Lukas Naegeli (University of Bern), “Two Ways of Limiting Moral Demands”
Forthcoming, The Philosophical Quarterly
How Should We Respond to Excessive Moral Demands?
Suppose a moral theory or principle requires us to devote ourselves so thoroughly to the service of morality that our own lives are increasingly pushed into the background. Take classical act utilitarianism, for example: If we are always morally obligated to maximize overall happiness, then, depending on the circumstances, we may have to stop doing philosophy, give up important life goals, or even sacrifice our whole existence.
In the light of such examples, it is clear that moral theories or principles can be so demanding as to seem too demanding. How should we respond to them? In my article “Two Ways of Limiting Moral Demands”, I distinguish between two fundamentally different approaches in dealing with excessive demands. Either we set limits within morality by restricting what we can be morally obligated to do, or we set limits on morality from outside by restricting the practical significance of its directives. In the first case we use what I call “intramoral” limits, which relate to the content of morality, while in the second case we use “extramoral” limits, which relate to the normative status of morality. For example, one might argue that we are not even morally obligated to maximize overall happiness at extraordinarily high cost, or one might argue that the existing moral obligation to maximize overall happiness can be ignored in such cases.
Building on this distinction, the article addresses a challenge for intramoral approaches that arises when they are confronted with competing extramoral approaches. Recent contributions to the demandingness literature suggest that it only makes sense to criticize moral theories for being too demanding in terms of content on the condition that moral standards are normatively authoritative. If extramoral approaches curtail this normative authoritativeness when moral standards appear excessive, then intramoral approaches seem doomed to fail. After all, they seem to rest on a premise that paradoxically turns out to be false whenever there is reason to pursue an intramoral approach. This leads to the main question of my article: Do intramoral approaches assume that extramoral approaches do not work, and if so, does this make them implausible?
“Two Ways of Limiting Moral Demands,” The Philosophical Quarterly (Advance Articles), DOI: 10.1093/pq/pqad103.
You mentioned scalar ethics a bit in the article, which you distinguish from both of your options. Of the two options you discuss, the scalar approach is more similar to extramoral limits. I'd be interested to hear more about how you think they relate.
I'd also like to hear about how the extramoral approach works when cuttoffs are arbitrary (e.g. how hard to work etc.).
As I understand scalar theories in the article, they do not imply any moral demands at all. So it is not clear to me that, for example, scalar utilitarianism is more akin to extramoral approaches than to intramoral approaches. Rather, one might argue for scalar utilitarianism if one believes that one needs to describe the content of morality in such a way that no intramoral limits to moral demands are transgressed.