Moral Conflict and Prudential Agreement: Michael Moehler’s Minimal Morality

Michael Moehler’s Minimal Morality is a wonderful and important book, from which I have learned a great deal. It reinvigorates rational choice moral theory in the process of confronting what I see as the most important issue in social and moral philosophy today: can those in a deeply morally divided society endorse a common moral framework to structure social cooperation? Is a rational moral order possible under conditions of deep and wide moral diversity? Minimal Morality’s answers are thoughtful and innovative. I am not, however, entirely persuaded that Minimal Morality can fulfil its promise of grounding a cooperative order when ‘traditional’ modes moral justification cannot.