Why do we seek philosophical foundations for morality? Every day we make many decisions. More often than not we can give numerous reasons for the decisions we make. And more often than not no philosophy is needed. Some of the decisions we make are moral decisions and they can be hard to make; their demands aren't easy to meet. We are often inclined to take the easy way out. And then we ask: Why should I do what morality demands of me? And that's why we seek philosophical foundations - because our every-day reasoning might not support our moral ideas.


Explanatory adequacy and justification

According to Korsgaard theories of moral concepts are concerned with three fundamental questions: What the meaning of moral concepts is (what their contents are), what they apply to, and where we get these concepts from.

Any theory of morality has to explain what she calls the practical and psychological effects of moral ideas, i.e. that our moral ideas can and often do motivate us to do something, or not to do something, and that we tend to feel that people who act morally somehow deserve to have good things happen to them, while those who do not, somehow don't deserve good things. And people have even been prepared to die for their conviction.

But explanatory adequacy is simply not enough. We also have to justify the claims that morality seems to make on us. And that justification has to be directed at the agent. If we cannot justify the claims morality makes on us then we fail to answer the normative question.

If someone asks why he ought to tell the truth or not make a promise he knows he can't keep, it is not sufficient to explain to that person that the reason he has for acting in such a way is his moral ideas. Because his moral ideas are exactly what he is questioning. What right, he might ask, does morality have to make such claims on me, and why should I live up to them? This is what we want to answer.


Voluntarism as an answer to the normative question

First I want to prevent any misunderstanding about the word “voluntarism”. The word is derived from the Latin word voluntas, meaning will. But the theory does not claim that the sources of normativity are to be found in our own will or that the claims morality makes on us are claims which we are prepared to make on ourselves. This is the view Korsgaard calls “The Appeal to Autonomy”.(1) The voluntarist claims that obligation depends on the will of someone else, a legislator perhaps or even God as the medieval voluntarists held.(2) His free choice was the root of moral order. And although Hobbes and Pufendorf, the philosophers Korsgaard has selected to represent voluntarism, ultimately traced obligation to Gods command, it is not necessary for the voluntarist to do so.

Now, Hobbes and Pufendorf believed that there was no obligation prior to a sovereign imposing laws on us. So if the sovereign were removed from power (and nobody took his place) obligation would disappear, vanish into thin air so to speak. But the content of morality would stay the same. It is given by reason and is independent of the sovereign. We would not be obligated to be just and do what is right, but certain actions would still be good and just, and others bad and unjust. If the content of morality wasn't independent of the legislative will, right and wrong would be no more than the whim of the legislator.

Why, then, should I do the right thing? The answer is: I should do the right thing just because it is the right thing to do; i.e. because morality requires me to act in that way.(3) But I'm not yet obligated to act in that fashion (there are still no consequences if I act immorally). Morality hasn't “the special force of requirement”(4) until a legislator is in the position to impose sanctions on me. When a legislator is in this position, three reasons may motivate me to do the right thing. First, I might do it out of fear of punishment. That would not be a proper motive for acting morally. Indeed some might say (e.g. Kant) that acting out of fear of punishment is not acting morally at all, even when doing exactly what morality demands. I'm not sure whether Hobbes or Pufendorf would go so far as to say that but in any case it is not a proper motive. Fear of punishment is only supposed to establish the authority of the legislator. Second, I might see why it is the right thing to do and that would be my only motive. And at last, I might do it because it is required of me, because it is my duty. Kant would agree with Hobbes and Pufendorf that this last motive would be the only proper motive.(5)

So, according to voluntarism, morality becomes normative only when a legislator is in place to impose sanctions on us. That, according to voluntarism, is the source of normativity.


Problems for voluntarism

If obligation only first comes into existence with an authority that makes laws for us, then why are we obligated to submit to that authority in the first place? Let's imagine a group of people stranded on a deserted island. One of them, the biggest and the strongest, gets the brilliant idea that they should all have laws and obligations to each other. And then he decides to write down a few laws for the whole group. Are the people obligated to abide by those laws, or aren't they? If they are, then where does that obligation come from, and are there any more such obligations? And if they are not, then how can this man maintain that his laws have any meaning? Is it just because he's bigger and stronger than everyone else? According to Hobbes and Pufendorf his strength would be the source of his authority and hence also of the obligations.(6)

If his strength is the source of obligation then the people are obligated by his laws as long as he is able to use his strength to punish them. If he is somehow not able to punish them then they don't seem to be obligated any more. He certainly can't punish them for something he doesn't know about. And this has the peculiar consequences that the people have no obligation to abide by the law if they can get away with breaking it. Breaking the law only first becomes a crime when it is detected and punished for. So even if someone breaks the law and is caught but gets off because of a technicality then that person does not get punished and consequently has not committed a crime. But this is absurd. As Korsgaard points out “…authority cannot be reduced to any kind of power. And the relation in which moral claims stand to us is a relation of authority, not one of power.”(7)

Notice finally that since the contents of morality are not given by the legislator not all laws are necessarily moral. The contents of morality are given by reason and the legislator is only needed to make it into a law. But is the legislator infallible? If he isn't then what is the relation between the laws and morality? For it is quite possible that the legislator were to make a mistake by passing an unjust law. An it is conceivable that in some cases morality might even demand of us that we break the law. But if morality demands that I break an unjust law, can it then be said that I am obligated to break the law? Where does that obligation come from? Certainly not from the legislator. Or don't I have any moral obligation in this case? Then perhaps I don't have any moral obligation at all - only obligations to the legislator, to abide by the law. This can be avoided only if the legislator is infallible.

