Abstract

In this paper I focus on how the meritorious dimension (or latitude, Spielraum) involved in the promotion of the highest good is closely related to the constitution of an ethical community as a free, open and progressive moral society. I argue that since moral perfection and moral belief/faith as the grounding elements for the promotion of the highest good (synthesis of virtue and happiness) are not objective duties that must be promoted to a definite extent but involve a certain latitude in their employment, the ethical community that emerges out of the pursuit of the highest good does not prove to be a uniform society in terms of the degrees of the pursuit of moral perfection and moral commitment of its citizens. Rather, I point out that the latitude involved in the pursuit of moral perfection and the adoption of moral belief leads to the establishment of an ethical community that emerges as an open and free society entered by its citizens freely and willfully as part of their inner self-constraint. I thus hold that in such an ethical society agents can pursue and promote the highest good not in a strictly prescribed and uniform manner but in various forms and degrees as long as they constantly progress towards a higher form of moral perfection and purer form of religious (or rational) belief/faith.