[PDF] Kant On Morality Humanity And Legality eBook

Author : Ansgar Lyssy
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 30,84 MB
Release : 2020-10-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 3030540502

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It was not so long ago that the dominant picture of Kant’s practical philosophy was formalistic, focusing almost exclusively on his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and Critique of Practical Reason. However, the overall picture of Kant’s wide-ranging philosophy has since been broadened and deepened. We now have a much more complete understanding of the range of Kant’s practical interests and of his contributions to areas as diverse as anthropology, pedagogy, and legal theory. What remains somewhat obscure, however, is how these different contributions hang together in the way that Kant suggests that they must. This book explores these different conceptions of humanity, morality, and legality in Kant as main ‘manifestations’ or ‘dimensions’ of practical normativity. These interrelated terms play a crucial role in highlighting different rational obligations, their source(s), and their applicability in the face of changing circumstances.

Author : Arthur Ripstein
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 416 pages
File Size : 16,4 MB
Release : 2010-02-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0674054512

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In this masterful work, both an illumination of Kant’s thought and an important contribution to contemporary legal and political theory, Arthur Ripstein gives a comprehensive yet accessible account of Kant’s political philosophy. Ripstein shows that Kant’s thought is organized around two central claims: first, that legal institutions are not simply responses to human limitations or circumstances; indeed the requirements of justice can be articulated without recourse to views about human inclinations and vulnerabilities. Second, Kant argues for a distinctive moral principle, which restricts the legitimate use of force to the creation of a system of equal freedom. Ripstein’s description of the unity and philosophical plausibility of this dimension of Kant’s thought will be a revelation to political and legal scholars. In addition to providing a clear and coherent statement of the most misunderstood of Kant’s ideas, Ripstein also shows that Kant’s views remain conceptually powerful and morally appealing today. Ripstein defends the idea of equal freedom by examining several substantive areas of law—private rights, constitutional law, police powers, and punishment—and by demonstrating the compelling advantages of the Kantian framework over competing approaches.

Author : Richard Dean
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 39,46 MB
Release : 2006-05-11
Category : History
ISBN : 0199285721

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The humanity formulation of Kant's Categorical Imperative demands that we treat humanity as an end in itself. Because this principle resonates with currently influential ideals of human rights and dignity, contemporary readers often find it compelling, even if the rest of Kant's moral philosophy leaves them cold. Moreover, some prominent specialists in Kant's ethics have recently turned to the humanity formulation as the most theoretically central and promising principle of Kant'sethics. Nevertheless, it has received less attention than many other aspects of Kant's ethics. Richard Dean offers the most sustained and systematic examination of the humanity formulation to date. He presents an original analysis of what it means to treat humanity as an end in itself, and examinesthe implications both for Kant scholarship and for practical guidance on specific moral issues.

Author : Kenneth R. Westphal
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 286 pages
File Size : 49,24 MB
Release : 2016-04-07
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0191064122

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Kenneth R. Westphal presents an original interpretation of Hume's and Kant's moral philosophies, the differences between which are prominent in current philosophical accounts. Westphal argues that focussing on these differences, however, occludes a decisive, shared achievement: a distinctive constructivist method to identify basic moral principles and to justify their strict objectivity, without invoking moral realism nor moral anti-realism or irrealism. Their constructivism is based on Hume's key insight that 'though the laws of justice are artificial, they are not arbitrary'. Arbitrariness in basic moral principles is avoided by starting with fundamental problems of social coördination which concern outward behaviour and physiological needs; basic principles of justice are artificial because solving those problems does not require appeal to moral realism (nor to moral anti-realism). Instead, moral cognitivism is preserved by identifying sufficient justifying reasons, which can be addressed to all parties, for the minimum sufficient legitimate principles and institutions required to provide and protect basic forms of social coördination (including verbal behaviour). Hume first develops this kind of constructivism for basic property rights and for government. Kant greatly refines Hume's construction of justice within his 'metaphysical principles of justice', whilst preserving the core model of Hume's innovative constructivism. Hume's and Kant's constructivism avoids the conventionalist and relativist tendencies latent if not explicit in contemporary forms of moral constructivism.

