Is Kant a Moral Realist?

Bojanowski, Jochen

doi:10.1515/kantyb.2012.1

Cited by 7 publications

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“…50 If empirical realism in epistemology is the view that our judgments correspond to something real in the world (cf. KrV: A375, A491/B520) in accordance with the common understanding of the objectivity of knowledge, Kant defends in moral philosophy the idea that moral judgments correspond to what he sometimes calls the constitution (Beschaffenheit) of the Bojanowski (2012) has also proposed to understand Kant as an idealist about morality, but on partially different 48 grounds than those that I suggest here. He argues that Kant is committed to moral idealism because he holds that the practical use of reason and practical cognition aim at bringing their objects about (see esp.…”

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confidence: 57%

Moral Realism by Other Means: The Hybrid Nature of Kant’s Practical Rationalism

Bacin¹

2017

Realism and Antirealism in Kant's Moral Philosophy

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Please cite published version - Moral realism in eighteenth-century moral philosophy"A philosopher who asserts that she is a realist about theoretical science, for example, or ethics, has probably, for most philosophical audiences, accomplished little more than to clear her throat," as Crispin Wright once observed. Such an observation effectively conveys the familiar 1 uneasiness with these terms of art, along with a kind of prejudice against views apt to be considered as realist. In a similar vein, Korsgaard writes that "[t]here is a trivial sense in which everyone who thinks that ethics isn't hopeless is a realist." In this perspective, examining a 2 philosophical view with regard to these terms risks being not very productive. 'Realism' and 'antirealism' are maybe even more ambiguous than similar terms of art, to the extent that merely declaring a view realist or not-realist does not amount to a helpful statement. Things may become especially problematic when such labels are applied to philosophical views of the past, as in discussing Hume's or Kant's own thought, since they did not employ these terms to characterize their perspectives. Here the risk of anachronism seems difficult to avoid. As John Skorupski has recently remarked, the very attribution of the label 'moral realism' (or 'moral realist') to views which do not share specific philosophical assumptions with the current debates, for instance regarding the semantics of moral words or the truth-value of judgments, is hardly appropriate, since it connects or even equates views that are in fact heterogeneous in important respects. 3 In light of these difficulties, a helpful way to gain a clearer understanding of the questions at issue with regard to Kant is, I believe, to briefly consider what moral realism could be taken to Wright (1992, p. 1).

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confidence: 57%

Moral Realism by Other Means: The Hybrid Nature of Kant’s Practical Rationalism

Bacin¹

2017

Realism and Antirealism in Kant's Moral Philosophy

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“…A theory that is not practical is not even a moral theory. I cannot go into this in further detail here (see Bojanowski 2016); let me simply emphasize that I fundamentally agree with Rauscher that the idea that we cognize some mindindependent value property through 'inner [or] outer intuition' is incompatible with Kant's moral epistemology and ontology (p. 218). I do not think, however, that the heteronomy charge against contemporary Kantian realists hits its target.…”

Section: Why Kant Is Not a Value Realistmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Rauscher defines idealism as the view that ‘moral principles, properties, or objects of the world are dependent upon the transcendental … moral agent’ (p. 245). I agree with Rauscher that Kant is a moral idealist (Bojanowski 2012, 2016), but I think we should avoid the term ‘constructivism’ because it does not do justice to Kant’s cognitivism. In other words, Kant is not an idealist merely because moral principles are dependent on the moral agent.…”

Section: Why Kant Is a Moral Idealistmentioning

confidence: 93%