Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T10:33:35.208Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Conclusion

from Part IV - Reasons, Values, and Obligations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2023

Robert Audi
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame, Indiana
Get access

Summary

This book represents ethics as concerned not just with what we should do or even with that conceived as done for the kinds of reasons that, morally, befit what we should do. Ethics concerns our overall conduct. The ethical theory presented here stresses the three major dimensions of conduct: its matter – its act-type – the agent’s motivation for acting, and the manner in which the agent does the thing in question. This theory has the important implication that moral obligation encompasses adverbial obligations, particularly those regarding the salient manners of what we do. The adverbial dimension of ethics deserves more explication than it has received, and this book is intended in part as a contribution to remedying that imbalance. The motivational dimension of moral conduct is also important, and it cannot be reduced to matters of obligation – by treating actions for reasons as act-types that are objects of obligation – nor can manners of action be fruitfully represented as act-types. Acting for a reason is not a manner of action but a compound phenomenon entailing both an action and an explanatory basis of it, and actions so conceived admit of indefinitely many manners of performance.

Type
Chapter
Information
Of Moral Conduct
A Theory of Obligation, Reasons, and Value
, pp. 287 - 291
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Conclusion
  • Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
  • Book: Of Moral Conduct
  • Online publication: 08 June 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009266987.019
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Conclusion
  • Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
  • Book: Of Moral Conduct
  • Online publication: 08 June 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009266987.019
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Conclusion
  • Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
  • Book: Of Moral Conduct
  • Online publication: 08 June 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009266987.019
Available formats
×