Rational Beings with Emotional Needs: The Patient-Centered Grounds of Kant's Duty of Humanity

History of Philosophy Quarterly 32 (4):353-376 (2015)
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Abstract

Over the course of the past several decades, Kant scholars have made significant headway in showing that emotions play a more significant role in Kant's ethics than has traditionally been assumed. Closer attention has been paid to the Metaphysics of Morals (MS) where Kant provides important insights about the value of moral sentiments and the role they should play in our lives. One particularly important discussion occurs in sections 34 and 35 of the Doctrine of Virtue where Kant claims we have a duty to use sympathetic feelings "as a means of promoting active and rational benevolence" (MS 6:457). Kant labels this the "duty of humanity," and he suggests that nature has implanted sympathetic feelings in us "to do what the representation of duty alone might not accomplish" (ibid.). Commentators have rightly highlighted these remarks as prime evidence that feelings do play a positive role in Kant's ethics after all.

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Tyler Paytas
Australian Catholic University

Citations of this work

“Reason's sympathy” and others' ends in Kant.Benjamin Vilhauer - 2021 - European Journal of Philosophy 30 (1):96-112.
Sages, Sympathy, and Suffering in Kant’s Theory of Friendship.Benjamin Vilhauer - 2021 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 51 (6):452-467.

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References found in this work

Practical philosophy.Immanuel Kant - 1996 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Mary J. Gregor.
Kant's Theory of Freedom.Henry E. Allison - 1990 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
The schizophrenia of modern ethical theories.Michael Stocker - 1976 - Journal of Philosophy 73 (14):453-466.
The practice of moral judgment.Barbara Herman - 1985 - Journal of Philosophy 82 (8):414-436.
Anthropology, history, and education.Immanuel Kant - 2007 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Günter Zöller & Robert B. Louden.

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