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The Paradoxes of Kant's Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

A. C. Ewing
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Extract

Nobody interested in philosophy need be deterred by Kant's reputation for difficulty from familiarizing himself with his ethics. While the Critique of Pure Reason and his other non-ethical works are very hard to follow, the first two chapters of the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals at least are clear and straightforward and presuppose little previous acquaintance with philosophy. The third chapter is not about ethics as such but about the metaphysical problem of freedom and should be omitted by anyone who is not familiar with Kant's general philosophy, but the first two

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 13 , Issue 49 , January 1938 , pp. 40 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1938

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References

page 40 note 1 This should be distinguished from the Metaphysic of Morals, which is a more detailed ethical treatise but is much less important and not often read. The Critique of Practical Judgment, while giving Kant's ethical principles, has as its main object the connection of Kant's ethics with the rest of his philosophy and presupposes the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant's Theory of Ethics by Abbott consists of a translation of the Fundamental Principles … and the Critique of the Practical Reason in full besides some selections from other works. The best criticisms of Kant's ethics that I know are to be found in chapters in Rashdall, Theory of Good and Evil, vol. i, and Broad, Five Types of Ethical Theory.

page 43 note 1 Kant admitted exceptions to this in the theoretical sphere with his synthetic a priori principles, but they can only be synthetic according to his philosophy because they are dependent on the forms of sensible intuition, space and time, and they are therefore not completely a priori in the sense in which the principles of ethics are. There is nothing analogous to these in his ethics.

page 44 note 1 Abbott, , Kant’s Theory of Ethics, p. 39 ff.Google Scholar

page 44 note 2 ibid., p. 41.

page 45 note 1 Theory of Good and Evil, pp. 114–115.

page 45 note 2 Moral Theory, p. 24.

page 45 note 3 Abbott, p. 39.

page 49 note 1 The Right and the Good, p. 19 ff.

page 53 note 1 Leon, Ethics of Power.

page 53 note 2 E.g. Abbott, p. 13.

page 54 note 1 Excepting purely habitual behaviour, and I should not call cases of this “action.”