Metaphysik Der Sitten Research Articles

Kant und die metaethische Kritik der instrumentellen Rationalität

Abstract The article discusses the role of Immanuel Kant’s practical philosophy in recent attempts to reformulate the critique of instrumental reason formulated by Max Horkheimer from a metaethical point of view. Here, the focus is on the determination of the relationship between normative and rational aspects with regard to the deontological conception expressed by the imperatives. Using the example of the differing readings of Christine Korsgaard and Konstantin Pollok on the relevance of the hypothetical imperative introduced by Kant in the second section of the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten for questions concerning metaethics and the theory of action, the author shows that Kant’s practical philosophy can be interpreted both as an affirmative theory and as a criticism of instrumental reason. With Pollok, the article argues on the one hand for a reading of Kant that emphasises the prevalence of the categorical imperative over the instrumental forms of action. Simultaneously, it points to the problems of relating Kantian theorems to the socio-philosophical problems of a critique of instrumental reason that takes an overarching view of philosophical, scientific and social developments.

Challenged Universality – Kant and a Citoyenne between Stage and Scaffold

The universality of human rights faces the fundamental problem of the nationalized basis of their constitutionalization. Much can be said about the historical struggles to integrate females in the “all men” formulas, but what are the crucial lines of conflict? Historical answers may be found in the Kantian rightful republicanism (rechtlicher Republikanismus), denoting the legitimacy of state political structures by consistency with everyone’s freedom in accordance with universal law. “Rightful” is more precise than “legal”. Kant’s fundamental concept of right – derived from the categorical imperative among equal and free human beings – was “the possibility of [directly] connecting universal reciprocal coercion with the freedom of everyone” (Metaphysik der Sitten, Introduction, § E, 339). Of course, this paper is not so naive to transform Kant into a feminist voice; it draws the attention to the fundamental aspect of constitutional history, how to explain the relationship between the freedom of the individual and the formation of states.

Ciceronian Officium and Kantian Duty

Ciceronian Officium and Kantian Duty Andree Hahmann and Michael Vazquez One of the characteristic markers of the advent of modern moral philosophy is the conceptual distinction between morality and one's own happiness.1 Nowhere is this innovation more visible than with the concept of "moral duty," which in modern terms is often defined precisely by its opposition to prudential self-interest or one's own happiness.2 It is generally assumed that the Stoics are ancient precursors to this decidedly modern concept.3 The concept of duty, or [End Page 667] something like it, plays a central role not only in their account of the psychology of human action but also in their prototypical conception of natural law ethics.4 Yet as recent commentators have emphasized, while the commonalities are tantalizing, appearances are misleading. The Stoics are, at bottom, eudaimonists in the Socratic tradition for whom the modern distinction between morality and prudence would be incoherent.5 No historian of philosophy will deny the vast expanse that separates Stoicism from modern moral philosophy, but the picture [End Page 668] remains largely obscure. It has long been suspected that Cicero played a decisive role in this development due to his crucial role as a translator and mediator of Greek philosophy. After all, Cicero is responsible not only for giving Greek philosophy a Latin dress, but also for shaping the linguistic and conceptual resources of Western philosophy for centuries to come. Scholars have offered varying explanations for Cicero's role in the movement away from eudaimonism: Cicero's Antiochean and syncretizing tendencies,6 the Roman and juridical cast of his appropriation of Stoic ethics and natural law,7 his emphasis on moral progress and the performance of officia by nonvirtuous agents (a [End Page 669] feature of middle Stoicism),8 his anti-Epicurean polemics,9 or some combination thereof. Most important from the point of view of the history of ethics is the fact that Cicero's ethics of officia, although articulated in a decidedly eudaimonistic framework, eventually formed the basis of an ethical system in which moral principles function to place limits on and constrain one's pursuit and maximization of happiness. Furthermore, when we arrive at Kant, whose radical reconception of moral philosophy is a watershed moment in the history of philosophy, we find a direct reference to Cicero at a crucial point in which he explicitly carries out the separation between morality and happiness. In this article, we would like to unpack this story about the history of ideas and look more thoroughly at the ways in which Cicero could have contributed to the development of the modern understanding of moral duty. In so doing, we also shed new light on the intellectual context within which Kant worked out his first major contribution to moral philosophy. [End Page 670] The remainder of the article is divided into four sections. In the second section we outline basic features of the Stoic concept of καθῆκον. In the third section we examine Cicero's translation of the notion into Latin as officium. While Cicero problematized and deliberated over his translational decision, we do not find an adequate basis to conclude that his translation of the Stoic doctrine into Latin and into a Romanized context led to the sort of development some commentators have suggested. Instead, we find that Cicero's translation largely preserves the basic core of the Stoic doctrine of καθῆκον. In the fourth section, we examine important developments in the meaning of "duty" between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, with a particular focus on Pufendorf's reworking of Ciceronian officium in ways that anticipate Kant's critique of Garve's Ciceronian ethics. While it is not Cicero's translation and appropriation of καθῆκον into Latin as such that shapes the modern understanding of moral duty, we argue that Cicero did play a decisive role in this notion's development. In particular, we argue in the fifth section that Cicero's impact is indirect but substantial: Kant's Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten and some of the central theses contained therein are formulated as a direct response to Christian Garve's Ciceronian ethics. Kant, foreshadowed by his predecessor Pufendorf, rejects the Ciceronian...

