Kant's Moral Philosophy Research Articles

Comments on Guyer

Paul Guyer's paper “Naturalistic and Transcendental Moments in Kant's Moral Philosophy” raises a set of issues about how Kantian ethics should be understood in relation to present day “philosophical naturalism” that are very much in need of discussion. The paper itself is challenging, even in some respects iconoclastic, and provides a highly welcome provocation to raise in new ways some basic questions about what Kantian ethics is and what it ought to be. Guyer offers us an admirably informed and complex argument, both historical and philosophical, that tangles with some of the most difficult problems in Kant's moral philosophy. It begins with some ambitious and controversial claims about Kant's moral philosophy prior to the Groundwork of 1785. It then offers an interpretation, and also a fundamental criticism, of the Groundwork's attempt to establish the moral law based on the idea of freedom of the will. And finally, it raises – and expresses some opinions on – the large and vexed questions of the relationship between transcendental philosophy and philosophical naturalism, and whether Kantian ethics can be made consistent with a naturalistic philosophical outlook. In these comments I will have something to say on each of these three topics, without pretending (any more than Guyer does) to have exhausted what might be said about them.

Comments on Guyer

Before and in the Groundwork, Kant argues as follows for the validity of the moral law: we want to be free. Following the moral law is the only way to be free. So we should follow the moral law.1 The first premise of this syllogism is treated differently before and in the Groundwork. First Kant thought it an empirical fact that men want to be free and want it more than anything else.2 Later he sought an a priori argument showing that we ought to want to be free and are right in thinking it good.3 The former justification of the moral law is superior. When we look to “salvage the normative core of Kantian moral philosophy” (Guyer 445), we should turn to it. – So far Paul Guyer. It is evident that Guyer fails to describe Kant's thought in the Groundwork. It is equally clear that Kant never held the position Guyer claims he held before the Groundwork. (The quotations Guyer gives in support of his claim show this.) Therefore I shall not discuss Guyer's interpretation of Kant. Instead I shall consider the philosophical merits of the position he ascribes to the pre‐critical Kant, and which he recommends as superior. We shall see that that position makes no sense. This indirectly addresses the interpretive question, as it is a reason against ascribing it to Kant.

The Cultivation of Sensibility in Kant's Moral Philosophy

In his later moral writings Kant claims that we have a duty to cultivate certain aspects of our sensuous nature. This claim is surprising for three reasons. First, given Kant's ‘incorporation thesis’ – which states that the only sensible states capable of determining our actions are those that we willingly introduce and integrate into our maxims – it would seem that the content of our inclinations is morally irrelevant. Second, the exclusivity between the passivity that is characteristic of sensibility and the spontaneous quality of our free will that operates throughout Kant's philosophy seems to preclude that any such cultivation is possible. Third, Kant's specific arguments concerning why we are obliged to cultivate our sensible nature are unclear. The goal of this paper is to address each of these three concerns and thus fully explain Kant's theory of the moral necessity of cultivation.

Seeking Perfection: A Kantian Look at Human Genetic Engineering

It is tempting to argue that Kantian moral philosophy justifies prohibiting both human germ-line genetic engineering and non-therapeutic genetic engineering because they fail to respect human dignity. There are, however, good reasons for resisting this temptation. In fact, Kant's moral philosophy provides reasons that support genetic engineering-even germ-line and non-therapeutic. This is true of Kant's imperfect duties to seek one's own perfection and the happiness of others. It is also true of the categorical imperative. Kant's moral philosophy does, however, provide limits to justifiable genetic engineering.

I. Kant's Moral Philosophy: Judges in Our Own Case: Kantian Legislation and Responsibility Attribution

This paper looks at the attribution of moral responsibility in the light of Kant's claim that the maxims of our actions should be universalizable. Assuming that it is often difficult for us to judge which actions satisfy this test, it suggests one way of translating Kantian morality into practice. Suppose that it is possible to read each action, via its maxim, as a communication addressed to the world: as an attempt to set the terms on which we should interact with one another. The paper suggests that respect for the actor requires us to take this communication seriously. When we suppose that an action is wrong, we then have a powerful reason to dispute its message: to hold the actor responsible for her deed. Although we are often unreliable judges ‘in our own case’, our mutual attributions of responsibility show us judging together, what the moral law should mean in practice.

