Evil and the Subordination of the Moral Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Papish
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
The Law

This chapter asks what it means to say, as Kant does in the Religion, that evil consists in the “subordination” of the moral law to self-love. In other words, it is asked what kinds of formal arrangements between the incentives of practical reason—self-love and respect for the law—are possible in an evil will. While evil can consist in the “prioritization” of self-love over respect for the law, such prioritization is not, it is argued, the only way the incentives of practical reason can be wrongfully arranged. There is good reason to think that, for Kant, evil can result from “overdetermination” or the attempt to incorporate the incentives of both respect and self-love alongside one another in the same fundamental maxim. This proposal is defended throughout the chapter, with care taken to explain its philosophical value and the textual evidence directly or indirectly in its favor.

scholarly journals Kantian Ethics Towards A Justifiable Business And Trade Practices: Envisaging A Humanitarian Society

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Chris O. Abakare
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Code Of Ethics ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Kantian Ethics ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Kingdom Of Ends ◽  
The Law ◽  
Kant's Ethics

The Kantian code of ethics is guided by pure practical reason and since reason is consistent and permits no exceptions to favor the lawmaker or its adherent, the moral law is also consistent and inflexible. This nature of the law is very significant for trade as trade norms cannot be flexed to favor a particular nation or company. This paper believes that Kantian cosmopolitanism should be the credo of business and trade. The reason for this assertion is because the ultimate goal of humanity is a prosperous living of all people in a spirit of unity. Humanity is at its best when rising above the barriers of race, caste and creed. And Kant's ethics has always recommended a path for humanity that leads to this cohesion. Ethical commonwealth, cosmopolitanism, League of Nations and Kingdom of ends have in themselves this one-point agenda to envisage a humanitarian society that takes pride in peaceable solidarity of human existence. 

Kant on the Ground of Human Dignity

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Apaar Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Human Constitution ◽  
The Law

Abstract Kant interpreters have contrasting views on what Kant takes to be the basis for human dignity. Several commentators have argued that human dignity can be traced back to some feature of human beings. Others contend that humans in themselves lack dignity, but dignity can be attributed to them because the moral law demands respect for humanity. I argue, alternatively, that human dignity in Kant’s system can be seen to be grounded in the reciprocal relationship between the dignity of the moral law and the dignity inherent in the human constitution. The latter includes the dignity of personhood, construed as rational inner purposiveness, and the dignity of giving oneself the law and striving to follow it.

Law as Practical Reason

1989 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 436-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. J. Detmold
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
The State ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
A Priority ◽  
The Law ◽  
John Finnis ◽  
Vast Range

Law is practical. Legal reasoning is practical reasoning. We could make nothing of a judge who having listened to counsel's arguments and reflected about the law governing his case thought that the state of knowledge that he had achieved was the natural termination of his enterprise and submitted his conclusions to the editors of Halsbury's Laws of England rather than performed the action of giving judgment. The parties would be outraged, and rightly. And if the judge continued to do such a thing he would be dismissed. Legal reasoning is practical in the sense that its natural conclusion is an action (in the judge's case the action of giving judgment) rather than a state of knowledge. This is taking “practical” in a strong sense. By this definition thought is practical whose natural conclusion is an action (or decision against action): its strongest contrast is with theoretical thought whose natural conclusion is knowledge. But it also contrasts with hypothetical thought about action (say, my thinking it would be good to play cricket again). I do not call this practical because it does not conclude in an action or decision against action (others do; for example John Finnis in Fundamentals of Ethics; my reasons for differing in this matter will emerge). A judge's practical reasoning towards the action of giving judgment has priority for our understanding of law over that vast range of practically idle things that lawyers do, from the construction of digests like Halsbury to casual reflection about the rule in Shelley's case (of course there is one sort of doing involved in both these, but not legal doing). It is important here to be clear about this priority. It is a priority of practicality, not a priority of judges or lawyers.

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.

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.

Recent Decisions Affecting the Law of Life Assurance

1938 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 106-135
Author(s):  
Sydney Henry Levine
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Legal Decisions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Life Assurance ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
The Law

I should like to say first that I am extremely sensible of and greatly appreciate the honour that the Institute has done me by inviting me to submit this paper. In writing it I have felt throughout the difficulty that arises from the very different approach which a lawyer makes to legal decisions from that which an actuary may be expected to make. Cases interest me because of the niceties of construction they involve or of their subtle distinctions from other cases, or again because they mark the gradual development of the judicial mind in conformity with the public opinion of the preceding generation. To actuaries the interest of cases must primarily lie in their bearing on the practical problems of life assurance work. In discussing cases, therefore, I have felt that the reaction of readers will be sometimes that I have been labouring a decision that was obvious from the start, at others that the point at issue is obsolete because no company has had such a condition in its policies for the last ten years or for some equally good reason. Knowing next to nothing of life assurance practice, I have been unable to avoid this defect, and can only ask that it be excused.

scholarly journals Law’s Autonomy and Moral Reason

Laws ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Jack Clayton Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Moral Reason ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Legal Positivist ◽  
Law And Morality ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Concept Of Law

This paper intends to set out an argument to Legal Idealism and a thesis that holds law and morality as necessarily connected. My focus is on deconstructing the Positivist argument to the Autonomy Thesis and beginning to reconstruct it through the application of morality to law’s autonomous authority. My aim, ultimately, is to demonstrate how, through the concept of law, practical reason might explain the related (and overlapping) notions of legitimacy, authority, and the obligation to obey through the necessary connection of law and morality. That is, I intend to demonstrate that morality both survives and remains identifiable (transparently) following the process of metamorphosis into institutionalised practical reasoning. If this is so, the authority of and obligation to law is simultaneously a form of morally rational obligation. In the response to the Positivist argument that moral values are incommensurate, I will show that this commensurability can be determined ‘artificially’ by a system of institutionalised reasoning (i.e., the law); this is to say, if I can show that the Legal Positivist argument is left incomplete without some explanation of moral values underpinning it, I need not to show that a specific, defensible moral truth or principle is required, but that an artificial weighting of abstract moral principles is sufficient

Constitutionalism and the Myth of Practical Reason: Kelsenian Responses to Methodological Problems

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 723-740 ◽  
Author(s):  
JÖRG KAMMERHOFER
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Pure Theory ◽  
Alternative Vision ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
The Law ◽  
Theory Of Law

AbstractWhile today a significant stream of European scholarship of international law is concerned with the process and consequences of its constitutionalization, criticism of this trend has so far been muted. This article, using elements of the Pure Theory of Law, argues that constitutionalist writings confound methodologies, that scholarship claims competencies which it does not have, and that this confusion diminishes the benefits of the constitutionalist project for international law. The key problem is called a ‘methodological circle’: scholars call something a constitution and in effect claim that the law is changed by this classification. Thus constitutionalism relies on the natural law concept of practical reason; constitutionalism is, in turn, vulnerable to Kelsen's arguments against practical reason. Constitutionalism, like practical reason before it, contains an impossible admixture of the human faculties of will and cognition. The general critique is followed by a look at Article 2(6) of the UN Charter as a case in point. Here constitutionalism shows how law is purportedly changed by taxonomy. The article concludes by taking a look at an alternative vision of the constitution of international law: the rediscovery of a strictly legal – that is, structural – constitution as the highest echelon of legal regulation.

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