Five Good Reasons Not to Act on Principle (or, Why You Probably Can't Act on Principle, Anyway)

Abstract

This essay challenges the popular belief that principles either can or ought to play a decisive role in guiding or justifying moral decisions. The five reasons offered here hold that principled justification: 1) denies the aporetc, and hence the paradoxical, relation among opposing principles; 2) fails to consider the pathologies produced by the single-minded assertion of particular principles; 3) excludes a consideration of the role that feeling plays in both generating the moral impulse itself and mediating the use of reason in decision-making; 4) overasserts the role of consciousness as a positive force in guiding personal conduct; and 5) presumes an inflated conception of individual moral will at the expense of the social and the relational.

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