THE MORAL REQUIREMENT IN THEISTIC AND SECULAR ETHICS

One of the central tasks of meta‐ethical inquiry is to accommodate the common‐sense assumptions deeply embedded in our moral discourse. A comparison of the potential of secular and theistic ethics shows that, in the end, theists have a greater facility in achieving this accommodation task; it is easier to appreciate the action‐guiding authority and binding nature of morality in a theistic rather than in a secular context. Theistic ethics has a further advantage in being able to accommodate not only this essential conceptual feature of morality, but also the existence of moral requirements and their source of normativity.