The Sources of Moral Imperativeness

Abstract

A notion of morality as a sphere of general, impersonal and non-situational claims, which personality, which the person performs as an autonomous subject is dominant in philosophical literature. This feature is interpreted as a pivotal one and even comprehensively representing morality. Under such approach morality is escaped as a heterogeneous, multifold phenomenon. Morality manifests itself differently at the levels of personality, interpersonal communication, and group or society; or at the level of individual choice, guilt, and responsibility and the level of public guidance of behavior; or from the side of interaction or from the side of personal excellence, etc. One can distinguish heterogeneity in different functions of morality, specifically, in behavior guidance undertaken at different spheres of individual, communicative, and social practice, in different nature of authority, different kinds of relation between the agent and patient of morality, different forms and means of sanction, etc. Such differences show themselves in a variety of sources of moral imperativeness, that is the nature of authority of moral claims. Though at the highest levels of moral development the person considers herself as the sovereign agent of moral claims and the author of the moral law, the issue of objective source of the moral claims and their value basis is still a topical one. In this context the sources of imperativeness are specified in the article in (a) general cultural notions, (b) social-group standards, (c) situational claims in interpersonal communication.