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This chapter offers some reflections about how the Formula of Universal Law (FUL) has been understood by those who think that it can provide substantive guidance about choice and action. If the FUL were a purely formal criterion of universalizability, it would not reliably lead to any substantive moral judgments. These theorists have not, in general, understood the FUL as purely formal. Rather, they have incorporated a conception of rational agency into this formula, either explicitly or implicitly. The chapter is organized as follows. Section II briefly discusses some of John Rawls's remarks about what he has called Kant's ‘moral constructivism’ — specifically his claim that a conception of the person plays a central role in specifying the content of a constructivist moral conception. Section III asks how the FUL needs to be understood if it is to play its intended role in the extended argument of the Groundwork. Section IV shows why one is entitled to read a conception of rational agency into the FUL, and then considers some of the elements of this conception. In particular, it tries to make precise different senses in which rational agents with autonomy are independent spheres of judgment and choice and the sources of their own actions. Finally, Section V looks at various ways in which this conception of autonomous agency figures in determining whether a maxim can be willed as universal law without inconsistency.

A strategy developed by Thomas E. Hill Jr. — that of using the kingdom of ends as a moral constructivist device for deliberating about specific moral questions — is adopted as a further interpretive tool for moving from the basic humanity formulation to particular duties. But unlike Hill, it is emphasized that this use of the kingdom of ends presupposes that to be an end in oneself, or a deliberator in the kingdom of ends, one must be committed to morality. As an example of a specific moral issue, the moral status of non-human animals is considered. The examination of animals’ moral status shows that although the good will reading of the humanity formulation may seem extreme, it can lead to moderate conclusions about specific moral issues. It is also suggested that the emphasis on a distinction between direct and indirect duties is an oversimplification of a Kantian view of animals’ moral status.

Relativism is a bundle of different doctrines in ontology, semantics, epistemology, methodology, and ethics. This chapter starts with a defence of moderate moral relativism: morality is not a natural aspect of the world, but a human‐made social construction. Therefore, moral judgements (‘a’ is good, ‘a’ is right) receive truth‐values only relative to some historically defined system of standards. This does not entail radical moral relativism, which claims that moral systems are equally good or incomparable by some rational principles. In the same way, the epistemological notion of justification is relative to accepted standards. Again, this moderate cognitive relativism does not entail radical relativism. Further, it does not entail a corresponding relativism about truth and reality. Cognitive relativism thus fails precisely at those points where it conflicts with scientific realism. Debates about relativism are illustrated by a discussion of feminist epistemology.

Hume initiated a powerful and distinctive form of moral constructivism, which Kant adopted (via Rousseau) and further developed. Their form of moral constructivism identifies and justifies strictly objective basic moral principles and the practices they structure (social institutions), whilst maintaining neutrality about moral realism and its alternatives. Their form of moral constructivism justifies cognitivism about moral principles through its account of justification, rather than by appeal to alleged, ever-controversial moral ‘truths’, ‘facts’, or ‘values’. Their distinctive form of moral constructivism shows that issues about moral realism and its alternatives are subsidiary, not central, to normative moral philosophy—and that justice is central to morals.

Uniquely, Natural Law Constructivism can resolve the key challenge to rational justification posed by the Pyrrhonian Dilemma of the Criterion. Hume’s and Kant’s constructivist method is both sound and significant because it is based upon a core principle of rational justification as such within non-formal domains. Explicating this principle of Natural Law Constructivism illuminates and justifies four key aspects of the autonomy of rational judgment, including our positive moral freedom. Explicating these aspects of autonomous rational judgment shows how, inter alia, Kant’s constructivism is fundamentally social because it is fundamentally inter-subjective. It also shows how Kant’s constructivism accommodates historical factors bearing upon the appropriateness and legitimacy of social and political institutions. These advantages respond to common objections to Kant’s moral philosophy; none requires Kant’s Transcendental Idealism.

Kant’s Natural Law Constructivism affords an illuminating, powerful critique of Gauthier’s exemplary moral contractarianism. Hume’s and Kant’s Natural Law Constructivism is neutral regarding moral realism, but is constructivist about identifying and justifying moral norms. The basic acts relevant to contractarianism or contractualism concern voluntary agreements we make. Using agreement to establish basic norms faces serious difficulties: those highlighted by Socrates’ question to Euthyphro. Natural Law Constructivism avoids these problems by showing how basic moral norms can be identified and justified independently of voluntary agreement. It further shows that an individual’s justification of his or her acts to others, and the justification of the acts of others to any individual, are inseparable aspects of one and the same justificatory reasoning in which voluntary agreement plays no constitutive role.

