The Contradictions of Kantian Morality

Abstract

‘The moral point of view’, like the other positions explored in the Phenomenology, is an attitude to life rather than a formal philosophy. Hegel’s own interest in it is twofold: he sees it both as a stage in human history and as a partial anticipation of the wholly adequate standpoint of which he claims himself to be master. Regarded as a stage in human history ‘the moral point of view’ is alleged to offer a synthesis of the ethical world of the Greeks, where spirit was sunk in objectivity, and of the individualist culture of post-Hellenic times, when spirit was ‘self-estranged’ it claims, that is to say, to combine the element of universal law which is essential to morality with the element of individual choice which is also essential. Regarded as a partial anticipation of Hegel’s own position it is to be seen as a form of idealism, and deserves this title because of the emphasis it puts on the autonomy of the will and hence on mind. It is, however, an incomplete form of idealism, since it presents mind as active in an essentially alien world, and can offer no intelligible account of how its activity is possible.