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I) Work in Progress
  • My main present research project: a comparison between moral normativity and aesthetic normativity in order to obtain a model for a moral normative force that does not compel (like obligation).The project starts from a central characteristic of the morality of law: that it conceives the moral normative force as a force of obligation. In other words, it is characteristic for the morality of law to see moral agents as obeying a force of moral obligation when they bring about the change from how things are, to how they should be, morally speaking. The advancement towards the moral good is seen as an arduous task unlikely to be followed through without the pressure of obligation. I think Korsgaard puts it best: ‘the idea of obligation is naturally associated with the idea of law. [T]he force that value exerts upon us ... when we are obligated, it is compulsive. For obligation is the imposition of value on a reluctant, recalcitrant, resistant matter.’  Korsgaard (1996) contrasts the view based on obligation with another view, rooted in the Greek philosophical tradition, namely with morality as a kind of ‘excellence’ or virtue. According to Korsgaard, the force corresponding to excellence is a force of attraction, not of compulsion. (Compulsion corresponds to obligation, in this picture.) However, speaking in terms of ‘forces’ is, after all, just a (helpful) metaphor. Are there shortcomings to this metaphor? Is it sometimes inadequate? What would morality-without-obligation look like beyond the metaphor of attraction for the good? We readily recognize the effects of obligation-compulsion on the agent, but what are the effects of ‘attraction’ for moral excellence? And the most puzzling question of all: how can the force of attraction be a ‘force’ yet not compel? 

II) Recent work ​