Conscience in Kantian Ethics
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Retracing Augustine's Ethics: Lying, Necessity, and the Image Of
Valparaiso University ValpoScholar Christ College Faculty Publications Christ College (Honors College) 12-1-2016 Retracing Augustine’s Ethics: Lying, Necessity, and the Image of God Matthew Puffer Valparaiso University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/cc_fac_pub Recommended Citation Puffer, M. (2016). "Retracing Augustine’s ethics: Lying, necessity, and the image of God." Journal of Religious Ethics, 44(4), 685–720. https://doi.org/10.1111/jore.12159 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Christ College (Honors College) at ValpoScholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Christ College Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of ValpoScholar. For more information, please contact a ValpoScholar staff member at [email protected]. RETRACING AUGUSTINE’S ETHICS Lying, Necessity, and the Image of God Matthew Puffer ABSTRACT Augustine’s exposition of the image of God in Book 15 of On The Trinity (De Trinitate) sheds light on multiple issues that arise in scholarly interpretations of Augustine’s account of lying. This essay argues against interpretations that pos- it a uniform account of lying in Augustine—with the same constitutive features, and insisting both that it is never necessary to tell a lie and that lying is abso- lutely prohibited. Such interpretations regularly employ intertextual reading strategies that elide distinctions and developments in Augustine’sethicsoflying. Instead, I show how looking at texts written prior and subsequent to the texts usually consulted suggests a trajectory in Augustine’s thought, beginning with an understanding of lies as morally culpable but potentially necessary, and cul- minating in a vision of lying as the fundamental evil and the origin of every sin. -
'The Supreme Principle of Morality'? in the Preface to His Best
The Supreme Principle of Morality Allen W. Wood 1. What is ‘The Supreme Principle of Morality’? In the Preface to his best known work on moral philosophy, Kant states his purpose very clearly and succinctly: “The present groundwork is, however, nothing more than the search for and establishment of the supreme principle of morality, which already constitutes an enterprise whole in its aim and to be separated from every other moral investigation” (Groundwork 4:392). This paper will deal with the outcome of the first part of this task, namely, Kant’s attempt to formulate the supreme principle of morality, which is the intended outcome of the search. It will consider this formulation in light of Kant’s conception of the historical antecedents of his attempt. Our first task, however, must be to say a little about the meaning of the term ‘supreme principle of morality’. For it is not nearly as evident to many as it was to Kant that there is such a thing at all. And it is extremely common for people, whatever position they may take on this issue, to misunderstand what a ‘supreme principle of morality’ is, what it is for, and what role it is supposed to play in moral theorizing and moral reasoning. Kant never directly presents any argument that there must be such a principle, but he does articulate several considerations that would seem to justify supposing that there is. Kant holds that moral questions are to be decided by reason. Reason, according to Kant, always seeks unity under principles, and ultimately, systematic unity under the fewest possible number of principles (Pure Reason A298-302/B355-359, A645- 650/B673-678). -
Rosalind Hursthouse, on Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999
Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. x, 275. Reviewed by Gilbert Harman, Department of Philosophy, Princeton Univer- sity Virtue ethics is atype of ethicaltheory in which the notion of virtue or good character plays a central role. This splendid new book describes a “program” for the development of a particular (“Aristotelian”) form of virtue ethics. The book is intended to be used as a textbook, but should be read by anyone interested in moral philosophy. Hursthouse has been a major contributor to the development of virtue ethics and the program she describes, while making use of the many contributions of others, is very much her program, with numerous new ideas and insights. The book has three parts. The first dispels common misunderstandings and explains how virtue ethics applies to complex moral issues. The sec- ond discusses moral motivation, especially the motivation involved in doing something because it is right. The third explains how questions about the objectivity of ethics are to be approached within virtue ethics. Structure Hursthouse’s virtue ethics takes as central the conception of a human be- ing who possesses all ethical virtues of character and no vices or defects of character—”human being” rather than “person” because the relevant char- acter traits are “natural” to the species. To a first approximation, virtue ethics says that a right action is an action among those available that a perfectly virtuous human being would charac- teristically do under the circumstances. This is only a first approximation because of complications required in order accurately to describe certain moral dilemmas. -
