In the 1780s through the end of 1790s, Kant made various references to slavery (in its different forms) and the transatlantic slave trade in the context of his political philosophy or philosophy of right; he thereby had opportunities to speak in favor of abolitionism, which was gaining momentum in parts of Europe, or at least to articulate a normative critique of the race-based chattel slavery or Atlantic slavery and the associated slave trade qua (legalized) INSTITUTIONS; but he did neither. (...) Why? In raising and seeking an answer to this question, I am not interested in what Kant’s normative silence about the institutions of Atlantic slavery and slave trade may tell us about him as a person (for example, whether he was blinded by his own racist prejudices or whether he was affected by some kind of cognitive dissonance). Rather, I will focus on what it may tell us about certain limitations of his political philosophy, limitations that might have made it THEORETICALLY DIFFICULT for him to figure out exactly what to DO about those institutions as entrenched political realities. (shrink)

At the heart of Kant’s legal-political philosophy lies a liberal, republican ideal of justice understood in terms of private independence (non-domination) and subjection to public laws securing freedom for all citizens as equals. Given this basic commitment of Kant’s, it is puzzling to many that he does not consider democracy a minimal condition on a legitimate state. In addition, many find Kant ideas of reform or improvement of the historical states we have inherited vague and confusing. The aim (...) of this paper is to untangle both puzzles by exploring Kant’s idea of self-governance. I argue that Kant’s idea of self-governance gives us a very good starting point for thinking about how to leave room for a variety of political systems—different ideals—that have grown out of and responding to different contingent historical and cultural circumstances. It also helps us identify those areas where we want to take extra care to build in safeguards to secure stability and to take sufficiently seriously humankind’s truly nasty sides. (shrink)

Contrary to the received view, I argue that Kant, in the “Doctrine of Right”, outlines a third, republican alternative to absolutist and voluntarist conceptions of political legitimacy. According to this republican alternative, a state must meet certain institutional requirements before political obligations arise. An important result of this interpretation is not only that there are institutional restraints on a legitimate state's use of coercion, but also that the rights of the state (‘public right’) are not in principle (...) reducible to the rights of individuals (‘private right’). Thus, for Kant, political obligations are intimately linked to the existence of a certain kind of republican institutional framework. (shrink)

Scholars have long debated the relationship between Kant’s doctrine of right and his doctrine of virtue (including his moral religion or ethico-theology), which are the two branches of his moral philosophy. This article will examine the intimate connection in his practical philosophy between perpetual peace and the highest good, between political and ethico-religious communities, and between the types of transparency peculiar to each. It will show how domestic and international right provides a framework for the (...) development of ethical communities, including a kingdom of ends and even the noumenal ethical community of an afterlife, and how the transparency and trust achieved in these communities is anticipated in rightful political society by publicity and the mutual confidence among citizens that it engenders. Finally, it will explore the implications of this synthesis of Kant’s political and religious philosophies for contemporary Kantian political theories, especially those of Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls. (shrink)

This paper argues against the common justification for the necessity of the state through the particular difficulty of private property right. Instead, I argue that the necessity of the state is internal to the concept of right in general. In order to show this, I point out how Kants adoption of hylomorphic language for the concept of right, where there is a formal and material aspect of right, allows us to understand the Rechtslehre as progressing through (...) a syllogistic deduction from innate right (major), private right (minor) to public right (conclusion). Material right is made necessary through its subsumption under formal right in the civil condition. (shrink)

Like previous theorists of natural law, Kant believes in the possibility of a rational theory of ius, but also claims that the very concept of ius naturae and the method of investigation of its principles must be thoroughly reformulated. I will maintain that Kant solves the methodological problem of natural law theories by stating that a rational doctrine of Right concerns pure rational knowledge. Right must be conceived as a metaphysical doctrine in which its principles and (...) laws are determined a priori. By conceiving the idea of a “metaphysics of morals” and linking Right with it, he finds a way both to conserve the notion of ius naturae ) and to purify it from any empirical or anthropological element. (shrink)

In Kant’s “Doctrine of Right” there is a philosophical and interpretive puzzle surrounding the translation of a key concept: Gewalt. Should we translate it as “force,” “power,” or “violence”? This raises both general questions in Kant’s legal-political philosophy as well as puzzles regarding Kant’s definitions of “barbarism,” “anarchy,” “despotism,” and “republic” as the four possible political conditions. First, I argue that we have good textual reasons for translating Gewalt as “violence”—a translation which has the advantage (...) that it answers these questions and puzzles convincingly. Translating Gewalt as “violence” has two further, somewhat surprising advantages. It allows us to explain how human beings can be caught in situations with no morally good ways out, and it gives us an ideal Kantian refutation of the death penalty. I then explore Kant’s account of the establishment of public authorities by means of an analogy between the birth and development of a natural person (a human being) and an artificial one (a state). This analogy helps to clarify the difference between the necessary coercive element involved in ideally establishing a state and the likely violence involved in actually establishing one. The third and final section uses the ideas of barbarism, anarchy, despotism, and republic to identify four different types of political forces operating at any given time in actual historical societies. Once we use Kant’s theory to improve our understanding of the various challenges our historical societies present, we also realize the importance and usefulness of philosophical precision when we translate Gewalt as “violence” and correctly define barbarism, anarchy, despotism, and republic. (shrink)

