Kantian Ethics and Utopian Thinking

2021 ◽  
pp. 106-126
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Hill, Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
Moral Discourse ◽  
Slippery Slope ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Kantian Ethics ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
Kingdom Of Ends ◽  
Utopian Thinking ◽  
Political Ideal ◽  
Moral Rules

Is Kantian ethics guilty of utopian thinking? Good and bad uses of utopian ideals are distinguished, an apparent path is traced from Rousseau’s unworkable political ideal to Kant’s ethical ideal, and three versions of Kant’s Categorical Imperative (and counterparts in common moral discourse) are examined briefly with special attention on the kingdom of ends formulation. Following summary of previous development of this central idea, several objections suggesting that this idea encourages bad utopian thinking are briefly addressed: that we cannot count on everyone to follow ideal rules, that even conscientious people disagree in their moral judgments, and that theories that allow exceptions to familiar moral rules create a “slippery slope” to consequentialism.

Catching Up With Castañeda

Dialogue ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 671-685
Author(s):  
L. W. Sumner
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Discourse ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Truth Values ◽  
Catching Up ◽  
Express Emotion ◽  
Moral Philosophers

Remember the fifties? That was, among other things, when it was outré for moral philosophers acutally to use moral discourse and de rigueur to theorize about its use. It was when we all read Stevenson and Hare and learned to believe that moral judgments had no truth values and were used to express emotion or to issue imperatives. It was when we came to realize that all previous moral philosophy rested on the mistake of supposing that moral judgments were propositions. How remote it all seems now. Today we write about social justice, sex, death, politics as though there were no question this might be improper. We no longer have the time and patience for the idler and more distant questions of the metalevel. It is correct certainly to call this progress but at a certain price. We tired of the old questions but we never learned how to answer them. The very grip of the noncognitivist fad made illuminating answers unlikely. Perhaps now that the fad is buried and forgotten we can go back to the issues and deal with them in a more fruitful manner.

scholarly journals Policing Identities: Cop Decision Making and the Constitution of Citizens

1999 ◽  
Vol 24 (04) ◽  
pp. 897-923 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trish Oberweis ◽  
Michael Musheno
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Discourse ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Good Family ◽  
Police Decision Making ◽  
The Many

We examine police decision making by focusing on police stories and drawing together contemporary thought about identities and police subculture. Our inquiry suggests that police decision making is both improvisational and patterned. Cops are moral agents who tag people with identities as they project identities of their own. They do engage in raw forms of division or stereotyping, marking some as others to be feared and themselves as protectors of society, while exercising their coercive powers to punish “the bad.” Due, in part, to the many ways that they identify themselves, cops also connect with people as unique individuals, including individuals whose categorical identities (e.g., drug dealers) put them at the margins of society. Rather than using their coercive powers to repress these individuals, cops infuse them with certain virtues (e.g., good family men) while cutting them breaks. As they complicate representations of themselves, cops also project complex notions of law and legality. Moral discourse seems to infuse their judgments, while they invoke law strategically as a tool to enforce their moral judgments.

Morality

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Oxfeld
Keyword(s):  
Food System ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Food Choices ◽  
Moral Discourse ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
System P ◽  
Moral Dimensions ◽  
Implicit And Explicit ◽  
Simultaneous Growth

This chapter examines the connections between food and moral discourse in Moonshadow Pond. It examines how the exchange of food serves to express, fulfill and create moral obligations between people. Additionally, discourse about food expresses judgments about the rightness or wrongness of peoples’ actions at local and national levels. Finally, food choices themselves convey implicit and explicit moral judgments. These can be judgments about the wider food system (as in decisions to only purchase local meat), or about food intake as a moral index (as in a decision to be vegetarian). The chapter concludes by focusing on how moral dimensions of the meanings and practices surrounding food help to constitute a moral economy; this moral economy retains a strong presence in daily life, and may actually have been strengthened by the simultaneous growth of the market economy and the industrialized food system.

scholarly journals Hegel's Critique of Kantian Practical Reason

1998 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-412
Author(s):  
Philip J. Kain
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
Kantian Ethics

While many philosophers have found Hegel's critique of Kantian ethics to be interesting in certain respects, overall most tend to find it rather shallow and to think that Hegel either misunderstands Kant's thought or has a rather crude understanding of it. For example, in examining the last two sections of Chapter V of the Phenomenology— ‘Reason as Lawgiver’ and ‘Reason as Testing Laws’ (where we get an extended critique of the categorical imperative)- Lauer finds Hegel's treatment to be truncated and inadequate. The only trouble, though, is that like most other readers of the Phenomenology, Lauer does not recognize that Hegel had been examining and criticizing Kantian ethics throughout a much greater part of—indeed, more than half of—Chapter V. Once we do understand this, I think we must concede that Hegel's treatment is hardly truncated and that it cannot be described as shallow or inadequate. I will try to show that Hegel demonstrates a rather sophisticated understanding of, and gives a serious and thorough critique of, Kantian practical reason.

