Chapter 3 connects Kierkegaardian critiques of amoralism to discussions of wantonness and Humeanism in action theory. By discussing the cultivation of love (and higher-order motives), it is argued that practical rational agency requires moral normativity. The chapter then presents and discusses Kierkegaard’s strong views about the inescapability of morality, interpreting it as a form of constitutivism concerning moral normativity, which tries to derive practical normativity from practical agency itself. However, Kierkegaard seems to combine such constitutivism with the theological view that moral obligations depend on us belonging to God as his creation. Still, he is not a divine command theorist who sees divine commands as necessary and sufficient for moral obligations. Rather, he sketches a form of moral realism and criticizes subjectivism in ethics.

This chapter explains the etiology of disorders of memory content and why they are often intractable. It considers different therapeutic interventions. Psychotherapeutic and behavior techniques, as well as certain drugs, can weaken the emotional content of pathological fear memories but allow their reactivation. The chapter considers hypothetical scenarios of erasing memories. Protein synthesis inhibitors might block reconsolidation and erase pathological fear memories. High-frequency deep brain stimulation and high-intensity focused ultrasound may be more effective than drugs in erasing these memories because of their more direct effects on nuclei constituting the memory trace. It is not known how drugs and techniques will affect normal and abnormal memories and how selective they would be in their modulating or erase effects. The chapter also considers how erasing memories would affect identity, authenticity and rational and moral agency.