In his article titled Making the ‘Hard’ Problem of Moral Normativity Easier, Stephen Darwall conceptually connects moral obligation to blameworthiness to address the problem of moral normativity. Moral normativity posits that there exist a code of conduct which moral agents ought to obey. The ‘hard’ philosophical problem for moral normativity is to find the reasons for complying with the code of conduct, i.e. to answer the question why should one be moral, specifically why an agent should do what is morally obligatory if doing so is against her interest. Darwall argues that, in addressing this ‘hard’ philosophical problem, it is harder to show that agents have reasons to do what is in their interest or what would fulfill their aims or desires, than to show that agents have reasons to comply with moral obligations. According to Darwall, it is harder to show that agents have reasons to do what is in their interest or what would fulfill their aims or desires because it is not conceptually guaranteed, i.e. not always true, that agents would do what is in their interest or what would fulfill their aims or desires even if there are reasons for doing so. On the other hand, it is easier to show that agents have reasons to comply with moral obligations because if an action is morally obligatory, then there must be a reason to do it. According to Darwall, the reason to do what is morally obligatory is found in warranted blame.

Darwall continues, an action is morally obligatory if failing to perform that action causes the agent to be blameworthy unless the agent has a valid excuse. It is so because moral obligation is conceptually connected to moral responsibility and moral accountability, and, therefore, blame. It is through blame that we hold someone accountable. Citing Peter Strawson in Freedom and Resentment, Darwall says that blame is a distinctive kind of attitude, a reactive attitude that is inter-personal (or second personal) in that there is an implicit relationship between the person doing the blaming and the person being blamed. Unlike third-person critical attitudes such as dislike or contempt, blame as a reactive attitude involves one person issuing a demand to the other, the demand of being acknowledged as an authority to hold the other accountable, the demand followed by the other holding herself accountable through the feeling of guilt.

With the distinctive characteristics of blame established, Darwall concludes: because blame presupposes a normative reason for an agent to do what she is morally obligated to do, an act can warrant blame only if there was a normative reason not to have done it; conceptually, an act is morally obligatory only if it would be blameworthy to omit the act without excuse; therefore, it is conceptually necessary that there is a normative reason to do what is morally obligatory. Because it is conceptually necessary to have a normative reason to do what is morally obligatory, unlike the harder case of showing agents having reasons to do what is in their interest, it is easier to show that agents have reasons to do what is morally obligatory. In short, the existence of a warranted blame indicates a normative reason and a warranted blame is conceptually connected to a moral obligation, leading Darwall to conclude that there is a conceptually guaranteed normative reason for agents to comply with a moral obligation. Therefore, he asserts, it is easier to show that agents have reasons to comply with moral obligations.