Does Hume Have an Ethics of Virtue?

1998 ◽  
pp. 65-72
Author(s):  
Marcia L. Homiak
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Kantian Ethics ◽  
Practical Deliberation ◽  
True Self ◽  
Virtuous Action ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Virtuous Character ◽  
Practical Reflection ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics

I argue that Hume's ethics can be characterized as a virtue ethics, by which I mean a view according to which character has priority over action and the principles governing action: virtuous character guides and constrains practical deliberation. In a traditional utilitarian or Kantian ethics, character is subordinate to practical deliberation: virtue is needed only to motivate virtuous action. I begin by outlining this approach in Aristotle's ethics, then draw relevant parallels to Hume. I argue that virtuous character in Aristotle is understood in terms of "self-love." A true self-lover enjoys most the exercise of the characteristic human powers of judging, choosing, deciding and deliberating. A virtuous agent's self-love enables sizing up practical situations properly and exhibiting the virtue called for by the situation. But if an agent's character is defective, the practical situation will be misapprehended and responded to improperly. I argue that though Hume claims moral judgments are the product of sympathy, they are actually the result of a complex process of practical reflection and deliberation. Although Hume writes as though anyone can be a judicious spectator, there is reason to think that persons of calm temperament, who enjoy deliberation and have a facility for it, are more likely to perform the corrections in sentiments that may be necessary. If this is so, an agent's character has priority over his or her practical deliberations.

Compassionate Moral Realism

2019 ◽  
pp. 139-192
Author(s):  
Sandra Shapshay
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Moral Realism ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
Moral Worth ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Kantian Ethics ◽  
Philippa Foot ◽  
Sole Criterion

This chapter reconstructs Schopenhauer’s ethical theory. As with his metaphysical system as a whole, his ethical theory is in part a rejection but also a development of Kant’s ethical theory. The major departure from Kant—and a serious departure indeed—is the jettisoning of the Categorical Imperative and the imperatival form of morality as a whole, for reasons echoed famously by G. E. M. Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and others in the 20th century. In the place of the CI, Schopenhauer puts the feeling of compassion as the foundation of morality, and as the sole criterion for actions of moral worth. What is really novel in Schopenhauer’s ethics, is his synthesis of elements of moral sense theory and a realist foundation he retains from Kantian ethics, a synthesis this chapter calls “compassionate moral realism.”

Compulsion or Attractiveness - A False Dichotomy? A Kantian Perspective on the Sources of Moral Motivation

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Maria Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
Kantian Ethics ◽  
Single Source ◽  
Personal Integrity ◽  
Christine Korsgaard ◽  
False Dichotomy ◽  
Push And Pull ◽  
Common World

The essay questions the dichotomy between ‘push’ and ‘pull’ motivation to act morally, asking for the motivational power of Kant’s categorical imperative instead, its functionality as well as its sources. With reference to Christine Korsgaard it can be shown that personal integrity together with the notion of an ideal common world form one single source of motivation, grounded in exercising our autonomy. In a last step this outline of a kantian ethics of automony is related to the notion of God, whose role is illustrated in Kant’s Religion Within in a surprising way.

Ethical Deontology

Philosophy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörg Schroth
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
Moral Pluralism ◽  
Important Distinction ◽  
Good Definition ◽  
Right Action ◽  
Ethical Intuitionism ◽  
Principle Of Double Effect ◽  
Moral Rules ◽  
The Right

