Obligatory Ends Research Articles

On Kantian Obligatory Ends and Their Maxims of Actions

On Kantian Obligatory Ends and Their Maxims of Actions

Kant on the Normativity of Obligatory Ends

AbstractI propose a novel way to understand the stringency of Kant’s conception of beneficence. This novel understanding can ground our intuition that we do not have to forego (almost) all pursuit of our personal ends. I argue that we should understand the application of imperfect duties to specific cases according to the framework set by the adoption and promotion of ends. Agents have other ends than obligatory ones and they must weigh obligatory ends against these other ends. Obligatory ends are special among ends only insofar as their adoption is not optional. My reading of the normative status of imperfect duties affords a way of thinking about beneficence modelled on the everyday ways in which agents pursue their personal projects and weigh different ends against each other. This establishes a middle-ground between an extremely demanding conception of beneficence and an overly latitudinarian one. Furthermore, it helps us understand why we do not have to be maximally beneficent and why there is a bias towards the near in our thinking about rescue cases.

Morality, Voluntary Laws, and State Neutrality

Kantian political philosophies stress that a state ought to be “neutral” (Rawls), “minimal” (Nozick), or “public” (Ripstein’s Kant), as part of its duty to respect its citizens’ freedom to pursue whatever ends these citizens find valuable. States are under duty merely to secure citizens’ independence from each other and from the state. In contrast, Kantian morality contends that individuals are subject to a duty to pursue certain “obligatory” ends, viz., ends that emerge from the intrinsic value of personhood and autonomy. In some cases, hindering one’s freedom is necessary for promoting these ends. This essay describes circumstances in which a legal right to interfere with one’s property and body in promoting obligatory ends is justified, even though such a right compromises states’ neutrality. This description sheds a new light on the relation between the optimal legal system (“Right”) and morality (“Virtue”) and between justice and truth.

A Funeral March for Those Drowning in Shallow Ponds?

Abstract I discuss the problem that Kant’s ethics seems to be incapable of capturing our strong intuition that emergencies create a context for actions that is very different from other cases of helping and from other opportunities to further obligatory ends. I argue that if we pay attention to how Kant grounds beneficence we see that distress and emergency function as constitutive concerns. They are vital to establishing the duty of beneficence in the first place, and they also guide the application of duties to specific cases. Kant’s conception of imperfect duties to others, when understood correctly, offers a way to understand why emergencies are morally important, but also why other factors have a place in our moral reasoning.

Review of: Jeffrey Edwards, Autonomy, Moral Worth, and Right. Kant on Obligatory Ends, Respect for Law, and Original Acquisition, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2018

Review of: Jeffrey Edwards, Autonomy, Moral Worth, and Right. Kant on Obligatory Ends, Respect for Law, and Original Acquisition, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2018

Understanding Kant’s Duty of Respect as a Duty of Virtue

In the Doctrine of Virtue Kant declares that “Only an end that is also a duty can be called a duty of virtue” (MS 6:383). In the same text Kant refers to the duty of respect for others as a duty of virtue. It follows that the duty of respect must correspond to some end that is also a duty. What is this end? This paper endeavors to answer this question. Though Kant explicitly identifies two obligatory ends—one’s own perfection and the happiness of others (MS 6:385)—neither is a good candidate for the end which corresponds to the duty of respect. This paper examines two plausible candidates—others’ humanity and others’ self-esteem—arguing that the latter is preferable insofar as it accords better with what Kant says about the vice of defamation, respecting others in the logical use of their reason, and respectful beneficence.

Will, Obligatory Ends and the Completion of Practical Reason: Comments on Barbara Herman'sMoral Literacy

AbstractThis paper discusses three inter-related themes in Barbara Herman'sMoral Literacy– the idea that, for Kant, the will is a ‘norm-constituted power’ whose activity is guided by its own internal norm, that the obligatory ends are reasonably viewed as the ends of all rational choice, and that morality ‘completes’ practical reason or rational agency.

Reasoning to Obligation

If, as Kant says, “the will is practical reason”, we should think of willing as a mode of reasoning, and its activity represented in movement from evaluative premises to intention by way of a validity‐securing principle of inference. Such a view of willing takes motive and rational choice out of empirical psychology, thereby eliminating grounds for many familiar objections to Kant's account of morally good action. The categorical imperative provides the fundamental principle of valid practical inference; however, for good willing, we also require correct premises. These come from specifications of the two obligatory ends – our own perfection and the happiness of others. Interpreting good willing as good reasoning not only fits well with Kant's metaphysics of free action, it also offers a sound method for reasoning to and about individual as well as role‐dependent moral obligations.

Wise Maxims / Wise Judging

One of the reasons often cited for the renewed interest in Aristotelian virtue theory is its alleged sensitivity to the particular case. In addition to rules and procedures is attention to the variety of individual cases, and a reminder of the shortfalls of misplaced rigour. Often quoted are the passages from the Nicomachean Ethics in which Aristotle warns that we must seek only so much precision as is appropriate for the subject matter (EN1094M1-22; 1103b34-1104al0).2 Repeated, too, is the well-known phrase of the Ethics, that judgment rests in perception (EN1109b22). The spirit of these remarks, in essence, that practical wisdom is not scien tific understanding (EN1142a24),3 is contrasted with modern views which stress the sufficiency of algorithms for fully determining right action and deliberation based on deduction from rules. However, the contrast between modern and ancient approaches seems less stark when we turn to recent Kantian ethics. For here there has been a recognizable shift away from interpreting Kant as proposing some generalizable view of deliberation as either algorithmic, prescribing a cor rect act for each situation, or as involving rules that prescribe uniform con duct.4 In their place is an emphasis on the notion of acting on principles responsive to the salient features of complex situations. The principles of a subject (maxims) must of course be lawful if they are to be morally accep table. They are in accordance with law (gesetzm?ssig) when they can be universalized or acted on by others. This is the point at which the Cate gorical Imperative enters?namely in checking our initial proposals. But in stressing the importance of acting on principles formulated from the bottom up, the interpretation also stresses the fact that capacities for perceiving moral salience figure crucially in a Kantian account. The role of these capacities is perhaps most perspicuous in the case of imperfect duties, or wide duties of end or virtue. Whereas perfect duties specify determinate actions the performance of which is obligatory, im perfect duties leave wide discretion for the fulfilling of obligatory ends? imperfect duties underdetermine specific action. Ends such as others' happiness or my own moral perfection are held by Kant to be obligatory in the sense that finite rational agents such as ourselves require these policies in

Immanuel Kant's moral theory

1. Introduction 2. The context for Kant's moral philosophy Part I. The Nature of Morality: 3. The nature of human action 4. Prudence: taking care of our own interests 5. Morality: living autonomously 6. Morally obligatory ends 7. The defense of morality 8. The primacy of morality Part II. The Moral Norm for Persons: 9. Moral character: part I 10. Moral character: part II Part III. The Norm for Moral Judgment: 11. The categorical imperative 12. The formula of autonomy or of universal law: part I 13. The formula of autonomy or of universal law: part II 14. The formula of respect for the dignity of persons 15. The formula of legislation for a moral community Part IV. Kant on History, Politics, and Religion: 16. Autonomy and the state 17. Civil justice and republicanism 18. Kant's philosophy of religion Appendixes: 1. Kant's two-viewpoints doctrine 2. Kant's philosophy of moral education.