Abstract
One thing that is indispensable to anyone intending a thorough critique of Kant’s ethics is to have a knowledge of its method, and its method is the subject we shall have to treat next.1 It is true that one cannot criticize any systematic ethics (or any other kind of philosophical system) unless one knows its method, but a knowledge of the method Kant’s ethics follows is especially indispensable to a critique of it. The fact is that the special character of Kant’s method is mainly accountable for the falseness of his theories on ethics and his inability to drop the mistaken assumptions underlying them. Moreover, one cannot know for certain what path a critique of this ethics should take until the questions about its method are resolved.
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References
The Poems of Schiller, tr. E.P. Arnold-Forster (London, 1901), p. 84. H. Cysarz notices with reference to these verses: “the birth of morality” to Schiller’s mind was “not a Kantian conflict, but an awakening of the whole man”. Schiller, p. 134.
The previous chapter, the purpose of which was exposition, would ordinarily have been the proper place for this account of method. However, our interest in the question of method being mainly to criticize rather than to describe, it appears expedient to include the whole discussion of method in this second, critical chapter and to use our account of it for an introduction to the critique.
Critique of Practical Reason, pp. 46/7.
The term “metaphysics” is thus essentially the name of a method when Kant speaks of a “metaphysics of morals”. In all Kant uses the term in two different senses. First, it signifies a method (or “means”) of cognition; namely, the method cognition follows when it occurs a priori rather than by means of the senses, and so by means of experience; and hence metaphysics is the method of “super-sensuous” cognition. Metaphysics in this sense of the word is defined by Kant as “the system of all purely rational knowledge of things by means of concepts”. Secondly, Kant speaks of metaphysics when he means the “end” or “object” the science of metaphysics aims at, which is an object “unattainable by experience”. The two terms are related by the fact that the “object” of metaphysics can be attained only through a priori cognition. But the term signifying a method is broader than that signifying an object, since not all a priori cognition aims at the same final end. Cf. Vber die Fortschritte der Metaphysik, Beilage 1.
Groundwork, p. 424; cf. p. 408 m.
Cf. the first sentence of the Concluding Note in the Groundwork. This view is also corroborated by many passages in the Critique of Practical Reason.
Critique of Practical Reason, p. 46 m. The term “deduction” is used by Kant in the same sense on pp. 447,454 m., and 463 in the Groundwork.
Groundwork, p. 445.
Ibid., p. 420t.
Ibid., p. 440.
Ibid., pp. 446 f.
Ibid., p. 447.
Ibid., p. 448 t.
Ibid., pp. 449/50.
Ibid., p. 453 b.
Ibid., p. 460.
Ibid., pp. 459 t. and 461.
Ibid., p. 455.
The last sentence of the Groundwork.
Critique of Practical Reason, p. 47.
Ibid., p. 31 b.
Groundwork, p. 452 b.
Critique of Practical Reason, p. 47; cf. pp. 55, 91, and 104.
Ibid., pp. 29/30.
Ibid., p. 4 n.
David Baumgardt, Der Kampf um den Lebenssinn unter den Vorläufern der modernen Ethik (Leipzig, 1933), pp. 73, 81, and 85 f.
To use such expressions when speaking of a Kant may seem to some readers pedantic, presumptuous, and so highly inappropriate. However, after decades of intense occupation with a subject, an author can find himself in the possession of such strong evidence against a doctrine as to feel bound to speak thus for the sake of clarity, even if the doctrine is the work of a Kant; whereas no one would benefit from watered-down criticism. I feel myself in the possession of such evidence. Moreover, I may notice that, in criticizing Kant, I am in the company of such eminent predecessors as Schiller and Hegel, and that my critique differs from that of Hegel, for example, not so much in the harshness of its judgements as in the completeness and nature of its arguments.
The term “moral demand” (sittliche Forderung) is not used by Kant, who speaks rather of a “necessitation” (Nötìgung) to do what is morally good. Nevertheless I chose to use “moral demand”, which is more specific than “necessitation” and less specific than “obligation”, since it seemed to me to make the exposition easier to understand. Numerous authors (for example, G. Simmel, Th. Lipps, G. Störring, M. Scheler, and D. von Hildebrand) have used the term since the end of the last century, and I have used it in later publications (as in “Good and Evil”, 1965). (Appended note by the author, 1980.)
Cf. Groundwork, pp. 406/7 and the Critique of Practical Reason, p. 47, which passages were cited in the preceding §.
