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22 results

Page 1 of 2

  • 4 - Jacobi and Kant

  • from Part I - The Critique of Reason: Debates on Rationalism, Empiricism, and Skepticism
  • Edited by Alexander J. B. Hampton, University of Toronto
  • Book:
    Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and the Ends of the Enlightenment
    Published online:
    09 February 2023
    Print publication:
    16 February 2023, pp 66-84

  • Summary

    Jacobi argues that although Spinoza produced the most consistent rational system, its complete rational explanation leads to fatalism, mechanism, and atheism. The concern in this chapter is with how Jacobi stimulates Kant on issues of faith in relation to autonomy and practical reason (ethics), and how Kant’s “moral faith” seeks to avoid the pitfalls of mechanism while integrally linking faith with reason.

Kant's Ethics

Kant's Ethics
  • Kate A. Moran
  • Published online:
    10 February 2022
    Print publication:
    10 March 2022
  • The Element provides an overview of Immanuel Kant's arguments regarding the content of the moral law (the categorical imperative), as well as an exposition of his arguments for the bindingness of the moral law for rational agents. The Element also considers common objections to Kant's ethics.

  • Kant on the Ground of Human Dignity

  • Apaar Kumar
  • Journal:
    Kantian Review / Volume 26 / Issue 3 / September 2021
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    29 March 2021, pp. 435-453
    Print publication:
    September 2021

  • Kant interpreters have contrasting views on what Kant takes to be the basis for human dignity. Several commentators have argued that human dignity can be traced back to some feature of human beings. Others contend that humans in themselves lack dignity, but dignity can be attributed to them because the moral law demands respect for humanity. I argue, alternatively, that human dignity in Kant’s system can be seen to be grounded in the reciprocal relationship between the dignity of the moral law and the dignity inherent in the human constitution. The latter includes the dignity of personhood, construed as rational inner purposiveness, and the dignity of giving oneself the law and striving to follow it.

  • 8 - Fichte’s Ethical Holism

  • Edited by James A. Clarke, University of York, Gabriel Gottlieb
  • Book:
    Practical Philosophy from Kant to Hegel
    Published online:
    16 March 2021
    Print publication:
    18 March 2021, pp 138-156

  • Summary

    My aim in this chapter is to address what looks like a tension in Fichte’s derivation of ethical content for the moral law in his System of Ethics. In the first place, Fichte seeks to derive the content of our duties from our “natural drive [Naturtrieb],” which he defines in terms of our striving for enjoyment. But later in the book we find a second argument that derives the content of our duties from what Fichte calls the conditions of our “I-hood [Ichheit],” namely, our embodiment, intelligence, and sociality. I argue that a careful re-reading of Fichte’s notion of a natural drive is consistent with this second derivation. The key to this reading lies in Fichte’s effort to reframe the natural drive through the category of “reciprocal interaction [Wechselwirkung],” which allows us to view the natural drive as a “formative drive [Bildungstrieb]” that is both active and passive. For Fichte, the formative drive amounts to a striving for self-organization, and this striving, I argue, prefigures what becomes the ethical drive to engage in reciprocal interaction with other members of the rational community.

  • Chapter 6 - Moral Conscience as the Practical Inner Tribunal

  • Sofie Møller, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt Am Main
  • Book:
    Kant's Tribunal of Reason
    Published online:
    24 February 2020
    Print publication:
    05 March 2020, pp 96-112

  • Summary

    This chapter compares the portrayal of the critique as an inner tribunal to the traditional image of moral conscience as an inner tribunal. The main argument is that moral conscience is a model of the way in which a reflexive investigation can be both internal and objective. In support of this argument, Møller considers Kant’s claim made in the 1790s that an erring conscience is an absurdity. She argues that this claim should be understood in light of Kant’s account of moral conscience as a second-order capacity, which is not merely judicial but also legislative and executive. This analysis shows that Kant’s mature account of moral conscience is not a departure from but rather a development of the inner tribunal image. The parallel between the two inner tribunals shows that an internal investigation can reach a valid outcome if this outcome depends on the valid use of impersonal cognitive faculties.