This paper presents and defends Kant’s non-voluntarist conception of political obligations. I argue that civil society is not primarily a prudential requirement for justice; it is not merely a necessary evil or moral response to combat our corrupting nature or our tendency to act viciously, thoughtlessly or in a biased manner. Rather, civil society is constitutive of rightful relations because only in civil society can we interact in ways reconcilable with each person’s innate right to freedom. Civil society (...) is the means through which we can rightfully interact even on the ideal assumption that no one ever succumbs to immoral temptation. (shrink)

Kant’s example of lying to the murderer at the door has been a cherished source of scorn for thinkers with little sympathy for Kant’s philosophy and a source of deep puzzlement for those more favorably inclined. The problem is that Kant seems to say that it’s always wrong to lie – even if necessary to prevent a murderer from reaching his victim – and that if one does lie, one becomes partially responsible for the killing of the victim. (...) If this is correct, then Kant’s account seems not only to require us to respect the murderer more than the victim, but also that we somehow can become responsible for the consequences that ultimately result from someone else’s wrongdoing. After World War II our spontaneous negative reaction to this apparently absurd line of argument is brought out even more starkly by making the murderer at the door a Nazi officer looking for Jews hidden in people’s homes. This paper argues that Kant’s discussion of lying to the murderer at the door has been seriously misinterpreted. The suggested root of the problem is that the Doctrine of Right has been given insufficient attention in Kant interpretation. It is in this work we find many of the arguments needed to understand Kant’s analysis of lying to the murderer in “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy”. When we interpret this essay in light of Kant’s discussion in the Doctrine of Right, we can make sense of why lying to the murderer isn’t to wrong the murderer, why we nevertheless become responsible for the consequences of the lie and why choosing to lie to do wrong ‘in the highest degree’. Finally, the Doctrine of Right account of rightful relations makes it possible for us to analyze the example when we make the murderer at the door a Nazi officer. (shrink)

Some contemporary intepreters of Kant maintain that on Kant's view fulfilling duties of virtue require doing so from the motive of duty. I argue that there are interpretive and doctinal reasons for rejecting this interpretation. However, I argue that for Kant motives can be deontically relevant; one's motives can affect the deontic status of actions.

This paper defends a legal and political conception of sexual relations grounded in Kant’s Doctrine of Right. First, I argue that only a lack of consent can make a sexual deed wrong in the legal sense. Second, I demonstrate why all other legal constraints on sexual practices in a just society are legal constraints on seemingly unrelated public institutions. I explain the way in which the just state acts as a civil guardian for domestic relations and as (...) a civil guarantor for private property and contract relations—and thereby enables the existence of legally enforceable claims. Throughout the aim is to demonstrate that Kant’s relational conception of justice entails that legally enforceable claims regarding sexual deeds are fully justifiable only insofar as they are determined and enforced by a public authority that we may refer to as a liberal democratic welfare state. (shrink)

Over the course of the past several decades, Kant scholars have made significant headway in showing that emotions play a more significant role in Kant's ethics than has traditionally been assumed. Closer attention has been paid to the Metaphysics of Morals (MS) where Kant provides important insights about the value of moral sentiments and the role they should play in our lives. One particularly important discussion occurs in sections 34 and 35 of the Doctrine of Virtue where Kant claims (...) we have a duty to use sympathetic feelings "as a means of promoting active and rational benevolence" (MS 6:457). Kant labels this the "duty of humanity," and he suggests that nature has implanted sympathetic feelings in us "to do what the representation of duty alone might not accomplish" (ibid.). Commentators have rightly highlighted these remarks as prime evidence that feelings do play a positive role in Kant's ethics after all. (shrink)

Kant’s discussion of the highest good is subject to continuous disagreement between the proponents of two interpretations of this concept. According to the secular interpretation, Kant conceived of the highest good as a political ideal which can be realized through human agency alone, albeit only from the Critique of the Power of Judgement onwards. By way of contrast, proponents of the theological interpretation find Kant’s treatment of the highest good in his later works to be wholly coherent with (...) the discussions of this concept found in the second Critique. In their view, however, Kant never conceived of the highest good as a political ideal, and some go as far as to argue that it is the work of God alone. In this article, I defend a theologico-political account of the highest good that avoids the pitfalls of both readings. (shrink)

Contrary to much Kant interpretation, this article argues that Kant's moral philosophy, including his account of charity, is irrelevant to justifying the state's right to redistribute material resources to secure the rights of dependents (the poor, children, and the impaired). The article also rejects the popular view that Kant either does not or cannot justify anything remotely similar to the liberal welfare state. A closer look at Kant's account of dependency relations in “The Doctrine of Right” reveals (...) an argumentative structure sufficient for a public institutional protection of dependents and evidence that Kant identifies concerns of economic justice as lying at the heart of the state's legitimacy. (shrink)

Kant argues that it is only as citizens of a properly constituted state that persons are able to respect one another’s innate right to freedom, for joint subjection to the authority of a state enables them to avoid what Kantians call “the problem of unilateralism”: when I interact with you in a state of nature according to my judgment of right in circumstances of disagreement between us, I implicitly claim that my judgment, and not yours, has authority over (...) us simply because it is mine. But this argument seems vulnerable to a powerful objection: my reason for acting on my judgment of right is not that it is mine but rather that it is, as I believe, correct, and so there is no sense in which I am claiming special authority for that judgment. This paper defends the Kantian problem of unilateralism against this objection and, in so doing, illuminates the feature of the Kantian conception of right that accounts for why, no matter how good and right-loving they might be, persons in a state of nature about right are unable coherently to pursue the aim of acting rightly. (shrink)

