ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to take steps toward delineating, within a naturalistic framework, both the respect in which moral normativity is fundamentally a rational and objective matter and, on the other hand, the respect in which it is fundamentally subjective. Rational and objective moral truths are grounded in indubitable and involuntary love, which entails commanding requirements and constraints on the lover’s behavior. The necessities entailed by a particular love are indeed only contingent necessities, since it is only a contingent fact that an individual happens to be bound by that particular love. But they are necessities nonetheless, from which the individual cannot escape merely at will. Thus, they bind sufficiently to satisfy the presumption that the commands and constraints of morality must be rigorously unavoidable. The necessity characterizing love spills over onto the beliefs and behaviors entailed by that love. Our sense of the inescapability of our love conveys itself to us in our apprehending that love’s requirements are contingently necessary truths.
