Why Be Moral?

Abstract

Abstract This chapter addresses four challenges to morality’s authority. The first casts doubt on the comparative importance of moral reasons vis-à-vis those implied by other familiar normative systems, such as those associated with etiquette or social clubs. If strong moral reasons typically play second fiddle to such rivals, then morality would indeed be sapped of its authority. Likewise if religious duties of certain kinds take precedence over even the strongest moral considerations. This possibility, suggested by Kierkegaard’s treatment of ethics in Fear and Trembling, represents the second challenge. The third alleges that realists have no answer to the “normative question” of why we should, from a first-personal perspective, take morality at all seriously. At issue is not whether strong moral reasons exist, but whether they earn their grip on an agent who is thinking about how best to live; their failure to do so would be tantamount to a crisis of authority. All three varieties of ‘intramural skepticism’ contrast with an ‘extramural’ sort that queries the relation between strong moral reasons and what some philosophers call “schmeasons,” which are allegedly implied by so-called schmoral systems. If there were no way to make good on the superiority of strong moral reasons over these competitors, then morality’s authority would likewise be jeopardized. This is the fourth challenge.