Kant on Obligation and Motivation in Law and Ethics
University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Faculty Publications - Department of Philosophy Philosophy, Department of 1994 Kant on Obligation and Motivation in Law and Ethics Nelson T. Potter Jr. University of Nebraska - Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/philosfacpub Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons, and the Legal History Commons Potter, Nelson T. Jr., "Kant on Obligation and Motivation in Law and Ethics" (1994). Faculty Publications - Department of Philosophy. 15. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/philosfacpub/15 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications - Department of Philosophy by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Potter in Jarbuch für Recht und Ethik (1994) 2. Copyright 1994, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Used by permission. Kant on Obligation and Motivation in Law and Ethics Nelson Potter I. There is a passage in Immanuel Kant's general introduction to both parts of Die Metaphysik der Sitten that deserves more attention than it has received. I plan to build the present paper around the implil:ations of this passage: In all lawgiving (Gesetzgebung) (whether it prescribes for internal or external actions, and whether it prescribes them a priori by reason alone or by the choice of another) there are two elements: first, a law, which represents an action that is to be done as objectively necessary, that is, which makes the action a duty; and second, an incentive, which connects a ground for determining choice to this action subjectively with the representation of the law. -
"The Principle of Punishment Is a Categorical Imperative"
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by UNL | Libraries University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Faculty Publications - Department of Philosophy Philosophy, Department of 1998 "The Principle of Punishment Is a Categorical Imperative" Nelson T. Potter Jr. University of Nebraska - Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/philosfacpub Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons, and the Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons Potter, Nelson T. Jr., ""The Principle of Punishment Is a Categorical Imperative"" (1998). Faculty Publications - Department of Philosophy. 22. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/philosfacpub/22 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications - Department of Philosophy by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Potter in Autonomy and Community: Readings in Contemporary Kantian Social Philosophy (J. Kneller & S. Axinn, eds.). Section II. Kant and Contemporary Social Issues. Copyright 1998, SUNY Press. Used by permission. 9------ Nelson Thomas Potter Jr. UThe Principle ofPunuhment Id a 1 Categorical Imperatire 77 KANT'S VIEWS There has been a considerable renaissance in retributivism as a theory of the justification of punishment in the second half of this century. Retributivism is often defended -
Love As a Moral Emotion* J. David Velleman
Love as a Moral Emotion* J. David Velleman INTRODUCTION Love and morality are generally assumed to differ in spirit. The moral point of view is impartial and favors no particular individual, whereas favoring someone in particular seems like the very essence of love. Love and morality are therefore thought to place con¯icting demands on our attention, requiring us to look at things differently, whether or not they ultimately require us to do different things.1 The question is supposed to be whether a person can do justice to both perspectives. Some philosophers think that one or the other per- * The theme of this article was suggested to me by Harry Frankfurt's ``Autonomy, Necessity, and Love'' (in Vernunftbegriffe in der Moderne, ed. Hans Friedrich Fulda and Rolf- Peter Horstmann [Klett-Cotta, 1994], pp. 433± 47). I ®rst attempted to state the theme in a paper entitled ``Frankfurt on Love and Duty,'' written for a conference organized by RuÈdi- ger Bittner in the spring of 1996, at the Zentrum fuÈr interdiziplinaÈre Forschung, in Biele- feld, Germany. Some of that paper is reproduced here. Also contained here is material from a commentary on Henry S. Richardson's Practical Reasoning about Final Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); my commentary was presented at a session of the So- ciety for Informal Logic at the 1995 meetings of the American Philosophical Association (APA) Eastern Division. Earlier versions of this article were read to the philosophy depart- ments at Arizona State University; Harvard; Princeton; University of California, Los Ange- les; University College London; and to a discussion group that meets at Oriel College, Ox- ford, under the auspices of David Charles. -
Cultivating Conscience: How Good Laws Make Good People Lynn A
