Evolution and Kantian morality

2016 ◽  
Vol 98 ◽  
pp. 56-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingela Alger ◽  
Jörgen W. Weibull
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Alix Cohen

Kant’s ethics is traditionally portrayed as unequivocal on one issue: natural drives, including feelings, emotions, and inclinations, are intrinsically at odds with morality. However, this does not entail that there is no moral role for them in Kant’s ethics. For instance, he writes ‘while it is not in itself a duty to share the sufferings (as well the joys) of others, it is a duty to sympathize actively in their fate’ [6:456–7].This statement is not only in conflict with traditional portrayals of his ethics, but more importantly it may seem surprising for Kantian morality to endorse the claim that we have duties, albeit indirect, to cultivate feelings of sympathy in order to use them as a means to moral ends. The aim of this chapter is to spell out and defend the claim that the cultivation of certain emotions is one of our moral duties.


1995 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Sherman ◽  
Paul Guyer
Keyword(s):  

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernd Ludwig

AbstractKant's comments `against Garve' constitute his reaction to the latter's remarks on Cicero's De Officiis . Two related criticisms of Kant's against Garve are discussed in brief in this paper. A closer look is then taken at Garve's claim that `Kantian morality destroys all incentives that can move human beings to act at all'. I argue that Kant and Garve rely on two different models of human action for their analyses of moral motivation; these models differ in what each takes to be salient for the explanation of human action. I show that Samuel Clarke's analogy of physical explanation in the framework of Newtonianism (in his Discourse concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion ) usefully illuminates the difference between Kant and Garve in these respects.


2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 441-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krista K. Thomason

AbstractOne way of understanding Kant’s views about moral emotions is the cultivation view. On this view, emotions play a role in Kantian morality provided they are properly cultivated. I evince a sceptical position about the cultivation view. First, I show that the textual evidence in support of cultivation is ambiguous. I then provide an account of emotions in Kant’s theory that explains both his positive and negative views about them. Emotions capture our attention such that they both disrupt the mind’s composure and serve as a surrogate for reason. As such, Kant cannot recommend that we cultivate our emotions.


1988 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcia Baron
Keyword(s):  

1995 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arne Poulsen

AbstractThe societal dynamism of modernity results in the theoretical upgrading and the actual development of personal reflective capacities, for example abstract reasoning, Kantian morality, and the development of the idiocentered perspective. These capacities are created in the disembedding of prereflective capacities, for example context-sensitive intelligence, care-morality, and mundocenteredness. The reflective capacities become the prerequisite of further modernization. The development-potential offered by the demands of modernity is accompanied by a risk of assimilative stress, for example pseudological reasoning, varieties of postmodernism, making a fetish of the medium, and the forfeit of the morality of care.


Kant-Studien ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 52 (1-4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Wassmer
Keyword(s):  

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