Abstract

The thesis of this dissertation is that, as he presents it, Kant's position fails to stand up to the idealist/monist challenge. In examining the reasons for this failure, however, and in determining what kinds of arguments it would take to resist the Hegelian attack, we learn a great deal about what the dualistic position entails in general, and what it entails with regard to ethics, in particular. ;I begin by showing why both Kant's ethical and epistemological dualisms cannot resist Hegel's moves against them. I then determine what kind of dualism it would, in fact, take to oppose Hegel's Aufhebung, and I use Freud in order to develop a more concrete understanding of the features which this kind of dualism needs to have in the ethical domain. Finally, I show that this newly developed dualism does indeed take better account of our moral experience than any monism possibly could. I point precisely to those elements of our experience which monism misses, and which may therefore properly be called dualistic. And I also show that even those phenomena which the monist places at the center of her analysis can be understood more thoroughly if we speak about them in the dualistic terms I introduce. The relationship between this strengthened dualism and ideas found in Heidegger, Rorty and Derrida is also discussed