The Central Difficulty of the Moral Life

Abstract

R.M. Hare claims that the central difficulty of the moral life is moral weakness, describing it as ‘the tendency not to do ourselves something which in general we commend, or to do something which in general we condemn’. Agents finding themselves in a situation that preys on a personal weakness, which results in them betraying their moral convictions, succumb to this difficulty. How should agents deal with moral weakness? While this is clearly a subject for ethics and should be a central problem for ethics, it has been largely ignored. One reason for this is that when agents face moral weakness, the issue of what they morally ought to do is already settled. But the larger reason for ethics ignoring the central difficulty is that it relies on the moral theoretical framework which is ill-equipped to handle it. The inability of normative ethics to deal with moral weakness, or to even recognize it as a problem, indicates a serious blind spot in this framework. This chapter by David Kaspar examines this framework and aims to understand why ethics neglects the problem of moral weakness. What ethics needs to effectively deal with moral weakness is the systematically integrated contribution of prudence.