Agency itself requires evaluative commitment to some incommensurably higher good

Evidence

Taylor’s central contention is that the identity of human beings is necessarily constituted by what he calls “strong evaluation,” namely, the interrelation of 1. a distinction between some good or set of goods (alternatively, some value or set of values) that are seen as incomparably higher in worth than other goods (or values) and 2. the corresponding motivational or attitudinal commitments on the part of the agent with those evaluative views. The necessity involved here is transcendental. It does not imply that one must strongly evaluate any particular good or set of goods, only that there must be some such good(s) strongly evaluated on pain of failing to be a human agent at all. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 43

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Taylor’s ‘strong evaluation’ as constitutive of identity.
• QUESTION: A strong transcendental claim worth pressing: is the needing-to-value requirement credible given apparent agents, e.g. nihilists or anhedonic people, who evaluate nothing as incomparably higher?