Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T05:31:52.222Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 3 - Moral Inescapability: Moral Agency and Metaethics

from Part I - Self, Despair, and Wholeheartedness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2022

Roe Fremstedal
Affiliation:
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim
Get access

Summary

Chapter 3 connects Kierkegaardian critiques of amoralism to discussions of wantonness and Humeanism in action theory. By discussing the cultivation of love (and higher-order motives), it is argued that practical rational agency requires moral normativity. The chapter then presents and discusses Kierkegaard’s strong views about the inescapability of morality, interpreting it as a form of constitutivism concerning moral normativity, which tries to derive practical normativity from practical agency itself. However, Kierkegaard seems to combine such constitutivism with the theological view that moral obligations depend on us belonging to God as his creation. Still, he is not a divine command theorist who sees divine commands as necessary and sufficient for moral obligations. Rather, he sketches a form of moral realism and criticizes subjectivism in ethics.

Type
Chapter
Information
Kierkegaard on Self, Ethics, and Religion
Purity or Despair
, pp. 54 - 72
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×