View/Open - Scholarly Commons Home

on measures such as sensibility, relevance and sensitivity, it must after all, therefore, be
based on matters of subjective evaluation.
Along with Raz and Rachels, many influential thinkers have propounded the view that
ethical rationalism is possible and preferable, establishing moral theories based on this
premise. Perhaps two of the best known are Kant’s deontology and Bentham and Mill’s
utilitarianism.
Kant
Kant has been credited with first challenging the notion that moral reasoning consists of
the discovery of external norms, such as the will of God, or objective perfections
(Guyer, 1992, p. 3). Kant’s rationalist account of ethical reasoning has been influential,
along with the perception that an account of moral judgement that admits a subjective
response is somehow deficient. As Norton explains:
The rationalist understanding of human nature has a strong hold on the
common understanding of our choices. We pride ourselves on the
supposed fact that we are able sometimes to choose courses of action
that override our passions and desires in the light of a greater good. We
pride ourselves on the supposed fact that when we do this, we exercise
the power to be free from the influences and temptations that would
otherwise condemn us to what Kant called heteronomy. And we
particularly pride ourselves on the supposed fact that we are able to
pursue the austere demands of duty and so, by putting inclination aside,
function as pillars of society.
Norton, 1993, p. 125
According to Kant, to call an action morally right is to describe the nature of the
initiating or original impulse that causes the action, and it is this original doing, or the
willing of the action, which can be called morally good (Thomson, 2003, p. 64). Kant’s
moral philosophy is in the rationalist tradition that moral laws can be found “not in the
nature of man, nor in the circumstances in which he is placed, but solely a priori [sic]
in the concepts of pure reason” (Kant, 2002, p. 21). However, while values are a
necessary and integral part of any process of reasoning, Kantian theory does not
account for values.
52