I. Kant after Virtue 1

Maclntyre's refurbishing of Aristotelian ethics aims to restore both intelligibility and rationality to moral discourse. In After Virtue he concentrates on showing how intelligible action requires that lives be led within institutional and cultural traditions. But he does not offer a developed account of practical reason which could provide grounds for seeking some rather than other intelligible continuations of lives and traditions. Despite Maclntyre's criticisms of Kant's ethics, a Kantian account of practical reasoning may complement his account of intelligibility. An appropriate interpretation of Kantian ethics is outlined, which escapes Maclntyre's criticisms, allows both for the universal character of basic moral principles and for the historical variability of intelligible action, and which makes moral worth or virtue the centre of the moral life. The refurbishing of Aristotelian ethics may be achieved by a Kantian completion.     

After MacIntyre

In his influential book After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre identifies Kierkegaard's view of ethics with that of Kant. Both Kant and Kierkegaard, according to MacIntyre, accept the modern paradigm of moral activity for which freedom of the will is the ultimate basis. Ronald M. Green, in Kierkegaard and Kant: The Hidden Debt, accepts and deepens this alignment between the two thinkers. Green argues that Kierkegaard deliberately obscured his debt to Kant by a systematic “misattribution” of his ideas to other thinkers, and to classical philosophy in particular. This essay argues that MacIntyre and Green are mistaken in identifying Kierkegaard with the Kantian tradition of moral autonomy and that they overlook his debt to the classical conception of virtue. In casting Kierkegaard in the role of the quintessential exponent of a modern conception of freedom, they have perhaps overlooked one of the greatest critics of moral autonomy who has ever lived.     

KANTIAN VALUE REALISM

Why should we be interested in Kant's ethical theory? One reason is that we find his views about our moral responsibilities appealing. Anyone who thinks that we should treat other people with respect, that we should not use them as a mere means in ways to which they could not possibly consent, will be attracted by a Kantian style of ethical theory. But according to recent supporters of Kant, the most distinctive and important feature of his ethical theory is not his claims about the particular ethical duties that we owe to each other, but his views about the nature of value. They argue that Kant has an account of the relationship between practical reason and value, known as “Kantian constructivism” that is far superior to the traditional “value realist” theory, and that it is because of this that we should accept his theory. ¹ 1 Korsgaard (1996a, 1996b, 2003 ).
It is now standard for both supporters and critics to claim that Kant's moral theory stands or falls with Kantian constructivism. ² 2 Gaut (1997 ), Regan (2002 ).
But this is a mistake. In this paper, I sketch a rival Kantian theory of value, which I call Kantian value realism. I argue that there is textual evidence that Kant himself accepted value realism rather than constructivism. Whilst my aim in this paper is to set out the theory clearly rather than to defend it, I will try to show that Kantian value realism is preferable to Kantian constructivism and that it is worthy of further study.     

KORSGAARD'S REJECTION OF CONSEQUENTIALISM

Abstract: In her recent book Self‐Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity, Christine Korsgaard does a wonderful job developing her Kantian account of normativity and the rational necessity of morality. Korsgaard's account of normativity, however, has received its fair share of attention. In this discussion, the focus is on the resulting moral theory and, in particular, on Korsgaard's reason for rejecting consequentialist moral theories. The article suggests that we assume that Korsgaard's vindication of Kantian rationalism is successful and ask whether, nonetheless, her account is consistent with consequentialism. It suggests further that we grant that moral reasons are not based on substantive principles, and that they must instead emerge from the purely formal principles of practical reason. Can consequentialist principles nonetheless emerge from the formal constraints of practical reason? Why can't a consequentialist embrace Korsgaard's account of self‐constitution and normativity?     

Freedom immediately after Kant

Kant's effort to defend the co‐existence of transcendental freedom and natural necessity is one of the crowning achievements of the first Critique. Yet by identifying the will with practical reason in his moral philosophy, he lent support to the view that the moral law is the causal law of a free will—the result of which, as Reinhold argued, left immoral action impossible. However, Reinhold's attempt to separate the will from practical reason generated difficulties of its own, which Maimon was quick to point out. By identifying freedom with indifferent choice, Maimon argued, Reinhold had no resources to explain why a free will acts at all. My aim in this article is to show how Fichte's theory of freedom seeks to reconcile these two commitments: The key lies in what I call Fichte's Genetic Model, according to which indifferent choice is the original condition of the will, but a condition we must actively overcome.     

