Kurt Baier's Research On Issues Of Moral Rationality

The question of moral rationality has always been the focus of the Western contemporary ethicists,especially contemporary metaethicists.In the case of suspending moral judgment,it is generally considered that only the behavior that accords with the actor's personal interests is rational behavior for the actor,and rationality in this sence is called prudential rationality(or prudence).However,with the addition of moral judgments,we find that moral reasons for action often seem to contain elements of altruism.Therefore,there seems to be a certain contradiction between the reason of morality and the reason of self-interest,and how to deal with this contradiction has become an urgent topic for ethicists to study.Overall,the western philosophers to this solution is that in the direction of the moral value has its priority development,they think it conforms to everyday people's moral consciousness,but such solutions in addition to the intuition,also needs corresponding objective basis.Therefore,many contemporary Western philosophers hope to find a way to objectively demonstrate that one reason for action(moral reason)is superior to another(self-interest reason),thus placing a relatively objective order of value between the two.Baier Kurt was a representative person who studied this topic from the 1950 s to the 1990 s.Therefore,based on Kurt Baer's works and following his ideas,this paper tries to restore and analyze the moral reason that seems to be contradictory to the self-interested reason,find out the connection between its essence and the self-interested reason,and finally restore the moral value to the self-interested reason,so as to find out the possible method to reconcile the two,and then determine the rationality of moral judgment.At first,by exploring and summarizing the intuitively unquestionable requirements of practical rationality,he argues that the real reason for the existence of morality is that when everyone only cares and follows his own interests,the result will be bad for everyone,and therefore we have reasons that to do things moral and override our own interests.However,such argument and defense undoubtedly contain the suspicion of circular argument,so he finally summed up the reason for morality as that morality is essentially a kind of rational social individuals who reach a cooperation agreement under the condition of equality and freedom out of their own interests,and obtained it through the disintegration argument of thought experiments such as "Prisoner's Dilemma".The society-anchored reasons(usually moral)can quite simply build on the rationale anchored in the self-anchored reasons(the intrinsic ones tied to the actor).This paper generalizes and defends his series of thoughts,and carries on further philosophical reflection on their rationality according to the author's own understanding and feeling.