Sterba on Divine Commands and Fairness

James Sterba has recently argued against Divine Command Theory (DCT). Sterba also offers, as a preferable alternative to DCT, a metaethical account which he has developed over a number of years (culminating in Sterba’s 2013 book), which attempts to ground ethics in rationality. Both his case against DCT and his alternative metaethical theory are worth considering, but in this paper I will argue that both fail. This is not of course to say that DCT is either true or the most promising account of metaethics, or that the project of trying to ground ethics on rationality is a dead-end. I do conclude, however, that Sterba’s own unique approach, which involves trying to derive morality from rationality by appeal to a non-question-begging requirement, is doomed to failure, and also that his new arguments against DCT are ineffective.