Search

beings suffering for no apparent good reason. Perhaps the most common criticism of the evidential argument comes from the camp of skeptical theism, whose lot includes William Alston, Alvin Plantinga, and Stephen Wykstra. According to skeptical theism the limits of human knowledge concerning the realm of goods, evils, and the connections between values, undermines the judgment that what appears as pointless evil really is pointless. For all we know the suffering of an innocent being, though appearing pointless, in fact leads to a greater good. In this paper I argue that no one who accepts the doctrines of skeptical theism has a principled way of avoiding moral skepticism. The evidential argument from evil seeks to show that evil is strong evidence against theism. While the evidential argument comes in various versions, perhaps its most prominent version is an argument that seeks to show that the apparent pointlessness of much of the pain and suffering found in the world makes it likely that God does not exist

This article argues that introductory ethics classes can unwittingly create or confirm skeptical views toward morality. Introductory courses frequently include critical discussion of skeptical positions such as moral relativism and psychological egoism as a way to head off this unintended outcome. But this method of forestalling skepticism can have a residual (and unintended) skeptical effect. The problem calls for deeper pedagogical-cum- philosophical engagement with the underlying sources of skepticism. The paper provides examples of how to do this and explains the additional benefits of teaching moral skepticism.

Thomas Nagel has proposed that the existence of moral luck mandates a general attitude of skepticism in ethics. One popular way of arguing against Nagel’s claim is to insist that the phenomenon of moral luck itself is an illusion , in the sense that situations in which it seems to occur may be plausibly re-described so as to show that agents need not be held responsible for the unlucky outcomes of their actions. Here I argue that this strategy for explaining away moral luck fails because it does not take account of the fact that agents in morally unlucky circumstances are uniformly subject to a very specific type of epistemic obligation. I then proceed to sketch out an alternative strategy for blocking the inference to skepticism, one that makes use of the distinctive explanatory resources provided by epistemic virtue theory.

Skeptical theists purport to undermine evidential arguments from evil by appealing to the fact that our knowledge of goods, evils, and their interconnections is significantly limited. Michael J. Almeida and Graham Oppy have recently argued that skeptical theism is unacceptable because it results in a form of moral skepticism which rejects inferences that play an important role in our ordinary moral reasoning. In this reply to Almeida and Oppy's argument we offer some reasons for thinking that skeptical theism need not lead to any such objectionable form of moral skepticism.

Walter Sinnott–Armstrong's recent defence of moral scepticism raises the debate to a new level, but I argue that it is unsatisfactory because of problems with its assumption of global scepticism, with its use of the Sceptical Hypothesis Argument, and with its use of the idea of contrast classes and the correlative distinction between ‘everyday’ justification and ‘philosophical’ justification. I draw on Chisholm's treatment of the Problem of the Criterion to show that my claim that I know that, e.g., baby–torture is wrong, is no more question–begging than Sinnott–Armstrong's denial that I know this.

In “The Value of Rational Nature,” Donald Regan challenges a central argument of much recent Kantian moral philosophy. For such contemporary Kantians as Christine Korsgaard and Allen Wood, the heart of Kant’s ethics is the claim that our capacities for rational deliberation and choice are unconditionally valuable. These Kantians hold that for Kant, the unconditional worth of our rational nature or “humanity” is presupposed by our ability to act for the sake of any values at all. According to this approach, morality is grounded in the norms that express a proper recognition of rational nature’s preeminent value as the sine qua non of all possible value. We are supposedly committed to these norms insofar as we aspire to any coherent and nondelusive experience of practical deliberation and choice. On this view, moral skepticism may remain a minimally coherent philosophical option, but only at the cost of a thoroughgoing nihilism about value in general. Regan does not deny that our rational nature has real value. He even accepts that this value may be an essential aspect of all value whatsoever. Regan allows that appreciative engagement by a rational subject may indeed be a necessary part of any truly good organic whole. He challenges only the claim that rational nature or rational choice is the sole original value from which the significance of all other concerns is derived. Regan’s central objection is that this position is wildly implausible, if not downright incoherent. He argues that the exercise of rational

Popular culture is full of post-apocalyptic visions these days, especially the fiction and movies aimed at young adults. The plot usually features a variegated band of survivors crossing a wasteland in search of a place of peaceful plenty that may or may not exist. Ruined cityscapes poke out of the sand. The survivors have nothing in common and don’t even get along well with each other, at least at first. The communities they encounter along the way tend to be militarized dictatorships, patriarchal cults, or cannibals. There is a mysterious, lanky man in scuffed boots who claims to know the way, on the basis of arcane knowledge from Before.