Number 38 December 2010 Cultivating Conscience: How Good Laws Make Good People Lynn A. Stout EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ow can we get people to behave themselves? H Experts often assume that humans are selfish creatures who respond only to punishments and rewards, and who can’t be trusted to do a good job or refrain from lying, cheating and stealing unless Recent Issues in Governance Studies given the right “incentives.” Yet “The Age of Leverage” every day we see people behaving (November 2010) ethically and unselfishly—few of “Beyond Additionality in Cap- us mug the elderly or steal the and-Trade Offset Policy” paper from our neighbor's yard, © Fry Design (July 2010) and many of us help strangers. We nevertheless overlook the good aspects of our “The Senate Syndrome” own natures and fixate on the bad things people do and how we can stop them. (June 2010) This focus on bad behavior obscures the reality, and importance, of goodness, leading us to neglect the crucial role our better impulses could play in shaping “Can a Polarized American Party System Be “Healthy”? society. Evidence from behavioral science and experimental gaming (April 2010) demonstrates that unselfish prosocial behavior (sacrificing to follow ethical rules, or to help or avoid harming others) is far more common and important than “Broken Politics” (March 2010) generally recognized. Under the right conditions, the vast majority of people act as if they have a conscience that causes them to act ethically and look out for others’ interests. To view previous papers, visit: www.brookings.edu/governance/Issues- This paper unpacks how these empirical findings can be used to develop a in-Governance-Studies.aspx “Jekyll/Hyde” model of how human behavior shifts predictably from purely selfish to prosocial, depending on certain social cues. -
Modern Moral Conscience
Modern Moral Conscience Tom O’Shea Forthcoming in International Journal of Philosophical Studies Abstract: This article challenges the individualism and neutrality of modern moral conscience. It looks to the history of the concept to excavate an older tradition that takes conscience to be social and morally responsive, while arguing that dominant contemporary justifications of conscience in terms of integrity are inadequate without reintroducing these social and moral traits. This prompts a rethinking of the nature and value of conscience: first, by demonstrating that a morally-responsive conscience is neither a contradiction in terms nor a political absurdity; second, by suggesting how a morally-responsive conscience can be informed by the social world without being a mere proxy for social power or moribund tradition. 1. The idea of conscience underwent a gradual hollowing out during modernity. Our now- dominant conceptions of conscience have sundered it from both social relationships and ethical truths which outrun each individual’s convictions. We have yet to properly reckon with the implications of this shift towards an egocentric and normatively neutral understanding of conscience. My aim is to excavate an older tradition without these two traits and to ask what we may have lost by leaving it behind. While this will reveal a challenge to modern moral conscience, there remain formidable obstacles to returning to earlier understandings of it. I shall outline a social and normative conception of conscience which learns the lessons of this earlier tradition while showing how it must nevertheless adapt to modern conditions. What then is conscience? Among our oldest moral concepts – recognisable as early as the Greek playwrights of the 5th century BCE – it has long been understood as the self’s awareness of the moral dimension of its conduct (Sorabji 2014, 15).1 Conscience consists in a consciousness of moral demands upon the particular individual in their own specific circumstances rather than a merely abstract knowledge of right and wrong. -
Animals in the Kingdom of Ends
25 Animals in the Kingdom of Ends Heather M. Kendrick Department of Philosophy and Religion Central Michigan University [email protected] Abstract Kant claimed that human beings have no duties to animals because they are not autonomous ends in themselves. I argue that Kant was wrong to exclude animals from the realm of moral consideration. Animals, although they do not set their own ends and thus cannot be regarded as ends in themselves, do have ends that are given to them by nature. As beings with ends, they stand between mere things that have no ends, and rational beings that are ends in themselves. I propose a broader version of Kant's kingdom of ends, in which rational beings respect the ends of all other beings that have them, including animals. The moral status of animals would still be dependent on the existence of rational beings, but our duty to take their ends into account would be a direct duty to them, rather than being a covert duty to human beings. Introduction Immanuel Kant holds that we have no duties to animals, because they are not ends in themselves, that is, autonomous beings of intrinsic value. Instead, we have indirect duties with regard to them. We ought not treat them cruelly, as it damages our natural sympathies and thus can harden us in our dealings with other human beings. He uses the example of a man who has his dog shot when the animal is no longer of service; this is not a violation of any duty to the dog, but of his duty to cultivate “the kindly and humane qualities in himself, which he ought to exercise in virtue of his duties to mankind” (Kant 1997b 27:459). -
Augustine's Ethics
