The Theo-Philosopher of Carlisle

2019 ◽  
pp. 97-113
Author(s):  
Hastings Rashdall
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Moral Argument ◽  
Dependence Relation ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Normative Analysis

Hastings Rashdall critiqued Henry Sidgwick’s inability to see that rational benevolence has primacy over rational self-love, so while recognizing the dualism of practical reason, Rashdall underscored the strength of at least certain versions of theism to account for the priority of benevolence and altruism. As both a moral apologist and kind of utilitarian, Rashdall also demonstrated that agreement on normative ethical matters is not a prerequisite for proponents of the moral argument. What’s needed more centrally is an essential dependence relation of morality on God, not agreement on the peripheral matter of fine-grained normative analysis. Rashdall argued that a generous empiricism won’t domesticate morality but will instead insist on allowing the deliverances of morality, the binding nature of the moral law, and the transcendent implications and aspirations of the moral good to inform his metaphysics. Like others, he thought the moral argument works best when combined with other pieces of natural theology.

An Unfamiliar and Positive Law: On Kant and Schiller

2013 ◽  
Vol 95 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reed Winegar
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Friedrich Schiller ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract: A familiar post-Kantian criticism contends that Kant enslaves sensibility under the yoke of practical reason. Friedrich Schiller advanced a version of this criticism to which Kant publicly responded. Recent commentators have emphasized the role that Kant’s reply assigns to the pleasure that accompanies successful moral action. In contrast, I argue that Kant’s reply relies primarily on the sublime feeling that arises when we merely contemplate the moral law. In fact, the pleasures emphasized by other recent commentators depend on this sublime feeling. These facts illuminate Kant’s views regarding the relationship between morality, freedom, and the development of moral feelings.

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.

An Agnostic Moralist

2019 ◽  
pp. 49-61
Author(s):  
Henry Sidgwick
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Potential Solution ◽  
Moral Argument ◽  
Full Rationality

Henry Sidgwick’s dualism of practical reason is a problem confronting the ethical enterprise. It’s the tension between one’s own happiness and the happiness of others; or between rational self-love and rational benevolence. Sidgwick thought each impulse was equally legitimate, yet on occasion they encounter an intractable tension. The full rationality of morality requires the resolution of this dualism, but Sidgwick didn’t see such a rapprochement as forthcoming. The only potential solution he could see is a theistic one, according to which a providential God ensures their harmony, but Sidgwick himself refused to follow this path. Nevertheless, his writings include the seeds for such a moral argument, predicated on the full rationality of morality.

The Sage of Königsberg

2019 ◽  
pp. 19-33
Author(s):  
Immanuel Kant
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Moral Argument ◽  
Rational Commitment ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Power And Authority

Better than anyone, Kant recognized the power and authority of the moral law. On that foundation he constructed two variants of the moral argument. His argument from grace pertains to whether or not the moral life is possible. Morality requires us to achieve a stand too demanding to meet on our own. Divine assistance is needed to close the resulting gap. So rationality dictates that we postulate God’s existence. Kant’s argument from providence pertains to the aforementioned rational need for happiness and virtue to cohere. Full rational commitment to morality requires that morality is a rationally stable enterprise, which entails the ultimate correspondence between virtue and (both individual and corporate) fulfillment. Without God’s existence there’s no particularly good reason to think such correspondence obtains. So rationality dictates the postulation of God’s existence.

scholarly journals Idea Boga w późnych pismach Immanuela Kanta

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomasz Kupś
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Critical Period ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Theoretical Status ◽  
The Status ◽  
Moral Behaviour ◽  
Opus Postumum ◽  
Idea Of God

Kant’s position on the problem of God is radicalized under the influence of transcendental philosophy’s evolving project. The weakening position of physico-theology and the growing importance of moral theology are possible ways of describing the shift in perspective between the pre-critical period writings and the critical period writings. The separation of the area of cognition and action excludes the possibility of formulating theodicy in a classical form. God, as only a conceived idea, and its meaning is firmly grounded in practical philosophy, in which the presentation of the law is a sufficient condition for moral behaviour. In such a model, God is only an idea, but a fully functional one. This could be noticed mostly in the Opus postumum, where in analogy to God’s practical idea, Kant deduces the transcendental ether’s existence. Ether is not just a hypothesis for Kant; it is not just a ‘temporary’ or ‘contingent’ assumption made ad hoc to explain a particular experience. Still, it is a fundamental and indelible condition, a conditio sine qua non of experience in general. The non-hypothetical matter of heat (ether) is the transcendental condition of all experience, though it does not cease to be an ‘intelligible thing’, an ‘idea’. The status of this idea is entirely ‘non-theoretical’. Kant writes about the ether similarly as he writes about the idea of God, which is only conceivable but at the same time it maintains a strong ‘non-theoretical’ status. The Kantian idea of God is strongly objectified. It is not a ‘product’ of reason, but rather something ‘perceived’ by reason, a strictly theistic idea (as Erich Adickes claims). Kant’s statements, characteristic for the Opus postumum, in which God is identified with moral law, of course give grounds to suppose that the deification of practical reason can be understood as a final stage in the long process of anthropologizing God. However, these statements also allow us to consider practical reason as a new source of what is given.

scholarly journals The Consumer Ideology and the Truth about Man

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Adrian J. Reimers
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Pope John Paul Ii ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
John Paul Ii ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Philosophical Writings

The formation of the human conscience is a controverted question in both philosophical ethics and moral philosophy. Conscience refers to one’s conception and understanding of the moral good. An especially significant manifestation of the problem of conscience in the 20th and 21st centuries is the impact of ideology on the individual person’s moral sense. This article considers the impact of two 19th century philosophies―Mill’s utilitarianism and Marxism―on contemporary moral thought insofar as the interaction of these two produce a powerful materialist ideology to determine the modern European and American conscience. We then turn to the thought of Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła), who in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor and in his earlier philosophical writings developed an account of moral truth by which the dangers of materialistic ideology can be overcome. It is argued, with John Paul II, that only in the context of truth can a coherent account of freedom of conscience under the moral law be developed.

Il Cielo Stellato Sopra di Me e la Legge Morale in Me

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (39) ◽  
pp. 45-54
Author(s):  
Marco Sgarbi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Mind

«Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily reflection is occupied with them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me». With these famous words written on paper and inscribed in stone, Immanuel Kant concludes the Critique of Practical Reason. In this paper, I intend to show how this sentence is closely linked with: 1) the kantian doctrine on the sublime and 2) to the foundation of the logic of the irrational in the Critique of Judgement.

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