References
- Here I assign more to the meaning of the Enlightenment than Kant's narrow stated view of it as the freedom to make public, scholarly use of reason. He and others saw reason as making progress towards establishing moral content. Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” AK VIII, p. 37.
- H. T. Engelhardt, Jr., and A. L. Caplan(eds.), Scientific Controversies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
- In his Prolegomena zu einer jeden künfitgen Metaphysik, Kant anticipates Wittgenstein's Statement that “Das Wesen ist in der Grammatik ausgesprochen” (Essence is expressed by grammar) [Philosophische Untersuchungen (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), See. 371], when Kant compares the search for categories with the search for the “Elemente zu einer Grammatik” (elements of a grammar) (AK IV, p. 323).
- Moral communities, for instance, will differ radically, depending on the ranking given to such central societal goals as liberty, equality, security, and prosperity. It will not suffice to appeal to intuitions in order to establish a canonical ranking, for intuitions may be countered by opposing intuitions. Nor will it be possible to resolve such controversies by appealing to consequences, for the comparison of consequences depends on a ranking of goals in order to know how to weight outcomes. Nor will it be helpful to appeal to hypothetical decision- theories, because disinterested observers or hypothetical contractors must be outfitted with a moral sense, which will deliver a particular ranking of the goods, which is to beg the initial fundamental questions. One must have already decided which moral sense to give them. This problem will plague all rational theories, including that of David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
- Immanuel Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten, AK VI, pp. 424 f.
- Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).
- Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 30–34.