ABSTRACT
The moral theory defines and justifies some part of a way of life, to give an account of the things moral agents ought to do and be. The moral theory is a teleological tendency built into the very nature of rational agency, specifically, into its purposive nature, when that is combined with the generalization rule and the presumption of equality. Virtue theory is necessarily parasitic upon a prior determination of what counts as a moral way of life. A final source of a moral theory is the self-consciousness that is characteristic of rational agents. In the same way that the purposiveness of agents generates a teleological tendency, their awareness of themselves as objects generates deontological commitments. The closure rule is a procedural one designed to deal with the following sort of skepticism about ultimate justification: The rules of the general conception are themselves subject to change.