This article is about the implications of a conciliatory view about the epistemology of peer disagreement for our moral beliefs. Many have endorsed a conciliatory view about the epistemology of peer disagreement according to which if we find ourselves in a disagreement about some matter with another whom we should judge to be our epistemic peer on that matter, we must revise our judgment about that matter. This article focuses on three issues about the implications of conciliationism for our moral beliefs. The first is whether there is an asymmetry between the implications of conciliationism for the epistemic status of our moral beliefs and the implications of conciliationism for the epistemic status of our non‐moral beliefs; for instance, some have argued that conciliationism leads to epistemological moral skepticism but not to epistemological nonmoral skepticism. The second is what the implications of conciliationism are for the epistemic status of particular moral beliefs. The third is whether conciliationism's impact on the epistemic status of our moral beliefs has practical implications.

This essay offers a new interpretation of Nietzsche's argument for moral skepticism (i.e., the metaphysical thesis that there do not exist any objective moral properties or facts), an argument that should be of independent philosophical interest as well. On this account, Nietzsche offers a version of the argument from moral disagreement, but, unlike familiar varieties, it does not purport to exploit anthropological reports about the moral views of exotic cultures, or even garden-variety conflicting moral intuitions about concrete cases. Nietzsche, instead, calls attention to the single most important and embarrassing fact about the history of moral theorizing by philosophers over two millennia: namely, that no rational consensus has been secured on any substantive, foundational proposition about morality. Persistent and apparently intractable disagreement on foundational questions, of course, distinguishes moral theory from inquiry in the sciences and mathematics (perhaps in kind, certainly in degree). According to Nietzsche, the best explanation for this disagreement is that, even though moral skepticism is true, philosophers can still construct valid dialectical justifications for moral propositions because the premises of different justifications will answer to the psychological needs of at least some philosophers and thus be deemed true by some of them. The essay concludes by considering various attempts to defuse this abductive argument for skepticism based on moral disagreement and by addressing the question whether the argument "proves too much," that is, whether it might entail an implausible skepticism about a wide range of topics about which there is philosophical disagreement.

This paper discusses the possibility of an ethics of difference. It begins with an introduction to current poststructural and critical theories in order to show their significance for transcultural politics and ethics. Its theme is formulated in terms of the debate between the affirmation of ethical cognitivism cast in the form of universalism and the advocacy of moral skepticism in the mode of communitarianism. Distancing itself from the idea of universal morality, this paper attempts to respond to the challenge of both communitarians and deconstructionists in contemporary French poststructuralism. In the end, it argues for transversality in place of universality.

L'A. met en evidence la relation entre le traitement de l'etre et du devoir dans le «Traite de la nature humaine», d'une part, et la position de Hume concernant le naturalisme ethique et son scepticisme a l'egard du role de la raison en morale, d'autre part. L'A. defend la these d'une analyse reductionniste des jugements moraux chez Hume.

Much moral skepticism stems from the charge that moral facts do not figure in causal explanations. However, philosophers committed to normative epistemological discourse (by which I mean our practice of evaluating beliefs as justified or unjustified, and so forth) are in no position to demand that normative facts serve such a role, since epistemic facts are causally impotent as well. I argue instead that pragmatic reasons can justify our continued participation in practices which, like morality and epistemology, do not serve the function of causal explanation.

Of all the moral concerns regarding privacy in its various meanings, this essay selects only one: the right to be left alone by others, in particular, by government. Because moral controversies in pluralist societies tend to be interminable, and surely controversies regarding privacy are no exception, I approach the right to privacy in terms of the centrality of persons. When there are foundational disputes about which content-full moral view should govern, it is not possible to resolve such controversies without begging the question or conceding at the outset crucial moral premises. This observation is not to affirm a moral skepticism or relativism. At worst, it involves an epistemic skepticism, a skepticism about the possibility of resolving controversies by sound rational argument without begging the question or engaging in an infinite regress.

Consider that forgiveness is always given ahead of time. Set within a moral context, this claim is apt to sound suspect, as it seems to invite transgression and all manner of immoral indulgence. When the context shifts to one of religious possibility, however, the claim can be read to entertain a redemptive anachronism: a memory of future innocence. The author examines forgiveness in both contexts and makes a case for the religious possibility.

