Peter Stemmer provides a moral theory that construes moral normativity and correlated phenomenona as essentially constituted by sanctions. Neither Stemmer nor his critics reflect sufficiently on the metaethical status of these claims, even though it is important to be clear about this status to evaluate the approach. I argue that there are two different readings of the theory: Either the “Sanktionstheorie” is a kind ofdescriptivemetaethical theory or it is what I call aconstructive(orrevisionary) theory. Stemmer’s approach is better understood as a (...) constructive metaethical theory, whereas critics mainly focus on a descriptive reading. (shrink)