there are hard questions about exactly why it has to be in the first person in this way. But it reminds me of an anecdote about how unlikely it was that I would be someone who would do this. I remember in grad school when I took my general exams, and the topic was ethics and practical reason. And I did well, but the examiner’s report had this phrase that I’ve never forgotten, which was, These ideas do not seem to have been tested in the crucible of direct moral experience. At the time I was twenty-one years old, and my friends and I rolled our eyes and made fun of it. But there was a way in which this was entirely right. Whatever I was doing right or wrong, I had not really integrated it with my own moral experience.
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