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Kant's Theory of Moral Sensibility: Respect for the Moral Law and the Influence of Inclination

Andrews Reath

in Agency and Autonomy in Kant's Moral Theory: Selected Essays

This chapter explores two parallel topics in Kant's moral psychology: respect for the moral law as the motive to moral conduct, and the influence of inclinations on the will. It explains some of ... More

This chapter explores two parallel topics in Kant's moral psychology: respect for the moral law as the motive to moral conduct, and the influence of inclinations on the will. It explains some of Kant's views about respect for the moral law and its role in moral motivation, and this leads to a consideration of the sensible motives that respect for the law limits, as well as the more general question of how Kant thinks that inclinations affect choice.Less

The Moral Law, the Categorical Imperative, and the Reciprocity Thesis

Henry E. Allison

in Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary

This is the first of three chapters dealing with Kant’s attempt to provide a deduction (justification) of the categorical imperative. It suggests that this deduction occurs in stages, involving the ... More

This is the first of three chapters dealing with Kant’s attempt to provide a deduction (justification) of the categorical imperative. It suggests that this deduction occurs in stages, involving the deductions of both the moral law, which describes the volition of a perfectly rational or holy will, and the presupposition of freedom. The foundation of this deduction and the central topic of the chapter is Kant’s claim that “a free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same thing,” which is called the “reciprocity thesis.” The argument for this thesis is analyzed and defended; and it is pointed out that its importance stems from the fact that it entails that freedom of the will is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for standing under the moral law.Less

Moral law

Mark C. Murphy

in God and Moral Law: On the Theistic Explanation of Morality

This chapter provides an account of the nature of moral law. Some philosophers, most notably Anscombe, have held that moral law is a parochial notion, at home only within a very limited subset of ... More

This chapter provides an account of the nature of moral law. Some philosophers, most notably Anscombe, have held that moral law is a parochial notion, at home only within a very limited subset of moral views. This chapter argues for an account of moral law that has a place within a wide variety of ethical views. It proceeds by asking what we can learn about how to characterize moral law from current philosophical treatments of the notion of a law of nature by Lewis, Armstrong, Dretske, and others. Drawing on discussions of the laws of nature in metaphysics and philosophy of science, this chapter defends a conception of moral law in which a moral law obtains when some set of descriptive properties morally necessitates an agential response (e.g. an action or attitude).Less

The Origins of Civil Society and the Function of Law

Garrett Barden and Tim Murphy

in Law and Justice in Community

How did it come about that humans live together in a community? This chapter argues — in contrast to ‘social contract’ approaches — that human society is a spontaneous ordering of the natural ... More

How did it come about that humans live together in a community? This chapter argues — in contrast to ‘social contract’ approaches — that human society is a spontaneous ordering of the natural sociability of humans. Civil society is a spontaneous order that gives rise to a spontaneous jural order made up of the ‘living law’ or communal moral law, which state or positive law expresses in part and develops. It emphasizes the similarity between the practice of language and the social and jural domains, and argues that the function of all law is to sustain a peaceful social order. The discussions in the chapter are drawn together with reference to Thomas Hobbes's De Cive (1642) and Leviathan (1651).Less

Natural law theory

Mark C. Murphy

in God and Moral Law: On the Theistic Explanation of Morality

This chapter is a treatment of standard natural law theory (Aquinas, Finnis, Lisska, MacIntyre), assessed in terms of its adequacy as a theistic explanation of moral law. This chapter argues that ... More

This chapter is a treatment of standard natural law theory (Aquinas, Finnis, Lisska, MacIntyre), assessed in terms of its adequacy as a theistic explanation of moral law. This chapter argues that although natural law theory has flourished within theistic ethics, it is unsatisfactory as a theistic explanation of moral law: most natural law theories in fact have no role at all for theistic facts in their explanation of moral laws, and while there are ways to try to make room for facts about God in their explanations, the role for such facts turns out to be highly mediated. So natural law theory fails as an adequate theistic account of moral law. This chapter also shows that these arguments generalize to other broadly realist theories (utilitarianism, certain forms of Kantianism, virtue ethics) cast in a theistic way, and a fortiori to varieties of constructivism.Less

