Accounting for the Normative Force of Project-Dependent Reasons

The goal of this chapter is to explain the normative force of personal projects and the project-dependent reasons they generate. Scheffler argues that it is not wrong to ignore project-dependent reasons. I point to three considerations that aim to show, pace Scheffler, that it is wrong to simply ignore the project-dependent reasons we once acknowledged. First, it is a condition for valuing a particular project that we have reasons to continue to respond to project-dependent reasons, even in cases where the project has been completed, where circumstances have forced us to abandon it, or where we have become less prone to value the project positively. Second, it is the fact of having once attained meaning in our lives by valuing a particular project that explains why we face additional reasons to sustain the project and to continue to respond to the project-dependent reasons we once acknowledged. Third, to the extent that a particular project accounts, in part at least, for our normative identity, and provided that it is valuable to thereby have conditions for having reasons at all, we have a further explanation of why project-dependent reasons carry a particular normative force for us to continue to value that project.