ABSTRACT
Moral obligation grows by a turn of the good heart from consciousness of the force of a moral claim. By awareness of the moral consequences of actions, developed over time, persons create or activate the reality of an obligation. The concept of historical appreciation for the moral worlds of past actors, as a task for persons in their capacity as moral agents, offers a way to manage the categorical nature of moral obligation. Much of human experience and all artifacted technical operations are co-extensive on one plane of reality. In more familiar terms, human life is suffused with intersubjective communications. Obligation follows as a long experience after the moral claim. In the midst of these experiences, the agent makes choices not by pure tincture of reason, but by a slower and roomier process, an unending argument with ourselves about what the correct balance of the forces is.
