A Critique of Moral Particularism’s Reliance on Moral Reasons

Moral particularism, which is one of the intellectual orientations in contemporary ethics, opposes the importance of principles in morality and in principled theories of ethics on metaethical grounds, and regards it detrimental to moral thought and judgement. I believe that the particularist’s challenge against principled ethics is important, and therefore it is a requirement that the problems of particularism are identified to be then solved. In this paper, I investigate some problems of particularism that stem from particularists’ reliance on reasons. I first explain what reason is in moral metaphysics debates, and after discussing the relations between holism, atomism, particularism, and generalism, I make clear why particularism’s reliance on reasons is not useful for it. Reliance on reasons is also detrimental to particularism, in the sense that causes inadequacies in it. For, first, conceiving morality only in terms of reasons at best creates an inadequate conception of moral obligation and therefore of morality; and second, narrowly conceiving moral principles in terms of general reasons prevents particularism from being inclusive against all principled theories of ethics. I discuss why the categorical imperative as a significant example shows that the scope of moral principles is broader than the scope of moral reasons.