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7 results

  • Chapter 18 - Respect

  • from Part II - Shakespeare’s Virtues
  • Edited by Julia Reinhard Lupton, University of California, Irvine, Donovan Sherman, Seton Hall University, New Jersey
  • Book:
    Shakespeare and Virtue
    Published online:
    19 January 2023
    Print publication:
    26 January 2023, pp 180-187

  • Summary

    Aided by Kant’s account, in “The Analytic of the Sublime,” of how “respect” is accessed, these pages show that effectively endless series of specific representations in A Midsummer Night’s Dream as well as King Lear open a moment of suspension, or space of “negativity,” within which that which Theseus terms “noble respect,” or France calls “inflamed respect,” can emerge. This route to respect may at first seem purely negative, yet its resulting humiliations of self-conceit release the good will of respect that is latent in the human. In these plays the attainment to respect is achieved in a reciprocal “amendment” or “art of known and feeling sorrows” that transpires most fully between spectator and play. Puck — standing amended beyond his play — envisions that which will “ere long . . . restore” these “amends.” He speaks as a minor prophet of a theatrical redemption that is outside time and in liminal space, even sweeping aside the play that was.

  • 24 - Moral Pluralism, Political Disagreement, and Human Rights

  • from Part V - Rival Interpretations and Interpretive Principles
  • Edited by Tom Angier, University of Cape Town, Iain T. Benson, University of Notre Dame, Australia, Mark D. Retter, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Natural Law and Human Rights
    Published online:
    03 November 2022
    Print publication:
    17 November 2022, pp 355-370

  • Summary

    This chapter examines Maritain’s notion of practical consensus amongst diverse views and backgrounds. For the Universal Declaration, this was built around a specific text setting forth rights dishonoured during war. Post-war conditions provided a stimulus for agreement amongst States. The chapter considers the prospects for consensus when moving beyond the mere enumeration of human rights, to their application in contemporary times, confronted with diverse philosophical views about their foundations. Reflecting on Maritain’s economic thought, I argue that those prospects are hampered given economic instrumentalisation and injustice from global capitalist structures. Moreover, efforts to reach political consensus on a regular basis are confronted with power in politics, which tempts some actors to go for broke, gain full control, and avoid compromise. Maritain realised that progress in protecting human rights would be replete with backward steps and new starts. Nevertheless, his hope was that the practically-embodied consensus embodied in the Universal Declaration would develop through progress in a common ethical life, despite divergence in theoretical explanations of that life.

  • Throwing Oneself Away: Kant on the Forfeiture of Respect

  • Aaron Bunch
  • Journal:
    Kantian Review / Volume 19 / Issue 1 / March 2014
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    31 January 2014, pp. 71-91
    Print publication:
    March 2014

  • Surprisingly often Kant asserts that it is possible to behave in such a degrading way that one ‘throws oneself away’ and turns oneself ‘into a thing’, as a result of which others may treat one ‘as they please’. Rather than dismiss these claims out of hand, I argue that they force us to reconsider what is meant and required by ‘respect for humanity’. I argue that to ‘throw away’ humanity is not to lose or extinguish it, but rather to refuse or otherwise fail to claim the respect that it authorizes one to claim. If I refuse or fail to make this claim, there is a sense in which I become a thing, and I leave others no choice but to treat me as such. This is compatible with their respect for humanity in my person.

  • Elateres Motiva: From the Good Will to the Good Human Being

  • Inder Marwah
  • Journal:
    Kantian Review / Volume 18 / Issue 3 / November 2013
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    07 October 2013, pp. 413-437
    Print publication:
    November 2013

  • Kant's ethics has long been bedevilled by a peculiar tension. While his practical philosophy describes the moral obligations incumbent on all free, rational beings, Kant also understands moral anthropology as addressing ‘helps and hindrances’ to our moral advancement. How are we to reconcile Kant's Critical account of a transcendentally free human will with his developmental view of anthropology, history and education as assisting in our collective progress towards moral ends? I argue that Kant in fact distinguishes between the objective determination of moral principles and subjective processes of moral acculturation developing human beings’ receptivity to the moral law. By differentiating subjective and objective dimensions of moral agency, I argue (1) that we better interpret the relationship between Kant's transcendental and anthropological accounts as a division of labour between principles of obligation and principles of volition, and so, as complementary rather than contradictory; and (2) that this counters the view of Kant's ethics as overly formalistic by recognizing his ‘empirical ethics’ as attending to the unsystematizable facets of a properly human moral life.

  • 2 - Happiness in the Groundwork

  • Edited by Jens Timmermann, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Book:
    Kant's 'Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals'
    Published online:
    04 August 2010
    Print publication:
    24 December 2009, pp 29-44

  • Summary

    Immanuel Kant begins the Groundwork by putting happiness in its place. Kant first introduces happiness in the Groundwork as 'that complete wellbeing and satisfaction with one's condition' (G IV 393), and a little later links it with 'enjoyment of life' (G IV 396). Kant never explicitly explains what he takes satisfaction to be, but he does introduce a second conception of happiness, on which he concentrates in the rest of the Groundwork. The good will is unconditionally valuable, esteemed beyond all comparison, according to Kant. According to Kant's conception of happiness, complete happiness is the satisfaction of all of the desires. According to Kant, action is based on maxims, subjective principles that the agent wills. Prudential reasons generate a kind of hypothetical imperative, since they are requirements that depend on the setting an end for themselves.

  • 1 - Ethics and anthropology in the development of Kant's moral philosophy

  • Edited by Jens Timmermann, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Book:
    Kant's 'Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals'
    Published online:
    04 August 2010
    Print publication:
    24 December 2009, pp 7-28

  • Summary

    This chapter investigates what the contents of Immanuel Kant's anthropology lectures between 1772 and 1785 show about the origins of concepts of the Groundwork, hoping to illuminate certain issues of the development of his moral philosophy between, i.e., the period that roughly lasted from the publication of the Inaugural Dissertation (1770) to the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). These issues concern the closely related concepts of 'moral sense', 'moral character', 'maxim' and 'the good will'. One of the thinkers who not only endorsed idle desires, but actually encouraged them, was Johann Fürchtegott Gellert (1715-69). An important issue that Kant raised in 1775-76 is how the concepts that characterize the Denkungsart or the moral will could ever become motives for us, because in and of themselves they cannot be motivating factors or Triebfedern. The customs and virtues introduce his truly ethical concerns, which have to do with moral principles.

  • 6 - Dignity and the formula of humanity

  • Edited by Jens Timmermann, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Book:
    Kant's 'Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals'
    Published online:
    04 August 2010
    Print publication:
    24 December 2009, pp 102-118

  • Summary

    This chapter gives a reading of the formula of humanity and dignity that can do without a value as a foundation. It shifts the burden of proof to the defenders of the standard reading. The chapter argues that the absolute worth of a morally good will is neither a property all human beings possess, nor is it the reason why one should respect others. The chapter presents the alternative reading of the derivation and justification of the formula of humanity. It argues that ends-in-themselves are the ground of the categorical imperative in virtue of freedom, a conclusion that anticipates Immanuel Kant's justification of the imperative in the third section of the Groundwork. The chapter address Kant's conception of human dignity in Groundwork IV 434-6. Kant uses 'dignity' to express the elevated position morality has in terms of worth.