Kant's Observations and Remarks: A Critical Guide

Philosophy in review, 2014

Akten des X. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, 2008

Baumgarten's influence on Kant.

2019

This volume contains the third modern translation of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten's Initia philosophiae primae acroamatice, the other two being a translation into French by Luc Langois, Matheiu Robitaille, and Émilie Jade-Poliquin (Vrin, 2014) and one into German by Alexander Aichele (Meiner, 2019). Together with Baumgarten's text, it also contains the first complete translation into English of Kant's Reflections on Moral Philosophy, a selection of which was previously translated by Curtis Bowman, Paul Guyer, and Frederick Rauscher (CUP, 2005). Nearly all of these notes were penned in Kant's personal copy of Baumgarten's textbook. Together, these materials provide a window into seventeenth-century moral philosophy and a nearly comprehensive picture of the course of Kant's thoughts on the foundations of this discipline over a span of more than three decades.

As has been noted in the recent literature on Kant's ethics, Kant holds that although natural drives such as feelings, emotions and inclinations cannot lead directly to moral worth, they nevertheless play some kind of role vis-à-vis morality. 2 The issue is thus to understand this role within the limits set by Kant's account of freedom, and it is usually tackled by examining the relationship between moral and non-moral motivation in the Groundwork, the Critique of Practical Reason, and more recently, the Anthropology. 3 In this respect, the aim of this paper is to argue that the Observations is a peculiar work, for by contrast with later works, its focus is not on the ways in which nature helps human beings become more moral, or better moral agents, but rather on how it ensures that the human species survives and flourishes independently of its morality, and in particular despite its lack thereof. In this sense, the Observations emphasizes first that the human species can, and does, function independently of its moral worth; and second, that it is intended to function beautifully has a whole in spite of its lack of moral worth. On this basis, I will conclude that the Kant of the Observations is more akin to a Mandeville than a Rousseau -he describes the functioning of the species, spelling out its survival mechanisms through natural drives, rather than explains that and how it ought to perfect itself.

The Philosophical Quarterly, 2011

This collection of papers of papers about the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (GW) addresses both exegetical issues and the defensibility of Kant's claims. Two contemporary strands of interpretation of Kant's practical philosophy are discussed. Examining Kant's lectures on ethics and anthropology, Kuehn distances himself from 'virtue ethical' interpretations (p. ) currently prevalent. He argues for a distinction between two senses of 'maxim', as 'subjective principles of volition' and as Lebensregeln, which maps onto a distinction between 'good will' and 'good character' (p. ). Again contrary to prevalent trends, Kuehn wants maxims to represent 'a highly generalized form of willing' (ibid.), but it is unclear how this squares with Kant's examples, which are not 'carefully cleansed of anything empirical'. A related stance, against 'Humeans and Aristotelians alike', is taken by Timmermann in his claim that when duty and inclination coincide, only action out of duty is moral (pp. -). He stresses the distinction between acting out of an interest in the effect of one's action, and an interest in the action itself (p. ). Although he makes a good case for rejecting maxims of action from inclination when this concurs with duty, there may be other ways of presenting the defence. Indeed, in the very act of checking that an inclination concurs with duty, an instance of willing out of duty is manifest. The presence of motives of inclination operating within its constraints does not obviously tarnish this moral incentive. Nevertheless, Timmermann correctly rejects the notion that such an action could be described as 'overdetermined' (p. ). Another key interpretative issue is how 'metaphysical' GW is. Current antimetaphysical trends are questioned in an excellent paper by Flikschuh, which makes a convincing case against political interpretations of the Kingdom of Ends (p. ). She argues that the formula of the Kingdom of Ends involves 'the idea of God as the independent unifying principle of a possible ethical union of dependent rational wills' (p. ). She also reviews the different formulae of the Categorical Imperative, thereby addressing the problem of their equivalence. Her treatment of the Formula of Humanity (FH) is particularly lucid (pp. -). Flikschuh agrees with Sensen, whose paper sets out to dispel the standard idea that (FH) requires a dogmatic acceptance of the value of human beings (pp. -). Sensen argues that 'in the requirement to universalize one's maxim for every subject, one is thereby required to respect those over whom one universalizes' (p. ). Flikschuh shows rather how the Formula of Universal Law, when considered together with the nature of rational agency, entails (FH). So although Kant BOOK REVIEWS

Akten des XI. Kant-Kongresses 2010, 2013

In this paper I would like to approach the relation between art and morality from a slightly different standpoint than is usually done. Commentators usually focus on Kant's claim that beauty is the symbol of the morally good. This approach has generally seen beauty as a sort of auxiliary to morality, a propedeutic in Henry Allison's words, which leaves Kant's moral theory untouched. 1 However, it seems to me that though beauty is not part of the justification project of morality undertaken in the Groundwork, and the second Critique, it can play a role greater than that of merely cultivating our sense of judgment (though this is not doubt of great importance as well). In short, I take it that Kant's theory of artistic production is part of a second explanation of morality through the concept of purposiveness. This point cannot be argued for here. I will argue, however, that art in general and not just beauty, can transform our way of understanding ourselves in the world as a whole in accordance with our fundamental purpose, which is morality. I will be arguing that the problem of becoming moral lies not just in the difficulty of placing the good ahead of our desires but also in the means we choose to implement this maxim. Fine art can help us with the former, and this is Kant's official position, but I will claim that it can also help us with the latter. For example, though burning witches was thought to be a step toward making the world a better place, we now see that it was not. The problem, however, need not have been one of a court having the wrong maxim but of their simply being mistaken about the facts of the world, namely that it is just not the case that old women are sometimes witches. This is a simple epistemological point. Leaving aside the question of the development of natural science all together, I want to argue that the aesthetic domain can help us understand the world as a place in which morality can and does come to pass by improving our shared epistemic schema. Judgments of taste, as

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), a German philosopher, is considered as the father of modern ethics and one of the great philosophers in the history of philosophy. He wanted to establish firm foundation for moral philosophy. He contributed something new to modern ethics which was not attempted by earlier ethicists. He wanted to show by using reason that morality is based on a single supreme universal principle, which is binding to all rational beings. Precisely, Kant wanted to establish the first principle of morality which neglects all consideration of self-interest and even particular human problems. In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant claimed that his intention is to seek out and establish the supreme principle of morality, and that supreme principle is the categorical imperative. He puts the supreme principle of morality or the categorical imperative in at least five ways. These are formula of universal law (FUL), formula of universal law (FLN), formula of humanity (FH), formula of humanity (FA), and formula of realm of ends (FRE). However, Kant affirms that there is one canonical and general formulation of the categorical imperative and it is the FUL. For him, the other formulas are not distinct ethical principles; rather they are the reformulations or variant formulations of the single categorical imperative. Kant put this position in his works, The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. So, in this paper, I will mainly concentrate on the fundamental doctrine of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. As I have tried to make clear before, Kant's aim in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is to search for and establish the supreme principle of morality (i.e., categorical imperative). He attempted to do this at the end of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. But, to me, the way he attempted to justify the categorical imperative is problematic. Thus, in this paper, I argue that Kant did not put the categorical imperative or morality on a solid ground.

Inquiry, 2000