| Research Abstract |
Previous attempts to conceive of a "foundation of morals" have differed in their results because of the scholars' different definitions of morality. However these projects all included the reference to "Internalistic character of morals". That means, it would be difficult to justify morality with reasons extrinsic to morality and also those justifications end in circulation within the morality. And that also means that morals can only bind the people who accept the moral system itself.
This 'Internalistic character of morals", however, is not so obvious in the history of ethics. Ancient and medieval ethics in particular has such conditions as "man's true end" or "The law of God", and under these conditions, "why should man be moral?", was not serious problem. The reason for this was, under the aforementioned conditions it was proper for man to be moral. But in the modern period, a new type of theology (Protestant or Jansenist) asserted that reason can supply no genuine comprehension of
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man's true end, and in fact the modern ethics could not postulate such premises as "man's true end". So for modern ethics it has become necessary to justify the morals and explain why man should be moral. Nevertheless many modern ethical theories, such as Contract theory or Utilitarianism, considered morals to be means to some ends, for example "to happiness", hence the justification of morality was externalistic and therefore incomplete.
In these circumstances, Kant tried and failed to deduce a moral law and later asserted, in his "Critique of practical Reason", that moral law was "The fact of reason". This was a precise enunciation of Internalism. But his Internalism was criticized for its dogmatic thought and for the exclusive and rigoristic character of its morality. On the other hand, Kant's unsuccessful argument, which had tried to deduce the necessity of moral law, contains some hints to overcome the problems of Internalism. One of these hints, referred to in chapter 3 of "Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals", is the "Natural tendency of reason". It will be argued that this hint can supply clues to release reason from the self-righteousness of Internalism. Less
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