Moral Requirements and Permissions, and the Requirements and Permissions of Reason
This chapter offers an account of personal ideals that sheds light on the relationship between the imperatives of morality and the imperatives of rationality. Many people endorse the ideal of treating others “with concern and respect” in such a way as to accommodate one’s other ideals. Living up to this accommodationist ideal closely approximates doing what one takes oneself to have sufficient reason to do, all things considered. In contrast, the requirements one must satisfy in order to live up to one’s nonaccommodationist ideals do not have a claim to be the requirements of rationality because they do not take the normative significance of other ideals into account. Accommodationist and nonaccommodationist ideals give rise to different forms of incoherence. To appreciate the ways in which our ideals fail to form a perfect unity is to appreciate the extent to which coherence is also a substantive ideal.