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Chapter 3 Commitment-Integrity For many, the shortcomings of preference-integrity will suggest the need for a rendering more faithful to the way we usually think about integrity. The version in this chapter addresses that concern by introducing the notion of commitment -integrity, which, most fundamentally, features conscious re›ection on principles, a commitment to those chosen, and the will. Don Quixote, perhaps unrealistically, commits to the moral principle of correcting every wrong, and he possesses indomitable will that allows him to act accordingly. Volpone consciously chooses un›inchingly to ful‹ll his own preferences, whatever they might be. Martha is more con›icted. She accepts the truth of some principles and even commits to them, but sometimes her preferences con›ict with those principles, and her will is not unshakable. She is therefore confronted with the problem of how to decide between her principles and her preferences, a position many will empathize with. Conceptualizing that decision process is the topic of this chapter. 3.1. Commitment-Integrity Preference-integrity captures an important moral element of integrity, namely, honesty as a disposition. There are at least two other important elements to consider. First, there is the notion of wholeness, which relates to the person’s character or identity. Second, there is the person’s relation to moral values. Integrity is usually thought to require that a person choose moral principles for herself and then make them her own. The de‹nition of integrity offered by the Oxford Companion to Philosophy (1995) makes these aspects especially clear. The quality of a person who can be counted upon to give precedence to moral considerations, even when there is strong inducement to let 22 self-interest or some claimant desire override them, or where the betrayal of moral principle might pass undetected. To have integrity is to have unconditional and steady commitment to moral values and obligations . For such a person, the fundamental question of whether to conduct life on the plane of self-concern or of moral seriousness has been decisively resolved, though particular life situations will doubtless continue to put that commitment to strenuous test. This moral commitment becomes a crucial component in his or her sense of identity as a person; it confers a unity (integration) of character, and even a simplicity upon the man or woman of integrity. What integrity cannot guarantee is the soundness of the value-judgements themselves , which form the core of that person’s commitments. Many philosophers have offered thoughtful accounts of integrity—its features , normative requirements, and implications—including Bernard Williams, Gabriele Taylor, Mark Halfon, and Jeffry Blustein.1 Philosopher Lynne McFall offers a particularly good account of what integrity requires.2 McFall differentiates personal from moral integrity: the former requires a person to commit to identity-conferring principles; the latter adds the further requirement that the principles must also be moral. An artist who commits to art for its own sake is an example of a person of personal integrity. Bernard Williams is even more inclusive. In offering a famous argument on why utilitarianism precludes personal integrity he suggests,“One can be committed to such things as a person, a cause, an institution, a career, one’s own genius, or the pursuit of danger.”3 But in McFall’s account, a person of integrity is one who embraces a coherent set of commitments to principles that, when taken together, confer identity to the person. The stress on principles is important because principles are usually universal or impartial. As we will see, that feature plays an important role in the notion of coherence, and its lapses. Commitments, personal imperatives or internal constraints, must become one’s own; one cannot have an impersonal relation to identity-conferring commitments. For a person to violate her identity-conferring commitment , then, would mean for her to lose her identity.4 Utterances like “I could Commitment-Integrity • 23 1. Smart and Williams 1973; Taylor 1971; Halfon 1989; Blustein 1991. 2. McFall 1987. 3. Smart and Williams 1973, 112. Williams argues that utilitarianism subordinates anyone’s own personal projects in favor of social welfare–increasing actions, which makes the idea of integrity impossible. As a logical matter, the criticism is wrong, at least for some conceptual cases. As Jeffrey Blustein (1991, chapter 6) points out, if one adopts as her own central personal project to maximize social welfare, then integrity and utilitarianism can be consistent with one another. 4. In what follows, I will not differentiate identity from self-conception...

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