ABSTRACT
Adequate knowledge of moral rules is inseparable from and cannot be had without genuine knowledge of human good. In certain respects, the status of conceptions of the human good is very different from that of moral rules. Appeals to particular moral rules always provide relevant, although not necessarily sufficient grounds for advocating legislation of various kinds, while appeals to particular conceptions of the human good never do. Insofar as it is this liberal view which has been embodied in social practice in contemporary advanced societies, the good has been privatized. The privatization of the good ensures not only that we are deprived of adequately determinate shared moral rules, but that central areas of moral concern cannot become the subject of anything like adequate public shared systematic discourse or enquiry. Adequately determinate moral rules can only be identified and characterized as parts of the specification of some particular overall conception of the human good and how it is to be achieved.
