Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

2 results

  • 3 - Justice without virtue

  • Edited by Lara Denis, Agnes Scott College, Decatur
  • Book:
    Kant's Metaphysics of Morals
    Published online:
    10 January 2011
    Print publication:
    28 October 2010, pp 51-70

  • Summary

    This chapter suggests two sorts of objections that mere outward conformity of a person's action with general principles of justice is all that can be required by justice even if not by ethics. It engages with both these objections, though pays more attention to the first and flags the second objection. The chapter sets out the systematic objection to the possible inclusion of Kant's philosophy of Right in his moral philosophy. It also argues that if one starts from central concerns of the Doctrine of Right, the text's distinctly public morality comes into focus. This chapter draws on Kant's late Wille/Willkr distinction in order to tease out the distinctive nature of public juridical willing: surprisingly, in the political context, autonomy as self-legislation is simply irrelevant. It explores how individual political judgment relates to public willing; and discovers crucial differences between Kant's political morality and Kant-inspired current liberalism.

  • 3 - What Is the Purpose of a Metaphysics of Morals? Some Observations on the Preface to the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

  • Edited by Karl Ameriks
  • Otfried Höffe, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany
  • Book:
    Kant's Moral and Legal Philosophy
    Published online:
    13 November 2009
    Print publication:
    27 April 2009, pp 77-92

  • Summary

    Immanuel Kant's late work, The Metaphysics of Morals, is treated as a kind of retreat from the critical self-limitation to a formal ethics that characterises the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant made it clear that the idea of a metaphysics of morals represents a Platonism of practical reason. In this chapter, the author focuses on the Preface and on one or two specific passages from the main text of the Groundwork that expressly pursue the argument in the Preface concerning the necessity for such metaphysics. Kant's speculative arguments concern the systematic structure of philosophy and the articulated presentation of its relevant objects. His arguments concern the way in which Kant's position coincides with the understanding that everyone already possesses concerning morality. The author elucidates these arguments and questions whether it is really necessary to provide a metaphysical grounding of ethics at all.