published on December 11, 2017

The Moral Truth about Normative Constructivism

Kenneth Westphal provides here a masterful evolutionary account of Normative Constructivism in its classical development, which encompasses Hobbes, Hume, Kant and Rousseau, and culminates in Hegel¡¯s vision of Sittlichkeit. In the process of endorsing the comprehensive moral anthropology of the latter, Westphal rejects the essentialist/objectivist rhetoric of Plato¡¯s Euthyphro and invokes Hume¡¯s alternative to Moral Realism, which is articulated in the view that what might appear ¡°artificial¡± and ¡°conventional¡± in our understanding of the rules (norms) of Justice does not necessarily imply that these rules are thus arbitrary. Westphal advocates a metaphysically agnostic Normative Constructivism, which separates our claims to what, on the one hand, is deemed to be morally factual, and on the other, is simply morally relevant. Whilst I acknowledge that this separation of claims is not only possible, but necessary, I argue that it is not, in any critically viable sense, consistent with the rejection of moral objectivism.