The normative question

Abstract

Do not merely show us by argument that justice is superior to injustice, but make clear to us what each in and of itself does to its possessor, whereby the one is evil and the other good. Plato INTRODUCTION In 1625, in his book On the Law of War and Peace , Hugo Grotius asserted that human beings would have obligations ‘even if we should concede that which cannot be conceded without the utmost wickedness, that there is no God, or that the affairs of men are of no concern to Him’. But two of his followers, Thomas Hobbes and Samuel Pufendorf, thought that Grotius was wrong. However socially useful moral conduct might be, they argued, it is not really obligatory unless some sovereign authority, backed by the power of sanctions, lays it down as the law. Others in turn disagreed with them, and so the argument began. Ever since then, modern moral philosophers have been engaged in a debate about the ‘foundations’ of morality. We need to be shown, it is often urged, that morality is ‘real’ or ‘objective’. The early rationalists, Samuel Clarke and Richard Price, thought that they knew exactly what they meant by this. Hobbes had said that there is no right or wrong in the state of nature, and to them, this meant that Tightness is mere invention or convention, not something real.