This book by Christine Korsgaard is quite possibly in my top three or four philosophical books I've read, period. I had read sections of it alongside this a few years ago when I was doing an undergraduate essay on conceptions of agency in practical reason, earmarking it as a book to revisit and properly digest later on - this time not for mere academicalism but to properly imbibe of and benefit from the potency of insights she makes herein.
Synthesizing ideas from Plato, Aristotle and Kant, alongside her own formidable weight of intellectual reflective handling of such diverse themes of psychological behaviouralism, the questions of what makes a person effective at being a person, how we respond at all to things like goodness or rightness; the ground covered here is incredibly holistic in scope and yet holds together into a cohesive train of argument that never dithers on the fences of empty philosophizing but consistently returns to the fertile soil of pragmatic, day-to-day human lived application - which is what all true philosophy should be and do, imho. I'm not going to pretend a cogent synthetic summary of the ideas contained herein is at all within either the intentional or possible parameters of my writing this post, but to give a roughly hazarded breakdown of what I think she's getting at in this book - it is the very question of what it means to live well, how a human person can conceptualize themselves in practical ways in relation to ideas about goodness and reason in a world so often devoid of either in the immediate circumstances; and how constantly choosing to cultivate one's own identity in line with notions of goodness, rational truth and whatnot ultimately shape the meaningful essence of our identities - how well we do this developing what she refers to as our integrity. She does shine some excellently critical lights into the murkier what-if corners of our failures to do this as well - with such problematic elements of human being as ignorance, moral failure, and incoherent aspects of our constituted beings all being dealt with generously and in my opinion rather satisfactorily. One small gripe I would take with it is that she deals primarily with autonomy and agency in these senses with regard to the individual, and so much of the kind of organic intersubjectivity that shapes, for good or ill, our capacities and efficacies in the pursuits talked about in this book aren't given the scrutiny I would have been keen to hear her delve into - but this is a small trifle when one considers how much truly helpful ground she has otherwise covered - no doubt that side of things is something she has talked about elsewhere,* or may someday.
As you'd probably guess from an Oxford University Press book, it is pretty dense reading and though Korsgaard writes excellently and this is much more accessible than a majority I think of typical books in this kind of ballpark, it would still be a bit of a hard go for those who haven't delved previously into the mindfields of psychological philosophy - but I'd say probably most people seriously willing to give their brains a bit of a workout could handle this book relatively easily, so long as you don't expect it to be the kind of thing you can just bash out in a few afternoons, and are happy to google the occasional word. And yes, I would very much recommend this book to basically anyone as the insights contained in it are so life-givingly pragmatic and reasonable that it would be an excellent book to anyone - so if you'd like to take the plunge and give your own grasp at being a coherent person a long hard thought-stare, I heartily recommend Christine Korsgaard's work as a springboard - and though I can't say I'm a scholar I'm confident enough this is a good starting point.
* I am speculating here - sadly, as I am no longer a student of any university, my access to philosophy books is now considerably more limited, as they're bloody expensive, and they won't let me in the student libraries with quite the same degree of welcome as I once had.
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