ABSTRACT
Morality is grounded in rationality, where rationality rests in a refusal to beg the question when supplying justifications for action or policy. Morality consists in a compromise between egoistic and altruistic reasons for action, such that strong self-interested reasons trump weak altruistic reasons, strong altruistic reasons trump weak egoistic reasons, and the relative strengths of reasons are not strictly a matter of how important a consideration happens to be for some agent, but rather how important the consideration is objectively. The moral reasons already have to be in place, practicable, and active—in our understanding of our circumstances and in our deliberation about what to do—in order for altruistic concerns about you, or egoistic concern about me, to get a grip. This chapter attempts to analyze considerations that favor promise keeping into egoistic and altruistic components looked to suffer from the fact that the morality of fidelity has to be in place to inform the calculation of individual interests.
