Beyond Respect and Beneficence

Respect ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 157-170
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Hill
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Kantian Ethics ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Moral Attitude ◽  
Moral Attitudes ◽  
Recent Tendency

Thomas E. Hill, Jr. breaks with two conventional approaches in moral philosophy. Hill eschews the recent tendency to focus either on duties or on virtues, and instead emphasizes the importance of moral attitudes. And Hill specifically steps outside the usual framework of Kantian ethics by developing and defending the importance of a moral attitude besides respect and beneficence, namely the attitude of appreciation. To appreciate something is to recognize and respond appropriately to its value as something worth attending to, observing, admiring, cherishing, or the like, for its own sake. The attitude of appreciation is especially important in personal relationships, although it includes recognizing and responding positively to the distinctive features possessed by many sorts of things, not just persons.

Die Wirklichkeit des Sittlichen

2008 ◽  
Vol 2008 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Kersting
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Discourse Ethics ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Principle ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Kantian Ethics ◽  
Hermeneutic Approach ◽  
The Given ◽  
Moral Convictions

Within the Kantian ethics consciousness of the moral principle is a fact of reason which cannot be grounded in any antecedent data, empirical or rational. Hegel however argues that the fact of reason is necessarily embedded in the fact of „Sittlichkeit“, that a pure reason is an empty and chimerical construction, that moral knowledge is unavoidably rootet in the contingent moral convictions of the given cultural and social environment. This essay defends Hegel’s critique of Kant’s moral philosophy and – by generalizing Hegel’s hermeneutic approach – sketches the outlines of an explicatory concept of ethics which contradicts the scientistic understanding of moral philosophy characteristic for Kant, the utilitarianism and the supporters of discourse ethics likewise.

scholarly journals The paradox of imperfect duty in Kant's moral philosophy: A problem in 'applying' ethics'

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 540-564
Author(s):  
Phillip Richter
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Applied Ethics ◽  
Discourse Ethics ◽  
Kantian Ethics ◽  
Imperfect Duty ◽  
Helping Others ◽  
Metaphysics Of Morals

The Applied Ethics debate has not yet sufficiently clarified what application of ethics exactly is. The issue of application is considered to be especially problematic in Kantian ethics or in discourse ethics. This article describes the concept of applying ethics in Kant. In discussing the duty of helping others and the theory of its application in Metaphysics of Morals it is shown that a strict separation of justification and application in ethical theory results in the paradox of imperfect duty. The paradox says that the duty to help others would be fulfilled without ever being fulfilled in action. To overcome the paradox it is necessary to form submaximes of helping, which are not arbitrarily but instructed by a theory of casuistry. This casuistry, if it is considered as a doctrine of application in Kantian ethics, can overcome the paradox of imperfect duty. However, the casuistry can overcome this paradox only if it is understood as a philosophy of prudence, which can be found in Aristotle or Descartes.

The Development of Kant’s Conception of Divine Freedom

2021 ◽  
pp. 295-319
Author(s):  
Patrick Kain
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
Alternative Possibilities ◽  
Divine Nature ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Lecture Notes ◽  
Divine Freedom ◽  
Perfect World

While several scholars have suggested that Kant’s early engagement with Leibniz’s philosophical theology led Kant to a conception of the divine will that helped to motivate many of the distinctive features of Kant’s mature moral psychology and moral philosophy, commentators have nevertheless neglected and failed to understand Kant’s account of divine freedom and how it functions in his rejection of substance monism, fatalism, and threats to divine self-sufficiency. This chapter examines the development of Kant’s position in a variety of his early and later published works and in his drafts, Reflexionen, and lecture notes. God is conceived of as the ens realissimum, possessing or exemplifying all fundamental realities or perfections, and it is God’s cognition of his own goodness that gives rise to his volition to create the most perfect world. Divine freedom is understood as a rational and autonomous expression of the divine nature itself, without requiring alternative possibilities.

Beyond Respect and Beneficence

2021 ◽  
pp. 270-283
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Hill, Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Good Will ◽  
Moral Attitudes

This essay focuses on ideal moral attitudes in close personal relationships, respect for persons as human beings and as particular individuals, beneficence or “caring,” and appreciation that is distinct from both respect and beneficent caring for another’s happiness and well-being. In good friendships, for example, one not only respects the friend but appreciates good things about the friend and in the friend’s life. Appreciation is not the same as gratitude, though to be grateful is in part to appreciate the evident good will of another person. The essay notes several merits of supplementing standard accounts by including appreciation as an ideal.

Moral Disagreement and Reason-Giving

2021 ◽  
pp. 82-105
Author(s):  
Neil Sinclair
Keyword(s):  
General Pattern ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Discourse ◽  
Moral Claim ◽  
Moral Practice ◽  
Constitutive Function ◽  
Moral Attitude ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Attitudes

According to practical expressivism, moral disagreement is a species of disagreement in attitude whereby agents have moral commitments that advocate incompatible policies of action and reaction. This follows from a unified general account of disagreement as involving mental states that cannot collectively fulfil their constitutive functions, and the practical expressivist hypothesis that the constitutive function of moral attitudes is to advocate and reinforce collective patterns of action and reaction. To reason in favour of a moral claim is to cite a feature of the world to which the related moral attitude is a response, typically in order to alter the attitudes of others. Further, the constraint of ascriptive supervenience and a standing preference for ‘guiding’ over ‘goading’ in moral discussion make sense in light of the practical function that practical expressivism attributes to moral practice. A general pattern for some aspects of moral discourse can be discerned, and this pattern can be applied to the phenomenon of moral avoidability.

