ARISTOTLE AND KANT IN DIALOGUE

For a long time, it seemed that Aristotelians and Kantians had little to say to each other. When Kant the moralist was known in the English-speaking world primarily from his Groundwork and his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant's conceptual vocabulary of “duty,” “law,” “maxim,” and “morality” appeared quite foreign to Aristotle's “virtue,” “end,” “good,” and “character.” Yet ever since philosopher Mary Gregor's Laws of Freedom, published in 1963, made Kant's The Metaphysics of Morals central to the interpretation of his ethical thought, it has become clear that such “Aristotelian” terms as virtue, end, good, happiness, and character are also central to Kant. Aristotelians and Kantians now see that they have plenty to say to each other, and they have gone from being adversaries to sharing a sometimes unprincipled urge to merge central aspects of Aristotle's and Kant's ethical thought.

I think the current dialogue between Aristotelians and Kantians can powerfully illuminate not just the interpretation of Aristotle's and Kant's texts, but also key questions in contemporary ethical theory. What implications do human nature and psychology have for practical reason? Are the moral virtues perfective of our nature or at odds with it? What is or ought to be the relation of the desires and the passions to reason in moral deliberation? To what extent can moral agents transcend their natural and acquired dispositions? This dialogue is most illuminating when its participants resist the temptations to perform either a summary execution or a hasty rapprochement.