This article features the contributions of Fichte and Schopenhauer to a philosophical account of action against the background of Kant's earlier and influential treatment of the topic. The article first presents Kant's pertinent contributions in the areas of general epistemology and metaphysics, general practical philosophy, the philosophy of law and ethic. Then the focus is on Fichte's further original work on the issue of action in those same areas. Finally, the article turns to Schopenhauer's radical revision of the Kantian and (...) Fichtean affirmative accounts of acting and willing through the correlated introduction of the irrational will, the self-negated will and ethical inaction. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This article discusses the concept of publicity in Kant’s moral philosophy. Insofar as the concepts of ‘public’ and ‘private’ can describe our relations with others, they can be considered to be moral concepts. I argue that we can find in Kant a moral duty not to keep our maxims of action private, or secret. Whereas Korsgaard argues that sometimes in the face of evil it is permissible to sidestep the moral law, I argue that it is rather through publicity that (...) we can deal with evil in the non-ideal world. Moreover, by being open with our maxims, moral progress is possible. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.Making the Ideal Real: Publicity and Morality in KantVolume 21, Issue 2Melissa Zinkin DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415416000042Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. Making the Ideal Real: Publicity and Morality in KantVolume 21, Issue 2Melissa Zinkin DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415416000042Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. Making the Ideal Real: Publicity and Morality in KantVolume 21, Issue 2Melissa Zinkin DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415416000042Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation. (shrink)

Based on the dispute between Protagoras and Socrates on the origin of ethics, one can ask the question of whether the principle of ethics is reason orfeeling/emotion, or whether ethics is grounded on reason or feeling/emotion. The development of Kant’s thoughts on ethics shows the tension between reason and feeling/emotion. In Kant’s final critical ethics, he held to a principle of “rational a priori.” On the one hand, this is presented as the rational a priori principle being the binding principle (...) of judgment. On the other hand, it is presented as the doctrine of “rational fact” as the ultimate argument of his ethics. Husserl believed that Kant’s doctrine of a rational a priori totally disregarded the a priori essential laws of feeling. Like Husserl, Scheler criticized Kant’s doctrine of a rational a priori, and therefore developed his own theory of an “emotional a priori”. Both of them focused their critiques on the grounding level of ethics. Scheler, however, did not follow Husserl all the way, but criticized him and reflected on his thoughts. At last, he revealed the primary status of a phenomenological material ethics of value. (shrink)

Recent discussion on the ethics of killer robots has focused on the supposed lack of respect their deployment would show to combatants targeted, thereby causing their undignified deaths. I present two rebuttals of this argument. The weak rebuttal maintains that while deploying killer robots is an affront to the dignity of combatants, their use should nevertheless be thought of as a pro tanto wrong, making deployment permissible if the affront is outweighed by some right-making feature. This rebuttal is, however, vulnerable (...) to the charge that killer robots would cause unnecessary suffering. The strong rebuttal, in contrast, argues that the use of killer robots would not disrespect the dignity of combatants, for reasons discussed. I also argue that, irrespective of whether killer robots disrespect the dignity of combatants, they would not necessarily bring about their undignified deaths: for one can maintain dignity in the face of indignity. (shrink)

In this paper, we motivate, propose and defend the following two conditions as individually sufficient and disjunctively necessary for moral responsibility: PODMA —originally proposed by Coren, Acta Analytica, 33, 145–159,, now cast as sufficient rather than necessary—and the TWC*, which amends versions presented by Young, 961–969, 2016; Philosophia, 45, 1365–1380, 2017). We explain why there is a need for new necessary and sufficient conditions, how these build on and improve existing ideas, particularly in relation to Frankfurt-style counterexamples and the continuing (...) discussion on their effectiveness, and why PODMA and the TWC* are good candidates. Finally, we defend the proposal against anticipated objections in order to clarify why we think these individually sufficient and disjunctively necessary conditions are plausible and able to inform the ongoing debate on the role of alternate possibilities in the ascription of moral responsibility. (shrink)

In this article, I propose a business paradigm that allows and enables the integration of environmental ethics into business decisions while creating a competitive advantage through the use of an ethical framework based on classical American pragmatism. Environmental ethics could be useful as an alternative paradigm for business ethics by offering new perspectives and methodologies to grant consideration of the natural environment. An approach based on classical American pragmatism provides a superior framework for businesses by focusing on experimentation and innovation, (...) driving a long-term focus, and providing actionable clarity. Under a pragmatic approach to ethics, the choice for sustainability becomes self-evident for business performance and moral reasons. (shrink)

