Ethical egoism, when summarized into a single ethical principle, is the position that a person ought, all things considered, to do an action if and only if that action is in his overall self-interest. The criticisms standardly advanced against this view try to show either that it is subject to some fatal logical flaw or else that, even if logically coherent, it can give no account of the basic parts of morality. Both these objections are mistaken, however, and it is the point of this paper to make this clear. Central to my argument is the distinction drawn in Section 1 between two kinds of moral reasoning and hence two kinds of moral reasons. I call these ‘traditional’ and ‘nontraditional’ (the latter could be termed ‘conventional’ or ‘institutional’ without much change of meaning). Both are present in the writings of contemporary moral philosophers but have not been emphasized or seen as crucial.

John Rawls’ use of a contractarian strategy for justifying basic principles of justice has raised the hope that a similar strategy might work for a theory of right and moral principles generally. I want to show that this hope cannot be fulfilled.

In what follows I interpret contractarianism in a Rawlsian way on the grounds that his is the most plausible version of the doctrine we are likely to get. I am not however concerned with the details of Rawls’ argument for justice but instead with an idea that appears to underlie the contractarian strategy. In order to avoid the complications of Rawlsian exegesis, I choose to discuss the doctrine as it might be used to justify a moral principle of mutual assistance and not as Rawls in fact uses it to justify principles of justice.

Some of the most important disagreements among value theorists concern what things, if any, are intrinsically valuable, and what role intrinsically valuable things have in determining the value of other things. To understand these disagreements a clear account must be provided of the notion of intrinsic value which is their focus. The account should not prejudge these disagreements. For reasons to be considered I do not think that an adequate account has been provided of a notion of intrinsic value that can be taken to be the focus of these disagreements. I attempt to provide such an account in this paper. In order to do this I outline what I think is a reasonable task for a value theory, the task of “reconstructing value.” In explaining this task I take as a model the task of reconstructing knowledge.

1. There is no dearth of objections to Rawls's A Theory of justice. Scores of articles and several books begin by praising the rigor and depth of Rawls's book — and end by concluding that it is thoroughly mistaken. In the present essay I will not add to the list of negative responses to A Theory of Justice. Instead I will attempt to reply to Rawls's critics in a way which makes a positive contribution to his theory.

2. Among the many objections that have been raised against Rawls's theory, two are of paramount importance. It is these two objections I shall attempt to meet. They may be formulated as follows.

Act Utilitarianism has traditionally been regarded as the view that you should always perform the action that will bring about the greatest possible excess of happiness over unhappiness or, if there is no such alternative, the least possible excess of unhappiness over happiness.1 Following Rawls, I shall call this the classical principle. An alternative which Rawls calls the average principle is the view that you should always do the thing that will bring about the highest possible average happiness level. Rawls, Rescher and Broad2 regard the average principle as superior to the classical principle, and there are considerable grounds for supposing that Mill accepted the average principle.3 Smart favours the classical position but confesses that if someone doesn't feel the same way, he doesn't know how to argue with him.4

The relation of Marx's writings to ethical theory has been viewed in a variety of different ways. Some deny that Marx has or can have any ethical theory at all. Others claim, on the contrary, that underlying Marx's pronouncements lies an implicit ethical theory which we may discern. Amongst this latter group a debate has quietly been taking place of late as to the nature of the ethical theory to which Marx might be said to subscribe. Some, e.g. E. Kamenka, have maintained that Marx's ethics is non-utilitarian. Others such as A. Schaff, and most recently D. Allen, have argued that in fact, Marx is a utilitarian, though of course Marx did not proclaim himself to be a utilitarian.

Liberalism, as currently manifest in the permissive, consumer society powerfully invokes the principle that, questions of harm aside, human beings ought to be able to do what they want to do; and, by implication, not be coerced into doing what they do not want to do. Liberty, defined in terms of want satisfaction, all wants being taken at par, and used by the more extreme adherents of liberalism as a necessary and even sufficient condition for the good life, is said to be increased or diminished with greater or decreasing opportunities for the satisfaction of wants: every want, given its rightful due, a success story.

As an adjunct to this first principle comes another, also of great political importance; namely, that it is for the subject of the want to say what his wants are, he being, logically speaking, in an impregnable position to identify these shy denizens of his mental world.

I will attempt to do two things in this paper.In Part I) I will show that H.A. Prichard failed to appreciate the limitations of the application of the ‘“ought” implies “can”’ principle. Where the ‘can’ is not the ‘can’ of physical impossibility the principle is false; the principle can be shown to be false when it is read this way by an examination of the role of excuses, which is not that of removing obligations. Part II) demonstrates how the misapplication of the ‘“ought” implies “can”’ principle is utilized in a chain of confusion: a confusion of excuses and justifications with respect to obligations and a confusion of the relation between obligations and blameworthiness.