Cultivating Virtue: Moral Progress and the Kantian State

After examining the ethical and political writings of Immanuel Kant, one finds an apparent paradox in his philosophy as his perfectionist moral teachings appear to be linked to his anti-perfectionist political theory. Specifically, he writes that the perfection of moral character can only take place for an individual who is inside of civil society, a condition where no laws may legitimately be implemented expressly for the purpose of trying to make individuals moral. Kant believes that living in civil society is a necessary condition for an individual to refine his talents and reason completely, a process required by morality. I believe, however, that the connection between his moral and political theory runs much deeper than simply facilitating the refinement of talents. Kant's moral theory focuses on an individual's cultivation of virtue, but this cultivation cannot be most satisfactorily completed unless that individual is a member of civil society. Put differently, civil society plays a necessary role in cultivating an individual's character so that he is able to act from maxims consistent with the moral law, out of the respect for the law itself. However, because he believes that civic laws primarily intended to encourage moral cultivation cannot be implemented legitimately, it seems curious that this condition should play such a significant role in Kant's moral philosophy. Through this examination of Kant's moral and political theory, it will be shown that Kant's political society establishes a condition necessary for an individual's complete cultivation of virtue, not by implementing laws that make men moral but by weakening the forces of heteronomy, thereby removing barriers to moral action.

Kant's Rationalist Aesthetics

It is quite standard, even banal, to describe Kant's project in the Critique of Pure Reason [KrV] as a critical reconciliation of rationalism and empiricism, most directly expressed in Kant's claim that intuitions and concepts are two distinct, yet equally necessary, and necessarily interdependent sources of cognition. Similarly, though Kant rejects both the rationalist foundation of morality in the concept of perfection and that of the empiricists in feeling or in the moral sense, one might broadly characterize Kant's moral philosophy as an attempt to reconcile the apriori universality and necessity of rationalist ethics with empiricist (Humean) or sentimentalist (Rousseauean) strictures concerning the distinction between the ‘ought’ and the ‘is’, between third personal knowledge of the good and first personal motivation.

Sartre's Criticisms of Kant's Moral Philosophy

There has been much discussion concerning whether or not some of Sartre's views on morality may be understood as endorsing Kant's views. Perhaps the most controversial issue has been whether in various places in his corpus Sartre invokes Kant's “universalizability principle.” Indeed, Sartre's frequent use of Kantian language, including the idea of universalizability and “kingdom of ends,” strongly suggests that there is some appreciable convergence between his views and those of Kant. While it is true that Sartre borrows Kant's language and expressions, he does not, I argue, use them in the same sense as Kant does.

Simplicity and Authority: Reflections on Theory and Practice in Kant's Moral Philosophy

AbstractWhat is the proper task of Kantian ethical theory? This paper seeks to answer this question with reference to Kant's reply to Christian Garve in Section I of his 1793 essay on Theory and Practice. Kant reasserts the distinctness and natural authority of our consciousness of the moral law. Every mature human being is a moral professional—even philosophers like Garve, if only they forget about their ill-conceived ethical systems and listen to the voice of pure practical reason. Normative theory, Kant argues, cannot be refuted with reference to alleged experience. It is the proper task of the moral philosopher to emphasize this fact. The paper also discusses Kant's attempts to clarify his moral psychology, philosophy of value and conception of the highest good in the course of replying to Garve's challenge.

