Rules and Exceptions

Abstract

Abstract. Over the last decades the traditional emphasis on moral rules, or principles, has been attacked by particularists like Jonathan Dancy. I argue that particularists are correct in rejecting traditional attempts at moral codification, but that it is still possible to have a rule‐oriented approach to morality if we distinguish between different ways in which features can be morally relevant. I suggest that there are first a limited number of features that can serve as basic moral reasons for action, and then a class of relational features that can change the relevance of these features. I then argue that while particularists do well in drawing attention to the fact that sometimes our basic moral duties are put out of play by other relevant features, they fail to make sense of the exceptional nature of such situations. Only a rule‐oriented understanding of morality can do this.