Human morality / Samuel Scheffler.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introductory themes -- Morality's demands and their limits: competing views -- Assessment, deliberation, and theory -- Overridingness, human correctness, and motivational naturalism -- Reason, psychology, and the authority of morality -- Purity and humanity -- The case for moderation -- Morality, politics, and the self -- Index.

Some people believe that the demands of morality coincide with the requirements of an enlightened self-interest. Others believe that morality is diametrically opposed to considerations of self-interest. Written by one of the most prominent moral philosophers working today, this important study argues that there is another position, intermediate between these extremes, which makes better sense of the totality of our moral thought and practice. Scheffler elaborates this position via an examination of morality's content, scope, authority, and deliberative role. Although conflicts between morality and self-interest do arise, according to this position, nevertheless morality is fundamentally a reasonable and humane phenomenon. Moreover, the psychological bases of effective moral motivation have sources deep within the self, and morally motivated individuals try to shape their own interests so as to avoid conflict with morality. Human practices and institutions help to determine the prevalence of these motives, and because in this and other ways they influence the degree to which conflicts between morality and self-interest actually occur, the extent of such conflict is not fixed or immutable, and is in part a social and a political issue.