Such processes are referred to as moral sensitivity, a precondition to moral judgment, or the innate detection and initial interpretive processing of a moral issue that may be triggered by a potential moral conflict.
Indeed, the common position among most Western thinkers has been to argue the necessity for moral constraint as a precondition for freedom in all other aspects of life.
For example, he considered moral self-cultivation a precondition for the search for immortality; self-cultivation included such Confucian virtues as benevolence (ren), trustworthiness (xin), loyalty (zhong) and filiality (xiao).
After all, if the freedom to act is a precondition of moral responsibility and therefore blame, then the dirty hand agent who does what is (all-things-considered) necessary and somehow right seems immune to the criticism involved in blame.
Whereas Confucianism and Daoism emphasize moral virtue as a precondition for the proper governance of the state, legalism, by contrast, argues that the well-being of the state would be best guaranteed by clear-cut rules rather than any reliance on private morality.
External utility values are natural goods like air, water etc. as preconditions for our moral life.
Kant as well was little inclined to make fun of evil and suffering, and he viewed liberation from theology as a precondition of better morals and politics.
As usually told, the story of the rise of toleration becomes a myth, he writes, "a symbolic story, with heroes and villains and a moral" — the moral being that the precondition of toleration is the triumph of reason over faith.
However, as an animal lover who prefers FU Penguin and the challenging moral ambiguity of Ratatouille, I am preconditioned to be critical of the cuddly, patronizing work of most anthropomorphic faire.
This he regarded as a necessary precondition to arguing that the moral goodness or badness of actions can be ascertained regardless of the presence of commanding or prohibiting divine law.
