The Moral Universe

The Moral Universe marks an importance advance in metaethical thinking, offering the most sustained and sophisticated development of nonnaturalistic moral realism to date. Employing a novel philosophical method, it addresses central questions in metaethics concerning the nature of moral reality, its fundamental laws, its relation to the natural world, and its normative authority.The authors advance new ways of answering these questions, contending that moral standards regarding what to do and how to be are not only objectively authoritative, but essentially so.Rather than arising from personal schemes or collective ideals, morality flows from the nature of things. One of the principal aims of the book is to show how this view accommodates and explains a wide range of data concerning the metaphysical and normative dimensions of morality. Along the way, the book offers novel characterizations of moral realism and nonnaturalism, defends and explains the existence of substantive moral conceptual truths, supplies a new treatment of moral supervenience, substantiates the categoricity and importance of moral reasons, and presents a strategy for identifying the source of morality. Exemplifying a commitment to the integrity of moral philosophy,The Moral Universe also tackles fundamental issues in value theory and normative ethics in the service of developing a systematic, explanatorily potent version of nonnaturalist realism.

John Bengson, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin,Terence Cuneo, Marsh Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, University of Vermont,Russ Shafer-Landau, Professor of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin-Madison

John Bengson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin.

Terence Cuneo is Marsh Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy at the University of Vermont. He is the author of six books, as well as the editor of numerous others. He works primarily in the areas of moral philosophy, history of modern philosophy, and philosophy of religion.

Russ Shafer-Landau is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is Past President of the American Philosophical Association (Central), editor of Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Director of the Marc Sanders Prize in Metaethics, and organizer of the annual Madison Metaethics Workshop. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books in philosophy.

IntroductionPART I FOUNDATIONS1. Methodology in Metaethics2. Moral Realism and Its Burdens3. Nonnaturalism and EnchantmentPART II METAPHYSICS4. Moral Reality5. Moral Conceptual Truths and Real Definitional Facts6. Objectivity7. Tethering Moral RealityPART III NORMATIVITY8. Strong Moral Reasons: Defense9. Categoricity without Alienation10. Strong Moral Reasons: Explanation11. Why Be Moral?PART IV MORAL ESSENCE12. The Principle of Befittingness13. Deep NormativityEnvoi