A partir de la distinction etablie par D. Parfit et T. Nagel entre les raisons relatives a l'agent et les raisons neutres par rapport a l'agent, l'A. etudie la normativite et la categoricite des theories morales concernant la motivation des agents individuels. Rejetant l'argument de C. Korsgaard en faveur de la publicite des raisons et de la normativite non-morale, l'A. montre que la critique intersubjective et linguistique des raisons relatives a l'agent ne permet pas a C. Korsgaard de refuter l'egoisme.

What is one who takes normativity seriously to do if normativity can neither be discovered lurking out there in the world independently of us nor can it be sufficiently grasped from a merely explanatory perspective? One option is to accept that the normative challenge cannot be met and to retreat to some form of moral skepticism. Another possibility has recently been proposed by Christine Korsgaard in The Sources of Normativity where she aims to develop an account of normativity which is grounded in autonomy. Furthermore, she argues that on her account reasons are "essentially public" and that this captures how it is that we can obligate one another. In this paper I argue that there is a serious tension between her account of normativity and the publicity of reasons-namely, that if reasons are essentially public, then it is not possible for individuals to legislate laws for themselves. However, I then argue that if we revise her conception of normativity such that it is understood to involve collective rather than individual legislation that it may then be possible to account for interpersonal reasons.

Normative thinking permeates the work of the English School and has done so since its start as the British Committee for International Politics. Ethics, or, more precisely, the tension between ethics and power or interests, was one of the original concerns of the founding members of the Committee. It was an aim of the Committee to combine ethical reflection with the historical analysis of states systems. The approach in first-generation, or classical, English School scholarship to ethical questions primarily involved the identification of traditions of political and moral speculation about international relations (IR). Another significant feature of classical English School thought was moral skepticism, which seriously challenged what could be said about ethical choices within the forms of international interaction it charted. However, keen interest in what normative agendas can be supported within international or world society—basic subsistence rights, international criminal justice, and humanitarian intervention—does not necessarily amount to a normative theory. As such, order versus justice is a more productive starting point for normative theorizing within the English School. Meanwhile, there are two modes of normative thought in postclassical English School: practical and moral–philosophical arguments. The English School is grounded in the practical, in the real-world tussle of power and interests, while at the same time it works through what it is possible to say about the nature of obligation and moral responsibility among international actors. This is where ethics and practical interest meet, and it represents the unique contribution of the English School to contemporary normative IR theory.

The aim of this article is to recover and reevaluate the American tradition of constitutional skepticism. Part I consists of a brief history of skepticism running from before the founding to the modern period. My aim here is not to provide anything like a complete description of the historical actors, texts, and events that I discuss. Instead, I link together familiar episodes and arguments that stretch across our history so as to demonstrate that they are part of a common narrative that has been crucial to our self-identity. Part II disentangles the various strands of skeptical argument. I argue that the various strands share a common core. At base, all forms of constitutional skepticism rest on doubts about whether moral and political disagreement can be bridged by a legal text. Those doubts, in turn, are grounded on a rejection of global moral skepticism and on deep strands of American thought that emphasize the possibility of moral knowledge. In Part III, I very briefly suggest some preliminary conclusions about how we should view constitutional skepticism. I argue that there are reasons to think that a dose constitutional skepticism might mitigate some of our current political dysfunction.

Here lyes that mighty Man of SenseWho, full of years, departed hence,To teach the other world Intelligence,This was the prodigious Man,who vanquish’ d Pope and Puritan,By the Magic of Leviathan.Had he not Controversy wanted,His deeper Thoughts had not been scanted;Therefore good Spirits him transplant:Wise as he was, he could not tellWhether he went to Heaven or Hell.Beyond the Tenth Sphere, if there be a wide place,He'll prove by his Art there's no infinite space:And all good Angels may thank him, for thatHe has prov’ d they are something, tho men know not what.Hobbes's Epitaph (Anon 1680)

In ethical debate, the ‘middle ground’ signifies the position between two alternatives in applied ethics, alternatives that are frequently represented as, or demonstrated to be, extremes. This may be the distance between two opposed moralities, such as allowing homosexuals to become ministers in the Church of England, at one end, as opposed to forbidding them even the sacraments. It may also be the distance between a thoroughgoing moral skepticism and the further reaches of naive ‘idealism’. Molly Cochran has recently used the term ‘middle ground’ to characterize the aspirations of members of the British Committee on International Theory, to locate an ethic that could combine state interests with some form of international morality (Cochran 2009). The term echoes Aristotle’s ‘mean’ (sometimes the ‘golden mean’); and the method of argument frequently follows the structure of the Nicomachean ethics, where Aristotle proposed that virtuous conduct was to be found in the avoidance of extremes.

