What if I Cannot Do What I Have to Do? Notions of Personal Practical Necessity and the Principle ‘Ought Implies Can’

The statement “Here I stand, I can do no other,” attributed to Martin Luther, poses a classical example for a personal practical necessity. Although it was, in a way, possible for him to do otherwise, Luther could not act differently without going against who he was, that is, without violating his most essential convictions and values or, in short, his self. In this chapter, Michael Kühler addresses the question of what to make of this idea of personal practical necessity in situations in which circumstances prevent the person from actually succeeding in meeting normative claims which are constitutive of her self. Based on the much cherished principle “ought implies can,” one’s personal practical necessities then seem to become either conceptually impossible, or at least a silly thing to identify oneself with. Kühler first discusses four influential views on the constitution of the self (existentialism, essentialism, as well as social-relational and narrative accounts) and their respective implications for the notion of personal practical necessity. Second, he elaborates on the two most influential views regarding the principle “ought implies can,” on the one hand, a conceptual interpretation and, on the other hand, a normative interpretation, and he argues that for all four mentioned views of the self a normative interpretation of the principle “ought implies can” is better suited to analyze and take seriously the (more or less tragic) predicament of being unable to act according to one’s personal practical necessities.