1 David Kaspar MORAL EXPLANATION THROUGH MORAL KINDS 4/30/16 This is a *LATE DRAFT* If you wish to cite this article, please cite its published form forthcoming in: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON REALISM, edited by Luca Taddio and Kevin W. Molìn. Mimesis International INTRODUCTION All varieties of moral realism agree that there are moral facts. Explanation is central to metaethics. So such theories ought to explain what is distinctive of particular moral facts. Once such explanations are in place, all other points needed by a moral theory might be explained on their basis. But the general tendency today in metaethics is to provide piecemeal, partial explanations of some phenomena, without, it seems, thorough thought of how the pieces might be connected and unified. More surprising is the general reluctance of moral realisms to provide the most basic explanations of moral facts. The theory that I think has the most explanatory promise is stout nonnaturalist intuitionism. It provides a realist way of explaining the basis of morality, employing the fundamental concept of moral kind. Moral kinds are genuine universals. So this is a moral realism in both senses of the term– in holding that there are moral facts and in holding that universals are essential to explaining such facts. The direct predecessor of the theory of moral kinds is Adolf Reinach’s theory of ‘essential structures’, which he saw as grounding a ‘pure science of right (reine Rechtswissenschaft)’. 1 1 Adolf Reinach, ‘The A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law’, trans. by J.F. Crosby, Aletheia, 3 (1983), p. 6. Adolf Reinach’s work is not widely known in Anglo-American philosophical