Naturalism and Realism in Kant's Ethics

Naturalism and Realism in Kant's Ethics PDF

Author: Frederick Rauscher

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-11-26

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1107088801

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This book is the first detailed analysis and interpretation of Kant's ethics as anti-realist and idealist.

Realism and Antirealism in Kant's Moral Philosophy

Realism and Antirealism in Kant's Moral Philosophy PDF

Author: Robinson dos Santos

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-12-18

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 3110572346

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The debate between moral realism and antirealism plays an important role in contemporary metaethics as well as in the interpretation of Kant’s moral philosophy. This volume aims to clarify whether, and in what sense, Kant is a moral realist, an antirealist, or something in-between. Based on an explication of the key metaethical terms, internationally recognized Kant scholars discuss the question of how Kant’s moral philosophy should be understood in this regard. All camps in the metaethical field have their inhabitants: Some contributors read Kant’s philosophy in terms of a more or less robust moral realism, objectivism, or idealism, and some of them take it to be a version of constructivism, constitutionism, or brute antirealism. In any case, all authors introduce and defend their terminology in a clear manner and argue thoughtfully and refreshingly for their positions. With contributions of Stefano Bacin, Jochen Bojanowski, Christoph Horn, Patrick Kain, Lara Ostaric, Fred Rauscher, Oliver Sensen, Elke Schmidt, Dieter Schönecker, and Melissa Zinkin.

Ethical Realism

Ethical Realism PDF

Author: William J. FitzPatrick

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-02-17

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 1108586449

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This Element examines the many facets of ethical realism and the issues at stake in metaethical debates about it—both between realism and non-realist alternatives, and between different versions of realism itself. Starting with a minimal core characterization of ethical realism focused on claims about meaning and truth, we go on to develop a narrower and more theoretically useful conception by adding further claims about objectivity and ontological commitment. Yet even this common understanding of ethical realism captures a surprisingly heterogeneous range of views. In fact, a strong case can be made for adding several more conditions in order to arrive at a proper paradigm of realism about ethics when understood in a non-deflationary way. We then develop this more robust realism, bringing out its distinctive take on ethical objectivity and normative authority, its unique ontological commitments, and both the support for it and some challenges it faces.

The Development of Ethics, Volume 3

The Development of Ethics, Volume 3 PDF

Author: Terence Irwin

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2009-09-10

Total Pages: 1048

ISBN-13: 0191571466

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This book is a selective historical and critical study of moral philosophy in the Socratic tradition, with special attention to Aristotelian naturalism. It discusses the main topics of moral philosophy as they have developed historically, including: the human good, human nature, justice, friendship, and morality; the methods of moral inquiry; the virtues and their connexions; will, freedom, and responsibility; reason and emotion; relativism, subjectivism, and realism; the theological aspect of morality. The first volume discusses ancient and mediaeval moral philosophy. The second volume examines early modern moral philosophy from the 16th to the 18th century. This third volume continues the story up to Rawls's Theory of Justice. A comparison between the Kantian and the Aristotelian outlook is one central theme of the third volume. The chapters on Kant compare Kant both with his rationalist and empiricist predecessors and with the Aristotelian naturalist tradition. Reactions to Kant are traced through Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard. Utilitarian and idealist approaches to Kantian and Aristotelian views are traced through Sidgwick, Bradley, and Green. Mill and Sidgwick provide a link between 18th-century rationalism and sentimentalism and the 20th-century debates in the metaphysics and epistemology of morality. These debates are explored in Moore, Ross, Stevenson, Hare, C.I. Lewis, Heidegger, and in some more recent meta-ethical discussion. This volume concludes with a discussion of Rawls, with special emphasis on a comparison of his position with utilitarianism, intuitionism, Kantianism, naturalism, and idealism. Since this book seeks to be not only descriptive and exegetical, but also philosophical, it discusses the comparative merits of different views, the difficulties that they raise, and how some of the difficulties might be resolved. It presents the leading moral philosophers of the past as participants in a rational discussion in which the contemporary reader can participate.

