Practical Reason and Morality

Morality is a set of norms that transcend any particular society and that bind you regardless of your desires and dispositions. Morality tells you to keep your promises, not coerce others, respect others’ human rights, and so on. But what explains the authority of morality? According to a venerable tradition in philosophy, stretching from Plato and Aristotle through Kant, the authority of morality depends on the authority of reason. Rationalism, in other words, tells us that moral norms are rational norms . But many philosophers are skeptical of rationalism and argue that if the authority of morality is to be explained at all, it cannot be explained by reason. The topic of this workshop, then, is the purported connection between practical reason and morality.