One of the more notorious passages in Kant occurs in the Doctrine of Right where he claims that ‘bloodguilt’ will cling to members of a dissolving society if they fail to execute the last murderer (MM, 6: 333). Although this is the most famous, bloodguilt appears in three other passages in Kant’s writings. These have received little attention in Kant scholarship. In this article, I examine these other passages and argue that bloodguilt functions as a symbol for (...) the demandingness of justice. I then offer a sympathetic interpretation of the passage from the Doctrine of Right. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s political philosophy has enjoyed renewed attention as an egalitarian alternative to contemporary inequality since it seems to uncompromisingly reassert the primacy of the state over the economy, enabling it to defend the modern welfare state against encroaching neoliberal markets. However, I argue that, when understood as a free-standing approach to politics, Kant’s doctrine of right shares essential features with the prevailing theories that legitimate really existing economic inequality. Like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, Kant (...) understands the state’s function as essentially coercive and, in justifying state coercion, he adopts a narrow conception of political freedom that formally preserves the right to choose while denying that the range of choices one actually has can be a matter of justice. As a result, Kant cannot identify various forms of social pressure as potential injustices even as he recognizes their power to create and sustain troubling inequalities. For both Kant and the neoliberals, the result is that economic relations almost never count as unjust forms of coercion, no matter how unequal they are. Views that identify coercion as the trigger for duties of justice are thus particularly ill-suited to orient us to contemporary inequality. (shrink)

The paper lays the foundations for a duty of sustainable property use based on Kant’s Doctrine of Right. In doing so, it contributes to the project of extending the application of Kant’s philosophy to environmental issues so as to include his legal-political philosophy. After providing some context, focusing in particular on Kant’s property argument, I present and critically evaluate a recent argument for a duty of sustainable property use, put forward by Attila Ataner. Then, I (...) draw on Reinhard Brandt’s and Katrin Flikschuh’s interpretation of Kant’s permissive law in order to develop my own argument. According to my account, the duty of sustainable property use is rooted in Kant’s property argument, it is best construed in terms of interpersonal freedom, and it has a structure resembling that of duties of distributive justice. Unlike Ataner’s, my argument proceeds entirely within the domain of interpersonal freedom; it focuses clearly on the normative sense of usability; it does not overgenerate obligations; and it categorises the duty of sustainable property use within Kant’s taxonomy of duties. It thus constitutes a promising starting point to further investigate the connection between sustainability, Kant’s property argument and its use of a permissive law, and the Universal Principle of Right. (shrink)

Liberal theories of justice have been rightly criticized for two things by care theorists. First, they have failed to deal with private care relations’ inherent (inter)dependency, asymmetry and particularity. Second, they have been shown unable properly to address the asymmetry and dependency constitutive of care workers’ and care-receivers’ systemic conditions. I apply Kant’s theory of right to show that current care theories unfortunately reproduce similar problems because they also argue on the assumption that good care requires only virtuous (...) private individuals. Giving up this assumption enables us to solve the problems regarding both private care relations and systemic injustice. (shrink)

The first part of this paper surveys five perspectives in Kant’s philosophy on the quantity of retribution to be inflicted on wrongdoers, ordered by two dimensions of difference – whether they are theoretical or practical perspectives, and the quantity of retribution they prescribe: (1) theoretical zero, the perspective of theoretical philosophy; (2) practical infinity, the perspective of God and conscience; (3) practical equality, the perspective of punishment in public law; (4) practical degrees, the perspective we adopt in private relations (...) to others and (5) practical zero, a perspective I argue is entailed by Kant’s doctrine of strict right, which is his justification of coercing compliance with public law. Kant acknowledges 1–4 but not 5. The second part draws on Kant’s account of the burden of proof in criminal law to argue that Kant is wrong to adopt 3 in responding to criminals, and that we ought to adopt 5 instead. (shrink)

I argue that by considering Kant’s engagement with previous theorists of natural right, we can gain a clearer understanding of how he transformed the discipline from its foundations. To do this, I focus my analysis on Kant’s (critical) reception of two models of natural right with which he was very familiar: one from Alexander Baumgarten’s Elements of First Practical Philosophy [Initia philosophiae practicae primae], the other from Gottfried Achenwall’s Natural Law [Ius naturae]. The Initia served as (...) a basis for Kant’s lectures on moral philosophy for over three decades and may thus be considered as having played an important role in shaping his practical philosophy as a whole. Achenwall’s Ius naturae was the textbook that Kant employed in his lectures on natural right for over two decades. I argue that Kant distances himself from previous models of natural right in three main regards: the identification of moral laws with laws of nature, the normative connection between the principles of right and a natural end, and the place of God as the author of moral laws. I then briefly discuss what Kant retains of Baumgarten’s and Achenwall’s models of natural right. Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals preserves the view that a rational doctrine of right belongs to a broader systematic doctrine that comprehends the entire system of duties. I address the question of the division of the Sittenlehre into two branches and claim that, whereas Kant did not consider Baumgarten’s answer to the problem of distinguishing juridical from ethical principles to be satisfactory, he found a key piece of his own resolution in Achenwall’s Ius naturae, namely the definition of right as a power to coerce. (shrink)

I emphasize two merits of Eric Watkins’ account in "Kant on Laws": the strong evidential support it has, and the central place it gives to Kant’s laws of mechanics. Then, I raise two questions for further research. 1. What kind of evidential reasoning confirms a Kantian law? 2. Do natures explain Kantian laws? If so, how?

