Kant's Groundwork Research Articles

Self-understanding and philosophy: the strategy of Kant's Groundwork

Self-understanding and philosophy: the strategy of Kant's Groundwork

Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

An ethics of temptation: Schelling's contribution to the freedom controversy

AbstractIn the period following the publication of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and Critique of Practical Reason, there was a wide‐ranging debate in German philosophy about the concept of freedom. It drew in not only Kant and the so‐called “popular philosophers” of his generation, but also many of those who would go on to be the leading lights of post‐Kantian idealism, including Reinhold, Fichte, and Schelling. Building on recent scholarship that brings Fichte's ethics into contemporary discussions of this freedom controversy, this article introduces Schelling's contribution, found in the seventh installment of his “General Overview of the Most Recent Philosophical Literature.” This article first reconstructs the conflict between Kant and Reinhold as Schelling understood it, which forms the background to this text. Then, it outlines the original position he stakes out in this debate, which is termed an “ethics of temptation.”

SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND ETHICS: THE BOYLE LECTURE 2019

AbstractHow do we and should we decide what is morally right and what is morally wrong? For much of human history, the teachings of religion were presumed to provide either the answer, or much of the answer. Over time, two developments challenged this. The first was the establishment of the discipline of moral philosophy. Foundational texts, such as Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, and the growth of coherent, nonreligious approaches to ethics, notably utilitarianism, served to marginalize the role of religion. And then, second, the twentieth century saw the rapid growth of evolutionary biology with an enthusiastic presumption that biology was the source of ethics. Here, I begin by discussing these developments and then examine the extent to which religion is still needed for a coherent account of ethics.

Kant's Criticism of Common Moral Rational Cognition

AbstractThere is a consensus that Kant's aim in the Groundwork is to clarify, systematize and vindicate the common conception of morality. Philosophical theory hence serves a restorative function. It can strengthen agents' motivation, protect against self‐deception and correct misunderstandings produced by uncritical moral theory. In this paper, I argue that Kant also corrects the common perspective and that Kant's Groundwork shows in which senses the common perspective, even considered apart from its propensity to self‐deception and without being influenced by misleading theory, is deficient. Critical practical philosophy needs to set right agents about the stringency of some of their duties, and agents need to be made aware that they have certain other duties. I discuss how Kant corrects the common agent's notion of the stringency of the duty to not make false promises and how Kant corrects the common agent's notion of duties to self. I finally discuss how his critical practical philosophy can become popular and achieve the correction of the common perspective. I stress the role of education informed by philosophical theory for this and contrast it with so called ‘popular philosophy’.

Immanuel Kant's Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals: a commentary

A defining work of moral philosophy, Kant s for the Metaphysics of has been influential to an extent far beyond what its modest length (roughly 75 pages) might suggest. It is also a famously difficult work, concerned with propounding universal principles rather than answering practical questions. As even professional philosophers will admit, first-time readers are not alone in finding some of its arguments perplexing.Offering an introduction that is accessible to students and relevant to specialized scholars, Dieter Schonecker and Allen Wood make luminously clear the ways the for the Metaphysics of Morals forms the basis of our modern moral outlook: that all human beings have equal dignity as ends in themselves; that every rational being is a self-governing agent whose morality freely derives from his or her own will; and that all rational beings constitute an ideal community, bound only by the moral laws they have agreed upon. Schonecker and Wood explain key Kantian concepts of duty, the good will, and moral worth, as well as the propositions Kant uses to derive his conception of the moral law. How the law relates to freedom, and the significance of the free will within Kant s overall philosophy are rigorously interrogated. Where differing interpretations of Kant s claims are possible, the authors provide alternative options, giving arguments for each. This critical introduction will help readers of the Groundwork gain an informed understanding of Kant s challenging but central philosophical work.

Local desire satisfaction and long term wellbeing: Revisiting the gout sufferer of Kant's groundwork

Local desire satisfaction and long term wellbeing: Revisiting the gout sufferer of Kant's groundwork

Deconstructing dignity: a critique of the right-to-die debate

The right-to-die debate has gone on for centuries, playing out most recently as a spectacle of protest surrounding figures such as Terry Schiavo. In Deconstructing Dignity, Scott Cutler Shershow offers a powerful new way of thinking about it philosophically. Focusing on the concepts of human dignity and the sanctity of life, he employs Derridean deconstruction to uncover self-contradictory and damaging assumptions that underlie both sides of the debate. Shershow examines texts from Cicero's De Officiis to Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals to court decisions and religious declarations. Through them he reveals how arguments both supporting and denying the right to die undermine their own unconditional concepts of human dignity and the sanctity of life with a hidden conditional logic, one often tied to practical economic concerns and the scarcity or unequal distribution of medical resources. He goes on to examine the exceptional case of self-sacrifice, closing with a vision of a society - one whose conditions we are far from meeting-in which the debate can finally be resolved. A sophisticated analysis of a heated topic, Deconstructing Dignity is also a masterful example of deconstructionist methods at work.

