2009

Ruling exemplarity and the paradigm of reflective judgement
Some reflections on Alessandro Ferrara's The Force of the Example

Daniele Santoro (*)

1. Premise

The Force of the Example is a valuable book for anyone who believes that a reflection on the foundation of political philosophy is, ultimately, an epistemology endeavor. One can read it as a path-guiding inquiry in the theory of practical judgement, a subject to which Ferrara dedicated a long-standing reflection since the middle of the '80, when his first works on the concept of "reflective authenticity" appeared in publication. There, his quest was already for a conception of identity capable of reconciling the normative demands of universalism with the pluralism of particular cultures, values, and forms of life. Aside from the thematic continuity however, The Force of the Example stands on its own as an original book in which the reflective nature of authenticity is analysed through the epistemological lenses of reflective judgement, a distinctive model of judgement borrowed from the Kant of the third Critique. Ferrara elaborates this model in novel and thoughtful directions: in particular, he makes the case for an inclusive theory of republican citizenship in which the reconciliation between universalism and pluralism finds its home in alternative to the liberal and the communitarian legacies.

In the following I will not further comment on the general direction of a project for which I must confess my sympathy, but concentrate on three conceptual issues which I find problematic and propose a different reading of some of the core claims of the model: the availability of what Ferrara calls an "universalism without principles" and the nature of Kantian formalism (sections 2 and 3); the role of "exemplarity" in the domain of public reason (section 4), and the relation between authenticity and autonomy (section 5).

2. Universalism, pluralism, and their difficult reconciliation

The explicit purpose of The Force of the Example is to provide a model of judgement capable of reconciling the claims of universal validity of moral demands (especially those associate with the matter of basic justice) with cultural and moral diversity (1):

We currently have on offer theories and conceptions....that embed universalistic claims but poorly match our pluralistic intuitions. And on the other hand we are confronted with theories and conceptions that start from pluralistic assumptions ... but fail to vindicate our urge for universalism, even if by "universalism" just the simple requirement is meant that theories and norms exert some kind of cogency not just within, but somehow also beyond their context and time of origin. (Ferrara, 2008: 18).

As a paramount case of univeralistic claims, Ferrara mentions proceduralist liberalism. According to this view, the question of what sort of normativity is specific of the practical domain is a question about the specific sort of reasons we have that can be justified to others. Of course, practical normativity has distinctive features which involve our moral motivations, but aside from them, the core epistemological issue concerns the way in which we define the right or the good reasons to act upon. Constructivists see in the universal form of principles the criterion by means of which moral reasoning can achieve a moral point of view. In turn, such moral point of view can be justified only in procedural terms. Scanlon's proceduralism, for instance, identifies the rightness of actions in terms of a reasoning that yields an impartial point of view, where impartiality is achieved by a procedure of universalization based on what, in a counterfactual reasoning, could not be reasonably rejectable by anybody involved. The specific kind of normative import of universal principles is tackled by Kantians of this sort as a feature inherent to the procedure of construction.

The problem with this view is that a political conception of justice that implements the Kantian principled model of judgement incurs in a clash when fundamental disagreement is at stake. Consider, for instance, the Rawlsian model of overlapping consensus: it is supposed to offer a solution to the question of stability in a pluralistic society governed by impartial principles of justice. A theory of justice will be stable, according to Rawls, if it can be the object of such a consensus, but the justification of the two principles is given via a procedure in which the political identity of citizens clashes with their comprehensive identities (i.e., as persons who have specific conceptions of the good). As many have noticed, the conflict between the impartial and the comprehensive point of view boils down into a idiosyncratic view of the moral subject (2).

The kind of judgement that makes sense of the procedural understanding of this conception of justice is a principled understanding of the faculty of deliberation, a idea whose source is Kant's second Critique. As I read him, Ferrara's strategic move is to overcome such an impasse by showing that the source of the idiosyncrasy lies at the level of its epistemology, in the formality envisaged by this kind of judgement.

Ferrara's option is to work out an alternative model of exemplarity, which still owes its philosophical paternity to the same father of principled morality, Immanuel Kant. In his Critique of the Power of Judgement, Kant elaborates a concept of reflective judgement and distinguishes it from the determinant judgement. Determinant judgement consists in thinking "the particular as contained under the universal" (CJ, 5: 179) (3). But, this can be done only if one is able to identify a principle or rule, under which the concrete case can be subsumed as an instance. A determinant judgement states that such submission is the case, that it is correct. On the other side, reflective judgement is the type of judgement in which "only the particular is given, for which the universal has to be found" (CJ, 5: 179). While the ascending path from the particular to the universal is what we do when we look for a general principle (both of conduct or theoretical) under which to subsume our judgements, this is not possible within reflective judgement.

