Critical discussion of recent work in Kantian ethics: Timmermann, Herman, Timmons

Abstract

ABSTRACTA critical discussion of three recent monographs on Kantian ethics: Jens Timmermann's Kant's Will at the Crossroads, Barbara Herman's The Moral Habitat, and Mark Timmons' Kant's Doctrine of Virtue. I start by laying out some of the main claims of all three works, and then examine some of the main points of contention between them: principally, the issue of moral complexity, the derivation of duties, and the distinction between theoretical and practical reason. I conclude with some remarks on how the insights of all three works might be fruitfully combined to advance the current state of thought on the structure and composition of the Kantian moral system, as well as on the sense in which it might be taken to parallel, or otherwise be related to, Kant's theoretical system.KEYWORDS: Kantpractical reasonKantian ethicsmoral psychologymoral duties Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 The argument for self-perfection parallels the one for others' happiness: “Now there are in humanity predispositions to greater perfection, which belong to the end of nature with regard to the humanity in our subject; to neglect these would perhaps be consistent with the preservation of humanity, as an end in itself, but not with the advancement of this end” (4:430). Both arguments thus conclude the insufficiency of a conception of morality in terms merely of limiting conditions.2 “The imagination (as a productive cognitive faculty) is, namely, very powerful in creating, as it were, another nature, out of the material which the real one gives it. We entertain ourselves with it when experience seems too mundane to us; we transform the latter, no doubt always in accordance with analogous laws, but also in accordance with principles that lie higher in reason (and which are every bit as natural to us as those in accordance with which the understanding apprehends empirical nature); in this we feel our freedom from the law of association (which applies to the empirical use of that faculty), in accordance with which material can certainly be lent to us by nature, but the latter can be transformed by us into something entirely different, namely into that which steps beyond nature” (5:314). Compare Kant's positing of a teleological “kingdom of nature” as necessary in order to arrive at the formulation of a kingdom of ends (4:436n).Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung.