The Practical Significance of Kant’s Categorical Imperative

On a standard interpretation, the aim of the formula of universal law is to provide a decision procedure for determining the deontic status of actions. By contrast, this chapter argues for the practical significance of the Categorical Imperative (CI) centering on Kant’s account of the dynamics of incentives. This approach avoids some widespread misconceptions about how the CI operates and false expectations about what it promises and delivers. In particular, it explains how it differs from deductive practical inferences. The CI is the supreme form of morality, and yet not in the sense that particular categorical principles can be derived deductively from it, once the relevant details are supplied. The efficacy of practical reasoning primarily concerns agents and consists in their reorientation toward the right end. Moral knowledge is knowledge about what we ought to do, but it is also a distinctive variety of self-knowledge, that is, knowledge of ourselves as rationally efficacious agents.

Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics Volume 11

This series aims to provide, on an annual basis, some of the best contemporary work in the field of normative ethical theory. Each volume features new chapters that contribute to an understanding of a wide range of issues and positions in normative ethical theory, and represents a sampling of recent developments in this field. This 11th volume brings together 13 new essays that collectively cover a range of fundamental topics in the field, including moral conscientiousness and moral wrongness; impartiality and the boundaries of morality; moral testimony; Kant’s categorical imperative; and ethical theories as methods of ethics.

Introduction

Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics features new work in normative ethical theory. This 11th volume includes chapters on the following topics: the significance of appreciation; the objective/subjective debate over wrongness; requests as a kind of wrong; the puzzle of taking comfort in the travails of others; finding meaning in one’s life; the boundaries of morality in light of the legitimacy of non-moral partialist pursuits; the value of moral testimony to those who testify; the category of “ordinary” wrongs that are not blameworthy; the practical role of Kant’s Categorical Imperative; the possibility of non-moral blame; reasons to reject the category of subjective obligation; how to understand the point of ethical theory; and the justification of social moral rules....

Kantian Ethics and Utopian Thinking

Is Kantian ethics guilty of utopian thinking? Good and bad uses of utopian ideals are distinguished, an apparent path is traced from Rousseau’s unworkable political ideal to Kant’s ethical ideal, and three versions of Kant’s Categorical Imperative (and counterparts in common moral discourse) are examined briefly with special attention on the kingdom of ends formulation. Following summary of previous development of this central idea, several objections suggesting that this idea encourages bad utopian thinking are briefly addressed: that we cannot count on everyone to follow ideal rules, that even conscientious people disagree in their moral judgments, and that theories that allow exceptions to familiar moral rules create a “slippery slope” to consequentialism.

The Groundwork

This essay notes background in Kant’s first Critique, reviews the aims and arguments of his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals section by section, and calls attention to several remaining questions and controversies. The Preface states the overall aim to identify the supreme principle of morality and to defend its claim to be rationally necessary. Section one uses common moral thought about duty and moral worth to identify the basic principle of a good will. Section two argues from the common idea of duty that this same principle is the supreme moral principle, that its requirements are expressed in several formulations, that this is the only possible Categorical Imperative, and that it presupposes that moral agents have autonomy of the will. The third section argues from a practical standpoint that we must take ourselves to be rational agents with autonomy of the will and therefore subject to the Categorical Imperative.

The Kantian System of Duties

Beginning with Kant’s infamous “derivation of duties” problem, the chapter argues that the Groundwork’s categorical imperative (as principle or test) was never intended for duty-generation. By contrast, the two parts of the Metaphysics of Morals set out a system of duties, with priority given to duties of Right. Answerable to innate right, juridical duties secure persons’ moral standing. The institutions of Right create new moral powers that enable persons to obligate others, resolving the moral impossibilities of human life in a state of nature. Examples of self-defense and duties of free communication show how a value that first appears as a juridical duty descends to and is completed by ethical duties, here concerning truthful speech and integrity of the body. The chapter concludes with an argument for the idea of “provisional universal right” that marks a moral standard and source of duties even where legitimate juridical conditions are absent.

Subject to the Law of Reason while Belonging to the World of Sense: the Inevitable Randomness of Human Experience in The Brothers Karamazov and ‘The Garden of Forking Paths'

Taking as its starting point the tension between the human condition as subject to the law of reason while belonging to the world of sense in establishing the categorical imperative as described by Kant, this article explores how belonging to the world of sense may be equated with randomness and the temporal as the presupposition for morality in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Borges's ‘The Garden of Forking Paths'. The article also discusses the two authors' views of time and eternity as expressed in their nonfiction.

Acceleration, Education and Resonance

This article aims to reflect on the themes of Acceleration, Education and Resonance. The work discusses the educational process, already exhaustively addressed, from a perspective not yet explored in the work of Hartmut Rosa: the historically feasible process of acceleration and its bet on the construction of resonant relationships in the educational process. The constitution and consolidation of the educational process is feasible, and that it is continuously modified with processes of ruptures, advances and setbacks, in the name of Culture. Rosa exhaustively explores the process of acceleration of the world in her work “Acceleration”, as well as underscores in “Ressonance” the need to build an “oasis of resonance”. This work, as a reflexive exercise, dares to weave an arrangement in which it is not possible to think or even build an “acceleration oasis” in the educational space without this construction not considering the categorical imperative of time.

Human happiness, Conscience and Duties

Mankind has long faced the question - what is the main thing in human life, Why is life worth living?Some philosophers considered happiness-pleasure-bliss to be the highest value. Consequently, the meaning of human lifewas seen in achieving all this (Democrats, Epicureans and Epicureans, French and English materialists, Feuerbach, Russian Revolutionary Democrats), while others viewed life in accordance with duty. According to the ethics of happiness, the main orientation of morality is the pursuit of happiness; Morality is what leads a person to happiness. This does not preclude a moment of temporary suffering and distress in order to achieve ultimate bliss.Such an understanding of happiness and the recognition of bliss as the meaning of human life has aroused the desire of all sections of society to strive for happiness. That caused a collision between the interests of people, often irreconcilable conflicts and contradictions.Ethical rigorism based morality solely on a sense of duty and ruled out human spontaneous aspirations. It is essentially the same as asceticism. And according to the representatives of the ethics of duty, we should look for the meaning of human life in the specifics of human life. If we see the meaning of human life in the pursuit of happiness and bliss, then Then human life is nothing higher than the existence of animals - the regulator of animal behavior is also pleasure-enjoyment-bliss! Man stands above the animal world so much that he can subdue his aspirations towards sources of pleasure and live according to his\her duties. People have these responsibilities to the homeland, relatives and humanity, as well as to themselves. For example, taking care of your own health-beauty, acquiring knowledge, moral perfection. Performing duty requires great spiritual tension, a strict attitude towards oneself, that is why living according to duty is the specificity of human existence, which gives a person a sense of dignity and perfection.Ethics historians point out that eventually, from the "back door", the ethics of duty also goes to the ethics of happiness, because it promises people to achieve happiness through the performance of duties. By the same logic, ethics, happiness attributed to Christian ethics too. Christian ethics emphasizes man's responsibilities to God, his parents, other people, and even his own enemies. At the same time, this will faithfully discharge the duties of the person promises to God's mercy in this world and paradise in the country. It is nothing but happiness. Duty as the end of human life was recognized by Immanuel Kant. In his view, morality and moral behavior must be based on a sense of duty, regardless of any consequences of the behavior (see Kant's categorical imperative).