Habermas’s discourse ethics and Hegel’s critique of Kant

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (9) ◽  
pp. 997-1014 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theory ◽  
Discourse Ethics ◽  
Role Taking ◽  
Rational Discourse ◽  
The Will ◽  
Moral Will

In this article I follow James Gordon Finlayson who claims that a Hegelian criticism applies both to Kant and also to Habermas, namely, the criticism of the will as a tester of maxims. The issue is that Kant cannot connect the will of morality and the will of the particular agent and this leaves the empirical will unaffected. According to Finlayson, Habermas can be charged with this criticism, insofar as he draws a distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons. The upshot is that in Discourse Ethics the empirical will seems to be left also unaffected by the moral will. In light of an analysis of ideal role taking, and rational discourse, I claim that Habermas can rebut the Hegelian criticism. Nonetheless, I show that these concepts are incompatible with the distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons. Hence, either the concepts or the distinction have to be removed. Habermas can only afford to discard the distinction, and indeed this modification answers the criticism. The final issue that arises is why does Habermas maintain the distinction? And what would be the consequences for his moral theory if he discards it? At the end of the article I sketch some of the implications and challenges that this alternative could have for Habermas’s Discourse Ethics.

FACTICITY AND SOCIOCENTRISM: SOME REMARKS CONCERNING TWO BASIC CONCEPTS OF MORAL THEORY

2010 ◽  
Vol 35 (113) ◽  
pp. 301
Author(s):  
Marcel Niquet
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theory ◽  
Discourse Ethics ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Normative Realism ◽  
Critical Content ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Kantian Deontology ◽  
Core Meaning

Faticidade e sociocentrismo são dois conceitos fundamentais com os quais toda teoria moral se vê confrontada. O artigo enquadra o significado deles na deontologia clássica kantiana e no paradigma pós-kantiano da ética do discurso. A discussão dos problemas implicados nesses conceitos leva o autor a defender um paradigma do Realismo Normativo que faz justiça ao conteúdo crítico desses conceitos e às intuições morais contidas neles.Abstract: ´Facticity´ and ´socio-centrism´ denote major structural features of theories of morality. The paper explicates their core-meaning and tries to demonstrate how these notions are instantiated in classical Kantian deontology and the post-Kantian paradigms of discourse-ethics. A justification is attempted for abandoning these theories in favour of a possible successor paradigm of Normative Realism which does better justice to the critical content of these concepts and the morally loaded intuitions contained therein.

L'éthique du discours et le problème de la connaissance morale

Dialogue ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-278
Author(s):  
Stéphane Courtois
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theory ◽  
Discourse Ethics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

ABSTRACTThe aim of this article is to assess the coherence of the metaethical positions on which discourse ethics as developed by Habermas and Apel rests. After showing that one is faced here with a non-descriptivist, anti-realist but cognitivist moral theory, I examine whether a non-descriptivist cognitivism, on the one hand, and an anti-realist cognitivism, on the other hand, can consistently be held. I maintain that the problem of the relation between cognitivism and non-descriptivism is adequately solved by the two authors, but that the problem of the relation between cognitivism and anti-realism is still waiting for an appropriate answer, which I put forth in my article.

INTUITIONISM'S BURDEN: THOMAS REID ON THE PROBLEM OF MORAL MOTIVATION

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
TERENCE CUNEO
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
External World ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Unique Type ◽  
Close Affinity ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Moral Domain ◽  
The Will

Hume bequeathed to rational intuitionists a problem concerning moral judgment and the will – a problem of sufficient severity that it is still cited as one of the major reasons why intuitionism is untenable. 1 Stated in general terms, the problem concerns how an intuitionist moral theory can account for the intimate connection between moral judgment and moral motivation. One reason that this is still considered to be a problem for intuitionists is that it is widely assumed that the early intuitionists made little progress towards solving it. In this essay, I wish to challenge this assumption by examining one of the more subtle intuitionist responses to Hume, viz., that offered by Thomas Reid. For reasons that remain unclear to me, Reid's response to Hume on this issue has been almost entirely neglected. I shall argue that it is nonetheless one that merits our attention, for at least two reasons. In the first place, Reid's response to Hume's challenge to rational intuitionism bears a close affinity to the type of response that he offers to Hume's broadly skeptical challenge to realist views regarding our perception of the external world. Since Reid's strategy in the latter case is widely regarded as exhibiting significant promise, it is natural to wonder whether, when applied to the moral domain, this type of strategy displays similar promise. 2 I will suggest that it does. That is, I will suggest that since Reid's broadly nativist position in perception is one well worth considering, then so also is his broadly nativist account of moral motivation. Second, Reid's position regarding moral motivation represents an intriguing attempt to blend a broadly intuitionist view with important insights from the sentimentalist tradition. In this respect, Reid's view is a genuine hybrid position unlike that offered by other intuitionists such as Richard Price. The synthetic character of Reid's position, I claim, gives it a unique type of theoretical richness, since it incorporates some very attractive features of both rational intuitionism and sentimentalism.

Does Hegel's Critique of Kant's Moral Theory Apply to Discourse Ethics?

