Habit, Reason, and the Limits of Normativity

[...]once we start to see the importance of habit as both constitutive of our self-identity and as a central way of being-in-the-world that we share with animals, then the exclusivity of the dualism of rational man versus irrational animals that such theories assume will be undermined. In this view, norms of right and wrong are beliefs about which we have good reason to want to agree; they are shared explicitly and are intersubjectively validated: "contractualism as I understand it locates the source of the reason-giving force of judgment of right and wrong in the importance of standing in a certain relation to others" (Scanlon 177-78). Because Scanlon does not focus on "mutual advantage" as the basis of the motivation and the agreement for moral deliberation, the legitimacy of moral precepts is not, as with other contractualist theories, through direct benefit to the parties involved. [...]the morals, norms and values that are established on this model are not based on a distinction between those for whom morality has significance and all outside of this that is therefore of only "instrumental value." [...]once we conceive of norms not as exclusively the preserve of explicit acts of rational reflection, but also as habits that are determinative of us in a very different way from explicit affirmations, and that this orientation to the world and ourselves is something we share with animals, then the rational/irrational division that separates us from animals can no longer be maintained.