scholarly journals Moral Deliberation and Desire Development: Herman on Alienation

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-308
Author(s):  
Donald Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Moral Deliberation ◽  
Kantian Ethics ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Personal Interests ◽  
Moral Requirements

In chapter nine of The Practice of Moral Judgment (1996b) and her later article ‘Making Room for Character’ (1996a), Barbara Herman offers a distinctive and interesting response to a set of concerns involving the idea that Kantian ethics objectionably alienates us from personal relationships and commitments. Broadly speaking, these concerns take one of two general forms: some accounts emphasize the practical marginalization of personal interests and relationships, arguing that the Kantian's open-ended commitment to impartial overriding moral requirements threatens to leave the agent little or no practical room for the sorts of relationships and commitments that we think of as important in (or essential to) a recognizably human life. A related but more formal variant emphasizes the internal perspective of the agent and the structure rather than the scope of moral commitment. On this account, the problem is said to lie in the requirement that we are only to act on reasons justifiable from an impersonal universalizing point of view and the way in which this requirement precludes the kind of partial and personal reasons for action said to be essential to individual agency and a sense of self.

Integrity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Davis
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Moral Thinking ◽  
The Core ◽  
Leading Role

The possession (or lack) of integrity is something that all morally serious people care about and think important. In both personal relationships and public life, to describe someone as exhibiting a lack of integrity is to offer a damning diagnosis. It carries the implication that this individual is not to be relied upon, that in some fundamental way they are not someone who we can, or should, view as being wholly or unequivocally there. The foundations of self and character are not sound; the ordering of values is not coherent. Important as the notion of integrity is, it is nevertheless difficult to characterize with precision. Attempts to analyse it seldom do justice to its complexity, or adequately reflect the diverse concerns that generate and sustain either philosophers’ or non-philosophers’ interest in it. Contemporary interest in the notion of integrity has a number of different, often overlapping, sources. It has been accorded a leading role in the debate between consequentialists and non-consequentialists; revived interest in virtue-ethics has naturally focused attention on it; and its connection with unity or coherence of personality make it central for moral psychology. As well as occupying a central position in three major topics within academic moral philosophy, integrity has also come to wider prominence in at least two ways: as a virtue increasingly missed in public life; and as a transcultural virtue that reflects a world that has become increasingly morally pluralistic. The notion of integrity, though complex, elusive, and analytically intractable, is one that goes to the core of our moral thinking, both in theoretical and practical terms.

Forgiveness and Loyalty

Philosophy ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 71 (277) ◽  
pp. 369-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piers Benn
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Right Action ◽  
Theories Of Punishment ◽  
Moral Attitudes ◽  
Interpersonal Responses ◽  
Philosophical Importance

Contemporary moral philosophy rightly gives an important place not only to theories of right action, but to the nature and value of our interpersonal moral attitudes, including such reactions as resentment, admiration and forgiveness. Whilst these concerns have always been of interest to theologians and psychologists, their philosophical importance partly derives from wider concerns about the nature of persons. The recent resurgence, for instance, of retributivist theories of punishment, which are finding favour among many philosophical writers, largely bases itself on the idea that a range of ‘participant reactive attitudes’ (to borrow P. F. Strawson's phrase) is both socially indispensable and morally legitimate. In this web of interpersonal responses is forgiveness, which cannot properly be examined without discussion of other responses such as indignation, anger and even hatred.

Unethical Laws and Lawless Ethics: Right and Virtue in Kant’s Rechtslehre

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Jenna Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Kantian Ethics ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
Late Work ◽  
Moral Philosophies ◽  
Law And Morality ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Political Decisions

In this paper, I examine the relation between law and morality within the context of Kant’s late work The Metaphysics of Morals. I argue that Kant’s conception of the law is based on a fundamental distinction between Right and Virtue, which respectively correspond to his legal-political theory and moral philosophy. My analysis is two part: in the first part, I examine the relationship between the Doctrines of Right and Virtue within the Kantian architectonic; in the second, I evaluate two cases of adjudication in the Rechtslehre that exemplify the distinction between law and morality explicated in the preceding section. I begin by showing that Kant’s legal and moral philosophies are normatively distinct, insofar as Right and Virtue belong to incommensurable realms of freedom and necessity. From this distinction, I derive Kant’s conception of the legal state as principally concerned with external freedoms and the preservation of the lawful condition itself. The second part of this paper analyzes Kant’s views on two cases of criminal justice, revealing his prioritization of the political over independent ethical considerations in juridical decision-making. Here, the conceptual barrier between law and morality serves as a caveat against facile recourses to Kantian ethics as means of legitimizing juridico-political decisions.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Cureton ◽  
Thomas E. Hill, Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Moral Consideration ◽  
Reproductive Decisions ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Care Giving ◽  
Disabled Patients ◽  
Moral Attitudes

This introduction explains the main themes of the collection and briefly summarizes the chapters. The essays in the ‘Attitudes and Relationships’ section discuss the attitudes that we can have towards people with disabilities, ourselves included, as we engage in personal relationships of various kinds, including friendship, care-giving, and more casual interactions with strangers. The essays in the ‘Attitudes and Policy’ section focus on the implications of moral attitudes, such as respect and love, for social policies, including reproductive decisions, research to find “cures” for disabilities, and physicians’ assessments of the decision-making capacities of newly disabled patients to accept or reject life-sustaining support. And, the essays in the ‘Justifying Frameworks’ section consider what frameworks are appropriate for justifying and assessing particular relationships and policies. Basic moral attitudes are shown to be relevant in practice but also in how we justify our practices and debate about the scope of our moral consideration.

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