Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals

Reading Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, 2019

Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (hereafter MGM) was Iris Murdoch's major philosophical testament and a highly original and ambitious attempt to talk about our time. Based on her Gifford Lectures in 1982, it was reworked over a ten-year period before its publication in 1992. Her manuscripts as well as her correspondence from the period attest that this was not an altogether easy process, as Frances White reveals in the second chapter of this book. Her ambition was to do serious philosophical work, and yet to speak in a way accessible to the ordinary educated person about the cultural and moral predicament of largely liberal modernity: perhaps a nearly impossible task in the academic and compartmentalised context of late twentieth-century anglophone philosophy. It is perhaps precisely the broader ambition that gives MGM lasting philosophical relevance and opens up dimensions as yet unexplored. Murdoch's earlier work resonates with contemporary turns in ethics towards 'vision' rather than 'choice', to virtues, to love and other © The Author(s) 2019 N. Hämäläinen and G. Dooley (eds.), Reading Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals,

Dialogue and universalism, 2021

This paper argues that Kant’s project of a metaphysics of morals represents a normative ideal grounded on the core ideas of Enlightenment. In the first section, it analyzes Kant’s concept of metaphysical principles of morals by establishing a connection between a metaphysics of morals and Kant’s concept of metaphysics in general and of metaphysics of nature in particular. It then discusses what is metaphysical in the Doctrine of Right and the Doctrine of Virtue. In its last section, it tackles the question of whether a non-metaphysical reading of Kant’s doctrines of right and of virtue is desirable if we want to remain faithful to Kant’s Enlightenment project.

Modern Metaphysics, 2007

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between possibility and actuality. Reviewing these papers will set the scene for a REVIEW of the very popular KANTISM of Today. Metaphysics is the science of being and ask the question “What really exists?” The answer to this question has been sought for by mankind since the beginning of recorded time. In the past 2500 years there have been many answers to this question and these answers dominate our view of how physics is done. Examples of questions which were originally metaphysical are the shape of the earth, the motion of the earth, the existence of atoms, the relativity of space and time, the uncertainty principle, the renormalization of field theory and the existence of quarks and strings. we should explore our changing conception of what constitutes reality by examining the views of Aristotle, Ptolemy, St. Thomas Aquinas, Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Newton, Leibnitz, Compte, Einstein, Bohr, Feynman, Schwinger, Yang, Gell-Mann, Wilson and Witten ET AL https://cds.cern.ch/record/311040/files/9609160.pdf IE IS THE INTERNATIONAL DEBT SIMPLY A FIGMENT OF ALL OUR IMAGINATION? IT MAY NEVER BE REPAID IN FULL HENCE IT MAY FOLLOW THAT IN FACT IT DOES NOT EXIST THEREFORE: ""WHY WORRY?"" Metaphysics Peter van Inwagen Meghan Sullivan SEE PDF

This is the English version of a paper that appeared in a Korean-language translation of many of my articles. In this paper, I argue that the famous 4-7 debate in Korean Neo-Confucianism was more about the most effective way to cultivate a moral character than it was about abstract metaphysical concepts.

2019

2006

This dissertation concerns the methodology Kant employs in the first two sections of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Groundwork I-II) with particular attention to how the execution of the method of analysis in these sections contributes to the establishment of moral metaphysics as a science. My thesis is that Kant had a detailed strategy for the Groundwork, this strategy and Kant's reasons for adopting it can be ascertained from the first Critique and his lectures on logic, and understanding this strategy gains us interpretive insight into Kant's moral metaphysics. At the most general level of methodology, there are four steps for the establishment of any science: 1) make distinct the idea of the natural unity of its material 2) determine the special content of the science 3) articulate the systematic unity of the science 4) critique the science to determine its boundaries The first two of these steps are accomplished by the genetically scholastic method of analysis, paradigmatically the method whereby confused and obscure ideas are made x clear and distinct, thereby logically perfecting them and transforming them into possible grounds of cognitive insight that are potentially complete and adequate to philosophical purposes. The analysis of Groundwork I is a paradigmatic analysis that makes distinct what is contained in common understanding, i.e. that makes distinct the higher, partial concepts that together define the concept of morality. The analysis of Groundwork II is an employment more specifically of the method of logical division, which makes distinct what is contained under the concept by which the extension or object of morality is determined. Part I introduces Kant's conception of moral metaphysical science and why he took it to be in need of establishment, explains the general method for establishing science and the scholastic method of analysis by which its first two steps are to be accomplished, then provides an interpretation of Groundwork I as an execution of this method. Part II details Kant's determination of the special content of moral science in Groundwork II in relation to the central problem for moral metaphysicshow synthetic a priori practical cognition is possible.

1998

Ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three sciences: physics, ethics, and logic. This division is perfectly suitable to the nature of the thing; and the only improvement that can be made in it is to add the principle on which it is based, so that we may both satisfy ourselves of its completeness, and also be able to determine correctly the necessary subdivisions. All rational knowledge is either material or formal: the former considers some object, the latter is concerned only with the form of the understanding and of the reason itself, and with the universal laws of thought in general without distinction of its objects. Formal philosophy is called logic. Material philosophy, however, has to do with determinate objects and the laws to which they are subject, is again twofold; for these laws are either laws of nature or of freedom. The science of the former is physics, that of the latter, ethics; they are also called natural philosophy and moral philosophy respectively. Logic cannot have any empirical part; that is, a part in which the universal and necessary laws of thought should rest on grounds taken from experience; otherwise it would not be logic, i.e., a canon for the understanding or the reason, valid for all thought, and capable of demonstration. Natural and moral philosophy, on the contrary, can each have their empirical part, since the former has to determine the laws of nature as an object of experience; the latter the laws of the human will, so far as it is affected by nature: the former, however, being laws according to which everything does happen; the latter, laws according to which everything ought to happen. Ethics, however, must also consider the conditions under which what ought to happen frequently does not.

There are few good summaries of this important work available on the internet. This submission aims to fill that gap.

Rowman & Littlefield eBooks, 1997

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals of 1785 is one of the most profound and important works in the history of practical philosophy. In this introduction to the Goundwork, Sally Sedgwick provides a guide to Kant's text that follows the course of his discussion virtually paragraph by paragraph. Her aim is to convey Kant's ideas and arguments as clearly and simply as possible, without getting lost in scholarly controversies. Her introductory chapter offers a useful overview of Kant's general approach to practical philosophy, and she also explores and clarifies some of the main assumptions which Kant relies on in his Groundwork but defends in his Critique of Pure Reason. The book will be a valuable guide for all who are interested in Kant's practical philosophy.

Forum Philosophicum, 2001

On the 11''^ of January, 2001 the Philosophical Circle of the University School of Philosophy and of Education/^^a^ia^i/m in Cracow organised a philosophical symposium on: The subject of metaphysics and the way of its determination. This problem seems important nowadays, although it has been discussed throughout the whole philosophical tradition. Solutions concerning basic philosophical problems have their impact on the understanding of reality, first of all the human being and the culture created by him which is expressed in knowledge, morality, arts and religion. Reflection on the foundations of philosophy is especially important in the contemporary intellectual climate which is dominated by relativism and nihilism. This is demonstrated by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Fides et Ratio, which also proposes the way of overcoming the crisis through the return to the philosophy of being, that is metaphysics. The guests invited to the symposium belong to the above-mentioned philosophical trend. The guests at symposium were three philosophers from three Polish Catholic academic centres: the