Propositional Ethics and the Jurisdictional Conditions of Moral Judgment

This paper argues that ethical theory cannot proceed coherently without first addressing the authority under which moral judgment operates. Contemporary moral philosophy often assumes the legitimacy of moral claims while offering competing accounts of outcomes, duties, virtues, or social functions. This paper contends that such approaches presuppose, rather than justify, the right of moral claims to bind conscience. Ethics, it is argued, is a jurisdictional domain before it is a practical one. The argument proceeds propositionally. It begins by establishing that moral judgment exists and is irreducibly normative, asserting claims about what ought to be the case. Normativity, in turn, is shown to entail obligation—claims that bind the will irrespective of preference or consequence. Obligation, however, cannot arise without authority. Any moral system that purports to obligate necessarily exercises authority, whether explicitly confessed or tacitly concealed. The paper then examines whether immanent sources—such as outcomes, reason, consensus, culture, or function—can bear ultimate moral authority. Each is shown to fail structurally, collapsing either into circularity, contingency, or coercion. Moral authority must therefore be transcendent to moral agents, understood not spatially but jurisdictionally. Moral claims are further shown to be truth-claims requiring propositional articulation if they are to bind legitimately and render agents accountable. The paper concludes that ethics either confesses authority or collapses into power. While the argument deliberately refrains from naming the bearer of moral authority, it demonstrates that no ethical system can avoid the authority question without incoherence. Ethics must therefore be judged before it can judge.