ABSTRACT

Christianity is a very important influence on contemporary moral knowledge. This chapter highlights a few aspects as examples, which are central to the moral philosophy inspired in Christianity. The main distinguishing feature of Jesus' moral and spiritual doctrine is to accept a unifying, mystical, and objective distinction between good and bad, right and wrong. The notion of the good is a reflection of the spiritual reward promised by God to man. All happiness on Earth is just but a pale image of that final human end. The chapter examines the foundations of Kantian moral philosophy. As his interest in 'metaphysics as science' suggests, Kantian moral philosophy can be seen as an attempt to prove that morality is objective; that is, valid beyond personal, conditional considerations and, in that sense, akin to physics' laws. In fact the notion of a superior good occupies a central role in Kantian morality.