Among moral attributes true virtue alone is sublime. … [I]t is only by means of this idea [of virtue] that any judgment as to moral worth or its opposite is possible. … Everything good that is not based on a morally good disposition … is nothing but pretence and glittering misery. 1.

Two centuries after they were published, Kant's ethical writings are as much admired and imitated as they have ever been, yet serious and long-standing accusations of internal incoherence remain unresolved. Onora O'Neill traces the alleged incoherences to attempts to assimilate Kant's ethical writings to modern conceptions of rationality, action and rights. When the temptation to assimilate is resisted, a strikingly different and more cohesive account of reason and morality emerges. Kant offers a "constructivist" vindication of reason and a moral vision (...) in which obligations are prior to rights and in which justice and virtue are linked. O'Neill begins by reconsidering Kant's conceptions of philosophical method, reason, freedom, autonomy and action. She then moves on to the more familiar terrain of interpretation of the Categorical Imperative, while in the last section she emphasizes differences between Kant's ethics and recent "Kantian" ethics, including the work of John Rawls and other contemporary liberal political philosophers. (shrink)

In Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason Kant wrote that ‘freedom of the power of choice has the characteristic, entirely peculiar to it, that it cannot be determined to action through any incentive except insofar as the human being has incorporated it into his maxim.’ This is an obscure statement, in both meaning and provenance. Yet almost all recent interpreters of Kant's practical philosophy find it crucial for understanding his theories of freedom and motivation, since it seems to indicate (...) what we are required to do in order to act by our own free choice. Here I refer to Kant's statement expressing the requirement that incentives be incorporated into maxims as his ‘incorporation requirement.’ How that requirement is best understood will be the leading question in what follows: a question I shall answer by showing why the incorporation requirement, and Kant's theories of freedom and motivation, should be understood differently from the way they are now usually understood. (shrink)

In der 1970 gegründeten Reihe erscheinen Arbeiten, die philosophiehistorische Studien mit einem systematischen Ansatz oder systematische Studien mit philosophiehistorischen Rekonstruktionen verbinden. Neben deutschsprachigen werden auch englischsprachige Monographien veröffentlicht. Gründungsherausgeber sind: Erhard Scheibe (Herausgeber bis 1991), Günther Patzig (bis 1999) und Wolfgang Wieland (bis 2003). Von 1990 bis 2007 wurde die Reihe von Jürgen Mittelstraß mitherausgegeben.

Maxims play a crucial role in Kant's ethical philosophy, but there is significant disagreement about what maxims are. In this two-part essay, I survey eight different views of Kantian maxims, presenting their strengths and their weaknesses. In Part II: New Approaches, I look at three more recent views in somewhat greater detail than I do the five treatments canvassed in 'Recent Works on Kantian Maxims I: Established Approaches'. First, there is Richard McCarty's Interpretation, which holds that Kant's understanding of maxims (...) can be illuminated by placing them in the context of the Wollfian tradition, according to which maxims are the major premises of practical syllogisms. The next subject Maria Schwartz, holds that careful attention to Kant's distinction between rules and maxims, as well as Kant's concept of happiness, allows us to make sense of almost all of Kant's remarks on maxims. It may be, however, that on Schwartz's view agents turn out to perform actions as opposed to thoughtlessly habitual behaviors much less often than is plausible. This leads to the final approach, exemplified by Jens Timmermann, which is that Kant understands maxims equivocally. I claim that something like Timmermann's approach is the only way to make sense of all of what Kant has to say on maxims. (shrink)

Perhaps the most fundamental and distinctive idea of Kantian moral psychology is that no behavior can count as action unless it is performed on a subjective practical principle, or a maxim of action. The maxim is supposed to provide the target of moral assessment of all actions, whether this assessment is prospective or retrospective. The presence of a maxim is also supposed to illuminate how it is that agents are active in, hence responsible for, the peculiar species of events we (...) call actions. To put the point roughly, agents are the sources of their actions in that they have in some sense affirmed or endorsed the maxims of these actions. (shrink)

Perhaps the most fundamental and distinctive idea of Kantian moral psychology is that no behavior can count as action unless it is performed on a subjective practical principle, or a maxim of action. The maxim is supposed to provide the target of moral assessment of all actions, whether this assessment is prospective or retrospective. The presence of a maxim is also supposed to illuminate how it is that agents are active in, hence responsible for, the peculiar species of events we (...) call actions. To put the point roughly, agents are the sources of their actions in that they have in some sense affirmed or endorsed the maxims of these actions. (shrink)

Christine Korsgaard has become one of the leading interpreters of Kant's moral philosophy. She is identified with a small group of philosophers who are intent on producing a version of Kant's moral philosophy that is at once sensitive to its historical roots while revealing its particular relevance to contemporary problems. She rejects the traditional picture of Kant's ethics as a cold vision of the moral life which emphasises duty at the expense of love and value. Rather, Kant's work is seen (...) as providing a resource for addressing not only the metaphysics of morals, but also for tackling practical questions about personal relations, politics, and everyday human interaction. This collection contains some of the finest current work on Kant's ethics and will command the attention of all those involved in teaching and studying moral theory. (shrink)

This is a major new study of Kant's ethics that will transform the way students and scholars approach the subject in future. Allen Wood argues that Kant's ethical vision is grounded in the idea of the dignity of the rational nature of every human being. Undergoing both natural competitiveness and social antagonism the human species, according to Kant, develops the rational capacity to struggle against its impulses towards a human community in which the ends of all are to harmonize and (...) coincide. The distinctive features of the book are twofold. First, it focuses for the first time on the central role played in Kant's ethical theory by the value of rational nature as an end itself. Second, it shows the importance of Kant's systematic theory of human nature and history, and its implications for the structure, formulation, and application of Kant's moral principles. This comprehensive study will be of critical importance to students of moral philosophy, the history of ideas, political theory, and religious studies. (shrink)

In his new book the eminent Kant scholar Henry Allison provides an innovative and comprehensive interpretation of Kant's concept of freedom. The author analyzes the concept and discusses the role it plays in Kant's moral philosophy and psychology. He also considers in full detail the critical literature on the subject from Kant's own time to the present day. In the first part Professor Allison argues that at the centre of the Critique of Pure Reason there is the foundation for a (...) coherent general theory of rational agency. The second part employs this account of rational agency as a key to understanding Kant's concept of moral agency and associated moral psychology. The third part focuses on Kant's attempt to ground both moral law and freedom in the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason. This is a major contribution to the interpretation of Kant which will be of special interest to scholars and graduate students of Kant's moral theory. (shrink)

Kant held that “an incentive can determine the will [Willkür] to action only so far as the individual has incorporated it into his maxim”, a view dubbed the “Incorporation Thesis” by Henry Allison (hereafter, “IT”). Although many see IT as basic to Kant’s views on agency, it also seems irreconcilable with the possibility of a kind of weakness, the kind exhibited by a person who acts on incentives that run contrary to principles she holds dear. The problem is this: According (...) to IT, if an incentive determines the will of the weak person when she acts contrary to her principles, then it must be the case that she incorporated that incentive into her maxim. But that in turn means that she has made it her principle to act on the wayward incentive, and so is not, after all, exhibiting weakness in failing to follow her own principles, but at best simply dropping one principle in favor of another. So either the weak person does not incorporate the wayward incentive into her maxim and IT is false, or she does incorporate it and weakness is impossible. (shrink)