Moral Demands, Moral Pragmatics, and Being Good

Saul Smilansky ()

Utilitas, 2010, vol. 22, issue 3, 303-308

Abstract: I point out an odd consequence of the role that broadly pragmatic considerations regularly (and reasonably) play in determining moral demands. As a result of the way in which moral demands are formed, it turns out that people will frequently become morally good in a strange and rather dubious way. Because human beings are not very good, we will lower our moral demands and, as a result, most people will turn out, in an important sense, to be morally good. Our relative badness, by giving us good reasons to limit moral demands, makes us morally good.

Date: 2010
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