One of the reasons why there is no Hegelian school in contemporary ethics in the way that there are Kantian, Humean and Aristotelian schools is because Hegelians have been unable to clearly articulate the Hegelian alternative to those schools’ moral psychologies, i.e., to present a Hegelian model of the motivation to, perception of, and responsibility for moral action. Here it is argued that in its most basic terms Hegel's model can be understood as follows: the agent acts in a responsible (...) and thus paradigmatic sense when she identifies as reasons those motivations which are grounded in his or her talents and support actions that are likely to develop those talents in ways suggested by his or her interests. (shrink)

Does a board with greater gender diversity make better investment decisions? Drawing on Austrian economic cycle theory and work groups theory, we argue that such board openness will help male board members to overcome gender biases, discrimination, and conflicts; integrate different perspectives under the economic cycle and crisis; and foster an environment in which better decisions are made. The results of an empirical study of 14,609 firm-quarter observations from 1,555 listed firms in China between 2007 and 2009 strongly support our (...) arguments. We find that a Chinese board is more likely to accept female directorship during an economic crisis than during an economic prosperity stage. Boards with greater gender diversity are more likely to make tough, counter-cyclical investments to improve firm performance during a crisis. Our study enriches the board decision-making literature by exploring the impacts of board gender diversity on firm performance within the context of an economic crisis. The results of our study also carry significant managerial implications for overcoming gender stereotypes, biases, and prejudices on a board. (shrink)

This paper concerns Hegel's early treatment of the productive imagination in his 1803–1804 Faith and Knowledge. I show how he articulates that activity in terms of a pair of speculative unities, which solve lingering problems of self-knowledge and self-constitution from Kant's B-deduction. On the one hand, I argue that the familiar unity of spontaneity and receptivity makes possible knowledge of the moment of self-positing. On the other hand, I contend that Hegel's talk of imagination as both an “organic idea” and (...) an “intuitive intellect” refers to a self-constituting capacity that intellects like ours possess. I show that self-constitution is possible, for Hegel, only in so far as intellects like ours possess a capacity to unify possibility and actuality in thought, or to think themselves into being. (shrink)

Academic dishonesty is a persistent problem in the American educational system. The present investigation examined how reports of academic cheating related to students' emphasis on their moral identities and their sensitivity to social evaluation. Seventy college students at a large southeastern university completed a battery of surveys. Symptoms of social anxiety were positively correlated with recall of academic cheating. Additionally, relative to students who placed less importance on their moral identities, students who placed more importance on their moral identities recalled (...) significantly fewer instances of cheating. In summary, these findings suggest that students are less likely to cheat on their school work when they place greater emphasis on their moral identity and are less sensitive to social evaluation. Practical interventions to rampant cheating in American schools are discussed. (shrink)

This paper explores some of the values that underpin health care and how these relate more specifically to the values and ethics of palliative care. The paper focuses on the concept of autonomy because autonomy has emerged as a foundational concept in contemporary health care ethics and because this is an opportunity to scratch the surface of this concept in order to reveal something of its complexity, a necessary precaution when applying the concept to the context of palliative care. The (...) paper begins with a theoretical discussion of autonomy exploring an aspect of its contemporary meaning and relevance to health care. The second part of the paper focuses more closely on how the principle of respect for autonomy can be applied in the context of palliative care. In this section an ethical framework is employed to explore a practical application of this principle within a broader context of respect for persons. (shrink)

Kant held that the moral vocation of the human species was to strive toward moral perfection. But in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, he at least entertained as part of the human condition a rationalist version of the Christian doctrine of original sin: that human beings have a universal, innate and inextirpable propensity to evil. Are these two Kantian doctrines inconsistent, or at least in tension with each other? If they are, the tension is a creative one. This (...) chapter will explain the Kantian doctrine of the radical human propensity to evil and relate it to Kant's theory of the acquisition of virtue and the struggle toward moral perfection. We will see that this struggle for Kant must be social, not merely individual, and that it involves both the development of moral character and the cultivation of empirical inclinations that harmonize with morality. (shrink)

This is critical review of Richard Dean’ book, The Value of Humanity in Kant’s Moral Theory. Dean’s book was evaluated, and some of his interpretations of Kant were critiqued. However, it concludes that Dean’s book is illuminating especially, as regards the distinction he made between consent and informed consent and their roles in biomedical practice.

