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Moral Sensitivity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

John Kekes
John Kekes
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Albany
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Extract

Most contemporary philosophers accept Kant's view1 that the central question of morality is what ought I to do. This gives choice a pivotal role, for choice is what one faces when the question has to be answered. Since what is chosen is an action, this view of morality—I shall call it the current view—is action-orientated. And since actions are directed towards people, the current view stresses altruism and universalizability. Morality is thus supposed to be activist and social. It is a sensible, public-spirited enterprise in which responsible members of society will participate because they realize that reason requires it. Kantians, Utilitarians, Contractarians, and Marxists disagree, of course, about the nature of the relation between reason and morality. But they agree that choice intending to lead to action contributing to the welfare of others is the central concern of morality.

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Type
Articles
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Philosophy , Volume 59 , Issue 227 , January 1984 , pp. 3 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1984

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References

1 I. Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, tr. N. K. Smith (London: Macmillan, 1953), A800-801 and A805.

2 My view is close to those of G. P. Grice, ‘Moral Theories and Received Opinion’, Aristotelian Society Proceedings Suppl. Vol. 52 (1978), 1–23; A. I. Melden, Rights and Persons (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); and I. Murdoch, ‘The Idea of Perfection’, in The Sovereignty of Good, (London: Routledge, 1970).

3 In ‘Religious Faith and Prometheus’, Philosophy 55 (1980), 497–507, James Kellenberger suggestively explores this view of morality. Huck Finn's moral predicament has been discussed by Jonathan Bennett, ‘The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn’, Philosophy 49 (1974), 123–134; Jenny Teichman, ‘Mr Bennett on Huckleberry Finn’, Philosophy 50 (1975), 358-359; and Phillip Montague, ‘Re-examining Huck Finn's Conscience’, Philosophy 55 (1980), 542–546.

4 See Melden, op. cit., and P. Foot, ‘Virtues and Vices’, in Virtues and Vices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 1–18.

5 See Grice, op. cit.

6 I am grateful to Philippa Foot, A. I. Melden, T. Morawetz, Amélie Rorty, and to participants in the University of London Philosophy Group for commenting on a predecessor of this paper. I have also benefited from an unpublished manuscript of James Kellenberger, The Structure ofWisdom.