  • No King and No Torture: Kant on Suicide and Law

  • Jennifer Uleman
  • Journal:
    Kantian Review / Volume 21 / Issue 1 / March 2016
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 February 2016, pp. 77-100
    Print publication:
    March 2016

  • Kant’s most canonical argument against suicide, the universal law argument, is widely dismissed. This paper attempts to save it, showing that a suicide maxim, universalized, undermines all bases for practical law, resisting both the non-negotiable value of free rational willing and the ordinary array of sensuous commitments that inform prudential incentives. Suicide therefore undermines moral law-governed community as a whole, threatening ‘savage disorder’. In pursuing this argument, I propose a non-teleological and non-theoretical nature – a ‘practical nature’ or moral law governed whole – the realization of which morality demands.

  • Kant on Radical Evil and the Origin of Moral Responsibility

  • Irene McMullin
  • Journal:
    Kantian Review / Volume 18 / Issue 1 / March 2013
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    04 February 2013, pp. 49-72
    Print publication:
    March 2013

  • The notion of radical evil plays a more important role in Kant's moral theory than is typically recognized. In Religion Within the Limits of Mere Reason, radical evil is both an innate propensity and a morally imputable act – a paradoxical status that has prompted commentators to reject it as inconsistent with the rest of Kant's moral theory. In contrast, I argue that the notion of radical evil accounts for the beginning of moral responsibility in Kant's theory, since the act of attributing radical evil to one's freedom is an inauguration into the autonomous stance.

  • 13 - Rousseau’s Unease with Locke’s Uneasiness

  • from Part V - Unease, Happiness, and Death
  • Edited by Eve Grace, Colorado College, Christopher Kelly, Boston College, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Challenge of Rousseau
    Published online:
    05 January 2013
    Print publication:
    17 December 2012, pp 295-311

  • Summary

    In the Second Discourse, Jean-Jacques Rousseau seems in the end to deny that natural law can be founded upon reason. Rousseau's state of nature saliently goes even further than Thomas Hobbes's in the direction of radical individualism, depicting human beings as solitary primates who, wandering through the wilds alone except for the occasional chance encounter, are not driven into society even in order to survive. According to Rousseau, all the rules of natural right are consequences that flow from two principles one feel without any reasoning: self-love and compassion. Self-love itself would therefore mandate obedience to rules not merely as restrictions imposed by society and that one follows because to do so is a precondition of the own welfare; rather, subordination of the particular interest to the general interest would become our fullest welfare. Sociability is consequently a law of reason; it is predicated upon natural enlightenment.

  • 7 - Moral feelings in the Metaphysics of Morals

  • 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 130-151

  • Summary

    In his lectures on ethics prior to the Groundwork, Kant insisted upon an indispensable causal role for feeling in the production of moral action. Kant's discussion of the "Aesthetic Preconditions of the Mind's Receptivity to Concepts of Duty in General" in Section XII of the Introduction to the Doctrine of Virtue is brief but raises many questions. The chapter explores what causal roles do these distinct "aesthetic preconditions" play and how do they relate to the causal role or roles of the single feeling of respect Kant previously recognized. It discusses Kant's exposition and then Kant's four aesthetic preconditions. The empirical consciousness of the moral law produces a general feeling of respect that causes or at least strengthens our commitment to acting in accordance with it and that needs to be and can be cultivated.

  • 4 - Kant's innate right as a rational criterion for human rights

  • 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 71-92

  • Summary

    The idea of a single innate right rests, as does the entire first part of the Metaphysics of Morals, upon a double distinction. Kant differentiates between two fundamentally distinct basic questions - what is "laid down as right" and "what is right" - and two fundamentally distinct doctrines of right, an empirical and a natural one. Thereupon follows reflections concerning the moral concept of right and the moral law of right, the authorization to employ force, and the turn of phrase "by virtue of his humanity". The chapter analyzes how Kant clarifies his thesis of an innate right in four statements, which only appear to refute his singular use of "human right". The conclusion further sharpens the focus already brought to Kant's thesis by mentioning two quasi-human rights. Even though Kant considers there to be only one innate human right, two further pronouncements are relevant to human rights.