Author : Immanuel Kant
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 118 pages
File Size : 31,23 MB
Release : 2013-03-04
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 113489869X

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First published in 2012. Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals is one of the small books which are truly great: it has exercised on human thought an influence almost ludicrously disproportionate to its size. In moral philosophy it ranks with the ‘Republic’ of Plato and the ‘Ethics’ of Aristotle; and perhaps— partly no doubt through the spread of Christian ideals and through the long experience of the human race during the last two thousand years—it shows in some respects a deeper insight even than these. Its main topic—the supreme principle of morality—is of the utmost importance to all who are not indifferent to the struggle of good against evil. Written, as it was, towards the end of the eighteenth century, it is couched in terms other than those that would be used today; but its message was never more needed than it is at present, when a somewhat arid empiricism is the prevailing fashion in philosophy.

Author : Eric Watkins
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 315 pages
File Size : 38,8 MB
Release : 2019-05-16
Category : History
ISBN : 1107163919

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Provides a unified account of the notion of law - both natural and moral - in Kant's abstract and empirical philosophy.

Author : Sven Nyholm
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 35,6 MB
Release : 2015-07-24
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 3110401320

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This book offers new readings of Kant’s “universal law” and “humanity” formulations of the categorical imperative. It shows how, on these readings, the formulas do indeed turn out being alternative statements of the same basic moral law, and in the process responds to many of the standard objections raised against Kant’s theory. Its first chapter briefly explores the ways in which Kant draws on his philosophical predecessors such as Plato (and especially Plato’s Republic) and Jean-Jacque Rousseau. The second chapter offers a new reading of the relation between the universal law and humanity formulas by relating both of these to a third formula of Kant’s, viz. the “law of nature” formula, and also to Kant’s ideas about laws in general and human nature in particular. The third chapter considers and rejects some influential recent attempts to understand Kant’s argument for the humanity formula, and offers an alternative reconstruction instead. Chapter four considers what it is to flourish as a human being in line with Kant’s basic formulas of morality, and argues that the standard readings of the humanity formula cannot properly account for its relation to Kant’s views about the highest human good.

Author : Paul Guyer
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 456 pages
File Size : 17,98 MB
Release : 2000-02-13
Category : History
ISBN : 9780521654210

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Kant is often portrayed as the author of a rigid system of ethics in which adherence to a formal and universal principle of morality - the famous categorical imperative - is an end itself, and any concern for human goals and happiness a strictly secondary and subordinate matter. Such a theory seems to suit perfectly rational beings but not human beings. The twelve essays in this collection by one of the world's preeminent Kant scholars argue for a radically different account of Kant's ethics. They explore an interpretation of the moral philosophy according to which freedom is the fundamental end of human action, but an end that can only be preserved and promoted by adherence to moral law. By radically revising the traditional interpretation of Kant's moral and political philosophy and by showing how Kant's coherent liberalism can guide us in current debates, Paul Guyer will find an audience across moral and political philosophy, intellectual history, and political science.

Author : Samuel J. Kerstein
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 25,6 MB
Release : 2002-05-02
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1139434195

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At the core of Kant's ethics lies the claim that if there is a supreme principle of morality then it cannot be a principle based on utilitarianism or Aristotelian perfectionism or the Ten Commandments. The only viable candidate for such a principle is the categorical imperative. This book is the most detailed investigation of this claim. It constructs a new, criterial reading of Kant's derivation of one version of the categorical imperative: the Formula of Universal Law. This reading shows this derivation to be far more compelling than contemporary philosophers tend to believe. It also reveals a novel approach to deriving another version of the categorical imperative, the Formula of Humanity, a principle widely considered to be the most attractive Kantian candidate for the supreme principle of morality. This book will be important not just for Kant scholars but for a broad swathe of students of philosophy.