ABSTRACT
This chapter explores distinction between moral valuation in terms of a principle or rule and moral valuation in terms of a standard or ideal is actually a synthesis of three other distinctions. First is the distinction between the right and the good. Second is the distinction between technological and aesthetic values. Third is the distinction between an ethic of obligation and an ethic of virtue. An obligation-creating protasis does not contain the word “want” or its equivalent, but only some duty-implying statement about a previous action or role attributable to the agent. I. Kant wrote extensively on the moral virtues, in spite of his famous stress on obligation or duty, and Aristotle, famous for his stress on virtue as the end of man, clearly took its exercise to be a matter of political and therefore moral obligation. Moral consciousness is marked by the particularly strong sense of urgency generated by its valuations.
