Kantian Ethics Research Articles

Propuesta para el diseño de un código de ética empresarial basado en la ética kantiana

El objetivo de este artículo es determinar cómo los fundamentos de la ética kantiana pueden dar sustento a la construcción de un código de ética para una empresa concreta. La investigación es cualitativa, basada en entrevistas aplicadas a 138 colaboradores y analiza el proceso seguido en una empresa para diseñar su código de ética. En este proceso se respeta el principio de la autonomía del colaborador, tanto en la generación y apropiación de los criterios éticos. Bajo esta perspectiva, el código de ética logra establecer con claridad y precisión el deber ser de la organización siguiendo el criterio de la racionalidad y universalización de las normas, así como el respeto a la dignidad humana. Gracias a ello, el código de ética responde a los problemas que todo colaborador se enfrenta en la vida organizacional, así como asegurar su legitimidad como pilar de la ética empresarial.

The paradox of imperfect duty in Kant's moral philosophy: A problem in 'applying' ethics'

The Applied Ethics debate has not yet sufficiently clarified what application of ethics exactly is. The issue of application is considered to be especially problematic in Kantian ethics or in discourse ethics. This article describes the concept of applying ethics in Kant. In discussing the duty of helping others and the theory of its application in Metaphysics of Morals it is shown that a strict separation of justification and application in ethical theory results in the paradox of imperfect duty. The paradox says that the duty to help others would be fulfilled without ever being fulfilled in action. To overcome the paradox it is necessary to form submaximes of helping, which are not arbitrarily but instructed by a theory of casuistry. This casuistry, if it is considered as a doctrine of application in Kantian ethics, can overcome the paradox of imperfect duty. However, the casuistry can overcome this paradox only if it is understood as a philosophy of prudence, which can be found in Aristotle or Descartes.

CAN THERE BE COMMON KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT A COMMON LANGUAGE?

This essay argues that, since Kant wrote in German and since German has no word for “right” corresponding in meaning to the English word, it is a case of conceptual anglocentrism to say, as many anglophone philosophers do, that Kant reformulated the foundations of ethics by formulating them in terms of the “right” rather than the “good.” Further, the essay shows how the German word Pflicht, central to Kant's ethics, does not correspond in meaning to the English word duty, whose cultural roots lie in English Puritanism. More generally, the argument is that, ultimately, “common knowledge” is possible only to the extent to which it can be stated in words corresponding to universal human concepts — a set of which has been identified through empirical cross-linguistic investigations — rather than in words whose meanings have been shaped by a particular history and culture. Finally, the essay shows how “NSM” methodology, developed within linguistic semantics, allows us to cast new light on aspects of German culture reflected in keywords such as Ordnung, Gehorsam, Befehl, and Pflicht — terms that appear to be anchored in the legacy of Luther and Kant.

Quem habita a dignidade humana? A fundamentação kantiana

O artigo examina o conceito kantiano de dignidade humana com base na <em>Fundamentação da metafísica dos costumes</em> (1785), em particular, o papel da autonomia da vontade na fundamentação da dignidade. O ponto de partida desse exame é a liberdade transcendental de que trata a <em>Crítica da razão pura</em> (edição de 1787), seguindo-se a análise de alguns elementos da teoria moral kantiana, notadamente o imperativo categórico, em duas de suas formulações, e o conceito de dignidade humana. A relação entre dignidade, racionalidade e autonomia (enquanto autolegislação, conforme à moral kantiana) constitui o objetivo do artigo, que se concluirá com breves comentários sobre algumas dificuldades que tal relação suscita.

XIV-Kant on the Ethics of Belief

In this paper, I explore the possibility of developing a Kantian account of the ethics of belief by deploying the tools provided by Kant's ethics. To do so, I reconstruct epistemic concepts and arguments on the model of their ethical counterparts, focusing on the notions of epistemic principle, epistemic maxim and epistemic universalizability test. On this basis, I suggest that there is an analogy between our position as moral agents and as cognizers: our actions and our thoughts are subject to the same rational norm.