Über den Anfang von Walter Benjamins Aufsatz „Zur Kritik der Gewalt“ anlässlich des hundertjährigen Jubiläums seiner Veröffentlichung

AbstractAs a commentary on the initial paragraph of Benjamin’s “Zur Kritik der Gewalt,” this article shows that its characterisation of the “sphere of moral relations” as circumscribed by the poles of law and justice generates the rationale for the critique of violence. After describing how Benjamin reproduces the structure of Kant’sMetaphysik der Sitten, the article outlines the procedure whereby the initial definition ofGewaltas an “intervention” into moral relations is supplemented by an exposition of the situation in which law “encroaches” upon “the living” by presenting itself as an “expiation” (Sühne) of moral ambiguity; but inasmuch as the sphere of moral relations is constitutively split between the mutually repugnant poles of law and justice, the process of expiation intensifies the ambiguity of the situation law purports to resolve. Benjamin’s solution to this dilemma consists in claiming the reality of “de-expiation” (Entsühnung), which he associates with “pure” and thus “divine” violence.

Kant on Freedom and Spontaneity ed. by Kate A. Moran

Reviewed by: Kant on Freedom and Spontaneity ed. by Kate A. Moran Desmond Hogan Kate A. Moran, editor. Kant on Freedom and Spontaneity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. xiii + 309. Cloth, £75.00. This fine collection of essays is dedicated to Paul Guyer. It includes work by distinguished experts and younger scholars across a range of topics in Kant’s theoretical, moral, and political philosophy. Karl Ameriks’s “On the Many Senses of ‘Self-Determination’” responds to two misreadings of Kantian autonomy. One dismisses its notion of self-determination, the source of the auto-in autonomy, as an excessively subjective basis for morality; the other interprets its nomos as involving excessive determination of will by reason or sensibility. Ameriks responds with careful analysis of Kant’s “provocative language” concerning the authorship and legislation of morality (186). This includes Kant’s famous description of the will as “giving the law to itself [selbstgesetzgebend] and just because of this as first subject to the law” (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Ak. 4:431). Such formulations, Ameriks argues, do not pick out a “willful process” that undermines objectivity. They reflect Kant’s effort to ground the “strict universality, tantamount to necessity” already imputed to morality in Groundwork II (180). Kant’s concept of moral self-determination thus emerges from the search for a suitable locus for an unconditionally necessary principle of value. Its situation in practical reason justifies talk of “authorship”; however, Kant’s meaning has only “partial, metaphorical overlaps with familiar notions of empirical authorship and legislation” (186). [End Page 152] Kate Moran’s “Inclination, Need, and Moral Misery” sets out from the Groundwork’s notorious claim that “to be free” of inclination “must be the wish of every rational person” (Ak. 4:428). The crucial context, Moran reminds us, is Kant’s effort to exclude inclination as a possible candidate for the absolute worth attributed to humanity. An association of inclination with need, she argues, explains inclination’s morally problematic status. Kant is especially concerned with acquired needs that “change and grow with the indulgence that one allows them,” resulting in a burdensome counterweight to morality and moral misery (KpV, Ak. 5:118). Concern about need’s corrupting potential is consistent with the doctrine of Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone that natural inclinations are “good in themselves” (Ak. 5:158). Rolf-Peter Horstmann’s “Kant on Imagination and Object Constitution” offers a compressed presentation of the argument of half of his 2018 Cambridge University Press book on Kant’s theory of imagination (its other half concerns imagination in aesthetics). Horstmann skillfully defends the partial independence of Kant’s productive imagination vis-à-vis the understanding, emphasizing imagination’s indispensability as a “discerning” power in empirical apprehension—the first stage in Kant’s account of empirical object-constitution. Along with Allen Wood, Patricia Kitcher (“Guyer on the Value of Freedom”) takes issue with Guyer’s interpretation of Kantian morality as “means to the preservation,” “promotion,” or “maximization” of freedom. She also challenges Guyer’s view that Kant regards freedom and morality as valuable “primarily as the necessary condition [of] universal happiness” (90). This is not entailed by Kant’s theory of the “highest good” (summum bonum)—though that includes universal moral perfection and proportional, thus presumably universal, happiness. Guyer’s “happiness-friendly Kant” can receive only qualified endorsement given the merely conditional value of happiness, on account of which it cannot ground morality (105). Kitcher’s reading draws solid support from published texts, and from an unpublished note asserting “happiness is no true good [kein wahres Gut].” The note’s continuation shows, to the reader’s relief, that Kant’s target is again only happiness’s unconditional value: “Worthiness is a true and the highest good, but not the complete good” (Ak. 19:187; cf. KpV, Ak. 5:111). Here I can only indicate a few other highlights. Barbara Herman’s “Religion and the Highest Good” offers a new and intriguing reading of the Religion’s Christology. She reads it as a contribution to the “moral imagination” that helps us manage guilt and anxiety arising from a propensity to evil that threatens to derail our moral identities (226). The Religion...

