ABSTRACT

Ethical principles, the conventional view runs, guide the proper determination of guilt or innocence, praise or blame, honor or dishonor, shame or pride. The moral rules cover the least that can be expected of human beings dealing with one another or with themselves as they determine what to permit or to demand. Because the moral rules preserve the minimum conditions for membership in any community of selves, they are those rules for the violation of which punishment or the disapproval of others seems "only right" and self-disapproval plainly merited. Morally reflective agents seek to manage the application of rules and ideals by recourse to certain higher-level principles. In defense of the societal concept of the self and its decisions against the accusation of relativism, one need not resort to the devoutly to be desired possibility that historical conditions may increasingly create communities transcending ethnic and national boundaries and in that way promote agreement.