Abstract

LA ROCCA, CLAUDIO. MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND GESINNUNG. Ideas y Valores [online]. 2013, vol.62, suppl.1, pp.133-152. ISSN 0120-0062.

Kant always emphasized the problematic nature of self-knowledge in the fields of anthropology and psychology. Ever since his first works, he insisted on the impossibility of knowing with certainty, on the basis of actions, the subjective moral disposition of the agent, which alone gives action a moral value. This difficulty is not mitigated when moral judgment is directed at the subject itself. To these cognitive problems there is now added a tendency to self-deceit that is active in any moral life. If the importance of this argument is maintained, it is possible to envisage a characterization of Gesinnung that distinguishes it from any subjective "intention". Thus, it could be understood rather as an "objective" structure, independent of subjective consciousness and similar to a regulative idea, which requires that moral actions be interpreted on the basis of a necessarily assumed but impossible to know principle.

Keywords : action; self-knowledge; self-deceit; Gesinnung; moral judgment.

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