Three Models of Morality

Courtesy of Prof. Walden's Ethics and the Arts course.

• Picture 1: Kant

  • Moral law is derived from philosophical argumentation a priori

    • Results in the categorical imperative, i.e., only do that wish you would will become universal

• Picture 2: Kinda Aristotle (“Not Fakistotle,” as Prof. Walden says), Martha Nussbaum (and Adam Smith, I believe, as a moral intuitionist)

  • Well-trained moral perception builds heuristic principles from repeated observations of behavior that we sense to be good or bad (a posteriori)

• Picture 3: Rawls’s Reflective Equilibrium

  • General principles and considered judgments have a sort of interplay whose final cause is harmony, i.e., coherence, between the two.

    • Both a priori and a posteriori. . . I’m not sure that’s logically possible; we haven’t discussed this at length in class—I’ll be sure to report back.

I leave you with the question: Which picture is most persuasive?

Now I’m off to other commitments. Talk to you tomorrow, readers!