Kantian Ethics, Misc

The goal of this paper is to sketch and defend a novel conception of dignity. I begin by offering three desiderata that a theory of dignity should be able to satisfy: it should be able to explain why all human beings are owed respect, and what kind of respect we are owed; it should be able to explain how acts such as torture damage dignity, and what kinds of harms this brings about; and finally, it should be able to explain (...) why dignity is held to a higher degree by certain individuals. After demonstrating that the dominant, Kantian-inspired conception of dignity cannot fulfill these desiderata, I develop a novel conception of dignity that centers around the role of normative standards. Dignity, on this conception, involves being subject to, and then upholding, relevant normative standards; to violate someone’s dignity is to prevent them from upholding those standards. Importantly, these standards can have either a subjective or a communal source, which in turn explains both the agential and social harms that accompany dignity violations. I then draw on the idea of social dignity to explain human dignity. Unlike the dominant philosophical conception, I take human dignity to be a status that is conferred, rather than a status that is inherent. (shrink)

In this paper, I confront Parfit’s Mixed Maxims Objection. I argue that recent attempts to respond to this objection fail, and I argue that their failure is compounded by the failure of recent attempts to show how the Formula of Universal Law can be used to demarcate the category of obligatory maxims. I then set out my own response to the objection, drawing on remarks from Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals for inspiration and developing a novel account of how the Formula (...) of Universal Law can be employed to determine the deontic status of action tokens, action types, and maxims. (shrink)

This article considers the charge that citizens of developed societies are complicit in large-scale harms, using climate destabilisation as its central example. It contends that we have yet to create a lived morality – a fabric of practices and institutions – that is adequate to our situation. As a result, we participate in systematic injustice, despite all good efforts and intentions. To make this case, the article draws on recent discussions of Kant’s ethics and politics. Section 1 considers Tamar Schapiro’s (...) account of how otherwise decent actions can be corrupted by others’ betrayals, and hence fall into complicity. Section 2 turns to discussions by Christine Korsgaard and Lucy Allais, which highlight how people can be left without innocent choices if shared frameworks of interaction do not instantiate core ideals. Section 3 brings these ideas together in order to make sense of the charge of complicity in grave collective harms, and addresses some worries that the idea of unavoidable complicity may raise. (shrink)

Commentators disagree about Kant’s view on the proper treatment of emotions. In contrast to a tendency in this literature to treat them uniformly, I argue that, according to Kant, feelings (but not affects) require cultivation, and inclinations – although they can and perhaps may be cultivated – generally require discipline. The appropriate treatment for emotions depends on their susceptibility to rational constraint and on the threat they pose to rational deliberation. Although I read Kant as recommending that we cultivate certain (...) emotions, I argue that my reading is not vulnerable to Thomason’s recent pertinent objections to such readings. (shrink)

In this paper I am going to raise a problem for recent attempts to derive positive duties from Kant’s universalizability tests. In particular, I argue that these recent attempts are subject to reductio and that the most obvious way of patching them renders them impracticable. I begin by explaining the motivation for these attempts. Then I describe how they work and begin my attack. I conclude by considering some patches.

One way to think about the philosophical significance of hatred is to consider doctrines that are characterised by feelings of hatred. A good candidate is misanthropy, which is often conceived as an attitude of hatred directed at humankind at large. I start by sketching a working account of misanthropy as a critical verdict or judgment on the contemporary condition of humankind as it has become. The criticism is directed at the array of vices and failings that are ubiquitous and entrenched (...) within the wider structures of human life, rather than those of individual persons. In one of its forms, misanthropy manifests itself in feelings of hatred for those entrenched failings and the patterns of awful behaviour which they motivate and sustain - for instance, the figure that Kant called the "enemy of mankind", or the radical eco-misanthropes who populated much American radical environmentalism of the 1980s, with their calls to 'tear down' the 'whole human world'. I then argue that such hateful 'enemies of mankind' represent only one among a set of modes of misanthropy. These have more peaceable affective and practical profiles that offer us forms of misanthropy without hatred. If so, we can think philosophically about hate in relation to misanthropy and about the potential scope of hatred. Thinking about the entrenched vices and failings constitutive of our life as it has become offers a way of intelligibly hating something as large as 'humanity'. But there are other responses to those vices and failings than hatred. I end by speculating that although hateful misanthropy tends to dominate discussions of misanthropy, historically it is the least common. That, itself, might tell us something about the sustainability of hatred. (shrink)

