Is moral understanding a kind of moral vision?

Abstract

Understanding is often descibed as a kind of “seeing”, and that would make moral understanding a kidn of moral vision. Recently the idea of moral perception has been explored. I suggest that the identification of moral understanding with moral perception is promising, as it seems to give a good account of what is distinctively valuable about moral understanding. But in the end it faces a difficult dilemma. I draw some conclusions about what is distinctive about moral understanding and the role that moral vision might play.