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In Defence of the Abstract
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2015
Abstract
Kant's ethics is frequently criticised by Hegel for being merely formal or abstract, for being infected by the vices of abstraction” as one commentator put it. It is tempting for those sympathetic to the general drift of Kant's ethics to attempt to defend him from this criticism by arguing that it is not merely formal at all. But the abstract nature of Kant's ethics was not accidental: neither is it falsely ascribed to him because of poor, or insensitive interpretation. Kant intended his ethics to be formal and saw this as its virtue. The distinctively Kantian way to deal with the charge of abstraction is not to attempt to give some content to his ethics, but to show that it is none the worse for being abstract, and that this has the advantages Kant thought it did. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this line of argument.
- Type
- Hegel and Kant
- Information
- Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain , Volume 17 , Issue 1: number 33 , Spring/Summer 1996 , pp. 42 - 53
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 1996
References
1 O'Hagan, T, “On Hegel's Critique of Kant's Moral and Political Philosophy”, in Hegel's Critique of Kant, Priest, S, ed, Clarendon: Oxford, 1987, p 136 Google Scholar.
2 This is O'Neill's and Korsgaard's strategy. See respectively “Kant After Virtue”( Inquiry, 26, 1984, pp 387–405 Google Scholar) and “Kant's Formula of Universal Law” ( Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 66, 1985, pp 24–47 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
3 C D Broad notes this rather sarcastically when he writes:
“It [the Categorical Imperative] is said to be ‘empty’, ‘sterile’, and ‘merely formal’. Since Kant was perfectly well aware of that his general principle is merely formal, and since he plainly regarded this as its great merit, we may assume that this objection rests on a misunderstanding” ( Five Types of Ethical Theory, Routledge and Kegan Paul: London, 1930, p 122 Google Scholar).
4 Phenomenology of Spirit (Miller, A V, trans Oxford University Press, 1977), §637, pp 386–7Google Scholar. Cf also §622, p 377.
5 “[I]t is certainly undeniable that every volition must have an object and therefore a material” (Ak V, 34/CPrR, p 34). By ‘material’ Kant means “an object whose reality is desired” ( Ak V, 21/CPrR, p 19).
6 This is Prichard's position in Moral Obligation (Clarendon: Oxford, 1949), p 10 Google Scholar.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 This principle was most famously applied by Descartes in his argument for the real distinction between the mind and the body. (It is still tacitly adhered to by those who turn Descartes' argument on its head and claim that the mind cannot exist without the body, therefore we cannot conceive of the former without the latter.)
10 We may not be able to imagine, ie represent, a shape in abstraction from a certain size, but imagining is not conceiving.
11 Cf eg Phenomenology, §629.
12 This is not a specifically Hegelian critique of Kant, but a more general criticism of cognitivist theories of motivation. Cf Smith, M, “The Humean Theory of Motivation”, Mind, 96, pp 36–61 Google Scholar. Nonetheless, it is a criticism on which Hegel and Hegelians may draw.
13 Cf Dancy, J, Moral Reasons (Blackwell: Oxford, 1993), Chapter TwoGoogle Scholar.
14 The concept of a motive and a state of being motivated can be understood as corresponding to Kant's Bestimmungsgrund des Willens and a Bestimmung des Willens respectively (see Ak IV, 401n/Gr, 69n, and Ak V, 72/CPrR, 72).
15 Ak IV, 394/Gr, 62.
16 On Kant's theory of rational agency, a motive can only motivate on the condition that it be incorporated into one's maxim. But this complication does not introduce any special difficulties to what I have to say.
17 These have been clearly stated by Westphal, K, “Hegel's Critique of Hegel's Moral World View” (Philosophical Topics, vol 19, no 2, 1991), pp 139–146 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 Ak IV, 399/Gr, 67.
19 Cf K Westphal, op cit, p 141.
20 A Wood notes this in Hegel's Ethical Thought, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1990, p 63 Google Scholar.
21 There is other apparent evidence. For example, his claim in the Religion that man is radically evil (Chapter One). But radical evil, for Kant, does not imply the essential opposition of our inclinations to the requirements of morality, but is a disposition to prioritise our inclinations over moral requirements when they conflict (Ak VI, 36/Rel, 31-2).
22 “The very concept of duty is already the concept of a necessitation (constraint) of free choice through the law” (Ak VI, 379/MM, 185).
23 Ak IV, 414/Gr, 81.
24 LE, p 197.
25 Ak VI, 402/MM, 203.
26 “So the saying ‘you ought to love your neighbour as yourself’ does not mean that you ought immediately (first) to love him and (afterwards) by means of this love do good to him. It means, rather, do good to your fellow man, and your beneficence will produce love of man in you (as an aptitude of the inclination to beneficence in general)” (Ak VI, 402/MM, 203). Cf also Ak VI, 397/MM, 200.
27 Ak VI, 24n/Rel, p 19n.