A Kantian intuitionism

Kant famously said that one could not do morality a worse disservice than t o derive it from examples, and this pronouncement, taken together with his formulations and explanations of the categorical imperative, has led some c ritics to regard him as too abstract. Ross, by contrast, has been widely vi ewed as taking individual cases of duty to have a kind of epistemic priorit y over principles of duty, and some of his critics have thus considered him insufficiently systematic, or even dogmatically limited to deliverances of intuition. This paper arises from the conviction that understanding of the categorical imperative may be enhanced by reflection on Rossian principles , and conversely, Kant and other systematic philosophers who have done mora l philosophy in the grand style have had too little faith in intuitive sing ular moral judgement: Ross and other intuitionists have had too little fait h in comprehensive moral theory. Drawing in part on an independent account of self-evidence and its relation to intuition, the paper shows how a Rossi an view can be integrated with a Kantian moral theory in a way that yields the major benefits of both positions: the moral unification possible throug h the categorical imperative and other notions prominent in Kantian ethics, and the relative closeness to moral practice of Rossian principles.