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Kantian Eudaimonism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

E. SONNY ELIZONDO
E. SONNY ELIZONDO*
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA eselizondo@ucsb.edu
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Abstract

My aim in this essay is to reorient our understanding of the Kantian ethical project, especially in relation to its assumed rivals. I do this by considering Kant's relation to eudaimonism, especially in its Aristotelian form. I argue for two points. First, once we understand what Kant and Aristotle mean by happiness, we can see that not only is it the case that, by Kant's lights, Aristotle is not a eudaimonist. We can also see that, by Aristotle's lights, Kant is a eudaimonist. Second, we can see that this agreement on eudaimonism actually reflects a deeper, more fundamental agreement on the nature of ethics as a distinctively practical philosophy. This is an important result, not just for the history of moral philosophy but for moral philosophy as well. For it suggests that both Kantians and Aristotelians may well have more argumentative resources available to them than is commonly thought.

Keywords

KantAristotlehappinessmoralitypractical philosophy
Type
Article
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , December 2023 , pp. 655 - 669
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Philosophical Association

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Footnotes

This essay originated in an attempt to reconcile the ideas of two of my graduate teachers: Barbara Herman and Gavin Lawrence. I thank them both, knowing full well that they would find much to object to in my argument. For discussion of relevant issues, I also thank Patricio Fernandez, Tamar Schapiro, Jeanine Grenberg, Jeremy Fix, Ed Lamb, and several anonymous referees. Earlier versions of the essay were presented at the Central APA and Oxford Moral Philosophy Seminar. I thank the audiences at those occasions for useful discussion.

Although I quote from and cite modern editions and translations of Aristotle and Kant, for the specialist or those reading these sources in the original or other languages, I also provide, in brackets, the standard volume, section, or line numbers for these works. References to Aristotle employ the standard Bekker numbers. All references to Kant are to the volumes in Kants gesammelte Schriften and employ the standard Akadamie numbers with the following abbreviations: KpV (Critique of Practical Reason); KU (Critique of the Power of Judgment); KUEE (Critique of the Power of Judgment, First Introduction); G (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals); MS (The Metaphysics of Morals); R (Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason).

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