The "Societal Crisis of the Present" as a Neoliberal Leitmotif

The ‘societal crisis of the present’ (Gesellschaftskrisis der Gegenwart) is defined by the German neoliberals Eucken, Ropke and Rustow as a state of ‘massification’ (Vermassung), proletarianization and disintegration – accompanied by a far-reaching moral decadence, an ethical nihilism and a religious-spiritual vacuum. Apparently, all major spheres of the ‘life world’ are affected by the various crises appearances: the political sphere, the economic sphere, the religious-cultural sphere as well as the academic-scientific sphere. Following the three neo- or Ordoliberals, the present situation requires a new social way of life and a religious-spiritual reformation, one which allows for overcoming the spiritual crisis and to fill the ethical-religious vacuum. It also requires a new scientific methodology, a new way of economic-ethical thinking (combining elements of a Kantian ethics with an Aristotelian virtue ethics) and a (revolutionary) new type of economic policy. That is, a ‘third way’ between laissez-faire paleo-liberalism on the one hand and Hobbes’ authoritarian and totalitarian Leviathan (e.g., in the form of Soviet-type ‘communism’) on the other hand is required – one which is (closely) linked with the model of a Social Market Economy. The following paper analyses the ordoliberal crisis topic and its crisis appearances at the politico-economic, cultural-religious and scientific levels. It becomes apparent that the crisis topic is one of the central ordoliberal leitmotifs and at the same time argumentative starting point of German neoliberal economic ethics. The paper also critically evaluates the politico-economic implications of the ordoliberal crisis-topic as well as the reform measures proposed by Ordoliberalism. The paper, in particular, reviews the (partially) radical and revolutionary tendencies of Ordoliberalism as well as its limits in a globalized (post-Westphalian) world order.

The Societal Crisis of the Presentt as a Neoliberal Leitmotif

The ‘societal crisis of the present’ (Gesellschaftskrisis der Gegenwart) is defined by the German neoliberals Eucken, Ropke and Rustow as a state of ‘massification’ (Vermassung), proletarianization and disintegration – accompanied by a far-reaching moral decadence, an ethical nihilism and a religious-spiritual vacuum. Apparently, all major spheres of the ‘life world’ are affected by the various crises appearances: the political sphere, the economic sphere, the religious-cultural sphere as well as the academic-scientific sphere. Following the three neo- or Ordoliberals, the present situation requires a new social way of life and a religious-spiritual reformation, one which allows for overcoming the spiritual crisis and to fill the ethical-religious vacuum. It also requires a new scientific methodology, a new way of economic-ethical thinking (combining elements of a Kantian ethics with an Aristotelian virtue ethics) and a (revolutionary) new type of economic policy. That is, a ‘third way’ between laissez-faire paleo-liberalism on the one hand and Hobbes’ authoritarian and totalitarian Leviathan (e.g., in the form of Soviet-type ‘communism’) on the other hand is required – one which is (closely) linked with the model of a Social Market Economy. The following paper analyses the ordoliberal crisis topic and its crisis appearances at the politico-economic, cultural-religious and scientific levels. It becomes apparent that the crisis topic is one of the central ordoliberal leitmotifs and at the same time argumentative starting point of German neoliberal economic ethics. The paper also critically evaluates the politico-economic implications of the ordoliberal crisis-topic as well as the reform measures proposed by Ordoliberalism. The paper, in particular, reviews the (partially) radical and revolutionary tendencies of Ordoliberalism as well as its limits in a globalized (post-Westphalian) world order.

Kant on euthanasia and the duty to die: clearing the air

Thanks to recent scholarship, Kant is no longer seen as the dogmatic opponent of suicide that he appears to be at first glance. However, some interpreters have recently argued for...

Ethical Considerations in the Medico-Legal Expert Approach of a Severe Untreated Psychiatric Disease

The goal of this article is to evaluate from an ethical perspective, involuntary admission versus surveillance within community psychiatric programs of the mentally ill persons who represent a danger for the others. We will be using a Kantian ethics which we will interpose with a utilitarian one. The Kantian ethical perspective promotes the respect for the personal freedom of the mentally impaired persons and questions the legitimacy of its restriction until a criminal act is committed. The utilitarian perspective will take into account public welfare and the precautions to eliminate the risk to the community due to the inability of the mentally ill to discern the consequence of their acts. Using a methodology based on the multidisciplinary case study the authors will be underlining the importance of the psychiatric community programs and the ethics of intervention in regard to the management of potentially hazardous cases. The conclusions will show how important the establishment of community psychiatric programs is to the surveillance of patients with severe chronic mental illnesses.

Book Review: Self-Improvement: An Essay in Kantian Ethics, written by Robert N. Johnson

Book Review: Self-Improvement: An Essay in Kantian Ethics, written by Robert N. Johnson