What are the conditions required for becoming better human beings? What are our limitations and possibilities? I understand “becoming better” as a combined improvement process bringing persons “up from” a negative condition and “up to” a positive one. Today there is a tendency to understand improvement in a one-sided way as a movement up to the mastery of cognitive skills, neglecting the negative conditions that can make these skills mis-educative. I therefore tell six stories in the Western tradition about conditions (...) for a combined improvement process. The first three stories belong to our cultural ABC: an Aristotelian story about moral wisdom which brings people up from being enslaved by passions and up to a good life of virtues; a Biblical story about God’s word bringing listeners up from a self-centred life and up into creative work as God’s fellow workers, and a short Cave story by Plato about liberation—up from living by common illusions and up to enlightenment from what is perfectly good. The subsequent three stories interpret and actualise these basic stories in different ways: a story about moral wisdom and divine love (Thomas Aquinas), a story about individual freedom and rationality (Immanuel Kant), and a story about the love that builds us up as equal human beings (Søren Kierkegaard). These stories may directly guide us adults—and indirectly the children and youth who learn from our examples—when we struggle to become better human beings. (shrink)

Whilst acknowledging that there are several major differences in the approach which Kant and Marx take to political philosophy this article argues that there are also several common themes. These common themes of commitment to critique, freedom, equality, human betterment and cosmopolitanism are first highlighted. Subsequently the most marked contrasts in their approaches are examined and evaluated. Although Kant demonstrates greater political wisdom and a greater respect for law, Marx shows greater insight into social and political forces. Taken together Kant (...) and Marx present an as yet unrealized, powerful programme for political and social improvement. (shrink)

Imagine you and your friend Pierre agreed on meeting each other at a café, but he does not show up. What is the difference between a friend’s not showing up meeting? and any other person not coming? In some sense, all people who did not come show the same kind of behaviour, but most people would be willing to say that the absence of a friend who you expected to see is different in kind. In this paper, I will spell (...) out this difference by investigating laypeople’s conceptualisation of absences of actions in four experiments. In languages such as German, French, Italian, or Polish, people consider a friend’s not coming an omission. Any other person’s not coming, in contrast, is not considered an omission at all, but just a mere nothing. This use of the term omission differs from the usage in English, where ‘omission’ refers to all kinds of absences. In addition, ‘omission’ is not even an everyday term, but invented by philosophers for the sake of philosophical investigation. In other languages, ‘omission’ is part of an everyday vocabulary. Finally, I will discuss how this folk concept of omission could be made fruitful for philosophical questions. (shrink)

In the debate over moral bioenhancement, some object that biochemical, genetic, and neurological interventions aiming at enhancing moral agency threaten the autonomy of persons, as they compromise moral deliberation and motivation. Opponents of this view argue that such interventions may actually enhance autonomy itself, thereby increasing a person's capacity for moral agency. My aim is to explore the various senses of autonomy commonly appealed to in such controversies and to expose their limitations in resolving the central disputed issues. I propose (...) that a Kantian conception of autonomy is more effective in addressing these issues, as it specifies the key features that inform an intelligible account of moral worth and moral law. A consideration of these features is typically lacking in the arguments advanced by contenders in these debates. Guided by a Kantian framework, I argue that moral bioenhancement projects directed at affecting moral autonomy are not as promising as they appear, for both metaphysical and empirical reasons. (shrink)

The continuing existence of zoos and their good purposes such as conservation, science, education, and recreation, can be ethically justified only if zoos guarantee the welfare of their animals. The usual criteria for measuring animal welfare in zoos are physical health, long life, and reproduction. This paper looks at these criteria and finds them insufficient. Additional criteria are submitted to expand the range of welfare considerations: natural and abnormal behavior; freedom and choice; and dignity. All these criteria should play a (...) role in analyzing zoo animal welfare and interests but dignity has the overriding part because it impacts on both animal and human interests. (shrink)

