No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2011
It is difficult to exaggerate the extent to which Kant has influenced contemporary ethics. Whether or not one is sympathetic to his moral theory, one cannot ignore it, or the various ethical theories which draw their inspiration from it. Debates which have centred on Kantian themes include debates about whether moral requirements are categorical imperatives, whether they have an overriding authority, whether the various moral judgements we make can be codified, the role of duty in moral motivation, whether there are moral actions which are beyond the call of duty, the relation of morality to autonomy, and the very nature of moral judgement. The pervasiveness of Kant's influence makes it very difficult to write anything comprehensive on his relation to contemporary ethics, and I do not intend to attempt such an ambitious task here. Rather, in what follows I shall focus mainly on three distinctive features of Kant's ethics, which correspond roughly to the three chapters of the Groundwork.
References in the notes to Kant's text are to the Akademie Ausgabe (Ak.) (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902– ) by volume and page number.
1 Luck, Moral: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 1–19.Google Scholar See also Stocker, Michael, ‘The schizophrenia of modern ethical theories’, Journal of Philosophy (1976), 453–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 This argument was not explicitly directed at the Kantian theory of motivation, but those sympathetic to Kant's view realized that if this critique was valid against the thought of permissibility as a motive, it will a fortiori be valid against the motive of duty.
3 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 you
(cited in Paton, H. J., The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kant's Moral Philosophy (London: Hutchinson's University Library, 1947), p. 249.)Google Scholar
4 Kant may be criticized on the ground that it does not make sense to talk of an inclination being present whilst being motivationally inert. For one might think that such inclinations always constitute motives, and it is very difficult to understand what it could be for a motive to fail to motivate. But I do not think this is as odd as it may at first appear. It is common enough to talk of someone having a motive to commit a crime without assuming that they were motivated by this.
5 See Herman, B., ‘On the value of acting from the motive of duty’, in Philosophical Review (1981), 359–82Google Scholar, and Baron, M., Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995).Google Scholar
6 See, for example, Ross, W. D., The Right and the Good (Indianapolis, Hackett, 1930), p. 164.Google Scholar
7 Ak. 4: 398/Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper, 1964), p. 66.
8 Herman sometimes gives the impression that it is, but this is not, I think, the best way to understand Kant.
9 Freedom and Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 123.Google Scholar
10 ‘Kantian constructivism in moral theory’, Journal of Philosophy, 77 (1980), 519.Google Scholar
11 A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 302–3.Google Scholar
12 Ak. 4: 401n/Groundwork, trans. H. J. Paton, p. 69n.
13 See O'Neill, O., Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant's Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, ch. 11.
14 R. M. Hare, amongst others, was quick to notice this. See his ‘Rawls' theory of justice’, in Daniels, N. (ed.), Reading Rawls: Critical Studies on Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975)Google Scholar, ch. 4.
15 See, for example, Dworkin, R., Taking Rights Seriously (London: Duck worth, 1977)Google Scholar, and Kymlieka, Will, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 60.Google Scholar Ié Rawls thought that he was doing something very different from the intuitionists because he thought that they simply listed our intuitions, and that they did not rank them. This is, however, quite mistaken: see McNaughton, D., ‘An unconnected heap?’, Philosophical Quarterly (1996), 433–47).Google Scholar
17 O'Neill, O., ‘Constructivism in ethics’ in Constructions of Reason, ch.11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18 See Korsgaard, , ‘Kant's analysis of obligation: the argument of Ground work I’, in Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 43–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 Williams's, B. internalism is relativistic (’Internal and external reasons’, in Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 101–13).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20 Korsgaard, , ‘Skepticism about practical reason’, Journal of Philosophy, 83 (1986), 5–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21 Velleman's version of this argument is designed to undermine the distinction between internal and external reasons. See his ‘The possibility of practical reason’, Ethics, 106 (1996), 694–726.Google Scholar
22 'Kantian constructivism in moral theory’, Journal of Philosophy, 77 (1980), 519.Google Scholar
23 See, for example, Charvet, John, The Idea of an Ethical Community (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 1.Google Scholar
24 Mind and World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
25 Savile, Anthony argues for this interpretation in his Kantian Aesthetics Pursued (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993), pp. 1–16.Google Scholar