  Reflections along these lines have led some to conclude that we are bound to come up empty-handed as long as we think of an agent’s identification with her motives as a self-relation she is responsible for securing. For, as long as we take this approach, we appear to be stuck with the question: under what conditions does the agent govern her identification with some motive? what conditions must she satisfy in order to identify with the motives that move her to identify with some of her motives and not others? under what conditions does she authorize the attitudes and/or mental activities that issue in a given lower-order authorization? If we are to escape the regress such questions evoke, it seems that there must be an attitude that can be identified with the agent’s point of view simply by virtue of being the attitude it is; there must be an attitude from which no agent can possibly be alienated. To be sure, if—like most animals—rational  agents could not distance themselves from their own motives, then they would be incapable of governing themselves. Self-government requires two points of view: that of the governing authority, and that of the governed. Nonetheless, if there is to be an end to the potential regress of identifications, it seems that there must also be a limit to the capacity for self-alienation.