EGOISM AND THE PUBLICITY OF REASON: A REPLY TO KORSGAARD Michael J. Cholbi Social Theory and Practice 25:3 (1999): 491-517. PLEASE CITE PUBLISHED VERSION AT: http://bit.ly/1O6u7v9 One of the chief tasks of a moral theory is to describe the conditions under which we are moved to act in accordance with moral requirements, whatever the theory determines those requirements to be. That moral requirements present themselves as categorical or unconditioned greatly complicates this task, especially if we suppose that moral requirements are somehow justified by reasons. Agents seem often to act on reasons that have normative force exclusively for them, reasons whose power to motivate the will is due to their being the reasons of the individual who has them. When for example an agent acts upon a reason given by a desire of hers, that the considerations that make her action reasonable rest upon her desires and not someone else's seems like a valid explanation of how her action was motivated by a reason. Yet moral requirements are special in being categorical; if they bind us at all, it is due not to anything special about us as individual persons. Moral requirements apply to an individual regardless of her particular non-moral ends and desires. So if moral requirements are to rest on reasons, then agents must be subject not only to reasons that provide particular individual agents with grounds for action but also to moral reasons that provide grounds for action to any agent similarly situated with respect to the relevant moral circumstances. But the existence of reasons which are not "about" the agents to which they apply may seem mystifying. Aren't all reasons, at heart, reasons for me or for someone in particular? Isn't it precisely because reasons are reasons for me that I am moved to act on reasons at all? If we answer 'yes', then perhaps all reasons, including moral ones, are only reasons relative to persons. If this is the case, the task of showing how we are rationally moved to obey moral requirements must involve showing how moral requirements, the scope of which is not a particular agent but