Papers by Jochen Bojanowski
Kant famously claims that the table of the categories of freedom does not require explanation, ‘s... more Kant famously claims that the table of the categories of freedom does not require explanation, ‘since it is intelligible enough of itself’ (Critique of Practical Reason 5: 67). Kant interpreters have been baffled by this claim, and the disagreement among the increasing number of studies in more recent years suggests that the table is not as straightforward as Kant took it to be. In this article I want to show that a coherent interpretation of the table depends essentially on a clarification of what have been taken to be three fundamental ambiguities in Kant’s presentation of the table. This assumption about ambiguities in Kant’s text is, I argue, rooted in a hybrid conception of practical rationality assumed by his interpreters. I believe the task of disambiguating the table in all three cases can be completed. But it will require spelling out Kant’s moral cognitivism in such a way that he emerges as holding what I will call a unitary account of practical rationality.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
In this paper, I argue against the view, most eloquently advocated by Dieter Schönecker, that Ka... more In this paper, I argue against the view, most eloquently advocated by Dieter Schönecker, that Kant is what I call a “sensualist intuitionist.” Kant’s text does not accommodate a sensualist intuitionist reading; the fact of reason is cognized by reason, not intuition. I agree with Schönecker that the feeling of respect for the moral law makes us feel its obligatory character, but I disagree that this feeling constitutes cognition of the normative content of the moral law. We do not cognize the validity of the moral law through feeling. I argue instead for what I take to be the standard view: We feel through respect for the moral law the limiting and humiliating effect that rational cognition of the moral law has on our sensibility.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
European Journal of Philosophy, 2018
According to a widespread view, Kant’s claim that moral wrongness has its ground in a contradicti... more According to a widespread view, Kant’s claim that moral wrongness has its ground in a contradiction underlying every immoral action is a “bluff” rooted in “dogmatic moralism”. Ever since Benjamin Constant’s exchange with Kant, counterexamples have played a crucial role in showing why Kant’s “universalization procedure” fails to determine the moral validity of our judgments. Despite attempts in recent years to bring Kant’s ethics closer to Aristotle’s, these counterexamples have prevailed. Most recently, Jesse Prinz has launched another attack along the same lines. Prinz insists that Kant’s universalization procedure fundamentally begs the question and fails to generate plausible results. Even authors who are very sympathetic to Kant, such as Allen Wood, have tried to downplay universalization, focusing instead on other formulations of the categorical imperative. In this paper, I respond directly to four of the most prominent counterexamples. In each case, I aim to show how we can uphold Kant’s fundamental claim that the universal law formulation of the categorical imperative is the articulation of the form of our particular moral judgments.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Proceedings of the XIII. International Kant Congress , 2021
Kant’s conception of autonomy has been criticised for identifying acting freely with acting moral... more Kant’s conception of autonomy has been criticised for identifying acting freely with acting morally. As a result, many Kantians have moved away from Kant’s moral conception of autonomy, instead proposing what I will call an “end-set- ting” or “two-way capacity” account of autonomy. I believe that we should resist these revisions and that doing so makes clear why it is only the capacity for moral autonomy that is of unlimited value. What fundamentally distinguishes our free capacity of volition is the fact that we are autonomous. This capacity en- ables us to have a conception of unlimited goodness that gives us the dignity, i. e. the unlimited value, that non-autonomous beings lack.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Philosophia, 2016
Are our actions morally good because we approve of them or are they good independently of our app... more Are our actions morally good because we approve of them or are they good independently of our approval? Are we projecting moral values onto the world or do we detect values that are already there? For many these questions don’t state a real alternative but a secular variant of the Euthyphro dilemma: If our actions are good because we approve of them moral goodness appears to be arbitrary. If they are good independently of our approval, it is unclear how we come to know their moral quality and how moral knowledge can be motivating. None of these options seems attractive; the source of moral goodness unclear.
Despite the growing literature on Kant’s moral epistemology and moral epistemology the question remains open what Kant’s answer to this apparent dilemma is. According to the moral realist the objectivity of our moral judgments can only be preserved if moral values are independent of our voluntary approval. Objectivity requires that there are mind-independent moral facts so that our moral judgments can be true or false. Since Kant wants to hold on to the objectivity of our moral judgments, he would need to endorse the second horn of the dilemma. Thus, many have tried to ascribe some sort of realism to Kant. Allen Wood, for example, claims that Kant “is a moral realist in the most agreed-upon sense that term has in contemporary metaphysics and metaethics. [Since] Kant holds that moral truth is irreducible either to what people think or to the results of any verification procedures […].“ (Wood 1999, 157 f.). According to the moral realist interpretation the categorical imperative in its universal law formulation is merely a reliable goodness-tracking device. It detects moral goodness but is not itself the source of the good (Stern, Stratton-Lake, Langton, Timmons et al.). The mind-independent moral facts, which the moral realist takes to be necessary in order to account for objectivity, are facts about how our actions relate to what is absolutely valuable: our “humanity”.
