This open access book revises Kant’s ethical thought in one of its most notorious respects: its exclusion of animals from moral consideration. The book gives readers in animal ethics an accessible introduction to Kant’s views on our duties to others, and his view that we have only ‘indirect’ duties regarding animals. It then investigates how one would have to depart from Kant in order to recognise that animals matter morally for their own sake. Particular attention is paid to Kant’s ‘Formula (...) of Humanity,' the role of autonomy and the moral law, as well as Kant’s notions of practical reason and animal instinct. The result is a deliberately amended version of Kantianism which nevertheless remains faithful to central aspects of Kant’s thought. The book’s final part illustrates the framework’s use in applied contexts, addressing the issues of using animals as mere means, the ethics of veganism and vegetarianism, and environmental protection. Nico Dario Müller shows how, when furnished with duties to animals, Kant's moral philosophy can be a powerful resource for animal ethicists. (shrink)

In his later writings, Kant distinguishes between autonomy and self-mastery or self-command. My article explains the relation between these two ideas, both of which are integral to his understanding of moral agency and the pursuit of virtue. I point to problems with other interpretations of this relation and offer an alternative. On my view, self-command is a condition or state achieved by those agents who become proficient at solving problems presented by the passions. Such agents are able to stick to (...) the results of self-legislation over time and thereby achieve a form of temporally extended freedom. (shrink)

Schiller was one of many early post-Kantians who wrestled with Kant’s doctrine of radical evil, a doctrine that continues to puzzle commentators today. Schiller’s own explanation of why we are prone to pursue happiness without restriction is, I argue, subtle and multilayered: it offers us a new genealogy of reflective agency, linking our tendency to egoism to the first emergence of reason within human beings. On the reading I defend, our drive for the absolute does not lead us directly to (...) moral autonomy; rather, it misleads us to seek the absolute in the field of our own impulses and inclinations. However, since this detour is the result of cognitive error, it involves no willful subordination of the moral law to self-love, and so nothing that bears the guilt of evil. (shrink)

This paper offers a new interpretation of Kant's relationship with skepticism in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. My position differs from commonly held views in the literature in two ways. On the one hand, I argue that Kant's relationship with skepticism is active and systematic (contrary to Hill, Wood, Rawls, Timmermann, and Allison). On the other hand, I argue that the kind of skepticism Kant is interested in does not speak to the philosophical tradition in any straightforward sense (...) (contrary to Forster and Guyer). On my reading, Kant takes up a skeptical method in the Groundwork as a way of exposing certain obstacles in our ordinary and philosophical thinking about morality. The central obstacle he is interested in is practical in character, arising from a natural tendency we have to rationalize against the moral law. In attempting to resolve this tendency, I argue, the Groundwork turns out to have a profoundly educative task. (shrink)

It is commonly held that Kant ventured to derive morality from freedom in Groundwork III. It is also believed that he reversed this strategy in the second Critique, attempting to derive freedom from morality instead. In this paper, I set out to challenge these familiar assumptions: Kant’s argument in Groundwork III rests on a moral conception of the intelligible world, one that plays a similar role as the ‘fact of reason’ in the second Critique. Accordingly, I argue, there is no (...) reversal in the proof-structure of Kant’s two works. (shrink)

We discuss the demandingness of Kant’s ethics. Whilst previous discussions of this issue focused on imperfect duties, our first aim is to show that Kantian demandingness is especially salient in the class of perfect duties. Our second aim is to introduce a fine-grained picture of demandingness by distinguishing between different possible components of a moral theory which can lead to demandingness: a required process of decision making, overridingness and the stringent content of demands, due to a standpoint of moral purity. (...) This distinction allows a specification of the sources of demandingness in Kant. The most characteristically Kantian form of demandingness springs from overridingness and purity and comes as a constant threat that an agent might find herself in a situation in which, due to no fault of her own, she is required to sacrifice everything for little to no non-moral goods. Our third aim is to discuss whether Kant has the resources to reply to those who criticize his ethics based on its demandingness. For this purpose we discuss Kant’s notion of “rationalizing” in the context of various types of current conceptions of demandingness and calls for moderate ethical theories. (shrink)

Kant’s most canonical argument against suicide, the universal law argument, is widely dismissed. This paper attempts to save it, showing that a suicide maxim, universalized, undermines all bases for practical law, resisting both the non-negotiable value of free rational willing and the ordinary array of sensuous commitments that inform prudential incentives. Suicide therefore undermines moral law governed community as a whole, threatening ‘savage disorder’. In pursuing this argument, I propose a non-teleological and non-theoretical nature – a ‘practical nature’ or moral (...) law governed whole – the realization of which morality demands. (shrink)

