Second-Personal Reasons and Moral Obligations

Abstract

Stephen Darwall (2006, 2010) argues that a conceptual connection exists between second-personal reasons (explained below) and moral obligations. In particular, he claims that, ‘‘moral obligation is an irreducibly second-personal concept. That an action would violate a moral obligation is...a second-personal reason not to do it.’’ A second-personal reason, according to him, is ‘‘a distinctive kind of (normative) reason for acting,’’ a reason made on one’s will and purportedly given by an authority’s demand or address. This paper argues that Darwall fails to establish the above conceptual connection between second-personal reasons and moral obligations. The failure of Darwall’s construal of the second-person standpoint does not imply that there is no conceptual connection between second-personal reasons and moral obligations at all, since another construal might work. However, given that his construal is probably the best version, its failure suggests the absence of any conceptual connection between second-personal reasons and moral obligations. The implication is that second-personal reasons at best account for only interpersonal morality, the morality that is captured by autonomy-based rights theories. In other words, the second-person standpoint might amount to an autonomy-based rights theory in the end.