The Southern Journal of Philosophy (2001) Vol. XXXIX Korsgaard, Wittgenstein, and the Mafioso Mark LeBar Ohio University What reason do we have not to pursue our own interests at any cost? Recall the saga of Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan of a few years back. Tonya aspired to a spot on the U. S. Olympic ice skating team, and Nancy was her strongest competitor. If Nancy's knees were smashed, that would serve Tonya's ends admirably. Tonya thus appears to have had reason to smash Nancy's knees (and in fact some of Tony a's benighted admirers did just that). But what reason did Tonya have not to do so-to constrain herself from pursuing her interests in this way? One might insist it's a mistake to suppose Tonya had reason both to break and not to break Nancy's knees. After all, that amounts to supposing that she did have reason-however weak or defeasible-to do something obviously immoral. Some theorists maintain that thinking this misunderstands the nature of practical reason. One is Christine Korsgaard. In her recent book, The Sources of Normativity, Korsgaard works out (among other things) a view of what we have reason to do.! Part of her argument is that the kind of moral constraint we feel Tonya was under not to break Nancy's knees comes from the fact that Tonya really had no reason to do so. Tonya's putative reason was a "private reason" and as such fails a crucial test for reasons: it couldn't be shared by Nancy. Thus, breaking Nancy's knees wasn't something Tonya actually had reason to do. As Korsgaard has it, any reason that cannot be shared is not really a reason at all. I will argue that Korsgaard's argument that Tonya had no reason to break Nancy's knee fails, though her proposal that we consider the ways we share reasons is instructive. Exploring Korsgaard's thought allows us not only to see the deficiencies of her argument but also to discover some ways we can share reasons.s Mark LeBar is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Ohio University. His focus is eudaimonistic virtue ethics and its contributions to contemporary problems in ethical and metaethical theory. 261