Why Should I be Moral? (The Theoretical Context of Justification of Morality)

Abstract

The paper reconstructs the general theoretical context of attempts to justify morality. Morality will be justified if we find some convincing arguments that affirm the significance of moral values and the imperative force of moral norms. The emphatically personal form to articulate the problem of justification of morality is the question ‘Why should I be moral?’ It coexists in moral philosophy with a different fundamental question, the question about causes of the constant reproduction of moral beliefs and moral activity (‘Why people do comply with moral norms?’). There is a steady trend in the contemporary ethics to drive out the justificatory problematique. The author demonstrates that two circumstances prevent this outcome. First, we can not cease to discuss moral values and norms in the perspective of the agent or the first person. Second, if we do not take into account this perspective, we can not create the fully-fledged explanation of morality. The author criticizes the C.M.Korsgaard’s typology of conceptions that try to justify morality. He divides them into two general groups. One of them founds the moral duty on the agents own good interpreted as advantage or happiness. The second identifies the moral duty with the voice of reason. In this case moral beliefs can be understood as a result of the special form of rational inquiry or as a necessary correlate of the human capacity to apply reason in practical matters. The paper ends by the analysis of the so-called Prichard’s dilemma – the main theoretical obstacle to justification of morality.