Knud Ejler Løgstrup (1905-1981) was a Danish philosopher and theologian.

Løgstrup was an ethical intuitionist and critical to the kind of ethics that reaches its peak with Immanuel Kant. This kind of ethics tries to determine the basic moral laws.

Løgstrup mentions philosopher Stephen Toulmin's example of an everyday situation: I have borrowed a book from John and the question is now, why should I give it back today as I promised him? Toulmin argues by deriving still more general moral rules. But if I give John back his book because "I should always keep my promises" or because of the more general rule "I should never lie", I treat him as a means and this unethical.

Moral is not about rules, but about the socalled independent manifestions of life. All men have an intuitive feeling of right and wrong. Manifestions of life includes feelings and actions as the open speech, trust, compassion and love. These phenomena are good per se.

An example is the open speech. Even when the secret police are searching the apartment, the people living there cannot help, but speaking with the police sergeant, because it feels intuitively natural to do so.

Moral laws are only substitutes in situations where these intuitive feelings fails to lead to action. For instance the golden rule is a substitute for compassion.

So Løgstrup takes the oppositive point of view to Kant, who belived that the moral law is they only truly moral reason for action and that natural desires can never be moral.

Translated works

• Knud Løgstrup. Metaphysics. Volume I. Marquette University, Milwaukee, 1995. ISBN 0-87462-603-X.
• Knud Løgstrup. Metaphysics. Volume II. Marquette University, Milwaukee, 1995. ISBN 0-67462-607-2.

External link

• The Løgstrup Archive