Making the Turn to Kant

Introducing Part Two of the book, this chapter sets the program for a revisionary interpretation of Kant’s ethics, broadly understood. The new interpretation aims to defuse standard objections, to offer a compelling reading of key texts, and to justify its method by giving us a better moral theory, in both Kant’s terms and ours. A first task for a moral theory with ambitions of application is to make a case for its value to those whom it would direct. For Kantian morality it is the creation of a morally shaped social environment made and managed over time by free, equal, and self-directing persons, an environment suited to the expression of their human rational nature: a moral habitat. To suit such a project, theorizing about moral practice should be hermeneutical, abstract first principles interpreted to render intelligible what morality is actually like for moral agents and moral subjects. We should come to see our duties as vehicles for habitat construction.

The Moral Habitat

The Moral Habitat is a book in three parts that begins with an investigation of three understudied imperfect duties which together offer some important and challenging insights about moral requirements and moral agency: that our duties only make sense as a system; that actions can be morally wrong to do and yet not be impermissible; and that there are motive-dependent duties. In Part Two, these insights are used to launch a substantial reinterpretation of Kant’s ethics as a system of duties, juridical and ethical, perfect and imperfect, that can incorporate what we learn from imperfect duties and do much more. The system of duties provides the structure for what I call a moral habitat: a made environment, created by and for free and equal persons living together. It is a dynamic system, with duties from the juridical and ethical spheres shaping and being affected by each other, each level further interpreting the system’s core anti-subordination value initiated in Kant’s account of innate right. The structure of an imperfect duty is exhibited in a detailed account of the duty of beneficence, including its latitude of application and demandingness. Part Three takes up some implications and applications of the moral habitat idea. Its topics range from the adjustments to the system that would come with recognizing a human right to housing to meta-ethical issues about objectivity and our responsibility for moral change. The upshot is a transformative, holistic agent- and institution-centered, account of Kantian morality.

God’s Law or Categorical Imperative: on Crusian Issues of Kantian Morality

The ethics of Kant and the ethics of Crusius are strikingly similar. This is manifested in a whole range of principles and concepts. Crusius’ moral teaching hinges on the rigorous moral law which has to be obeyed absolutely, and which makes it different from other prescriptions that are binding only to a relative degree. This is very close to the Kantian distinction between hypothetical and categorical imperatives. Another salient feature of Crusius’ moral teaching is the stress laid on the sphere of internal motives. It is the inner motive that determines the morality of an act, rather than the external form of the act. These and some other features of Crusius’ ethics suggest a possible influence of Crusius on Kant. The possibility of such influence has repeatedly come under close scrutiny. The first works devoted to this problem date to the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Pointers to the possibility of such influence are semantic and structural similarities of the two thinkers’ systems. Besides, it is an unchallengeable fact that Kant was fairly familiar with the main theses of Crusian philosophy. Some scholars proceed from the study of Kantian vocabulary. Some of the terms Kant uses, especially in his early works which later formed the basis of his ethical teaching in the critical period, can be traced to the terms of Crusian philosophy. However, an alternative view is that Kant was primarily influenced by Wolffian philosophy (mainly through Baumgarten), while the direct influence of Crusius remains unproven. I examine both points of view and propose my own solution to the problem.

A Good Enough Heart: Kant and the Cultivation of Emotions

One way of understanding Kant’s views about moral emotions is the cultivation view. On this view, emotions play a role in Kantian morality provided they are properly cultivated. I evince a sceptical position about the cultivation view. First, I show that the textual evidence in support of cultivation is ambiguous. I then provide an account of emotions in Kant’s theory that explains both his positive and negative views about them. Emotions capture our attention such that they both disrupt the mind’s composure and serve as a surrogate for reason. As such, Kant cannot recommend that we cultivate our emotions.

Kant on the Moral Cultivation of Feelings

Kant’s ethics is traditionally portrayed as unequivocal on one issue: natural drives, including feelings, emotions, and inclinations, are intrinsically at odds with morality. However, this does not entail that there is no moral role for them in Kant’s ethics. For instance, he writes ‘while it is not in itself a duty to share the sufferings (as well the joys) of others, it is a duty to sympathize actively in their fate’ [6:456–7].This statement is not only in conflict with traditional portrayals of his ethics, but more importantly it may seem surprising for Kantian morality to endorse the claim that we have duties, albeit indirect, to cultivate feelings of sympathy in order to use them as a means to moral ends. The aim of this chapter is to spell out and defend the claim that the cultivation of certain emotions is one of our moral duties.