The Way to World Peace via an Integrated Kantian and Buddhist Perspective

The age of the global war on terror requires a new route to world peace. Immanuel Kant points out that the gradual evolution of human institutions is the key to world peace and that the principles of laws, morality and politics could be holistically established and systematically promoting the right to self-determination of individuals, peoples and the whole of mankind as a motivating force. An international league for peace, the national republican constitution and the law of world citizenship are the legal tools need to be implemented.Moreover, Buddhism values peace both intrinsically and instrumentally. It identifies the human nature and the structural cause of violence. It has the cultural power to motivate and to hold people morally responsible for achieving peaceful ideals: common basis of values, virtues, rights and responsibilities, culture of non-violence, solidarity and tolerance. By associating with the Buddhists, people around the world may feel powerful enough to deal with the contemporary world issues.Therefore, the Buddhist ethics has been called a conceptual skill for a peace education project and the Kantian ethics has been called a technical skill for a rule of law development movement. Both are the ultimate guarantors for peace, thus becoming the new paradigm for peace governance. Such local collaboration can contribute to the peace-building and peacekeeping processes worldwide. The time is now ripe for such an integrated approach to be introduced.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz: Jewish existentialism

AbstractThis article presents Yeshayahu Leibowitz's conception of Judaism and characterizes his position as typically religious-existentialist. It confronts Leibowitz's conception with Kantian ethics, refutes the analogy made between these two conceptions, and shows that Leibowitz's response to Kant is analogous to that of Kierkegaard, the Christian existentialist thinker. It considers Leibowitz's religious position a Jewish variation of Kierkegaard's notion of faith in the absurd. Such an analogy enables us not only to elucidate Leibowitz's religious conception but also to evaluate the implications of Kierkegaard's religious thought in a broader context.

Marx on Exploitation: A Kantian Perspective

Despite exhaustive discussion among scholars of Karl Marx, there remains significant disagreement regarding the best conception of capitalist exploitation. This article tries to move the debate forward by drawing on the ethical theory of Immanuel Kant. The aim is to give moralizing Marxists a foundation in Kantian ethics for the injustice of capitalist exploitation that they already instinctively believe in. As well as using the formula of the end in itself to develop a Kantian articulation of capitalist exploitation (which is in turn compared and contrasted with the three leading conceptions of capitalist exploitation found in Marx scholarship), the article also develops the idea of an antihierarchy philanthropist-capitalist—someone who is not yet motivated to move beyond basic capitalist institutions but who is nevertheless willing to listen to (and forgo some gains that do not benefit) his workers.

The methodological rigor of anticipatory bioethics.

The discipline of historiography, understood as the scientific exploration of the past, has developed much earlier in time than that of futurology, i.e. the methodologically rigorous examination of the future. Yet anticipating the future has arguably always had more practical importance than knowing and understanding the past. Hence anticipation is a crucial aspect of deliberation—the rational reflection on and organization of our action—and indeed ethics. Even in Kantian ethics, with its seemingly utter disregard for the real-world consequences of our actions, anticipating hypothetical future scenarios appears to be an important element of the rational exercise of figuring out whether maxims are universalizable. Even so, the gap between the huge aggregate of rigorous studies of the past and the cautious beginnings of critical analyses and thorough assessments of future scenarios is striking. No surprise then that we know a lot about the past and only very little about the future. Take technology as an example, arguably one of the contemporary phenomena most significantly reshaping the human condition. There is a colossal amount of knowledge about the history, and indeed the prehistory of technology. Studying the historical and archeological data and looking at the way technology has developed since it started with the use of simple stone tools more than two million years ago, it is hard to resist the impression that the pace of technological innovation overall seems to have been accelerating over time. Indeed, in the Paleolithic technological progress must have been a difficult concept to come up with, since nobody would ever witness any significant technological change during his or her lifetime. Today in contrast, many people lament the speed of technological advance. It really does affect everybody, so much so that it sometimes seems difficult to keep up with evernew changes. Understandably, speculation about various new technology-induced vistas of the future is burgeoning. In the early 1990s Vernor Vinge published his essay on the technological singularity (Vinge 1993). Reflecting on the future of technology he predicted the rise of superhumanly intelligent entities within the next 30 years, explored different scenarios of how this might occur (AI, enhanced human brains etc.) and looked into the potential effects of this development. He argued that the singularity would likely mean a huge acceleration of further technological progress, because innovation would henceforth be driven by powers more intelligent than anything currently known to humans, making many of our present models of reality obsolete (Vinge 1993). Ray Kurzweil later maintained that the singularity would involve a merger of human beings and technology, and more generally a fierce technological change so much so that it would represent a ‘‘rupture in the fabric of human history’’ (Kurzweil 2005, 9). He even set a date when the singularity would actually occur: the year 2045. Unsurprisingly Vinge’s and Kurzweil’s ideas have drawn a range of critical reactions pointing out various purported flaws and weaknesses in their respective singularity prognostications. More recently the singularity debate has gained momentum with two contributions. First in 2012 the Journal of Consciousness Studies published a special double-issue devoted to the singularity (Volume 19, Issue 1–2, 2012) containing various responses to David Chalmers’ philosophical analysis of the idea (Chalmers, 2010). B. Gordijn (&) Dublin, Ireland e-mail: bert.gordijn@dcu.ie

L'individualismo etico di Schleiermacher

Schleiermacher’s moral theory takes as its central value the concept of individuality that has been anchored to the feeling of infinity in the Discourses on Religion. The analysis of Monologues confirms a substantial continuity on this point. Finally, the exposure of legal and social features in Kantian ethics concludes this path in the Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre. Among repressive and eudemonistic systems, Schleiermacher follows the lead of the ‘abproductive’ ethics of Plato and Spinoza. These precursors do not express in a typical way the individualistic-romantic instance that Schleiermacher carry out, but their ‘abreligious’ spirit ensures that the affirmations of individualities occur within the horizon of a fundamental harmony.

