Abstract

Morality can conflict not only with sheer self-interest but also with relationships and commitments to other persons for whom one has special concern, including family and friends. The dissertation examines how morality can credibly balance the concerns important to us against impartial concern for the welfare of people generally. I criticize standard views of morality's relation to personal life: impartialists have insisted on overly demanding conceptions of morality, while partialists grant an importance to personal concerns that cannot sustain a weak conception of moral decency. Instead, I propose three constraints that any "viable" moral theory would need to satisfy. These constraints set a moral standard that is more robust than simply prohibiting violation of our negative rights; but this would leave us considerable room for giving priority to our own personal concerns, which could sometimes involve considerations that lie outside strict moral boundaries. ;Chapter 1 introduces the idea of a "viable" understanding of morality. This is not a moral theory but, rather, an account of constraints that any moral theory reasonable for human practice would need to satisfy. ;Chapter 2 challenges the impartiality of consequentialist and Kantian moral theories. Each theory has trouble satisfying the viability approach's motivational plausibility constraint. ;Chapter 3 evaluates objections to impartiality made by partialists such as Williams. In showing that these objections can be much less compelling than advertised, I elaborate a "limited" type of moral impartiality that can be compatible with "extra-moral" considerations. ;Chapter 4 argues that personal reasons that are morally salient must have their source in the interactive substance of our personal relationships or in the value we attach to personal projects. ;Chapter 5 elaborates a particular approach to thinking about moral justification for privileging our own personal concerns. The "Caretaker View," as I call it, illustrates why such justification plausibly derives from our distinctive ability to promote the. interests of persons with whom we have special relationships