Kant’s Virtue as Strength

The revival of virtue ethics has been accompanied by an increasing interest in Kant’s theory of virtue. Many scholars claim that virtue plays an important role in Kant’s moral theory. However, some worries and disagreements have arisen within the camp of contemporary virtue ethics concerning the Kantian concept of virtue. Some scholars have pointed out that Kantian virtue is at best nothing more than Aristotelian continence, that is, strength of will in the face of contrary emotions and appetites, and hence not a real virtue. In response to these criticisms and worries concerning Kant’s concept of virtue, this paper examines the question of whether Kant’s account of virtue is only a reformulation of Aristotle’s idea of continence. My analysis focuses on Kant’s concept of inner freedom, his ideas about latitude in the imperfect duties of virtue, and his notion of the perfection of virtue. I thus attempt to provide some evidence of the significant differences between Aristotelian continence and Kant’s virtue as strength. Then I explore the significance of Kant’s virtue as strength. Finally, I argue that Kant’s virtue as strength not only is not Aristotle’s idea of continence but also is located at a much higher level, that is, the state of inner freedom and the mental attitude of a human being’s soul.     

Kant’s Critical Philosophy as Pedagogical Praxis: A Call to Learn to Philosophize

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

Foucault’s Kant

The Journal of Value Inquiry -     

Kant’s Racism

After a long period of comparative neglect, in the last few decades growing numbers of philosophers have been paying attention to the startling contrast presented between Kant’s universal moral theory, with its inspiring enlightenment ideas of human autonomy, equality and dignity and Kant’s racism. Against Charles Mills, who argues that the way to make Kant consistent is by attributing to him a threshold notion of moral personhood, according to which some races do not qualify for consideration under the categorical imperative, I argue that Kant cannot be made consistent on race, and that rather than trying to make him so, we should use the example of Kant’s racism to tell us something about the nature of racism. I argue that Kant’s own moral philosophy and moral psychology in fact give some materials for thinking about his racism, and about racism.     

Kant’s Solution to the Euthyphro Dilemma

Are our actions morally good because we approve of them or are they good independently of our approval? Are we projecting moral values onto the world or do we detect values that are already there? For many these questions don’t state a real alternative but a secular variant of the Euthyphro dilemma: If our actions are good because we approve of them moral goodness appears to be arbitrary. If they are good independently of our approval, it is unclear how we come to know their moral quality and how moral knowledge can be motivating. None of these options seems attractive; the source of moral goodness unclear. Despite the growing literature on Kant’s moral epistemology and moral epistemology the question remains open what Kant’s answer to this apparent dilemma is. The Kantian view I attempt to lay out in this paper is supposed to dissolve the secular version of the Euthyphro dilemma. In responding to this dilemma we need to get clear about the source or the origin of our moral knowledge: Voluntary approval or mind-independent moral facts? Projectivism or detectivism? Construction or given? I believe that all these ways of articulating the problem turn out, on closer inspection, to be false alternatives.     

Kant’s Moral Panentheism

Although Kant is often interpreted as an Enlightenment Deist, Kant scholars are increasingly recognizing aspects of his philosophy that are more amenable to theism. If Kant regarded himself as a theist, what kind of theist was he? The theological approach that best fits Kant’s model of God is panentheism, whereby God is viewed as a living being pervading the entire natural world, present ‘in’ every part of nature, yet going beyond the physical world. The purpose of Kant’s restrictions on our knowledge of God is not to cast doubt on God’s existence, but to preserve a mystery in God’s reality so that God is always more than the world as we experience it. The same God who is theoretically unknowable is also an aspect of the moral substratum of the physical world. Kant’s moral Trinity (God as righteous Lawgiver, benevolent Ruler, and just Judge) permeates everything, as the ultimate unifier of reason and nature. This Paper was delivered during the 2007 APA Pacific Mini-Conference on Models of God, together with papers published in Philosophia 35:3–4.     

Formalizing Kant’s Rules

Journal of Philosophical Logic - This paper formalizes part of the cognitive architecture that Kant develops in the Critique of Pure Reason. The central Kantian notion that we formalize is the...     

Kant’s virtue theory

By focusing on human virtues rather than the general morality of rational beings, Kant’s virtue theory presents systematic arguments from the perspectives of reason and experiential emotion, norms and disposition, spirituality and humanity, etc., which is of great significance to an overall understanding of Kantian ethics, thus clarifying misunderstandings from the past decades.     

