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Kant’s Justification of Parental Duties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2016

Heiko Puls
Heiko Puls*
Affiliation:
Universität Hamburg
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In his applied moral philosophy, Kant formulates the parents’ duty to make their child happy. I argue that, for Kant, this duty is an ad hoc attempt at compensating for the parental guilt of having brought a person into the condition of existence – and hence also having created her need for happiness – on their own initiative. I argue that Kant’s considerations regarding parental duties and human reproduction in general imply arguments for an ethically justified anti-natalism, but that this position is abolished in his teleology for meta-ethical reasons.

Keywords

parental dutiesprocreationhappinessphilosophy of lawKant’s pessimism
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 53 - 75
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2016 

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