Moralism as threat to the possibility of civil society

This essay is grounded in the belief that public administrative institutions, the people who staff them and the people who study and teach about them, are deeply implicated in realizing the possibility for achieving civil society. before this role can be effectively fulfilled, though, pub lic administration must address the theoretical questions that cluster around the issue of what potentials exist for finding empirical Truth and moral Good. in its present form, this issue concerns the matter of how far moralism can serve as a basis for collective decision and action. by the term moralism, i mean the belief that it is both possible and ultimately desirable to regulate social life through explicitly defined values and rules of behavior that are derived from them. Moralism means the attempt to impose such values and rules on others while refusing to acknowledge counterclaims concerning the definitions of the values or the applicability of them in specific situations.