In this article, I examine what Kant’s Formula of Universal Law requires of an individual agent in situations of great need, e.g.: if you can easily help a drowning child, or if you know of a famine situation in another country. I first explain why I do not simply apply the standard interpretation of how one can derive concrete duties from Kant’s Universal Law formulation of the Categorical Imperative. I then glean an alternative procedure from Kant’s texts and give the (...) reasons for using that interpretation. Finally, I apply the alternative procedure to situations of great need. – According to the interpretation I glean from Kant’s texts, one (i) should not make an exception to (ii) laws that we believe to be objectively necessary, whereby we derive these rules from (iii) universal ends of humankind. Since we take survival as one of the universal ends of mankind, we deem helping someone whose life is in danger as objectively necessary (to achieve the end). The formal Categorical Imperative demands that one does not make an exception to this rule. Applying this interpretation to cases of great need depends on at least three factors: (i) how urgent the need is, (ii) how great the costs are to the one who helps, and (iii) how many people can help. But at one extreme, where you are the only one who can easily save an innocent person’s life, the Kantian procedure generates a strict duty to help the other in need. (shrink)

Abstract: This article addresses a foundational issue in Kant's moral philosophy, the question of the relation of the Categorical Imperative to value. There is an important movement in current Kant scholarship that argues that there is a value underlying the Categorical Imperative. However, some scholars have raised doubts as to whether Kant has a conception of value that could ground the Categorical Imperative. In this paper I seek to add to these doubts by arguing, first, that value would have to (...) be of a particular kind in order to be the foundation of Kant's moral philosophy. Second, I argue that Kant does not have such a conception of value, and that his arguments rule out that value could ground his moral philosophy. I then outline an alternative reading of how Kant uses ‘inner value’. My conclusion will be that Kant does not derive the Categorical Imperative from an underlying value. While some of his passages could also be read as if value were foundational for Kant, a close look at these passages and his arguments point away from this conclusion. (shrink)

Im Beitrag wird die übliche, intuitionsbasierte Bewertung ethischer Gedankenexperimente hinterfragt und stattdessen für ein neo-kantisches Verfahren der Bewertung argumentiert. Hierzu wird nach einer kurzen systematisch-historischen Verortung zunächst eine grobe Kategorisierung vorgenommen, die erstens nach der Funktion, zweitens nach der Fragestellung erfolgt, auf die Gedankenexperimente antworten. Das vorgeschlagene, neo-kantische Verfahren eignet sich insbesondere zur Bewertung einer bestimmten Kategorie von Gedankenexperimenten: Dilemmatische Situationen, in denen eine Abwägung von Menschenleben zur Debatte steht, weil nicht alle Beteiligten überleben können. Anhand von drei ausgewählten Gedankenexperimenten (...) wird das jeweilige Bewertungsverfahren betrachtet. Im Zuge des neokantischen Verfahrens wird ein „Rollentausch“ vorgenommen und danach gefragt, was alle Betroffenen „rationalerweise wollen“ können. Während die Präferenzen der Täter, die das Dilemma erst verursachen, nicht in die Überlegung eingehen, hängt die Bewertung der Perspektive der Opfer von Art und Ausmaß ihrer Bedrohung ab. Passagiere und Crew des entführten Flugzeugs, deren Tod unausweichlich bevorsteht, könnten einem Abschuss, der vielen anderen das Leben rettet, rationalerweise zustimmen. Beim Gedankenexperiment von Jim und den Indianern ist dies nur bedingt der Fall. In fast allen Varianten des Trolley-Experiments kann nicht davon ausgegangen werden, dass die jeweilige Person der Opferung ihres Lebens für andere zustimmt. In einem letzten Punkt wird auf den Einwand Humes eingegangen, dass weder ein radikal egoistisches noch ein übertrieben altruistisches Wollen als „irrational“ bezeichnet werden kann. (shrink)

In this essay I offer a new interpretation of Kant’s discussion of “the old formula of the schools” in the Critique of Practical Reason – “nihil appetimus, nisi sub ratione boni; nihil aversamur, n...

