Moral Imagination 183one is dealing. This knowledge must therefore be sought
in a branch of general scientific knowledge. Hence,
along with the faculty^1 for moral ideas and imagination,
moral action presupposes the capacity to transform the
world of percepts without interrupting its coherence in
natural law.
The capacity to transform the world of percepts ismoral
technique. It is learnable in the sense that any knowledge
is learnable. Generally, people are better equipped to find
concepts for the world that is already finished than to de-
termine productively, out of their imagination, future, not-
yet-existent actions. Therefore, those without moral imag-
ination may well receive the moral mental pictures of oth-
er people and skillfully work them into reality. The
reverse can also occur: people with moral imagination can
lack technical skill and may have to make use of others to
realize their mental pictures.
Insofar as knowledge of the objects within our field of
action is necessary for moral action, our actions are based
upon this kind of knowledge. What is relevant here are
natural laws. We are dealing with natural science, not
with ethics.
Moral imagination and the moral capacity for ideas can
become objects of knowledge only after an individual has
produced them. By then, they no longer regulate life; they
- Only a superficial view could see, in the use of the word “faculty”
here and in other passages, a return to an older psychology’s teaching
of soul faculties. Connecting it with what was said on pp. 88–89 ff.
yields the exact meaning of the word. (Author’s note)