Obwohl Kants Tugendlehre bei ihrer Veröffentlichung weithin unbeachtet bleibt, entfaltet sie in den letzten Jahren eine zunehmende Wirkung: ein revolutionär neuer Tugend-Begriff, der mit Nachdruck vertretene Gedanke von Pflichten gegen andere und auch gegen sich selbst, eine Auseinandersetzung mit "Liebespflichten" sowie mit Achtung und Würde. Der von Fachleuten verfasste Kommentar, der anlässlich des 300. Jubiläums Immanuel Kants in einer 2. überarbeiteten erscheint, entschlüsselt damit das letzte wichtige Werk Kants zur Moral. Mit Beiträgen von Monika Betzler, Jochen Bojanowski, Dahan Fan, Franz (...) Hespe Moritz Hildt, Otfried Höffe, Dieter Hüning, Heiner F. Klemme, Karoline Reinhardt, Elke E. Schmidt, Dieter Schönecker, Oliver Sensen, Amelie Stuart. (shrink)

Different from the autonomy of understanding in cognition and the autonomy of practical reason in praxis, the heautonomy in the judgement of taste is reflexive. The reflexivity consists not only in the fact that the power of judgement legislates to its own usage but also, and more importantly, it legislates itself through its own operative process. This normativity, based on the self-referential structure of pure aesthetic judgement and the a priori principle of subjective, internal purposiveness, can be regarded as a (...) self-discovering and -flourishing principle that organically grows out of the aesthetic experience and, at the same time, regulates its growth in return. In this scenario, aesthetic freedom can be identified as a third kind of freedom different from Kant’s transcendental freedom and practical freedom—a flexible and living freedom with spontaneous legislation, but not bound by any determinate laws. (shrink)

It has been suggested that, in addition to individual level decision-making, informed consent procedures could be used in collective decision-making too. One of the main criticisms directed at this suggestion concerns decision-making power. It is maintained that consent is a veto power concept and that, as such, it is not appropriate for collective decision-making. This paper examines this objection to collective informed consent. It argues that veto power informed consent can have some uses in the collective level and that when (...) it is not appropriate the decision power a concerned party ought to have in connection with an arrangement should be made relative to the interest she has at stake in it. It concludes that the objection examined does not undermine collective informed consent. (shrink)

Can a moral monster - a person whose life is characterised by immoral actions - live a meaningful life? Pre-theoretical intuitions appear divided. For some, moral monsters can't live a meaningful life because they were immoral, while for others they did because morality is irrelevant. So what is the relationship between morality and meaning? This article contends that both sides are partially correct but for the wrong reasons: moral monsters don’t live meaningful lives, but morality is irrelevant for meaning. First, (...) it is argued moral monsters live meaningless lives not because of immoral actions per se, but rather the harm they cause. Second, that moral monsters can live meaningful lives confuses meaningfulness with significance. Significance, I propose, is conferred upon a life when one's actions impact others' well-being for good or ill. On the view, moral monsters live meaningless but significant lives. (shrink)

An influential view of sexual morality claims that participant consent is sufficient for the moral permissibility of a sexual act. I argue that the complex and frequently dark nature of sexual desire precludes this, because some sexual desire has a character such that it should not be gratified, even if this were consented to. I illustrate this with a discussion of a famous literary character, the Vicomte de Valmont, and draw on Kant's anthropology to illuminate the nature of such desire, (...) before offering an account of its psychological roots. In the course of the paper I explain why the view of sexual desire endorsed by my main opponents is mistaken, and attack the limited conception of the normative which is a central plank in the argument of a prominent recent defender of the view, Igor Primoratz. (shrink)

In this paper, I critique one aspect of Simester and von Hirsch’s, Crimes, Harms, and Wrongs—their recognition of harm and offence principles, but failure to construct a paternalistic principle, despite their willingness to countenance some small measure of criminal paternalism. Construction of such a principle would have clarified the problems of as well as the limits to criminalising paternalism.

This paper argues that morality depends on prudence, or more specifically, that one cannot be a moral person without being prudent. Ethicists are unaware of this, ignore it, or imply it is wrong. Although this thesis is not obvious from the current perspective of ethics, I believe that its several implications for ethics make it worth examining. In this paper I argue for the prudence dependency thesis by isolating moral practice from all reliance on prudence. The result is that in (...) the actual world in which we live one cannot be moral unless one is prudent. In order to show that morality depends on prudence for the entire range of moral situations, we put prudence to the test against the most extraordinary of moral situations: moral dilemmas. Doing so shows that for all practical purposes moral dilemmas are prudential problems for agents, giving further support to the prudence dependency thesis. (shrink)

In his recent book, Joshi (2021) argues that the open exchange of ideas is essential for the flourishing of individuals and society. He provides two arguments for this claim. First, speaking your mind is essential for the common good: we enhance our collective ability to reach the truth if we share evidence and offer different perspectives. Second, speaking your mind is good for your own sake: it is necessary to develop your rational faculties and exercise intellectual independence, both of which (...) are essential for living a good life. In this paper, I consider the implications of Joshi’s argument and raise several objections to his view. (shrink)

