Towards a More Comprehensive Interpretation of Kant’s Ethics: The Case of Those Who Are Viewed Only as Means (original) (raw)

Who is Rationalising? On an Overlooked Problem for Kant’s Moral Psychology and Method of Ethics

Кантовский сборник, 2022

Автор критически исследует убедительность кантовской концепции мудрствования-формы самообмана, играющей решающую роль для кантовской моральной психологии и его видения функций критической практической философии. Основная проблема, которую автор усматривает в концепции Канта, состоит в том, что в последней не существует независимых от теории критериев, позволяющих определить, является ли упражнение рациональных способностей мудрствованием. Кант считает, что мудрствование широко распространено, и обвиняет в этом популярных философов и других теоретиков в области этики. При этом его оппоненты могли бы, в свою очередь, обвинить его самого в том же самом. Некоторые теоретики, а именно консеквенциалисты действия, по-видимому, находятся даже на более выгодных позициях, чем сам Кант, позволяющих им обвинять его в мудрствовании. В этой связи автор описывает стандарты, которые не предполагают конкретной нормативной теории и становятся очевидными при рассмотрении случаев явного злоупотребления рациональностью. Эти стандарты минимально приемлемого рассуждения могут помочь нам диагностировать мудрствование. Автор разрабатывает эти стандарты, рассматривая случаи неадекватного использования рациональных способностей с уверенностью, что они являются проблемными

The question of being in Kant’s philosophy

ESSE: filosofskie i teologičeskie issledovaniâ, 2019

Кандидат философских наук, старший научный сотрудник Социологического института РАН Федерального научноисследовательского социологического центра Российской академии наук, доцент Кафедры общественных наук Санкт-Петербургского политехнического университета Петра Великого.

Kozlovskyi V. Kant’s moral anthropology-general outline of the project

2013

This article investigates Kant's moral anthropology project, which was mentioned in his well as in unfinished manuscript, that publishers call "Opus Postumum". In these texts philosopher has formulated the idea of a special anthropological doctrine that needs to be created for better understanding of how to apply pure (a priori) imperatives of moral and rights in the context of human (empirical) nature. In this article correlations between project of moral philosophy with anthropology of religion in particular the doctrine of radical evil written by German thinker can be traced. The most radical evil, specific to the human nature, underlines the peculiarities of the moral anthropology, because human predisposition to evil is the founding idea that makes this type of anthropological discussion possible. Most of the attention is given to ascertaining the characteristics of the moral anthropology which underline its relativity to the "experience of the radical evil" on one hand and to the principles of the critical philosophy on the other. At the same time, it is shown that moral anthropology should not be viewed as the consistent implementation of the aforementioned principles. In his handwritten notes, the German philosopher studies the idea of the

The Role of the Sublime in Kant’s Religion: Moral Motivation and Empirical Possibility

Kantian Journal, 2020

I show that Kant’s depiction of the christic figure in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is not contingent but explains how this figure functions in two essential ways: as a representation of a maximum of morality that can ground our moral disposition and in so doing acts as a stan­dard for morality. More precisely, the following argument is made: 1) the sublime nature of the image of Christ — as an image of universal respect for the law — awakens the moral feeling of subjects in the sense of the possibility of overcoming one’s perverted nature; 2) as moral perfection it provides immediate transparency to the end goal of morality; 3) just as in the case of associative construction of empirical concepts, the sublime provides the prototype for association through which empirical acts are determined as moral ones; 4) the image of Christ also acts as motivator by encompassing said trans­parency and standard in the idea of moral perfection. These four points show that the image of Christ functions in a dual manner. Points 1) to 3) address Christ as a prototype/archetype (Urbild) — awakening and making possible a moral redefinition of the subject — while point 4) addresses Christ as an example (Vorbild) — sustaining and entertaining the moral redefinition as a motivating model.

