Self-Creation and Transformation

Abstract

AbstractWe are sometimes creators of our normative selves not simply inheritors of it. Working through and with our current social roles we forge new projects and engage new commitments with new (to us) sets of norms and values. Sometimes our decisions are transformative; sometimes they usher in entirely new (to us) norms and values. The externalist artisanal model has better resources to explain normative self-creation than does internalism. In particular I argue that Afunction externalism provides a solution to the paradox of self-creation—that is, the idea that self-creation is a process guided by values that we do not yet possess—and familiar forms of internalism lack the resources to disarm the paradox. The artisanal model offers an external location for the goods and norms that are the objects of aspiration for the apprentice.