by roberto frega
Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 23, 4, 2009, pp. 307-327 .
The aim of this article is to offer a contribution to our understanding of the place and function of reason in human... more
The aim of this article is to offer a contribution to our understanding of the place and function of reason in human agency, notably in that specific part of human agency that can be qualified as "moral" and whose main trait is that it presupposes some reference to normativity. In this perspective, through the concept of "expressive inquiry" I would like to propose a theory of how reason enters our moral practices. In line with the pragmatist tradition, I take this theory to be at the same time grounded in effective existing practices and as being a normative description of how agents should resort to reasoning in practical (and notably moral) affairs.
My methodological starting point can be devised in what I call the "epistemology of practice," a theory of knowledge and rationality whose main sources can be traced back to John Dewey's logical and epistemological writings. 1 While having explicitly in mind a pragmatist paradigm of human rationality—as also the term inquiry should have made clear—in this article I attempt to extend the pragmatist paradigm, integrating it with more recent contributions to moral philosophy. In so doing, I do not intend to take part in the recent debate over pragmatism and perfectionism, although that last develops around a similar awareness of the necessity to open classical pragmatism to different sources and traditions. 2 I, rather, intend to follow a different path, which consists in developing a notion of moral rationality that is rooted in the Deweyan paradigm of rationality as inquiry and that at the same time takes into account those articulative and expressive dimensions that characterize the specifically moral form of inquiry. In this way, it will become easier to qualify the general notion of situation with respect to moral experience.
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