As Ferrara puts it, reflective judgement is involved

...when the nature of the question raised, the cultural plurality of ways of framing it, the historical distance in time, or whatever other reason puts us in a predicament where no clear-cut, generally accepted or otherwise established 'universal' can be invoked for answering it or testing available answers. (Ferrara 2008:20)

Reflective judgement is the type of judgement that exhibits and prompts the conceptual resources needed to raise questions in the normative domain in which validity cannot be thought under the universal claims of a principled reason. What sort of judgement should we then conceive of, which is not based on principles? Should we think, for instance, of a judgement that yields a form of 'universalism without principles'? (4) Would it be conceivable at all?

A way to save the universalistic claim along with the a non-principled view of practical reason is to adopt a reconstructive perspective: the universal bearing of practical reason should be thought not as a feature of principles, but as a feature of particular exemplary judgements. Ferrara calls a paradigm of judgement the model of practical reason, which reconciles "normativity and universalism...in the form of an anticipation of the general consensus of those who possess the necessary expertise for assessing the matter, no matter where they are situated"(Ferrara 2008: 22). Here

...the normativity of a law or principle [is replaced] with the normativity of the example. What emerges from within a historical and cultural context can exert a cogency outside its original context by virtue of entering a relation of exceptional congruency with the subjectivity, individual or collective, that has brought it into being. (Ferrara, 2008: 20-21)

The strategic move allowed by the model of reflective judgement is to show that the normative force of practical judgements does not need to be couched in the form of principles.

But, if we adopt the model of reflective judgement as a paradigm for practical normativity, this move can only be made at the cost of admitting that Kant's philosophical system splits into two different directions in his crucial doctrine of judgement: the doctrine of general principles on one side, the model of exemplarity on the other. Ferrara does not discuss directly Kant's practical philosophy, but he seems to interpret it as doctrine in which the formality principles consists in their generality. But Kant's practical philosophy does just not boil down to a doctrine of principles; rather, both the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and The Critique of Practical Reason provide insightful suggestions on how to make sense of a model of "normativity without principles", Ferrara's highest desideratum. In this regard, there are two sources of misunderstanding that need to be cleared out to see the relevance of this works to Ferrara's project: first, there is a question about the way we should conceive of the formality of laws or principles; the second is a question concerning the nature and function of the exemplary in a theory of judgement.

3. Formalism and the exemplary in Kant's practical philosophy

In the opening definition of the first book of the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant states that:

Practical principles are propositions that contain a general determination of the will, having under it several practical rules. They are subjective, or maxims, when the condition is regarded by the subject as holding only for his will; but they are objective, or practical laws, when the condition is cognized as objective, that is, as holding for the will of every rational being. (CprR, 5: 19)

This definition is the premise for the deduction of the fundamental law of morality:

If a rational being is to think of his maxims as practical universal laws, he can think of them only as principles that contain the determining ground of the will not by their matter but only by their form. (CprR, 5: 27)

It is clear from the argument that Kant presents in these sections that the principles of practical laws are principles in virtue of their form, but with an important qualification: the form of those principles should be understood as a constraint of the will, independently from the content of the maxim. Kant makes it clear in the passage that follows the theorem:

...[A]ll that remains of a law if one separates from it everything material, that is, every object of the will (as its determining ground), is the mere form of giving universal law. Therefore, either a rational being cannot think of his subjectively practical principles, that is, his maxims, as being at the same time universal laws or he must assume that their mere form, by which they are fit for a giving of universal law, of itself and alone makes them practical laws. (CprR, 5: 27)

Here the connection between principles and form is given by the specification of what he means by the form of a maxim: maxims - Kant says - are practical principles only insofar as they are fit to express a universal law. Since the universalizability of maxims is the only ground to determine the will as purely moral, it follows that the normativity of morality (what Kant calls its practical necessity) is inherent to the form of the will. Now, the practical necessity expressed by the formula is quite different from a general formulation of a principle of conduct: it is not the action of the maxim which is universalized, but the 'capacity of willing' the maxim as being universally valid; and it is such capacity that discerns authentically moral from non-moral reasons. The form in which the moral laws are couched has therefore a specific semantic function, which extends beyond the propositional form of a general prescription. Let me call such function expressive: the right kind of will can be expressed in the form of universal principles only insofar as one can also will the maxim to be an universal law. What Kant is telling us then is that the universal significance of the moral law does not primarily consists in its generality, but in its practical necessity in the form of.

