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The Source of Kant's Mature Moral Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 1970

Bernard Wand
Bernard Wand
Affiliation:
Carleton University
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Extract

Some thirty years ago Klaus Reich claimed that Kant's abandonment of feeling as the source of our moral appraisals was due to his reading of Plato and the Stoics, and more interestingly that it led him to the fundamental concept of his mature moral theory, the autonomy of the will. Despite the obvious importance of the latter claim, it seems to have gone either unnoticed or unchallenged, at least in the English philosophical literature. This is particularly surprising since, apart from holding any view as to the legitimacy of singling out the source of Kant's mature moral theory, more obvious influences than those of Plato and the Stoics seem to have played such a role : the variant of Lutheran Christianity, Pietism, Rousseau, and the cultural context of the Enlightenment.

Type
Notes—Discussion
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , June 1970 , pp. 81 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1970

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References

1 Reich, Klaus, “Kant and Greek Ethics”, trans. Walsh, W. H., Mind 48 (1939): pp. 338–354, 446–463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See Webb, C. G. J., Kant’s Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1926) p. 46Google Scholar.

3 See Cassirer, Ernst, Rousseau, Kant, Goethe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945) pp. 30–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Zweig, Arnulf, ed., Kant: Philosophical Correspondence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967) p. 59Google Scholar.

5 Cited by Reich, Mind, p. 341.

6 Reich, Mind, p. 450.

7 Ibid., p. 463.

8 Ibid., p. 454.

9 Ibid., p. 450.

10 Zweig, Kant, p. 78.

11 See Beck, Lewis W., A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958) pp. 214, 215.Google Scholar

12 Kant, Immanuel, Kants Werke, 9 vols. (1902; reprint ed., Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1968) 4: 401Google Scholar; Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy, ed. and trans. Beck, Lewis W. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949) p. 71 (hereafter cited as Beck, Kant)Google Scholar.

13 See Paton, H. J., The Categorical Imperative (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1953) pp. 66–8.Google Scholar

14 Kant, Immanuel, Lectures on Ethics, trans. Infield, L., (New York and Evanston: Harper & Row, Harper Torchbooks, 1963), p. 43Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., p. 37.

16 Ibid., p. 46, 47.

17 Kants Werke, 5: 160; Critique of Practical Reason, Beck, Kant, p. 257.

18 Kants Werke, 6: 479; Kant, Immanuel, The Doctrine of Virtue, trans. Gregor, Mary J., (New York and Evanston: Harper & Row, Harper Torchbooks, 1970), p. 152.Google Scholar

19 Kant, Lectures, p. 82.

20 Kants Werke, 5: 126–7; Critique of Practical Reason, Beck, Kant, 230–231.

21 Ibid., 5. 127–861., Beck, pp. 230–1fn.