Moral theories often issue general principles that explain our moral judgments in terms of underlying moral considerations. But it is unclear whether the general principles have an explanatory role beyond the underlying moral considerations. In order to avoid the redundancy of their principles, two-level theories issue principles that appear to generalize beyond the considerations that ground them. In doing so, the principles appear to overgeneralize. The problem is conspicuous in the case of contractualism, which proposes that moral principles are grounded (...) in generic reasons that operate in only a subset of the cases covered by the relevant principle. Arguments that motivate the use of generic reasons on the basis of guidance, institutional necessity, or fairness are unsatisfactory. But the generality of moral principles can be justified in terms of the idea of a generic interest, which is an interest that all occupants of a standpoint have in virtue of what occupants of the standpoint as such typically take an interest in. The notion of a generic interest therefore acknowledges a distinction between having and taking an interest, and its use in moral theory is a way of giving expression to the significance of autonomy. This is reminiscent of the idea of a normative power; but the idea of a generic interest is less expensive and makes better sense of the way in which autonomy features in our moral lives. (shrink)

According to John Rawls’s famous Liberal Principle of Legitimacy, the exercise of political power is legitimate only if it is justifiable to all citizens. The currently dominant interpretation of what is justifiable to persons in this sense is an internalist one. On this view, what is justifiable to persons depends on their beliefs and commitments. In this paper I challenge this reading of Rawls’s principle, and instead suggest that it is most plausibly interpreted in externalist terms. On this alternative view, (...) what is justifiable to persons is not in any way dependent on, or relativized to, their beliefs and commitments. Instead, what is justifiable to all in the relevant sense is what all could accept as free and equal. I defend this reinterpretation of the view by showing how it is supported by Rawls’s account of the freedom and equality of persons. In addition, a considerable advantage of this suggestion is that it allows for an inclusive account of to whom the exercise of political power must be made justifiable. (shrink)

Two generally recognized moral duties are to reciprocate benefits one has received from others and to compensate harms one has done to others. In this paper I want to show that it is not possible to give an adequate account of either duty – or at least one that corresponds to our actual practices – within a contractualist moral theory of the type developed by T. M. Scanlon (1982, 1998). This fact is interesting in its own right, as contractualism is (...) a leading contemporary contender among deontological moral theories, and the two duties I have mentioned are fairly standard ingredients of such theories. But it also serves to highlight a general problem with contractualism, at least in Scanlon’s version – namely its one-dimensional view of the keystone of any plausible deontological theory: the idea of respect for persons. (shrink)