INTRODUCTION

Over the course of the last two lectures I have sketched the way in which the normative question took shape in the debates of modern moral philosophy. Voluntarists try to explain normativity in what is in some sense the most natural way: we are subject to laws, including the laws of morality, because we are subject to lawgivers. But when we ask why we should be subject to those lawgivers, an infinite regress threatens. Realists try to block that regress by postulating the existence of entities — objective values, reasons, or obligations — whose intrinsic normativity forbids further questioning. But why should we believe in these entities? In the end, it seems, we will be prepared to assert that such entities exist only because — and only if — we are already confident that the claims of morality are justified.