Filosofisk antropologi og moralbegrundelse

Abstract

This article consists of three parts. In the first part I present the three most important positions in the philosophical discussion of human nature, and I sketch the conceptions of moral life that are connected with each of these positions. The most extensively described position is the socalled person-theory, which I myself maintain. In the second part I develop the critique of the theory of needs (taken as a general theory of motivation), which was mentioned already in the first part, and I argue that the theory of motivation which is included in my person-theory (according to which part of human motivation consists of potentials, not needs) contributes to answering the normative question about man's destination, a contribution that is important for the critique of the way our type of society moulds man and human life. In the third part I give a more systematic argument to the effect that moral life cannot be grounded in a single principle, but consists of a series of irreducible types, each of which is grounded in a given type or indispensible way of acting. In other words it is my thesis, that morality - or rather the different types of morality - has an ontological foundation in the sense that each type of morality is necessarily connected with an indispensible kind of human activity.