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ON the UNIVERSAL LAW and HUMANITY FORMULAS by Sven R ON THE UNIVERSAL LAW AND HUMANITY FORMULAS by Sven R. Nyholm A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Philosophy) in the University of Michigan 2012 Doctoral Committee: Professor Elizabeth S. Anderson, Co-Chair Associate Professor Sarah Buss, Co-Chair Professor Peter A. Railton Professor Donald H. Regan © Sven R. Nyholm 2012 To my grandmother ! ii! ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would first like to thank my committee – Liz Anderson, Sarah Buss, Peter Railton, and Don Regan – for their support. During my time at Michigan I have also benefited greatly from the course work I did – especially under Allan Gibbard, Stephen Darwall, and Victor Caston – so I would like to thank my other teachers at Michigan, too. My approach to the study of the history of philosophy is very strongly influenced by what I learned in some of these courses, but also greatly inspired by the Ancient Philosophy reading group whose concern with the proper and precise translation of the great historical works has served as a model for me in my engagement with Kant’s texts. In the preparation of these chapters I have been particularly helped by comments on an earlier draft by Liz Anderson, and also by the discussions about Kant’s ethics I had with Sarah Buss in Zürich in the summer of 2011. I was also particularly helped by the feedback I received by Peter Railton, Rich Thomason, and Gordon Belot when I presented parts of chapter two as a practice job talk in September of last year. Since I wrote these chapters away from Ann Arbor – in Berlin and Stupferich in Germany, Borgholm in Sweden, and Durham, NC – I haven’t had a chance to discuss their content with my fellow Michigan graduate students. But during my time at Michigan I have certainly learned a lot from Steve Campbell, Jason Konek, Nathaniel Coleman, Dave Wiens, Lina Jansson, and all the others. Finally I would also like to thank Katharina Uhde, her family, and my own family. ! iii! TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii CHAPTER I. Introduction: The Human Nature Formula 1 Why Yet Another Dissertation on How to Interpret Kant’s Ethical Theory? 1 Korsgaard on Self-Constitution in The Ethics of Plato and Kant 6 How Kant’s Constitutivism (as I understand it) Differs from Korsgaard’s 10 The Role of Kant’s Constitutivism in the Groundwork (and the Human Nature Formula) 15 The Kantian View of Categorical Imperatives of Practical Reason 24 On the Coming Chapters 28 II. Rediscovering the Universal Law Formula 32 Introduction 32 On the Standard Readings 34 Seven Objections to the Universal Law Formula 41 Two Radically Different Conclusions We Can Draw 49 Eight Steps Towards a New Understanding of the Universal Law Formula 54 Eight Steps Towards a New Reading, Continued 64 ! iv! How to Understand the Universal Law Formula (and Its Relation to the Humanity Formula) 70 Why the Seven Objections Discussed Above All Misfire 74 Why the Seven Objections Misfire, Continued 81 Looking Ahead 88 III. Kant’s Real Argument for the Humanity Formula 90 Introduction 90 Kant’s Argument for the Humanity Formula in His Own Words 94 The Reconstructions of Korsgaard, Wood, and Other Members of the American School: Preliminaries 101 The Reconstructions of Korsgaard, Wood, and Other Members of the American School, Continued 104 Three Objections to the Just-Reviewed Reconstructions of Kant’s Reasoning 115 On the Absolute Value of a Good Will and the Worthiness to Be Happy 126 How to Understand Kant’s Argument for the Humanity Formula 133 Is Our Reconstruction Uncharitable to Kant? 141 IV. Permissibility, Virtue, and the Highest Good 155 Some Distinctions 155 Scanlon and Parfit’s Objections to the Humanity Formula as a Test for Permissibility 163 Why Scanlon and Parfit’s Objections Fail 170 A Kantian Moral Saint? 176 Human Flourishing and the Highest Good 188 Human Flourishing and the Highest Good, Continued 197 Concluding Remarks 202 ! v! BIBLIOGRAPHY 207 ! vi! LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS The translations of passages from the works whose abbreviations in the footnotes are listed below are all mine. When I have translated the given passages I have consulted Mary J. Gregor and Werner S Pluhar’s English translations of Kant’s works as well as Jeanette Emt, Fredrik Linde, and Joachim Retzlaff’s Swedish translations. The German versions I have used are all from the widely available Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft Immanuel Kant Werkausgabe in 12 Bänden edition whose editor is Willhelm Weischedel. In what follows I cite Kant’s works by giving the abbreviations below (if and only if the works in question are among those for which I use my own translations) and the volume numbers and page numbers in the Immanuel Kant: Gesammelte Schriften (Akademie-Ausgabe), as is customary, except for in the case of the first Critique, where I give the page numbers in the original first and