In this paper I propose to shed new light on the role of feeling in Kant’s psychology of moral motivation by focusing on the concept of an incentive (Triebfeder), a term he borrowed from one of his most important rationalist predecessors, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. I argue that, similar to Baumgarten, Kant understands an incentive to refer to the ground of desire and that feelings function as a specific kind of ground within Kant’s psychology of moral action, namely as the ‘impelling (...) cause’ of desire. I claim that this interpretation has several advantages over the alternatives currently on offer in the literature. (shrink)

The main purpose of this article is to discuss the place of the ethics of virtues and char acter in nursing and health care in general, and in psychiatric nursing in particular. To attain this goal, the relationship between the ethics of duty (i.e. rule based ethics) and the ethics of virtue and character will be clarified in order to defend our main hypothe sis that these two types of ethics should complement each other, since both are necessary but neither (...) by itself is sufficient for nursing. This means that any applied ethics, as in nursing, should consider the importance of the agent's moral character. To support our arguments, we shall use cases from the empirical reality of psychiatric and mental health care. (shrink)

I argue for a new reading of Kant's claim that respect is the moral incentive; this reading accommodates the central insights of the affectivist and intellectualist readings of respect, while avoiding shortcomings of each. I show that within Kant's ethical system, the feeling of respect should be understood as paradigmatic of a kind of pleasure, pleasure in the moral. The motivational power of respect arises from its nature as pleasurable feeling, but the feeling does not directly motivate individual dutiful actions. (...) Rather, the feeling is motivational in the sense that, after an agent has acted in a morally good way, the pleasure that results from that action contributes to the cultivation of virtue in the agent and, consequently, morally good actions in the future. Understanding the feeling of respect to be moral pleasure not only gives us insight into how finite rational beings develop virtue, but also a new way of understanding respect as an incentive. (shrink)