Toward a Critical Ethic: Hobbes, Kant, and Nietzsche on Feelings and Foundations

Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst (2002)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The texts that play a major role in my dissertation include Hobbes's Leviathan, Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and Critique of Practical Reason, and Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil and Toward a Genealogy of Morals. My research is situated on the border between ethics and politics because I challenge the belief that ethical conduct always requires universal laws. The articulation of an ethical sensibility that is not grounded on a universal law has been one of the thorniest issues in political theory. Ethical reflection has been unnecessarily trapped between the poles of moral universalism and/or relativism. Through readings of Hobbes, Kant, and Nietzsche in reference to foundations and specific human feelings, I demonstrate that the absence of moral universals does not put an end to ethics but is the condition for a new ethical sensibility that overcomes the this opposition. A critical ethic confronts the difficulty of articulating the relationship between ethics and politics in an age of disenchantment

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Actions and feelings: Série 2.Maria Borges - 2008 - Kant E-Prints 3:115-122.
Kant against Hobbes in theory and practice.Patrick Riley - 2007 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 4 (2):194-206.
The Role of God in Kant's Ethical Theory.Deborah Eve Kerman - 1988 - Dissertation, Stanford University
Natural Right in Hobbes and Kant.Howard Williams - 2012 - Hobbes Studies 25 (1):66-90.
Nietzsche's Imperatives.William Henry Winstead - 2001 - Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Kant against Hobbes: Reasoning and rhetoric.Gabriella Slomp - 2007 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 4 (2):207-222.
Husserl’s Critique of Kant’s Ethics.Henning Peucker - 2007 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45 (2):309-319.
Kant on Moral Sensibility and Moral Motivation.Owen Ware - 2014 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 52 (4):727-746.
Morality and the good life: an introduction to ethics through classical sources.Robert C. Solomon - 2009 - Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Edited by Clancy W. Martin & Wayne Vaught.
Duties to Oneself, Duties of Respect to Others.Allen Wood - 2009 - In Thomas E. Hill (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Kant's Ethics. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 229–251.
Formalism in Kant's Ethics.Thomas Michael Powers - 1994 - Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-02-05

Downloads
0

6 months
0

Historical graph of downloads

Sorry, there are not enough data points to plot this chart.
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references