ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with a distinction which plays a very prominent role in discourse ethics, namely between the moral and the ethical points of view. A large part of the task is to clarify J. Habermas’ standpoint and critically follow its implications for moral theory. Habermas even recognizes a genuine, albeit heuristic, value in ‘the intuition that issues of justice evolve from an idealising extension of the ethical problematic’. Practical reason in its moral version is a power opposed to ‘pre-existing interests and context-dependent value-orientations through pragmatic and ethical reasons’ and which should impose restrictions on them. The universalistic potential of the cognitive content of everyday morality, as revealed by an adequate philosophical reconstruction, points to ‘an ethically neutral conception of justice’ which accords the right an absolute priority over the good. The chapter details Habermas’ account of how ideals of good living operate in practical reasoning.