Reflection on the variety of forms of social life has long been a source of moral skepticism. The thought that there are many radically different social systems, each of which colors the way its members think about moral and political questions, has been thought by many moral philosophers to undermine confidence in our belief that our way of looking at-or even posing-these questions is the correct one. The fact of cultural variety is held to reduce, if not eliminate altogether, the possibility of moral criticism of the practices of other societies. This thought is not a recent one; it is implicit, for example, in an observation made in David Hume's “A Dialogue,” when he writes:There are no manners so innocent or reasonable, but may be rendered odious or ridiculous, if measured by a standard, unknown to the persons; especially, if you employ a little art or eloquence, in aggravating some circumstances, and extenuating others, as best suits the purpose of your discourse.

ARAUJO, Marcelo de. Como deliberar sobre o tipo de pessoa que queremos ser. Argumentos Revista de Filosofia, Fortaleza, v. 3, n. 5, p. 23-34, 2011. This paper discusses the idea of an intermediary position between the “absolutism of principles” and “moral scepticism”. Following a denomination suggested by Wilson Mendonça, I will call intermediary position “reflexive attitude”. The reflexive attitude seeks to construct the objectivity of moral principles through an examination of desires, beliefs, and values, which, actually, motivate individuals at large. O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar criticamente a idéia de uma posição intermediária entre o “absolutismo de princípios” e o “ceticismo moral”. A posição intermediária será denominada aqui, tendo em vista uma nomenclatura sugerida por Wilson Mendonça, de “atitude reflexiva”. A atitude reflexiva busca interpretar a objetividade de princípios morais a partir de considerações sobre desejos, crenças, e valores que, de fato, motivam os indivíduos em geral.

This paper explores the apparent tension between Hayek's moral skepticism and his role as a defender of liberal institutions. It looks at Hayek's concept of spontaneous order, and asks whether there are any grounds for claiming that spontaneous orders have moral value. The argument from group selection is considered but rejected. Hayek is interpreted as putting most weight on arguments which show, for specific orders (such as the market and common law) that their rules assist each individual in the pursuit of his or her ends, whatever those ends may be. It is suggested that this form of argument is contractarian in character. However, Hayek's contractarianism is distinctive in that it looks for agreement among individuals within an ongoing social order, rather than among rational agents who stand outside any particular society.

This article examines moral skepticism and the possible attendant limits of moral education. It describes attempts at teaching moral commitment and presents materials from a recent account of moral standing to assemble an explanation for skepticism's tenacity. It discusses Robert Nozick's treatment of moral standing and suggests that neither theory nor education will in the end do what so many philosophers have assumed they could, that is, anchor ethical commitment against skeptical second thoughts.

Nietzsche just encouraged us to learn to “play” and “float” “above morality”. To attain such a free-spirited existence, we must recognize there is no deity. Moreover, we must conquer all vestiges of belief in an Absolute. Consequently, Nietzsche begins Book Three with the announcement of God’s death and the need to overcome His shadow. He indicates we must de-deify nature completely to dispell that shadow and begin naturalizing ourselves. He urges us not to anthropomorphize and deify the world.

The power of skepticism depends on the apparent possibility of rationally asking, for virtually any kind of proposition commonly thought to be known, how it is known or what justifies believing it. Moral claims are among those commonly subjected to skeptical challenges and doubts, even on the part of some people who are not skeptical about ordinary claims regarding the external world. There may be even more skepticism about the possibility of justifying moral actions, particularly if they are against the agent's self-interest. Both problems-how to justify moral claims and how to justify moral action - come within the scope of the troubling question “Why be moral?” Even a brief response to moral skepticism should consider both kinds of targets of justification, cognitive and behavioural, and should indicate some important relations between the two types of skeptical challenge. I will begin with the cognitive case- with skepticism about the scope of theoretical reason in ethics - proceed to practical skepticism, which concerns the scope of practical reason, and then show how an adequate account of rationality may enable us to respond to moral skepticism.