Kant offers the following argument for the formula of humanity (FH): Each rational agent necessarily conceives of her own rational nature as an end in itself and does so on the same grounds as every other rational agent, so all rational agents must conceive of one another's rational nature as an end in itself. As it stands, the argument appears to be question-begging and fallacious. Drawing on resources from the formula of universal law (FUL) and Kant's claims about the primacy (...) of duties to oneself, I propose a contractualist reconstruction of this puzzling line of reasoning. (shrink)

It seems, at first glance, that a Kantian ethics approach to moral enhancement would tend towards the position that there could be no place for emotional modulation in any understanding of the endeavour, owing to the typically understood view that Kantian ethics does not allow any role for emotion in morality as a whole. It seems then that any account of moral bioenhancement which places emotion at its centre would therefore be rejected. This article argues, however, that this assumption is (...) incorrect. Given later writings by Kant on the role of sympathy, and taking into account other concerns in Kantian ethics, it may in fact be the case that Kantian ethics would allow for an account of moral bioenhancement through emotional modulation, and that in some cases such an intervention might even be considered to be a duty. (shrink)

In this commentary, I critically discuss the respective views of Gert and Beauchamp–Childress on the nature of so-called common morality and its promise for enriching ethical reflection within the field of bioethics. Although I endorse Beauchamp and Childress’ shift from an emphasis on ethical theory as the source of moral norms to an emphasis on common morality, I question whether rouging up common morality to make it look like some sort of ultimate and universal foundation for morality, untouched by the (...) dialectics of time and reflective equilibrium, was an equally good move. As for Gert’s magisterial conception of common morality, I conclude that certain elements of his system are controversial at best and woefully inadequate at worst. He has a tendency to find in common morality what he himself put there, and his highly restricted conception of duties of assistance strikes this reader as ad hoc, inadequately defended, and unworthy of a project whose goal is to lessen the amount of misery in the world. (shrink)

Recently some bioethicists and neuroscientists have argued for an imperative of chemical cognitive enhancement. This imperative is usually based on consequentialist grounds. In this paper, the topic of cognitive self-enhancement is discussed from a Kantian point of view in order to shed new light on the controversial debate. With Kant, it is an imperfect duty to oneself to strive for perfecting one’s own natural and moral capacities beyond one’s natural condition, but there is no duty to enhance others. A Kantian (...) approach does not directly lead to a duty of chemical cognitive self-enhancement, but it also does not clearly rule out that this type of enhancement can be an appropriate means to the end of self-improvement. The paper shows the benefits of a Kantian view, which offers a consistent ideal of self-perfection and teaches us a lesson about the crucial relevance of the attitude that underlies one’s striving for cognitive self-improvement: the lesson of treating oneself as an end in itself and not as mere means to the end of better output. (shrink)

In The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant claims that “the first command” of all self-regarding duties is to know our “heart.” Kant ostensibly identifies our heart with our moral disposition. Strangely, this appears to be precisely the sort of knowledge that, elsewhere, Kant claims is epistemically inaccessible to us. While the more sophisticated attempts to resolve this difficulty succeed in situating an injunction to know the quality of one’s disposition within a Kantian epistemic framework, no account is wholly successful in explaining (...) why Kant takes self-knowledge to be a necessary condition of virtue. To make sense of the priority Kant assigns to the pursuit of self-knowledge, I argue that it is essential to understand the role of what has been called “generic” self-knowledge in Kant’s moral philosophy. I proceed to defend the place Kant grants moral self-knowledge in his moral philosophy, primarily by developing a Kantian account of such “generic” self-knowledge. (shrink)

Despite the impressive progress that has been made on both the empirical and conceptual fronts of boredom research, there is one facet of boredom that has received remarkably little attention. This is boredom's relationship to morality. The aim of this article is to explore the moral dimensions of boredom and to argue that boredom is a morally relevant personality trait. The presence of trait boredom hinders our capacity to flourish and in doing so hurts our prospects for a moral life. (...) -/- . (shrink)

Does the fact that humans are vulnerable, needy and dependent beings play an important role in Kantian ethics? It is sometimes claimed that it cannot and does not. I argue that it can and does. I distinguish between broad (all persons are vulnerable) and narrow (only some persons are vulnerable) senses of vulnerability, and explain the role of vulnerability in both senses in Kantian ethics. The basis of this argument is to show that the core normative focus of Kantian ethics (...) is on the dignity that human beings have in virtue of their capacity for rational agency. This implies that the empirical conditions under which human beings can acquire, sustain, exercise, and develop their rational capacities are of core moral importance in Kantian ethics. This explains why human vulnerabilities, including the vulnerability of human bodies, are important in Kantian ethics, since rational capacities in human agents (and the bodies those rational capacities depend upon) are highly vulnerable in all persons (vulnerability in the broad sense) and especially vulnerable in some sub-groups of persons (vulnerability in the narrow sense). (shrink)