If You Cannot Help Being Committed to It, then It Exists: A Defence of Robust Normative Realism

Abstract

This review article examines David Enoch’s recent book Taking Morality Seriously and focuses on ‘the deliberative indispensability of irreducibly normative truths’ which is a central argument of the book. I will show that this important and original argument as it stands fails. I will also argue that if Enoch had embraced all the consequences of his argument, then he would have opened up a more promising line of argument via which to defend the robust realism of normative truths. I will, therefore, attempt to defend a modified version of robust realism of normative truths and, in so doing, I will show how all the implications of Enoch’s insight can fully be embraced. I will finally demonstrate how this modified version illuminates some Dworkinian insights on the nature of law, but also undermines Dworkin’s theory of constructive interpretation.