ABSTRACT
For hundreds of years in mainstream Western philosophy it has been a commonplace to regard “moral imagination” as an oxymoron. The terms “moral” and “imagination” are often thought to be incompatible by those who conceive of morality as a system of rational moral principles and who regard imagination as a free play of images and ideas unconstrained by reason. The result of this mistaken bifurcation between reason and imagination is that imagination is not seen as having any constitutive role in determining what is right and wrong, lest we risk arbitrariness, idiosyncrasy, subjectivism, and rampant relativism. This widespread misconception that imagination is unsuited to the lofty office of moral
appraisal has led, for most of history and with only rare, though very important, exceptions, to a profound neglect of moral imagination by philosophers and psychologists. Over the past three decades, however, an increasing number of philosophers have begun to use the term unapologetically to name a crucial process of imaginative moral deliberation by which we are able to explore how experience would play out under the influence of various values and commitments. From this perspective, moral imagination is regarded as the chief means we have for reducing moral indeterminacy, resolving conflicts among competing ends, and addressing clashes of values. In short, imagination is viewed as constitutive of our moral reasoning and not merely subservient to the alleged application of preestablished, rationally derived moral principles.
