In this article, Forst tries to answer the question: why is the right to justification the ultimate principle of justice?

Forst starts his essay by distinguishing between rational grounding and reasonable justification. An action is rationally grounded if someone is able to explain to himself in a logically consistent manner why he took certain means towards a given end. In other words, it is a kind of instrumental or strategic reasoning. On the other hand, an action is reasonably justified if it appeals to good reasons that others can accept. Put it this way: when you say someone is irrational, youre basically saying hes stupid or unintelligent in the sense that there is some kind of gap in his mental capacities. When you say someone was unreasonable, youre saying the chain of thought that led to his actions was epistemically consistent or plausible, but still it was wrong or immoral of him to do what he did. Forst makes this distinction to help us understand that an action can be rationally grounded but stilll morally wrong because someone had a reason to do something but not a good reason to do something. Forst next makes the distinction between ethics and morality. Ethical discourse evaluates ends and actions by assessing what is good for me or for us, where the collective us refers to the various ethical communities to whom one belongs. Here a question arises. What defines an ethical community? Do supporters of Manchester United form a worldwide billi ons-strong ethical community? Do the members of Americas National Rifle Association form an ethical community? Even though Forst explicitly brackets this question in his article, I think that for Forst probably ethical communities are not just collections of individuals with shared preferences. Cultural groups, tribes, and nations which share a common way of life, historic traditions etc. are probably closer to the definition of ethical communities that he intends. Since I think Forst himself brackets this question in his article, I hope you guys would allow me to move on to Forsts main point. Forsts main point is that morality cannot be grounded in ethical considerations. Whereas ethical obligations are conditional upon our particular attachments to particular others (eg. family, nation), and therefore they are only binding upon members of a particular group in light of their membership of that particular group, morality deals with categorically and universally binding obligations towards others as persons in general. Morality demands that we respect the inherent dignity of others as human beings and treat them as ends in themselves - which means we must recognize their right to justification, our duty to fulfil this right, and vice versa. Only those actions and norms are morally valid that all possibly affected persons can agree to as free and equal participants in rational discourse. (Forst gives a procedural reformulation of the Categorical Imperative: the emphasis shifts from what each can will without contradiction in private ratiocination to what all can agree to in rational discourse.) This right to justification is a basic right, in the sense that its moral authority is prior to public justification, which is to say that because everyone has this right to justification, we can intersubjectively determine other moral norms, but this right to justification itself does not depend for its validity on intersubjective agreement. For Forst, the reasonable acceptability of moral principles is constitutive of, rather than derivative from, their moral validity or epistemic authority. This, of course, is a contested view. Is genocide wrong because we agree it is wrong, or should we agree that genocide is wrong because it is wrong? We could value the instrumental worth of having reasonably justified moral norms in conducing towards a stable social order among other things without committing ourselves to the view that reasonably justified moral norms are valid moral norms. And in the first place, we c an reasonably disagree with the basic premises of Forsts constructivism, and this causes problems for his theory. Forst is arguing that (i) firstly, everyone has moral significance and (ii) secondly, we are responsive to everyones moral significance when we act in ways that can be reasonably justified to those affected by our actions. But conceptually speaking, the first principle does not entail the second. I think there is nothing wrong conceptually with the view that moral respect requires moral concern only. And moreover, different interpretations of what it takes for a doctrine to be reasonably justified will yield different accounts of the strength of the right to justification. Your right to justification has significant purchase for you if I regard the fact that you are committed to rejecting my doctrine, given your current set of beliefs, as showing that my doctrine has failed the principle of reciprocal and universal justification. It has very little purchase for you if I feel that my doctrine cannot be reasonably rejected by you if you would only take a few more years to think it through. There is much middle ground between an actualist view

which takes a simple rejection as showing that a doctrine is not reasonably justified and a counterfactualist view that neutralizes even the most well-considered objections of others. I think Forst needs to be more specific as to the conditions under which what he calls a veto can be reasonably justified or rejected. But this is not the end of the story. Forst tells us that a foundation for morality must address both its cognitive and its volitional aspects. Which means a theory of morality must not only give a phenomenological account or reconstruction of what does it mean to act in morally justified ways, but specify why someone should want to act in such morally justified ways. So the question is how the theoretical reconstruction of the moral point of view could become a part of the practical selfunderstanding of the moral person. Forsts answer, in a nutshell, is the autonomy of morality. To elaborate, contrary to ethics, which we can say is self- or we-regarding, morality is other-regarding by definition. So the reason why we should respect others as justificatory beings, ie. people with a right to justification, cannot be external to morality. Simply put, the person who implicitly or explicitly appeals to self-interest by asking why should I be moral? whats in it for me?, is by definition asking this question from an immoral point of view. Forst goes further to say that morality is part of man's "second nature". By this I think he means that our socialization in "ethical communities", which sensitivizes us to the mutual vulnerabilities and finitudes of each other, begins that process of de-centering us (heightening our awareness of and responsiveness to the interests of others) which is a precondition of our becoming moral subjects. In other words, we learn to respect those outside our "ethical communities" - ie as moral persons - first by learning to respect our parents, our fellow countrymen etc.