Stephen Darwall

Dancy’s famous arguments for the position he calls _moral particularism_ proceed entirely on the basis of general features of normative reasons for acting rather than anything having to do with _morality_ more specifically. Dancy argues plausibly that there being normative reason for an agent to do something need not depend on the existence of valid general norms or principles from which these reasons derive. But Dancy simply does not consider whether there might be something about morality in particular that requires the existence of general _moral_ principles. This paper argues that this is indeed the case. What is distinctive about morality is the idea not just that there are good reasons favouring or supporting action, but that action is _required_ of us—that we are morally _obligated_ to act in the sense of being _accountable_ for doing so and of being warrantedly _held_ responsible and blamed if we do not and lack valid excuse.

George Terzis makes several objections to claims and arguments I advanced in Impartial Reason. I cannot take them all up, but I would like to respond to some, which I shall group into three: whether reasons depend on norms applying to all rational agents; how the unity of agency relates to such norms; and the self-support condition. Since the objections concerning cut most deeply against the central thesis of Impartial Reason, I shall begin with them. Before I do that, however, I should make some preliminary remarks.Impartial Reason offers an internalist theory of reasons, but one that is, I believe, more sensitive to the normative character of reasons than internalist theories usually are.1 A theory of reasons is internalist if it holds that something's being a reason depends somehow on its capacity to affect motivation. Unlike internalist theories that identify reasons with de facto motives, however, IR insists on the normative character of reasons as tending to justify conduct as rational. It does this by holding that a reason to act is something which motivates when appropriately considered. The normative or justificatory weight of reasons, then, is held to derive from a normative ideal of rational consideration. Reasons inherit as justificatory weight the motivational force they would come to have in an ideally rational process of practical reflection.