Togetherness as a Moral Notion

Abstract

Moral philosophy for the most part conceives of morality in terms of rational action. An agent acts morally, in other words, if she acts as she ought to act on pain of rational inconsistency. Accordingly, interpersonal relationality, to the extent that it reflects moral value, is understood in terms of two or more individuals interacting with one another in rationally called-for ways. This approach can be called third-personal: what is morally decisive is the agent’s reasons for acting, abstract entities equally accessible, and assessable, by all. This dissertation takes issue with two variants of such a third-personal approach to moral relationality, namely the moral thought of Immanuel Kant and John McDowell. The main effort of this work is to show that a) Kant’s and McDowell’s accounts fail to do justice to what it means to find oneself vis-à-vis a unique other, addressed by, and responding to, her, and b) to develop an alternative understanding of moral relationality that seeks recourse to Martin Buber’s dialogical phenomenology and post-Wittgensteinian moral philosophy. The proposed alternative revolves around the notion of the second-personal relation – or the ‘I-You relation,’ as Buber speaks of it – and explicates how this mode of relationality not only underlies the third-personal understanding of morality but comes with its own sui generis moral-existential charge – namely the claim to respond lovingly to the other.