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Kantian Journal

2024 Vol. 43. №4

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Povecherova A.V.

The Concept of Moral Sense in Kant’s Ethics

DOI
10.5922/0207-6918-2024-4-3
Pages
70-98
Kant’s ethics moral sense ethical sentimentalism Hutcheson Shaftesbury

Abstract

The concept of “moral sense”, introduced into the philosophical lexicon by Ashley-Cooper Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson, has found a place in the teachings of many thinkers. Immanuel Kant was one of them. The position of the theory of moral sense, which exerted a formative influence on Kant’s moral philosophy, varied as it evolved from the pre-critical to the critical period of Kant’s work. In order to find out what this influence was, I first reconstructed the views of Shaftesbury on the nature of the moral sense and then proceeded to analyse the place of this concept in Hutcheson’s philosophy. In the case of the former the moral sense is closely linked with the aesthetic categories of the beautiful and the ugly which correspond respectively to the aesthetic categories of good and evil. The latter associates the moral sense with reason. I then examine Kant’s attitude to the concept of moral sense. First I look at the works of the pre-critical period in which this concept is used and conclude that Kant may have borrowed the concept from Hutcheson. At the same time Kant makes this concept an object of his immanent critique because already now the question arises of the nature and character of virtue and the possibility of its being estimated impartially. Next I turn to Kant’s works of the critical period in which he is more emphatic in claiming that the moral sense cannot be a criterion in making ethical judgments. However, Kant does not exclude this concept from his practical philosophy, but explains it in a different way from the views both of British sentimentalists and from his own views of the pre-critical period. Accordingly, the moral sense is no longer a sensation, but occupies a place in-between feelings as such and reason.

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