1 All references to page numbers alone refer to James P. Sterba, From Rationality to Equality, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013. Sterba on Amoralism and Begging the Question Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen Abstract: While sympathetic to Sterba’s equalitarian convictions, Lippert-Ras- mussen attacks that Sterba’s rationality-to-morality argument. He presents six objec- tions to show that Sterba’s main argument grounded on the principle of non-ques- tion-beggingness fails to defeat amoralism. He also argues that another argument of- fered by Sterba to defeat amoralism fails to distinguish between motivating and justi- fying reasons. None of this shows that we should accept amoralism, but it discloses serious problems with the rationality-to-morality sub-argument. Fortunately, this sub- argument is, so I argue, independent of Sterba’s liberty-to-equality sub-argument. 1. Introduction By today’s standards James Sterba’s From Rationality to Equality is an unusually ambitious piece of philosophical work: “the goal of this book has been to provide an argument from rationality to equality that will help to resolve the fundamental conflicts between opposing moral and political ideals of our times and thus prepare the way for a peaceful implementa- tion of its egalitarian conclusions, thereby making philosophy and philosophers look a little better in the process” (219). 1 The book’s overall argument – the rationality-to-equality argument (137) – divides into two sub-arguments: a rationality-to-morality argument for the claim that if an action is morally required, it is also rationally required; and a liberty-to- equality argument that right-libertarianism, despite the self-understanding of its proponents, entails commitment to a substantial form of equality en- compassing future generations as well as non-human animals. Both sub-arguments make heavy use of a principle enjoining those en- gaged in argument to avoid begging the question against their oppo- philinq I, 2-2013 ISSN (print) 2281-8618 - ETS