Conceptuality of the Intuition: Sellars сompletes Kant’s Epistemology (in Ukrainian)

Sententiae, 2016

The article deals with Wilfrid Sellars’ interpretation of Kant’s concept of intuition. The au-thor demonstrates that Sellars’ two-aspect view follows both basic Kantian distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal, and his division of the cognitive capacities. Meanwhile, on the ground of unifying intensional semantics and productive imagination, Sellars completes Kantian model of cognition by eliminating the sharp opposition between passive sensibility and active reason. Thus Sellars makes the mechanism of transcendental logic unified in the context of modal logic. The author argues that such approach would be successful if guided by a princi-pal rejection of the idea of pure synthesis as well as the hard version of apriorism. In general, the conceptualistic-and-categorial treatment of intuition helps to (a) overcome contradictory predicates problem, (b) bring together Critical philosophy and Scientific Realism. Also, using the Kantian doctrine of double affection, it (c) makes possible to describe the theory of meaning as a part of the theory of truth.

Kant and Analysis (with Timothy Williamson)

Kantian Journal 42/3, 49-73, 2023

In the current dialogue between two authors with different views on analysis, philosophy, and the use of labels, the leading question is: How should one understand the expression ‘analytic philosophy’? Lewin argues that as there are no generally agreed tenets and methods of what is being called ‘analytic philosophy’, the name is to be replaced by a more specific one or abandoned. Williamson defends the use of this phrase, claiming that it is quite serviceable, as it relates to a broad tradition of influence, while it is not even required to adhere to the method of analysis in any distinctive sense. Lewin counters that, in this case, ‘analytic philosophy’ is too empty. One could heal this by conceptual analysis of ‘analytic philosophy’ — but then Kant, for whom philosophy is inherently analytic, would be a proponent of analytic philosophy. Another option is to follow Ryle’s ideal of a label-free, coherent and honest thinking. As Lewin argues, Williamson’s views seem at least partially to agree with Kant’s conception of the difference between philosophy and history of philosophy as well as empirical analysis and the underlying empirical realism. Williamson replies that he uses ‘analytic philosophy’ in its current meaning, which is not composed of the meanings of ‘analytic’ and ‘philosophy’. The current use is different from the earlier ones and not applicable to Kant. He argues against the transcendental idealism and the coarse-grained distinction between analytic and synthetic and a priori and a posteriori that requires an update.

Kant, Universality Test, and a Criterion of Morality

Russian Journal of Philosophical Sciences, 2018

The universality test is a significant reflective procedure, owing to which Kant’s categorical imperative is brought into proximity with moral practice and with an agent’s decisions made in particular circumstances and at the face of value collisions. The test is to be done in every single case by a moral agent her/himself and it aims to examine a selected maxim for its universality, that is to its congruity to universal and necessary moral law and hence to its moral dignity. This issue has been broadly developed during the last century either within Kant studies, or in positive philosophical discussions, often sharply polemical. The paper represents some positions in those discussions (O. O’Neill, D. Parfit, H.J. Paton, J. Rawls, A.P. Skripnik, E.Y. Soloviev, A.K. Sudakov, A. Wood). No matter how important the universality test in an agent’s moral decisions, so far universality signifies one of three embodiments of the categorical imperative, it would be wrong to consider the test ...

Universality and Autonomy in Kant’s Moral Philosophy

Russian Journal of Philosophical Sciences

The paper is devoted to the analysis of Kant’s approach to the ideas of universality and autonomy as the constitutive features of morality. The paper shows that Kant’s findings concerning these ideas were anticipated by the previous history of moral philosophy, mainly by the modern moral philosophers, who focused specifically on the elaboration of the philosophical concept of morality. Kant’s peculiar role was that, firstly, he conceptualized the ideas of universality and autonomy and formulated corresponding principles; secondly, Kant integrated both principles into the concept of moral law (a key concept in his moral philosophy) and revealed the way by which the formula of universality and the formula of autonomy together with formula of humanity constitute the supreme principle of morality and essentially express the sense of morality itself. Kant believed that the reason for the failure of the previous attempts to explicate the supreme principle of morality was inability to unde...