In order to understand this point, we should notice that Kant distinguishes two kinds of universalizations in his Groundwork, when he discusses the counterexamples to the main formula of the moral law. Consider the case of the person that, in need of money, promises to return the amount borrowed knowing that this will never happen. Kant says the maxim, once it has gone the process of universalization, would necessarily contradict itself, for this "would make the promise and the end one might have in it itself impossible, since no one would believe what was promised him but would laugh at all such expressions as vain pretenses" (G, 4:422, emphasis added). The impossibility he refers to here concerns the logic of the beliefs involved in committing oneself to a promise: this is a semantic impossibility, which impinges on the propositional content of the maxim. But, then he brings to the reader another case, that of the disinterested person

... for whom things are going well while he sees that others (whom he could very well help) have to contend with great hardships, thinks: what is it to me? let each be as happy as heaven wills or as he can make himself; I shall take nothing from him nor even envy him; only I do not care to contribute anything to his welfare or to his assistance in need! Now, if such a way of thinking were to become a universal law the human race could admittedly very well subsist, ....But although it is possible that a universal law of nature could very well subsist in accordance with such a maxim, it is still impossible to will that such a principle hold everywhere as a law of nature. For, a will that decided this would conflict with itself, since many cases could occur in which one would need the love and sympathy of others and in which, by such a law of nature arisen from his own will, he would rob himself of all hope of the assistance he wishes for himself. (G, 4: 423)

The relevance of this example is that it points out not a logical or semantic contradiction, but an impossibility of the will - or a pragmatic impossibility if you like - between the content of the maxim and the will associated with it.

The role of the will is therefore not primarily to provide motivational force to the subject, but to the operations of reason involved in the understanding of synthetic practical propositions: one who grasps the concept of the categorical imperative will also recognize (on due reflection) the necessity of the maxim as subjected to universal legislation. Such necessity does not only involves a determining judgement as a conclusion (the law is given, and the maxim falls under the law), but contains also a constraint on the will, what Kant calls the canon of moral judgement in general: we must be able to will that a maxim of our action become a universal law. (G, 4: 424). In terms of the distinction drawn above, this means that while a semantic contradiction makes it impossible to formulate a maxim as an universal law, a pragmatic contradiction makes it impossible to will the maxim as an universal law. It is this latter aspect of Kant's formality which is essential to our discussion: the universal formulation does not generalize the will in the form of a mere impersonal generalization of contingent maxims of behaviour, but rather expresses its cogency in the form of a proposition containing a practical determination of the will for rational agents. The grammatical form of the imperative illuminates the depth of this point: the form "you ought to φ" is not formal in virtue of an indeterminate content φ, neither in virtue of the purely formal deontic term "ought", but rather in virtue of the expression "you ought..", in which agency and normativity are inherently connected. The way this connection holds or fails, depends purely on the nature of the will. Kant's formalism, in other words, is not to be thought in terms of the dichotomy between form and content, but in terms of the role of will in the logical structure of a judgement.

If this reading is correct, one may ask whether it is may be consistent with a conception of practical normativity based on examples. Apparently, Kant rejects it:

Only we must never leave out of account, here, that it cannot be made out by means of any example, and so empirically, whether there is any such imperative at all, but it is rather to be feared that all imperatives which seem to be categorical may yet in some hidden way be hypothetical.

