Abstract

The paper starts with the intuition that morality basically consists in a caring respect for human beings: Moral subjects have to respect human beings in their individual human potential, and they have to do whatever is necessary for this potential to be realized. The main aim of the paper is to defend the claim that this understanding of morality is connected with objectivity as a formal feature of morality. I begin by considering constructivist and cooperation-based accounts of morality. Their explanation of moral objectivity is not compatible with caring respect as fundamental content of morality. Thus, in order to argue for my claim I have to put this explanation of moral objectivity into question. To do so, I turn to its action theoretic background. Since this background consists in a dualistic understanding of action I sketch and argue for a non-dualistic alternative based on the notion of practical conceptual capacities. This understanding of human agency leads to the conception of objectively good actions in which the subject is determined by the reality of bodily substances. In the final section, I propose to conceive of human beings as a certain kind of bodily substances, namely as bearers of conceptual capacities. Consequently, moral actions can be seen as a certain type of objectively good actions. These actions correspond to what has to be done out of caring respect because this is exactly what bodily substances with conceptual capacities oblige moral subjects to do