Abstract

Philosophers have always recognized that moral experience would be meaningless if it did not contain some measure of universality or necessity. Yet, moral understanding tends to resist rational attempts to turn it into a set of principles, categories, or propositions. This is because moral experience is tied to the moods and perceptions of conscience; there would be nothing "human" about moral experience if it were wholly insensitive. But conscience, on the other hand, is seemingly chaotic; it lacks the universality of logical understanding. This dissertation tries to reconcile these elements of perception and universality by arguing that conscience and moral necessity are linked in the imagination. ;Utilizing the work of such thinkers as Vico, Kant, and Collingwood, it is argued that the imagination plays an epistemological role in the formulation of moral imperatives by contributing a perceptual or ostensive necessity to the ethical event. Most rational analyses of moral experience presuppose this ostensive necessity; that is, they presuppose the existence of some form of "moral sense." In this way, conscience serves as the ready-made object of ethical inquiry. Reason can critique and describe moral sensibility; but conscience is strikingly perceptual, and for this reason rational analysis cannot by itself form the basis of moral experience. What, then, lies at the basis of moral sensibility? How does the ethical event first arise within the context of human affairs? How is it that conscience is able to provide reason with an initial point of reference? These questions form the basis of this inquiry