Moral Imagination

Patricia Werhane, Moral Imagination and Management Decision Making, p 89-126

 Moral Imagination
“...a questing spirit…[or] moral imagination. While I
do not argue that all moral reasoning is grounded in
the imagination, I conclude that moral imagination
is necessary ingredient in responsible moral
judgment. Only through imagination can one
project alternative ways to frame experience and
thus broaden, evaluate, and even change one’s
moral point of view.”
 Preliminary Definitions
Adam Smith: believed imagination to be a faculty that
enables us to understand the sentiments of others
Immanuel Kant: imagination accounts for the ways in
which the mind synthesizes sensations and
perceptions to form experience and relates experience
to understanding. Imagination is usually distinguished
from reason, for to be imaginative one need not be
restricted by reason.
 Preliminary Definitions
Paul Ricoeur: once observed that to imagine is
to make oneself absent from the whole of
things, to become disengaged, fragmented,
focused on the fantastic, distanced from
reality and ordinary experience. Imagination,
then, can involve creating a fresh
phenomenon, situation, or series of events.
A Definition of Moral Imagination
Mark Johnson: [1] self-knowledge about the imaginative
structure of our moral understanding, including its values,
limitations, and blind spots…[2] similar knowledge of other
people…[3] [the ability to] imagine how various actions open to
us might alter our self-identity, modify our commitments,
change our relationships, and affect the lives of others…[4] what
it might mean, in terms of possibilities for enhanced meaning
and relationships, for us to perform this or that action…[5] the
ability to imagine and to enact transformations in our moral
understanding, our character, and our behavior.
DAGHANG SALAMAT!