For example, when it is said "you ought not to promise anything deceitfully," and one assumes that the necessity of this omission is not giving counsel for avoiding some other ill in which case what is said would be "you ought not to make a lying promise lest if it comes to light you destroy your credit" but that an action of this kind must be regarded as in itself evil and that the imperative of prohibition is therefore categorical: one still cannot show with certainty in any example that the will is here determined merely through the law, without another incentive, although it seems to be so; for it is always possible that covert fear of disgrace, perhaps also obscure apprehension of other dangers, may have had an influence on the will. Who can prove by experience the nonexistence of a cause when all that experience teaches is that we do not perceive it? In such a case, however, the so-called moral imperative, which as such appears to be categorical and unconditional, would in fact be only a pragmatic precept that makes us attentive to our advantage and merely teaches us to take this into consideration. (G., 4: 419)

H.J. Paton, commenting on these passages in his classical work on the categorical imperative, highlighted the limited role of examples in Kant's Groundwork:

As to the use of examples, Kant is far from repudiating this in the moral education of the young, provided it is directed towards separating the moral motive from motives of pleasure and self-interest. The danger of basing ethical teaching on examples is this: it may give the impression that the concept of duty is a generalisation from experience, a concept of how men actually behave; and this in turn may lead to a confusion of moral with non-moral motives, or even to the view that duty is a mere phantom of the mind. (Paton 1970: 24)

Thus no ambiguity arises here: the role of examples cannot be foundational of any cogent moral law, because they lack the a priori form of universal validity.

Ferrara's characterization of the epistemological role of examples does not appear to avoid their limited role. He conceives of examples as providing the premise of a judgement whose conclusion claims normative validity and universal significance "in the form of an anticipation of the general consensus of those who possess the necessary expertise for assessing the matter, no matter where they are situated" (Ferrara 2008: 22). Later on, he specifies that the capacity for such a consensus is given by appealing to "a layer of intuitions that we have reason to consider accessible from a plurality of perspectives insofar as these intuitions are linked with the universal human experience, along with mortality and embodiment, of the flourishing ...of one's own life" (Ferrara 2008: 33-34). But, this way examples seem to boil down to a sort of prudential expertise, accessible from a plurality of perspective in virtue of an intuitionist epistemology, which does not yield the universalizability required by the moral will. In other words, they will always be part of a conditional imperative, therefore subjected to an empirical determination of the will.

There is nonetheless room for an understanding of example that might reconcile Kant's conception of universality with Ferrara's desiderata. I suggested above that practical maxims are expressive of the quality of the will involved. In particular, when they can be formulated as practical laws, they express reasons which are potentially recognizable by all rational beings on due reflection. My suggestion is that examples may be thought to share the form of practical laws, while still not being formulable as general principles. Let me elaborate a bit on this point.

As pointed out by R. M. Hare, universality and generality are different concepts. Matthew Kramer has recently provided a perspicuous explanation of this distinction:

Generality, which is always a matter of degree, consists in abstraction from the more concrete or detailed features of things. If two features can be ranked in their generality, and if the possession of one of them entails the possession of the other, the entailment always runs from the more specific feature to the more general feature rather than vice versa. Thus, for example, the property of being a lion entails the property of being an animal but not vice versa. General laws prescind from many concrete qualities of the instances of conduct to which they apply. A law proscribing murder, for example, will have abstracted from the specific features that earmark various types of murders (strangulations versus shootings versus stabbings, and so forth).

Universality differs from generality. A formulated norm is universal if and only if it contains no named references to particular entities such as individuals or times or places. A named reference to Abraham Lincoln or to the year 1922 or to France, for instance, would deprive a formulation of its universality. Still, although any named reference to a particular person or thing is inconsistent with universality, specificity is not; a universal norm can be highly specific. A law prohibiting anyone with red hair and brown eyes from watering rhododendrons on Thursdays, for example, is expressive of a universal norm in spite of its detail. Such a law contains no named references to particulars, even though its references to types (types of hair, eyes, flowers, and days) are quite concrete. (Kramer 2007: 111-12).

If we apply this distinction to practical laws, we can see that they are universal in that they do not specify in advance the types of subjects to which they apply, although they can be highly specific in what they prescribe. Of course, practical laws can be formulated as general principles of conduct, but it is not because they are general that they can be universalized, but it is in virtue of their being universal that they can be generalized.

Now, it may seem difficult to think of examples as universal laws, but the surface should not led us astray. Rather than focusing on their matter, we should look into their form. The best way is perhaps to reason by analogy with archetypes. Archetypes are particular representations (mental images, symbols, episodes or even visual figures) which embed cognitive or practical models. Their inheritability and recurrent presence in other contexts derive from their form as models, not from their literal meaning. Likewise, although examples are always particular episodes or actions, they nonetheless strike moral agents not for their narrative, but for their internal congruence and trans-contextual significance. They express a model of rightness which, in virtue of their congruence and self-consistency, is accessible independently from any particular moral assumption.

