Moral reasoning and moral practice

Morten Raffnsøe-Møller

pp. 343-385

in: Lilli Alanen, Sara Heinämaa, Thomas Wallgren (eds), Commonality and particularity in ethics, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1997

Abstract

Morality has always had a rather ambivalent position within the philosophical tradition. As "moral obligation", as feeling or as act of compassion, it is directed towards a particular individual in a specific context. As moral law or goodness, it is supposed to be the most universal and overarching concept. Consequently, our moral reasoning oscillates between particularity and universality when it tries to see the universal human conditions, obligations or natural laws expressed in specific situations. We thus use particular examples and very specialized arguments, but at the same time take them to represent or explicate universal points about our moral condition. This paper deals with this peculiar dialogue between universality and particularity as it is expressed through the moral reasoning of our tradition. The paper also deals with the related fact, that morality often expresses a dialogue between context and transcendence, and this in two different ways: morality transcends context both as a standard or a larger form of pre-understanding from which we comprehend and judge in particular contexts, and it also expresses itself in attempts to change and transcend contexts that are morally intolerable.