Some people believe that the demands of morality coincide with the requirements of an enlightened self-interest. Others believe that morality is diametrically opposed to considerations of self-interest. This book argues that there is another position, intermediate between these extremes, which makes better sense of the totality of our moral thought and practice. Scheffler elaborates this position via an examination of morality's content, scope, authority, and deliberative role. Although conflicts between morality and self-interest do arise, according to this position, nevertheless (...) morality is fundamentally a reasonable and humane phenomenon. Moreover, the psychological bases of effective moral motivation have sources deep within the self, and morally motivated individuals try to shape their own interests so as to avoid conflict with morality. Since human practices and institutions help to determine the prevalence of these motives, and since in this and other ways they influence the degree to which conflicts between morality and self-interest actually occur, the extent of such conflict is not fixed or immutable, and is in part a social and political issue. (shrink)

Scheffler discusses the role of thick concepts in the context of Williams’s main ethical book. He is critical of Williams’s distinction between thick and thin concepts, pointing out that with great problems, justice cannot be said to be either thick or thin.

This book is a collection of eleven essays by one of the most interesting moral philosophers currently writing. It examines challenges to liberal thought posed by the changing circumstances of the modern world such as the conflicting tendencies toward global integration, and greater ethnic and communal identification. The author considers whether liberal principles of justice can accommodate social and global interdependencies while reaffirming the importance of individual responsibility and acknowledging the significance of people's diverse personal and communal allegiances.

Scheffler begins this chapter by arguing that less turns on the question of morality's overridingness than some have supposed. Even if the claim of overridingness were shown to be true, that would not guarantee that all sane human beings would act morally. And even if the claim were false, most people would not abandon their moral beliefs and concerns. The question of what kind of authority morality would have if CO were false is further illuminated by Scheffler's extended (...) discussion of moral motivation and psychoanalytic theory. Although Scheffler remains agnostic on the truth of this theory, Freud's classic account of moral motivation serves as an example of a naturalistic account that, unlike the standard accounts, is responsive to Kant's challenge to naturalism and can offer viable explanations of the resonance and fragility of morality. (shrink)

One response to an unusually demanding moral theory is to reject it on the ground that the content of morality is moderate rather than stringent, while a second response is to claim that a stringent theory may be acceptable, provided morality is thought of as limited in scope rather than as pervasive.In this chapter, Scheffler provides a general argument against the second response and in support of the view that morality is pervasive. In the process, he distinguishes the idea (...) that morality is pervasive from the idea that it is overriding, which is a claim about morality's authority rather than its scope. He also replies to an argument of Bernard Williams against the pervasiveness of morality. On one interpretation of Williams's argument, Scheffler notes that the argument rests on the implausible assumption that to deem a certain action morally permissible is to imply that the agent should be motivated, at least in part, by the thought of the action's permissibility. (shrink)

In John Rawls’s theory, the role of the principles of justice is to regulate the basic structure of society—its major social, political and economic institutions—and to specify the fair terms of cooperation for free and equal persons. Some have interpreted Rawls as excluding contract law, and perhaps the private law as a whole, from the basic structure. However, this interpretation of Rawls is untenable, given the motivations for his emphasis on the basic structure and the highly inclusive characterisations he gives (...) of it. Yet if he includes private law within the basic structure, he seems committed to holding that its design and operations should be regulated by his two principles of justice, which govern the distribution of basic liberties, economic resources and opportunities. This would leave it unclear whether there was any room for values other than distributive values to inform the design of private law. Leaving no role for other values might be unproblematic if distributive justice were a master normative category with equal regulative authority over all basic social institutions. But we should not assume that this ‘distributivist paradigm’ gives the best interpretation either of private law or of the fair terms of cooperation for a society of free and equal people. We need to think further about how non-distributive values may inform the principles of justice that regulate the institutional structure of society. And we need to ask how much of law, whether public or private, is regulated solely by principles of justice that focus on the distribution of basic liberties, economic resources and opportunities. (shrink)

Sketches a view of the relationship between the interests of the individual and the demands of morality, a view according to which morality and self‐interest stand in a relation of potential congruence. In adopting this view, Scheffler rejects two extreme positions, one that sees morality and self‐interest as ultimately coinciding and another that sees them as diametrically opposed. The complete exposition of Scheffler's view is left for subsequent chapters, but in this introduction he proposes that a proper treatment (...) of the relationship between morality and self‐interest, which must address morality's authority, content, scope, and deliberative role. Scheffler also situates his view in relation to the debate between defenders of contemporary moral theories, such as Kantian and utilitarian outlooks, and critics who claim that these positions neglect important ethical notions, such as virtue. Though he notes certain affinities between his view and the views of the critics, Scheffler denies that the defects in modern moral thought warrant its repudiation in favor of an ethics of virtue. (shrink)

The deepest beliefs’ about personal identity whose consequences Unger seeks to draw out are the beliefs of those who already share his theoretical convictions; and his pain-avoidance’ experiments show nothing unless one already assumes those convictions. If there is a risk’ that I may not survive a brain operation even though I know exactly which chunks of brain will be removed and replaced, that shows that I am a separate thing from my body and brain, about which the latter provide (...) normally reliable, but still fallible evidence. (shrink)

In Human Morality, I attempt to do two things. The first is to distinguish carefully among questions concerning morality’s scope, content, authority, and deliberative role, and to emphasize the importance of addressing all four of these topics if we are to understand the relation between morality and the point of view of the individual agent. The second is to explore each of these topics myself, and, in so doing, to sketch one interpretation of the place of moral concerns in human (...) life. (shrink)