Nnadiebube Journal of Philosophy

This paper interrogates the philosophical tension between objective morality and the condition of finite human agency. It asks whether an individual can fully ground moral judgment in pure rational principles without generating internal contradiction. The paper examines the aspiration toward universally valid moral laws derived from reason alone by probing the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. While Kantian ethics seeks coherence through the categorical imperative and the demand for universalizability, this paper argues that the lived reality of the moral agent complicates such purity. Human beings are historically situated, emotionally textured and socially embedded; their rational deliberations are never wholly detached from context. The paper demonstrates how the claim to purely objective moral reasoning risks masking subjective presuppositions or generating tensions between universal principles and particular obligations. The argument does not dismiss rational morality; rather, it presents it as a regulative ideal that guides finite agents without erasing their existential limitations. The so-called “selfcontradiction” of pure rational ethics, therefore, is not merely logical but existential because it arises from the attempt to inhabit a standpoint that transcends the very conditions that make moral agency possible. In recovering this tension, the paper proposes a more modest and reflexive account of moral objectivity, one that preserves rational rigor while acknowledging human finitude.

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