Conclusion

Abstract

The empiricist moral philosophers posit that what we experience as morality belongs to the natural world and can therefore be explained empirically. In many cases the starting-point of their analysis is an experience of a moral consciousness as described by Kant. However there is a radical difference between their explanation of this experience and Kant’s metaphysical interpretation. According to them, moral consciousness is a natural product of certain emotions, attitudes, dispositions, vital inclinations or social processes. There is no objective normative order. As Ross says,

‘No one has given a more penetrating analysis of this phenomenon than Kant, although he took the awareness of duty to be a revelation of the transcendental and not as one psychological phenomenon among others.’ (Directives and Norms, p. 85).