ABSTRACT
The sensation that morality compels a choice, even a highly aversive one, is something we all experience at some point, although hopefully not frequently. Importantly, it would be a mistake (at least from the internal perspective) to describe this situation as a weighing of competing motivational forces. An individual may feel morality as an overriding compulsion that trumps his/her desires. The question is whether compulsion is an acceptable one. Obviously some compulsions are not; the obsessive-compulsive disorder sufferer’s compulsion to triple-check every last light switch and window lock is at best something to cope with and ideally something to cure. In some cases, morality can seem like this, as it once did to Freud. Camus, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Beauvoir each offer some manner of reckoning with the contingency of our moral nature. But none should be described as common sense.
