Is morality an elegant machine or a kludge

In a passage in A Theory of Justice , which has become increasingly in ”uentialin recent years, John Rawls (1971) noted an analogy between moral phi-losophy and grammar. Moral philosophy, or at least the “rst stage ofmoral philosophy, Rawls maintained, can be thought of as the attemptto describe our moral capacity Ð the capacity which underlies Othe poten-tially in“nite number and variety of [moral] judgments we are preparedto make.O In order to describe that capacity, we must formulate Oa setof principles which, when conjoined with our beliefs and knowledge ofthe circumstances, would lead us to make [the judgments we actuallymake] were we to apply these principles conscientiously and intelligently.O(Rawls 1971, 46) Citing ChomskyOs Aspects of the Theory of Syntax(1965),Rawls goes on to suggest that describing our moral capacity can be use-fully compared to Odescribing the sense of grammaticalness that we havefor the sentences of our native language. In this case the aim is to char-acterize the ability to recognize well-formed sentences by formulatingclearly expressed principles which make the same discriminations as thenative speaker.O (Ibid. 47)Though RawlsO analogy between our moral capacity and a Chomskiangrammar of our language was new and insightful, the project of describingour moral capacity Ð of “nding a set of principles (or rules or de “nitions)which entail the potentially in“nite number of judgments we actuallymake Ð has a history that goes back to Plato. In The Republic, Socratesasks Cephalus to provide an account of justice, and then challenges the