Kant’s Ethics

G. A. Cohen

Jonathan Wolff (ed.)

in Lectures on the History of Moral and Political Philosophy

This chapter examines Immanuel Kant's ethics, and particularly his views on reason and faith. According to Thomas Aquinas, there were two avenues whereby men could come to possess knowledge: the way ... More

This chapter examines Immanuel Kant's ethics, and particularly his views on reason and faith. According to Thomas Aquinas, there were two avenues whereby men could come to possess knowledge: the way of reason and the way of faith, of faith in revelation. Unlike Aquinas, Kant entertains not two faculties, but a single faculty in two employments. The chapter considers Kant's motives, and what he advanced as justifications, for treating the sources of knowledge and of moral behavior not as two separate faculties, but as different employments of a single faculty, reason. It offers a general account of Kant's moral philosophy, and more specifically his account of reason and his argument that men are obliged to obey the moral law. It also suggests that the duality of obligation and motivation is present in Kant's ethics and compares Kant's ideas with those of Richard Peters regarding human behavior.Less

Theistic explanation of moral law

Mark C. Murphy

in God and Moral Law: On the Theistic Explanation of Morality

This chapter defends a particular strategy and set of constraints on an adequate theistic explanation of morality. It claims that God's status in orthodox theism as ultimate explainer of the states ... More

This chapter defends a particular strategy and set of constraints on an adequate theistic explanation of morality. It claims that God's status in orthodox theism as ultimate explainer of the states of affairs that obtain is not satisfied by anything less than immediacy: that for any state of affairs that obtains, some theistic facts (facts about God's existence, nature, or activity) must enter immediately into that explanation. It also argues, drawing on a previous chapter's account of moral law and responding to recent work by Schroeder, that for every moral fact, that fact is explained by some moral law and is unexplained unless explained by a moral law. Thus, the way, and the only way, to provide an adequate account of God's explanatory role with respect to morality is for God to enter immediately into the explanation of all moral laws.Less

Theological voluntarism

Mark C. Murphy

in God and Moral Law: On the Theistic Explanation of Morality

This chapter is a treatment of divine command theory, or more generally, theological voluntarism (Quinn, Adams, Hare). After describing the trajectory that theological voluntarism has taken in recent ... More

This chapter is a treatment of divine command theory, or more generally, theological voluntarism (Quinn, Adams, Hare). After describing the trajectory that theological voluntarism has taken in recent years to avoid the more obvious objections to that view, this chapter shows that recent versions of the view have the unsettling — and from a theistic perspective, entirely unsatisfactory — result that while natural facts cannot morally necessitate any human action, natural facts can morally necessitate God's action. In combination with the implausible implications that theological voluntarism has about the moral impotence of natural facts with respect to created rational beings, these implications mark the failure of theological voluntarism as an adequate theistic account of moral law. This chapter also shows that Adams's recent appeal to the ‘social’ character of obligation fails to provide any distinctive benefits for the voluntarist position.Less

The Deduction of the Categorical Imperative and the Outermost Boundary of Practical Philosophy

Henry E. Allison

in Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary

This chapter deals with two issues: (1) Kant’s deduction of the categorical imperative and (2) the bounds of what can be claimed from a practical point of view. The task of the deduction is to ... More

This chapter deals with two issues: (1) Kant’s deduction of the categorical imperative and (2) the bounds of what can be claimed from a practical point of view. The task of the deduction is to explain how the moral law can be unconditionally binding on the wills of finite beings with a sensuous as well as a rational nature. Kant’s argument turns on the proposition that the intelligible world is the ground of both the sensible world and its laws. Although the argument is problematic because it appears to be based on unwarranted metaphysical assumptions, it is suggested that it can be made more plausible, if read in a less blatantly metaphysical way. The boundary question concerns the limits of explanation. Kant claims that we are justified in presupposing freedom and a pure moral interest, both of which are required by the categorical imperative, even though neither is itself explicable.Less

Moral concurrentism

Mark C. Murphy

in God and Moral Law: On the Theistic Explanation of Morality

This chapter makes the case for a moral concurrentist account of moral law and shows how it escapes the difficulties raised against standard natural law theory and theological voluntarism. The ... More

