ABSTRACT
Do we have reasons for being good? Can we have reasons? Do we need reasons? This question is discussed from three different angles. In the first section, Philippa Foot’s essay “Moral Beliefs” is brought up. She criticizes the non-cognitivist notion that moral judgements are independent of reasoning, then arguing that to have reasons for living justly, one must come to think that doing so will serve one’s self-interest. Against this it is argued that self-interest cannot ground a just life. The second section discusses Bernard Williams’s essay “Internal and External Reasons”, which argues that a person can be given a reason for acting well only if the reason accords with some motive she embraces. I claim that he develops his position in such a way that it is unclear whether it excludes any conceivable reason. The third section deals with the Badou family, presented by Larissa MacFarquhar in Strangers Drowning. The Badous over the years adopted a huge number of children. The reasons they might give do not differ from reasons most of us would embrace. They had not come to embrace their special way of life through a special line of thought, but through a special kind of moral responsiveness.