Immanuel Kant's Theory of Rights

Abstract. It is common for Kant's rights‐based liberalism to be contrasted with the communitarian authoritarianism of the later Fichte and of Hegel, and it is the concept of autonomy that is generally regarded as the theoretical fount of Kant's theory of natural rights, providing the analytical link between Kant's moral philosophy and his political and legal theory. The author argues that this view is erroneous: The notion of autonomy ultimately remains contentless and incapable of providing practical political and legal prescriptions without Kant's substantive account of human nature, an account specifying both the proper moral ends that humans should strive for and the anthropological limits of human perfectibility. Kant's theory of rights is informed by both sets of considerations. Contrary to the received view, Kant develops a socially sensitive account of the self in his later writings, and comes to believe that individual autonomy depends in large measure on the realisation of certain propitious sociocultural and political arrangements. For Kant, natural rights, like individual freedom, are not ahistorical, universal standards of political justice but the historical outcome of the long process of enlightenment. As such, what is right will depend on what is timely. Here Kant is much closer to Fichte and Hegel than is generally acknowledged.

Realism and Anti‐Realism in Kant's Second Critique

AbstractThis article surveys recent work on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, with a particular focus on his doctrine of the fact of reason and his doctrine of the practical postulates, assessing the implications of such work for the debate about realism and antirealism in Kant's moral philosophy. Section 1 briefly surveys some salient considerations raised by Kant's first Critique and Groundwork. In section 2, I survey recent work on the Kant's doctrine of the fact of reason and argue that it does not support an anti‐realist interpretation of Kant's ethics. In section 3, I argue that recent work on Kant's doctrine of the practical postulates does not support an anti‐realist interpretation of Kant's ethics.

Kant on Community: A Reply to Gehrke

Some attempts have been made in recent research on Immanuel Kant and rheto ric to enunciate guidance he may have for communicative practice and ethics. This is promising, since Kant has held relatively minor role in contemporary analyses of rhetoric and communication ethics, due to misunderstandings both on part and on the part of commentators. I firmly believe that Kant's works contain insights on community and the role of rhetoric therein, and that accounts that attempt to mine these resources must do appropriate justice to the depth and breadth of writings. Otherwise, one risks solving problems that Kant already solved elsewhere, or worse yet, one risks misidentifying problem in Kant by not giving developed due attention in the first place. In what follows, I will discuss one recent contribution to the philosophy and rhetoric literature by Pat Gehrke in this journal that I believe falls prey to such problems.1 While I applaud attempt to bring Kant back into discussions of communica tion ethics and rhetoric by rebuilding notion of community, I must voice some concerns I have over account of Kant on community. Indeed, this seems to be in the spirit of Gehrke's analysis, which begins by lamenting the loss of much richness and complexity of Kant's thought in the work of modern commentators, as well as their lack of focus on what Kant's own works say about his articulation of ground for duty to community.21 take Gehrke at word, and will explore how true of an account this is in terms of both the problems in Kant's as well as Gehrke's putative Kantian solution.3 Research considering the relationship between Kant's moral philosophy and rhetoric has been quite sparse. Robert Dostal's account notes Kant's hostil ity to rhetoric as conceived in terms of the manipulative production of what we can call human effects, but ends right where Kant becomes interesting the connection between historical/religious forms of community and communica tive interaction among agents.4 A more recent analysis of Kant's implications for rhetoric comes from Gehrke. Gehrke's purpose is to combine a reading

Considerations on the Notion of Moral Validity in the Moral Theories of Kant and Habermas

In what follows I will consider Kant's and Habermas's conceptions of moral validity in a comparative and critical way. First, I will reconstruct Habermas's discursive or deliberative reformulation of Kant's moral theory (sec.1). And, second, I will introduce some comparative critical considerations (2). I will contend that, though much is gained with Habermas's intersubjectivist reformulation of Kant's moral philosophy, some problems emerge that could be treated with the help of certain Kantian insights. I will focus on Kant's and Habermas's strictly moral writings. The issue of political validity or legitimacy (i.e., of the validity of norms that are to be enforced by a coercive state apparatus) is of course of great importance, but I will not address it here.

