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Chapter 10 - Kant’s religious constructivism
- By Pablo Muchnik
Edited by Gordon Michalson
Book:

Kant’s <I>Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason</I>

Published online:

05 May 2014

Print publication:

17 April 2014, pp 193-213
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Summary

This chapter discusses in more detail the conception of action based on maxims from the Groundwork and the Religion, to see where Gesinnung might fit in. Despite the crucial importance of maxims in his account of action and of duty and moral worth, Immanuel Kant introduces them briefly, explaining in a footnote that a maxim is a subjective principle of volition. Kant claims that each person's Gesinnung is chosen, as it must be if we are to be held morally responsible for maxims chosen on its basis, but that it is not chosen at any one particular time. According to Kant's theory, moral responsibility involves a hierarchy of attitudes. Kant's incompatibilism is both a large cost and a large benefit of his account of moral responsibility. A familiar way of understanding the relationship between character and action is that character is a disposition to perform certain kinds of action.

3 - Kant and agent-oriented ethics
- By Allen Wood
Edited by Lawrence Jost, University of Cincinnati, Julian Wuerth, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
Book:

Perfecting Virtue

Published online:

04 February 2011

Print publication:

03 February 2011, pp 58-91
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Summary

This chapter looks at the ways in which Kant's theory is agent-focused, and also at why it is not more agent-focused than it is. In Kant, as in Aristotle, "virtue" (Tugend) is by far the most complex moral quality of an agent that he discusses, and any serviceable treatment of it will require some investigation of the details not only of Kant's moral psychology but also his larger empirical theory of human nature. For Kant virtues also involve the setting and pursuing of ends. Promoting an end involves desire for it, and desire is the representation of an object accompanied by a feeling of pleasure. Kant holds that we have a duty to strive to make the motive of duty a sufficient incentive in all our actions, and that only those actions done from duty have genuine or authentic moral worth.

12 - Kant's Tugendlehre as normative ethics
- By Thomas E. Hill, Jr.
Edited by Lara Denis, Agnes Scott College, Decatur
Book:

Kant's Metaphysics of Morals

Published online:

10 January 2011

Print publication:

28 October 2010, pp 234-255
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Summary

In The Metaphysics of Morals, especially the Tugendlehre or Doctrine of Virtue, Kant clarifies, develops, and extends ideas that he presented in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason. This chapter reviews some features of normative ethics that distinguish Tugendlehre from science, metaphysics, metaethics, and theories of law. It discusses the role of the basic moral principles in Kant's theory and how they relate to more specific principles. The chapter considers Kant's idea of duties to oneself and their relevance to certain contemporary discussions. Then, it discusses second-order duties to oneself that anticipate our liability to errors in moral judgment, ulterior motives, and weakness of will. Finally, the chapter notes some ways in which the Tugendlehre is incomplete. It is incomplete partly because Kant's aim was only to present the first principles of "the doctrine of virtue".