Traduction de l’ « Introduction » du cours de droit naturel dit Naturrecht Feyerabend (1784)

Abstract This paper offers the first French translation of the “Introduction” (“Einleitung”) of the only available manuscript of the natural law course (which Kant taught between 1767 and 1788) known as Naturrecht Feyerabend (1784). The translation is preceded by a “Présentation” which, in particular, aims to establish the important but often ignored place of the “Introduction” of the Naturrecht Feyerabend in the development of Kant’s moral thought. The most obvious interest of the Naturrecht Feyerabend is related to the year in which this course was taught: 1784, a crucial year in the evolution of Kant’s moral thought, where Kant worked to complete the Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten. In this regard, the “Présentation” that we propose for the French translation of the “Introduction” emphasizes that the Introduction of the NF contains arguments which are not found in the Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten (among others the arguments that only freedom gives dignity and makes rational beings ends in themselves and that freedom must be a law to itself). To this extent, this “Présentation” aims to contribute to showing that the Introduction of the NF is a valuable text for the historian of Kantian thought who wants to reconstruct the development of Kant’s moral thought.

Bona Fama Defuncti in Kant’s Rechtslehre: Some Perspectives

AbstractAlthough Kant’s final work in moral philosophy, Die Metaphysik der Sitten, currently attracts much scholarly attention, there is still a lot to explore. This article is an attempt to get to grips with a particular, often neglected passage of the Rechtslehre, namely §35. Here Kant defends the view that not only can a person’s good reputation can be tarnished after his death, but also that this constitutes a violation of this dead person’s property. Here I will not be able to fully clarify what Kant means when he holds that persons can be harmed after their death, but I will put Kant’s view in a few perspectives.

