, Murdoch defends a conception of practical reason as oriented toward the good by practical attitudes. Unlike Kant’s dialogical model of orientation, however, Murdoch’s individualist model emphasizes the privacy of the path toward the good where others are the object of a clear vision rather than equal partners engaged in relations of mutual recognition. Undertaking a comparative analysis of these models, this paper highlights unexplored complexities of the corresponding views of moral growth and progress. The first cluster of issues concern the impact of moral progress on agential unity, whether moral progress is disruptive or cumulative. A second set concerns its political effects. Murdoch remarks that “If morality is essentially connected with change and progress, we cannot be as democratic as we would like to think”, because individuals improve in radically different ways. Her attack on publicity raises the question of the place and value of moral equality. A distinctive achievement of Kant’s dialogical metaphor of orientation is that it responds to both these issues (regarding the agential and political dimensions of moral progress) on the basis of the same rationale, i.e., referring to the ‘public’ structure of practical reason.
