AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

In metaethics, it is widely held—following Smith (1994)—that only de re desires (wanting to perform a particular act which happens to be right) are praiseworthy, whereas de dicto desires (wanting to do whatever is right) are fetishistic. In this paper, I argue that moral fetishism extends equally to what I call “right-making-feature desires,” i.e. wanting to perform an act insofar as it instantiates its right-making feature. If either class were exempt, the very notion of fetishism would collapse. Drawing on two parallel thought experiments, I show that both de dicto and right-making-feature motivations sever the agent from the act qua token, thus lacking genuine praiseworthiness. Two implications follow. First, proponents of the right-making features view of moral worth cannot appeal to fetishism to support their view, since right-making-feature desires are themselves fetishistic. Second, deontic buck-passing accounts fail to explain our intuition about moral fetishism, because right-making-feature desires already respond to the genuine reason for action yet remain unworthy of praise. By refining the taxonomy of moral motivation, this analysis constrains viable accounts of moral worth.