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Notes Preface: The Project of an Existential Theory of Personhood 1. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 57. 2. See Rawls, Political Liberalism I.5, ‘‘The Political Conception of the Person.’’ 3. See Cadava, Connor, and Nancy, Who Comes after the Subject? 4. This is why Cicero emphasizes Plato’s procedure in the Phaedrus of beginning with a ‘‘preface’’ providing an initial definition of the concepts from which to start analysis; see Cicero, On Moral Ends, Book II, sec. 3, 27. See also Heidegger on the ‘‘forehaving’’ in Being and Time I.5 section 32. 1: Introduction 1. Hammarskjöld, Markings, 71. 2. Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy, 289–90. 3. Hence thick conceptions of volition offer differing theories, explanations, or interpretations of will in the motivational sense but they share the same basic concept of what it is they are attempting to explicate. This basic notion of the will as the capacity for a particular kind of self-motivation is not itself a ‘‘theory’’ of the will. Thus if this thick basic concept represents our ‘‘folk-psychological’’ notion of volition, folk psychology does not on this account give us any theory or determinate conception of the will. It only proleptically demarcates or identifies the phenomena that such theories, are supposed to explain. This function of setting basic concepts rather than theories or determining the explananda that developed conceptions try to explain is the usual role of ‘‘folk psychology’’—or, more accurately, of the complex hermeneutic background of inherited ideas and settled usages affected by past theoretical interpretations, for which ‘‘folk-thinking’’ is the shorthand in contemporary analytic philosophy. 4. See my discussion of this theme in ‘‘The Ethical and Religious Significance of Taciturnus’s Letter in Kierkegaard’s Stages on Life’s Way.’’ This is the same sentiment that finds expression in Kierkegaard’s notion of ‘‘infinite resignation.’’ Also see the discussion of aretaic commitment in chapter 13. 547 548 Notes to Pages 4–29 5. On this topic, see Davenport, ‘‘The Ethical and Religious Significance of Taciturnus’s Letter in Kierkegaard’s Stages on Life’s Way.’’ 6. Tolkien, ‘‘The Homecoming,’’ 151–52. 7. Tolkien, ‘‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,’’ 21. The same passage from Ker, (The Dark Ages, 58) is also cited in Wright’s Introduction to his prose translation of Beowulf, 12. 8. Ibid., 23. 9. Ibid., 26. 10. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Book VI, chap. 3, 211. 11. Auden, ‘‘The Quest Hero,’’ 40–61. 12. Hauerwas, Character and the Christian Life, 12. 13. Ibid., 15. On this point, Hauerwas cites Nicolai Hartmann, Ethics II, trans. Croit (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1963), 287. 14. As Hauerwas notes, the strength of will implied in ‘‘having character’’ is compatible with an evil will (Character and the Christian Life, 17). Also see my essay, ‘‘Towards an Existential Virtue Ethics.’’ 15. Ryle, Concept of Mind, chap. 3, 68. 16. Ibid., 73. 17. Ibid., 68. Nor is the ‘‘particular exercise of tenacity of purpose’’ that we mean by an ‘‘effort of will’’ reducible to fear of irresoluteness, as Ryle suggests (73). The singularly unpersuasive nature of Ryle’s regress arguments is taken up again in chap. 3. 18. Pippin, ‘‘Review Article: Horstmann, Siep, and German Idealism,’’ 87. However, this existential conception of willing can be detached from Fichte’s idealist view that self-positing will is also the ground of knowledge. 19. Breazeale, ‘‘Check or Checkmate?’’ 93. 20. Ibid., 97. 21. Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy, 291. 22. Frankfurt, ‘‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,’’ 12–13. 23. G. B. Wilson, ‘‘Goals—Or Ideals?’’ 33. 24. A large literature has emerged on this topic in the last fifteen years, prompted primarily by the groundbreaking work of Edward Deci and his colleague Richard Ryan. See their Web site on ‘‘Self-Determination Theory’’ at http:// www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT. 25. I say ‘‘most clearly’’ because it is possible, on my view, for agents to project ends related to their own well-being, which they may also desire. But in these cases the agent may have more than one operative motive, so the volitional element of self-projection is not as clearly isolated. 26. For this point and other valuable comments on a draft of this book, I am particularly indebted to Mark LeBar. 27. Obviously, the phrase ‘‘A-psychological-eudaimonism’’ would be too awkward , so it must be understood throughout that A-eudaimonism is my construction of an ideal version of psychological eudaimonism...

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