Imperative Ethics

If heteronomy tells us why morality binds, imperative ethics tells us what kind of thing morality is. The basic stuff of morality is the command. If morality is the forest, commands are the trees.

Unlike a proposition, which is judged in terms of its truth value, a command is apt or inapt, proper or improper, depending on who issues it and to whom. A command from father to son may be apt; the same command from son to father may be absurd.

Moderns mistake moral language for propositional language. They treat "you should respect your elders" as though it were the same kind of statement as "Warsaw is the capital of Poland." But "should" is just an abstracted command, and every command presupposes an authority.

Ethics remains objective: commands are objectively apt or inapt, though not universally so, because they are fitting for particular agents in particular relations rather than for abstract man as such. As Hume observed, no "is" can generate an "ought." Moral propositions are downstream of commands.