Public Reasons and Moral Normativity

This paper aims to discuss the public conception of reasons proposed by Christine Korsgaard to justify moral obligation in her books The Sources of Normativity (1996a) and Self-constitution (2009). It will be mainly emphasized two connected points. On the one hand, Korsgaard's description of the public nature of reasons, which states that their normative force is potentially shared, is not enough for her own account of universal moral obligations, because these obligations are based on the existing shared normativity of reasons. On the other hand, Korsgaard does not consider her own explanation of the normativity of reasons to explain the movement from the shareable normative force of reasons to their existing shared normativity, and this explanation has damaging consequences to support the unconditional respect for humanity. Furthermore, I will review alternative ways in which the publicity of reasons can be understood and outline a trilemma for Korsgaard's justification of morality.