The first part of this book provides a detailed description of the moral system that is commonly used, although usually only implicitly, by people when they are making thoughtful moral decisions and judgments. This system includes moral rules that prohibit doing the kinds of actions that need justification so as not to be considered immoral; moral ideals that encourage doing the kinds of actions that, if they do not involve violations of moral rules, are universally considered to be morally good actions; and a two-step procedure for determining when the violation of a moral rule is strongly ju ... More

The first part of this book provides a detailed description of the moral system that is commonly used, although usually only implicitly, by people when they are making thoughtful moral decisions and judgments. This system includes moral rules that prohibit doing the kinds of actions that need justification so as not to be considered immoral; moral ideals that encourage doing the kinds of actions that, if they do not involve violations of moral rules, are universally considered to be morally good actions; and a two-step procedure for determining when the violation of a moral rule is strongly justified, weakly justified, or unjustified. The first step of this two-step procedure uses the morally relevant features to provide a morally relevant description of the action. The second step involves estimating whether more harm would be caused by publicly allowing such a violation or by not allowing it. The second part of the book provides an analysis of the concepts of rationality and impartiality, and of morality as a public system that is known by all normal adults, and that it is not irrational for any of them to use to govern their own behavior and to judge the behavior of others. These analyses are used to provide a justification for the moral system — that is, to show that all rational persons who satisfy some plausible conditions would endorse the moral system as the system to govern the behavior of all of them — and to provide an answer to the question why one should be moral.