Abstract
The approach sketched in this paper develops a personalistic interpretation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative. The main difference from the purely Kantian perspective is the attempt to introduce a somewhat richer notion of the human person than the one used by Kant himself, one that is suggested by the phenomenological analysis of the experience of being a person. Such a notion highlights three highly relevant dimensions of the fundamental principle of morality, rather hidden in Kant’s wording of it. The first of these is the moral significance of the mutual recognition of each other as persons (i.e. as a subject and an individual). The second is an account of the idea of respect as a disposition of the will rather than as a merely emotive response to an awareness of the moral law. Thirdly there is the intrinsically intersubjective value of the moral reasons for action, a feature that helps to overcome the rather “monological” appearance of Kant’s imperative. I will first of all try to formulate the fundamental principle of morality in a way that emphasizes the centrality of the idea of “respect for persons”, and outline an interpretation of it within the boundaries of a Kantian approach. Then, I will present an argument concerning the issue of euthanasia based on that principle, partially reinterpreting one of Kant’s arguments against suicide.
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MORDACCI, R. (2006). RECOGNITION AND RESPECT FOR PERSONS A Personalistic Interpretation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative. In: Rehmann-Sutter, C., Düwell, M., Mieth, D. (eds) Bioethics in Cultural Contexts. International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine, vol 28. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4241-8_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4241-8_10
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