Maxims play a crucial role in Kant's ethical philosophy, but there is significant disagreement about what maxims are. In this two-part essay, I survey eight different views of Kantian maxims, presenting their strengths and their weaknesses. In Part II: New Approaches, I look at three more recent views in somewhat greater detail than I do the five treatments canvassed in 'Recent Works on Kantian Maxims I: Established Approaches'. First, there is Richard McCarty's Interpretation, which holds that Kant's understanding of maxims (...) can be illuminated by placing them in the context of the Wollfian tradition, according to which maxims are the major premises of practical syllogisms. The next subject Maria Schwartz, holds that careful attention to Kant's distinction between rules and maxims, as well as Kant's concept of happiness, allows us to make sense of almost all of Kant's remarks on maxims. It may be, however, that on Schwartz's view agents turn out to perform actions as opposed to thoughtlessly habitual behaviors much less often than is plausible. This leads to the final approach, exemplified by Jens Timmermann, which is that Kant understands maxims equivocally. I claim that something like Timmermann's approach is the only way to make sense of all of what Kant has to say on maxims. (shrink)

A stable classification of practical principles into mutually exclusive types is foundational to Kant’s moral theory. Yet, other than a few brief hints on the distinction between maxims and laws, he does not provide any elaborate discussion on the classification and the types of practical principles in his works. This has led Onora O’Neill and Lewis Beck to reinterpret Kant’s classification of practical principles in a way that would clarify the conceptual connection between maxims and laws. In this paper I (...) argue that the revised interpretations of O’Neill and Beck stem from a mistaken reading of the fundamental basis of the classification of practical principles. To show this, I first argue that Kant distinguishes between maxims and laws on the bases of validity and reality. I then argue that although a practical principle necessarily has the feature of validity, its reality in actually moving the agents to action sufficiently makes a principle a practical principle. If this is so, I argue that the classification of practical principles must be based on the extent to which they are effective in human agents. Such a classification yields us three exhaustive and mutually exclusive types namely, “maxims that are not potential laws”, “maxims that are potential laws” and “laws that are not maxims”. (shrink)