second editions (which is also fairly customary). Here, in the order in which the works were published, are my abbreviations along with the original German titles and, within brackets, the English titles most often used: KrV: Kritik der reinen Vernuft (Critique of Pure Reason) P: Prolegomena zu jeden künftigen Metaphysik (Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics) G: Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Groundwork for the Metaphysics ! vii! of Morals) MN: Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft (Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science) KpV: Kritik der Praktischen Vernuft (Critique of Practical Reason) KU: Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of the Power of Judgment) R: Die Religion Innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernuft (Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone) TP: Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis (Concerning the Common Saying: That May Work in Theory, though Not in Practice) MS: Die Metaphysik der Sitten (The Metaphysics of Morals) ÜVR: Über ein Vermeintes Recht aus Menschenliebe zu Lügen (On a Supposed Right to Lie out of Benevolence) AP: Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View) ! viii! CHAPTER I Introduction: The Human Nature Formula 1. Why Yet Another Dissertation on How to Interpret Kant’s Ethical Theory? Our topic is how to understand Immanuel Kant’s “universal law” and “humanity” formulations of the categorical imperative, and the exact relation between the two. The former reads (in the formulation used in the Metaphysics of Morals) “act on the basis of a maxim that could hold as a universal law”1; the second “so act that you treat the humanity in your own person, as well as in every other person, always at the same time as an end, and never as a means only.”2 Since my choice of topic is in itself everything but groundbreaking, the first thing I need to do is to motivate this choice. I shall limit myself to offering two main motivating reasons. Before doing so I will, however, first note another limitation I have placed myself under: namely, to engage exclusively with the discussion of Kant’s ethics within Anglophone moral philosophy, and in particular fairly recent contributions to this discussion. This leads directly to the first motivation behind the discussion that follows. Firstly, although Kant’s ethical theory is very widely discussed and often severely criticized both by those who sympathize with Kant and those who don’t, Kant’s ethical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 (MS: 6:225) 2 (G: 4:429) ! 1! theory is not, I believe, well understood within contemporary moral philosophy. This means that many of the criticisms that are directed at Kant’s ethical system misfire and that, insofar as Kant has anything to teach us, many of Kant’s intended contributions to ethical theory go unappreciated. That Kant’s ethical theory isn’t well understood within contemporary moral philosophy isn’t surprising. It does of course most of all have to do with the fact that Kant’s texts are simply hard to understand.3 It is, to use our own main topic as our example, all but immediately obvious how subjecting ourselves to guiding principles (or “maxims”) that could hold as universal laws is equivalent, as Kant argues that is, to always treating the humanity in each person as a purpose in itself, and never as a means only. As we will see in the chapters to follow, most commentators believe that these formulas have different practical implications, and therefore find this claim to be, as one commenter puts it, “puzzling”.4 But Kant’s ethics’ not being well-understood within contemporary Anglophone moral philosophy also has to do with how many of Kant’s readers read the ethical works by Kant that they do read (which is often limited to a sub- set of these) in light of contemporary discussions of ethics within Anglophone analytical philosophy (which tend to focus exclusively on the mere permissibility of candidate !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 Kant’s works are also hard to translate into English. Indeed, the major translations that tend to be used are, I will argue, questionable at key points in the texts, which is part of what has led to some of the major misconceptions about how to understand Kant’s theory. 4 Though she’s initially “puzzled” by this claim – most of all since the two formulas contain very different concepts – Onora O’Neill eventually argues her way to an interpretation on which the formulas can be reconciled (O’Neill 1989). Thomas Hill and Christine Korsgaard are two prominent writers who argue that these formulas differ in their practical applications (Hill 1980); (Korsgaard, 1996). Derek Parfit argues that while the humanity formula implies that the permissibility of actions is dependent of what the agent’s attitudes are, the universal law formula can be interpreted so as to not have this implication.
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