This article retrieves Kant's imitatio Christi as a viable alternative to the recent construal of mimesis as a universal human desire, in particular to Ward's reformulation of the imitatio Christi in such terms (in which the human condition is defined by an intrinsic desire for God as other). Kant's writings participate in a very different debate on imitation (one sceptical of its ethical value), and this plays out as a continual ambivalence towards the concept in his work. Kant's imitatio Christi, (...) however, does, I contend, make possible a moral form of imitation by characterising it as a rational and intersubjective debate upon the good. Imitating Christ becomes part of human ethical living in the world. (shrink)

Tonkens has issued a seemingly impossible challenge, to articulate a comprehensive ethical framework within which artificial moral agents satisfy a Kantian inspired recipe—"rational" and "free"—while also satisfying perceived prerogatives of machine ethicists to facilitate the creation of AMAs that are perfectly and not merely reliably ethical. Challenges for machine ethicists have also been presented by Anthony Beavers and Wendell Wallach. Beavers pushes for the reinvention of traditional ethics to avoid "ethical nihilism" due to the reduction of morality to mechanical causation. (...) Wallach pushes for redoubled efforts toward a comprehensive account of ethics to guide machine ethicists on the issue of artificial moral agency. Options, thus, present themselves: reinterpret traditional ethics in a way that affords a comprehensive account of moral agency inclusive of both artificial and natural agents, or give up on the possibility and “muddle through” regardless. This series of papers pursues the first option, meets Tonkens' "challenge" and pursues Wallach's ends through Beavers’ proposed means, by "landscaping" traditional moral theory in resolution of a comprehensive account of moral agency. This first paper sets out the challenge and establishes the tradition that Kant had inherited from Aristotle, briefly entertains an Aristotelian AMA, fields objections, and ends with unanswered questions. The next paper in this series responds to the challenge in Kantian terms, and argues that a Kantian AMA is not only a possibility for Machine ethics research, but a necessary one. (shrink)

Ryan Tonkens has issued a seemingly impossible challenge, to articulate a comprehensive ethical framework within which artificial moral agents satisfy a Kantian inspired recipe—"rational" and "free"—while also satisfying perceived prerogatives of machine ethicists to facilitate the creation of AMAs that are perfectly and not merely reliably ethical. This series of papers meets this challenge by landscaping traditional moral theory in resolution of a comprehensive account of moral agency. The first paper established the challenge and set out autonomy in Aristotelian terms. (...) The present paper interprets Kantian moral theory on the basis of the preceding introduction, argues contra Tonkens that an engineer does not violate the categorical imperative in creating Kantian AMAs, and proposes that a Kantian AMA is not only a possible goal for Machine ethics research, but a necessary one. (shrink)

‘Universalist’ moral principles have fallen into disfavour because too often they have been pretexts for unilateral impositions upon others, whether domestically or internationally. Too widely neglected has been Kant’s specifically Critical re-analysis of the scope and character of rational justification in all non-formal domains, including the entirety of epistemology and moral philosophy, including both justice and ethics. Rational judgment is inherently normative because it is in part constituted by our self-assessment of whether the considerations we now integrate into a candidate (...) judgment have been integrated as they ought, so as to form a cogent, justifiable judgment. Constitutive of this self-assessment is that rational judgments must be based upon considerations which can be communicated to all others, such that they too can assess them as sufficiently cogent justification; also constitutive of this rational self-assessment is that we actually engage with others who do assess our judgments. Kant’s Critical principles rule out in principle any unilateral imposition upon others, whether in cognition or morals. Using Kant’s Critical principles and methods in connection with ‘practical anthropology’ and the enormously important domain of acquired rights and obligations shows how Kant had already justified fundamentally universal principles of justice which can be institutionalised in variously distinctive cultures, and which form the proper bases for our acquired, specifically social rights and obligations, including those of friendship and community. (shrink)

In legal orders around the world, commitments to democracy, liberalism and constitutionalism are increasingly eroding. Although political and constitutional theorists often lament this trend, they invariably adopt frameworks that are indifferent to these commitments. My aims in this article are both critical and constructive. As a critical matter, I will expose the indifference of the leading political and constitutional theories to the emergence, maintenance and refinement of liberal democratic constitutional orders. As a constructive matter, I will draw on Immanuel Kant’s (...) constitutional theory to explain why realizing such a form of governance is a public duty and why receding from it is a public wrong. (shrink)