Arguments for moral consequentialism often appeal to an alleged structural similarity between consequentialist reasoning in ethics and rational decision-making in everyday life. Ordinary rational decision-making is seen as a paradigmatic case of goal-oriented, teleological decision-making, since it allegedly aims at maximizing the goal of preference satisfaction. This chapter describes and discusses a neglected type of preference change, “predictable preference accommodation.” This phenomenon leads to a number of critical cases in which the rationality of a particular choice does not depend on (...) features of the outcome of the chosen act. On the basis of these cases, it is argued that consequentialists cannot point to everyday decision-making as an uncontroversial example of consequentialist reasoning. On the contrary, it is suggested that an adequate account of rationality in prudential choice may need a Kantian notion of respect. (shrink)

In a recent article, Krauss (2017) raises some fundamental questions concerning (i) what the desiderata of a definition of lying are, and (ii) how definitions of lying can account for partial beliefs. This paper aims to provide an adequate answer to both questions. Regarding (i), it shows that there can be a tension between two desiderata for a definition of lying: 'descriptive accuracy' (meeting intuitions about our ordinary concept of lying), and 'moral import' (meeting intuitions about what is wrong with (...) lying), vindicating the primacy of the former desideratum. Regarding (ii), it shows that Krauss' proposed 'worse-off requirement' meets neither of these desiderata, whereas the 'comparative insincerity condition' (Marsili 2014) can meet both. The conclusion is that lies are assertions that the speaker takes to be more likely to be false than true, and their distinctive blameworthiness is a function of the extent to which they violate a sincerity norm. (shrink)

Liberal theories of justice have been rightly criticized for two things by care theorists. First, they have failed to deal with private care relations’ inherent dependency, asymmetry and particularity. Second, they have been shown unable properly to address the asymmetry and dependency constitutive of care workers’ and care-receivers’ systemic conditions. I apply Kant’s theory of right to show that current care theories unfortunately reproduce similar problems because they also argue on the assumption that good care requires only virtuous private individuals. (...) Giving up this assumption enables us to solve the problems regarding both private care relations and systemic injustice. (shrink)

This paper examines the often-mentioned similarity in comparative moral philosophy between the Hindu Text Bhagavad-Gita’s notion of duty and Kant’s notion of duty. It is commonly argued that they are similar in their deontological nature where one is asked to perform one’s duty for the sake of duty only. I consider three related questions from Gita’s and Kant’s perspectives. First, What is the source of our duties: Self or Nature; second, How do we know that an act x is our (...) duty, and third, What would be an acceptable example of a duty. In all these three cases I show that their respective answers diverge quite clearly and conclude by arguing that the reason for this divergence lies in their respective contexts: while the ideal of Kantian morality is to become a member of the ‘kingdom of ends’, the aims of the Gita’s system of duties are the sustenance of the social order and the realization of one’s identity with the Supreme Self. (shrink)

Kant's moral theory has received trenchant criticism for its rigorism. Rigorism generally denotes an overemphasis on rules in moral theory, and a consequent neglect of the roles of emotional receptivity and perception in moral judgement. Critics of Kant's ethics have invoked the term rigorism with reference to any one of three overlapping features of Kant's moral theory. Usually rigorism designates the 'rigid and insensitive uniformities of conduct' that result from the mechanical application of rules. Occasionally it refers to the excessively (...) strict moral standard implied by Kant's conception of the good will. But some critics object to rigorism in just the sense in which Kant himself understood and embraced it: as referring to moral theories that admit only two types of moral character, namely good and evil ones. The complaint, which Kant was fully aware of, is that this bipolar view of character is woefully inadequate to our experience of the gradations of virtue and vice. (shrink)

