Contractualist Account of Reasons for Being Moral Defended
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Jussi Suikkanen
Abstract
I will begin this paper by identifying the problem within the theory of ethics, which contractualism as a moral theory is attempting to address. It is not that of solving the problem of moral motivation like the ‘arch-contractualist’, Thomas Scanlon, often claims, but rather that of describing a class of fundamental moral reasons – contractualist reasons for short. In the second section, I will defend the contractualist idea of how the nature of these moral reasons provides us with sufficient, independent tools to construct the content of public moral principles. The rest of my paper is defensive. It addresses the main challenges set to the contractualist account of moral reasons. In the third section, I will discuss a frequent objection according to which the contractualist reasons are a redundant addition to the space of moral reasons. In the fourth section, I will examine the worry that acting from these reasons would not lead to morally admirable action but rather to vice. In the last section, I will investigate the criticism according to which the normative force of the contractualist reasons is insufficient for rationalising our moral actions in certain difficult circumstances. In this section, we get to the heart of the matter – what the reasons contractualism describes truly are, and how they can explain the generally overriding strength of our moral requirements. I hope to conclude that even after these serious challenges contractualism remains a philosophically viable account of morality's rationalistic appeal.
© Philosophia Press 2005
Artikel in diesem Heft
- The Dialectic of Perspectivism, I
- Science Studies and Moral Challenges. Making it explicit: an updating of science studies
- Incorporating Feminist Standpoint Theory
- Contractualist Account of Reasons for Being Moral Defended
- Enjoying the Law. On a possible conflict between Kant's views on obedience and enjoyment
- Ethics in the Tractatus and Imaginative Understanding
- A Bee's-Eye View on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals
- Gundersen on Counterfactuals and Tracking
- Counterfactuals and Tracking – A Reply to Smith
- Book Review
- Robin May Schott, Discovering Feminist philosophy; Knowledge, ethics politics, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003, pp. x +157
- Cecilia Sjöholm, The Antigone Complex, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2004, pp. 240
- Phenomenology and Psychiatry: A Contemporary Diagnosis Introducing the Work of Thomas Fuchs
- Gunnar Foss and Eivind Kasa (eds.), Forms of Knowledge and Sensibility: Ernst Cassirer and the Human Sciences, Høyskoleforlaget AS – Norwegian Academic Press, 2002, pp. 223
- Dan Zahavi, Søren Overgaard and Thomas Schwarz Wentzer (eds.), Den unge Heidegger, Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag 2003, 229 pp.
- Philosophical Aspects on Emotions, ed. Åsa Carlson, Stockholm: Thales, 2005. 351 pp.
Artikel in diesem Heft
- The Dialectic of Perspectivism, I
- Science Studies and Moral Challenges. Making it explicit: an updating of science studies
- Incorporating Feminist Standpoint Theory
- Contractualist Account of Reasons for Being Moral Defended
- Enjoying the Law. On a possible conflict between Kant's views on obedience and enjoyment
- Ethics in the Tractatus and Imaginative Understanding
- A Bee's-Eye View on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals
- Gundersen on Counterfactuals and Tracking
- Counterfactuals and Tracking – A Reply to Smith
- Book Review
- Robin May Schott, Discovering Feminist philosophy; Knowledge, ethics politics, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003, pp. x +157
- Cecilia Sjöholm, The Antigone Complex, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2004, pp. 240
- Phenomenology and Psychiatry: A Contemporary Diagnosis Introducing the Work of Thomas Fuchs
- Gunnar Foss and Eivind Kasa (eds.), Forms of Knowledge and Sensibility: Ernst Cassirer and the Human Sciences, Høyskoleforlaget AS – Norwegian Academic Press, 2002, pp. 223
- Dan Zahavi, Søren Overgaard and Thomas Schwarz Wentzer (eds.), Den unge Heidegger, Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag 2003, 229 pp.
- Philosophical Aspects on Emotions, ed. Åsa Carlson, Stockholm: Thales, 2005. 351 pp.
