In the introduction to Reason and Philosophy (2009), Brandom identifies with “a venerable tradition that distinguishes us as rational animals, and philosophy by its concern to understand, articulate, and explain the notion of reason…. Kant and Hegel showed us a way forward for a rationalism that is not objectionably Cartesian, intellectualist, or anti- (or super-) naturalist. Nor need it treat the ‘light of reason’ as unacquired or innate” (pp. 1-2; emphasis in original throughout).
“Rational beings are ones that ought to have reasons for what they do, and ought to act as they have reason to” (p.3).
“Taking something to be subject to appraisals of its reasons, holding it rationally responsible, is treating it as someone: as one of us (rational beings). This normative attitude toward others is recognition, in the sense of Hegel’s central notion of Anerrkennung” (p. 3).
The role of recognition makes things like authority and responsibility into social statuses. These “are in principle unintelligible apart from consideration of the practical attitudes of those who hold each other responsible, acknowledge each other’s authority, attribute commitments and entitlements to each other” (pp. 3-4).
If we take meaning seriously, we cannot take it for granted. Inferential articulation is involved not only in determining what is true, but also in the understanding of meanings. What we mean and what we believe are actually interdependent. He refers to Wilfrid Sellars’ thesis that no description can be understood apart from the “space of implications” in which the terminology used in the description is embedded. “Discursive activity, applying concepts paradigmatically in describing how things are, is inseparable from the inferential activity of giving and asking for reasons” (p. 8).
“[T]he acts or statuses that are givings of reasons and for which reasons are given – are judgings, claimings, assertings, or believings. They are the undertakings or acknowledgements of commitments” (p. 9). “[R]ationality is a normative concept. The space of reasons is a normative space” (p. 12). Philosophy should be concerned not just with pure logic and semantics, but with “the acknowledgement and attribution of… statuses such as responsibility and authority, commitment and entitlement” (p. 13).
The Postmodern Peripatetic 