Transition from the metaphysics of morals to the critique of pure practical reason

2010 ◽  
pp. 120-151
Author(s):  
Jens Timmermann
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Metaphysics Of Morals

Kant's Justification of Ethics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Owen Ware
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Critical Methodology ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Historical Contextualization ◽  
Metaphysics Of Morals ◽  
Moral Normativity ◽  
Moral Requirements

Kant’s arguments for the reality of human freedom and the normativity of the moral law continue to inspire work in contemporary moral philosophy. Many prominent ethicists invoke Kant, directly or indirectly, in their efforts to derive the authority of moral requirements from a more basic conception of action, agency, or rationality. But many commentators have detected a deep rift between the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason, leaving Kant’s project of justification exposed to conflicting assessments and interpretations. In this major re-reading of Kant, Owen Ware defends the controversial view that Kant’s mature writings on ethics share a unified commitment to the moral law’s primacy. Using both close analysis and historical contextualization, Owen Ware overturns a paradigmatic way of reading Kant’s arguments for morality and freedom, situating them within Kant’s critical methodology at large. The result is a novel understanding of Kant that challenges much of what goes under the banner of Kantian arguments for moral normativity today.

scholarly journals Deduction of Freedom vs Deduction of Experience in Kant’s Metaphysics

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-80
Author(s):  
Valeriy E. Semyonov
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
Transcendental Reduction ◽  
Methodological Basis ◽  
Metaphysics Of Morals ◽  
Intelligible World ◽  
Critical Methods

My aim is to demonstrate the specificities and differences between transcendental deduction of concepts and deduction of the fundamental principles of pure practical reason in Kant’s metaphysics. First of all it is necessary to examine Kant’s attitude to the metaphysics of his time and the problem of its new justification. Kant in his philosophy explicated not only the theoretical world of cognition, but also the practical world of freedom. Accordingly, the fundamental means of proving metaphysics’ claims are the deduction of pure concepts of understanding (deduction of experience) and the deduction of the principles of pure practical reason (deduction of freedom). The underlying premises of the Kantian project of reviving metaphysics, “the Copernican Turn”, the critical methods and basic principles of transcendental (formal) idealism also provide the methodological basis of transcendental deduction, a new method of proving the claims of metaphysics in various spheres of human being. Proceeding from the above, I analyse the essence, structure and the peculiarities as well as the differences between the deduction of experience and the deduction of freedom. I single out the following features of the two types of deduction. First, theoretical use of reason is aimed at objects while practical reason is aimed at noumena, the foundations of will and freedom. Second, the transcendental deduction of space and time, as well as the deduction of categories, is preceded by transcendental reduction, which is absent in the deduction of freedom. Third, Kant orients the methodological movement of deductions in opposite directions. Theoretical deduction proceeds from pure forms of sensible intuition to concepts of understanding and thence to fundamental principles. Practical deduction proceeds from a priori principles to the concepts of the metaphysics of morals and thence to moral feelings. Fourth, deduction in the theoretical sphere forbids speculative reason to go beyond experience. Practical deduction has pointed to the intelligible world and has proved its “legitimacy”.

Kant’s Theodicy and its Role in the Development of Radical Evil

2018 ◽  
Vol 100 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-75
Author(s):  
Robert Gressis
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Radical Evil ◽  
Metaphysics Of Morals

Abstract: In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant claims that rational beings should want to have no inclinations. But in Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, he asserts that the inclinations are good in themselves. While many commentators hold that Kant simply wrote hyperbolically in the Groundwork and the second Critique, I argue Kant was sincere, and changed his mind about the worth of the inclinations between the second Critique and the Religion. This is because he changed his mind about the source of immorality: whereas in the Groundwork and Critique of Practical Reason Kant took our inclinations to be tempters, starting in “Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy” and concluding in the Religion, he posited a self-imposed propensity to evil as the source of immorality. Kant’s reason for changing his mind about the source of immorality was partly theological: if our inclinations were to blame for immorality, then God would also be to blame for creating us with them. The only way God could not be to blame is if our immorality were self-imposed. But Kant also concluded that looking for theoretical explanations of our immorality – whether theological or naturalistic – was itself problematic: such explanations ended up exonerating us for our immorality. Because they had this effect, I contend that Kant saw the offering of such exculpating theoretical explanations as itself motivated by immorality. This understanding of Kant makes sense of the approaches he takes in both “Miscarriage” and Religion.