Kant and Dependency Relations: Kant on the State's Right to Redistribute Resources to Protect the Rights of Dependents

ABSTRACTContrary to much Kant interpretation, this article argues that Kant's moral philosophy, including his account of charity, is irrelevant to justifying the state's right to redistribute material resources to secure the rights of dependents (the poor, children, and the impaired). The article also rejects the popular view that Kant either does not or cannot justify anything remotely similar to the liberal welfare state. A closer look at Kant's account of dependency relations in “The Doctrine of Right” reveals an argumentative structure sufficient for a public institutional protection of dependents and evidence that Kant identifies concerns of economic justice as lying at the heart of the state's legitimacy.

Humean and Kantian Influences on Husserl’s Later Ethics

Edmund Husserl's writings on moral philosophy have received relatively little attention in the scholarly literature. Nevertheless, those scholars who have written on Husserl's moral philosophy have distinguished between his early or "pre-war" ethics and his later or "postwar" ethics. Husserl's early ethics are influenced heavily by his teacher, Franz Brentano, while his later ethics are influenced by the practical writings of J. G. Fichte. As one might suspect given these two very different influences, there are issues concerning the consistency between Husserl's positions in his earlier and later ethics. Moreover, identifying Husserl's considered ethical position is complicated by the fact that, as Janet Donohoe points out, "it is important to recognize at the outset that Husserl's [ethical] theory is by no means complete. He was never satisfied enough with his account to publish it, nor is there even necessarily a unified theory that deserves the name of Husserl's ethics."1 Despite the difficulty Donohoe identifies, one may still speak of "Husserl's ethics," for he devoted many pages of lecture notes and research manuscripts to the articulation of his views on ethics. My focus in this essay is Husserl's later ethics. By drawing on Husserl's recently published lecture course from the early 1920s titled "Introduction to Ethics,"2 I shall expound and evaluate the influence Hume and Kant had on Husserl's moral philosophy. First, I shall argue that Husserl both uncritically endorses Hume's claim that all acts of valuing are based on feeling or sentiment, and I shall argue, as well, that Hume influenced Husserl's concern for preserving human individuality in an account of moral obligation. second, I shall argue that despite Husserl's criticism that Kant's moral philosophy cannot serve as a guide to action because it is too formal,3 Kant's conception of the moral law as universally and necessarily applying to all human beings, as well as Kant's notion of autonomy, deeply impressed Husserl. Third, I shall examine Husserl's account of what he calls the "absolute ought." Specifically, I shall examine and evaluate Husserl's attempts to explain and to justify how this absolute ought (i.e., moral obligation) is normative for all human beings by grounding it in each individual's personal values of love, values that originate from the inwardness of each individual. This attempt at justification was inspired by Fichte's practical philosophy and was motivated by Husserl's desire to reconcile universal moral obligation with human individuality. I think Husserl's Fichtean grounding of obligation fails, and I shall argue that by returning to Husserl's original Kantian inspiration, Husserlians can develop a cogent account of and normative justification for moral obligation. Humean and Kantian Influences in Husserl's "Introduction to Ethics" Husserl's lecture course, "Introduction to Ethics," gives us an interesting source of material for seeing the influences on Husserl's own thinking on ethics, for, unlike his early lecture notes,4 Husserl spends most of the course engaging the moral philosophies of other thinkers. Though Husserl spends time in the beginning of the lectures discussing the ethical theories of some ancient philosophers (most notably Aristippus' version of hedonism), most of his attention is directed to an examination of modern ethical theories from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. And, as in the early lecture notes, the central theme running throughout Husserl's lecture courses from the early twenties is the struggle in moral philosophy between an ethics of feeling and an ethics of reason. Husserl thinks that this struggle can be seen throughout the history of Western ethics, but he believes that it comes to a head in the debates between moral sense theories and rationalist theories of ethics from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.5 More ximportantly, Husserl sees the struggle as it is articulated from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries as continuing into Husserl's time. …

