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International Deontology Defended: A Response to Russell Hardin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Thomas Donaldson
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Abstract

Donaldson argues that agreeing with Hardin to banish deontological justifications from international discussion amounts to abandoning the power of deontology to interpret political intent and to establish hard limits on political behavior. The moral language of deontology may not be sufficient for the moral interpretation of international affairs, he admits, but does turn out to be necessary.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 9 , March 1995 , pp. 147 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1995

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References

1 Kant's moral theory is articulated primarily in six writings: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Paton, H. J. (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1964)Google Scholar; Critique of Practical Reason in Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy, trans. L. W. Beck (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949); The Metaphysics of Morals, (which contains “The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue” and “The Metaphysical Elements of Justice”) [See “The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue,” trans. James Ellington (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964) and “The Metaphysical Elements of Justice” [1797], trans. John Ladd (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965)]; Lectures on Ethics trans. Louis Infeld (New York: Harper & Row, 1963); “On the Common Saying: ‘This May be True in Theory, But it Does Not Apply in Practice,”’ (1793) and Perpetual Peace (1795) in Hans Reiss, ed., Kant's Political Writings, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971). Kant's own application of moral philosophy to the international realm occurs primarily in two of these works: “Metaphysical Elements of Justice” (one of the two sections of the Metaphysics of Morals) and Perpetual Peace.

2 It is often said, I believe correctly, that Kant's international doctrine suffers from incompleteness. For example, we would like to know how Kant's sketch of nations understood through the social contract fits with his broader moral theory of the categorical imperative. And we would like to know how his extreme view of the moral agency of states jibes with his belief that the moral status of the individual stems from his rationality.Google Scholar

3 French, Peter, “Principles of Responsibilities,” ed. Curtler, Hugh, in Shame, Responsibility, and the Corporation, (New York: Haven Publishing, Inc., 1986), 27.Google Scholar See French, also, Collective and Corporate Responsibility (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984Google Scholar).

4 Feinberg, Joel, “Duties, Rights, and Claims.” American Philosophical Quarterly 3 (1966), 137–44Google Scholar; Dworkin, Ronald, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977Google ScholarPubMed).