Kant’s most prominent formulation of the Categorical Imperative, known as the Formula of Universal Law (FUL), is generally thought to demand that one act only on maxims that one can will as universal laws without this generating a contradiction. Kant's view is standardly summarized as requiring the 'universalizability' of one's maxims and described in terms of the distinction between 'contradictions in conception' and 'contradictions in the will'. Focusing on the underappreciated significance of the simultaneity condition included in the FUL, I (...) argue, by contrast, that the principle is better read as requiring that one be able to will two things simultaneously without self-contradiction, namely, that a maxim be one's own and that it be a universal law. This amounts to a new interpretation of the FUL with significant interpretive and philosophical advantages. (shrink)

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)

The purpose of this paper is to challenge the suggestion that Kant offers a solution to the Reinhold/Sidgwick Problem in his Metaphysics of Morals. The problem, briefly, is about how Kant can hold moral evil to be imputable when he also seems to hold that freedom is found only in moral actions. After providing a new formulation of this problem under the title ‘Objection R/S’ and describing the popular strategy for addressing it through reference to this text, the paper recounts (...) some of the history relevant to interpreting the passage in question. The paper then argues that this strategy is not supported by the text and indeed proves to be contrary to other arguments that are central to Kant's moral thought. The closing section briefly considers other possible ways of addressing the Objection R/S. (shrink)

Richard Hare argues that the fundamental assumptions of Kant's ethical system should have led Kant to utilitarianism, had Kant not confused a norm's generality with its universality, and hence adopted rigorist, deontological norms. Several authors, including Jens Timmermann, have argued contra Hare that the gap between Kantian and utilitarian/consequentialist ethics is fundamental and cannot be bridged. This article shows that Timmermann's claims rely on a systematic failure to separate normative and metaethical aspects of each view, and that Hare's attempt to (...) bridge the gap between Kantian and consequentialist ethics is immune to Timmermann's criticisms. Furthermore, the term “Kantian ethics” is often misleading, and should typically be qualified as either “Kantian rationalism” or “Kantian deontology” in order to avoid confusions of the sort Timmermann falls into. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAccording to some influential readings of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the view presented there of the kind of spontaneity we are conscious of through theoretical reason and...

Abstract Robert Stern's Understanding Moral Obligation is a remarkable achievement, representing an original reading of Kant's contribution to modern moral philosophy and the legacy he bequeathed to his later-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century successors in the German tradition. On Stern's interpretation, it was not the threat to autonomy posed by value realism, but the threat to autonomy posed by the obligatory nature of morality that led Kant to develop his critical moral theory grounded in the concept of the self-legislating moral agent. Accordingly, (...) Stern contends that Kant was a moral realist of sorts, holding certain substantive views that are best characterized as realist commitments about value. In this paper, I raise two central objections to Stern's reading of Kant. The first objection concerns what Stern identifies as Kant's solution to the problem of moral obligation. Whereas Stern sees the distinction between the infinite will and the finite will as resolving the problem of moral obligation, I argue that this distinction merely explains why moral obligations necessarily take the form of imperatives for us imperfect human beings, but does not solve the deeper problem concerning the obligatory nature of morality: why we should take moral norms to be supremely authoritative laws that override all other norms based on our non-moral interests. The second objection addresses Stern's claim that Kantian autonomy is compatible with value realism. Although this is an idea with which many contemporary readers will be sympathetic, I suggest that the textual evidence actually weighs in favor of constructivism. (shrink)

Philosophers often mention Friedrich Schiller as the author of a famous epigram taking aim at Kant’s account of moral motivation: Gladly I serve my friends, but alas I do it with pleasure. Hence I am plagued with doubt that I am not a virtuous person. To this, the answer is given: Surely, your only resource is to try to despise them entirely, And then with aversion do what your duty enjoins. These joking lines capture a natural objection to Kant’s rationalist (...) picture of moral motivation, especially as it appears in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Schiller himself, however, intended his poem as a caricature of Kant’s view, reserving his considered critique of Kant’s practical philosophy for his extended treatise ‘On Grace and Dignity’. It is in this major work that Schiller begins his debate with Kant about the aesthetic aspect of morality, sets out a systematic account of his own ethics, and argues for an account of character according to which the virtuous person is inclined to do her duty and takes pleasure in moral action. This essay aims to highlight the importance of Schiller’s ‘On Grace and Dignity’, which is a valuable resource in relation to contemporary debates about Kant’s moral psychology. Section 1 outlines the main features of Schiller’s concerns with Kantian rationalism. Section 2 surveys a number of recent critical discussions of Schiller’s interpretation of Kant. Finally, Section 3 concludes with some observations about the historical and broader philosophical significance of ‘On Grace and Dignity’. (shrink)