Kant on the motive of (imperfect) duty

This paper argues that Kantians face a little discussed problem in accounting for how actions that fulfill imperfect duties can be morally motivated. It is widely agreed that actions that are performed from the motive of duty are performed through a recognition of the objective necessity of the action. It is also generally held that the objective necessity of an action consists in its rational non-optionality. Many actions that fulfill imperfect duties, however, are rationally optional. Given these constraints, it is impossible that such rationally optional actions (including, for instance, many acts of benevolence) could be performed from the motive of duty. After presenting the problem as one that Kantians should find genuinely pressing, this paper offers a solution by advancing an alternative to the conception of rational necessity widely shared by Kantians. On the alternative view presented here, an action is rationally necessary if and only if the justifying reasons that speak in favor of performing the action do not depend on any empirical and therefore contingent motivational source on the part of an agent. Such actions may well be rationally optional. Moral motivation is therefore possible even in the case of rationally optional actions. Abbreviations: The following abbreviations are used for Kant’s works. All translations are from Practical Philosophy, ed. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Citations are given by the abbreviation, the volume, and the page number from Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften, edited by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences (Berlin: Georg Reimer, later Walter deGruyter & Co., 1900–). G.Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals).KpVKritik der praktischen Vernunft (Critique of Practical Reason).MSDie Metaphysik der Sitten (The Metaphysics of Morals).

Föderalität ohne Zwangsgewalt

In the last years, we witnessed war-like conflicts, which put the question of legitimate international coercive powers high on the agenda of lawyers and politicians likewise - where it has not really disappeared ever since the publishing of I. Kant's Metaphysik der Sitten more than 200 years ago. In this essay it will be shown, that the concept of public international law, as it was consistently developed by Kant, has lost nothing of its relevance. For this purpose, the author will reflect first on Kant's League of Nations, secondly on his reference to the foedus Amphictyonum as the ancient Greek cultural federation, and thus prove the conclusiveness of Kant's rejection of any international coercive law.

Foruroligende etik i Heinrich von Kleists »Michael Kohlhaas«

Disquieting Ethics in »Michael Kohlhaas« by Heinrich von Kleist:This article argues that the concept of evil takes a central place in the exploration of the Kantian ethics in Heinrich von Kleist’s novella »Michael Kohlhaas«.Maria Jørgensen argues that not only is the famous duty to which Kohlhaas finds himself obliged conceived in accordance with Kant’s ethics of duty, but also the description of Kohlhaas’ subjectivity in general is constructed by means of Kantian terms. Kleist’s text makes use of concepts such as duty, freedom, pathology, universality and the sublime in order to construct Kohlhaas as an inherently decentered subject. Furthermore Jørgensen argues that the emptying of the concept of the Good in Kantian ethics surfaces in Kleist’s novella as a hitherto unnoticed tendency to a certain tautologisation in Kohlhaas’ qualitative judgments.In the final section of the article the evil act in »Michael Kohlhaas« as an act of freedom, »Aktus der Freiheit«, is investigated with a departure in the Kantian concept of diabolical evil in Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft. If Kohlhaas’ first attempt to act ethically is contaminated by the self-interest which sticks to his initial duty to secure redress for the wrongs done to him and his fellow citizens by the Junker von Tronka, his last act of refusing to negotiate with the Elector of Saxony functions as a purely ethical act in Kantian terms. Kohlhaas’ act can be seen as an ethical act as it neglects the subject’s pathology, which according to Kant can only be done by an act of reason. Furthermore the act is in keeping with the criteria which Kant, according to Alenka Zupančič, delivers in the famous footnote on the execution of Louis XVI in Metaphysik der Sitten: The act is characterized by being purely formal, it arises from a maxim, and it is first of all an act of freedom. This article thus argues that »Michael Kohlhaas« evidently contains a fulfilled ethical act in Kantian terms, but that this act must be found in quite another place than previously assumed.

The Formation of Kant's Casuistry and Method Problems of Applied Ethics

This paper examines the methodological problem of casuistry by reference to Immanuel Kant's position on it. He addressed “Casuistical Questions” in his last work on ethics, Metaphysik der Sitten, in order to defend his position against attacks from scholars defending an Aristotelian (and also Ciceronian) eudemonistic viewpoint. It is argued that Kantian casuistry has much in common with the Aristotelian idea of emphasizing the moral objectives and sensibility of an agent in concrete circumstances. Nevertheless, Kant did not entirely adopt the case-oriented ethical perspective because he saw the moral duty as the „wide“ one. Moral duties are wide in the sense that they demand continuous self-examination: asking whether there might be a better way to limit one's maxim by another. According to Kant, although casuistry as a case study could give moral law or duties more practicability through the training of moral judgment, the moral agent cannot use with individual cases in order to modify or devise new moral rules or duties.