Deontology is usually contrasted with consequentialism (and both with virtue ethics). Whereas consequentialists maintain that the right action is determined solely by its consequences, deontologists deny this and hold that the right action is not determined solely by its consequences. This characterization makes room for the important distinction between moderate deontology (or threshold deontology) and absolutism: Absolutists assert that there are exceptionless moral rules or intrinsically wrong actions that are absolutely wrong and may never be performed, whatever the consequences. Moderate deontologists reject exceptionless moral rules or absolutely wrong actions and regard all moral rules as prima facie rules. A further distinction is between agent-centered deontological theories, which focus upon agents’ duties, and patient-centered (or victim-centered) deontological theories, which focus upon people’s rights. Deontology is associated with the following features which play a more or less significant role in different deontological theories: agent-relativity, especially agent-relative constraints (restrictions), options (prerogatives) and special obligations; priority of the right over the good; definition of the right independently of the good; priority of honoring values over promoting values; intrinsically wrong actions; absolutely wrong actions and exceptionless moral rules; duty for duty’s sake; pluralism of moral rules; respect of persons; non-instrumentalization of persons; human dignity; inviolable rights. Deontologists also maintain the moral relevance of the following distinctions: positive versus negative duties, doing versus allowing (killing versus letting die; see the Oxford Bibliographies article in Philosophy “Doing and Allowing.”), and intention versus foresight and unintended side-effects. Famous deontological moral principles are Kant’s Categorical Imperative, the Pauline Principle (“Evil may not be done for the sake of good”), the principle of double effect (see the bibliography on Bibliographien zu Themen der Ethik) and the principle that the end does not always justify the means. Deontology can take many forms, the most important ones are Kant’s and Kantian ethics (see the Oxford Bibliographies article in Philosophy “Immanuel Kant: Ethics”); Ross’s and Rossian-style moral pluralism, natural law theory, and moral contractualism (see the Oxford Bibliographies article in Philosophy “Moral Contractualism”); libertarianism (in political philosophy); moral particularism (see the bibliography on Bibliographien zu Themen der Ethik); and principlism (in bioethics). Deontology is also often associated with ethical intuitionism (see the Oxford Bibliographies article in Philosophy “Ethical Intuitionism”) although not every deontological theory is grounded in moral intuitions.

Ethics and Social Policy

1981 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Rapaport
Keyword(s):  
Moral Discourse ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Preferential Treatment ◽  
Value Analysis ◽  
Public Issues ◽  
The Past ◽  
Straightforward Application ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World

During the past ten years moral philosophers in the English-speaking world have executed an astonishing volte face on the question of whether philosophers qua philosophers have a role as advocates in public policy debates. The standard answer to this question a decade ago was that philosophers were peculiarly qualified to analyze the logic and meaning of moral discourse but were in no way privileged in their ability to make correct moral judgments. This doctrine was a straightforward application of the then equally standard (but of course not universal) trichotomous fact/ value/ analysis distinction. Moral discourse was divided from scientific discourse and philosophy from both. Today philosophers are more than willing to take a stand on public issues — abortion, euthanasia, violence as instrument of social change, any element of foreign policy, preferential treatment of previously discriminated against social groups, and so on. This reversal is easy enough to account for historically.

scholarly journals Debates acerca das apropriações da ética kantiana

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 95-134
Author(s):  
Gustavo Da Encarnação Galvão França
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
Kantian Ethics ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Moral Realist ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
Contemporary Author

Este artigo procura colocar em foco a interpretação de John Rawls (1921-2002) acerca da ética de Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Sendo Rawls, talvez, o autor contemporâneo que mais ecos encontrou lançando uma teoria política original que reclama para si uma herança kantiana, faz-se de grande importância esclarecer os pontos centrais de sua apropriação e os questionamentos levantados por outros comentadores de Kant que possuem leituras conflitantes do filósofo de Königsberg. Assim, tratarei, em primeiro lugar, do forte formalismo que Rawls atribui a Kant, derivado, em grande parte, de seu foco na primeira formulação do imperativo categórico em detrimento das demais. Em seguida, abordarei a consequência particular que o professor de Harvard extrai daí e que batiza de construtivismo ético: além de o imperativo categórico se constituir num procedimento vazio de teste das máximas particulares, esse procedimento verdadeiramente cria os princípios morais a partir da razão. Anteriormente à atividade racional, inexistem fatos morais. Por fim, trarei um brevíssimo resumo das críticas dirigidas por outros autores a essa caracterização construtivista do pensamento moral kantiano, buscando apresentar os argumentos dos que preferem enquadrar Kant como um realista em moral. Debates surrounding appropriations of Kantian ethics: doubts about John Rawls' constructivism  Abstract: This article seeks to throw light on John Rawls’s (1921-2002) interpretation of Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) ethics. Being Rawls, perhaps, the contemporary author that has found more repercussion proposing a political theory which claims a kantian inheritance, it’s greatly important to clarify the central points of his appropriation and the questionings arisen by others Kant’s commentators which have conflicting views about the German philosopher. Therefore, first of all, I will consider the Strong formalism that Rawls attributesto Kant, derived mainly of his focus on the categorical imperative’s first formulacion, to the detriment of the others. Then, I willl talk about the particular consequence the Harvard’s professor draws from that, which he baptizes ethical constructivism: not only the categorical imperative is simply an empty procedure to test the particular maxims, but also this procedure truly creates the moral principles from reason alone. Previous to the racional activity, there is no moral facts. Finally, I will bring a brief summary of the critics made by other authors to that constructivist caracterization of the kantian moral thought, trying to introduce the arguments of those who prefer to classify Kant as a moral realist.

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