The Limits of Moral Authority

Download or read book The Limits of Moral Authority written by Dale Dorsey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-21 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dale Dorsey considers one of the most fundamental questions in philosophical ethics: to what extent do the demands of morality have normative authority over us and our lives? Must we conform to moral requirements? Most who have addressed this question have treated the normative significance of morality as simply a fact to be explained. But Dorsey argues that this traditional assumption is misguided. According to Dorsey, not only are we not required to conform to moral demands, conforming to morality's demands will not always even be normatively permissible—-moral behavior can be (quite literally) wrong. This view is significant not only for understanding the content and force of the moral point of view, but also for understanding the basic elements of how one ought to live.