Suppose that the ultimate point of ethics is to make the world a better place. If it is, we must face the question: better in what respect? If the good is prior to the right — that is, if the rationale for all requirements of the right is that they serve to further the good in one way or another — then what is this good? Is there a single fundamental value capable of underlying and unifying all of our moral categories? If so, how might it defeat the claims of rival candidates for this role? If not, is there instead a plurality of basic goods, each irreducible to any of the others? In that case, how do they fit together into a unified picture of the moral life?These are the questions I wish to address, in a necessarily limited way. To many the questions will seem hopelessly old-fashioned or misguided. Some deontologists will wish to reverse my ordering of the good and the right, holding that the right constrains acceptable conceptions of the good. For many contractarians, neither the good nor the right will seem normatively basic, since both are to be derived from a prior conception of rationality. Finally, some theorists will reject the classification of moral theories in terms of their basic normative categories, arguing that the whole foundationalist enterprise in ethics should be abandoned.In the face of these challenges to the priority of the good, and in light of the many current varieties of moral skepticism and relativism, I cannot provide a very convincing justification for raising the questions I intend to discuss.

In the title to the second section of Book 3 Hume announces that “Moral distinctions [are] deriv'd from a moral sense” (T3.1.2).The phrase “moral sense” is taken from the philosophies of Francis Hutcheson and Lord Shaftesbury, whose writings Hume had clearly studied very carefully as he was writing Book 3 of the Treatise . However, apart from the title to this section, Hume uses the phrase “moral sense” only one other time in the Treatise , in Book 3, Part 3, where he claims to give his own “explication of the moral sense” (T3.3.1.25: 588). It is never used in his later recasting of his moral theory in the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals . It is true that later in Book 3 of the Treatise he does sometimes use the phrase “sense of morals.” But in the Conclusion to Book 3 of the Treatise he contrasts his own account of the “sense of morals” with the account of “those who resolve the sense of morals into original instincts of the human mind” – an apparent reference to the theory of moral sense of Hutcheson (T3.3.6.3: 619). His own view, he tells us, accounts “for that sense by an extensive sympathy with mankind.” As we have seen in Chapter 1, Hume's personal relations with Hutcheson, which began as he was revising Book 3 for publication, were complex. Hume sought Hutcheson out as an authority who would recommend his philosophy to others.

This essay offers a new interpretation of Nietzsche's argument for moral skepticism (i.e., the metaphysical thesis that there do not exist any objective moral properties or facts), an argument that should be of independent philosophical interest as well. On this account, Nietzsche offers a version of the argument from moral disagreement, but, unlike familiar varieties, it does not purport to exploit anthropological reports about the moral views of exotic cultures, or even garden-variety conflicting moral intuitions about concrete cases. Nietzsche, instead, calls attention to the single most important and embarrassing fact about the history of moral theorizing by philosophers over two millennia: namely, that no rational consensus has been secured on any substantive, foundational proposition about morality. Persistent and apparently intractable disagreement on foundational questions, of course, distinguishes moral theory from inquiry in the sciences and mathematics (perhaps in kind, certainly in degree). According to Nietzsche, the best explanation for this disagreement is that, even though moral skepticism is true, philosophers can still construct valid dialectical justifications for moral propositions because the premises of different justifications will answer to the psychological needs of at least some philosophers and thus be deemed true by some of them. The essay concludes by considering various attempts to defuse this abductive argument for skepticism based on moral disagreement and by addressing the question whether the argument "proves too much," that is, whether it might entail an implausible skepticism about a wide range of topics about which there is philosophical disagreement.

O artigo mostra que há boas razões para questionar se abordagens embasadas na virtude sobre a questão da justiça podem adequadamente dar conta dos usos sofistas da mentira política – especialmente quando o pensamento sofista estende-se ao ponto culminante do ceticismo moral, ou para além do gritante niilismo moral e seus usos cínicos. A fim de refutar tais usos, recorre-se à mais influente discussão sobre a mentira em Kant, que se encontra em seu artigo de 1797 “Sobre o Suposto Direito de Mentir por causa da Filantropia.” Embora mantenha que o particular argumento moral kantiano contra Constant seja deficiente, o artigo argumenta que a posição especificamente política no argumento jurídico genérico de Kant é defensável. Mostra-se, portanto, que o relato kantiano das condições para a possível conformidade da política com os princípios do Direito efetivamente estabelece que um ato de mentir é passível de impeachment e categoricamente exige o impeachment e a devida execução jurídica de tal delito. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Filosofia do Direito. Filosofia moral. Kant. Mentira política.

The main normative problem in the context of dual use is to determine the ethical responsibility of scientists especially in the case of unintended, harmful, and criminal dual use of new technological applications of scientific results. This article starts from an analysis of the concepts of responsibility and complicity, examining alternative options regarding the responsibility of scientists. Within the context of the basic conflict between the freedom of science and the duty to avoid causing harm, two positions are discussed: moral skepticism and the ethics of responsibility by Hans Jonas. According to these reflections, four duties are suggested and evaluated: stopping research, systematically carrying out research for dual-use applications, informing public authorities, and not publishing results. In the conclusion it is argued that these duties should be considered as imperfect duties in a Kantian sense and that the individual scientist should be discharged as much as possible from obligations which follow from them by the scientific community and institutions created for this purpose.