Kant exegesis and interpretation has become something of a growth industry, especially in the area of practical philosophy, where impressively argued scholarly and interpretative monographs abound. This is due partly to John Rawls's influential affirmation of the contemporary relevance of Kant's moral thinking; indeed, many of the most assiduous current Kant scholars are former students of Rawls. A second reason lies in the rediscovery of Kant's late work, The Metaphysics of Morals, which is congenial especially to those who feel uncomfortable (...) with the more explicitly metaphysical character of the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason. There has been a convergence of views between those who, coming from Rawls, offer non-metaphysical readings of Kant's account of practical reasoning in the Groundwork, and those who, starting with the Metaphysics of Morals, detect therein a less formalistic approach to moral thinking than is apparent in the earlier works. Both perspectives are keen to emphasize the practically sensible, non-metaphysical tenor of Kant's moral philosophy. (shrink)

… the supreme end, the happiness of all mankind. The law concerning punishment is a Categorical Imperative; and woe to him who rummages around in the winding paths of a theory of happiness, looking for some advantage to be gained by releasing the criminal from punishment or by reducing the amount of it.

What is morally permissible, and what is morally obligatory? These questions form the core of a vast amount of philosophical reasoning. In this landmark work, Kant proposes the concept of a maxim, which functions as a guide to appropriate action under a given set of circumstances. By universalizing the maxim, morally permissible and obligatory behavior becomes clear. The German philosopher's test, known as the Categorical Imperative, is a logical proof of the Golden Rule and the centerpiece of this work. It (...) constitutes Kant's best-known contribution to ethical discussion, and a familiarity with its constituents is essential to students of philosophy, religion, and history. (shrink)

Two claims stand behind my title. I will argue first that, if we read Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy the way I do, in which rationality is the means to the end of human freedom rather than being an end in itself, then Kant offers a fuller example of what Stanley Cavell calls Emersonian perfectionism, but which I will call Cavell’s own perfectionism, than Cavell himself has recognized even in his most sympathetic account of Kant, and can help us see the (...) full power of such perfectionism. Second, I will argue that there is a deep affinity between the views of moral education with which Kant and Cavell accompany their examples of moral perfectionism, in that each thinks that examples of the possibility of actually .. (shrink)

It is almost unanimously accepted that Kant denies resultant moral luck—that is, he denies that the lucky consequence of a person’s action can affect how much praise or blame she deserves. Philosophers often point to the famous good will passage at the beginning of the Groundwork to justify this claim. I argue, however, that this passage does not support Kant’s denial of resultant moral luck. Subsequently, I argue that Kant allows agents to be morally responsible for certain kinds of lucky (...) consequences. Even so, I argue that it is unclear whether Kant ultimately endorses resultant moral luck. The reason is that Kant does not write enough on moral responsibility for consequences to determine definitively whether he thinks that the lucky consequence for which an agent is morally responsible can add to her degree of praiseworthiness or blameworthiness. The clear upshot, however, is that Kant does not deny resultant moral luck. (shrink)

The series Rethinking Kant, now in its fifth volume, has become a mirror of Kantian studies in North America. It gathers papers presented at the various study groups of the North American Kant Society, along with contributions from hosts, session chairs, and keynote speakers. Because of its broad and unique composition, it offers a sample of a whole generation of Kantian thought, ranging from recent Ph.Ds, to up and coming young scholars, to some well-established and influential players in the field. (...) Contributions are subjected to strenuous peer review, and are, without exception, examples of the most innovative and cutting-edge research done in this area. Any one interested in taking the pulse of contemporary Kantian scholarship and engage in the humbling, but rewarding task of rethinking Kant, should consider it. (shrink)

