Abstract

In “Virtue Ethics and Deontic Constraints,” Mark LeBar claims to have discovered a two-level eudaimonist position that coheres with the claim that moral obligations are “real” and have “nonderivative normative authority.” In this article, I raise worries about how “real” second-personal reasons are on LeBar’s account, and then argue that second-personal reasons ramify up from the first to the second level in a way that LeBar denies. My argument is meant to encourage philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition to question the existence of second-personal reasons of the sort Darwall elucidates.