Our understanding of emotional labor, while conceptually and empirically substantial, is normatively impoverished: very little has been said or written expressly about its ethical dimensions or ramifications. Emotional labor refers to efforts undertaken by employees to make their private feelings and/or public emotion displays consistent with job and organizational requirements. We formally define emotional labor, briefly summarize research in organizational behavior and social psychology on the causes and consequences of emotional labor, and present a normative analysis of its moral limits (...) focused on conditional rights and duties of employers and employees. Our focus is on three points of conflict involving rights and duties as they apply to the performance of emotional labor: when employees’ and organizations’ rights conflict, when employees’ rights conflict with their duties, and when organizations’ rights conflict with their duties. We discuss implications for future inquiry as well as managerial practice. (shrink)

The volume Applied Ethics. Perspectives from Romania is the first contribution that aims at showing to the Japanese reader a sample of contemporary philosophy in Romania. At the same time a volume of contemporary Japanese philosophy is translated into Romanian and will be published by the University of Bucharest Press. -/- Applied Ethics. Perspectives from Romania includes several original articles in applied ethics and theoretical moral philosophy. It is representative of the variety of research and the growing interest in applied (...) ethics in the last few years in Romania. The philosophy practised here is at the same time an international activity, but also a kind of research deeply involved in Romanian realities. The contributors to the volume are Romanian philosophers from the most important Universities in the country, including members of the Romanian Academy, but also junior researchers. -/- This volume was made possible thanks to the relationship established between the Applied Ethics Centres of the University of Bucharest, Romania, and Hokkaido University, Japan. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) argued that moral requirements are based on a standard of rationality he dubbed the “Categorical Imperative” (CI). Immorality thus involves a violation of the CI and is thereby irrational. Other philosophers, such as Locke and Hobbes, had also argued that moral requirements are based on standards of rationality. However, these standards were either desirebased instrumental principles of rationality or based on sui generis rational intuitions. Kant agreed with many of his predecessors that an analysis of practical reason (...) will reveal only the requirement that rational agents must conform to instrumental principles. Yet he argued that conformity to the CI (a non-instrumental principle) and hence to moral requirements themselves, can nevertheless be shown to be essential to rational agency. This argument was based on his striking doctrine that a rational will must be regarded as autonomous, or free in the sense of being the author of the law that binds it. The fundamental principle of morality — the CI — is none other than the law of an autonomous will. Thus, at the heart of Kant's moral philosophy is a conception of reason whose reach in practical affairs goes well beyond that of a Humean ‘slave’ to the passions. Moreover, it is the presence of this self-governing reason in each person that Kant thought offered decisive grounds for viewing each as possessed of equal worth and deserving of equal respect. (shrink)

In this paper I put forth three criticisms against McDowell account of the idea that moral requirements are categorical imperatives. I argue that McDowell’s account fails as a defense of Kant’s doctrine for at least three reasons. First, McDowell claims that agents can appeal to experience in order to formulate and recognize categorical imperatives. However, Kant strongly disagrees with this claim, explicitly claiming that moral requirements cannot be derived from experience. Second, McDowell argues that the virtuous agent will not experience (...) inner conflict when motivating herself to act virtuously, but inner conflict plays a central role in Kant’s picture of moral motivation and virtue. Third, McDowell does not account for how the moral law serves as a necessary incentive to moral action through the a priori feeling of respect. Finally, I suggest that my criticisms cast doubt on the validity of McDowell’s account, and provide insights into some criteria that an account must meet if it is to be a proper defense of Kant’s doctrine of moral requirements as categorical imperatives. (shrink)

There has been a considerable amount of research concerning Kantian hope, but focused on the perspective of Kant’s moral and religious philosophy. In this essay, I will present the Kantian theory of theoretical hope, as found in the first Critique. My argument first establishes that there is such a thing as Kantian theoretical hope. And the second part of the argument defines Kantian theoretical hope as a priori, necessary, and universal within the use of reason and understanding, or, in Kantian (...) terms, as a transcendental concept. (shrink)

