Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 A Peacemaking Way of Doing Philosophy
- 2 From Rationality to Morality
- 3 From Liberty to Equality
- 4 From Equality to Feminism
- 5 From Feminism to Multiculturalism
- 6 From Anthropocentrism to Nonanthropocentrism
- 7 From Just War Theory to Pacifism
- 8 Conclusion: Justice for Here and Now
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - From Rationality to Morality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 A Peacemaking Way of Doing Philosophy
- 2 From Rationality to Morality
- 3 From Liberty to Equality
- 4 From Equality to Feminism
- 5 From Feminism to Multiculturalism
- 6 From Anthropocentrism to Nonanthropocentrism
- 7 From Just War Theory to Pacifism
- 8 Conclusion: Justice for Here and Now
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In a defense of a conception of justice for here and now, as we noted in Chapter 1, it would be helpful to show that morality is grounded in rationality. This requires not simply showing that morality is rationally permissible, because that would imply that egoism and immorality were rationally permissible as well. Rather, what needs to be shown is that morality is rationally required, thus excluding egoism and immorality as rationally permissible. Unfortunately, the goal of showing that morality is rationally required has been abandoned by most contemporary philosophers, who seem content to show that morality is simply rationally permissible. No doubt most contemporary philosophers would like to have an argument showing that morality is rationally required, but given the history of past failures to provide a convincing argument of this sort, most of them have simply given up hope of defending morality in this way. In this chapter, I propose to provide just such a defense of morality. I will begin in Section I by arguing against one opponent of morality – the moral relativist. In Section II, I will consider two of the better-known contemporary attempts to defend morality as rationally required and, unfortunately, why they fail. In Section III, I will, with some trepidation, offer my own defense of morality as rationally required; and, in Section IV, I will consider a number of objections to it.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Justice for Here and Now , pp. 14 - 40Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998