Salomon Maimon’s Attempt at a New Presentation of the Principle of Morality and a New Deduction of Its Reality1

This essay is a translation of one of Salomon Maimon’s ethical writings, accompanied by a brief introduction. In it, Maimon proposes a correction of the Kantian moral principle of duty, as it is articulated both by Kant’s Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals and his Critique of Practical Reason. In particular, Maimon’s essay reveals the influence of Reinhold’s critique of Kant’s moral philosophy, especially regarding the role of incentives behind moral action. It reveals as well Maimon’s commitment to the primacy of the theoretical over the practical, drawn from his reading of Maimonides and Spinoza. The essay, therefore, marks an important moment in the development of Maimon’s assimilation of Kantian philosophy, one often neglected in scholarship on his work.     

Value and Obligation Once More

In Understanding Moral Obligation (2012), Robert Stern sets out to provide a fresh interpretation of the role of autonomy in Kant's moral philosophy and attempts to rectify J. B. Schneewind's standard account in The Invention of Autonomy (1998). While Stern agrees that Kant's resort to autonomy is at the basis of a constructivist account of moral obligation, he claims that autonomy plays no role in Kant's theory of value, such that, in this respect, Kant remains a realist. Accordingly, Stern characterizes Kant's moral philosophy as a “hybrid” view because he sees it as involving a compromise between realism with regard to value and constructivism with regard to obligation. Stern's interpretation relies on a sharp distinction between value and obligation. The purpose of the present article is to question Stern's reliance on that rigid distinction, which involves intermixing theoretical and practical reason and assumes a distorted view of human agency.     

KAUFMAN'S DEBT TO KANT: THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE “STRUCTURE OF THE WORLD WHICH ENVIRONS US”

Gordon Kaufman's “constructive theology” can easily be taken out of context and misunderstood or misrepresented as a denial of God. It is too easily overlooked that in his approach everything is an imaginary construct given no immediate ontological status—the self, the world, and God are “products of the imagination.” This reflects an influence, not only of theories on linguistic and cultural relativism, but also of Kant's “ideas of pure reason.” Kaufman is explicit about this debt to Kant. But I argue there are other aspects of Kant's legacy implicit in his method. These center around Kaufman's engagement with “observed patterns” in nature. With Paul Tillich's aid, I bring this neglected issue to the fore and argue that addressing it allows one to more readily capitalize upon the Kantian influence in Kaufman's method. This, in turn, encourages one to tap more deeply into the epistemic underpinnings of Kaufman's approach to the science–religion dialogue.     

Wild chimeras: Enthusiasm and intellectual virtue in Kant

Kant typically is not identified with the tradition of virtue epistemology. Although he may not be a virtue epistemologist in a strict sense, I suggest that intellectual virtues and vices play a key role in his epistemology. Specifically, Kant identifies a serious intellectual vice that threatens to undermine reason, namely enthusiasm (Schwärmerei). Enthusiasts become so enamored with their own thinking that they refuse to subject reason to self‐critique. The particular danger of enthusiasm is that reason colludes in its own destruction: Enthusiasm occurs when self‐conceit and reason's desire to transcend its boundaries mutually reinforce each other. I conclude by sketching an account of Kantian intellectual virtue that is consistent with Kantian moral virtue.     

The Origins of Walter Benjamin's Concept of Philosophical Critique

Focusing on Walter Benjamin's earliest pieces dedicated to school reform and the student movement, this article traces the basic critical approaches informing his mature thought back to his struggle to critically implement and transform the theory of concept formation and value presentation developed by his Freiburg teacher, Heinrich Rickert. It begins with an account of Rickert's work, specifically of the concept of Darstellung (presentation) and its central role in Rickert's postmetaphysical theory of historical research (which he characterizes as exclusively concerned with the Kantian quid juris). It shows that Rickert develops a speculative but practical theory of value recognition, which nevertheless leaves the status of value itself undetermined. Contra Rickert, Benjamin returns to the ignored quid facti, or origin of value, and shows that a metacritical, postmetaphysical approach such as Rickert's ultimately limits possible experience rather than grounding it. This basic insight, it is argued, is the cornerstone of Benjamin's concept of critique.     