This paper provides an entrance into central discussions regarding Kant’s account of property. The first section shows how Kant engages and transforms important, related proposals from Hobbes and Locke as well as how the ‘libertarian’ and ‘liberal republican’ interpretive traditions differ in their readings on these points. Since Kantian theories for a long time didn’t focus on Kant’s Doctrine of Right but instead followed Rawls’s lead by developing Kantian theories grounded on Kant’s (meta-) ethical writings, (...) the second section focuses on property discussions found in the Rawlsian tradition. The final section shows how important contemporary work in the Kantian tradition goes beyond Rawlsian, libertarian, and liberal republican concerns of distributive justice among free and equal citizens, to include questions central to, for example, the philosophy of care, feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, philosophy of sex and love, and environmental philosophy. (shrink)

Kant limits cosmopolitan right to a universal right of hospitality, condemning European imperial practices towards indigenous peoples, while allowing a right to visit foreign countries for the purpose of offering to engage in commerce. I argue that attempts by contemporary theorists such as Jeremy Waldron to expand and update Kant’s juridical category of cosmopolitan right would blunt or erase Kant’s own anti-colonial doctrine. Waldron’s use of Kant’s category of cosmopolitan right to (...) criticize contemporary identity politics relies on premises that upset Kant’s balanced right to hospitality. An over-extensive right to visit can invoke “Kantian” principles that Kant himself could not have consistently held, without weakening his condemnation of European settlement. I construct an alternative spirit of cosmopolitan right more favorable to the contemporary claims of indigenous peoples. Kant’s analysis suggests there are circumstances when indigenous peoples may choose whether to engage in extensive cultural interaction, and reasonably refuse the risks of subjecting their claims to debate in democratic politics in a unitary public. Cosmopolitan right accorded respect to peoples; any “domestic” adaptation of cosmopolitan right should respect indigenous peoples as peoples, absent a serious public explanation by a democratic state for why it has now become appropriate to treat indigenous peoples merely as individual citizens. (shrink)

This paper argues that Immanuel Kant’s practical philosophy contains a coherent, albeit implicit, defense of the legitimacy of capital punishment, one that refutes the most important objections leveled against it. I first show that Kant is consistent in his application of the ius talionis. I then explain how Kant can respond to the claim that death penalty violates the inviolable right to life. To address the most significant objection – the claim that execution violates human dignity – I (...) argue that motives of honor, as Kant conceives it, require a rational person to will her own execution, were she to commit murder. (shrink)

Kant infamously opposes not only revolution but also any resistance or disobedience by citizens that aims to compel states to reform themselves. This paper argues that, in fact, the Kantian account of the legitimate state has the resources for a distinctive justification of principled disobedience, including even violent or destructive resistance, that applies to citizens of contemporary Western democracies. When a state fails to enforce the law equally, this lack of equal enforcement can deprive some citizens of the equal assurance (...) of the security of their rights that, on the Kantian account, forms part of the very basis of the state’s claim of legitimate authority. This failure of equal enforcement of the law will thus be a defect of legitimacy and, as a result, those citizens may engage not only in civil disobedience but also in uncivil disobedience, even violent or destructive resistance, in order to compel the state to reform itself. In this context, such disobedience or resistance will count as furthering rather than undermining the project of governance by legitimate law. (shrink)

Forgiveness as a positive response to wrongdoing is a widespread phenomenon that plays a role in the moral lives of most persons. Surprisingly, Kant has very little to say on the matter. Although Kant dedicates considerable space to discussing punishment, wrongdoing and grace, he addresses the issues of human forgiveness directly only in some short passages in the Lectures on Ethics and in one passage of the Metaphysics of Morals. As noted by Sussman, the TL passage, however, betrays some ambivalence. (...) Kant establishes a duty of virtue to be forgiving (TL, 6:460), yet he immediately warns against its excess: meek toleration of recurrent wrongs could manifest a lack of self-respect and a violation of a duty to oneself (TL, 6:461). Sussman claims that this ambivalence ultimately arises from the fact that forgiveness sits uncomfortably in Kant’s moral thought. First, forgiveness has an ‘ineluctably elective aspect’ that makes it, to a certain extent, arbitrary and dependent on particular features of the forgiver’s psychology and, as such, in tension with Kant’s central claims that human beings are autonomous agents capable of determining their own moral status. Second, according to Sussman, Kant’s moral retributivism, i.e. ‘the particular moral position that every moral wrong against another deserves punishment of the wrongdoer’ seems to be in tension with the possibility of a ‘truly redemptive forgiveness’. Moreover, forgiveness also seems to be in tension with a passage of the Religion in which Kant argues that the moral guilt from our original evil disposition cannot be understood as a debt or liability that can be compensated, erased, transferred or otherwise wiped out by others (Rel, 6:72). Thus, to the extent that forgiveness might be thought to involve the forgoing of moral guilt, it seems incompatible with Kant’s views on culpability and punishment. This chapter seeks to clarify Kant’s views on forgiveness in order to show that, although not often appreciated, personal forgiveness plays an important role in the lives of ordinary human agents as understood by Kant. In particular, I aim to show there is a conception of forgiveness available to Kant that is not incompatible with Kant’s views of punishment and culpability. In Section 1, I argue that, for Kant, far from being merely ‘elective,’ forgiveness is, under certain conditions, morally required. I provide a brief summary of an interpretation of Kant’s theory of forgiveness that I have defended in recently published work , in order to argue that Kant’s duty to be forgiving should be understood as an imperfect duty of virtue which is conditional on repentance. Kant is not ambivalent about this duty because he maintains that when the relevant conditions are not met, we have a perfect duty to ourselves not to forgive unrepentant wrongdoers. The TL passage thus identifies two different duties. In Section 2, I show that forgiveness, as conceptualised by Kant, does not require the forgoing of punishment or the overcoming of moral guilt and that this could, in fact, be seen as an attractive feature of Kant’s position. I end by offering a very brief assessment of Kant’s views. (shrink)

This paper explores the charge by Bruce Aune and Allen Wood that a gap exists in Kant's derivation of the Categorical Imperative. I show that properly understood, no such gap exists, and that the deduction of the Categorical Imperative is successful as it stands.