Kant’s Religion postulates the idea of an ethical community as a necessary requirement for humanity to become good. Few interpreters acknowledge Kant’s claims that realizing this idea requires building a “church” characterized by unity, integrity, freedom, and unchangeability, and that this new form of community is a non-coercive version of theocracy. Traditional theocracy replaces the political state of nature with an ethical state of nature ; non-coercive theocracy transcends this distinction, uniting humanity in a common vision of a divine legislator (...) whose legislation is inward: the law of love binds church members together like families. (shrink)

In the article I justify the acceptability of ex vivo transplantation and I provide the ethical evaluation of trafficking in human organs from the Kantian perspective. Firstly, I refer to passages of Kant's works, where he explicitly states that depriving oneself of one’s body parts for other purposes than self-preservation is not permitted. I explain that the negative ethical evaluation of the disposal of the body parts was given various justifications by Kant. Subsequently, I provide partial criticism of this justification, (...) resulting in the recognition of the admissibility of ex vivo transplantation. Secondly, I analyse the Kantian slippery-slope argument which, as some philosophers believe, supports banning trade in human organs. It turns out, however, that this argument has wider application, namely it applies to all forms of the instrumental treatment of the human body. Using a previously introduced distinction between organs of the first and the second order, I show that the slippery-slope argument is inconclusive. However, I propose a reinterpretation of this reasoning, which results in using this argument as an additional reason to support prohibiting trade in human organs. (shrink)

This paper provides analysis of Kant's Categorical Imperative and its relevance to religion. I discuss what the concept of a categorical imperative implies about self-transcendence, and what this understanding of self-transcendence indicates about the self's relation to God and others.

I argue that the claim that all value is conferred is incompatible with the view that the capacity to set ends is unconditionally valuable. While this objection has been made, I offer a rebuttal and then a counterexample to the rebuttal. I also argue that, if all value were conferred, then the Kantian notion that moral wrongness consists in a practical contradiction is undermined.

Kant argues that morals should not only constrain politics, but that morals and politics properly understood cannot conflict. Such an uncompromising stance on the relation of morals to politics has been branded unrealistic and even politically irresponsible. While justice can afford to be blind, politics must keep its eyes wide open. In response to this charge I argue that Kant’s position on the relation of morals to politics is both morally uncompromising and yet politically flexible, both principled and practical. Kantian (...) justice is not blind to circumstances, and we need not abandon our convictions in order to be politically responsible. Indeed, Kant argues that future political progress can only be achieved when the coerced rule of right is coupled with the non-coerced rule of virtue. For Kant, freedom and justice are intertwined with publicity, and publicity depends upon the critical acumen and moral candour of an enlightened and virtuous citizenry. (shrink)

The concept of dignity plays a foundational role in the more recent versions of Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities theory. However, despite its centrality to her theory, Nussbaum’s conception of dignity remains under-theorised. In this paper we critically examine the role that dignity plays in Nussbaum’s theory by, first, developing an account of the concept of dignity and introducing a distinction between two types of dignity, status dignity and achievement dignity. Next, drawing on this account, we analyse Nussbaum’s conception of dignity and (...) contrast it with Kant’s conception of dignity. On the basis of this comparison between Nussbaum and Kant, we highlight tensions between Nussbaum’s Aristotelianism, which is central to her conception of dignity, and her commitment to political liberalism. This leads us to conclude that Nussbaum’s claim that her conception of dignity is only a partial political conception is implausible and that her conception of dignity seems to commit her to a satisficing form of perfectionist liberalism. (shrink)

Does the fact that humans are vulnerable, needy and dependent beings play an important role in Kantian ethics? It is sometimes claimed that it cannot and does not. I argue that it can and does. I distinguish between broad (all persons are vulnerable) and narrow (only some persons are vulnerable) senses of vulnerability, and explain the role of vulnerability in both senses in Kantian ethics. The basis of this argument is to show that the core normative focus of Kantian ethics (...) is on the dignity that human beings have in virtue of their capacity for rational agency. This implies that the empirical conditions under which human beings can acquire, sustain, exercise, and develop their rational capacities are of core moral importance in Kantian ethics. This explains why human vulnerabilities, including the vulnerability of human bodies, are important in Kantian ethics, since rational capacities in human agents (and the bodies those rational capacities depend upon) are highly vulnerable in all persons (vulnerability in the broad sense) and especially vulnerable in some sub-groups of persons (vulnerability in the narrow sense). (shrink)