This chapter makes the case for a moral concurrentist account of moral law and shows how it escapes the difficulties raised against standard natural law theory and theological voluntarism. The strategy is to employ the natural law view's characteristic account of moral necessitation — that what morally necessitates are human goods — while rejecting standard natural law theory's nontheistic account of goods. Rather, goods are to be understood along the lines defended by Adams, as likenesses to God, though unlike on Adams's view this theory of the good is cast in an Aristotelian rather than a Platonist way. Thus the desiderata for an adequate theistic explanation of morality are met: facts about God enter immediately into the explanation of every moral fact. The chapter concludes by considering objections that moral concurrentism cannot handle the phenomenon of moral obligation and that it cannot handle what Quinn calls ‘the immoralities of the patriarchs,’ cases in which God reverses the moral status of certain actions by an act of divine will.Less

Reason, Humanity, and the Moral Law

G. A. Cohen

Jonathan Wolff (ed.)

in Lectures on the History of Moral and Political Philosophy

This chapter comments on Christine Korsgaard's views on reason, humanity, and moral law in the context of her ethics. In particular, it examines Korsgaard's response to the question inspired by ... More

This chapter comments on Christine Korsgaard's views on reason, humanity, and moral law in the context of her ethics. In particular, it examines Korsgaard's response to the question inspired by Thomas Hobbes' second argument, the one about the sovereign: how can the subject be responsible to a law that it makes and can therefore unmake? Korsgaard's ethics descends from Immanuel Kant, but it contrasts in important ways with Kant's ethics. Korsgaard's subject is unequivocally the author of the law that binds it, for its law is the law of its practical identity, and the subject itself “constructs” that identity. In the case of the Kantian subject, we can say that it both is and is not the author of the law that binds it. The chapter considers Korsgaard's claim that morality is grounded in human nature, along with her position on the problem of normativity and on obligation.Less

: Kant's Practical Justification of Freedom

Henry E. Allison

in Essays on Kant

After providing a brief account of what Kant understands by a practical justification and the various types of it found in his writings, the essay examines the ways in which Kant attempts to provide ... More

After providing a brief account of what Kant understands by a practical justification and the various types of it found in his writings, the essay examines the ways in which Kant attempts to provide a practical justification of freedom in various texts, chiefly the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason. Its main focus is on the tension between Kant's attempt in the former work to ground the necessity of presupposing freedom in our conception of ourselves as rational agents, independently of any specifically moral considerations, and his view in the latter that, “[H]ad not the moral law already been distinctly thought in our reason, we should never consider ourselves justified in assuming such a thing as freedom” (KpV 5: 4n). The tension is resolved by linking the former with freedom as spontaneity and the latter with freedom as autonomy.Less

‘To the Jews’—Rescue Attempts

Susanne M. Sklar

in Blake's Jerusalem As Visionary Theatre: Entering the Divine Body

Blake's Jews coinhere with British Druids — who spread war throughout the world. Los's Spectre and Emanation appear as refugees, fleeing from Albion to tell their version of his fall (1). Los ... More

Blake's Jews coinhere with British Druids — who spread war throughout the world. Los's Spectre and Emanation appear as refugees, fleeing from Albion to tell their version of his fall (1). Los journeys into Albion's interior, encountering creative ruin and shadowy Vala enthroned (2). Attempting to control lusts, Los sensually constricts Reuben (Albion's son) — while Jesus imaginatively creates states through which humanity can find forgiveness (3). Angelmorphic Eternals (cathedral cities) want to rescue Albion, but they are blighted by spectrous Selfhood (4) and though Los empowers them, Albion rejects their help (5). Vala tramples Jerusalem (6), but wise Erin protectively separates the poem's heroine from Albion's body, which is infected with bellicose Moral Law (7).Less

Kant and Commitment

Galen Strawson

in Freedom and Belief

This chapter considers Kant's theory of freedom. Kant thinks that our experience of being subject to the Moral Law has the consequence that we cannot help experiencing ourselves as truly, radically ... More

