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As we began our critique of Kant's system of ethics with a look at his method, so a discussion of the method of the new system we intend to set forth must be the first step in the system's construction. Our previous reflections on method, especially the critique of Kant's method, have given some idea of the method we shall require. As we have seen, Kant is right to attach a great value to a priori principles, on which, he insists, ethics must rest; and so he is right that ethics must be a "metaphysics" (of morals). But we have also seen that whether there are any such ethical principles can be found out only by experience, not a priori. And of the two sides an ethics must therefore have, one empirical and the other rational, the empirical side is in a sense the more fundamental. For proving that moral demands have an ideal, and hence an a priori, validity, cannot produce a genuine moral obligation when an insight into their validity is lacking. To someone who does not see (or "feel") a moral obligation at all the obligation does not exist, though it may exist in itself. To find out who is capable of such seeing (or "feeling") is the business of experience. Moreover, experience alone can show us what data of human moral consciousness there are for justifying moral obligations, and it alone can tell us whether the contents of consciousness on which our own obligations rest are the same as underlie the moral obligations of others, or whether there are other obligations and other contents of consciousness to justify them.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-6830-1_3

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