Autonomia w etyce I. Kanta (próba interpretacji historystycznej)

Traditional interpretations of the Kantian idea of autonomy, based on classical texts such as Kritik der praktischen Vernunft and Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten , stress mainly one point: action is autonomous only when the agent obeys the law. In this paper I try to introduce an interpretation of Kant’s practical philosophy which covers a broader perspective and presents the idea of “radical autonomy”. By reading Kant’s classical practical texts in connection with Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blosen Vernunft and Tugendlehre , it is possible to show that Kant’s conception of autonomy also allows for actions (and maxims) that are not determined by the categorical imperative. This paper adopts the point of view of “historical enlightenment” ( Schnadelbach ), which is rather contrary to the general anti-historical context of Kant’s philosophy. It causes interpretation to be methodologically against Kantian the “metaphysical hipotheque” (e.g., the pure Faktum der Vernunft , the absolute grounding of morality); however, a broadened idea of (“radical”) autonomy also makes it possible to defend Kant’s ethics in the contemporary critical horizon of historicism.

Larvae

Larvae

De la apropiación privada a la adquisición común originaria del suelo. Un cambio metodológico «menor» con consecuencias políticas revolucionarias

In a fascinating and enigmatic passage of the Metaphysik der Sitten , Kant produced a definitive methodological change in the justification of the acquisition of what is «mine and thine exterior». This change was introduced by means of the rational and not empirically verifiable hypothesis of common original acquisition of land: «All men are originally and before any juridical act of will in rightful possession of the soil; that is, they have a right to be ( da Sein ) wherever nature or chance has placed them without their will». In this way, the passionate supporter of the acquired -not innate- character of property rights makes room for the only natural right proceeding from the exercise of (external) freedom: the right of mankind to take possession of a place on the Earth's limited spherical surface. A historical and political interpretation of these passages makes possible to assess the revolutionary consequences of an apparently «minor» methodological change.

La morale kantienne et la philosophie transcendantale

ABSTRACTThe aim of this article is to discuss the transcendental status of Kant's moral philosophy. Despite what is usually thought among scholars, we intend to demonstrate that morality for Kant is not part of transcendental philosophy. We shall at first recall the reasons that have driven Kant to separate morality from the transcendental philosophy. Kant's position seems both firm and clear: morality, although involving a priori concepts such as the moral law, is not a transcendantal knowledge because its major concept, the will, is not pure enough; it refers somehow to experience. On the other hand, after considering the positions of renowned scholars such as Gueroult, Delbos, and Höffe, who claim that Kant's morality became partially or totally transcendantal since the writing of the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, we suggest that Kant had then found the right way to establish on a critical basis a future metaphysics of morals.

Lux Regiomontana. Der kategorische Imperativ in Ciceros De officiis

Abstract Interpretation of Cicero's De officiis mostly focuses on questions of traditional Quellen-forschung, especially on its relationship with the lost works of Panaetius, Posidonius and Hecato. This essay, on the contrary, tries to illuminate Cicero's work by confronting a pivotal passage of De off. (3, 19-32) with Kant's famous categorical imperative. Cicero's invention of a formula to decide moral dilemmas as well as its anthropological grounds and socio-political implications foreshadow the Kantian concept in the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. This suggests that there may even be a direct influence of Cicero on Kant.

In Praise of La Mitezza

Among the ancients, ethics was resolved largely through the treatment of virtues. Suffice it to recall Aristotle's Etica Nicomachea, which was for many centuries a prescribed text. In our times such a treatment has almost disappeared. Today moral philosophers discuss values and choices, on both analytical and propositional levels, and their major or minor rationality, as well as discussing rules or norms and consequently rights and duties. One of the last significant writings devoted to the classic subject of virtue was the second part of Kant's Metaphysics of Morals (Die Metaphysik der Sitten), titled The Theory of Virtue (Die Tugendlehre), the first part of which discusses the Theory of Law (Die Rechtlehre). However, Kant's ethics is especially one of duty, and more specifically of inward as distinguished from outward duty, with which the theory of law is concerned. In the former, virtue is defined as the necessary willpower to accomplish one's duty, as the moral strength required by man to fight those defects which prevent or become an obstacle to the accomplishment of duty. Kant's theory of virtue is an integral part of the ethics of duty and, as explicitly and repeatedly declared, has nothing to do with Aristotelian ethics.