I do not know whether Ferrara would agree on such characterization, a question that I leave open for discussion. One point it seems clear nonetheless: if we want to make sense of the idea of an universal exemplarity, examples cannot be thought as mere exemplifications of general features of an action. Let's see more in detail how exemplarity works within the public domain.

4. Public Reason and the paradigm of reflective judgement

A central topic of The Force of the Example is that we can remodel within the paradigm of reflective judgement the Rawlsian idea of "public reason". Here Ferrara provides an argument that I find intriguing, but unconvincing. Ferrara characterizes public reason as the domain of reasons that citizens provide in the public forum. Public reason, he says, is an instance of reasonableness, rather than rational calculus (5).The fundamental requirement of reasonableness is that the validity of one's own claims depends on whether they would be acceptable from the point of view of all others involved. As we have seen, this is understanding of the idea of reason that proceduralists like Rawls and Scanlon owe to Kant's practical philosophy. Ferrara gives a different reading of the idea of public reason as a paramount example of the Sellarsian "game of giving and asking for reasons", which Ferrara reinterprets as a free inter-subjective interplay of the faculty of deliberation. Within the domain of public reason, each subject accepts only as valid premises of public discussion only those which are also acceptable by the others. The purpose of public reason is not to establish truths, but to deliberate on the basis of the most reasonable argument. The crux of the matter, however, is how to understand the inferential norms from the shared premises to deliberations acceptable for all. Ferrara's account is very detailed, but the core argument is described in terms of an inferential model of reasoning: the force of the "most reasonable argument" is a specific form of a practical obligation,

the obligation to recognize the superior reasonableness of that argument. Given our shared commitment to p, we are shown by the most reasonable argument that we can't but commit ourselves to q as well. [...] The nature of this new commitment is best highlighted not by normativity associated with the application of principles to facts of the matter, but rather the normativity of reflective judgement, understood as judgement in the service of the fulfillment of an identity. (Ferrara 2008: 72-73)

The obligation carried out in terms of commitments from shared premises to deliberative conclusions is then connected to the model of exemplarity. This is done in three steps. First, he claims that a practical obligation stems from the recognition of one's political identity.

[W]e can think of the reasonableness of the most reasonable argument as a normativity that proceeds - via reflective judgement - from a certain description under which "we value ourselves" - the "we" being the political community to which the contending parties admittedly belong. The practical obligation to accept q given that we share a certain premise p doesn't stem therefore from logical principles or moral principles antecedent to the situation at hand, but stems from what the inner integrity or authenticity of the political identity shared by us and our opponents qua citizens demands for its flourishing.

Second, he claims that the reasoning from premises to conclusions is analogous to reflective judgement in the aesthetic realm.

[...] The reasonable is then the equivalent, in the realm of political argument, of what the exemplary is in the aesthetic realm. We call most reasonable what fits best the shared truths that form our starting point, just as we call exemplary the artistic element, device, representation, or solution that best fits certain aesthetic intentions that form the recognizable starting point of a given creative process.

Third - the core point - he shows how examples functions as premises of arguments in the domain of public reason. They elicit shared commitments to deliberative conclusions which everybody recognizes as normatively valid in virtue of their common political identity:

The conclusions suggested by arguments that move within the circle of public reason exert a normative force that cannot rest just on the eventual de facto convergence of the people subscribing to different competing alternatives. [...] That normative force...rests on the exemplary quality of the relation established by the conclusion with the shared initial premises from which it follows. (Ferrara 2008: 77)

I would like to discuss the second and third steps, and leave the first to the last section. What I think needs to be explained is whether reflective judgement represents a model of normative validity, or if it merely explains a phenomenology of the space of reasons. As I said, Ferrara offers an argument by analogy: the most reasonable is said to be what fits best the shared truths that form our starting point, in the same way in which we call exemplary the artistic element, device, representation, or solution that best fits certain aesthetic intentions that we recognize in a creative process. What does justify the analogy between the aesthetic and the political realm? Some objections are in order here.

First, the aesthetic judgement is not a matter of practical deliberation: the recognition of a work of art does not impose on the subject the agreement of its fellows, whereas the public reason has a deliberative function under constraints of shared acceptability. Ferrara says that the "anticipation of a general consensus" is at work in the political realm as well. But, while one can refer to the anticipation of a general consensus as an argument for the recognition of the aesthetic value of a work of art, one cannot provide this is an argument in the practical - hic et nunc - deliberation. The idea that the anticipation of a general consensus can account for actual disagreement provides only a proxy for justification, not a proper justification.

