Kantian moral education for the future of humanity: The climate change challenge

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, I investigate the potential of a Kantian account of moral education to facilitate the development of humanity towards much-needed change in individual and collective responses to global problems such as climate change. Kant's account of moral development is focused on the internal motivation for and not the external result of action. An often-proposed strategy to tackle climate change consists of calling for various juridical sanctions, rules and laws that regulate the climate-affecting actions of agents, as well as the behaviour of corporations and even nations. I agree with such approaches, which on a Kantian framework belong to the sphere of state or international legislation. Significantly, Kant emphasises that legal sanctions on external actions are only one of two main aspects of morality, the other being free actions and their underlying motivations. My focus is on investigating how Kant's account of moral progress on an individual and collective level can provide a perspective that complements the politico-juridical solutions to this problem. My starting point is a brief overview of the available means of bettering human beings on an individual level. I then discuss Kant's propositions for moral change on the collective and eventually global levels, while showing the significance of shaping not only the global legal order, but also communal participation in the idea of the kingdom of ends. I then proceed to show how Kant's demanding account of the ethical community can be interpreted in a weaker sense and serve to better understand some modern problems and offer practical prescriptions for informal moral education on a collective level. In so doing, I apply the general account of moral education on the collective level to the problem of climate change, while showing that the Kantian means for moral progress might be of value in stopping humanity on its march to self-destruction.