Despite the value they claim to place on clarity, most philosophers tend to take less care than they might to make precise the questions they are asking. This is perhaps partly because engaging in argument, whether with oneself or with others, tends to be more enjoyable and satisfying than patient and meticulous preparation of the ground for such argument. Certainly students are not encouraged to make such preparations, and Philosophy 101 courses tend to deliver a set of questions on various topics as if they were the obvious places from which any philosopher will set out. All this is as true in ethics as in any other area of philosophy, and it raises the worrying possibility that the various ethical theories developed by great philosophers over the centuries are castles built on sand.

When clarifying our initial ethical questions, we should seek both parsimony and ultimacy. Parsimony requires us to avoid unnecessary concepts. One might think that the ultimate question in ethics must be something like: ‘How am I required by morality to act?’. But this question itself will not be worth addressing unless we believe that we have a reason to obey the requirements of morality. The ultimate question in ethics, then, is more likely to be: ‘What reason or reasons do I have to act?’ (Williams 1985, 5–6; Crisp 2006, 8; Parfit 2011, 1:147; 2017: 342). We should begin, that is to say, with reasons, not with morality. This is not to say that moral concepts – ‘right’, ‘wrong’, ‘morally good’, – have no place in ethics. But they must earn that place. The same goes for the concepts used to describe the operation of moral reasons, such as ‘requirement’, ‘demand’, or ‘permission’. This critical approach to moral concepts is central to the project of de-moralizing ethics.

In addition to the goals of parsimony and ultimacy, de-moralizing is motivated by awareness that moral concepts have their own cultural histories, and it is unlikely that the forces that shaped those histories were philosophically well grounded (Marx and Engels 1972, 351; Garner 1993). For instance, Anscombe (1958) famously argues that concepts like the moral ‘ought’ presuppose a divine law framework. If this is right, then those who are skeptical of such frameworks (whether on ethical or metaphysical grounds), should be skeptical of the relevant concepts.

It is also important to remember that morality itself, as a social phenomenon, emerged from a long evolutionary process in which its role was concerned with the promotion of survival. It can be seen, then, as a set of ‘positive’ rules analogous to law, and just as the mere fact that a law ‘requires’ one to ϕ does not provide one with a reason to ϕ, so the same is true of morality (Crisp 2006, ch. 1). Some philosophers have claimed that there is a ‘natural’ law in the light of which we can assess the claims of any positive legal system, and the majority of moral philosophers appear to believe that something similar is true of morality. But one cannot just assume the existence of natural law or ‘natural morality’: argument is required for each.

Another potentially distorting feature of moral concepts is that their application often involves emotions, which can make it more difficult to dispassionately and rationally assess claims expressed in moral terminology (Paytas 2022). The natural way to respond to an action seen as wrong is with blame, and moral blame is best understood as a form of anger, directed at the wrongdoer for their violation of some moral norm (Menges 2017; Shoemaker 2015; Wallace 1994; Wolf 2011). This can cause moral arguments to become heated and lacking in focus. Consider a case in which an effective altruist asserts that buying an expensive watch is wrong, in that the money should have been spent on helping those in dire need. The implicit anger in that charge is likely to provoke an angry and defensive response, while the claim that there is stronger reason to help those in dire need than to buy an expensive watch may encourage reflection and constructive change. Blame can also distort ethical theory itself. Consider someone who rejects act utilitarianism because, according to that theory, someone who promotes a huge amount of good but not quite the most they could have promoted, is blameworthy for acting wrongly. Here defenders of utilitarianism have developed more nuanced views expressed in terms of variable strengths of reason and degrees of goodness rather than the conventional right/wrong dichotomy (Norcross 2006, 2020; Sinhababu 2017).

Not all de-moralizers advocate making reasons the primary focus of ethics. Some maintain that our initial inquiries should be expressed in terms of virtue and character. Inspired by writers such as MacIntyre (1981, ch. 1), these virtue ethicists argue that starting out with concepts like ‘duty’, ‘ought’, and ‘wrong’ creates a risk of parochialism and internal incoherence (Brewer 2009). For instance, to the extent that these concepts suggest a notion of obligation that is defined in contrast to self-interest, they are likely to bias us against eudaimonist approaches. Virtue-focused de-moralizers are also sympathetic to the above-mentioned concerns about the influence of divine law frameworks in shaping contemporary conceptions of right and wrong. Although these theorists diverge from reasons-focused de-moralizers regarding the correct starting point, they are aligned in their resistance to framing matters in the language of moral obligation and moral wrongness.