This chapter provides an historical explanation of the epistemological basis for autonomy rights. The history begins with Mill’s revolutionary social process epistemology in On Liberty. On Mill’s account, to attain rational beliefs and to approach true beliefs, we depend on being part of a process of free give-and-take of opinion. The chapter contrasts Mill’s account based on this real-world process with Habermas’s account of normative validity based on an ideal process of rational discourse. The chapter criticizes Rawls’s move from metaphysical to political liberalism, which led Rawls to dispense with truth and to replace it with a relativized version of reasonableness. The chapter endorses Habermas’s insistence that engaging in normative inquiry commits us to standards of validity that transcend our particular life world. However, the chapter criticizes Habermas for a move that parallels Rawls’s: Habermas’s decision to understand our normative commitments as factual rather than metaphysical. Finally, the chapter reverses the order of explanation in Habermas’s theory of normative validity. It is not by reference to an ideal process of rational discourse that the results of our real-world process of free give-and-take of opinion attain whatever validity they might have; it is the real-world process that provides the grounding for our beliefs about what an ideal process would be like.

Central issues about objectivity and conventionalism are detailed by reconsidering Socrates’ question to Euthyphro about the status of piety and the gods’ love of piety; contemporary forms of moral constructivism are shown to be ill suited to address those issues. Their common weakness serves to highlight central merits of the distinctive Natural Law Constructivism of Hume and Kant.

The centrality of principles in Kant’s moral philosophy is examined: what is distinctively ‘Kantian’ about them, why Kant presents—in a special, ‘Critical’ sense—a ‘metaphysical’ system of moral principles, and how these ‘formal’ principles are to be used in practice. These points are central to how Kant thinks pure reason can be practical. These features often puzzle Anglophone readers, in part due to Kant’s opposition to moral empiricism. Special attention is paid to Kant’s reasons for rejecting moral empiricism. These reasons accord with Hume’s own demonstration of the deficiencies of moral sentiments as a basis for normative theory (chapter 4), and with the core problems facing contemporary forms of moral constructivism identified in chapter 2.

The aim in this chapter is to consider a particular line of criticism that has been used by constructivists to argue against moral realism, which is to claim that if moral realism were true, this would then threaten or undermine our autonomy as agents. This chapter calls this the argument from autonomy. It argues that the best way to understand the argument from autonomy is to relate it to the issue of obligatoriness; but that there are a variety of strategies to be explored concerning obligation before it is clear that the right response to this issue is a constructivist one, or that the realist is hereby compelled to surrender their position.

One argument that has been used by Christine Korsgaard and others in favour of constructivism, is that the constructivist is better able than the realist to avoid the threat of moral scepticism, where this has also fuelled a certain way of reading Kant, namely as a constructivist rather than a realist about the moral value of rational beings. For, it is held, we can see a constructivist and not a realist sensibility at work in the way in which Kant seeks to address sceptical concerns over such value claims, particularly in the Formula of Humanity argument in the Groundwork. By contrast, this chapter argues that when properly understood this text suggests the opposite: namely, that Kant’s attitude to scepticism here fits better with the one that Korsgaard attributes to the realist, and that the constructivist manoeuvres that she claims to identify are not to be found.

Chapter 3 examines and reconstructs Hume’s account of the basic rules of justice, and how these rules count, on his view, as natural laws. It develops significantly further Baier’s (1991) insightful suggestions about the character of Hume’s analysis to show that it is a powerful fragment of, and basis for, Natural Law Constructivism.

Richard Dean examines the popular strategy of developing a system of moral duties based on respect for some capacity possessed by all persons. Dean argues that not only is there a deep ambiguity in the concept of a “capacity,” as either a mere potential or as a developed and stable ability or characteristic, but that several prominent moral theories based on respect for a capacity trade problematically on this ambiguity. Dean suggests that the prevalence of this mistake, and the apparent absence of theories that avoid it, is evidence that such a strategy for developing moral theories is not viable.