Normative and Educational Ethics :: Philosophy Morals Papers

The controversies in our time amid teleological and deontological ethics which come down to the problem from being to ought, referring to human race being or nature, can be resolved only by an adequate conception of human nature. Taking up the ancient impost (Plato, Aristotle, Stoa) again, we can re-examine the teleological conception of human nature as primarily instinctive and selfish, and say that human nature is constituted likewise by reason and that the instinctive nature is predisposed to be channelize by reason or intellect. The constitutive order of the human soul, with the mastery of the instinct under the intellect, involves already some natural goodness, of which the intellect is advised (in the natural object lesson conscience) and for which the will strives (in a natural inclination). This is the basis for the chaste justice and for normative ethics. Thus, human nature is not selfish in itself. Although chaste goodness as humankinds perfection is an ideal, it has in us already imperfect natural beginnings, a natural morality. In a certain sense, the moral ought of actions comes from ones being, from the natural moral goodness of which the intellect is aware in itself, and from its good intentions. I. Problems of FoundationSeen historically, the home problems of ethical norms and normative ethics have been treated, in modern times, in two opposite directions, the empiricist and the rationalistic way. The former is characterized as the aposterioric way, taking the measurement of morality only from the result of experience feelings of usefulness and happiness , in contrast to the latter as aprioric, taking the criterion from a law of reason universal human duties foregoing to all experience. Kants ethics try to superate the aposterioric ethics of the English empiricists, claiming, with the rationalists, a law of reason apriori, but in doing so he did not follow the way of pure rationalism. kind of he established his position as a com bination of two directions, the empiricist and the rationalistic one. They form the so-called material and formal side of his ethics. The moral law of reason, the famous categorical imperative, belongs to the formal side, whereas the objects of our actions are considered as material, i.e. as objects of our sensitive desire or vital unavoidably which can be given only in the field of levelheaded intuition. He denies with the empiricists any intellectual intuition and formulates the paradox of method (1) that no object or good can be the criterion a priori for morality, but only the categorical imperative, of which, if applied to actions, every object or good is a consequence.