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The ethical problem this book has undertaken to resolve is that of the foundation of the moral ought or duty; and we have said that especial attention would be paid to the relations of the moral ought to "inclination" and willing. We shall have to begin our work (in accordance with the principles of method set forth in the last chapter) with an exhibition and description of those forms of moral consciousness in which the moral ought comes to givenness. We must not try to explain, that is, to interpret and analyse, the grounds of the moral ought until we have established with certainty that there is such a thing and have a clear idea of it in our minds. The purpose of the exhibition will be to provide against our falling short of our goal to explain the grounds of the moral ought because our explanation has overlooked important constituents of the thing we want to explain. The description will be necessary especially in order to shed light on what phenomena of our consciousness of the moral ought can be considered (or asserted to be) general in the sense that they occur frequently among all men (or at least frequently in the circle of men covered by our empirical study).

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-6830-1_4

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