Sophie's World

by Jostein Gaarder

‘Hume’s skepticism with regard to what reason and the senses can tell us forced Kant to think through many of life’s important questions again. Not least in the area of ethics.’ ‘Didn’t Hume say that you can never prove what is right and what is wrong? You can’t draw conclusions from is-sentences to oughtsentences.’ ‘For Hume it was neither our reason nor our experience that determined the difference between right and wrong. It was simply our sentiments. This was too tenuous a basis for Kant.’ ‘I can imagine.’ ‘Kant had always felt that the difference between right and wrong was a matter of reason, not sentiment. In this he agreed with the rationalists, who said the ability to distinguish between right and wrong is inherent in human reason. Everybody knows what is right or wrong, not because we have learned it but because it is born in the mind. According to Kant, everybody has “practical reason,” that is, the intelligence that gives us the capacity to discern what is right or wrong in every case.’ ‘And that is innate?’ ‘The ability to tell right from wrong is just as innate as all the other attributes of reason. Just as we are all intelligent beings, for example, perceiving everything as having a causal relation, we all have access to the same universal moral law. ‘This moral law has the same absolute validity as the physical laws. It is just as basic to our morality as the statements that everything has a cause, or that seven plus five is twelve, are basic to our intelli...