A failure to address the challenges of those advocating de-moralization in ethics cannot help but be mistaken, since, even if the de-moralizing project is in error, its not being shown to be so leaves ethical theory without rational foundation. Some of the contributions to this special issue outline new forms of de-moralized ethical theorizing and arguments for de-moralizing. Other contributions combat existing de-moralized ethical theories. In combination they show that there is much more work to do in thinking about whether moral concepts earn their keep or not and whether our ethical theories should take a moralized form. We hope that this special issue will draw more attention to, and assessment of, the de-moralizing program in normative ethics.Footnote 1

Summaries

Brad Hooker, ‘Should Philosophical Reflection on Ethics Do Without Moral Concepts?’

This paper addresses Roger Crisp’s arguments for de-moralizing in his book Reasons and the Good (2006). Having outlined Crisp’s position, Hooker suggests that there are some claims involving moral concepts that are very difficult not to accept: that everyone matters morally, for example, or that there are moral prohibitions on harming the innocent. While widespread confidence in these claims does not establish their truth (or the legitimacy of the concepts used to express them), it does make it reasonable to employ them as a touchstone for our ethical theorizing. Hooker argues further that even if there is some explanation of why we hold certain moral claims, such as Crisp’s evolutionary account, this explanation may be quite consistent with these claims being true. We may also find Crisp’s conceptual parsimony unsatisfying if, for example, we have genuine questions about whether we are required to make some sacrifice for the sake of others, or about whether that sacrifice is supererogatory. The paper ends with a critique of Crisp’s argument that a community of ideally rational beings would have no need for moral concepts: such beings, Hooker claims, will need concepts such as fairness, rights, and desert.

Terence Irwin, ‘The Philosophy and History of the Moral “Ought”: Some of Anscombe’s Objections.’

This paper considers the arguments in G.E.M. Anscombe’s well-known 1958 paper, ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, against using the word ‘ought’ in moral philosophy. Irwin begins by reconstructing Anscombe’s argument that the modern use of ‘ought’ in ethics is to be understood in terms of ‘obligation’, that is, ‘being obliged’ (by a lawgiver). Since we no longer accept the idea of a divine lawgiver, she assumes, we must, like Hume, offer a non-cognitive account of ‘ought’. Irwin points out that Anscombe is not justified in thinking that this will make ‘ought’ judgements ‘unintelligible’, noting various other tensions in her position. Irwin goes on to show that medieval thinkers cannot have held that ‘morally ought’ means ‘required by divine law’, and so later thinkers, who denied divine legislation, are best understood to be using the concept of ‘ought’ as the medieval thinkers did: there is no need to introduce a non-cognitive account of the modern use of ‘ought’, nor indeed to distinguish a special ‘moral’ sense of ‘ought’.

Julia Annas, ‘Virtuous People and Moral Reasons’

A common criticism of virtue ethics is that the reasons on which virtuous people act fail to have the special overriding force of moral reasons. Julia Annas investigates this criticism and argues that it is ultimately misguided. While the virtuous agent will not feel the reasons of virtue as constraints because they align with her motivations, she recognizes that they ought to be obeyed irrespective of such motivational alignment. Hence, virtue gives us reasons that constrain behaviour in ways that are no less powerful than so-called ‘moral reasons’. After addressing this challenge, Annas argues that the persistence of such objections to virtue ethics is explained in part by the fact that our ethical theorizing usually involves trying to accommodate various intuitions from disparate pre-theoretical conceptions of morality. Annas plausibly suggests that we will make greater progress by turning our attention to the Socratic question of what this thing called morality is in the first place.

Marcia Baron, ‘Does Ethics Really Need to be “De-Moralized”? Some Kantian Reflections’

Among the three major approaches to normative ethics, deontology appears least compatible with de-moralizing. This is because deontology is built around the very concepts that de-moralizers are most skeptical of such as ‘right’, ‘wrong’, and ‘duty’. Marica Baron takes up the challenge of defending these concepts by arguing that they are unproblematic within a properly formulated Kantian framework. Focusing primarily on duty, Baron argues that the Kantian notion, including the classification of imperfect duties, has a richness and subtlety that enables it to withstand the most important considerations in favor of de-moralizing. A central part of her argument is a comparison between Kantian ethics and virtue ethics. Baron argues that a key difference between the two is that the Kantian view allows for inner conflict even among the virtuous. While some consider this a weakness, Baron argues that it allows for more plausible assessments of agents in a variety of contexts. Baron concludes by addressing the objection that Kantian ethics is moralistic in the sense that it makes moral concerns too pervasive in one’s life. She argues that, properly understood, such moralism is salutary rather than oppressive because it fosters a more meaningful and enriching life.

