海德格尔对康德伦理学的批判

相对于康德的其他主要著作而言,海德格尔对于康德第二批判持有一种特殊的看法。他没有直接去探讨它,这实际上隐含着对于它的一种彻底的思考和批判。由于康德伦理学的根本概念是应当,康德把接受了古希腊以来人是理性的动物这个关于人的定义,海德格尔把康德伦理学看作是西方形而上学自身发展线条的一个基本环节,是柏拉图主义理念学说发展进程中一个特殊的点。人的本质的干瘪化也是人道主义最终走向主体主义的根本原因,康德的自由意志和道德律只是这种人道主义思考的必然后果。     

略谈康德伦理学的几个问题——兼与宁新昌、许平二位先生商榷

宁新昌、许平二位先生的<张载康德伦理思想的相异与相通>一文在曲解康德的道德、义务的基础上,把二律背反归结为康德的阶级软弱性和非此即彼的思维方式.实际上,康德的道德、义务和相应的中文含义不同,二律背反既不是康德奉人的思想,也和其阶级软弱性或非此即彼的思雏方式无关.相反,正是因为康德在一定程度上超越了阶级软弱性等经验对象和非此即彼的思维方式,才发现并试图解决二律背反.     

Kant's Ethics and Duties to Oneself

Abstract: This paper investigates the nature and foundation of duties to oneself in Kant's moral theory. Duties to oneself embody the requirement of the formula of humanity that agents respect rational nature in them-selves as well as in others. So understood, duties to oneself are not subject to the sorts of conceptual objections often raised against duties to oneself; nor do these duties support objections that Kant's moral theory is overly demanding or produces agents who are preoccupied with their own virtue. Duties to oneself emerge as an essential and compelling part of Kant's moral theory.     

康德的道德哲学对罗尔斯正义理论的影响

康德的道德哲学深深影响到罗尔斯的正义理论,这不仅表现在宏观的理论结构、方法和价值旨趣上,还表现在一些微观的概念上,比如自律与定言命令等。罗尔斯的正义理论在关键的地方依赖康德的一些假定,但他对康德的继承又是创造性的,也是对康德理论疑难的一种澄清和解决。     

Another Defense of Naturalized Ethics

This essay argues against Richard Joyce, using him as an exemplar of a number of writers who purport to show that the best a naturalized ethics can provide are demands that we can hold only as moral agnostics; that is, that no moral claims can be shown to be epistemically warranted, hence no moral claims have the property of “inescapable authority” necessary for real moral discourse or deliberation. The prudent (and “dignified”) course of action is therefore to act as if moral claims had categorical standing, knowing full well that we cannot, in principle, know this. The essay proposes instead that a fully naturalized account of moral reasoning and sentiments, compatible with the commitment to understanding human beings as products of evolutionary processes, can provide “existence imperatives” necessarily implicated in our being social animals. It argues that, on the one hand, we're mistaken in believing that real moral discourse must include imperatives that hold with inescapable authority as a foundation and, on the other, that a naturalistic perspective can offer demands that are authoritative enough to make moral judgment sound.     

The Importance of Pleasure in the Moral for Kant's Ethics

I argue for a new reading of Kant's claim that respect is the moral incentive; this reading accommodates the central insights of the affectivist and intellectualist readings of respect, while avoiding shortcomings of each. I show that within Kant's ethical system, the feeling of respect should be understood as paradigmatic of a kind of pleasure, pleasure in the moral. The motivational power of respect arises from its nature as pleasurable feeling, but the feeling does not directly motivate individual dutiful actions. Rather, the feeling is motivational in the sense that, after an agent has acted in a morally good way, the pleasure that results from that action contributes to the cultivation of virtue in the agent and, consequently, morally good actions in the future. Understanding the feeling of respect to be moral pleasure not only gives us insight into how finite rational beings develop virtue, but also a new way of understanding respect as an incentive.     

The Apple of Kant's Ethics: i-Maxims as the Locus of Assessment

I want to distinguish between maxims at three levels of abstraction. At the first level are what I shall call individual maxims, or i-maxims: maxim tokens as adopted by particular rational beings. At the second level are abstract maxims, or a-maxims: abstract principles distinct from any individual who adopts them. At the third level are maxim kinds, or k-maxims: sets of various action-guiding principles that are grouped on the basis of their content. In this paper, I argue for the thesis that i-maxims are the locus of assessment in Kant's ethics.     

Self‐Legislation and Self‐Command in Kant's Ethics

In his later writings, Kant distinguishes between autonomy and self‐mastery or self‐command. My article explains the relation between these two ideas, both of which are integral to his understanding of moral agency and the pursuit of virtue. I point to problems with other interpretations of this relation and offer an alternative. On my view, self‐command is a condition or state achieved by those agents who become proficient at solving problems presented by the passions. Such agents are able to stick to the results of self‐legislation over time and thereby achieve a form of temporally extended freedom.     

Kant's Schematism of the categories: An interpretation and defence

The aim of the Schematism chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason is to solve the problem posed by the “inhomogeneity” of intuitions and categories: the sensible properties of objects represented in intuition are of a different kind than the properties represented by categories. Kant's solution is to introduce what he calls “transcendental schemata,” which mediate the subsumption of objects under categories. I reconstruct Kant's solution in terms of two substantive premises, which I call Subsumption Sufficiency (i.e., that subsuming an object under a transcendental schema is sufficient to subsume it under the corresponding category) and Real Possibility (i.e., that it is really possible to subsume objects under each of the transcendental schemata). These two principles, together with a trivial modal one (the Subsumption-Possibility Link), entail that it is possible to subsume objects under categories; in other words, the argument of the Schematism is valid. The main work of the paper consists in reconstructing Kant's arguments for, and explanations of, these premises. I argue that they hinge on Kant's claim that transcendental schemata are “time-determinations,” which I interpret to mean: rules for reflexively representing the temporal relations among our own representational states. On the basis of this reading, I reconstruct Kant's argument for Subsumption Sufficiency, category by category. I also explain why Real Possibility follows almost immediately. Granting Kant the argument up to this point in the Critique, the argument of the Schematism is sound.     

Ethics Talk; Talking Ethics: An Example of Clinical Ethics Consultation

This written account of a clinical encounter - depicting fragments of a more extensive array of events - attempts to exemplify many facets and associated complexities of clinical ethics consultation. Within the general telling, I provide more detailed portrayals of several key events. In secion 1, I document briefly my initial interactions at the beginning of the consultation, focusing on the information gained - in the context of those interactions - as I read the medical chart of Mrs. Rose. Next in section 2, I briefly describes my initial conversation with Mrs. Rose's three sons. Section 3 illustrates several questions raised in sections 1 and 2. Then section 4 presents my encounter with Paul, the youngest son, as he was carrying out his vigil at his mother's bedside in the hospital. Section 5 chronicles my interactions with several care providers involved in Mrs. Rose's situation, including two different meetings that occurred with Mrs. Rose's attending physician. I conclude in section 6 by telling about a conversation I had with Mrs. Rose's middle son, Russell, approximately one month after Mrs. Rose died.