Kant on Duty in the Groundwork

Barbara Herman offers an interpretation of Kant's Groundwork on which an action has moral worth if the primary motive for the action is the motive of duty. She offers this approach in place of Richard Henson's sufficiency-based interpretation, according to which an action has moral worth when the motive of duty is sufficient by itself to generate the action. Noa Latham criticizes Herman's account and argues that we cannot make sense of the position that an agent can hold multiple motives for action and yet be motivated by only one of them, concluding that we must accept a face-value interpretation of the Groundwork where morally worthy actions obtain only when the agent's sole motive is the motive of duty. This paper has two goals, one broad and one more constrained. The broader objective is to argue that interpretations of moral worth, as it is presented in the Groundwork, depend on interpretations of Kant's theory of freedom. I show that whether we can make sense of the inclusion of nonmoral motives in morally worthy actions depends on whether the 'always causal framework' is consistent with Kant's theory of freedom. The narrow goal is to show that if we adopt an 'always causal' framework for moral motivation, then Herman's position and her critique of the sufficiency-based approach fail. Furthermore, within this framework I will specify a criterion for judging whether an action is determined by the motive of duty, even in the presence of nonmoral motives. Thus, I argue Latham's conclusion that we must accept a face-value interpretation is incorrect.

Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: a Critical Guide - Jens Timmermann (ed.)

Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: a Critical Guide - Jens Timmermann (ed.)

Analysing the Good Will: Kant's Argument in the First Section of the Groundwork

This article contends that the first section of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals provides a sophisticated and valid argument, and that commentators are therefore mistaken in dismissing this section as flawed. In particular, the article undertakes to show that in this section Kant argues from a conception of the goodness of a good will to two distinctive features of moral goodness, and from these features to his ‘formula of universal law’. The article reveals the sophistication and validity of this argument by considering it in the light of a number of criticisms that are commonly levelled at the section. In conclusion, the article proposes that this interpretation of the section also has significant implications for the understanding of Kant's method, his formulas and his basic conception of the ‘moral’.

Reading Kant's Groundwork

Reading Kant's Groundwork

Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals- By Paul Guyer

Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals- By Paul Guyer

Sapere Aude! The Importance of a Moral Education in Kant's Doctrine of Virtue

The misunderstanding of philosopher Immanuel Kant's principle of morality—the categorical imperative—by journalism professionals, professors, and students comes in many forms. To better understand Kant's ethical theory, however, one must go beyond Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals and study his Doctrine of Virtue: Part 2 of The Metaphysics of Morals; to apply the categorical imperative, one must also understand the importance Kant placed on moral education.

Justice and Action in Otherwise than Being

Are we not at this very moment in the process of barring the issue that our whole essay attempts, and of encircling our position from all sides? (OB, 169). One of the most provocative aspects of the work of Emmanuel Levinas, for many readers, seems to be his misuse of the term "ethics" in describing what it is he is doing. Ethical philosophy, in the tradition of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, has set itself the task of providing a philosophical reflection on ethical action. It has attempted to provide some basic rules for conduct that can assist ethical decision making in particular circumstances. Levinas, in Otherwise than Being (OB) and elsewhere, does not only fail to do this; he in fact presents an "ethics" that is not even to be thought of as thematizing the world of concrete action in any way. He not only fails to provide rules for action, he presents a theory in which to describe an action as ethical would be a strict impossibility; it would be to misunderstand the very meaning of the ethical. Why this disorienting transformation in vocabulary? In fact, the traditional ethical realm has not disappeared from Levinas's account, it has merely been displaced and renamed-- the sphere of ethical action in the traditional sense is the sphere of justice in Levinas. But while it is useful to recognize this, it should not allow us to be less disturbed by what Levinas has done. For while there continues to be a sphere of ethical (or in his terminology, just) action, his sphere of justice remains deeply connected with what he calls ethics. To understand the former, we will have to try to understand the latter. The question remains of whether Levinas provides us any guidance for just action. I would argue that this at least is a legitimate question, as opposed to two possible questions regarding ethics, which I will claim are simply based on a misunderstanding: that is, does Levinas gives us the means to predicate "ethical" of some actions and not others; and does he provide us with any way to guide our own ethical decisions. "Ethics" for Levinas is simply not something of which these questions could be asked. I would like, then, to explore the relation of ethics to justice in Levinas, by way of the parallel relation of the saying to the said. I will argue that action must be described in terms of justice and not ethics. Then I will attempt to show that Otherwise than Being itself can be considered as an attempt at a just action in philosophy-which for Levinas means that it has the specific task of thematizing the relation between the just and the ethical. Extrapolating from this reading of Otherwise than Being as a performative philosophical intervention in the sphere of justice, I will argue that Levinas has in fact provided some general criteria for what a just action must look like. Ethics is to justice as Saying is to Said The relation between ethics and justice, for Levinas, parallels the relation between the saying and the said. In fact, more than merely being in parallel, ethics/justice and saying/said are two ways of talking about the same relation. One of the preeminent features of the saying, the first that any discussion of Otherwise than Being, as well as Levinas's own discussion within the text, must run up against, is that the saying cannot be said without betraying it. It is that which cannot be fixed in discourse, nor even in synchronic time. It is a pre-originary, irrecuperable past. The said, on the contrary, is discourse insofar as it is set down and given meaning, it is philosophy as phenomenology or ontology, it is ethics in the traditional sense of rules for conduct. The said organizes, structures, assigns meanings, compares, asks questions. The saying interrupts all of these-it is an-archical, the overturning of any possible arche. The said is the order of being, and the saying is the "otherwise than being" which, as Levinas insists, is not simply a "being otherwise" (OB, 3). …

