ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the classical linguistic approaches to moral obligation featured in the previous pages within a larger context that that includes more philosophical and psychosocial approaches to morality. It explores a conceptual scheme or model of ways that scholars from various discipline have tried to map the moral domain. To illustrate the several dimensions of the model, the chapter reviews discussions of several psycho-philosophical issues that lie at the heart of the moral domain. They are usually discussed by Anglo-American philosophers under the rubric of philosophy of action and by psychologists under the rubric of moral development. Closely related to responsibility are the concepts of moral motivation, moral cognition, and personal autonomy. Moral agency is inconceivable without some notion of the motivational springs of human action. Both utilitarian and duty-oriented ethics focus on moral actions, though in the first case actions are thought to derive their ultimate importance from the states of affairs they produce.