Herbert Spencer, Data of Ethics, §§ 45–47; Paul Rée, Die Entstehung des Gewissens (Berlin, 1885), §§ 25–27; Georg Simmel, Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft I, 407/8; L. Lévy- Bruhl, La morale et la science des moeurs (Paris, 1903), p. 196. Nietzsche s and Freud’s theories of conscience amount (though not obviously) to such an invalidation of conscience’s claim.
The correctness of this thesis will be shown in Chapters Four and Five of this book. Here it is asserted only in the form of a notice of our disagreement with Kant. We may also say provisionally that the aggregate of abilities for having moral insights consists in the various abilities underlying the comprehension of values.
Critique of Practical Reason, p. 47.
Cf. the remarks on this point at the end of § 15 below.
Like our account of Kant’s system of ethics (§ 2), our critique does not aim at completeness; we shall pass over many particulars and bring out only the decisive main points.
Groundwork, p. 435 m.
Ibid., pp. 399/400.
Ibid., p. 445 t.
Cf. § 30.
That there are still even Christian philosophers who, from a failure to see the irreducible importance moral values have in themselves, try to lay ethics upon a (social) eudomonistic foundation is amazing. Did Jesus not show in his parable of the Widow’s Mite (Mark, 12, 41ff.) that the value of the spirit in which an action was done was incomparably higher than the value of the action’s success.
Groundwork, p. 435 m; cf. p. 416 m.
On this Schiller cf. the second half of § 7.
The word value is here intended to be understood non-terminologically and in keeping with common usage, just as the whole of the present characterization of good and evil is provisional. More exact definitions cannot be given until Chapter Four.
The positive meaning of this genuine principle of autonomy is here only suggested in brief. A full discussion of it follows in Chapter Four (§§ 26 and 27).
Hegel describes Kant’s argument yet more harshly as “stacking the deck” (his account of Kant’s mistake is however very general and sketchy). Die wissenschaftlichen Behandlungs- arten des Naturrechts, Werke (1832) I, 354.
This too will be explained by the analyses in Chapter Four.
Cf. Gerhard Kruger, Philosophie und Moral in der Kantischen Kritik (Tübingen, 1931) and David Baumgardt, Der Kampf um den Lebenssinn unter den Vorläufern der modernen Ethik (Leipzig, 1933), pp. 97 ff.
Groundwork, p. 422 t. Cf.Ibid.., p. 429 m.;.Critique of Practical Reason, p. 69 m. and The Metaphysics of Morals., pp. 422. ff
Groundwork, p. 403.
Ibid., p. 402.
The point of our objection if obviously not that by adopting new maxims to act upon one can alter the result of the categorical imperative as one pleases. We assert only that one is free to make certain slight alterations. Our objection therefore must not be likened to interpretations alleging that the categorical imperative is compatible with any content; these Julius Ebbinghaus rightly attacks in his essay “Deutung und Mißdeutung des k’ategorischen Im- perativs” (Studium Generate, I/7, December, 1948).
I use the (nowadays confusingly ambiguous) term “metaphysics” in a sense that derives principally from Aristotle, which is explained more fully below in § 16. This sense corresponds roughly to the “second”, that is, narrower, sense of the term in Kant, which signifies the “purpose” or “object” of the science of metaphysics. Cf. § 9 n. 1.
A full enumeration of the relations and differences here mentioned only briefly is contained in my dissertation Freiheit, Wollen, und Aktivität (Halle, 1927).
This will be shown more fully in Chapter Four.
Critique of Practical Reason, pp. 96 ff; cf. p. 7 b.
Cf. above § 6 n. 8. More on the peculiar nature of this kind of freedom is contained in book Freiheit, Wollen und A ktivität, under the catch-word “profektiven Machtbereich”
This ambiguity of the term freedom corresponds to an ambiguity of the term morality: Morality can be thought of as comprising good and evil or as consisting solely in the good. The ambiguity of the two propositions at the beginning of the § on the relation between morality and freedom is hereby increased.
Recently by J.G. Greiner, Formale Gesetzes-Ethik und materiale Wert-Ethik (Heidelberg, 1932), and Paul Olivier, Zum Willensproblem bei Kant und Reinhold (Berlin, 1941).
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Reiner, H. (1983). A Critique of the Groundwork of Kant’s Ethics. In: Duty and Inclination The Fundamentals of Morality Discussed and Redefined with Special Regard to Kant and Schiller. Phaenomenologica, vol 93. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6830-1_2
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