An Analytic Evaluation of the Concept of Moral Certainty in Western Philosophy: A Historical Approach
Subject Areas : New findings regarding the development of ancient western philosophy (Greek and Hellenistic Philosophies)
Mohammad Saeid Abdollahi
1
*
,
Mohsen Javadi
2
,
Muhammad Legenhausen
3
1 - PhD candidate of Philosophy of Ethics, Qom University, Qom, Iran
2 - Professor at the Philosophy of Ethics Department of Qom University, Qom, Iran
3 - Professor at Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute, Qom, Iran
Keywords: moral certainty, metaphysical certainty, epistemology, Jean Gerson, Wittgenstein,
Abstract :
Moral certainty is one of the functional concepts that has recently attracted the attention of some philosophers of ethics and epistemologists. During the last decades, philosophers have approached this concept from different angles; however, they have sometimes provided an incorrect and inaccurate concept of this term because of ignoring its origin and historical development and losing sight of the historical, religious, or legal context in which it might be used. Jean Gerson, the French scholar and educator, created the term “moral certainty” for an appropriate level of certainty. Later, Descartes defined it as a kind of certainty that is sufficient for organizing behavior and assisting people in solving life-related problems. On the other hand, John Locke included absolute certainty and moral certainty in the concept of his own “real certainty”. The concept of moral certainty has also undergone an interesting process of development in Christianity. In church law, the concept of moral certainty is used to describe the mental status of the judge when they should decide with certainty whether the accused is truly guilty or not. In this paper, after referring to the first applications of this concept in the history of Western philosophy in the course of a historical-philosophical research and a study of the development of the concept of moral philosophy in different periods, the authors demonstrate that the concept of certainty has been prone to many changes since the 14th century and its first use in Gerson’s works. They will also clarify the place of this philosophical term in today’s epistemology of ethics after its historical journey and presence in various disciplines, and how the Wittgensteinian approach to this concept has gained widespread acceptance during the recent decades after its introduction many centuries ago.
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