15 BONNIE KENT Augustine’s ethics Augustine regards ethics as an enquiry into the Summum Bonum: the supreme good, which provides the happiness all human beings seek. In this respect his moral thought comes closer to the eudaimonistic virtue ethics of the classical Western tradition than to the ethics of duty and law associated with Christianity in the modern period. But even though Augustine addresses many of the same problems that pagan philosophers do, he often defends very different answers. For him, happiness consists in the enjoyment of God, a reward granted in the afterlife for virtue in this life. Virtue itself is a gift of God, and founded on love, not on the wisdom prized by philosophers. The art of living In Book 8 of De civitate Dei Augustine describes “moral philosophy” (a Latin expression), or “ethics” (the Greek equivalent), as an enquiry into the supreme good and how we can attain it. The supreme good is that which we seek for its own sake, not as a means to some other end, and which makes us happy. Augustine adds, as if this were an uncontroversial point, that happiness is the aim of philosophy in general.1 Book 19 opens with a similar discussion. In his summary of Varro’s treatise De philosophia, Augustine reports that no school of philosophy deserves to be considered a distinct school unless it differs from others on the supreme good. For the supreme good is that which makes us happy, and the only purpose of philosophizing is the attainment of happiness.2 Both of these discussions cast philosophy as a fundamentally practical discipline, so that ethics appears to overshadow logic, metaphysics, and other comparatively abstract areas as a philosopher’s chief concern. -
Justice and Ethics
Justice and Ethics Jimmy Rising October 18, 2002 1 Introduction Utilitarianism is an ethical system. John Stuart Mill's use of Utilitarianism to determine what is just and what is injustice may seem natural, but I will argue that the relationship between justice and ethics and the role that Utilitarianism might play in the development of ideas of justice is more complicated than it initially appears. Despite these difficulties, Utilitarianism's consequentialist stance offers tantalizing possibilities for uniting the two, as I think Mill believed they were. The same claim cannot be easily made for either libertarianism and egalitarian liberalism. The relationship between justice and ethics in Utilitarianism is far too extensive for a paper of this size. I will confine my discussion to the arguments in chapter two of On Liberty, \On the Liberty of Thought and Discussion." These arguments are fundamental to Mill's views, and the arguments in all of the other chapters rest on it. Individuality and limitation on societal influence (the topics of Mill's next two chapters) are respectively impossible and irrelevant if not for the liberty of opinion. My purpose is not to argue against Mill's conclusions as much as it is to explore how his assumptions and the course of his argument shed light on this distinction between ethics and justice. Specifically, I will look at the following areas: 1 1. Mill's justification for the use of the principle of utility (a fundamentally ethical prin- ciple) for the development of a system of justice. 2. The argument that the just society must be ethically competitive, with a variety of opinions at different levels of ethical understanding. -
Kant, Neo-Kantianism, and Phenomenology Sebastian Luft Marquette University, [email protected]
Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications Philosophy, Department of 7-1-2018 Kant, Neo-Kantianism, and Phenomenology Sebastian Luft Marquette University, [email protected] Published version. Oxford Handbook of the History of Phenomenology (07/18). DOI. © 2018 Oxford University Press. Used with permission. Kant, Neo-Kantianism, and Phenomenology Kant, Neo-Kantianism, and Phenomenology Sebastian Luft The Oxford Handbook of the History of Phenomenology Edited by Dan Zahavi Print Publication Date: Jun 2018 Subject: Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, History of Western Philosophy (Post-Classical) Online Publication Date: Jul 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198755340.013.5 Abstract and Keywords This chapter offers a reassessment of the relationship between Kant, the Kantian tradi tion, and phenomenology, here focusing mainly on Husserl and Heidegger. Part of this re assessment concerns those philosophers who, during the lives of Husserl and Heidegger, sought to defend an updated version of Kant’s philosophy, the neo-Kantians. The chapter shows where the phenomenologists were able to benefit from some of the insights on the part of Kant and the neo-Kantians, but also clearly points to the differences. The aim of this chapter is to offer a fair evaluation of the relation of the main phenomenologists to Kant and to what was at the time the most powerful philosophical movement in Europe. Keywords: Immanuel Kant, neo-Kantianism, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Marburg School of neo-Kantian ism 3.1 Introduction THE relation between phenomenology, Kant, and Kantian philosophizing broadly con strued (historically and systematically), has been a mainstay in phenomenological re search.1 This mutual testing of both philosophies is hardly surprising given phenomenology’s promise to provide a wholly novel type of philosophy.