In his early writings, Kant says that the solution to the puzzle of how morality can serve as a motivating force in human life is nothing less than the “philosophers’ stone.” In this dissertation I show that for years Kant searched for the philosophers’ stone in the concept of “respect” (Achtung), which he understood as the complex effect practical reason has on feeling. -/- I sketch the history of that search in Chapters 1-2. In Chapter 3 I show that Kant’s (...) analysis in Groundwork I is incomplete because it does not explain how respect functions as a feeling in motivating choice. In Chapter 4 I argue that Kant’s subsequent attempt to sidestep this explanation in Groundwork III is unsuccessful, and that his position remains open to a skeptical threat. The argument in the second Critique, which I reconstruct in Chapters 5-6, overcomes this threat, and in doing so explains how the feeling of respect is both painful and pleasurable. -/- In the course of defending these claims, I provide an alternative reading of the shift in Kant’s ethical project from the Groundwork of 1785 to the second Critique of 1788 Against a common view in the literature, I argue that the shift does not concern the direction of Kant’s deduction (from freedom to morality, or morality to freedom); rather, it concerns his view of human sensibility and the resources he thinks we have to make our practical self-understanding intelligible. In the second Critique, I argue, Kant develops a novel approach to moral feeling from the perspective of the human agent; and this in turn clears room in his ethics for a new kind of a priori knowledge—namely, knowledge of what the activity of practical reason must feel like. By way of conclusion, I offer a few reasons for why the form of Kant’s argument in the second Critique is still relevant today, as it shows why we can only address moral skepticism from a first-personal perspective. (shrink)

This paper addresses the issue of making sense of Kant’s notion of moral worth. Kant’s identification in GMM1 I of the good will as the unconditional good leads to understanding the moral worth of human agency in ways which, some critics claim, is at odds with our moral intuitions. By first focusing upon how Kant singles out action out of duty as characteristic of the good will, we shall show that a covert assumption about our nature potentially weakens the force (...) of Kant’s argument. This paper claims that this assumption is not needed, and proposes an interpretation of Kant’s notion of moral worth that dispenses with it. In so doing, the interpretative strategy draws upon Kant’s solution to the Third Antinomy, and therefore on Transcendental Idealism. An analysis of the moral worth of the action of a benevolent agent who heeds the requirements of duty will show how inclinations contribute to morally worthy action, while the action’s moral worth lies in its being motivated by duty. A further analysis of the issue of moral worth in the light of recent scholarship introduces a distinction between the moral worth of the action and of the agent. This provides the material to address an important standard criticism of Kantian ethics. The paper concludes by suggesting that the proposed interpretation is required to make proper sense of Kant’s indirect duty to develop compassionate inclinations. (shrink)

Kant famously claims that autonomy is the ground of dignity. If he is correct about the grounding relationship, then doubts about our autonomy entail doubts about our dignity. Here, I attempt to show that Kant is sensitive to this problem, and invokes the ‘fact of reason’ as the key piece of evidence for our autonomy, and therefore our dignity. But as is well known, Kant’s appeal to the Faktum is controversial. After presenting an exegetical case for the connection between dignity (...) and the fact of reason, I respond to two prominent criticisms of Kant’s strategy in the Critique of Practical Reason in attempt to defend Kant’s use of the Faktum, and hence to preserve his conception of the dignity of humanity. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend an interpretation of Kant’s Singularity Thesis: the claim that the formulae of the Categorical Imperative are in fact representations of a single, underlying law. I proceed by answering two questions: How should we state the underlying law? And How can we best understand the relationship between the formulae and this law they supposedly represent? My account focuses on the concept of rational agency and how Kant develops it in the Groundwork. I will argue that the (...) formulae are three ways of expressing, thinking about, or applying the Categorical Imperative — understood as Kant’s statement of the supreme principle of morality — corresponding to three features of rational agency. (shrink)

Contra aquellas lecturas formalistas de la filosofía práctica deKant, se asume una lectura de su propuesta ética a partir delconcepto de máxima. Al referirnos a la moral kantiana comouna moral de máximas, se postula un modelo específico dela acción racional, el cual posibilita la aplicación de la leymoral. La máxima, dentro de este modelo de acción, sirvecomo principio práctico subjetivo de la acción a partir delcual se aplica el imperativo categórico, como su principiopráctico objetivo. Esto implica que la propuesta de (...) Kant noexcluye el contexto práctico en el que se quiere realizar laacción, así como tampoco la situación específica del agenteque la pretende realizar. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), the 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 a 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. (shrink)

Within Kantian ethics and Kant scholarship, it is widely assumed that autonomy consists in the self-legislation of the principle of morality. In this paper, we challenge this view on both textual and philosophical grounds. We argue that Kant never unequivocally claims that the Moral Law is self-legislated and that he is not philosophically committed to this claim by his overall conception of morality. Instead, the idea of autonomy concerns only substantive moral laws, such as the law that one ought not (...) to lie. We argue that autonomy, thus understood, does not have the paradoxical features widely associated with it. Rather, our account highlights a theoretical option that has been neglected in the current debate on whether Kant is best interpreted as a realist or a constructivist, namely that the Moral Law is an a priori principle of pure practical reason that neither requires nor admits of being grounded in anything else. (shrink)