Second: the recognition of the exemplary value of a work of art is reconstructed by appealing to the reflective operations of the power of judgement. On the contrary, public reason is - paradigmatically - a domain in which the subjects involved start from a situation of disagreement, and work out a solution that can be justifiable to all. Certainly, a disagreement must be reasonable in order to elicit responses acceptable for all, but the judgement here proceeds differently from how Ferrara describes it: practical judgements have a prospective, not retrospective validity. In other words, in exercising their reasonableness, the goal of citizens is not to express a feeling of common judgement, but to deliberate and justify one's own stances in a way that takes in due consideration the others involved.

Third, Ferrara maintains that the judgement paradigm relies on the capacity for intuiting the exemplary features of actions, symbols, life episodes and conducts, which are accessible from a plurality of experiences. I take the argument as saying that the epistemic basis of reflective judgement are shared in virtue of an analogous of sensus communis for the public reason - what Ferrara characterizes as "layer of intuitions":

To the extent that we consider plausible that these intuitions may not be inconsistent with cultures other than our own, we can make sense of how a judgement that does not rely on principles or concepts, and communicates something about the conduciveness of an object, an action, a symbolic whole to enhance and further our life, could possibly claim universality.
It may legitimately claim universality by appealing to a layer of intuitions that we have reason to consider accessible from a plurality of perspectives insofar as these intuitions are linked with the universal human experience, along with mortality and embodiment, of the flourishing or stagnating of one's own life. It is the task of a philosophical theory of sensus communis to reconstruct these intuitions as completely as possible. (Ferrara 2008: 33-34)

But intuitions cannot be reasons for the space of reasons. Although they can be rationally scrutinized, they have not the form of arguments which can claim universal significance or reasonable acceptance. Intuiting the rightness of an action does not involve intuiting the demandingness of universal compliance, because making the latter claim would involve to enter into the domain of normative concepts that express and articulate the primary intuitions. It is within the domain of concepts that the game of giving and asking for reasons is practiced.

Fourth, following Ferrara one can spell out two distinct functions of reflective judgement. Call one a "formative" function: it enhances the disclosing of one's own experience in the light of an idea of what counts as a life worth to be living. Reflective judgement is the organon of self-awareness, the path to the formation of self-conception that he calls "authenticity". Reflective judgement provides thus a guide in understanding and choosing what plans of life would fit best the promotion of one's own life. The other is a "deliberative" function: it provides a guide to practical judgements in the context of a shared world where others have equal claims to self-expression. Now, although sensus communis can elicit emulative responses in presence of exceptional exemplarities, and by so reveal to us that we all share the same humanity (the formative function), it is hard to see why sensus communis can also yield the deliberative function, i.e. a convergence in fundamental judgements of public interest.

5. Concluding remarks: authenticity and autonomy

I would like to conclude with a some remarks on the role of authenticity in Ferrara's paradigm of judgement. Let me first sum up the main points of my discussion: Ferrara argues that the practical reasoning from shared premises (elicited by exemplary episodes) to conclusions of potential universal significance takes the form of a reflective judgement. In the reflective judgement, examples of authentic and congruent behaviours serve as premise of a creative process in which a model for one's own behaviour has to be found. Different models will be valid for each single subject: reflection does not have one path, but follows the many itineraries of individual imaginations. This way, the validity of the moral ought is replaced by the exemplarity of congruence.

Now, an interesting aspect of this characterization is that authenticity replaces autonomy as the core element of individual freedom. For one thing, authenticity is closely connected to the concept of autonomy, but their dependence is problematic, since authenticity may be argued either to presuppose a theory of autonomy, or the other way round. In Reflective Authenticity, Ferrara claimed in favour of the first, but with the qualification that the concept of autonomy does not explain away the concept of authenticity: "the conceptual gap between autonomous and authentic conduct - he says - cannot be bridged with materials derived analytically from autonomy" (Ferrara, 1998: 5). In fact, he goes on, for an identity to be authentic

it must not only be autonomously willed; it is also necessary that its project-like moment ("Who I want to be") should fit in an exemplary way its diagnostic moment ("Who I am"), where the expression "to fit" does not mean that it depends in a mechanical way on it, but rather that a relation of mutual relevance is created or maintained between these two moments. (Ferrara, 1998: 16).