John Rawls and Christine Korsgaard, by contrast, hold that the procedure itself is the source of values. “Values for Kant are constructed by a procedure of making laws for ourselves […] [and are then] projected onto the world” (Korsgaard, SN 112). Many have argued that Rawls’ and Korsgaard’s constructivism makes moral facts dependent on our choices and thus commits them to anti-realism (Cohen 1996, Nagel 1996, Stern 2012). According to these critics, Kantians either have to give up on the objectivity of moral judgments or on constructivism. Korsgaard, by contrast, believes that even though she rejects the second horn of the dilemma, this does not necessarily lead into anti-realism or subjectivism. Since there is a correct procedure through which we arrive at our particular moral judgments, the objectivity of these judgments is preserved and moral values are not merely subjective.
Sharon Street has recently argued that Rawlsian constructivism is merely “restricted”; it cannot count as a metaethical theory at all because it is begging the question at issue. It purports to explain why and how something has value, but in fact the procedure (the original position and the veil of ignorance) simply presupposes freedom and equality to be good. All other results of the construction procedure owe their value properties to this initial presupposition. Korsgaard’s constructivism attempts to overcome the restrictedness and is, in contrast to Rawls’ constructivism, not merely a normative constructivism but indeed a metaethical constructivism. But her attempt is, according to Street, based on the false assumption that we can derive certain “substantive values” from a “purely formal understanding of the nature of practical reason“ (Street 2008, 244).
This rough sketch shows how wide ranging the disagreement about Kant’s moral epistemology and ontology has become. On a deeper level it reveals our fundamental dissatisfaction with the way some conceptual distinctions are drawn in contemporary metaethics. Thinking through Kant’s theory will put us in a position to see some of the presuppositions we have been taking for granted more clearly. The Kantian view I attempt to lay out in this paper is supposed to dissolve the secular version of the Euthyphro dilemma. In responding to this dilemma we need to get clear about the source or the origin of our moral knowledge: Voluntary approval or mind-independent moral facts? Projectivism or detectivism? Construction or given? I believe that all these ways of articulating the problem turn out, on closer inspection, to be false alternatives.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The Highest Good in Kant’s Philosophy, 2016
According to a widespread view, there is no conceptual space for ‘immortality’ in moral philosoph... more According to a widespread view, there is no conceptual space for ‘immortality’ in moral philosophy. If our lives were to continue endlessly, so the argument goes, they would become tedious and boring. Hence the good life is a life that comes to an end. Kant approaches the topic from a radically different angle. His question is not whether immortality would be conducive to our happiness. On his alternative account, we are committed to believing in the immortality of the soul because we recognize our obligation to become morally perfect. Even among those who are generally sympathetic to Kant, his argument for this claim has not been well received. In this paper, I reassess and defend the argument. I first show why moral perfection, even in the case of human beings, requires not just virtue as a “moral disposition in battle” but the idea of holiness. I then explain the connection between the moral requirement to perfect our moral disposition and our belief in the immortality of the soul. Kant’s idea is not that we have direct intuitive knowledge of our immortality; it is rather that the belief in our immortality makes possible an action (perfecting ourselves) which we practically cognize as obligatory. Kant calls this belief a “postulate of pure practical reason”. A practical postulate has a peculiar epistemological status. Finally, I discuss Kant’s notion of a practical postulate in order to determine how Kant can claim both that we cannot theoretically know whether the soul is immortal and that the belief in our immortality can in some sense count as a cognition.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Kant-Studien, 2015
Sensen’s stimulating and thought provoking book raises a question about whether Kant’s conception... more Sensen’s stimulating and thought provoking book raises a question about whether Kant’s conception of human dignity has been widely misrepresented. The view Sensen criticizes presupposes Moorean value realism, which he thinks leads to the false view that we first perceive that other human beings have value and then infer that we ought to respect them. I agree with Sensen that Kant does not embrace the intuitionist picture. However, I don’t think that this should lead us to conclude that Kant would deny the existence of moral value properties or that Kant is a prescriptivist. Those metaphysical value properties that result from the exercise of our capacity of pure practical reason can be ascribed to our actions or dispositions. In practical cognition, our cognition brings the object into “existence”. The object of pure practical reason is the good. In judging x to be practically necessary we thereby judge x as something that ought to be willed objectively, i.e. as good. In knowing practically, our cognition affects us through the feeling of respect for the moral law. It is this capacity for respect that makes it possible for the moral law to become a sufficient incentive of the will, which then brings the value property into existence. This is not to say that the objectivity of the moral law consists in the existence of its object, the good, but that the moral law determines the existence of the value property. The moral law itself does not exist in space and time, and is nothing but the articulation of the self-consciousness of pure practical reason. To think that objectivity in morality requires that the moral law “exists” independently of rational cognizers is to presuppose a conception of objectivity that Kant’s moral philosophy fundamentally calls into question.