The Development of Ethics

The Development of Ethics PDF

Author: Terence Irwin

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 1049

ISBN-13: 0199571783

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"This book is a selective historical and critical study of moral philosophy in the Socratic tradition, with special attention to Aristotelian naturalism. It discusses the main topics of moral philosophy as they have developed historically, including: the human good, human nature, justice, friendship, and morality; the methods of moral inquiry; the virtues and their connexions; will, freedom, and responsibility; reason and emotion; relativism, subjectivism, and realism; thetheological aspect of morality. The first volume discusses ancient and mediaeval moral philosophy. The second volume examines early modern moral philosophy from the 16th to the 18th century. This third volume continues the story up to Rawls''s Theory of Justice. A comparison between the Kantian and the Aristotelian outlook is one central theme of the third volume. The chapters on Kant compare Kant both with his rationalist and empiricist predecessors and with the Aristotelian naturalist tradition. Reactions to Kant are traced through Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard. Utilitarian and idealist approaches to Kantian and Aristotelian views are traced through Sidgwick, Bradley, and Green. Mill and Sidgwick provide a link between 18th-centuryrationalism and sentimentalism and the 20th-century debates in the metaphysics and epistemology of morality. These debates are explored in Moore, Ross, Stevenson, Hare, C.I. Lewis, Heidegger, and in some more recent meta-ethical discussion. This volume concludes with a discussion of Rawls, withspecial emphasis on a comparison of his position with utilitarianism, intuitionism, Kantianism, naturalism, and idealism. Since this book seeks to be not only descriptive and exegetical, but also philosophical, it discusses the comparative merits of different views, the difficulties that they raise, and how some of the difficulties might be resolved. It presents the leading moral philosophers of the past as participants in a rational discussion in which the contemporary reader can participate"--EBL.

How Hume and Kant Reconstruct Natural Law

How Hume and Kant Reconstruct Natural Law PDF

Author: Kenneth R. Westphal

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-04-08

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0191064114

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Kenneth R. Westphal presents an original interpretation of Hume's and Kant's moral philosophies, the differences between which are prominent in current philosophical accounts. Westphal argues that focussing on these differences, however, occludes a decisive, shared achievement: a distinctive constructivist method to identify basic moral principles and to justify their strict objectivity, without invoking moral realism nor moral anti-realism or irrealism. Their constructivism is based on Hume's key insight that 'though the laws of justice are artificial, they are not arbitrary'. Arbitrariness in basic moral principles is avoided by starting with fundamental problems of social coördination which concern outward behaviour and physiological needs; basic principles of justice are artificial because solving those problems does not require appeal to moral realism (nor to moral anti-realism). Instead, moral cognitivism is preserved by identifying sufficient justifying reasons, which can be addressed to all parties, for the minimum sufficient legitimate principles and institutions required to provide and protect basic forms of social coördination (including verbal behaviour). Hume first develops this kind of constructivism for basic property rights and for government. Kant greatly refines Hume's construction of justice within his 'metaphysical principles of justice', whilst preserving the core model of Hume's innovative constructivism. Hume's and Kant's constructivism avoids the conventionalist and relativist tendencies latent if not explicit in contemporary forms of moral constructivism.

Kant on Proofs for God’s Existence

Kant on Proofs for God’s Existence PDF

Author: Ina Goy

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2023-12-31

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 3110688964

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This volume provides a highly needed, comprehensive analysis of Kant's views on proofs for God's existence and explains the radical turns of Kant's accounts. In the "Theory of Heavens" (1755), Kant intended to harmonize the Newtonian laws of motion with a physicotheological argument for the existence of God. But only a few years later, in the "Ground of Proof" essay (1763), Kant defended an ontological ('possibility' or 'modal') argument on the basis of its logical exactitude. Nevertheless he continued to praise the physicotheological argument. In the first "Critique" (1781/7), Kant replaced the traditional constitutive proofs with regulative theoretical and practical arguments. He continued to defend a moral argument in the second "Critique" (1788). But in the third "Critique" (1790), Kant reintroduced a physicotheological besides an ethicotheological argument in order to unify the critical system of philosophy. Kant developed further moral arguments in the "Theodicy" essay (1791) and the "Religion" (1793/4), and still continued to discuss proofs for God's existence in the "OP" (1796–1804). This volume speaks to Kant specialists in the fields of philosophy and theology, but can be used also as an introduction for non-academic readers.

