Jacob Moore’s Reviews > The Disappearance of Ethics: The Gifford Lectures > Status Update

If there is such a thing as a categorical imperative, a normative form governing human action in all types & circumstances, it is not a principle but an acting person who appeared at a certain point in history & can be told of narratively.

A musician may sensibly desire to complete the Unfinished Symphony, of which Schubert left two perfect movements out... It makes no sense at all to desire to complete Sibelius' 8th Symphony, of which not a note that is definitely attributable survives. Without a real & known good, the desire to supply what it lacks is contentless. One cannot desire to supply what it lacks unless one's enjoyment has been cut short.

The task of practical reason was not to impose a restraint on interest in the goods, a curb on their uniformly seductive appeal, but to reach a clear view of them... To seize on the first good that offered itself would be a reflective failure, blind to the order of goods, blind to the opportunities for good at the present moment, and therefore neither wise nor prudent.

Ethics reflects on the living of human ... from the point of view of agents who ask deliberative & evaluative questions about their practical undertakings. There is no describable field of material data that defines the study of Ethics... its expertise is not defined by its data, but by the distinctive lines of practical questioning that it applies to them.