In thinking about global poverty, the question of moral motivation is of central importance: Why should the average person in the West feel morally compelled to do anything to help the poor? Various answers to this question have been constructed—and yet poverty persists. In this paper I will argue that, among other difficulties, the current approaches to the problem of poverty overlook a critical element: that poverty not only harms the poor, it harms every human being. Its existence forces us (...) to live in a world where we are compelled by a pervasive ideology to eviscerate our own humanity and neglect our human impulses. Drawing on Karl Marx’s Aristotelian-influenced notion of our human essence as “species-being,” I will construct an account of moral motivation in the face of poverty that stems from a selfish desire to avoid these harms. Thus our moral impetus for acting to help the poor comes not from feelings of guilt about how poverty harms them, but rather from recognizing that poverty is harming all of us. By fighting against global poverty, we seek to make the world a better place for ourselves and the poor alike. (shrink)

Two recent articles in this journal – one by Morris, the other by Pfleegor & Rosenberg – have revived the philosophical discussion of the ethics of deception in sport which had largely laid dormant since the 1973 publication of Pearson’s ‘Deception, Sportsmanship, and Ethics’. Morris and Pfleegor & Rosenberg both share with Pearson the view that ethical deceptive sport acts are those that relate to sport-specific skills. However, whereas Pearson ultimately grounds this view in the agreement she takes to obtain (...) amongst sport participants, both recent treatments overlook this fundamental aspect of her account and offer alternative justifications for that view. I argue, though, that in both cases the arguments offered are incomplete precisely because they require an appeal to the agreement amongst participants that lies at the foundation of Pearson’s account. On all three treatments, I argue, what ultimately determines an action’s ethical status is not its relation to sport-specific skills, but its conformit... (shrink)

Ethical work climate, introduced by Bart Victor and John Cullen, plays a central role in the business ethics literature due to its influence on employee’s ethical decision-making. Yet, the often-used framework is limited as a descriptive and prescriptive model because it lacks a normative focus and does not allow for organizations guided by universal ethical principles. We revisit Victor and Cullen’s original conceptualization of ethical climate and propose a reformulation of the ethical criteria to be conceptually consistent with Kohlberg’s theory (...) of cognitive moral development and to accommodate principled climates. We also describe how the locus of analysis dimension can be simplified to allow for a more parsimonious and potentially more valid theory. In doing so, we eliminate redundancy noted in the original model and clarify normative preference among the ethical climate types. We discuss implications for research, teaching, and practice. (shrink)

I show that the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and essentially omnimalevolent being is impossible given only two metaethical assumptions (viz., moral rationalism and reasons internalism). I then argue (pace Stephen Law) that such an impossibility undercuts Law’s (Relig Stud 46(3):353–373, 2010) evil god challenge.

Abstract Kant claims that the basis of a judgment of taste is a merely subjective representation and that the only merely subjective representations are feelings of pleasure or displeasure. Commentators disagree over how to interpret this claim. Some take it to mean that judgments about the beauty of an object depend only on the state of the judging subject. Others argue instead that, for Kant, the pleasure we take in a beautiful object is best understood as a response to its (...) qualities, and that, accordingly, feelings of pleasure or displeasure are no different from other representations, such as colors or smells. While I agree that the judgment of taste is best understood as asserting a claim about an object's qualities, I argue that the distinction Kant makes between feelings of pleasure or displeasure and other representations should not be ignored. I show that one's liking or disliking for an object is merely subjective in the sense that its significance depends on what one has made of oneself through one's aesthetic education. The judgment of taste, then, is merely subjective because one must first become the kind of person whose feelings have the right significance at the right time before one can determine whether an object's qualities make it beautiful. (shrink)

How can a person forge a stable ethical identity over time? On one view, ethical constancy means reapplying the same moral rules. On a rival view, it means continually adapting to one's ethical context in a way that allows one to be recognized as the same practical agent. Focusing on his thinking about repetition, I show how Kierkegaard offers a critical perspective on both these views. From this perspective, neither view can do justice to our vulnerability to certain kinds of (...) crisis, in which our ethical self-understanding is radically undermined. I further examine his alternative account of ethical constancy, by clarifying Kierkegaard's idea of a ‘second ethics’, as addressed to those who feel ethically powerless and as requiring an ongoing process of self-transformation. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 1010-1025, December 2021.

