ABSTRACT
This chapter gives an account of Hutcheson's conception of the moral sense. This sense is a perceptive faculty that explains our ability both to feel a particular kind of pleasure upon perceiving benevolence, and to appraise such benevolence as morally good on the basis of this feeling. The chapter summarizes Kant's discussion of the moral sense during his pre-Critical period. It explores the main reason why Kant rejects the moral sense as the foundation of moral judgment—namely, because it is incapable of issuing sufficiently universal and necessary judgments of moral good and evil. The chapter also argues that underlying Kant's rejection of the moral sense is the fact that he understands the faculty not as a "sense" proper, but as a "feeling" according to his technical understanding of these terms. It concludes by briefly evaluating what my analysis says about Kant's engagement with Hutcheson.