Alastair Norcross, ‘Contextualist Scalar Consequentialism, Determinism, and the Non-Identity “Problem”’

According to scalar consequentialism, at the fundamental normative level, consequentialists should eschew the deontic categories of obligation, permissibility, and wrongness and hold that there are only actions that are better and worse and that we have more and less reason to perform. Alastair Norcross explains how scalar consequentialism can be combined with a contextualist semantics for deontic categories which understands the meaning of ‘X is wrong’ in a particular context in terms of X’s being worse than a contextually appropriate set of alternatives, where this contextual appropriateness is established by the relevant conversational context. This combination of views allows scalar consequentialists to make claims about what is right and wrong in particular contexts whilst holding onto their core view that there are no deontic categories at the fundamental normative level. In this paper Norcross argues that by adopting this contextualist view, scalar consequentialists can dissolve seeming problems they face, such as those concerning determinism, demandingness, and the non-identity problem.

Brian McElwee, ‘Right and Wrong: Assessing Scalar Consequentialism’

In this paper Brian McElwee assesses Norcross’s recent book-length case for scalar consequentialism in Morality by Degrees. First, McElwee assesses Norcross’s arguments for scalar consequentialism. He argues that Norcross’s gradability and persuasion arguments do not support scalar consequentialism and that the demandingness argument for scalar consequentialism fails to show that we should accept it rather than recent versions of satisficing consequentialism. McElwee then turns his attention to the problems with scalar consequentialism. Although McElwee allows that scalar consequentialism can avoid worries about action guidance, he argues that it has implausible implications for our reasons to feel particular emotions and cannot account for the emotional force that morality has on us. McElwee also presents new arguments against Norcross’s contextualist version of scalar consequentialism, which Norcross discusses in his contribution to this special issue. McElwee concludes that certain forms of satisficing consequentialism have the virtues of scalar consequentialism without its vices.

Neil Sinhababu, ‘Pleasure is Goodness; Morality is Universal’

Deontic reasons are reasons for action which outstrip the goodness and pleasure created by taking particular actions. In his contribution, Neil Sinhababu develops a form of hedonism that dispenses with deontic reasons and so de-moralizes ethical theory. Sinhababu argues that the reasons for action that are the focus of contemporary ethics and metaethics are empirically undiscoverable and we should instead focus on goodness, which we can empirically discover in pleasurable experiences. Sinhababu takes up a correct representation account of ‘should’ claims and argues that with this account in hand we can hold that the actions that we should be pleased by are those which produce, or involve, the most pleasure. This is because to be pleased in proportion to that which involves the most pleasure is to have accurate attitudes, that is, attitudes that accurately reflect the pleasure involved. We can then understand what it is right to do in terms of what should please all and what it is wrong to do in terms of what should displease all. If we take up Sinhababu’s view, we dispense with deontic reasons. For Sinhababu, we have no empirical evidence that there are such deontic reasons, and we can do without them perfectly well by accepting empirically grounded hedonistic consequentialism instead.

Tyler Paytas, ‘Aptness Isn’t Enough: Why We Ought to Abandon Anger’

While skepticism about moral terms is motivated in part by concerns about their conceptual ties to anger, some philosophers consider such ties to be a reason for holding on to moral language. This is because angry blame is seen as a fitting response to wrongdoing, and we should encourage the use of concepts that are associated with fitting emotional responses. Tyler Paytas argues that recent attempts to vindicate anger by appealing to fittingness are unsuccessful. While it is true that anger is a means of recognizing and appreciating the significance of a transgression, there are alternative responses, both rational and affect-laden, that can attain the benefits of anger without the harmful effects. Perhaps the most pernicious effect, and the most relevant for the topic of de-moralizing, is the distorting influence that anger has on our ability to think clearly and make good decisions. The amplification of cognitive biases is one reason why anger so often leads to violence and ruined relationships. Paytas argues that, in addition to these harmful effects, anger also consists of attitudes and motivations that are intrinsically disvaluable, such as animosity and desires for revenge. If all this is right, then given that the application of moral concepts often involves emotions like anger, we have good reason to try to avoid them.