The mechanical way - I suppose - refers to the limits of the determinant judgement in accounting for the uniqueness of the self that constitutes a central feature of the concept of authenticity. Ferrara argues that the authentic conduct is expressive one's own unique personality in way in which autonomy is not, since one may act autonomously but in-authentically at the same time. This is true to some extent, as one could freely decide to take up a life-plan which is not a truly expression of one's own personality. The departure between autonomy and authenticity is also reflected in the kind of judgement that attaches to them. Ferrara, recalling Simmel on this point, shows a persuasive argument: an autonomous identity informed by the regulative ideal of the categorical imperative, will deliberate his conclusions from the point of view of nowhere, that is from the principles of morality set as premise for deliberative reasoning. But the determinant judgement characteristic of the morality of principles will fall short of capturing the uniqueness of the person - in her own flesh and body - that marks the idea of authenticity. Commitments undertaken from the point of view of nowhere would be idle: the individuality that "I am" might not be fitted for the ideal of what "I wished" to be. The generalization test disincarnates the subject, since the same maxim, in order to be universal, must acquire the same moral valence in the context of different lives.

The reflective judgement, on the contrary, is capable of reconciling these two aspects on an identity because the "Who I want to be" must be commensurate to "Who I am": the two poles are related by a set of possible life-projects within the sphere of feasibility of real persons, contingent as they are. In Ferrara's terminology, this is practical identity, not a cognitive one, that marks the irreplaceability of the subject of the claim (as far as the subject is aware of his/her own continuity in the time). Such identity carries a distinctive commitment which cannot be equated to the commitment to the truth of a proposition. Therefore, it shows a normative relation between the subject and his/her stances that cannot be captured within the epistemic paradigm of propositional knowledge, but requires a different paradigm - the paradigm of reflective judgement. Within reflective judgement, the project one sets for oneself has to be created, and there is nothing more autonomous, one would say, that the creation stemming out of imagination. Commitments of this sort are not simply undertaken, but created along with the elaboration of one's own life project.

I find this analysis meritorious and illuminating other various respects. In the first place, it is true that autonomy could not do the job of designing a life-project because its goal is to provide self-legislations over maxims of action, not over the whole of a life. In the second place, the distinctive kind of commitments stemming from the self-awareness of "Who I am" constitutes a bedrock of identity in which no principles play a defining role: there is in fact a factual connotation in the expression "Who I am" which expresses the contingent constitution of one's identity, but nonetheless the factuality and contingency of an identity has a normative import in the form of a modal articulation of the expression: what a person is consists in what a person cannot be or become, given she is the person she is. Along this modal articulation, Ferrara individuates a social dimension of identity, which articulates an answer to the other fundamental question, "Who I want to be". For him - I said - sociality has a formative role, prior to the special authority of the first person typical of the rationalist paradigm: one takes commitments for oneself in the same way one takes commitments towards others. In this regard, Ferrara recently wrote that:

[t]he practical dimension of the relation of the self to itself, far from presupposing a mysterious privileged access to self-knowledge on the part of the subject, on the contrary is one of the conditions of the possibility of self- knowledge. The received paradigm has been subverted radically. It is not self-knowledge that constitutes the self and enables it to relate to the world but, on the contrary, it is the self's capacity to enter relations of recognition with others and make commitments that enables the self to achieve self-knowledge. (Ferrara, 2009: 30).

I wonder whether the notion of authenticity allows this reading. I have two doubts in this regard.

The first concerns how to understand what Ferrara calls a "practical dimension". The best way, I think, is to think of it as a social dimension in which potential partners of communication are involved in relations of recognition and mutual commitment. This is how, in order words, we are able to establish commitments for ourselves: we can undertake commitments towards ourselves only insofar as a social practice of undertaking commitments towards others is in place. But, although commitments towards self-realization can originate in a social context, for a being to be authentic those commitments must hold even against established relations of recognition and social commitments. It is the moment of potential divergence that prompts the most exemplary cases of "reflective authenticity", as in the case of conversions where the established habitus breaks down in force of a higher moral or religious call. Such relations break down in virtue of self-knowledge, not the other way round. As a consequence, although the capacity of achieving self-knowledge are given in the context of practical relations, nonetheless the constitution of a practical identity is not a social phenomenon itself. Reflective authenticity, in other words, seems to imply a transparency of one's own condition ("Who I am") which is logically prior to the social dimension in which an authentic life is projected ("Who I want to be"). But can it be?

