Nibbling Gadflies

Abstract

In this paper I examine issues related to public and private “moral authority”, and how this public moral authority interferes with the exercise of private moral authority. This paper explores what public authority is, and why that while in other field it can properly exist, in terms of morality it by its very existence is problematic because 1) it interferes with the exercise of reason in determining ethical action and 2) because it treats the public moral authority as something other than a human being. I then look to several ethical dilemmas as presented by several philosophers and show how this public moral authority interacts with these dilemmas as well as how this exercise of public moral authority is distinct from ethical reasoning that roots itself in a particular ethical theory.