1998 ◽  
Vol 19 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 17-34
Author(s):  
Gordon Finlayson
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theory ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
Discourse Ethics ◽  
Moral Autonomy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Short Answer ◽  
General Law ◽  
Universal Law

Several years ago Jürgen Habermas wrote a short answer to the question: “Does Hegel's Critique of Kant apply to Discourse Ethics?” The gist of his short answer is, “no”. Insofar as Hegel's criticisms of the formalism and abstract universalism of the moral law never even applied to Kant's moral theory in the first place, they also fail to apply to discourse ethics. Insofar as Hegel's criticisms of the rigorism of the moral law and of Kant's conception of autonomy do hit the mark, discourse ethics successfully draws their sting by reconceiving Kant's moral standpoint along the following lines. 1. Kant wrongly undertakes to establish the moral law as a “fact of reason”: discourse ethics derives the moral standpoint from two premises — one formal, a rationally reconstructed logic of argumentation, and one material, namely our intuitions about how to justify utterances. 2. Kant wrongly contends that we must be able to think of ourselves as both intelligible characters, inhabiting a noumenal world, and as empirical characters inhabiting the world of appearances: discourse ethics allows that in everyday contexts of action and in the context of moral discourse we have one character that has real needs and interests. 3. Kant is also mistaken in arguing that moral autonomy requires human beings to abstract away from their needs and interests and to will universalizable maxims for the sake of their universal form: discourse ethics understands moral autonomy to consist in the free adoption of a standpoint from which conflicts of interest can be impartially regulated, by giving special weight to the satisfaction of universalizable interests. 4. Kant misconceives the categorical imperative as an objective test of universalizability that is applied by individual wills in isolation: discourse ethics reconceives the moral universalism as an ideal of intersubjective agreement of participants in discourse. On the differences between the principles of discourse ethics and Kant's categorical imperative Habermas is wont to cite McCarthy's summary of his — Habermas' — position: “Rather than ascribing as valid to all others any maxim that I can will to be a universal law, I must submit my maxim to all others for the purposes of discursively testing its claim to universality. The emphasis shifts from what each can will without contradiction to be a general law, to what all can will in agreement to be a universal norm” (MCCA 67).

The Source of Kant's Mature Moral Theory

Dialogue ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Wand
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theory ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Fundamental Concept ◽  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Will

Some thirty years ago Klaus Reich claimed that Kant's abandonment of feeling as the source of our moral appraisals was due to his reading of Plato and the Stoics, and more interestingly that it led him to the fundamental concept of his mature moral theory, the autonomy of the will. Despite the obvious importance of the latter claim, it seems to have gone either unnoticed or unchallenged, at least in the English philosophical literature. This is particularly surprising since, apart from holding any view as to the legitimacy of singling out the source of Kant's mature moral theory, more obvious influences than those of Plato and the Stoics seem to have played such a role : the variant of Lutheran Christianity, Pietism, Rousseau, and the cultural context of the Enlightenment.

What Goes Wrong in Habermas’s Pragmatic Justification of (U)?

Dialogue ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-110
Author(s):  
JUVÉNAL NDAYAMBAJE
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theory ◽  
Discourse Ethics ◽  
Moral Discourse ◽  
Moral Principle ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
Jurgen Habermas ◽  
Pragmatic Justification

In his moral theory, named ‘discourse ethics,’ Jürgen Habermas holds that a norm is morally valid only when it is universalizable. He establishes the principle of universalization (U) as the procedural principle for testing the moral validity of norms in moral discourse. He argues that this principle can be derived from the pragmatic presuppositions of argumentation in general. By explicating the fiduciary status of pragmatic presuppositions of argumentation, and by distinguishing perspectival from comprehensive universalization, I argue that Habermas fails to justify his moral principle.

scholarly journals The Reciprocity Thesis in Kant and Hegel

1996 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
pp. 54-69
Author(s):  
Alan Patten
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Rational Agent ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Metaphysics Of Morals ◽  
Moral Will

Following Henry Allison's terminology in his book Kant's Theory of Freedom I shall take the reciprocity thesis to be the thesis that morality and freedom are reciprocal concepts. To be free, the reciprocity thesis claims, is to be subject to the demands of morality; to be subject to the demands of morality is to be free. Despite quite different understandings of the domains of ethics and morality, Kant and Hegel both affirm versions of the reciprocity thesis. Kant's best known statement of the thesis can be found at the beginning of Chapter III of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: “a free will and a will under moral laws”, he asserts, “are one and the same. Consequently if freedom of the will is presupposed, morality, together with its principle, follows by mere analysis of the concept of freedom”. This assumption of reciprocity is an explicit premise in the subsequent argument that, since a rational agent must take himself to be free, he must consider himself subject to the moral law. And it reappears again in the Critique of Practical Reason's reversal of this argument, which claims that, since a rational agent has a sense of himself as subject to the moral law (the so-called “fact of reason”), he therefore has a consciousness of his freedom. Finally, it is worth noting that something like the reciprocity thesis underlies much of the argument of Chapters I and II of the Groundwork as well as the opening arguments of the second Critique: for in these texts Kant frequently moves directly from the proposition that the moral will must be determined independently of all of its desires and inclinations (it is free) to the conclusion that it must be subject to the moral law.

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