"The Moral Sense": An Examination of Classical Perspectives

The term moral sense was first used by British Moral Philosophers of the 18th century and what they meant by this term is that a person is able to recognize right and wrong actions in a situation through an innate ability. This theory was proposed for the first time by Anthony Ashley Cooper (third Earl of Shaftesbury) in his major work entitled "Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times". Then, Francis Hutcheson revived it in his book entitled "An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue", and David Hume expanded it with some modifications. The common feature of all those who speak of moral sense is that they consider moral knowledge to be related to a faculty called "moral sense", which is separate and distinct from other sources of human knowledge such as reason (for Kant), intuition (for George Moore), religion (for all those who believe in Religious decency and obscenity) as well as the famous and conventional senses that we are familiar with, and through that the necessary data is provided for experimental sciences. But there is a difference of opinion between the defenders of this theory about the details and how this sense works. even though there is a significant connection between the claims of these three philosophers, there is an important difference between their views. This study has tried to describe the classical views about moral sense, criticize them and explain the difference between them.