INTRODUCTION

In this lecture I address three apparently unconnected worries to which my argument in the last lecture gives rise. First, I will discuss a. familiar objection to the type of argument which I have offered: the objection that valuing your own humanity does not commit you to valuing that of others. I will argue that this objection does not hold. It is based upon a false view about reasons, the view that they are private mental entities. This response, which invokes Wittgenstein's ideas, will lead me into a discussion of die question of the normative status of pain, and that will put me in a position to address another familiar objection to Kantian theories: the objection that basing all value upon the value of humanity gives no moral standing to the other animals. I will argue that the other animals do have moral standing and that a natural extension of the sort of argument I have been presenting can accommodate that fact. That argument in turn will lead me to some reflections about the natural and in particular biological sources of value, and I will move from those to a discussion of the question of normative scepticism.

OBLIGATING ONE ANOTHER

In the last lecture I argued that we must value our own humanity, and so that we must treat our human identity as a form of practical, normative identity.