From Faking It to Making It: The Feeling of Love of Honor as an Aid to Morality

In Robert R. Clewis (ed.), Reading Kant's Lectures. De Gruyter. pp. 243-256 (2015)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This paper begins by examining the natural function of the feeling of love of honor. Like all natural drives, it has been implanted by nature to secure the survival and progress of the human species. However, mechanically, through the interplay of social forces, it soon turns into a competitive drive for superiority, what Kant calls “love of honor in a bad sense” (V-MS/Vigil 27: 695). This drive, which also enables the progress of human civilization, brings with it all the “vices of culture” (RGV 6: 27). However, from “mere semblance and glittering misery” (IaG 8: 26) can emerge “something quite serious” (Anth 7: 153), for even the worst forms of love of honor contain a nugget of virtue. A shift thereby transforms its natural function from an inclination to fake virtue to an inclination that aids it, thereby going from generating the appearance of worth to generating moral worthiness. The feeling of the love of honor thus has a dual nature, as a means to preserve the species and as an aid to morality. As I will show, these two functions converge in the role of culture, at once anchored in natural predispositions and oriented towards morality, at once an end of civilization and a means to moralization. In this sense, as part of human culture, the feeling love of honor can be seen as the locus of the convergence, if not the reconciliation, of the perspective of nature and that of morality.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The Morality of Faking Orgasms.Stephen Kershnar - 2012 - International Journal of Applied Philosophy 26 (1):85-104.
The Two Sides of Love.Paul Gregory - 1986 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 3 (2):229-233.
Love’s Vision.Troy Jollimore - 2011 - Princeton University Press.
Honor and Moral Revolution.Victor Kumar & Richmond Campbell - 2016 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (1):147-59.
Beyond Contracts: Love in Firms. [REVIEW]Antonio Argandoña - 2011 - Journal of Business Ethics 99 (1):77 - 85.
Honor: a phenomenology.Robert L. Oprisko - 2012 - New York: Routledge.
Feeling and Value.Cheryl Hause Calhoun - 1981 - Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin
Aristotle's Theory of Friendship.Michael Pakaluk - 1988 - Dissertation, Harvard University

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-09-07

Downloads
38 (#363,527)

6 months
4 (#315,908)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Alix Cohen
University of Edinburgh

Citations of this work

Kant’s Duty to Make Virtue Widely Loved.Michael L. Gregory - 2022 - Kantian Review 27 (2):195-213.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references