An Oxford Nolloth Professor

The work Clement Webb did on the moral argument often had for its context wider theological questions that he wished to explore. He primarily looked to Plato for inspiration about the nature of moral goodness, and he looked to Immanuel Kant on the nature of moral duties. Although he initially thought Kant had reduced religion to morality, he eventually softened on that conviction. As empirical experience justifies belief in an external world, he took our moral experience as solid justification for belief in moral realities. Inspired by James Martineau, Webb argued that the phenomenology of moral duties (which Kant explained so well) warranted belief in departing from an overambitious kind of Kantian autonomy that precludes belief in a “Higher than ourselves” (Martineau’s term) that gives us the moral law. Finally, Webb also saw some of the profound political implications of the erosion of moral foundations.