Kant on the Justification of Moral Principles

Bojanowski, Jochen

doi:10.1515/kant-2017-0001

Cited by 21 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…5 Schopenhauer's critique in On the Basis of Morality focuses specifically on the Groundwork (BM §3, 119); it is therefore beside the point whether in the second Critique Kant effectively renounces the argument from Groundwork III and instead merely posits the moral law as a "fact of reason" (CPrR 5:31,47). For a good entry wedge into the controversies over the interpretation of these two texts, and their relationship, see Bojanowski (2017).…”

Section: Kant's Petitio Principiimentioning

confidence: 99%

Schopenhauer's Rejection of the Moral Ought

Puryear¹

2021

Schopenhauer's Moral Philosophy

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In a practical philosophy, […] we have to do not with assuming grounds for what happens but rather laws of what ought to happen even if it never does, that is, objective practical laws."(Kant, G 4:427) 1 "We will not talk about 'oughts' at all: that is how you talk to children, or to nations in their infancy, not to those who have acquired all the culture of a mature age." (Schopenhauer, WWR 1, §53, 320)Kant's statement expresses the still widely accepted view that morality takes a prescriptive form: it concerns what in some sense ought to happen, even if it never does happen. An ought, Kant tells us earlier in the Groundwork, is that through which an imperative is expressed, and an imperative is the formula of a command or law (of reason) (G 4:413). Morality is thus from this perspective a system of oughts, imperatives, commands, laws. And on the common view, as on Kant's, these oughts or imperatives of morality are thought to bind us in a particularly strong fashion, that is, categorically or absolutely. In short, they tell us what we must do, or must not do, come what may. This conception of morality as a system of categorically binding oughts or imperatives has more recently come under fire, perhaps most notably at the hands of Elizabeth Anscombe (1958) andPhilippa Foot (1972). 2 To my mind, however, the most forceful and most interesting critique of the prescriptive conception of morality, though one not so well known today, was advanced more than a century earlier by Arthur Schopenhauer, first in his The World as Will and Representation (1818) and more fully in his unsuccessful prize-essay On the Basis of Morality (1839). My aim here will be to reconstruct and sharpen his critique, and to argue that it does in fact cast serious doubt on the prescriptivist conception of morality.I understand Schopenhauer's critique to consist of four main objections. According to the first, which I consider in Section 1, Kant begs the question by merely assuming that ethics has a prescriptive or legislative-imperative form, when a purely descriptive conception such as Schopenhauer's also presents itself as a possibility. In Section 2, I set the stage for the remaining objections by elucidating, sharpening, and 1 See also CPR A802/B830; MM 6:216. 2 See also Slote (1982); Williams (1985: 174-96); Taylor (2000: 139-77); Taylor (2002: 77-84); see Capaldi (1966) for an argument that Hume means to reject "ought" as a moral category. defending a principle of Schopenhauer's on which they all depend: namely, that a binding ought must be understood to presuppose, and be conditioned by, a threat of punishment or promise of reward. In Section 3, I turn to Schopenhauer's second objection, which anticipates Anscombe's point that the notion of a moral ought loses all intelligibility outside the framework of a divine law conception of ethics. I then note that, whereas Anscombe settles for arguing that we should jettison the moral ought (to the extent that we can) merely because, as a matter of historical fact, we have largely abandoned it...

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Section: Kant's Petitio Principiimentioning

confidence: 99%

Schopenhauer's Rejection of the Moral Ought

Puryear¹

2021

Schopenhauer's Moral Philosophy

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“…In other words, by curbing the pretensions of empirical practical reason (a negative Critique), Kant is able to show that practical reason has a pure use as well (a positive Critique). All of this coheres with his reasons for calling the second Critique a ‘Critique of practical reason.’ For a different reading, see Bojanowski (forthcoming).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other scholars find a significant change in Kant’s strategy of justification, not because he gave up a proof of the moral law, but because he gave up a non-moral argument for freedom. For this view, see Schönecker (1999; 2006; 2013; 2014); Guyer (2009); Ludwig (2010); Timmermann (2010); Ludwig (2010; 2012; 2015); Hahmann (2012); Bojanowski (forthcoming).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kant’s deductions of morality and freedom

Ware

2017

Can. J. of Philosophy

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It is commonly held that Kant ventured to derive morality from freedom in Groundwork III. It is also believed that he reversed this strategy in the second Critique, attempting to derive freedom from morality instead. In this paper, I set out to challenge these familiar assumptions: Kant’s argument in Groundwork III rests on a moral conception of the intelligible world, one that plays a similar role as the ‘fact of reason’ in the second Critique. Accordingly, I argue, there is no reversal in the proof-structure of Kant’s two works.

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Self-dignity amidst adversity: a review of coping strategies in the face of workplace toxicity

Sarkar

2024

Manag Rev Q

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Kant on the Justification of Moral Principles

Cited by 21 publications

References 10 publications

Schopenhauer's Rejection of the Moral Ought

Schopenhauer's Rejection of the Moral Ought

Kant’s deductions of morality and freedom

Self-dignity amidst adversity: a review of coping strategies in the face of workplace toxicity

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