The second doubt is connected with the first, and concerns Ferrara's rejection of authenticity as pure self-referentiality (6): the mere attestation "this is what I am" may be conducive of purely expressive stances, which would lack any moral quality. This is the case of the person for whom - hypothetically - "this is what I am" referred to her expensive and fatuous life. Certainly, we would admit, we value the life-project of a committed pacifist and disvalue the fatuous, but also the latter could be, after all, authentic in his own way. How to distinguish between authentic and inauthentic lives then, and how to distinguish between cases of exemplary from non-exemplary authenticity? To answer these questions, Ferrara integrates the conception of self-determination (characteristic of autonomy) with the additional material of four features of a complete account of authenticity: these are coherence, vitality, depth, and maturity. Certainly, we should admit, the fatuous lacks depth and maturity. But what is the purpose of appealing to these external resources? A plausible answer for a moral realist is that we have a conception of what counts as a valuable or good life: objectively, a life dedicated to the sole care of one's own appearance is not a good one, and it would be unintelligible for us. Though, Ferrara is not an advocate of moral realism, therefore the answer will not harbour here. But, neither he believes that self-knowledge is the primary source of knowledge about the good. I see here a tension that, to put the point bluntly, has the form of a dilemma: on one horn, authenticity cannot be purely self-referential; on the other horn, we cannot reduce claims of authenticity to normative attitudes, because normative attitudes depends on social norms, which often clash with authentic stances. A way out of the dilemma, appealing to objective features of what makes a life good or worth to live, remains obscure in many ways to Ferrara's own eyes. I don't know whether this is a reconstruction of reflective authenticity that Ferrara would find faithful to his intentions, so I will leave open this questions for his replies and clarifications.

However, there is no doubt that his intentions are ambitious. The task of a theory of reflective authenticity is to replace the vocabulary of autonomy with a vocabulary of authenticity by showing the virtues of a different epistemological paradigm, the model of reflective judgement. What I tried to explain here is why such shift does not provide a solution to the quest for an "universalism without principles", and why Kant's practical philosophy can still teach us something in this regard.

References

• Ferrara, A., 1998, Reflective Authenticity: Rethinking the Project of Modernity, London, Routledge.
• Ferrara, A., 2008, The Force of the Example, New York, Columbia University Press.
• Ferrara, A., 2009, "Authenticity Without a true Self", in Phillip Vannini, and Patrick Williams (eds), Authenticity in culture, Self, and Society, Farnham, Ashgate, pp. 17-36.
• Kant, I., 1997, Critique of Practical Reason (1788), Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, translated and edited by Mary Gregor, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
• Kant, I., 1998, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, translated and edited by Gregor, Mary J., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
• Kant, I., 2000, Critique of the Power of Judgement (1790), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, edited and translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Mathews, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
• Kramer, M. H., 2007, Objectivity and the Rule of Law, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
• Larmore, C., 2004, "Alessandro Ferrara's Theory of Authenticity", Philosophy and Social Criticism, 30:5-9.
• Paton, H. J., 1970, The Categorical Imperative. A Study in Kant's Moral Philosophy (1947), London, Hutchinson.
• Stout, C. (2004), Democracy and Tradition, Princeton, Princeton University Press.

Notes

*. Luiss University - Rome, dsantoro@luiss.it.

1. See also the final paragraph of the first chapter, where the project is labeled as a tertium datur, i.e. an option "between the universalism of principle and the mere reconstruction of subjectivity-shaping local frameworks into which validity remains imprisoned". (Ferrara, 2008: 41)

2. See, for instance, the discussion of this point in Charles Stout's Democracy and Tradition (Stout, 2004: chapter 3).

3. Hereafter references to Kant's works are given according to the volume/page number of the Akademie edition (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter), preceded by the following abbreviations: Critique of the Power of Judgement (CJ), Groundworks of the Metaphysics of Morals (G), Critique of Practical Reason (CprR).

4. The expression is Ferrara's, pp. 8, 23, passim.

5. According to Ferrara, this is what marks the passage from A Theory of Justice to Political Liberalism.

6. In response to Larmore (2004).