Good-Reasons Theory

The Good-Reasons Theory or Good Reasons approach is a meta-ethical theory that states simply that ethical conduct is justified if the actor has good reasons for that conduct. The Good Reasons approach is not opposed to ethical theory per se, but is antithetical to wholesale justifications of morality and stresses that our moral conduct requires no further ontological or other fundament beyond concrete justifications.

This approach is associated mainly with the ideas of Stephen Toulmin, Jon Wheatley and Kai Nielsen.

Opposition to the Good-Reasons Theory

In Jean Renoir's greatest movie, La Règle du jeu, (in English Rules of the Game) the character Octave (played by Renoir himself) says, "Ce qui est terrible sur cette terre, c’est que tout le monde a ses raisons,"—in English it is: What is terrible about this world is that everyone has his reasons (i.e. everyone thinks he is right).

The problem is that everyone has what he thinks are good reasons for whatever he does. Thus the good-reasons approach that claims that conduct is ethically justified if the actor has good reasons for it is made vacuous—every actor does, in fact, think that he has good reasons, or is at least able to produce what he thinks are good reasons if questioned.

References

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• Toulmin, Stephen (1950). An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
• Nielsen, Kai (April 1959). The 'Good Reasons Approach' and 'Ontological Justifications' of Morality. The Philosophical Quarterly 9 (35): 116–130.
• Wheatley, Jon (October 1973). Ethics Does Not Exist. Ethics 84 (1): 62–69.

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