ABSTRACT
Recourse to social ontology in matters moral has been widely regarded as courting conventionalism, relativism or worse. I shall suggest that this presumption represents a major failing in moral understanding and in moral self-understanding. First, I briefly characterise Hume’s key insight that, even if the most fundamental principles of justice are our artefacts, they are not at all arbitrary because they are altogether necessary for human life here on Earth, both individually and collectively. This insight is central to the prospect of what I call ‘Natural Law Constructivism’: a methodological kind of moral constructivism which identifies and justifies basic, strictly objective moral norms, altogether independent of issues about moral (ir)realism or human motivation. This independence from such issues is underscored by Hobbes’ two key points about the non-governmental state of nature. Two morally important points about social ontology made by Aristotle show why we are a zoôn politikon. I then show how and why Kant agrees with Aristotle and argues anew that we as individual moral agents are fundamentally a zoôn politikon. These results then allow me to show the significance of the fact that the first two parts of Hegel’s Philosophical Outlines of Justice (1821, Rph) map directly onto Kant’s Doctrines of Justice and of Virtue, the two Parts of Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals. Hegel’s account of Sittlichkeit (Rph, Part 3) undergirds Kant’s agreement with Aristotle by showing how the customs, economy, civil institutions and law of a republican nation are quite literally our artefacts, all of which are produced by our free agency and activity. It is fundamental to human nature to have a second moral, social and historical nature. These findings illuminate basic features of sound republican constitutionalism and the liberal education it requires for moral and civic virtues.
