There are two ways in which philosophical controversialists can approach a classical opponent of their views. They can attempt to refute him, or they can try to show that, while generally assumed to be an opponent, the philosopher really was not, at least when he was thinking clearly. Of these two strategies, the latter, if it can be pulled off, is dialectically..

Kant is regarded as the key critic of eudemonic ethics. Interpreters have claimed that for Kant, happiness was neither a precondition for morality nor a reward for moral conduct. However, this study shows that happiness does play a key role in Kant s moral philosophy. It reveals Kant s practical philosophy as a theory that seriously considers the irrefutable necessity for individual happiness in life.".

Can happiness be achieved by means of human will and reason or does it depend on natural conditions which escape the control of man? Is it an expression of autonomy or of heteronomy? The Enlightenment gives manifold answers to this question. Sometimes -above all in England and France -happiness is defined in terms opf pleasure and thus heteronomy is stressed; in other cases -above all in Germany -happiness is conceived as perfection, hence it is rather autonomy that is emphasized. For (...) his part Kant neatly contrasts happiness with autonomy, both from the ethicalpractical standpoint and from the technical-practical one . Such a contrast, which still leaves room for happiness in Kant's view, is carried to extremes in the idealistic tradition that comes to drastically anti-eudemonic results, since the latter either completely rejects happiness as expressing heteronomy or deprives it of its sensitive constituents and embodies it into interior bliss. (shrink)