Kant’s sacrificial turns

This paper addresses the role of the notion of sacrifice in Kant’s theoretical philosophy, practical philosophy, and in his account of religion. First, I argue that kenotic sacrifice, or sacrifice as ‘withdrawal’, plays a hidden and yet important role in the development of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Second, I focus on Kant’s practical philosophy, arguing that the notion of sacrifice that is both implied and explicitly analyzed by Kant is mainly suppressive sacrifice. However, Kant’s account is fundamentally ambiguous, as sometimes the kenotic meaning of sacrifice seems to resurface, especially in the context of Kant’s discussion of the happiness of others as an end in itself. Because religious notions are regarded by Kant as necessary transitional forms (Darstellungen) to be used to make moral ideas applicable to the world, I then scrutinize Kant’s view of sacrifice as an improper symbol, and I analyze Kant’s arguments for such a dismissal and discuss the subject matter in recent literature. Finally, I examine the role of sacrifice in Kant’s account of Christ as the prototype of pure moral disposition. I conclude by arguing that Kant indeed grasped the importance of including kenotic dynamics in practical philosophy but was somehow unable or unwilling to integrate it into the formal grounding of his ethics. This tension, however, effectively provides an entry point for features that can be found in the post-Kantians.     

Kant’s imitatio Christi

This article retrieves Kant’s imitatio Christi as a viable alternative to the recent construal of mimesis as a universal human desire, in particular to Ward’s reformulation of the imitatio Christi in such terms (in which the human condition is defined by an intrinsic desire for God as other). Kant’s writings participate in a very different debate on imitation (one sceptical of its ethical value), and this plays out as a continual ambivalence towards the concept in his work. Kant’s imitatio Christi, however, does, I contend, make possible a moral form of imitation by characterising it as a rational and intersubjective debate upon the good. Imitating Christ becomes part of human ethical living in the world.     

Sharon Street’s unsuccessful argument against theism

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion - Sharon Street has argued that we should reject theism because we can accept it only at the cost of having good reason to doubt the reliability of...     

Kant’s conception of proper science

Kant is well known for his restrictive conception of proper science. In the present paper I will try to explain why Kant adopted this conception. I will identify three core conditions which Kant thinks a proper science must satisfy: systematicity, objective grounding, and apodictic certainty. These conditions conform to conditions codified in the Classical Model of Science. Kant’s infamous claim that any proper natural science must be mathematical should be understood on the basis of these conditions. In order to substantiate this reading, I will show that only in this way it can be explained why Kant thought (1) that mathematics has a particular foundational function with respect to the natural sciences and (2) as such secures their scientific status.     

The metaphysics of human freedom: from Kant’s transcendental idealism to Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift

Schelling’s 1809 Freiheitsschrift (Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom), perhaps his most widely read work, presents considerable difficulties of understanding. In this paper, I offer an interpretation of the work in relation to Kant. My focus is on the relation in each case of their theory of human freedom to their general metaphysics, a relation which both regard as essential. The argument of the paper is in sum that Schelling may be viewed as addressing and resolving a problem which faces Kant’s theory of freedom and transcendental idealism, deriving from the challenge posed by Spinozism. One major innovation in Schelling’s theory of human freedom is his claim that it presupposes the reality of evil. I argue that Schelling’s thesis concerning evil also provides a key to the new and highly original metaphysics of the Freiheitsschrift. The relation of Schelling’s theory of freedom to his general metaphysics is therefore complex, for it goes in two directions: the metaphysics are not simply presupposed by the theory of freedom but are also in part derived from it. These new metaphysics also, I argue, allow Schelling to resolve a problem which his own earlier Spinozistic system had left unresolved.     

On Kant’s Knowledge of Leibniz’ Metaphysics—a Reply to Garber

Daniel Garber has put forward an argument that aims to show that Kant’s understanding of Leibniz’ metaphysics should be discounted because he could only have had access to a small and narrow sample of Leibniz’ works from around 1710–1714. In particular, Garber argues that as Kant could not have read Leibniz’ correspondence with Arnauld or his correspondence with Des Bosses he could not have had an adequate conception of Leibniz’ understanding of the relation between substance and body. I will show that Kant could have read some of the Arnauld correspondence and practically all of the Des Bosses correspondence, as well as a number of other related texts that are important for understanding Leibniz’ metaphysics, over a decade before writing the Critique of Pure Reason. Garber’s historical-textual argument for dismissing Kant’s account of Leibniz’ metaphysics is therefore seriously misleading.     

Realizing Freedom as Non-domination: Political Obligation in Kant’s Doctrine of Right

Res Publica - Prominent Kantian scholars, such as Korsgaard and Waldron, claim that the very existence of juridical-political institutions is sufficient to render laws authoritative. Critics argue...     

The Moral Laboratory: On Kant’s Notion of Pedagogy as a Science

Following Kant, it is clear that, but probably not completely how we are morally obligated. I will point out that there are three possible ways to struggle for an understanding of how we can be obligated as rational beings and also as ordinary human beings. There is (a) the argument from rational feeling (‘Achtung’), (b) the argument from language, and finally (c) the argument from systematization. Reading the later passages of the ‘Critique of pure Reason’ and following its instructions, we will understand why education has to be founded by the same kind of argumentation as the natural sciences. The systematical analysis of Kant’s analogy between the physical body and the moral obligation will explain the suspected gap between our just rational and our whole selves. The most important part of the demanded bridge will be Kant’s Moral Laboratory.