Plato held that moral progress is essentially an intellectual process, driven by reasoned arguments – a stance that many of the most influential moral philosophers, from Baruch Spinoza and Immanuel Kant to John Rawls and Peter Singer, have supported. Yet many other philosophers have rejected the autocracy of reason in humans’ moral lives, agreeing with David Hume’s assertion that “reason, in itself, is perfectly inert.”
柏拉图认为道德进步本质上是一个知识过程，由理性辩论推动——这一立场受到了许多最有影响力的哲学家的支持，从斯宾诺莎和康德到罗尔斯（John Rawls）到辛格（Peter Singer）都是如此。但许多其他这些假拒绝理性在人类道德生活中的支配地位，他们同意休谟的主张：“理性本身完全是惰性的。”他们认为没有纯抽象的原因可以让我们做任何我们不想做的东西。