ABSTRACT
Moral value is immediately felt, as a quality, in the experience of conscience. The Austrian pioneers in the realm of value theory, attempting the task of constructing a scale of moral worthiness of actions, were clearly influenced by flattering feeling. Recognition of the important part played by conflict in philosophers’ moral experience has led some thinkers, notably Spinoza and Immanuel Kant, to regard it as essential to any awareness of moral value. Moral value is distinctive of the conative aspect of self-harmonious activity and philosophers have seen, in three characteristic features of moral experience, the tendency to find moral value in sheer, active self-expression. These three features are the high evaluation of the moral decision requiring great effort of will; and the complementary moral stigma attaching to smug moral satisfaction which fails to exert itself in works of practical goodness or to awaken to the possibilities of developing to a higher spiritual level.
