The Relation of Moral Theory to Moral Judgments: A Kantian Review

Abstract

My object in this paper is to show how moralists working in the Kantian tradition go from their general moral principles to judgments in individual cases; and to do so by examining how they would proceed in an exemplary individual case. In an earlier paper [5] I attempted to exhibit the contemporary doctrine of informed consent in medical practice as an example of how moral precepts are arrived at in the Kantian tradition. In now attempting to explain how moral principles are applied in that same tradition, I have chosen an example that is more revealing than any I know of in medicine: President Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, its application is universal.