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Show Chapter IX. The Problem of Moral Justification 380 presuppose that we already are, at least to the extent of being positively disposed toward the acceptance of some moral precepts or other, without answering the question of whether it is rational to be so disposed. It will then try to convince us of why we should accept those particular precepts which are implied by the PGC. To say that Gewirth's conception of action as envisaged by moral precepts is not morally neutral is thus to say - at the very least - that it implicitly presupposes that the authoritative question already has been answered positively. This necessitates some revision in our conception of Gewirth's justificatory strategy. Initially we understood Gewirth to intend to begin with the concept of action as a premise; from this concept to derive two generic features of it, from which in turn would follow certain logically implicit normative judgments - specifically, certain generic rights and right-claims; and from these to derive the PGC. This would follow the traditional Kantian Deductivist strategy, of deriving from weak and generally accepted premises substantive normative results through conceptual analysis. But upon closer examination, we see that Gewirth begins not with the concept of action, but instead with the concept of a moral precept. From this premise he derives a conception of action that he claims all such moral precepts imply; from this the two generic features, from these the normative judgments, and from these, finally, the PGC. That is, he begins with the formal concept of a moral precept in general, and finally derives a particular moral precept for which he claims universal application. The PGC, then, in fact is justified as following deductively from the concept of a moral precept. The concept of a moral precept is neutral among competing moral theories. But it is not morally neutral in its content, the way the concept of action is. Gewirth's particular conception of a moral precept contains particularly strong moral assumptions - choice, freedom, value, and power. So far we have assumed that Gewirth's concept of action as behavior controlled by unforced choice is that envisaged by all moral precepts. We must now examine that assumption more closely. By the voluntariness of action, Gewirth means that the behavior does not occur from direct or indirect external physical or psychological compulsion, such as gusts of wind or terrorist threats; or from uncontrollable causes internal to the person, such as reflexes, ignorance or disease (31). When these mitigating causes are absent, Gewirth argues, the agent's unforced and informed choice is the necessary and sufficient condition of the behavior.... When there is such control, the person chooses on the basis of informed reasons he has for acting as he does.... The self, person, or agent to whom the choices belong may be viewed as an organized system of dispositions in which such informed reasons are coherently interrelated with other desires and choices. Insofar as a person's behavior derives from this system, it is the © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
