Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T06:27:39.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reasonable Hope in Kant’s Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2018

Adam Cureton
Adam Cureton*
Affiliation:
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The most apparent obstacles to a just, enlightened and peaceful social world are also, according to Kant, nature’s way of compelling us to realize those and other morally good ends. Echoing Adam Smith’s idea of the ‘invisible hand’, Kant thinks that selfishness, rivalry, quarrelsomeness, vanity, jealousy and self-conceit, along with the oppressive social inequalities they tend to produce, drive us to perfect our talents, develop culture, approach enlightenment and, through the strife and instability caused by our unsocial sociability, push us towards justice, political equality and the highest good. What are we to make of these arguments, which seem to rely on questionable empirical assumptions, invoke dubious claims about natural teleology and sit uncomfortably with fundamental aspects of Kant’s ethical framework? I suggest that the arguments reveal one of Kant’s deep and important insights about the moral life by partially describing what a good and virtuous person reasonably hopes for.

Keywords

KantKant’s ethicshopevirtuehistory
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 2018 , pp. 181 - 203
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Chignell, Andrew (2007) ‘Belief in Kant’. Philosophical Review, 116 (3), 323–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chignell, Andrew (2013a) ‘Rational Hope, Moral Order, and the Revolution of the Will’. In Eric Watkins (ed.), Divine Order, Human Order, and the Order of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 197–218.Google Scholar
Chignell, Andrew (2013b) What May I Hope? New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Chignell, Andrew (2014) ‘Rational Hope, Possibility, and Divine Action’. In Gorden E. Michalson (ed.), Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 98–117.Google Scholar
Friedman, Thomas L. (1999) The Lexus and the Olive Tree. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.Google Scholar
Friedman, Thomas L. (2005) The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.Google Scholar
Guyer, Paul (2005) Kant’s System of Nature and Freedom: Selected Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1992) Lectures on Logic. Trans. and ed. Michael J. Young. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1996a) Religion and Rational Theology. Trans. and ed. Allen W. Wood and George Di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1996b) The Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1998a) Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1998b) Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and Other Writings . Trans. and ed. Allen W. Wood and George Di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2000) Critique of the Power of Judgment. Trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews, ed. Paul Guyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2001) Lectures on Ethics. Trans. Peter Heath, ed. Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2006) Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, and History. Trans. David L. Colclasure, ed. Pauline Kleingeld. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2007) Anthropology, History, and Education . Ed. Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
King, Martin Luther (1991) ‘Where do we Go from Here? Chaos or Community?’ In James Melvin Washington (ed.), A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr (San Francisco: Harper), pp. 555–633.Google Scholar
Rawls, John (2000) Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Ed. Barbara Herman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John (2001) Justice as Fairness: A Restatement . Ed. Erin Kelly. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam (1976) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations . Ed. R. H. Campbell and Andrew S. Skinner. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam (2002) The Theory of Moral Sentiments . Ed. Knud Haakonssen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sussman, David (2005) ‘Perversity of the Heart’. Philosophical Review, 114 (2), 153–177.Google Scholar
Sussman, David (2010) ‘Something to Love: Kant and the Faith of Reason’. In Benjamin J. Bruxvoort, Lipscomb and James Krueger (eds), Kant’s Moral Metaphysics: God, Freedom, and Immortality (Berlin: De Gruyter), pp. 133–148.Google Scholar
Wood, Allen W. (1970) Kant’s Moral Religion. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Allen W. (1999) Kant’s Ethical Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Allen W. (2006) ‘Kant’s Philosophy of History’. In Pauline Kleingeld (ed.), Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, and History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 243–262.Google Scholar