In this article, I argue that there is no discrepancy between Kant's Doctrine of Right (The Metaphysics of Morals) (1797), which legally permits lies that do not deprive someone of their rights or property, and his On a Supposed Right to Lie from Love of Humanity (1797), which argues that it would be a crime to lie to a murderer about the whereabouts of the innocent person he is pursuing.

Kant’s doctrine of the Fact of Reason is one of the most perplexing aspects of his moral philosophy. The aim of this paper is to defend Kant’s doctrine from the common charge of dogmatism. My defense turns on a previously unexplored analogy to the notion of ‘matters of fact’ popularized by members of the Royal Society in the seventeenth century. In their work, ‘facts’ were beyond doubt, often referring to experimental effects one could witness first hand. (...) While Kant uses the German equivalent in different contexts, I argue that the scientific analogy opens up a new framework for interpreting his strategy of justification in the Critique of Practical Reason. In the final section, I address a few possible objections to my reading, one of which I anticipate coming from Dieter Henrich and Ian Proops, who have argued that Kant’s Fact of Reason is best understood under a legal analogy. (shrink)

Kant’s moral philosophy both enjoins the acquisition of self-knowledge as a duty, and precludes certain forms of its acquisition via what has become known as the Opacity Thesis. This article looks at several recent attempts to solve this difficulty and argues that they are inadequate. I argue instead that the Opacity Thesis rules out only the knowledge that one has acted from genuine moral principles, but does not apply in cases of moral failure. The duty of moral self-knowledge applies (...) therefore only to one’s awareness of one’s status as a moral being and to the knowledge of one’s moral failings, both in particular actions and one’s overall character failings, one’s vices. This kind of knowledge is morally salutary as an aid to discovering one’s individual moral weakness as well as the subjective ends for which one acts, and in this way for taking up the morally required end of treating human beings as human beings. In this way, moral self-knowledge can be understood as a necessary element of moral improvement, and I conclude by suggesting several ways to understand it thereby as genuinely primary among the duties to oneself. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the relationship between Kant and the traditional view of dignity. I argue that some amendments to Sensen’s description of the traditional paradigm enable us to see more clearly both where Kant adheres to the latter and where his view is original. First, a consideration of Pufendorf’s use of dignity suggests (1) that, contrary to Sensen’s reconstruction, the traditional paradigm does not entail a connection between dignity and duties to oneself, and (2) that Pufendorf’s understanding of dignity (...) as a kind of esteem, as opposed to price, provides a crucial mediation between the traditional view and Kant’s view. Finally, I argue that the traditional understanding of dignity also includes a subordinate justificatory element that helps to explain Kant’s use of dignity in the Doctrine of Virtue. (shrink)

Wang Yangming’s doctrine of the “unity of knowing and acting” (zhi xing heyi 知行合一) can be traced back to Mencius’s theory of “original knowing” (liangzhi 良知). Similarly, Kant discussed the relationship of theory to practice on three different levels (morality, the law of the state, and international law) in his article, “On the Common Saying: This May Be True in Theory, But It Does Not Apply in Practice.” Kant proposed the unity of theory and practice on the level of (...) morality. So, this article uses Kant’s related concepts of theory and practice to interpret Wang’s doctrine of the “unity of knowing and acting” with the aim of clarifying some misinterpretations of it. Thereby, I argue that, although Wang Yangming put forward the doctrine of “the unity of knowing and acting” at a different time than his doctrines of “heart-mind is principle” (xin ji li 心即理) and “the extension of original knowing” (zhi liangzhi 致良知), these three doctrines are logically interconnected. (shrink)

This article discusses a crucial question through an analysis of Adorno's critique of Kant's moral philosophy: can human beings live a good life? Kant optimistically argues that human beings as rational beings have transcendental freedom and can autonomously formulate and follow universal moral laws without any empirical conditions. Therefore, human beings can always act morally and live a good life. Adorno, on the other hand, argues that there is no right life in a wrong life. Adorno, who was at (...) a different time in history from Kant, criticized Kant's philosophy of transcendental freedom, moral imperative, and identity, and proposed new moral imperatives. I think Adorno's critique of Kant's conception of freedom failed, but his critique of the moral imperatives and identity shows a complex and profound philosophical reflection and practical concern. (shrink)

Since the publication of Andrews Reath's “Two Conceptions of the Highest Good in Kant” (Journal of the History of Philosophy 26:4 (1988)), most scholars have come to accept the view that Kant migrated away from an earlier “theological” version to one that is more “secular.” The purpose of this paper is to explore the roots of this interpretative trend, re-assess its merits, and then examine how the Highest Good is portrayed in Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. (...) As will be argued, it is in this text more so than any other where Kant develops his most philosophically sophisticated account of the Highest Good. Because of the central significance of Kant’s doctrine of the Highest Good for both his ethical theory and philosophy of religion, this paper therefore seeks to provide an important corrective to the current received views. (shrink)

