moral judgment

The paper deals with Kant's conception of moral judgment. I start by criticizing a dominant interpretation of Kant's practical rationality in its assertion that choosing, i.e. exercising judgment consists in adopting a maxim; and adopting a maxim is equivalent to acting on a principle, giving oneself the moral law (Korsgaard). According to this view, the logical inescapability of choosing alivqys already places us within the normative realm. I argue that there is a further function suppressed by this view, which can be termed as approval. This takes us to the further acknowledgement that the core of Kant's practical rationality, that is, the moral question itself, is not simply one of moral knowledge [Wissen], but a broader one of cognition in general [Erkenntnis].

This study aims to compare the ethical systems of Aristotle and Al-Biruni. The former was built in the ‘West’, but the latter was on the ‘Middle’ toward the ‘East’. Reviewing their literature and introducing the new concepts, this study found that while Aristotle’s system influenced Al-Biruni’s in the application of a scientific frame to ethical issues, the two systems shared a concern not for the moral judgment but for the moral agent. However, they differ from each other in the conceptualization of the agents. Aristotle’s model is the person of virtue evaluated by the golden mean, but Al-Biruni’s is the person of manliness rated by the reversibility of others. This comparison advanced the differentiation that the moral pragmatic is devoted to Aristotle’s and the moral practical to Al-Bruni’s. The study would contribute to resolving the current moral confusion and would demonstrate a model to integrate the systems of the western and eastern worlds.