This article takes into account Iris Murdoch’s complex critique of the Kantian conception of moral authority as based on the authority of reason. While this critique fails to rule out Kantian rationalism, it nonetheless points to an alternative account of moral authority, which is grounded on the independent authority of emotions. This alternative conception of moral authority shares some important features of Kantian accounts of the moral feeling of respect as reverence for the moral law, but it also suggests a radically different interpretation of practical reflection, and of its distinctive modes and moral achievements.