Is voluntarism an adequate explanation of morality? Can it explain the behaviour of others? Yes, I suppose it can. That's easy enough. But the more difficult question is whether it is adequate to justify our moral behaviour. And voluntarism has got a real problem with supporting the authority of morality. It can't be reduced to power and we can't derive it from a social contract or any such thing because we cannot be said to be obligated to honour those agreements. If we ask why we are obligated to honour those agreements we either get an infinite regress or we could say that the contracts' authority comes from morality - but that would beg the question. This is where the realist takes over and says that morality is irreducible, clear and simple.

Strictly speaking we wouldn't call a moral command law unless there is a sovereign making it into a law. But is this merely a linguistic point as Thomas Nagel concludes?(8) Let's assume that Hobbes is merely making a linguistic point. How does that make a difference? Either way morality is independent of the legislative will and possibly even of God. So Hobbes can still get the objection that he has not yet explained why it is that morality, even if it isn't strictly speaking law, commands us and what right it has to do so. But from Nagels' point of view Hobbes isn't a voluntarist in Korsgaard's sense but a realist. So instead of failing to answer the normative question, Hobbes refuses to. But Hobbes doesn't refuse to answer the question. In one place he says:

“So that the nature of justice, consisteth in keeping of valid covenants: but the validity of covenants begins not but with the constitution of a civil power, sufficient to compel men to keep them: and then it is also that propriety begins.”(9)

It seems that Hobbes is trying to derive morality from civil power. But this begs the question. How could he not have noticed that he was arguing in a circle? Or didn't he consider that to be a problem? Perhaps he thought of it this way: In the state of nature we have no obligations. Then we decide to make a contract. We have no obligation to keep that contract before we make it but once we have made that contract we suddenly have obligations e.g. to keep contracts. And so there is no turning back once the contract has been made. Is this a pseudo-solution?


Conclusions

Earlier in the paper a question was asked: Why should I do what morality asks of me? The voluntarist answers: Because it's right, but, more importantly, because it's the law! Now, the content of morality isn't a whim of the legislator; it's independent of him. And furthermore, the legislator is not infallible. Therefore some laws might be unjust or immoral. But there cannot be any obligation to break the unjust laws, as there is no legislator to obligate us thus. And so the question stands: why should I do what morality commands?

As we have already seen voluntarism has to deal with rather serious problems. There's the matter of reducing authority to power which cannot be done. Before the voluntarist knows it he may have argued in a circle or he might have escaped the circle in which case he faces an infinite regress. If he gives up and says that moral concepts are irreducible he has converted to realism and has abandoned his position (which happens to have been the historical development).

These problems arise when the voluntarist attempts to establish the authority of the legislator. To avoid them his authority would have to be beyond question.(10) And where can such a legislator to be found? Korsgaard will go on to argue that he is to be found in the reflective structure of ones own consciousness.(11)

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(1) Cf. Korsgaard, Christine, The Sources of Normativity, (Camebridge: Camebridge UP, 1996), p.19.
(2) Although it's also possible to argue that the roots of morality are in human nature and that our own nature has authority over us and is able to give us laws. This is very close to voluntarism. Korsgaard feels this is the best way to interpret Shaftesbury. Korsgaard, op. cit., p. 66.
(3) The voluntarists don't actually explain the nature of morality itself any more than the realists do. They are primarily concerned with establishing the authority of the legislator.
(4) Cf. Korsgaard, op. cit., p. 26.
(5) That is, if one is to act morally, out of duty and not merely in accordance with duty.
(6) Pufendorf also adds that the sovereign must have, in addition to strength, just cause to impose laws. So his authority also springs from the people's gratitude for his benevolence. This is what Pufendorf calls legitimate authority. Korsgaard points out that the notion of legitimate authority is, however, already a normative notion and can therefore not be used to answer the normative question. Cf. Korsgaard, op. cit., p.29.
(7) Korsgaard, op. cit., p. 30.
(8) Thomas Nagel, “Universality and the reflective self”, in Korsgaard, op. cit., p. 208.
(9) Hobbes, Leviathan, (London: Penguin, 1985), pp. 202f (I.15).
(10) Cf. Korsgaard, op. cit., p. 104.
(11) Ibidem.