Moral precepts — encouragements of virtue and prohibitions of vice — are rationally based when they lead to a clear telos. If your telos is this, you ought to do that.
When a culture lacks a shared telos, and everyone is following their
own ultimate aim (or lack such an aim at all), people with competing
teloi simply talk past each other, while those without any teloi make
moral arguments that sound objective but are really the irrational
products of personal preference and emotion.
by
Brett and Kate McKay