Freedom and Obligation

2021 ◽  
pp. 71-99
Author(s):  
Owen Ware
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Moral Justification ◽  
Moral Sensibility ◽  
Metaphysics Of Morals ◽  
Intelligible World

This chapter has three aims. First, it gives an overview of the reception of Kant’s project of moral justification up to the twentieth century, showing that Kant’s first readers detected no great rift between the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason. A consensus that Kant reversed or rejected the argument of Groundwork III only takes shape in 1960. Second, this chapter returns to the details of Groundwork III and argues that Kant appeals to the idea of an intelligible world to warrant our possession of a free will. Third, this chapter argues that, while the second Critique is mostly continuous with Kant’s earlier argument, it goes further by including a theory of moral sensibility.

From Deduction to Deed: Kant's Grounding of the Moral Law

2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Sussman
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Practical Rationality ◽  
Transcendental Idealism ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Metaphysics Of Morals ◽  
Intelligible World ◽  
Supreme Principle

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant presents the moral law as the sole ‘fact of pure reason’ that neither needs nor admits of a deduction to establish its authority. This claim may come as a surprise to many readers of his earlier Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In the last section of the Groundwork, Kant seemed to offer a sketch of just such a ‘deduction of the supreme principle of morality’ (GMS 4: 463). Although notoriously obscure, this sketch shows that Kant hoped to base the moral law in the freedom that rational agents can claim as members of the ‘intelligible world’ that transcendental idealism makes available to us. In contrast, the second Critique abandons all aspirations of deriving morality from more basic notions of freedom and practical rationality.

Humanity as an Idea, as an Ideal, and as an End in Itself

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Dean
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
Moral Anthropology ◽  
Empirical Application ◽  
Rational Part ◽  
Metaphysics Of Morals ◽  
Rational Idea

AbstractKant emphasizes that moral philosophy must be divided into two parts, a ‘purely rational’ metaphysics of morals, and an empirical application to individuals, which Kant calls ‘moral anthropology’. But Kant gives humanity (die Menschheit) a prominent role even in the purely rational part of ethics – for example, one formulation of the categorical imperative is a demand to treat humanity as an end in itself. This paper argues that the only concepts of humanity suited to play such a role are the rational idea of humanity, and the rational ideal derived from this idea, which Kant discusses inCritique of Practical Reasonand other texts.

scholarly journals Kants Freiheitsargument. Diskussion von Heiko Puls: Sittliches Bewusstsein und Kategorischer Imperativ in Kants Grundlegung: Ein Kommentar zum dritten Abschnitt. Berlin und Boston: De Gruyter, 2016. 318 S.

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-89
Author(s):  
Rocco Porcheddu
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Moral Consciousness ◽  
Main Thesis ◽  
Freedom Of Will ◽  
Metaphysics Of Morals ◽  
Objective Value ◽  
Kategorischer Imperativ ◽  
The One

Heiko Puls’ work Sittliches Bewusstsein und Kategorischer Imperativ in Kants Grundlegung: Ein Kommentar zum dritten Abschnitt, presents an attempt to show that, in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant’s argumentation for the objective value of the categorical imperative is almost based upon the same principle as the one presented in the second Critique. More precisely, Puls claims that, like in the Critique of Practical Reason, the Groundwork operates with some kind of fact of reason-theory, which means that our consciousness of the moral law is the ratio cognoscendi of our freedom of will. Accordingly, there is no conclusion from a kind of non-moral consciousness of freedom to the freedom of will and from here to the objective value of the categorical imperative, as many interpreters assume. Due to the ambitiousness of his main thesis and his detailed and subtle way of arguing, Puls’ work represents an important and innovative contribution to recent research on Kant’s Groundwork. Nevertheless, his interpretations sometimes seem to favour analysis of loose philological relationships over closer looks on the contexts of passages. Or he focuses excessively on isolated textual evidences for his readings without appropriately recognising the various other evidences against it. In what follows, I give examples for this criticism.

Spontaneity and Self-Consciousness in theGroundworkand the B-Critique

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (7) ◽  
pp. 936-955
Author(s):  
Yoon Choi
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Theoretical Reason ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
Metaphysics Of Morals ◽  
First Time

AbstractAccording to some influential readings of theGroundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the view presented there of the kind of spontaneity we are conscious of through theoretical reason and the significance of such self-consciousness is irremediably at odds with the Critical theory, and thus roundly and rightly rejected in the second edition of theCritique of Pure Reasonand theCritique of Practical Reason. This paper argues, on the contrary, that theGroundworkcan be read as articulating for the first time the account of self-consciousness and spontaneity that Kant goes on to develop in the B-Critique, especially the B-Transcendental Deduction.

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