Easy to understand philosophy papers in all areas. Table of contents: Three Short Philosophy Papers on Human Freedom The Paradox of Religions Institutions Different Perspectives on Religious Belief: O’Reilly v. Dawkins. v. James v. Clifford Schopenhauer on Suicide Schopenhauer’s Fractal Conception of Reality Theodore Roszak’s Views on Bicameral Consciousness Philosophy Exam Questions and Answers Locke, Aristotle and Kant on Virtue Logic Lecture for Erika Kant’s Ethics Van Cleve on Epistemic Circularity Plato’s Theory of Forms Can we trust our senses? (...) Yes we can Descartes on What He Believes Himself to Be The Role of Values in Science Modern Science Kant’s Moral Philosophy Plato’s Republic as Pol Potist Bureaucracy Schopenhauer on Human Suffering Bertrand Russell on the Value of Philosophy The Philosophical Value of Uncertainty Logic Homework: Theorems and Models Searle vs. Turing on the Imitation Game Hume, Frankfurt, and Holbach on Personal Freedom Manifesto of the University of Wisconsin, Madison Secular Society Michael’s Analysis of the Limits of Civil Protections Bentham and Mill on Different Types of Pleasure Set Theory Homework Aristotle on Virtue Nagel On the Hard Problem Wittgenstein on Language and Thought Camus and Schopenhauer on the Meaning of Life Camus’ Hero as Rebel without a Cause My Little Finger: Camus’ Absurdism Illustrated Are Late-term Abortions Ethical? Does Mathematics Assume the Truth of Platonism? The Self-defeating Nature of Utilitarianism and Consequentialism Generally What is The Good Life? Bentham and Mill regarding types of pleasures Kant’s Moral Philosophy Five Short Papers on Mind-body Dualism Tracy Latimer’s Father had the Right to Kill Her: Towards a doctrine of generalized self-defense Arguments Concerning God and Morality Goldman, Rousseau and von Hayek on the Ideal State J.S Mill on Liberty and Personal Freedom A Kantian Analysis of a Borderline Date-rape Situation Living Well as Flourishing: Aristotle’s Conception of the Good Life Three Essays on Medical Ethics: Answers to Exam Questions on Elective Amputation, Vaccination, and Informed Consent Hobbes, Marx, Rousseau, Nietzsche: Their Central Themes De Tocqueville on Egoism Mill vs. Hobbes on Liberty Exam-Essays on the Moral Systems of Mill, Bentham, and Kant Kant’s Moral System Aristotle on Virtue Plato’s Cave Allegory An Ethical Quandary Superorganisms The Tuskegee Experiment A Rawlsian Analysis Why Moore’s Proof of an External World Fails A Defense of Nagel’s Argument Against Materialism A Utilitarian Analysis of a Case of Theft The Paradox of the Self-aware Wretch: An Analysis of Pascal’s Moral Philosophy Jean-Paul Sartre: Decline and Fall of a Marxist Sell-out A One Page Proof of Plato’s Theory of Forms Plato’s Republic as Pol Potist Bureaucracy The problem of the one and the many Four Short Essays on Truth and Knowledge What is ‘the Good Life?’ The Ontological Argument Different Political Philosophies: Plato, Locke, Madison, Rousseau, Hayek, and Mill on the State What do I know with certainty? Skepticism about skepticism Neuroscience and Freewill Operant Conditioning What makes us special? Are Late-term Abortions Ethical? No Two Papers on Epistemology: Gettier and Bostrom Examination Nietzsche on Punishment God’s Foreknowledge and Moral Responsibility . (shrink)

It is a received view that Kant’s formal logic (or what he calls “pure general logic”) is thoroughly intensional. On this view, even the notion of logical extension must be understood solely in terms of the concepts that are subordinate to a given concept. I grant that the subordination relation among concepts is an important theme in Kant’s logical doctrine of concepts. But I argue that it is both possible and important to ascribe to Kant an objectual (...) notion of logical extension according to which the extension of a concept is the multitude of objects falling under it. I begin by defending this ascription in response to three reasons that are commonly invoked against it. First, I explain that this ascription is compatible with Kant’s philosophical reflections on the nature and boundary of a formal logic. Second, I show that the objectual notion of extension I ascribe to Kant can be traced back to many of the early modern works of logic with which he was more or less familiar. Third, I argue that such a notion of extension makes perfect sense of a pivotal principle in Kant’s logic, namely the principle that the quantity of a concept’s extension is inversely proportional to that of its intension. In the process, I tease out two important features of the Kantian objectual notion of logical extension in terms of which it markedly differs from the modern one. First, on the modern notion the extension of a concept is the sum of the objects actually falling under it; on the Kantian notion, by contrast, the extension of a concept consists of the multitude of possible objects—not in the metaphysical sense of possibility, though—to which a concept applies in virtue of being a general representation. While the quantity of the former extension is finite, that of the latter is infinite—as is reflected in Kant’s use of a plane-geometrical figure (e.g., circle, square), which is continuum as opposed to discretum, to represent the extension in question. Second, on the modern notion of extension, a concept that signifies exactly one object has a one-member extension; on the Kantian notion, however, such a concept has no extension at all—for a concept is taken to have extension only if it signifies a multitude of things. This feature of logical extension is manifested in Kant’s claim that a singular concept (or a concept in its singular use) can, for lack of extension, be figuratively represented only by a point—as opposed to an extended figure like circle, which is reserved for a general concept (or a concept in its general use). Precisely on account of these two features, the Kantian objectual extension proves vital to Kant’s theory of logical quantification (in universal, particular and singular judgments, respectively) and to his view regarding the formal truth of analytic judgments. (shrink)