Kantian Virtue Ethics in the Context of Business: How Practically Useful Can It Be?” by Daryl Koehn

Kantian Virtue Ethics in the Context of Business: How Practically Useful Can It Be?” by Daryl Koehn

Transforming Bourdieu's "perfect" economy of symbolic goods into an imperfect one – The moral grounding of water transfers in Khartoum

Abstract. Pierre Bourdieu conceptualizes social action as "instrumental rational". Disinterestedness is only possible as part of an actor's practical logic when the said actor actively or passively misrecognizes underlying interests. In the "logic of logic", this perceived disinterestedness can and must be scientifically reconstructed as a pure economic exchange. Reason-based morality, such as can be found in Kantian philosophy, becomes impossible, and morality becomes an ignored category in Bourdieu's theoretical endeavour. This article's first goal is to locate Bourdieu's approach within moral philosophy, through parallels to Gauthier's Morals by Agreement. An empirical case on water transfers between neighbours in Khartoum reveals the limits of such an approach. This leads to the second goal. By translating Bourdieu's perfect "economy of symbolic goods" into an imperfect one, reason-based morality is integrated into his project, and the relevance of interest for social interaction is curbed, but not denied.

An Agent-Centered Account of Rightness: The Importance of a Good Attitude

This paper provides a sketch of an agent-centered way of understanding and answering the question, “What’s wrong with that?” On this view, what lies at the bottom of judgments of wrongness is a bad attitude; when someone does something wrong, she does something that expresses a bad, or inappropriate, attitude (where inappropriateness is understood, tentatively, as a failure to recognize the separateness of others). In order to motivate this account, a general Kantian agent-centered ethics is discussed, as well as Michael Slote’s agent-based ethics, in light of analysis of the grounding role of attitudes in the evaluation of two core cases. In light of these discussions, it is argued that there are advantages to preserving the grounding of the appropriateness of attitudes in facts about their objects (as opposed to Slote’s sentimentalism), while cutting such an agent-centered ethics away from a Kantian grounding.

Dependence on Wrongdoing in the Consumption of Meat: A Kantian Analysis

Kant's ethics is used by some as a defence of the exploitation of animals and is criticised by others for not recognising any moral relevance of the plight of animals. These appeals overlook the broad applicability of Kant's principles. In this article, I argue that Kant's ethics implies a duty to abstain from most meat and some other animal products derived from farming. I argue that there is a Kantian principle not to choose goods that have been derived from wrongdoing, with certain qualifications. This principle isolates the wrong of using others to commit wrongdoing on one's behalf. As has been argued by others, Kant's ethics implies that animal farming as we know it in our society almost universally involves wrongdoing and the slaughter of animals is especially tied to wrongdoing. I argue for a broad sense in which these ideas together imply that choosing farmed meat, and probably other animal products, is treating animal industry workers as mere means. Thus, we have a Kantian duty to abstain from these products.

Agreement Matters: Critical Notice of Derek Parfit, On What Matters

Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons (1984) mounted a striking defense of Act Consequentialism against a Rawls-inspired Kantian orthodoxy in moral philosophy. On What Matters (2011) is notable for its serious engagement with Kant's ethics and for its arguments in support of the “Triple Theory,” which allies Rule Consequentialism with Kantian and Scanlonian Contractualism against Act Consequentialism as a theory of moral right. This critical notice argues that what underlies this change is a view of the deontic concept of moral rightness that ties it closely to blameworthiness and accountability in a way that effectively concedes a Rawlsian publicity condition. It is also argued that Parfit's arguments that Kantian and Scanlonian Contractualism entail Rule Consequentialism can be resisted. Two elements of Parfit's metaethics are critically discussed. First, concerning Parfit's arguments against subjectivist theories of practical reason, it is argued that a form of subjectivist theory exists that is not only consistent with Parfit's claim that all reasons for acting are object rather than state given, but that can support that claim. Second, it is argued that Parfit's arguments against identifying normative with natural statements and facts do not transfer seamlessly to identifying normative with natural properties.