The Events of Morality and Forgiveness: From Kant to Derrida

AbstractIn this paper, I will perform a "step back" by showing how Derrida's analysis of forgiveness is rooted in Kantian moral philosophy and in Derrida's interpretation of Kierkegaard's concept of decision. This will require a discussion of the distinction that Kant draws in his Groundwork between price (the economic) and dignity (the incomparable), as well as a discussion of the underlying notion of singularity in Kant's text. In addition, Derrida universalizes Kierkegaard's concept of the agent so that, with this perspective in view, the interpretation of Kantian morality as something that must be described in a paradoxical way, becomes fully transparent. Whereas the interpretation of Kantian morality will provide us with a concept of morality that remains a "blind spot" for the agent, with the help of Derrida's Kierkegaard interpretation we can see that the concept of decision remains ultimately ambivalent. In conclusion, both (a) the deconstructed concept of morality and (b) the concept of decision will finally (c) let us understand Derrida's radical concept of forgiveness, which is both a non-economic act of morality in the sense explained and an unpredictable, uncontrollable decision and event.

Noble in Reason, Infinite in Faculty: Themes and Variations in Kant's Moral and Religious Philosophy

Noble in Reason, Infinite in Faculty: Themes and Variations in Kant's Moral and Religious Philosophy

Could the ethics of institutionalized health care be anything but Kantian? Collecting building blocks for a unifying metaethics

Is a Health Care Ethics possible? Against sceptical and relativist doubts Kantian deontology may advance a challenging alternative affirming the possibility of such an ethics on the condition that deontology be adopted as a total programme or complete vision. Kantian deontology is enlisted to move us from an ethics of two-person informal care to one of institutions. It justifies this affirmative answer by occupying a commanding meta-ethical stand. Such a total programme comprises, on the one hand, a dual-aspect strategy incorporating the macro- (institutional) and micro- (person-to-person) levels while, on the other, it integrates consistently within moral epistemology a meta-ethics with lower-ground moral theories. The article describes the issues to be dealt with and the problems which have to be solved on the way to a unifying theory of that kind (Sections I-III) and indicates elements of Kantian moral philosophy which may serve as building blocks (Section IV). Among these are not only Kant's ideas concerning the moral acting of persons and his ideas concerning civil society and state but also his ideas concerning morality, schematism and religion.

The contribution of Kantian moral theory to contemporary medical ethics: a critical analysis.

Kantian deontology is one of three classic moral theories, among virtue ethics and consequentialism. Issues in medical ethics are frequently addressed within a Kantian paradigm, at least --although not exclusively--in European medical ethics. At the same time, critical voices have pointed to deficits of Kantian moral philosophy which must be examined and discussed. It is argued that taking concrete situations and complex relationships into account is of paramount importance in medical ethics. Encounters between medical or nursing staff and patients are rarely symmetrical relationships between autonomous and rational agents. Kantian ethics, the criticism reads, builds on the lofty ideal of such a relationship. In addition to the charge of an individualist and rationalist focus on autonomy, Kantian ethics has been accused of excluding those not actually in possession of these properties or of its rigorism. It is said to be focussed on laws and imperatives to an extent that it cannot appreciate the complex nuances of real conflicts. As a more detailed analysis will show, these charges are inadequate in at least some regards. This will be demonstrated by drawing on the Kantian notion of autonomy, the role of maxims and judgment and the conception of duties, as well as the role of emotions. Nevertheless the objections brought forward against Kantian moral theory can help determine, with greater precision, its strengths and shortcomings as an approach to current problems in medical ethics.

Person and Obligation

In the course of his polemic against Kant's moral philosophy, Scheler was led to depreciate moral obligation and its place in the existence of persons. This depreciation is part of a larger anti-authoritarian strain in his personalism. I attempt to retrieve certain truths about moral obligation that tend to get lost in Scheler: moral obligation is not merely medicinal but has a place at the highest levels of moral life; the freedom of persons is lived in an incomparable way in responding to moral obligation; obligation and obedience even have an indispensable place in the existence of Christians. Drawing on the studies of Scheler by Rudolf Otto, Karol Wojtyla, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Dietrich von Hildebrand, I show how Scheler's personalism is corrected and enhanced once we distance ourselves from his anti-authoritarian animus against obligation and restore obligation to its place in the existence of persons.