On What Grounds Doth Thou Commandeth Me O Lord?

Christine Korsgaard's The Sources of Normativity summarized in a dialogue with God

Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?

Lamentations 3:37

Avanus, as beautiful as she was wise, after listening to the preacher speak, finally asked him: But why should I listen to you and oblige these commands of yours and your Lord?

The Preacher: These are the Lord’s commandments and if reservations you still harbour, then I suggest you bring these doubts to The One upstairs.

So Avanus brings the matter straight to heaven.

From the throne of The Most High, a thunderous voice booms: Who is she that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not? I command thee and obligate thee and thou shalt abide.

Avanus: But on what grounds doth thou commandeth me O lord?

And so God answers: I command thee on the grounds that you shall be rewarded with eternal bliss in heaven for obedience to my commands and to suffer eternal punishment in hell for transgression. Thou knowest this treat and threat are enforceable by me for I am very powerful.

Avanus: Oh come now, knock it off. Yes, yes I know you are the very-mighty and you have the power to wield both carrot and stick. But surely there is more to it than that? Rābiʿa, that famed mystic, sought torches to set heaven ablaze and waters to quench hell’s fires to rid herself of sweet incentives and bitter threats of punishment and yet she abideth by the moral law still. So what gives O lord? On what grounds was she compelled to abide by the commands of Allah? In any case, the carrot and stick cannot be the sole grounds for the obligations you make me to bear.

God: Rābiʿa was an unusual one. What to make of someone who lacks neither fear of punishment nor desire for pleasure? Rābiʿa obeyed the law because she was a seeker and what she sought was moral truth. She saw the moral truth and immediately experienced a turn of heart. Now in possession of moral facts, she obliged the obligations that were set upon her.

Avanus: So you’re saying that she was what? Some kind of moral realist or moral veritist? Skeptical as I am of the existence of these objective moral truths, I will grant you that they exist for the sake of this argument. But what is the purpose of these moral truths? When I discover these moral truths, what then? Those truths and facts may have been enough to motivate Rābiʿa because what they were for might be self-evident to her. But what if they are not self-evident to me, so then why should this compel me to oblige the obligations you set before me? I do not know these moral truths and neither do I have access to the moral certainty of these facts as the mystics do. So again I ask, on what grounds doth thou commandeth me O lord?

God: I see that you are not a teleological veritist. In that case, might I appeal to your human nature, then. You have desires and impulses do you not? Some of these impulses contradict each other. Say an impulse to oblige my commands arises in you because I issue a demand in an imperious tone but in tandem another impulse arises in you to disobey my commands because of insolence or doubt. Do you act out these two contradictory impulses?

Avanus: No, of course not. I would have to choose between the two.

God: And how would you choose which of the two is the more choiceworthy?

Avanus: I would reflect; weigh and evaluate which of the two options have worth to me as a chooser. And then I would endorse the impulse that is closer to me.

God: Well there you are! That would be grounds on which I obligate you. Reflective endorsement. Your moral dispositions are either reinforced or undermined by reflection.

Avanus: Wait, wait, wait. Holup. I reflect on which of my desires I want to endorse. If I want to oblige your commands, then it is me that decides. This still leaves open the question of why I, after pausing and reflectively reasoning, should oblige the obligations set before me. You still have to give me obligations that are worthy of obligating. So why must I listen to you?

God: Ah well now it is up to me. I must give you reasons that can address you in your position and be justified on your side. You understand that your reflective endorsement is what gives your impulses your stamp of approval. But your stamp of approval only comes about if you have chosen what to endorse. But in order to endorse, you must first evaluate. And in order to evaluate, you must have values and standards against which you can compare how your impulses stack up and which ones deserve your endorsement. In other words, you can reason by recognizing and responding to these impulses in accordance with your values. If I command you with reasons, you must be capable of responding to them in accordance with your values. Do you follow?

Avanus: Makes sense to me. But why should I recognize and respond to these commands as opposed to any other source of normativity? What if the values I choose are to disobey some high-and-mighty’s commands?

God: The commands of your lord are special in that they reflect the ultimate source of normativity, which is the principle that requires us to treat all rational beings with dignity and respect. This is a principle that is based on the intrinsic value and worth of rational beings as such. Insofar as one considers oneself to be a rational being with intrinsic values, one should act in such a way that one would be willing for everyone to act as one does. It is not just a matter of individual preference or opinion, but is grounded in the value and worth of rational beings, and is thus a source of normativity that applies to all rational beings in general. This is what is called the moral law which is the requirement that one acts in accordance with the dignity and worth of all individuals. You may choose to disobey my commands if they be arbitrary. But if my commands are in accordance with the moral law, you cannot in good faith deny the legitimacy of such a command.