A focus on the presence of unjustified coercion is one of the central normative concerns of Kant’s entire practical philosophy, from the ethical to the cosmopolitical. This focus is intimately interconnected with Kant’s account of sovereignty, since only the sovereign can justifiably coerce others unconditionally. For Kant, the sovereign is she who has the rightful authority to legislate laws and who is subject only to the laws that she gives herself. In the moral realm (or kingdom) of ends, (...) each citizen is both a member of that realm and an equal co-sovereign of its categorically binding laws (GMS, 4:433-34, Reath 2006, p. 5). As such, each citizen is 'subject to the moral law' only insofar as she is 'at the same time lawgiving with respect to it and only for that reason subordinated to it' (GMS, 4:440). But when Kant comes to think about sovereignty in the political sphere, a number of tensions emerge. These tensions emerge because a doctrine of absolutist popular sovereignty, according to which the people are the ultimate holders of sovereignty, seems to be implied by Kant’s underlying normative theory. However, Kant also makes numerous explicit statements which seem to imply a doctrine of absolutist ruler sovereignty, according to which the ruler is the ultimate holder of sovereignty. And this seems inconsistent. However, despite the appearance of inconsistency I shall argue, by exploring the issues of civil disobedience and cosmopolitan peace, that Kant consistently defends an account of absolutist popular sovereignty which is compatible with his core normative commitments. Exploring these issues will also illuminate Kant’s political teleology by showing us the political ends towards which we should work and the means by which we should pursue them. (shrink)

In this article, I explicate Kant’s position on the wide right to abortion. That is, I explore the extent to which, according to Kant’s practical philosophy, abortion is punishable, even if it involves an unjust infringement of the right to life. By focusing on the state’s right to punish, rather than the right to life or the onset of personhood, I use Kant to expose a novel range of issues and questions about the legal (...) status of abortion (and criminal punishment more generally). The article is divided into four sections. In the first, I lay the groundwork for Kant’s theory of rights and briefly canvass some of the literature on Kantian approaches to abortion. In the second, I look at Kant’s discussion of equivocal rights. In the third, I turn to Kant’s discussions of capital punishment and suicide. In the fourth, I examine Kant on honor killings, and I use his position on infanticide in order to extrapolate and explain his ideas about the right to punish in the context of abortion. (shrink)

One of the most important difficulties facing Kant’s Formula of Universal Law (FUL) is its apparent inability to show that it is always impermissible to kill others for the sake of convenience. This difficulty has led current Kantian ethicists to de-emphasize the FUL or at least complement it with other Kantian principles when dealing with murder. The difficulty stems from the fact that the maxim of convenience killing fails to generate a ‘contradiction in conception’, producing only a ‘contradiction in (...) the will’ when subjected to the two-fold test associated with the FUL. This result is thought to imply that the FUL allows us sometimes to kill for the sake of convenience. In this essay, I argue that the very diagnosis of the problem rests on a mistake, and that if the maxim of convenience killing generates a contradiction in the will, then acting on it is never permissible. (shrink)

Working out a Kantian theory of moral responsibility for animals2 requires the untying of two philosophical and interpretive knots: i.) How to interpret Kant’s claim in the important “episodic” section of the Doctrine of Virtue that we do not have duties “to” animals, since such duties are only “with regard to” animals and “directly to” ourselves; and ii.) How to explain why animals don’t have rights, while human beings who (currently or permanently) don’t have sufficient reason for moral (...) responsibility do have rights. At the heart of the problem lies the philosophical challenge of whether a Kantian account of moral responsibility for animals can take the animals themselves into account in the right way, that is, without utilizing arguments that (wrongly) presuppose that non-human animals are moral agents or can be morally responsible for their actions. The task of untying these two knots is the aim of this chapter. I start by defending Kant’s general claim that our duties regarding animals are not “to” them, but rather “with regard to” them. Relations between human and other animals are not relations between two kinds of moral beings, since animals are not capable of the kind of consciousness, in particular the reflective self-consciousness moral being requires. Instead the more complex human-animal relations are affectionate, social relations to which humans can and sometimes should relate morally. This is why these moral duties are “direct” only to ourselves; we are the only ones in the relations that can be morally responsible for them. Correspondingly, respect (in Kant’s precise sense of the word) is a distinctly reflective, moral emotion internal to the specific normative orientation we have only to beings that can be truly free (reflectively self-conscious), and so, to human beings; morality and respect single out how we regard ourselves and other human beings capable of freedom. As we will see, Kant has a consistent and not counter-intuitive account of why we have the moral attitudes we do about animals and of how it is that these attitudes have the appearance of being about the animals themselves. In addition, Kant can explain why it doesn’t follow from this that these moral attitudes arise from attributing moral rights to the animals themselves. Central to this interpretation is Kant’s Religion, as it contains an account of human nature that adequately explains why we have the positive attitudes we do towards animals; similarly, the Religion contains an account of human evil that explains why we consider other occasions of attitudes towards animals as genuine examples of moral failure. Hence, the Religion is central to understanding why Kant’s approach to animals is neither internally inconsistent nor counter-intuitive. (shrink)

