Maxims and Thick Ethical Concepts

Abstract

I begin with Kant's notion of a maxim and consider the role which this notion plays in Kant's formulations of the fundamental categorical imperative. This raises the question of what a maxim is, and why there is not the same requirement for resolutions of other kinds to be universalizable. Drawing on Bernard Williams' notion of a thick ethical concept, I proffer an answer to this question which is intended neither in a spirit of simple exegesis nor as a straightforward exercise in moral philosophy but as something that is poised somewhere between the two. My aim is to provide a kind of rational reconstruction of Kant. In the final section of the essay, I argue that this reconstruction, while it manages to salvage something distinctively Kantian, also does justice to the relativism involved in what J. L. Mackie calls 'people's adherence to and participation in different ways of life'.

Seeing What is the Kind Thing to Do: Perception and Emotion in Morality

“…Application of these concepts is both world‐guided and action‐guiding. I will understand this in the following way, in line with a very helpful recent paper by A. W. Moore (2006).…”

“…W. Moore (2006). The idea is that ‘anyone who embraces a thick ethical concept thereby has certain reasons for doing things’ (Moore 2006, 136). To ‘embrace’ a concept is to grasp it ‘in the engaged way’ (2006, 138).…”

Affective Intentionality and Practical Rationality

“…Virtue, in words that Goldie borrows from A. W. Moore, requires that the relevant evaluative concepts which are non‐inferentially applied in the relevant contexts be such that the subject shares the ‘beliefs, concerns and values that give application of the concepts [their] point’ (Moore 2006, 137). Here we are back to the part of Döring's and Betzler's projects that consists in trying to capture the way emotions are capable of both motivating and rationalising actions.…”

Reasons and the form of practical identity (Proceedings of the CAPE International Workshops, 2013. Part I: The CAPE International Conference “Ethics and Well-being”)

“…The first is Kenny's discussion of the will (1989 ch.3 esp. [36][37][38][39][40][41][42], and the second is Frankfurt's discussion of it (in particular in his 1971/1998 and 1982/1998).…”

“…He points out that one might so strongly between a thousand-sided figure and a thousand-and-one-sided figure, or of aurally imagining a certain choral piece in retrograde. 36 "Thinking that something is unthinkable is not so direct a witness to its being unthinkable as is being incapable of thinking of it" (Williams 1981, 129). 37 Such psychological difficulties are part of what some psychologists (e.g.…”