This article seeks to revisit the distinction between the words ethics and morals. First, we understand the word ethics to be focused on the way we seek to live our own life, and hence to connote a relativistic and essentially subjective perspective, whereas we understand the word morals to be focused on the way we should live our lives together, especially through sensitivity to viewpoints other than our own. Second, we perceive a usefulness in such a differentiation when the ethical (...) values of those in a dilemmatic situation are conflicted in order to prioritize moral decision making in contemporary society. We argue that in our current era, characterized by a multiplicity of faiths and by pronounced value pluralism, a philosophical basis for moral decision making needs to be clearly attuned with intersubjectivity and interconnectivity among people. It should be able to determine principles of conduct toward others, no matter how one’s own ethical values, conceptions of the good, or life choices might differ from those of others. To do this, we relocate ethical decision making away from an essentially monological reflection on our own values and purposes into a social space wherein we have an inclusive, noncoercive, and reflective dialogue. (shrink)

People evolved as part of an ecosystem, making use of the Earth’s bounty without reflection. Only when our ancestors developed the capacity for moral agency could we begin to reflect on whether we had taken in excess of our due. This outlines a ‘green libertarianism’ in which our property rights are grounded in fundamental ecological facts. It further argues that it is immune from two objections levelled at right- and left- libertarian theories of acquisition: that Robert Nozick, without justification, divided (...) people into those who were able to acquire unowned resources, and those would could not; and, that left-libertarian attempts, such as Hillel Steiner’s, to separate choice from circumstance cannot account for the fact that not only people’s decisions to have children, but even their decisions to continue living, affect people’s entitlements to use the natural world. (shrink)

I suggest that the Kantian categorical imperative can be a basis for an ethical duty to live sustainably. The universalizability formulation of the categorical imperative should be seen as a test of whether the principle underlying a way of life is self-destructive of the system of living and acting which makes the way of life possible. In exploring this interpretation the self should be conceptualized as a socially and system-constituted being, rather than an atomized will. In this sense, a self (...) which lives in a way that is destructive of the system of life, is also in principle willing its own self-destruction. (shrink)

Schiller says that “it is only through beauty that man makes his way to freedom.” Here I attempt to defend a claim in the same spirit as Schiller’s but by different means. My thesis is that a person’s autonomous agency depends on their adopting an aesthetic identity. To act, we need to don contingent features of agency, things that structure our practical thought and explain what we do in very general terms but are neither universal nor necessary features of agency (...) as such. Without these things, the question of what to do for any individual would be underdetermined. The problem is that adopting such a contingent form of agency amounts to a restriction on what we can do, and so it is a prima facie threat to our autonomy. I will argue that one way, and indeed the only way, of meeting this challenge lies in aesthetic experience. Granting our capacity for aesthetic pleasure the authority to determine the particularities of our agency is compatible with autonomy because doing so means identifying with one’s capacity for pleasure in free and creative activity. Doing this allows us to be both particular sorts of agents and creatures regulated by the universalizing demands of reason. (shrink)

In recent years, debates about euthanasia and assisted suicide have increased to the point that now, many people defend the recognition of the right to die, the right for people to decide upon the end of their life. Consistently, advocates fight to legalise practices such as euthanasia to guarantee patients’ possibility to die when they request it. In this paper, I review two of the strongest arguments invoked by proponents of physician-assisted suicide: the argument for compassion and the argument for (...) dignity. The focus of this paper is to propose a review of these arguments through the lens of virtue ethics to inform the debate on physician-assisted suicide and question the relevance of such arguments for the legalisation of that right that would greatly ease the possibilities to end the life of a patient asking for it. (shrink)

The wrongful disability problem arises whenever a disability-causing, and therefore (presumptively) wrongful, procreative act is a necessary condition for the existence of a person whose life is otherwise worth living. It is a problem because it seems to involve no harm, and therefore no wrongful treatment, vis-à-vis that person. This essay defends the nonconsequentialist, rights-based, account of the wrong-making features of wrongful disability. It distinguishes between the person-affecting restriction, roughly the idea that wrongdoing is always the wronging of some person, (...) and the harm principle, the idea that all wrongings are harmings. It argues, first, that the harm principle should be rejected, in light of offending intuitions in salient examples. Rejection of the harm principle is not only independently plausible, but also paves the way for a nonconsequentialist diagnosis of wrongful disability. This diagnosis conceives of wrongdoing as a failure to express adequate respect for the humanity or personhood inherent in the person created. The paper defends a theory of humanity-respecting rights that accommodates plausible intuitions about satisficing and fairness, without resorting to consequentialist premises that lead to well-known impossibility results and paradoxes. (shrink)