The Derivation without the Gap: Rethinking Groundwork I

At the core of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals lies his ‘derivation’ of the categorical imperative: his attempt to establish that, if there is a supreme principle of morality, then it is this imperative. Kant's argument for this claim is one of the most puzzling in his corpus. The received view, championed by Aune and Allison, is that there is a fundamental gap in the argument, which Kant elides by means of a simple but deadly confusion, thus robbing the argument of all validity. We will here contest the received view, as well as Korsgaard's alternative interpretation of the argument. In place of these positions we will offer a reconstruction of the derivation which reveals its coherence and force. We will show that it illuminates some interesting grounds for rejecting certain candidates, including a utilitarian principle, for status as the supreme principle of morality. While certainly not free of all defects, the argument will be shown to be far more powerful and interesting than it has commonly been held to be.

The Possibility of the Categorical Imperative

In spite of two centuries of study and many fine commentaries, Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals' remains a deeply perplexing book. Several of its most vexing difficulties concern Kant's intentions in its Second Part. Here Kant indicates that he takes himself to be offering three different formulations of the fundamental principle of morality-a principle that we human beings call the categorical imperative (CI) because it presents itself as an obligatory constraint to creatures like us, whose will, because of our liability to inclination, is not necessarily determined by the pure principle of morality (413). But there are many questions about these three formulations of CI-about which ones they are, about the relationships that Kant intended to establish among them, about the basis from which he thought he could derive them and the manner in which he intended them to be derived from this basis, and about the relationship between the argument for and about the three formulations of CI in Groundwork II and the argument of the remainder of the book, especially the argument of Groundwork III. The first difficulty is the question of just which statements of CI

The "Possibility" of a Categorical Imperative: Kant's Groundwork, Part III

In part III of Groundwork for Metaphysics of Morals, Kant attempted to solve a that he took to be an especially serious one for his moral philosophy. He described it as of showing the of a categorical imperative.1 At end of part II of Groundwork, he said that he needed to show this in order to show that morality is something real, and not a chimerical idea without any truth-that morality is not a mere phantom of brain (Ak 445).2 The importance of this to Kant's argument in Groundwork can scarcely be denied.3 The possibility problem must be faced by any non-skeptical moral philosophy, as I will explain. My goal in this paper is to show how Kant saw problem, to show how it arose in context of his moral philosophy, and to explain his attempt to solve it. I shall explore Kant's argument in Groundwork III, and intuitions that underlie it. I shall also examine two recent reconstructions of argument, by Henry Allison and Thomas Hill, Jr. My overall goal is to locate a for moral theory in work of Kant, but to discourage idea that it can be solved by means of a Kantian strategy. I will argue that there are major hurdles in way of a Kantian solution.

Universal Laws and Ends-in-Themselves

Kant's Groundwork is the most read and surely the most exasperating of his works on practical philosophy. Both its structure and its arguments remain obscure and controversial. A quick list of unsettled questions reminds one how much is in doubt. The list might include the following: Why does Kant shift the framework of his discussion three times in a short work? Does he establish that there is a supreme principle of morality? Does he show that the Categorical Imperative is that supreme principle? Does he show that human beings are free agents for whom such principles of morali ty are important? What is the relationship between the various apparently distinct formulations of the Categorical Imperative? To what extent are any (or all) of them action-guiding? This paper concentrates on the last two of these questions. It is mainly about the equivalence of the various formulations of the Categorical Im perative: it also sketches ways in which the Categorical Imperative can guide action. I shall comment only on three significantly different formulations, the Formula of Universal Law (FUL), The Formula of the End-in-Itself (FEI) and the (more briefly) on the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends (FKE).1 By way of reminder the three formulations may be stated: