Murder and Violence in Kantian Ethics

In Violetta L. Waibel, Margit Ruffing & David Wagner (eds.), Natur und Freiheit. Akten des XII. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses. De Gruyter. pp. 2257-2264 (2018)
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Abstract

Acts of violence and murder have historically proved difficult to accommodate in standard accounts of the formula of universal law (FUL) version of Kant’s Categorical Imperative (CI). In “Murder and Mayhem,” Barbara Herman offers a distinctive account of the status of these acts that is intended to be appropriately didactic in comparison to accounts like the practical contradiction model. I argue that while Herman’s account is a promising one, the distinction she makes between coercive and non-coercive violence and her response to concerns with the classification of the latter as imperfect duties raise significant questions about the status of some duties. I suggest that we look, instead, to Kant’s treatment of suicide in The Metaphysics of Morals for an account of norms of non-violence and, in particular, to the connection between this duty and concerns with inner freedom and moral health. I argue that we can use this account to inform our general understanding of duties prohibiting killing and violence, and that the resulting account is a promising one.

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Donald Wilson
Kansas State University

Citations of this work

Kant-Bibliographie 2018.Margit Ruffing - 2020 - Kant Studien 111 (4):647-702.

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References found in this work

Moral literacy.Barbara Herman - 2007 - New York: Harvard University Press.
The practice of moral judgment.Barbara Herman - 1993 - Cambridge: Harvard Univsrsity Press.
The Inner Freedom of Virtue.Stephen Engstrom - 2002 - In Mark Timmons (ed.), Kant's Metaphysics of morals: interpetative essays. New York: Oxford University Press.

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