The Mystery of Moral Authority

"The mystery of moral authority is that we persist in attributing objective and inescapable authority to moral judgments even though there are so many reasons not to do so. The Mystery of Moral Authority is an accessible, up-to-date, thorough, convincing, and fair-minded attempt to show that the 'mystery of moral authority' has not been, and most likely will not be, solved. To solve it one would need to explain the source of the allegedly inescapable objective authority that is commonly thought to characterize moral judgments. In this book Blackford recommends that we replace the idea of morality as a collection of truths about how we ought to live with the idea that it is a modifiable social technology aimed at finding ways to live in groups. This realization frees us to replace outmoded moral norms with practical ones more appropriate to our present needs and circumstances." - Richard Garner, Emeritus Professor at The Ohio State University, US, and author of Beyond Morality