In defence of panmoralism

Abstract

Panmoralism is the thesis that every reason for human action is a moral reason. The thesis is easily misunderstood. It does not say that every cause of behaviour is a moral reason, or that every fact relevant to the explanation of an event is morally significant. It concerns reasons in the practical sense: considerations under which free and rational agents act, may act, or may be justified in acting. I argue that once reasons for action are understood in this way, and once morality is understood as the rational ordering of human action to the human good, the standard distinction between moral and non-moral reasons becomes artificial. Reasons of prudence, taste, etiquette, permissibility, supererogation, and even explanatory reasons–where these genuinely explain action–are not rivals to moral reasons but species or varieties of them. The contrary view depends partly on an unduly narrow conception of morality as centred on obligation, and partly on a failure to distinguish reasons from causes, background conditions, and merely enabling facts.