Impartial Morality and Practical Deliberation as First‐Personal

Bernard Williams questioned whether impartial morality “can allow for the importance of individual character and personal relations in moral experience.” Underlying his position is a distinction between factual and practical deliberation. While factual deliberation is about the world and brings in a standpoint that is impartial, practical deliberation is, he claims, radically first‐personal; it “involves an I that [is] intimately the I of my desires.” While it may be thought that Williams's claim implies an unpalatable Humean subjectivism, the present article argues that this does not follow: That first‐person practical deliberation is directed both by the “I of my desires” and by the world. Drawing on Peter Winch's argument against the universalizability of moral judgments and D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, the article argues that practical deliberations involve discovering value in the world, but that what is revealed about the world depends constitutively on the first‐person deliberations and decisions of particular agents.     

Comments on Guyer

Paul Guyer's paper “Naturalistic and Transcendental Moments in Kant's Moral Philosophy” raises a set of issues about how Kantian ethics should be understood in relation to present day “philosophical naturalism” that are very much in need of discussion. The paper itself is challenging, even in some respects iconoclastic, and provides a highly welcome provocation to raise in new ways some basic questions about what Kantian ethics is and what it ought to be. Guyer offers us an admirably informed and complex argument, both historical and philosophical, that tangles with some of the most difficult problems in Kant's moral philosophy. It begins with some ambitious and controversial claims about Kant's moral philosophy prior to the Groundwork of 1785. It then offers an interpretation, and also a fundamental criticism, of the Groundwork's attempt to establish the moral law based on the idea of freedom of the will. And finally, it raises – and expresses some opinions on – the large and vexed questions of the relationship between transcendental philosophy and philosophical naturalism, and whether Kantian ethics can be made consistent with a naturalistic philosophical outlook. In these comments I will have something to say on each of these three topics, without pretending (any more than Guyer does) to have exhausted what might be said about them.     

EVOLUTION,NATURALISM, AND THE WORTHWHILE: A CRITIQUE OF RICHARD JOYCE'S EVOLUTIONARY DEBUNKING OF MORALITY

Abstract: In The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce argues there is good reason to think that the “moral sense” is a biological adaptation, and that this provides a genealogy of the moral sense that has a debunking effect, driving us to the conclusion that “our moral beliefs are products of a process that is entirely independent of their truth, … we have no grounds one way or the other for maintaining these beliefs.” I argue that Joyce's skeptical conclusion is not warranted. Even if the moral sense is a biological adaptation, developed moralities (such as Aristotelian eudaimonism) can “co‐opt” it into new roles so that the moral judgments it makes possible can come to transcend the evolutionary process that is “entirely independent of their truth.” While evolutionary theory can shed much light on our shared human nature, moral theories must still be vindicated, or debunked, by moral arguments.     

Practical judgment as reflective judgment: On moral salience and Kantian particularist universalism

Moral particularists and generalists alike have struggled over how to incorporate the role of moral salience in ethical reasoning. In this paper, I point to neglected resources in Kant to account for the role of moral salience in maxim formation: Kant's theory of reflective judgment. Kant tasks reflective judgment with picking out salient empirical particulars for formation into maxims, associating it with purposiveness, or intentional activity (action on ends). The unexpected resources in Kantian reflective judgment suggest the possibility of a particularist universalism, where recalcitrant particulars directly inform, and in some cases revise, moral principles. Such an account improves on particularist accounts of moral salience and moral perception: rather than deriving moral sensitivity solely from an agent's upbringing or cultural resources, the reflective dimension is situated alongside the universalist dimension of moral principles typically identified with Kantian ethics, allowing for a critical approach both to moral universals and to the reception of moral particulars.     

PEIRCE'S "ARCHITECTURE OF THEORIES" AND THE PROBLEM OF PRAGMATISM

The paper begins as a response to Tom Rockmore's thesis that contemporary pragmatism is a healthy “confusion” of disparate views. While Rockmore sees the need of some of today's pragmatists to provide a motivation for what he calls “epistemic optimism,” I contend that the crucial question of pragmatism, the problem of pragmatism, is the ontological status of pragmatic meaning. Thus rather than a mere “epistemic optimism,” I call upon pragmatists to assert a fallible yet unabashedly metaphysical optimism. The argument supporting this claim is made in the context of Peirce's “The Architecture of Theories.” In “The Architecture of Theories” Peirce opens the door to a pragmatic metaphysics while at the same time committing the error of subordinating truths and reality to “the long run of inquiry.” Rockmore suggest that the solution may lie in a return to Kant's notion of the “powers of the mind.” However, it is my contention that a solution to this problem cannot be found within Kant at all. I shall argue here that until contemporary pragmatism decisively extracts itself from the Kantian paradigm, the pragmatic philosophic value of pragmatic meaning will always be qualified, conditional and ontologically subordinated, having the same effect upon the standing of pragmatism as a philosophy as well. Moreover, I shall endeavor to show that when the Kantian paradigm is finally abandoned, pragmatism's classic difficulties with realism and what Peircc called “the long run” of scientific inquiry can also be resolved. Kantian “powers of the mind” and constructivist “epistemological optimism” would then be transformed into what I shall call unrestricted pragmatism. On the other hand if the Kantian impediment is not overcome, these difficulties will continue to form the basis of a more sceptical and traditionally restricted pragmatism, one which lacks the confidence desired by both Rockmore and myself.     

