So far, our conclusions are (1) that the province of reason is to enable
us to generalize our concrete ends; to form such ends as are consistent
with one another, and reënforce one another, introducing continuity and
force, where otherwise there would be division and weakness; and (2)
that only social ends are ultimately reasonable, since they alone permit
us to organize our acts into consistent wholes. We have now, however, to
consider how this conception takes effect in detail; how it is employed
to determine the right or the reasonable in a given situation. We shall
approach this problem by considering a form of intuitionalism
historically prior to that of Kant. This emphasizes the direct character
of moral knowledge in particular cases, and assimilates moral knowledge
to the analogy of sense perception, which also deals directly with
specific objects; it insists, however, that a different kind of faculty
of knowledge operates in the knowledge of acts from that which operates
in the knowledge of things. Our underlying aim here is to bring out the
relation of immediate appreciation to deliberate reflection, with a view
to showing that the reasonable standpoint, that of the common good,
becomes effective through the socialized attitudes and emotions of a
person's own character.
=Moral Sense.=--This theory holds that rightness is an intrinsic,
absolute quality of special acts, and as such is immediately known or
recognized for what it is. Just as a white color is known as white, a
high tone as high, a hard body as existent, etc., so an act which is
right is known as right. In each case, the quality and the fact are so
intimately and inherently bound together that it is absurd to think of
one and not know the other. As a theory of moral judgment,
intuitionalism is thus opposed to utilitarianism, which holds that
rightness is not an inherent quality but one relative to and borrowed
from external and more or less remote consequences. While some forms of
intuitionalism hold that this moral quality belongs to general rules or
to classes of ends, the form we are now to consider holds that the moral
quality of an individual act cannot be borrowed even from a moral law,
but shines forth as an absolute and indestructible part of the motive of
the act itself. Because the theory in question sticks to the direct
perception of the immediately present quality of acts, it is usually
called, in analogy with the direct perception of eye or ear, the moral
sense theory.
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