What is it to have a reason to do something? is one sort of question; what is it we have reason to do? is another. These questions are often explored separately. But our answers to them may not be independent: what reasons are may have implications for what reasons there are. So the door is opened to a troubling tension--the account of what reasons are that is most plausible in its own right could entail a view of what we have reason to do that is independently implausible. In fact, it looks like this is the case.
In the first half of Moral...

Julia Markovits develops a desire-based, internalist account of what normative reasons are-an account which is compatible with the idea that moral reasons can apply to all of us, regardless of our desires. She builds on Kant's formula of humanity to defend universal moral reasons, and addresses why we should be moral.