Reasonable Pluralism,Interculturalism, and Sterba on Question-Beggingness

In From Rationality to Equality, James Sterba (From rationality to equality. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) argues that the non-moral, and non-controversial, principle of logic, the principle that good arguments do not beg-the-question, provides a rationally conclusive response to egoism. He calls this “the principle of non-question-beggingness” and it is supposed to justify a conception of “Morality as Compromise.” Sterba’s basic idea is that principles of morality provide a non-question-begging compromise between self-interested reasons and other-regarding reasons. I will focus, first, on Sterba’s rejection of the alternative Kantian rationalist justification of morality, and second, I discuss the logical principle of non-question-beggingness and I argue that Sterba is wrong to assume that there is a formal, logical requirement that a rational egoist must provide a non-question-begging defense of egoism. I argue that, like the Kantian, Sterba needs a more substantial conception of practical reason to derive his conclusion. My third focus is the problem of reasonable pluralism and public reason (Rawls in Political liberalism. Columbia University Press, New York, 1996; The law of peoples with the idea of public reason revisited. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1999). The Rawlsian principle of public reason is analogous to Sterba’s principle of non-question-beggingness. Sterba recognizes that public policies should respect competing perspectives and that a public conception of justice must be justifiable to all reasonable people. The problem is that that reasonable people disagree about fundamental moral questions. Rawls calls this the fact of reasonable pluralism. I argue that an intercultural conception of justice is necessary to provide a response to reasonable pluralism and a shared basis for public reason.     

Hegel's critique of Kant

In this paper we present a reconstruction of Hegel's critique of Kant. We try to show the congruence of that critique in both theoretical and practical philosophy. We argue that this congruence is to be found in Hegel's criticism of Kant's hylemorphism in his theoretical and practical philosophy. Hegel is much more sympathetic to Kant's response to the distinction between matter and form in his theoretical philosophy and he credits Kant with ‘discovering’ here that thinking is an activity that always takes place within a greater whole. He, however, argues that the consequences of this are much more significant than Kant suspects and that, most importantly, the model of cognition in which thought (form) confronts something non-thought (matter) is unsustainable. This leads to Hegel's appropriation of Kantian reflective judgements, arguing that the greater whole in which thinking takes place is a socially shared set of meanings, something resembling what Kant calls a sensus communis. From here, it is not far to Hegel's Geist, which eventually gains self-consciousness in Sittlichkeit, a whole of social practices of mutual recognition. In practical philosophy, Hegel argues for the importance of situating oneself within such a whole in order to attain the self-knowledge required for autonomous, or ethically required, action. For this to happen, he claims, it is necessary to recognise the status of Kantian Moralität as a form of Sittlichkeit or social practice. This would justify our practices without an appeal to a ‘fact of reason’ and also allow a wider range of actions that could count as autonomous.     

SECOND NATURE AND SPIRIT: HEGEL ON THE ROLE OF HABIT IN THE APPEARANCE OF PERCEPTUAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Hegel's discussion of the concept of “habit” appears at a crucial point in his Encyclopedia system, namely, in the transition from the topic of “nature” to the topic of “spirit” (Geist): it is through habit that the subject both distinguishes itself from its various sensory states as an absolute unity (the I) and, at the same time, preserves those sensory states as the content of sensory consciousness. By calling habit a “second nature,” Hegel highlights the fact that incipient spirit retains a “moment” of the natural that marks a limitation compared to “pure thought” but that also makes perceptual consciousness possible. This makes Hegel's account analogous in important respects to John McDowell's “naturalism of second nature.” But Hegel's account of habit can be seen as a version of a Kantian synthesis of the productive imagination—and hence presupposes a given material that can become one's own by means of habit. This does not mean that Hegel falls into the Myth of the Given, but it does suggest that an appropriate account of second nature might be committed to something McDowell wants to deny: that nonconceptual states of consciousness play a role (even if not a justificatory role) in perception.