Kant’s theory of citizenship replaces the French revolutionary triptych of liberty, equality and fraternity with freedom (Freiheit), equality (Gleichheit) and civil self-sufficiency (Selbständigkeit). The interpretative question is what the third attribute adds to the first two: what does self-sufficiency add to free consent by juridical equals? This article argues that Selbständigkeit adds the idea of interdependent independence: the independent possession and use of citizens’ interdependent rightful powers. Kant thinks of the modern state as an organism whose members are agents possessed (...) of rightful (productive) powers, whose interdependent mode of exercise independently of unilateral permission matters for right. The empirical form of that ideal, according to Kant, is a republic of independent commodity producers. I will show that this reading of Selbständigkeit can consistently explain Kant’s disenfranchisement of women, wage labourers and landless farmers; that it offers a robust alternative to influential republican, libertarian and proprietarian interpretations of the Kantian state; and that it can buttress an original account of community as productive interdependence. (shrink)

Imperatives cannot be true or false, so they are shunned by logicians. And yet imperatives can be combined by logical connectives: "kiss me and hug me" is the conjunction of "kiss me" with "hug me". This example may suggest that declarative and imperative logic are isomorphic: just as the conjunction of two declaratives is true exactly if both conjuncts are true, the conjunction of two imperatives is satisfied exactly if both conjuncts are satisfied—what more is there to say? Much more, (...) I argue. "If you love me, kiss me", a conditional imperative, mixes a declarative antecedent ("you love me") with an imperative consequent ("kiss me"); it is satisfied if you love and kiss me, violated if you love but don't kiss me, and avoided if you don't love me. So we need a logic of three -valued imperatives which mixes declaratives with imperatives. I develop such a logic. (shrink)

Impact investing is the fastest growing responsible investment strategy and has the potential to address many of the environmental and socio-economic challenges faced by humanity. Some scholars, however, claim that definitional ambiguity confounds impact measurement and hence reduces the attractiveness of this investment strategy. To investigate this claim, semi-structured personal interviews were conducted with 13 experienced impact investors in a large African market. Participants did not regard definitional ambiguity as a serious barrier, but found it difficult to identify and articulate (...) specific impact objectives that could match their financial return expectations. Investors called for more training and information sharing platforms. (shrink)

Kant’s doctrine of aesthetic ideas, along with his brief treatment of ugliness, has been the focus of some recent literature. In this paper, I employ an original approach, which nonetheless draws from Kant’s oeuvre, to pin down the phenomenological complexity of a spectacular event that took place at the inception of the French Terror—the decapitation of Louis the XVI. To this end, the first section of the essay fleshes out an interpretative framework explicating how seeing the guillotine as an aesthetic (...) idea could serve as a means to actualise the revolutionary ideal. The second section introduces a reading of Schwärmerei and argues that this unruly genius is accountable for the creation of aesthetic idols, rendering a spurious aesthetic experience. Finally, in the last section, I argue that there is a significant distinction between Kant’s account of ugliness and loathing, and that the latter stands for neither a moral nor an aesthetic response to a morally repellent object, but rather is an extraordinary sensible response. (shrink)

Kant’s theory of friendship is crucial in defending his ethics against the longstanding charge of emotional detachment. But his theory of friendship is vulnerable to this charge too: the Kantian sage can appear to reject sympathetic suffering when she cannot help a suffering friend. I argue that Kant is committed to the view that both sages and ordinary people must suffer in sympathy with friends even when they cannot help, because sympathy is necessary to fulfill the imperfect duty to adopt (...) others’ merely permissible ends, and we ought to take friends’ MPEs as our own. MPEs are individuated in terms of concepts which include marks of the first person, and no marks of law other than permissibility. To adopt ends of others individuated in terms of such concepts rather than merely promote them as means to different ends, those concepts must engage with one’s feelings in a way that requires sympathy. (shrink)

This paper argues that Kant endorses a distinction between rational and natural sympathy, and it presents an interpretation of rational sympathy as a power of voluntarya posterioriproductive imagination. In rational sympathy we draw on the imagination’s voluntary powers (a) to subjectively unify the contents of intuition, in order to imaginatively put ourselves in others’ places, and (b) to associate imagined intuitional contents with the concepts others use to convey their feelings, in such a way that those contents prompt feelings in (...) us that are like their feelings. (shrink)