Morality and the Second Person

The guiding ambition of Stephen Darwall's The Second‐Person Standpoint is to account for the normativity of moral obligations by tying them to a reciprocal ‘second‐person’ authority, possessed by each person, to make reasonable demands of others. Darwall maintains that this theoretical approach is uniquely suited to illuminate the basic distinguishing marks of moral obligations. A moral obligation is not merely an act that it would be a very good idea to do; it is an act one owes it to someone or other to do, hence an act whose performance can legitimately be demanded by that person or by others who speak on behalf of that person (p. 10). For this reason, Darwall maintains, it is a category mistake to attempt to ground moral obligations in the goodness or desirability of obligatory acts or their consequences. Even if performing some act would be very good or desirable, it does not follow that one is required to do it. By Darwall's lights, to violate a moral obligation just is to violate a legitimate second‐person demand. For this reason, he devotes the bulk of his book to illuminating the nature and normative dimensions of second‐person relations

Epistemology · Law and economics · Mistake · Moral obligation · Morality · Normative · Obligation · Political science · Sociology · Tying · Computer Science · Law · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · War, Ethics, and Justification