The general attitude towards Arthur Schopenhauer’s metaphysics is rather fiercely critical and at times even tendentious. It seems that the figure of Schopenhauer as an irredeemably flawed, stubborn, and contradictory philosopher serves as a leitmotiv among scholars. Schopenhauer’s identification of the thing-in-itself with the will continues to be a thorny puzzle in the secondary literature, and it presents perhaps the greatest challenge to Schopenhauer scholars. Schopenhauer borrows the term ‘thing-in-itself’ from Immanuel Kant, who uses it to refer to a reality (...) that is distinct from what appears to us, and hence unknowable. Despite the fact that several interpretations have been offered to make sense of Schopenhauer’s identification of the thing-in-itself with the will, there appears to be no consensus about how to interpret this identification as well as his understanding of the term ‘thing-in-itself’. Unlike the other interpretations, the interpretation that I offer here distinguishes between three distinct and mutually incompatible views that Schopenhauer formulates about the thing-in-itself. I argue that it is not only difficult to give a coherent, consistent account of Schopenhauer’s position, but also not worth trying, because such an endeavor comes at the cost of ignoring the textual richness and depth of thought that Schopenhauer’s works offer. (shrink)

Judgment has two functions therefore: determining and reflecting. Determining involves finding the right 'universal', that is concept or word for the situation at hand. Thus this function covers the choice of rule or aesthetic, that is, the metric of measurement. Reflective judgment is particularly relevant to the related activities of aesthetic choice and purposeful behaviour. It is the source of what Kant calls 'empirical concepts', that is, for my purposes, the range of aesthetic rules or metrics that one has (...) at one's disposal. Kant's ideas about beauty, although stimulating for my purposes, are not directly relevant to the issues of measurement. But his concept of the Sublime is. \"The experience of the sublime consists in a feeling of the superiority of our own power of reason, as a supersensible faculty, over nature.\" The specific category of the 'mathematically sublime' appears especially important for empirical measurement. (shrink)

I offer a Kantian argument for the idea that the state lacks the authority to punish neglected, impoverished citizens when they commit crimes to cope with that neglect. Given Kant’s own commitments to the value of external freedom and the state’s obligation to ensure it in Doctrine of Right, there is no reason a Kantian state can claim authority to punish an impoverished citizen while also failing in significant ways to protect her external freedom.

The concept of the highest good is an important but hardly uncontroversial piece of Kant’s moral philosophy. In the considerable literature on the topic, challenges are raised concerning its apparently heteronomous role in moral motivation, whether there is a distinct duty to promote it, and more broadly whether it is ultimately to be construed as a theological or merely secular ideal. Yet comparatively little attention has been paid to the context of a doctrine that had enjoyed a place (...) of prominence in the ethical systems of the ancients, where these systems provided a key critical foil for the development of Kant’s own conception of the highest good in terms of “happiness distributed in exact proportion to morality” (cf. 5:110). Indeed, these ethical systems prove important for Kant not only in his initial presentation of his account in the Canon of Pure Reason in the first Critique, where he sought to redress the errors of the Epicurean and Stoic conception in particular, but also and importantly in the course of his development towards the second Critique. As I argue in this paper, Christian Garve’s defense of a revised but recognizably Stoic conception of the highest good in his translation of and commentary on Cicero’s De officiis (On Duties), helps to account for Kant’s renewed attention to that doctrine, and specifically to the errors attending the Stoic version, in the Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason. (shrink)

Gabriele Gava's new monograph makes sense of Kant's obscure claim that the Critique of Pure Reason is a "doctrine of method" for the science of metaphysics. Gava does this by offering a reading of the whole Critique as aiming to show that metaphysics can become an "architectonic" science. The book shows impressive range; it covers diverse topics throughout the Aesthetic, Analytic, Dialectic, and Method, brings out appealing parallels between them, and relates them to the task of exhibiting metaphysic's architectonic (...) unity. But, I argue, it stops short of a full explanation of how the Critique is meant to outline or anticipate the whole of metaphysics in advance of actually completing that science. (shrink)

Hintikka considers that the “Transcendental Deduction” includes finding the role that concepts in the effort is meant by human activities of acquiring knowledge; and it affirms that the principles governing human activities of knowledge can be objective rules that can become transcendental conditions of experience and no conditions contingent product of nature of human agents involved in the know. In his opinion, intuition as it is used by Kant not be understood in the traditional way, ie as producer of mental (...) images, but rather as that which the mind represents an individual. To support this interpretation refers to the lessons of Kant´s Logics, to individuality space time and the thesis, submitted the winning essay in 1764, characterizing the mathematical method by the use of particular representatives of general concepts. Thus, his exegesis considers the Kantian conceptions of the “Doctrine of Method” not later conceptions, as traditionally interpreted, but prior conceptions to the processing of “Transcendental Aesthetic”. This article reconstructs some of their arguments that eventually will equal the Kantian intuition with the Euclidean ecthesis. (shrink)

This Guide is designed to restore the theological background that informs Kant’s treatment of grace in Religion to its rightful place. This background is essential not only to understand the nature of Kant’s overall project in this book, namely, to determine the “association” or “union” between Christianity (as a historical faith) and rational religion, but also to dispel the impression of “internal contradictions” and conundrums” that contemporary interpreters associate with Kant’s treatment of grace and moral regeneration. That (...) impression, we argue, is the result of entrenched interpretative habits that can be traced back to Karl Barth’s reading of the text. Once we realize that such a reading rests on a mistake, much of the anxiety and confusion that plague current discussions on these issues can be put to rest. (shrink)