Jean Hampton on the Authority of Reason

The philosopher Jean Hampton died at a young age in the early 1990’s before being able to complete the book that she was working on. Her notes were pulled together and published as The Authority of Reason in 1996. One of the main themes of Hampton’s book is that it is not just false, but incoherent, to think that rationality or reasons could be purely instrumental in nature.

I’m assigning chapter 4 of her book as the context in order to understand the kind of objection that Schroeder is trying to respond to in chapter 3 of Slaves of the Passions, which we’re reading next week. Schroeder is also motivated by trying to respond to a couple of other things by Christine Korsgaard that we have not read, but those are a little bit too difficult to read, and so I am assigning Hampton instead.

The Reading

The Hampton reading is here. The chapter is around 40 pages, but you can get the feel for the main issue by reading up to page 142 and then stopping. The main question that I want you to think about while reading this chapter is: why does Hampton think that it is incoherent and not just false to think that desires are the only source of reasons?