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Christine Korsgaard

Analytic · North America · born 1952

American philosopher who builds on Kant and holds that moral duties come from being a free, self-governing agent.

What it is

Christine Korsgaard (born 1952) is an American philosopher who works on ethics and the nature of action. She studied with John Rawls at Harvard University and later held the Arthur Kingsley Porter chair of philosophy there. She is now professor emerita.

She is known as a reader and defender of Kant, and for the view that the rules we are bound by are tied to what it takes to be an agent who acts and who decides, for herself, what to do.

The main ideas

  • A Kantian outlook. Her moral philosophy is built on the ethics of Immanuel Kant, and the influence of her teacher Rawls shows in the Kantian approach at the centre of her work. That ethics gives a central place to the free, reasoning agent who sets laws for itself.
  • Self-constitution. A notable idea of hers is that normativity, the authority of "ought", is grounded in the way an agent constitutes itself. Her book Self-Constitution (2009) is subtitled Agency, Identity, and Integrity.
  • Humanity as an end. She favours the argument, found in Kant, that humanity is an end in itself.
  • Reaching further. She has written on the moral standing of animals and has argued that Kantian ethics supports regard for animals.
  • Normativity as a question. Her book The Sources of Normativity asks what gives moral claims their hold on us, and her papers on Kant fill a second book of the same year.

What it looks like in practice

Picture someone who has promised to help a friend move on Saturday and is offered a better plan for the same day. Korsgaard would ask the person to consider what kind of agent they are making of themselves by dropping the promise. She would say that the answer matters because it is an answer about who they are acting as. This is an illustration of her line of thought, not a passage from her writing.

Books and moments

  • Creating the Kingdom of Ends (1996) gathers her papers on Kant.
  • The Sources of Normativity (1996) asks what gives moral claims their authority.
  • The Constitution of Agency (2008) collects essays on practical reason and moral psychology.
  • Self-Constitution (2009) is subtitled Agency, Identity, and Integrity.

Questions and criticism

  • Can the structure of action ground morality? It is fair to ask whether the standards that come with acting are the same as moral ones, or whether more must be added.
  • How far does the argument reach? If valuing our own ends commits us to valuing others', it is an open question where that stops and who counts.
  • What if someone sets the standards aside? A person might refuse to treat their own ends as binding. How the view answers them is left open here.

Close neighbours

The pages on Immanuel Kant and John Rawls cover the philosopher she builds on and her teacher, and the page on T. M. Scanlon sets another contemporary account of moral reasons beside hers.

Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 29 October 2026. The sources are listed below.

Who they connect to

Influenced by

  • Immanuel Kant · She builds her whole account of moral duty on Kant's idea of the self-governing will.
  • John Rawls · She studied under Rawls and edited his lectures on moral philosophy.

Other Analytic thinkers

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