Motivation is a word used frequently in everyday life. For example, we talk about work motivation, learning motivation, or the motivation to do something. In these expressions, what is generally implied is that having more motivation is desirable, and that unfortunately people often lack motivation to learn, work or do certain things. This aspect of motivation is salient in self-help books which aim to make people feel more motivated to, for instance, work harder. I call this dimension of motivation its strength or force, i.e., the dimension of motivational strength or force. By virtue of this dimension, motivation is referred to as being “more” or “less”, “adequate” or “lacking”. If something is a desirable or worthy end, then it is generally better for one to be “more” motivated to pursue it than “lack” the motivation.

In addition to our concern with motivational strength, we also care about the specific content of our motivation, namely, the “Why” or the reason for somebody to do something. In fact, for us humans, change in motivational strength often results from change in motivational content. For example, one tends to work hard or become more driven to do something if he finds it meaningful, and lack of motivation is sometimes a function of the absence of purpose of a clear goal. But the “Why” dimension of motivation is not just an instrument to the dimension of motivational strength, but rather has its independent value. We care about why someone did something, not because the different reasons or motivations resulted in different motivational force, but because of the qualitatively different reasons themselves. Suppose two individuals are equally motivated (in terms of motivational strength) to learn chemistry, but one wants to make explosives to harm others using his knowledge in chemistry, whereas the other person is simply curious. In this case we still say these two individuals have very different motivations; they differ in their motivational content in that they have qualitatively different goals or intentions (i.e., the “Why”), despite the fact that they are driven to the same degree to engage in the same activity.

There are thus two dimensions of motivation we are concerned with when we speak about “motivation to do something” in everyday language. One is the strength of motivation, namely how motivated one is to do something; the other concerns the content of motivation, i.e., what motivates one to do something.

With moral motivation, the two dimensions of concern obtain as well. That is, moral motivation involves a) how motivated one is to act morally, and b) what motivates one to act morally. Again, the strength of motivations for moral actions is often dependent upon motivational content, but the latter nevertheless is a valid concern in itself, and even matters more to us than the former. Also, understood in this way, the word “moral” in “moral motivation” is just an adjective, rather than a normative concept; in other words the word “moral” simply refers to anything related to morality, without prescribing that the relevant motivation must be “moral” in the sense of being morally right or good. Indeed, the very reason we care about what actually motivate one to act morally is precisely because one can do the morally right things from many different kinds of motives or reasons, including self-interested ones (e.g., avoiding punishment, building a moral reputation, etc.) as well as those that are altruistic or “genuinely moral”. Our motivations for moral actions differ in their moral quality or character, and the best scenario, of-course, is that people do the right thing for the right reasons or from motivations that are morally good.