The Age of German Idealism (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 525 and third Paralogisms, and the second edition subjective deduction, always with an eye towards what implications the arguments have for Kant's model of the mind. Discussion of his detailed exegetical work is not possible here, but his major claims should at least be mentioned. First, Brook stresses against Henrich, Strawson, and Guyer that ASA is not crucial to the actual argument of either Transcendental Deduction (TD). Second, Brook argues that the relational categories play a crucial role in the TD, since they alone enable the unification of global objects. Third, Brook notes that Kant's Paralogisms fit nicely with contemporary functionalism's agnosticism about the ultimate structure of the mind. Fourth, Brook interprets the Paralogisms as employing two strategies: a) an analysis of the concepts of a thinking being and of self-awareness and b) an examination of what self-awareness tells us about ourselves. Finally, Brook interprets Kant's model of the mind as implying that we can be aware of the mind as it is and, further, that the mind is a global representation. Brook's twofold project is quite interesting and very worthwhile reading for both contemporary philosophers of mind and Kant scholars. Philosophers of mind will appreciate Brook's attempts to make Kant both accessible and relevant to their own concerns in philosophically interesting ways, while Kant scholars can benefit from his clear and detailed exegetical work. It should be noted, however, that Brook neglects almost entirely the relevant German scholarship on Kant's theory of mind in the form of work by G. Prauss, W. Carl, M. Frank, G. Mohr, B. Th61e, and D. Sturma (to mention but a few), and Brook's arguments are at times not as explicit as one might like. Also, Brook's final claims that we can be aware of the mind as it is and that the mind is a global representation raise serious questions, especially since the latter seems to conflict directly with Kant's belief (based on practical arguments) that the noumenal self is an immaterial substance, not a representation. ERIC WATKINS Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins, editors. The Age of German Idealism. Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume VI. New York: Routledge, 1993. Pp. xxv + 4o8. Cloth, $85.oo. This is a collaborative work. The eleven chapters have eleven different authors (including the two editors). The editors have added a short introduction, a valuable chronology showing events in politics, the arts, science, and philosophy from the birth of Rousseau (l 712) to the death of Schopenhauer (186o), and a glossary. The authors have tried to write an introductory account of their assigned topic; and the essays are quite self-contained. So the volume fails to be a historyof philosophy at all, because interactions and influences are only sporadically discussed. It will be most useful to students making their first acquaintance with the particular authors (and works) dealt with. I shall offer here only a summary verdict upon it, chapter by chapter; and the reader must remember that myjudgment is probably sounder for the first eight chapters than for the last three. 526 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:3 JULY 1995 L. W. Beck's "From Leibniz to Kant" is elementary "history of philosophy" at its best. He expounds the German Enlightenment from its two sides (Rationalism and Pietism), looking always for the problems that it bequeathed to Kant. A better historical introduction to the study of Kant could hardly be imagined. Virtually all of us (students and teachers alike) need it; one hopes that all will read it (and fears that many will not). Kant has three chapters, and their value is rather uneven. Daniel Bonevac is content to provide a brief and simple exposition of the deductions of the categories in the Critique of Pure Reason--with a few pages on the Dialectic, especially the treatment of the Ontological Proof. Then Don Becker deals with Kant's moral philosophy almost entirely through the Grundlegung; after that he passes to the Metaphysik der Sitten, the essay on history, and "Perpetual Peace." The Critique of Practical Reason itself--which beginning students of the Categorical...

What Is Wrong with Kant’s Four Examples

Kant gives four examples to illustrate the application of the categorical imperative immediately after introducing its “universal law” formulation in Chapter Two his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. These examples have been much discussed to gain an understanding of how the categorical imperative applies to derive specific duties. It is argued that the discussions found in these examples do not accord well with Kant’s fuller account of that application in his later work The Metaphysics of Morals. That [later] work has quite different, sometimes better, arguments for the same moral conclusions, and never mentions the argument against making a lying promise (the second example). Giving exclusive or excessive attention to these four examples has distorted our understanding of Kant’s moral philosophy. I For a good many years there has been a great concentration on the four examples of the application of the categorical imperative that Kant gives us in the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, immediately after he introduces the “universal law” formulation of the categorical imperative in Chapter Two. Perhaps it all started with C. D. Broad’s discussion of Kant in Five Types of Ethical Theory.1 When Robert Paul Wolff’s well known anthology of writings on Kant first appeared some 25 years ago, five of the eight essays there on Kant’s ethics were at least in part concerned with giving an explication or critique of these four examples.2 Many textbook discussions of Kant center around Kant’s arguments for the four examples (e.g., Hospers, Feldman); as a result whole generations of students have been taught Kant based on what he shows or fails to show about the meaning and applicability of the categorical imperative in the famous four examples.3 In this literature friends of Kant have usually tried to defend his reasoning in the four examples, and those hostile to his general views have criticized it. In this paper I wish to take a different approach, and, although I will mention a few points of criticism, mainly I wish to urge that these famous few paragraphs do not very well state or reflect Kant’s more considered

