Can moral judgments be true or false? Or is ethics, at bottom, a purely subjective matter, for individuals to choose, or perhaps relative to the culture of the society in which one lives? We might have just found out the answer. Derek Parfit’s entirely secular arguments, and the comprehensive way in which he tackles alternative positions, have, for the first time in decades, put those who reject objectivism in ethics on the defensive. His book, On What Matters, is an intellectual treat for anyone who wants to understand not so much “what matters” as whether anything really can matter, in an objective sense. Parfit’s real interest is in combating subjectivism and nihilism. Unless he can show that objectivism is true, he believes, nothing matters.
Parfit argues that the best versions of three prominent ethical theories traditionally viewed as being opposed to each other actually converge. The theories in question are consequentialism, Kantian deontology, and contractualism. The resulting theories are: a version of rule consequentialism according to which "everyone ought to follow the principles whose universal acceptance would make things go best"; a contractualist formulation of Kant's categorical imperative, according to which "everyone ought to follow the principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally will"; and a revised account of Scanlon's social contract theory, according to which "everyone ought to follow the principles that no one could reasonably reject".
Parfit argues that the correctness of proposed moral rules turns on what everyone could rationally will. So, we have to know what constitutes willing rationally. According to Parfit's theory, if we have true beliefs, what we can rationally will depends on what good reasons there are for willing this or willing that. And he contends that the good reasons we can have for willing universal acceptance of one set of rules rather than another come either from facts about what the consequences would be for others or from facts about what the consequences would be for ourselves. Parfit's big idea is that the rules whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally will, which are also the rules that no one could reasonably reject, are in fact the rules whose universal acceptance would make things have the best consequences, impartially considered. There is no other set of rules that everyone has sufficient reason to will that everyone accept. Everyone ought to follow the rules that no one could reasonably reject. The rules that no one could reasonably reject coincide with the rules whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally will.
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