Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- I The Fundamental Problem
- PART ONE SOCIAL ORDER AND SOCIAL MORALITY
- PART TWO REAL PUBLIC REASON
- V The Justificatory Problem and the Deliberative Model
- VI The Rights of the Moderns
- VII Moral Equilibrium and Moral Freedom
- VIII The Moral and Political Orders
- Concluding Remarks on Moral Freedom and Moral Theory
- Appendix A The Plurality of Morality
- Appendix B Economic Freedom in States that Best Protect Civil Rights
- Bibliography
- Index
V - The Justificatory Problem and the Deliberative Model
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- I The Fundamental Problem
- PART ONE SOCIAL ORDER AND SOCIAL MORALITY
- PART TWO REAL PUBLIC REASON
- V The Justificatory Problem and the Deliberative Model
- VI The Rights of the Moderns
- VII Moral Equilibrium and Moral Freedom
- VIII The Moral and Political Orders
- Concluding Remarks on Moral Freedom and Moral Theory
- Appendix A The Plurality of Morality
- Appendix B Economic Freedom in States that Best Protect Civil Rights
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Suppose we now raise that old philosophical question: What interest has the individual in morality? … [W]hen we ask what the interest of the individual is in morality, we mean to ask about all those individuals on whom socially sanctioned demands are made; not just about the imaginatively restless and materially cosy. We need not, perhaps, insist upon just the same answer for all; but, if we take the question seriously, we must insist on some answer for all. …
We have arrived at the fact that everyone on whom some form of socially sanctioned demand is made has an interest in the existence of some system of socially sanctioned demands. But this fact seems inadequate to answer the question what the individual's interest in morality is. … A socially sanctioned demand is doubtless a demand made with the permission and approval of a society; and backed, in some form and degree, with its power. … [I]f no interest of mine is safeguarded by the system of demands to which I am subject, then, in fulfilling a demand made upon me, I may indeed, in one sense, be doing what I am obliged to do; but scarcely what I am morally obliged to do.
P. F. Strawson, “Social Morality and Individual Ideal”In Part One I analyzed social morality as a system of social rules, which Rule-following Punishers take as the basis of authoritative demands on each other.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Order of Public ReasonA Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World, pp. 261 - 333Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010