Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T09:15:11.107Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Kant on Moral Freedom and Moral Slavery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2012

David Forman
David Forman*
Affiliation:
The University of Nevada, Las Vegas
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Kant's account of the freedom gained through virtue builds on the Socratic tradition. On the Socratic view, when morality is our end, nothing can hinder us from attaining satisfaction: we are self-sufficient and free since moral goodness is (as Kant says) ‘created by us, hence is in our power’. But when our end is the fulfilment of sensible desires, our satisfaction requires luck as well as the cooperation of others. For Kant, this means that happiness requires that we get other people to work for our ends; and this requires, in turn, that we gain control over the things other people value so as to have influence over them. If this plan for happiness is not subordinated to morality, then what is most valuable to us will be precisely what others value. This is the root of the ‘passions’ that make us evil and make us slaves whose satisfaction depends on others. But, significantly, this dependence is a moral slavery and hence does not signal a loss, or even diminishment of the kind of freedom required for moral responsibility.

Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , 27 January 2012 , pp. 1 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © Kantian Review 2012

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.)

References

Aquinas (1905) [Summa Contra Gentiles =] Of God and his Creatures. An Annotated Translation (with some Abridgement) of the Summa Contra Gentiles of Saint Thos Aquinas by Joseph Rickaby, S.J. London: Burns & Oates.Google Scholar
Aquinas (1970) Summa Theologiae. Ed. T. Gilby. Cambridge: Blackfriars.Google Scholar
Aristotle (1941) The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Baumgarten, A. G. (1757) Metaphysica, 4th edn. Halle. Repr. in the Academy edn of Kant's works, 17: 5–130, 15: 5–54, 17: 130–226.Google Scholar
Baumgarten, A. G. (1751) Ethica philosophica, 2nd edn. Repr. in the Academy edn of Kant's works, 27: 732–1028.Google Scholar
Bobzien, Suzanne (1998) Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Denis, Lara (2000) ‘Kant's Cold Sage and the Sublimity of Apathy’. Kantian Review, 4, 48–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engstrom, Stephen (1997) ‘Practical Wisdom’. Kant-Studien, 88, 16–43.Google Scholar
Engstrom, Stephen (2002) ‘The Inner Freedom of Virtue’. In M. Timmons (ed.), Kant's Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretative Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 289–315.Google Scholar
Epictetus (1995) The Discourses, The Handbook, The Fragments. Ed. Christopher Gill. London: J. M. Dent.Google Scholar
Forman, David (2008) ‘Free Will and the Freedom of the Sage in Leibniz and the Stoics’. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 25/3, 203–219.Google Scholar
Forman, David (forthcoming) ‘Principled and Unprincipled Maxims’. Kant-Studien.Google Scholar
Grenberg, Jeanine (2005) Kant and the Ethics of Humility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul (2005) ‘Kant on the Theory and Practice of Autonomy’. In, Kant's System of Nature and Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 115–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul (2007) ‘Naturalistic and Transcendental Moments in Kant's Moral Philosophy’. Inquiry, 50/5, 444–464.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, Hud (1994) Kant's Compatibilism. Ithaca, NY: University of Cornell Press.Google Scholar
Inwood, B.Gerson, L. P. eds (1997) Hellenistic Philosophy. Indianapolis: Hackett.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1902–) Kants gesammelten Schriften. Ed. Königlich Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1991). Bemerkungen in den Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen. Ed. M. Rischmüller. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag. (Cited according to the numbering in this edition and the Academy pagination.)Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1992) Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770. Trans. and ed. David Walford. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1996a) Practical Philosophy. Ed. Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1996b) Writings on Religion and Rational Theology. Ed. A. Wood and G. di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1997) Lectures on Ethics. Ed. P. Heath and J. B. Schneewind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1998) Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. P. Guyer and A. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2000) Critique of Judgment. Trans. P. Guyer and E. Mathews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2004) Moralphilosophie Kaehler=Vorlesung zur Moralphilosophie. Ed. Werner Stark. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2007) Anthropology, History, and Education. Ed. G. Zöller and R. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korsgaard, Christine (1996) ‘Morality as Freedom’. In Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 159–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leibniz, G. W. (1951) Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Ott, Walter (2006) ‘Aristotle and Plato on Character’. Ancient Philosophy, 26, 65–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reinhold, C. L. (1975) ‘Erörterung des Begriffs von der Freiheit des Willens’. In R. Bittner and K. Cramer (eds), Materialien zu Kants ‘Kritik der praktischen Vernunft’ (Berlin: Suhrkamp), 252–274.Google Scholar
Rousseau, J.-J. (1997a) The Discourses and Other Political Writings. Ed. and trans. V. Gourevitch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rousseau, J.-J. (1997b) The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings. Ed. and trans. V. Gourevitch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rousseau, J.-J. (1979) Emile: Or On Education. Trans. A. Bloom. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Schneewind, J. B. (1998) ‘Kant and Stoic Ethics’. In S. Engstrom and J. Whiting (eds), Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics: Rethinking Happiness and Duty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 205–301.Google Scholar
Shaftesbury [Anthony Ashley Cooper] (1999) Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, and Times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Shell, Susan Meld (2007) ‘Kant and the Jewish Question’. Hebraic Political Studies, 2/1, 101–136.Google Scholar
Sidgwick, Henry (1888) ‘The Kantian Conception of Free Will’. Mind os, 13, 405–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strange, Steven (2004) ‘The Stoics on the Voluntariness of the Passions’. In Steven K. Strange and Jack Zupko (eds), Stoicism: Traditions and Transformations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 32–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Velkley, Richard (1989) Freedom and the End of Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolff, Christian (1733) German Ethics=Vernünfftige Gedancken von der Menschen Thun und Lassen zu Beförderung ihrer Glückseeligkeit, den Leibhabern der Wahrheit mitgetheilt. Frankfurt and Leipzig (17201).Google Scholar
Wolff, Christian (1751) German Metaphysics=Vernünfftige Gedancken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt, den Liebhabern der Wahrheit mitgetheilt. Halle (17201).Google Scholar
Wood, Allen (1984) ‘Kant's Compatibilism’. In A. Wood (ed.), Self and Nature in Kant's Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 73–101.Google Scholar
Wood, Allen (1999) Kant's Ethical Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Allen (2005) ‘Kant's History of Ethics’, Studies in the History of Ethics (June).Google Scholar
Zammito, John (2002) Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar