Motivation, moral judgement, and the justification of mortality

Abstract

It is often supposed that those who remain unmoved by their moral judgements cast doubt on the authority of moral requirements. In this dissertation, I consider the related, but neglected question, of how such people might be motivated to be moral. I consider four arguments. The first and the second investigate whether it is possible to justify morality to those who remain resistant to moral claims if we show that moral actions advance their self-interest, or if we expand their sympathies. I claim, that the former argument fails, since self-interested actions inspire moral motivation only accidentally.The latter argument by contrast might guarantee some motivation, but it is notsuccessful because it depends on the feeling of sympathy and the arbitrary degree of motivation it produces. The third argument holds that there is no need to offer any justification for morality, since moral considerations are merely practical considerations and therefore if one understands the latter one will be able to understand the former. Nonetheless, this argument does not provide a standpoint according to which one would be able to judge whether one acts well and it therefore dismisses too hastily the skeptical threat. The fourth argument rests on the view that there is no difference between moral and practical considerations and conceives the entry point to ethical reflection in terms of a virtue ethical account of moral training.