Moral and Prudential Considerations

Abstract

We will have seen that rules are action-guiding in a distinctly rational way since they offer, or at least imply, the existence of reasons or criteria in the light of which we can argue as well as judge whether our actions are right or wrong, or correct or incorrect. We now have to see that these reasons differ greatly according to whether they support actions on prudential or on moral grounds, the first type of reasons serving our self-chosen or self-regarding aims, the second more essentially other-regarding, being reasons why we must or must not do certain things regardless of whether or not they coincide with our own wants or interests.1 This prudential-moral distinction extends and complements, but in some ways also cuts across, that between autonomous and heteronomous rules. One may comply with a ‘no smoking’ sign because one is (autonomously) impressed by the medical fact that smoking is a health hazard; or alternatively because one is (heteronomously) impressed either by the threat of a penalty in which case one acts prudentially, in one’s own interest, or because of purely moral considerations for other people’s health.