ABSTRACT

Sophisticated people sometimes take a cynical attitude toward morality. This chapter focuses on a complex picture of morality. Sometimes, being moral is a matter of being generous, charitable, or compassionate. The point of morality is different from the point of morality as conceived by, say, Aristotle or Epictetus. Different people have different needs, interests, and commitments, and morality can be thought of as a system for adjudicating among them impartially. According to contractualists, morality requires compliance with principles no one can reasonably reject, given the aim of finding mutually agreeable principles for regulating conduct. Contractualism and utilitarianism, these two very different approaches to moral theory nevertheless have some features in common. Both agree that popular moral beliefs about particular issues should be subjected to critical scrutiny. Some utilitarians take the fact that utilitarianism opposes dogmatically asserted, purposeless requirements as a sufficient reason for being a utilitarian.