Moral Seeing and the Spectacles of Reason

Abstract

Initiating a differentiation between an expansive and a narrow conception of moral perception (MP), this paper shows interest in the questions whether (i) it is actually rational ethics’ blind spot that ultimately measures the potential of ethical immediacy, particularly with regard to MP, and (ii) a narrow notion of MP could be meaningfully separated from ethical immediacy in general. These questions are motivated by the notion of “heterochthonous perception” and generate from doubts whether MP could, as Wisnewski claims in a recent paper, be detached from personal interests, intrinsically prescriptive and, at the same time, divergent. I conclude that MP can neither be ontologically univocal, e.g. in the spirit of direct moral realism, nor is there “belief-free” moral immediacy. Finally, I posit that a narrow and stringent notion of MP has to build on the recognition and appraisal of physical symptoms in the expression of human activity.