The Right and the Good—and the Fitting?

Tradition divides the domain of normativity into the right—the deontic—and the good—the evaluative. But where does the fitting fit in? This chapter defends the claim that fittingness—the relation that holds between admiration and the admirable, between fear and the fearful, and between joy and the joyful—falls on the deontic side of things. In doing so, it defends tradition against recent arguments that fittingness is a distinct normative category additional to both the deontic and the evaluative. Specifically, the chapter considers a number of features that the deontic is supposed to possess, and that the fitting is supposed to lack. It argues that the deontic need not have those features, or that the fitting may have them. In this way, the chapter is also a reflection on what is characteristic of the deontic. Two recurring themes are that the deontic has something to do with responsibility, and that it is has something to do with reasons. The second recurring theme leads to a third, which is how the debate as to whether fittingness is deontic bears on the debate as to whether reasons are fundamental to the normative domain.