This chapter considers Kant's theory of freedom. Kant thinks that our experience of being subject to the Moral Law has the consequence that we cannot help experiencing ourselves as truly, radically free to choose. Various questions arise. For example: (1) Does Kant think that there is a sense in which we really are radically free ‘from a practical point of view’, i.e., as regards action, precisely because we cannot help experiencing ourselves as free? (2) Could a being that had no conception of morality none the less experience itself as radically free? (3) Is is really true that we — human beings — are bound to experience ourselves as radically free? (4) Is believing one is free perhaps a necessary condition of freedom, even if it is not sufficient?Less

Independence

Karl Ameriks

in Kant's Theory of Mind: An Analysis of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason

This chapter concerns human freedom, a topic that Kant remarkably struck from the list of main topics in rational psychology, although right before the Critique, he had given it pride of place. ... More

This chapter concerns human freedom, a topic that Kant remarkably struck from the list of main topics in rational psychology, although right before the Critique, he had given it pride of place. Hence, it is crucial to see why the Critique neither presents nor directly criticizes the rationalist arguments for our freedom with which Kant was extremely familiar. Kant's views here must be understood in terms of clues from his lectures, and especially in the light of the different kinds of arguments to freedom, which he presents in his Groundwork (a ‘deduction’) and second Critique (a ‘fact of reason’). I connect the changes in his presentation there with the clearer expression, in the second ed. of the first Critique, of his anti‐rationalist doctrine of self‐knowledge (as dependent on knowing spatial things). In this way, I show how—to appreciate the full interconnection and development of Kant's theoretical and practical views on freedom—we need to go beyond readings by Beck, Paton, Henrich, and others.Less

Hooker and the Moral Life

A. J. Joyce

in Richard Hooker and Anglican Moral Theology

This chapter provides a detailed analysis of Hooker's ‘law of reason’ and the account that he gives of how human beings come to the knowledge of what is good. This leads to a discussion of the ... More

This chapter provides a detailed analysis of Hooker's ‘law of reason’ and the account that he gives of how human beings come to the knowledge of what is good. This leads to a discussion of the relationship between morality and soteriology in his thought and the extent to which the moral law might be subject to change. The chapter considers the extent to which Hooker draws upon the Thomist tradition of natural law, but also identifies respects in which he departs from Aquinas, particularly in the more negative view that he takes of will and emotion in relation to human conduct. The relationship between justification and sanctification is also considered, and elements of classic eudaimonism identified within his text. It is also observed that, at times, he appears to shape his argument in order to make a polemical point.Less

The Norms of Morality are not Commands? Manfred Moritz's Theory: ‘Genuine’ and ‘Inauthentic’ Commands and Compliance

Hans Kelsen

in General Theory of Norms

The failure to distinguish between a norm and a statement about the validity of a norm, and so between morality and ethics, also leads to the wholly indefensible claim that the norms of morality are ... More

The failure to distinguish between a norm and a statement about the validity of a norm, and so between morality and ethics, also leads to the wholly indefensible claim that the norms of morality are not commands. Such is the thesis which Manfred Moritz tried to prove in his paper ‘Gebot und Pflicht’ (1941). He calls the norms of morality ‘moral sentences’ or ‘moral laws’. He speaks constantly of ‘moral commands’; but he says ‘The moral command does not have the properties one thought could be ascribed to it’, namely that of being a command.Less

Imperatives in Greek Ethics

Nicholas White

in Individual and Conflict in Greek Ethics

A common theme in the historiography of Greek ethics says that modern ethics is characterized by imperative notions such as ‘duty’—and with a Judeo‐Christian notion of imperatives or commands issued ... More

A common theme in the historiography of Greek ethics says that modern ethics is characterized by imperative notions such as ‘duty’—and with a Judeo‐Christian notion of imperatives or commands issued by god—whereas ancient ethics supposedly deals mainly with ‘attractive notions such as ‘good’ and ‘virtue’. This thought is often juxtaposed with the idea that imperative notions betoken a conflict between one's duty and one's good, because an imperative seems to be required only to command people to do what they do not wish to do, which is felt to be inappropriate to the supposed eudaimonism of Greek ethics. In fact Greek ethics makes substantial use of imperative notions, and does not attempt to show that attractive notions are more basic or preferable in ethics.Less