Drawing upon several questions raised in a recent exchange between Putnam and Habermas, this paper exposes Putnam’s pragmatist arguments against both moral skepticism and substantive moral realism and examines his realist account of moral objectivity in connection with the notion of truth. We defend that Putnam’s conception of moral objectivity can be better understood as a new version of a procedural realism. Furthermore, we discuss an internal tension and some problems that threaten the defense of this kind of moral realism.

This paper argues that naturalistic moral realism is vulnerable to a Hard Problem that has gone largely unrecognized. This problem is to explain how natural moral properties are detected by the folk. I argue that Thomas Nagel’s persuasive case for moral realism founded on the priority of first-order moral evaluations over second-order reflection is not conclusive—a certain type of moral agnosticism which I call Meta-Ethical Pyrrhonism can account for our inability to think of first-order moral evaluations as merely subjective or relative. Although unsatisfactory as metaphysics, Meta-Ethical Pyrrhonism is arguably all that a moral naturalist is entitled to by way of a meta-ethical theory.

Jus cogens can be defined as law that imports notions of universally applicable norms into the international legal process (Charlesworth & Chinkin, p. 118). Although it is clear from the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties that any treaty provision that contravenes jus cogens is invalid, and despite the universal acceptance that jus cogens standards may never be breached, substantial difficulty continues to surround this area of international law. In particular, questions relating to the `why' of jus cogens are tricky to answer. Why should these particular rules and rights have a higher status in international law than others? Why should states have to comply with these rules regardless of the surrounding circumstances and their security (and political) exigencies? Why should this category of law exist at all?The push towards torture in recent years has exposed the theoretical vulnerability of jus cogens. In a state of global uni-polarity the United States of America, joined by its partners in the Coalition of the Willing, has launched a so-called "War on Terror" in which international norms have all too often appeared to be low on the list of priority. United States' state practice (and that of other states) in the area of torture, in particular, has clearly shown the need to create a viable theoretical framework around the imposition of absolute rules of jus cogens on states, even in times when abidance by those rules might seem to jeopardise the immediate security imperatives of the state.This paper considers one way in which such a theoretical framework might be developed. The challenge is approached by means of a series of ideas. The first idea is simply that jus cogens exists and includes within it certain rights. The second claim is twofold. First that religion matters to people, and second that rights matter to people. The third idea is that jus cogens is essentially religious embodying, as it does, the basic protections that represent a consensus between different religions about the basics of human dignity. The fourth idea is that jus cogens is in danger and that, if we care for it and its capacity to ensure the basic circumstances for individual security and flourishing despite the surrounding conditions, we must do something about this threat. The final idea is that recognising the religiosity of jus cogens could be the means by which we find a different way of thinking about the obligation to comply.I should stress that this chapter is designed to operate as a question, or series of questions, as opposed to a solution. As a result of the tense relationship between rights and religion many of us, me included, are reluctant to put our faith in a connection between the two. However the words of another discomforted writer considering similar questions, Jeffrie Murphy, are equally applicable to this author. Murphy remarks that it is, for him, very difficult - perhaps impossible - to embrace religious convictions - [but] - the liberal theory of rights requires a doctrine of human dignity, preciousness and sacredness that cannot be utterly detached from a belief in God or at least from a world view that would be properly called religious in some metaphysically profound sense (Afterward: Constitutionalism, Moral Skepticism and Religious Belief, in A. S. Rosenbaum, Constitutionalism: The Philosophical Dimension, (Greenwood Press, 1988), p. 248).

Just when philosophers of science thought they had buried Freud for the last time, he has quietly reappeared in the writings of moral philosophers. Two analytic ethicists, Samuel Scheffler and John Deigh, have independently applied Freud's theory of the superego to the problem of moral motivation.' Scheffler and Deigh concur in thinking that although Freudian theory doesn't entirely solve the problem, it can nevertheless contribute to a solution. Freud claims that the governance exercised over us by morality is a form of governance that was once exercised by our parents and that was subsequently assumed by a portion of our own personalities. This inner proxy for our parents was established, according to Freud, at the time when we were obliged to give up our oedipal attachment to them. Freud therefore declares that "Kant's Categorical Imperative is . . . the direct heir of the Oedipus com