Naturalism and Constructivism in Metaethics

Naturalism and Constructivism in Metaethics PDF

Author: Sofia Bonicalzi

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2014-04-11

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 1443859370

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In this collection of essays, several authors, belonging to different generations and philosophical traditions, discuss ample ethical and metaethical issues together with their relations to questions of applied ethics. The volume provides a wide account of some of the main topics in these fields, thus dealing with nearly everything that human beings hold as valuable. Expert scholars and young researchers contribute to this virtual symposium, reframing the current philosophical debates about the definition and the history of the concept of Naturalism, the different declinations of Kantian Constructivism, the functioning of Rational Choice Theory, the complex role played by Neuroscience in redefining the contours of ethical theories and bioethics, the puzzles of Deontic Logic, and the bases of Animal Ethics. Divided into three sections, presented by comprehensive introductions by Sofia Bonicalzi, Leonardo Caffo and Mattia Sorgon, the present collection includes contributions by Martina Belmonte, Michele Borri, Luciana Ceri, Guglielmo Feis, Matteo Grasso, Andrea Lavazza, Sarah Songhorian, and Francesca Vitale. Each author develops a distinctive and independent position, while critically engaging with the central themes of contemporary reflection. This new, major study will benefit moral philosophers, philosophers of science, and scientists concerned with bioethics, while at the same time stimulating and challenging anyone who is curious about the nature and the origins of ethical and metaethical enquiries.

Kantian Ethics

Kantian Ethics PDF

Author: Robert Stern

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2015-10-29

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0191033650

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This volume presents a selection of Robert Stern's work on the theme of Kantian ethics. It begins by focusing on the relation between Kant's account of obligation and his view of autonomy, arguing that this leaves room for Kant to be a realist about value. Stern then considers where this places Kant in relation to the question of moral scepticism, and in relation to the principle of 'ought implies can', and examines this principle in its own right. The papers then move beyond Kant himself to his wider influence and to critics of his work, including Hegel, the British Idealists, and the Danish philosopher and theologian K. E. Løgstrup, while also offering a comparison with William James's arguments for freedom. The collection concludes with a consideration of a broadly Kantian critique of divine command ethics offered by Stephen Darwall, arguing that the critique does not succeed. General themes considered in this volume therefore include value, perfectionism, agency, autonomy, moral motivation, moral scepticism, and obligation, as well as the historical place of Kant's ethics and its influence on thinkers up to the present day.

Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity

Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity PDF

Author: Christopher Janaway

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2012-09-27

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0191654892

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Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity comprises ten original essays which critically engage with one of the western canon's most controversial ethical thinkers. Bringing together an internationally renowned line-up of Nietzsche specialists and mainstream moral philosophers, the volume provides a timely and distinctive contribution to our understanding of both Nietzsche and his significance for ethical thought more generally. As well as clarifying Nietzsche's own views, both critical and positive, ethical and meta-ethical, the articles connect Nietzsche's philosophical concerns to contemporary debates in and about ethics, normativity, and value. The volume's topics include: the nature and scope of Nietzsche's critique of morality; the character of the positive ideals Nietzsche advances in light of that critique; the meta-ethical commitments underpinning the substantive views he variously opposes and espouses; his conception of human psychology and its relation to normativity and value; and, more generally, the relation between Nietzsche's revaluative ambitions and the naturalistic worldview it has become common to attribute to him. With an editors' introduction providing a comprehensive and accessible background to these topics, including a state-of-the-art overview of the interpretative and philosophical controversies Nietzsche's normative and naturalistic endeavours raise, Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity stands at the cutting edge of current work in the field and is essential reading for anyone interested in the challenges Nietzsche poses for dominant models of moral philosophy.