Justification to Others Is Authorization by Non‐Rejectable Principles

Abstract

A compelling idea in ethics is that right and wrong is a matter of one's choices being justifiable to others. Contemporary contractualism in particular takes this idea as a starting point. There are, however, different ways to articulate the compelling idea within a contractualist theory. In this paper, I discuss three versions of contractualism and show that they have different implications in situations where there are no principles which can be justified to others. I argue that this sheds new light on the most plausible way of formulating contractualism and that it supports a formulation of the theory in terms of principles which authorize, rather than disallow, acts.