Morality sometimes makes severe demands on us. On the one hand, we may be moved by these demands, but on the other hand, we may find that fulfilling them involves a great deal of self-sacrifice. In such scenarios, one wonders: “Should I really fulfill the demands of morality? Why should I fulfill the demands of morality?” This paper examines an argumentative strategy that attempts to respond to these questions in the form of a “transcendental argument.” This argument is standardly used as a response to some form of skepticism and is understood to have the following features: It has a premise which states some fact that is difficult even for the skeptic to deny, it has another premise which states that one of the conditions that must be met for this fact to be possible is the very thing that is the target of the skeptic’s doubt, and it has a conclusion that states the subject of the doubt. In recent years, it has been noticed that this argument can be uniquely persuasive when used in ethics, that is, in the realm of evaluative matters. What makes it persuasive is the prospect of the gap between what we value and what really is valuable not becoming a stumbling block to a transcendental argument, insofar as there are prospects for some anti-realist views in metaethics, including moral constructivism. However, even with this prospect, the argumentative strategy to respond to moral skepticism with a transcendental argument seems to face difficulty. Accepting such an anti-realist view seems to make it unintelligible to have these questions. The purpose of this paper is to explore ways to deal with this difficulty. I shall argue that a kind of contractualist conception of morality can play a role in addressing this difficulty.
