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Moral Demands, Moral Pragmatics, and Being Good

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2010

SAUL SMILANSKY*
Affiliation:
University of [email protected]

Abstract

I point out an odd consequence of the role that broadly pragmatic considerations regularly (and reasonably) play in determining moral demands. As a result of the way in which moral demands are formed, it turns out that people will frequently become morally good in a strange and rather dubious way. Because human beings are not very good, we will lower our moral demands and, as a result, most people will turn out, in an important sense, to be morally good. Our relative badness, by giving us good reasons to limit moral demands, makes us morally good.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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