Avanus: But wouldn’t this also apply to you?

God: Yes, in fact, it would. You can decide whether a command I have commanded is in line with the moral law by examining its content and seeing if it promotes the values of dignity and worth that are central to the moral law — the requirement that one should act in accordance with the dignity and worth of moral agents. You can also look to your own moral intuitions and the intuitions of others to see if the command is consistent with our shared understanding of morality.

Avanus: Would this then mean that anyone who commands in accordance with the moral law can obligate another? In other words, you O lord would not be the sole source of normativity and others could obligate me too? But more importantly, that I would be able to obligate you as well?

God: My child, how clever you are to see this. Yes.

Avanus: But aren’t you supposed to be the sovereign of all creation? The uncommanded divine commander who. . .

God: My dear, what do you take me for? Some kind of Divine Command Theorist? If that’s what you’re thinking then you’re barking up the wrong kind of metaethics. In any case, we have already covered that commands backed up by the carrot and stick are inadequate justification. Besides, my commands, divine or not, do not rely on carrot-and-stick as the source of their normativity, as we’ve just established.

Avanus: Okayyy but I’m still not sold. Why should I value wanting to follow the moral law? Why should I value the desire to act in accordance with the dignity and worth of all moral agents? Why should I be motivated to do what the moral law requires?

God: Are you not a moral agent yourself?

Avanus: I don’t know. Let’s say for the sake of argument that I am. Where are you going with this?

God: Say if you were a moral agent, then you would have to constitute yourself as such. If some motivations are necessarily shared by all possible agents – if, in other words, some motives are constitutive of agency – then there would be an inbuilt motivation that came with viewing yourself as an agent. You would have to view yourself as a unified entity. As an agent, you would need to draw some kind of unified view of yourself that includes your actions, your goals, and your values into a coherent sense of self. Without the integrity that arises from drawing these values, goals and actions into a unified whole, you would not be able to constitute yourself as someone with a unified identity and moral status. If at all you should view yourself as capable of choice, then you must constitute yourself as a choosing agent because only choosers can choose. If you are not capable of choice, then you cannot be a chooser because you cannot really choose. So let me ask you this, are your choices real or nah?

Avanus: This is gonna take us down a free will argument isn’t it? I don’t know. I feel like my choices are real. Is that enough?

God: If you feel that your choices are real, then this makes you a chooser. In other words, a choosing agent. As an agent capable of choice, you would need to make choices in accordance with what you consider to be choiceworthy. How would you decide which choices are more or less worthy? There must be a standard against which you evaluate, judge and compare their differences in worth.

Avanus: I can see that standards are necessary for evaluating and making reflective choices. But where do these standards come from? There are so many evaluative standards, how will I know which one among them is right for me?

God: The standard comes from you holding a particular identity. If you have a chooser’s identity, then you act according to some standard of choiceworthiness. If you have a rational identity, then you choose according to a standard of rationality. If you have a moral identity, then you choose according to a moral standard — the moral law.

Avanus: But why should I want to view myself as having a moral identity?

God: Because you have objective moral status whether you want to or not. And your moral status can be grounded passively by virtue of your sentience or actively by virtue of your agency. Do you not care about either your sentience or agency? Do you not care about your capacity to feel pleasure and pain? Do you not care about your capacity to act and take credit and blame for your actions?

Avanus: I do care about pleasure and credit. I don’t want pain and blame though.

God: Well, that’s too bad because that is what it means to be a sentient agent. The pleasure makes sense only in contrast to pain. And credit can only come about in relation to blame. These things come as a package, for there is no having one without the other.

Avanus: Okay fine. And so these intrinsically value-laden concepts constitute my moral identity — my sense of moral self. And insofar as I care about these things in me, I should also care about them in others.

God: Yes.

Avanus: And so if I see myself as having moral identity, then I should behave in accordance with the standards of morality and to violate moral standards is to violate them upon pain of denying my own moral identity.

God: Yes.

Avanus: Say I accept all this. What if I choose to go ahead and violate these moral standards and deny my own moral identity. Could I not simply choose to be evil and do whatever my heart desires? After all, why should I care about hypothetical imperative this and categorical imperative that?

God: Yes but then you would lose the legitimacy to command another moral agent as a moral equal. In other words, you would lose your grounds for commanding me. At which point, I must now ask you, my dear Avanus: On what grounds doth thou commandeth me, my lady?

Satisfied with the answer, Avanus returns home with the grounds of normativity now under her ken.

Sources

Korsgaard, C. M. (1996). The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.