[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-608024-105":59,"doc-detail-608024-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":123,"head_meta":125,"extra_data":127,"updated_unix":129},105,"en","conscience-love-and-the-difficulty-of-morality","Conscience, Love and the Difficulty of Morality","","Moral philosophers often seek to ground ethics in a metaphysical or supernatural principle, claiming that without such a law there could be no real goodness. This paper challenges that move by questioning the supernaturality role from the author’s PhD thesis The “I”, the “You” and the Soul: an Ethics of Conscience. It argues the thesis distorts conscience and love by turning them impersonal, replacing personal love for one’s neighbor with a supernatural love that demands moral response.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/conscience-love-and-the-difficulty-of-morality/608024/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/conscience-love-and-the-difficulty-of-morality/608024.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"The weather in my hometown","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-30","2026-10-17",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":19},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"Why do some moral philosophers think ethics needs a metaphysical or supernatural basis?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"They assume that without an underlying supernatural or metaphysical law or principle, there would be no goodness for humans. The paper identifies this as a common strategy for grounding ethics.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What is the author’s critique of the supernaturality role from the PhD thesis?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The paper criticizes the idea that conscience presents one’s neighbor through a love that cannot be one’s own, arguing instead for a supernatural love that requires a moral response. The critique is that this account makes conscience and love impersonal and thereby produces nonsense of both.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"How does the paper characterize moral problems?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"A moral problem is marked by the fact that we do not want to know what is morally right. The author contrasts moral problems with outside, neutral analysis and argues that neutrality can function as a way to avoid confronting the issue in a spirit of love.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},608024,1792210530,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":19,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":129,"read_time":144},1374408744247,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/14001251d37d565ec6f?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1790672120290115972","Conscience, Love and the Difficulty of Morality  \nHannes Nykänen  \nhannes.nykanen(at)[abo.fi](abo.fi)  \nAbstract:  \nMoral philosophers often feel a need to underpin ethics with a metaphysical or supernatural law or principle, the idea being that would it be only for human beings, there could be no goodness. In this paper, I show the implausibility of this idea, by criticizing the fundamental role I assigned to supernaturality in my PhD thesis The“I”, the “You” and the Soul: an Ethics ofConscience. In this paper, I show how the view laid out in the thesis gives a distorted picture of the meaning of both conscience and love. In the thesis, I claimed that the love in the light of which conscience presents my neighbour “cannot” be my love, as I thought that conscience announces itself even against my will. Instead, I argued that the love that “presents”my neighbour as someone to love is a supernatural love and that our moral task is to respond to that love. In this paper, I show how this account makes nonsense of both conscience and love, by making them impersonal.  \n1. What is a moral problem?  \nWhat is it that characterises so called moral problems? In what sense are they different from logical and empirical problems? What is it that is moral about moral problems? Is it just that moral issues are different objects of thought or is perhaps the thinking itself different from the kind of thinking that goes with logical and empirical issues?  \nThese were the kinds of question I was asking myself when I worked on my PhD thesis in philosophy under the supervision of Lars Hertzberg in the late 1990s. I had come to adopt a view of ethics that was based on the accounts given by philosophers that can be situated in or associated with the Swansea school of philosophy, that is, philosophers like Peter Winch, Lars Hertzberg, R. F. Holland, and, especially, Raimond Gaita. I also found things of interest in the work of Simone Weil and, somewhat oddly, Martin Heidegger. The  \nthings that struck me as right in these philosophers’ accounts were of course different, but what they had in common was bringing out the meaning of moral concepts rather than theorising with abstract notions. This is true especially of Gaita, who discussed concepts like remorse, guilt and love.  \nBut also these philosophers seemed to me to do away with the specifically moral character of moral problems – though I did not see what this specific moral character was about. It seemed clear to me that moral problems cannot be accounted for in terms of calculation, logic, grammar, empirical psychology, duty (not to mention utility) or in terms of “moral character” or “virtue”. At some point I was struck by an insight that immediately seemed quite selfevident: a moral problem is characterised by the fact that we do not want to know what is morally right.  \nMoral problems are not problems that you can view from the outside as if the task would be to analyse the objective or grammatical features of the problem, and then reflect on different ways of solving the problem and, finally, judge which of the solutions, if any, is “moral”. I realised that the question “Is it morally right to …” arises precisely when one is heavily tempted to wrong someone.1 “Is it morally right to pressure my daughter to study law and prevent her from the art studies she plans to start with?” This question arises only when an inclination to such pressuring has already announced itself. And if one continues to be tempted to pressure one’s daughter, one will “find” that,“all things considered”, preventing her from entering art studies is for her own good. In other words: one fails to recognise the real problem – one’s loveless exertion of power over one’s daughter – and instead thinks that the problem is to assess the proportion of pros and cons with regard to the daughter’s choice of study. One imagines that one is analysing the situation from the outside, evaluating the different possibilities and assessin","cbCaimWZ44JyU6wr","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaimWZ44JyU6wr","pdf",516407,21,"English","# What is a moral problem?\n## The contrast with logical and empirical problems\n## Moral issues as resisting knowledge of what is right\n## Moral neutrality as avoidance of love\n## Engagement of moral reflection","[{\"question\":\"Why do some moral philosophers think ethics needs a metaphysical or supernatural basis?\",\"answer\":\"They assume that without an underlying supernatural or metaphysical law or principle, there would be no goodness for humans. The paper identifies this as a common strategy for grounding ethics.\"},{\"question\":\"What is the author’s critique of the supernaturality role from the PhD thesis?\",\"answer\":\"The paper criticizes the idea that conscience presents one’s neighbor through a love that cannot be one’s own, arguing instead for a supernatural love that requires a moral response. The critique is that this account makes conscience and love impersonal and thereby produces nonsense of both.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the paper characterize moral problems?\",\"answer\":\"A moral problem is marked by the fact that we do not want to know what is morally right. The author contrasts moral problems with outside, neutral analysis and argues that neutrality can function as a way to avoid confronting the issue in a spirit of love.\"}]","Conscience, Love and the Difficulty of Morality | PDF",53]