Kant's Absolute Value (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 261 Kant's Absolute Value. By P. A. E. Hutchings. (Detroit: Wayne University Press, 1972. Pp. 345. $11.50) This is a challenging and, at the same time, a disappointing book. It is challenging because it forces us to re-examine in detail Kant's position and argument as developed in the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. It is disappointing because of the author's misreading of Kant. The references to James Harris's Dialogue Concerning Happiness On themselves interesting) and to S. T. Coleridge and T. H. Green contribute little to a clarification of the basic issues. As far as Kant's Grundlegung is concerned, Hutchings excludes Chapter III from consideration and fails to notice that in the titles of the three chapters of his work Kant himself has indicated a progression of ideas that culminates in Chapter IIL To illustrate what this failure to take note of the progression of Kant's argument entails, only one passage need be cited. Hutchings says, by way of a criticism, that "Kant's definition of 'good will' in the first paragraph of the Groundwork hardly goes beyond the commonplaces of his age" (p. 85). But the title of Chapter I, which immediately precedes the first paragraph, is: "Transition from the Commonplace Rational Knowledge of Morals to the Philosophical." It would have been necessary for so detailed an analysis of the Grundlegung as Hutchings here attempts to use the German text of the work rather than Paton's often misleading translation. At times, Hutchings himself seems to have misgivings about Paton's translation . For instance, he quotes Patou's translation together with the German text. Paten: "The whole principle of action may be corrected and adjusted to universal ends." Kant: "Das ganze Prinzip zu handeln, berichtige und allgemein-zweckm~ssig mache" (p. 80). Now surely, Kant does not say that the principle may be "adjusted to universal ends"; he does say that it may be made "universally purposive," and that is quite a different story. I-Iutchings, however, accepts Paton's version and argues that Kant's statement "hardly affects.., the extremely traditional look" of Kant's position. But we must note that the passage quoted is part of the first paragraph of Chapter I of the Grundlegung and therefore belongs to the "commonplace view" which Kant there presents. Consider a second example. Hutchings says: "A notion of moral content appears to arise, obscurely, out of the concept of inner worth.., land] this notion looks to be shot through with a disastrous category mistake" (p. 255). The crux of the matter is the term "moral content," which is Paton's mistranslation of "moralischer Gehalt." Abbott's translation of "Gehalt" as "worth" Hutchings explicitly rejects and perhaps with good reason, considering the context. Lewis White Beck's translation of "Gehalt" as "import" is better; but in the context in which Kant uses the term I prefer "significance," which covers both meaning and importance. When the term "Gehalt" is so understood, Kant's "disastrous category mistake" evaporates into a translator's error. Consider a third example. Hutchings quotes Kant as saying: "However right and however amiable [an act, such as helping others] may be, [it] has still no genuinely moral worth"; and he comments: "There is something odd about admitting an act may be right while denying it moral worth. What is right surely has, in some sense, 'moral worth' " (p. 260). But Kant does not use the term "right" in this context; he uses "pflichtgemiiss," i.e., "in accord with duty," which Paten has erroneously translated as "fight." Now surely, there is nothing odd about admitting that an act may be "in accord with duty"-i .e., that it may be externally the kind of act which duty demands---and yet lack "genuine moral worth" because the motive behind the act is evil. Much more could be said by way of criticism of Hutchings's interpretation of Kant's Grundlegung; but it would require detailed analyses of large parts of the book, and such analyses are precluded by the limitations of a book review. The basic fault of Hutchings's interpretation is that it misses entirely the progression of Kant's...