Most Kantian constructivists try to ground universal duties of interpersonal morality in certain interactions between individuals, such as communication, argumentation, shared action or the second-person standpoint. The goal of this paper is to present these, which I refer to as arguments from the second-person perspective, with a dilemma: either the specific kind of interaction that is taken as a starting point of these arguments is inescapable, but in that case the argument does not justify a universal principle of interpersonal morality. (...) Or interaction does have a principle of interpersonal morality among its necessary conditions of possibility, but such forms of interactions are merely optional. I argue that proponents of arguments from the second-person perspective have failed to provide a convincing response to this dilemma and that this failure is systematic. This suggests that the success of Kantian constructivism depends on the success of arguments from the first person. (shrink)

This book examines three issues: the principle of ought implies can ; the principle of alternate possibilities ; and Kant’s views on the duty to promote one’s own happiness. It argues that although Kant was wrong to deny such a duty, the part of his denial that rests on a conception of duty incorporating both OIC and PAP is sound.

Tournaments have been a good way to promote and market the martial art of Karate. However, there seems to be a growing phenomenon in these tournaments as some spectators have begun to neglect the proper attitude and values in watching and accepting the results in competitions. Many spectators seem to be concerned only with their favorites and the success that these competitors achieve. Unfavorable results towards the players they support have often led to undue criticisms and protests against tournament officials (...) and organizers. In this paper, the authors will hope to present that a good understanding and sincere appreciation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the Ubermensch and Immanuel Kant’s deontology could serve as a guide to help spectators adopt the proper values in accepting the outcome and results of Karate competitions. The authors believe that these concepts, if properly understood, could possibly lead to a change in spectator attitudes that may help in preserving the integrity of tournaments and contribute in promoting a competitive yet harmonious atmosphere in these Karate contests. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to defend Kant’s idea of the highest good as part of his ethics, particularly in relation to the alleged problem of impossibility, according to which it would be impossible to promote it, due to the obscurity of moral intentions and of the relative nature of happiness. As a preliminary step, a singular definition of the highest good is unfolded, one that sees the highest good as a moral world where virtue will be rewarded with (...) happiness, which is a duty and an object of hope, individually and collectively. Regarding the defense itself, a distinction is made between fallible and infallible duties, and a soft interpretation of the “ought implies can” principle is used. The article also points out what is yet required for an overarching defense of the highest good, namely, a response to the other problems at stake, which are here labeled as those of heteronomy, deduction, and irrelevance. (shrink)

This book provides an entry-level introduction to philosophical ethics, theories of moral reasoning, and selected issues in applied ethics. Chapter 1 describes the importance of philosophical approaches to ethical issues, the general dialectical form of moral reasoning, and the broad landscape of moral philosophy. Chapter 2 presents egoism and relativism as challenges to the presumed objectivity and unconditionality of morality. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 discuss utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics, respectively. Each chapter begins with a general overview of the (...) characteristic theory of value and moral reasoning and proceeds to present a more refined account based on a prominent historical source (Mill, Kant, and Aristotle, respectively). It then discusses strengths and weaknesses of the theory from a contemporary perspective, including more recent developments, defenses, and critiques. Each chapter includes an appendix in which secondary, less prominent, or more complex issues are discussed. Chapters 6-9 address in detail a prominent area of applied ethics: 6. abortion, 7. assisted dying, 8. Biotechnology, 9. Animals and eating. Each of these chapters presents an introduction to the topic, including definitions, historical and contemporary developments and contexts, etc.; the various questions and issues involved; and an application of each theory from multiple points of view. Each chapter also includes a set of primary readings along with an extensive bibliography. Chapter 10 discusses four more areas of applied ethics: War, Torture, and Terrorism; Capital Punishment; Environmental Ethics; and Same-Sex Marriage. The treatment of these topics focuses mainly on the introductory material. While there is some discussion of the various ethical arguments, it is less comprehensive or detailed compared to other chapters. However, several primary resources are listed to supplement the discussion in the textbook. (shrink)

A commentary on Sections XII–XVI of the “Introduction to the Doctrine of Virtue”.

