Rejoinder to Menachem Fisch: A Few Stubbornly Penultimate Reflections

Abstract The present paper is the third and final piece of an ongoing and as of yet unfinished dialog on normative issues about rationality and the self. After specifying the differences, yet also the actual – and to some extent: unexpected – agreements between myself and Menachem Fisch, I argue that the latter are more substantial and far-reaching. This is an assumption I seek to justify by unpacking the implications of Fisch’s core idea, according to which being rational in the fullest human sense goes hand in hand with and in fact depends on being (able to be) a self. However, I also argue that some remaining shortcomings in Fisch’s account are mainly due to the latter’s all too liberal notion of rationality (“acting for a reason”) – shortcomings, which in my view can easily be remedied by a more restricted account, according to which acting for a reason only counts as rational, if and to the extent that the agent is “ responsive to reasons,” i. e. willing to call his claim to being and acting rationally into question, whenever that claim is (expected to be) challenged by his peers. This notwithstanding, the entire conversation between Fisch and myself is arguably itself an instance of what it is about: a dialog concerning issues of rationality in the environment and spirit of a rationality conceived of as irreducibly dialogical.