  • 4 - Reversal or retreat? Kant's deductions of freedom and morality

  • Edited by Andrews Reath, University of California, Riverside, Jens Timmermann, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Book:
    Kant's 'Critique of Practical Reason'
    Published online:
    06 August 2010
    Print publication:
    08 April 2010, pp 73-89

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the sentence in the Critique of Practical Reason in which Immanuel Kant explicitly discusses the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and its relation to the new book. In a surprising reversal towards the end of the deduction section of the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant tells one that the 'vainly sought deduction of the moral principle' is replaced by another deduction, namely the deduction of freedom. Kant never quite identifies freedom and the fact of reason, which is the awareness of the authority of the moral law. He returns to the role of morality as the ratio cognoscendi of freedom and accords the support freedom receives from these quarters the status of a deduction. In a striking note from the Duisburg papers, Kant explicitly turns to the task of a 'critique of practical reason'.

  • 3 - Moral consciousness and the ‘fact of reason’

  • Edited by Andrews Reath, University of California, Riverside, Jens Timmermann, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Book:
    Kant's 'Critique of Practical Reason'
    Published online:
    06 August 2010
    Print publication:
    08 April 2010, pp 55-72

  • Summary

    This chapter focuses on the meaning and the importance of the 'fact of reason' in the second Critique of Practical Reason. When he introduces the 'fact of reason', he refers to an alleged consciousness of the fundamental law of pure practical reason, which he also calls consciousness of the moral law. The chapter situates the occurrence of the terminology of a Factum der Vernunft in its argumentative context and provides an interpretation. By the end of the eighteenth century, then, 'factum' could mean either 'deed' or 'fact'. The proper way of reading the expression 'fact of reason' does not yet tells one how successful Kant's use of it is in his argument. Virtually all authors who discuss the fact of reason do so in terms of morality. They introduce the 'consciousness' that Kant calls a fact of reason as the 'consciousness of the moral law' or 'moral consciousness'.

  • 5 - The Triebfeder of pure practical reason

  • Edited by Andrews Reath, University of California, Riverside, Jens Timmermann, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Book:
    Kant's 'Critique of Practical Reason'
    Published online:
    06 August 2010
    Print publication:
    08 April 2010, pp 90-118

  • Summary

    After determining the concept of the object of pure practical reason in Chapter II of the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason, Immanuel Kant takes up the motivational issue in Chapter III, which deals with what he terms the Triebfeder of pure practical reason. In his chapter on the springs of pure practical reason, Kant undertakes to explicate, in the light of the Factum of reason, how pure reason is practical in the case of the human being, and more generally in that of a finite subject having a share in this Factum. Kant's account has merely described how the moral law can infringe the inclinations. This chapter considers the effect the moral law has on feeling through its bearing on the propensities of self-love and self-conceit. Kant says that when the moral law strikes down self-conceit, the direct effect on feeling is the negative, or displeasing, sentiment of humiliation.

  • 11 - Freedom and reason in Groundwork III

  • Edited by Jens Timmermann, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Book:
    Kant's 'Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals'
    Published online:
    04 August 2010
    Print publication:
    24 December 2009, pp 203-223

  • Summary

    This chapter explains a reading of Groundwork III that stresses the validation of reason rather than choice in the will. A standard approach to Groundwork III is to view Kant as attempting to provide an argument for the validity of the moral law for human beings by invoking a theoretical argument borrowed from the Critique of Pure Reason about the nature of reality. It presents a validation of reason interpretation, that centres on the role of reason as legislator of the moral law rather than on any choice in the will. The central claim of this interpretation is that in Groundwork III Kant invokes the transcendental freedom not of the whole person but only of the faculty of reason as a way of explaining the freedom of the will. The chapter explains what the alleged circle is by stepping even further back to Kant's invocation of the idea of freedom.

  • 8 - Kant against the ‘spurious principles of morality’

  • Edited by Jens Timmermann, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Book:
    Kant's 'Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals'
    Published online:
    04 August 2010
    Print publication:
    24 December 2009, pp 140-158

  • Summary

    Immanuel Kant's criticisms of the spurious principles of morality are best understood as parts of a sole survivor argument. Criticisms of mistaken views can be part of an argument to support a philosopher's own position. Henry Sidgwick is credited with having shaped a widely held view of the main difference between ancient and modern ethics. In the Groundwork Kant argues that a formal moral law is the basic law of morality. In the Groundwork (G IV 442-3) Kant divides heteronomous principles in two ways. One division is between empirically-based principles and rationally-based principles. The other division is between principles based on something internal to us and principles based on something external to us. Kant concentrates on principles about perfection, and begins by objecting to the ontological conception of it. Kant's basic argument against empirical views rests on the argument that moral principles must hold universally, for all rational beings.

