How exclusionary reasons guide

ABSTRACT

In ‘(Really) Defending Exclusionary Reasons’, Monti seeks to defend Raz’ notion of exclusionary reasons from the attack made by Daniel Whiting. Monti agrees with Whiting that exclusionary reasons cannot motivate and so suggests that they operate by guiding rather than motivating. However, Monti’s account of guiding omits the key feature that they can guide even when one’s action is the opposite to what the exclusionary reason seems to recommend. An amended account of what it is to be guided by exclusionary reasons is needed to give the Razian account the explanatory power it is due.

KEYWORDS:

• Exclusionary reasons
• Joseph Raz
• practical authority

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Daniel Whiting, ‘Against Second-Order Reasons’ (2017) 51 Nous 398.

2 Ezequiel Monti, ‘(Really) Defending Exclusionary Reasons' (2024) 15 Jurisprudence 48 [this issue], 49–50

3 Whiting (n 1) 403.

4 ibid 404. See also Monti (n 2) 57–58.

5 Monti (n 2) 59–60.

6 ibid 60. Note also the biconditional specification of the conditions for what it is to be guided by exclusionary reasons, the first of which is that one must refrain from performing the action the exclusionary reason militates against.

7 Granted, the reasons may already be present, in which case the wait has no length.

8 HLA Hart, Essays on Bentham: Jurisprudence and Political Theory (Clarendon Press 1982) 253–55. See also Scott J Shapiro, ‘Authority’ in JL Coleman and S Shapiro (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law (Oxford University Press 2002) 389.

9 Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Clarendon Press 1986) 39. See also Shapiro (n 8) 406.

10 Shapiro (n 8) 406–07.

11 Whiting (n 1) 402 (citing Joseph Raz, Practical Reason and Norms (2nd edn, Princeton University Press 1990) 48), 405.

12 Joseph Raz, ‘The Problem of Authority: Revisiting the Service Conception’ (2006) 90 Minn L Rev 1003, 1022.

13 Whiting (n 1) 406 n 23.

14 Monti (n 2) 65.