Critique of the Empiricist Explanation of Morality : Is There a Natural Equivalent of Categorical Morality?

a. 'Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within. ' Thus Kant formulates his attitude to morality (Critique of Practical Reason, p. 260). He draws a sharp distinction between these two objects of admiration. The starry sky, he writes, represents my relationship to the natural, empirical world. Moral law, on the other hand, is of a completely different order. It ' . . . begins from my invisible self, my personality, and exhibits me in a world which has true infinity, but which is traceable only by the understanding and with which I discern that I am not in a merely contingent but in a universal and necessary connection (. . . ). ' (p. 260). So Kant sees morality as a separate metaphysical order opposed to the world of empirical phenomena. Human beings belong to both worlds. According to Kant, the personality derives nothing of value from its relationship with the empirical world. His part in the sensuous world of nature places man on a level with any animal which before long must give back to the rest of nature the substances of which it is made. Front Matter....Pages I-XX Introduction....Pages 1-7 A topography of the empiricist theories of law....Pages 9-23 Hobbes’s empiricist theory of morality....Pages 25-39 The empiricist theories of David Hume and Adam Smith....Pages 41-71 Comte and positivism....Pages 73-92 Herbert Spencer and evolutionism....Pages 93-120 Guyau’s philosophy of life....Pages 121-136 Durkheim’s sociological ethics....Pages 137-154 Steveson’s and Hare’s analysis of language....Pages 155-191 Scandinavian realism....Pages 193-226 Scepticism or empiricism....Pages 227-239 The problem of the empiricist explanation of normativity: is there a natural equivalent of ‘duty’?....Pages 241-253 The empiricist justification of the claims of morality....Pages 255-283 The hierarchy argument as a justification of morality....Pages 285-336 The congruency argument....Pages 337-398 The moral game....Pages 399-448 Conclusion....Pages 449-461 Back Matter....Pages 463-475