  • 10 - Problems with freedom: Kant's argument in Groundwork III and its subsequent emendations

  • Edited by Jens Timmermann, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Book:
    Kant's 'Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals'
    Published online:
    04 August 2010
    Print publication:
    24 December 2009, pp 176-202

  • Summary

    Immanuel Kant's argument in Section III of Groundwork is a metaphysical argument that the moral law is the causal law of the noumenal self immediately raises several objections, three of which are discussed in this chapter. Kant addresses these three questions in his works on the foundations of morality subsequent to the Groundwork, that is, the Critique of Practical Reason and Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Kant addresses the first two of these questions in the Critique, but he did not address third question there nor modify his position in any way that would resolve the third question. He addresses the third question only in the Religion, although not so much by retracting the argument that gives rise to it, as by skirting it. The chapter describes Kant's explanation of how his theory of freedom is to be reconciled with his thoroughly deterministic theory of experience.

  • 5 - The moral law as causal law

  • Edited by Jens Timmermann, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Book:
    Kant's 'Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals'
    Published online:
    04 August 2010
    Print publication:
    24 December 2009, pp 82-101

  • Summary

    This chapter focuses on a preliminary step to connect the two claims, the step that connects rational agency to conformity to universally valid laws. It discusses the rationale behind thinking that conformity to universally valid laws is a requirement of rationality. Many readers assume that for Immanuel Kant, a rational agent must conform to universally valid laws because rational agency is rational. The chapter explains the role that conformity to universally valid causal laws plays in Kant's project of seeking out and justifying the supreme principle of morality. It also discusses some burdens this leaves for Kantians who favour the first formulation of the categorical imperative as a criterion or test of right action. The chapter concludes by claiming, admittedly without much argument, that while reason does not provide the universalization requirement in the categorical imperative, it does provide a spontaneity requirement.

  • 3 - Acting from duty: inclination, reason and moral worth

  • Edited by Jens Timmermann, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Book:
    Kant's 'Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals'
    Published online:
    04 August 2010
    Print publication:
    24 December 2009, pp 45-62

  • Summary

    In Groundwork I, Immanuel Kant wants to disclose the nature of duty, and ultimately its law. That is the reason why the celebrated case of the prudent merchant is 'set aside' (G IV 397). The requirement that the maxim of the moral agent produce right actions non-contingently and independently of his motivational state may yet seem to allow for the possibility that dutiful action must be done for duty's sake if and only if there is no concurrent inclination that is sufficiently strong to motivate the dutiful deed. Kant is systematically developing the theme of the incorruptible, sturdy and self-reliant nature of morality grounded solely in practical reason, as opposed to the fickle and unpredictable support actions that accord with duty may hope to receive from inclination. Kant's dualistic conception of human volition has important philosophical consequences. Ultimately, Kantian ethics concerns the quality of an agent's moral character.

  • 8 - ‘On the Concept of an Object of Pure Practical Reason’ (Chapter 2 of the Analytic of Practical Reason)

  • Edited by Karl Ameriks
  • Otfried Höffe, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany
  • Book:
    Kant's Moral and Legal Philosophy
    Published online:
    13 November 2009
    Print publication:
    27 April 2009, pp 179-197

  • Summary

    In the second chapter of the second Critique, Immanuel Kant explicitly addresses the object of practical reason, the categories through which practical reason determines this object and the faculty of practical judgement mediate between action and the moral law. Kant attempts to determine both whether this claim can be justified and how it can be rendered practically effective. Kant defines the object of practical reason, as distinct from the cognitive object of theoretical reason, as an envisaged consequence of an act of freedom. The categories of good and evil are applied exclusively to 'objects', which are subject to such moral evaluation. Insofar as practical reason is capable of determining the will immediately in relation to what ought to be willed, no specific practical faculty for making judgements is required. The concepts of good and evil first determine an object for the will.

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