It is often assumed that Fichte's aim in Part I of the System of Ethics is to provide a deduction of the moral law, the very thing that Kant – after years of unsuccessful attempts – deemed impossible. On this familiar reading, what Kant eventually viewed as an underivable 'fact' (Factum), the authority of the moral law, is what Fichte traces to its highest ground in what he calls the principle of the 'I'. However, scholars have largely overlooked a passage (...) in the System of Ethics where Fichte explicitly invokes Kant's doctrine of the fact of reason with approval, claiming that consciousness of the moral law grounds our belief in freedom (GA I/5:65). On the reading I defend, Fichte's invocation of the Factum is consistent with the structure of Part I when we distinguish (a) the feeling of moral compulsion from (b) the moral law itself. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 4 Seiten: 665-671.

In many histories of modern ethics, Kant is supposed to have ushered in an anti-realist or constructivist turn by holding that unless we ourselves 'author' or lay down moral norms and values for ourselves, our autonomy as agents will be threatened. In this book, Robert Stern challenges the cogency of this 'argument from autonomy', and claims that Kant never subscribed to it. Rather, it is not value realism but the apparent obligatoriness of morality that really poses a challenge to our (...) autonomy: how can this be accounted for without taking away our freedom? The debate the book focuses on therefore concerns whether this obligatoriness should be located in ourselves, in others or in God. Stern traces the historical dialectic that drove the development of these respective theories, and clearly and sympathetically considers their merits and disadvantages; he concludes by arguing that the choice between them remains open. (shrink)

_Moral Self-Regard_ draws on the work of Marcia Baron, Joseph Butler and Allen Wood, among others in this first extensive study of the nature, foundation and significance of duties to oneself in Kant's moral theory.

I. Introduction In Groundwork III and in the Critique of Practical Reason Kant famously asserted that “Freiheit und unbedingtes praktisches Gesetz weisen […] wechselsweise auf einander zurück.” Kant's thesis of the analyticity of freedom and practical reason was rejected by his prominent early readers. In the eighth of his influential Letters on Kant's Philosophy of 1786–1787, Karl Leonhard Reinhold argued that the identification of the will with practical reason excluded the possibility of ascribing freedom to immoral and amoral actions. Reinhold (...) proposed that free will consequently be defined in libertarian terms, as the free capacity to satisfy one of two fundamental drives at the expense of the other: either ‘den uneigennützigen Trieb’ equivalent to Kant's ‘Triebfeder der reinen praktischen Vernunft’, or ‘den eigennützigen Trieb’ equivalent to Kant's ‘Begierde und Neigungen’ or ‘Eigenliebe’. Most first-generation commentators followed Reinhold in rejecting Kant's assertion of an analytical relationship between freedom and practical reason, but several came out on the other side, denying freedom in order to secure the identity of will and practical reason. Leonhard Creuzer thus concurred with Reinhold that immoral conduct could not be imputed to the causality of pure reason, or by extension, to the rational agent, but then developed a theory of “transcendental fatalism” according to which immoral actions were the effects of forces from the realm of nature intervening upon, and outweighing, the force of the intelligible ground. Nearly a century later, Hermann Cohen dismissed libertarian freedom as incoherent in itself and as incompatible with autonomy. Across the channel Henry Sidgwick withheld judgment on the coherence of libertarian freedom, but he, too, claimed that such freedom is, at all events, incompatible with the causality of practical reason. More recently, Gerold Prauss has suggested that the perennial difficulties posed by Kant's account of the relationship between freedom and practical reason might be resolved by construing the relationship as a synthetic rather than analytic one. This view has found supporters across the Atlantic. (shrink)