I don’t think that the prescriptivism that Sensen wants to ascribe to Kant adequately captures his view. If idealism is the view that the existence of objects depends on the cognition of those objects, I would like to suggest that Kant’s alternative view, which fundamentally departs from other views in contemporary metaethics, is most accurately represented as “moral idealism”.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
In “The Sources of Normativity” Christine Korsgaard attempts to defend Kant’s moral ontology as a... more In “The Sources of Normativity” Christine Korsgaard attempts to defend Kant’s moral ontology as a kind of moral realism. She does so by way of drawing a distinction between substantial and procedural moral realism. After dis- missing substantial realism as dogmatic and defending procedural moral realism, goes on to claim that Kant’s view is best described as procedural moral realism. It has been argued against Korsgaard that procedural moral realism is a misnomer and that it turns out to be an anti-realist position. I don’t think that this criticism is correct and I will defend Korsgaard against the subjectivist objections that have been leveled against her. However, my main concern is to show why even Korsgaard’s procedural moral realism is still not completely in with Kant’s own epistemological and ontological commitments. In contrast to Korsgaard, I argue that Kant’s conception of reason as a capacity that is “by itself practical” commits him to a position which is best described by what I will call “moral idealism.” Practical reason is not merely a faculty for cognizing some testing procedure that would reliably distinguish between good and bad max- ims. In Kant, practical cognition consists in cognition of what I ought to do such that I do it, i.e. bring the object of my cognition into existence through a kind of self-affection.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Kant-Studien, 2017
In Groundwork III, Kant attempts to give a deduction of the categorical imperative. There is wide... more In Groundwork III, Kant attempts to give a deduction of the categorical imperative. There is widespread disagreement as to how Kant’s argument is supposed to proceed. Many com-mentators believe that Kant’s deduction fails because some of its argumentative moves are unjustified. In particular, Kant makes a mistaken inference from theoretical freedom to prac-tical freedom, and his axiological ‘superiority claim’ regarding the noumenal world’s priority over the sensible world is unjustified. According to the standard incompatibilist story, Kant came to see that his deduction was flawed by the time he wrote the Critique of Practical Reason, at which point he claimed that the truth of the moral law does not require a deduc-tion since it is a “fact of pure reason”. The moral law is no longer the conclusion of his argu-ment; instead, it functions as the premise of an argument that establishes our freedom. Other commentators endorse a compatibilist reading, according to which the justification of the moral law in Groundwork III and the second Critique are compatible because Kant never attempted to give the strong kind of deduction that he rightly rejects in the second Critique. On the view I develop here, the particular argumentative moves that the standard incompat-ibilist takes issue with are not flawed and incompatible with Kant’s second Critique. I argue for a compatibilist reading of these moves. I think the compatibilist is right to claim that the deduction Kant considered impossible in both the Groundwork and the second Critique is what I call a strong deduction. I also agree with compatibilists that the deduction he actually delivers in Groundwork III is only a weak deduction that makes use of a merely problematic conception of transcendental freedom. However, I do think that Kant’s argument in Groundwork III remains question begging in the final analysis. The facticity claim in the se-cond Critique, by contrast, can provide a non-question-begging account of moral obligation. Here, I agree with the optimistic incompatibilist, who views the argument in the second Cri-tique as an improvement on his argument in the Groundwork. However, in my novel account of Kant’s argument, I endorse what I call ‘radical incompatibilism’ because it concerns the roots of Kant’s approach to the justification of the moral law. What is novel about my ac-count is the claim that the deduction in Groundwork III rests on the false assumption that practical cognition, like theoretical cognition, requires a critique of pure reason. In the se-cond Critique, Kant revised his argument because he realized that, in contrast to synthetic a priori judgments of theoretical cognition, the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments of practical cognition can be derived from the actuality of a “deed”. With respect to pure prac-tical reason, the second Critique proceeds metaphysically—i.e. dogmatically—rather than critically. Hence Kant came to view a deduction of the categorical imperative as unnecessary and abandoned the project of a critique of pure practical reason. We should, for this reason, resist the generality of Kant’s claim in the first Critique to the effect that, for all synthetic judgments a priori, “if not a proof then at least a deduction of the legitimacy of its assertion must unfailingly be supplied” (CPR, B 286).
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Kantian Review, 2017
This paper is a discussion of Frederick Rauscher's interpretation of Kant's moral epistemology an... more This paper is a discussion of Frederick Rauscher's interpretation of Kant's moral epistemology and moral ontology. Rauscher and I both agree that Kant is a moral idealist, yet we disagree about the nature of his idealism. In the first section, I show that Rauscher neglects the common ground of Kant’s theoretical and practical philosophy, i.e. reason as a capacity for knowledge. As a consequence, Rauscher does not do justice to Kant’s practical cognitivism, and it remains an open question how his moral idealism can account for strict objectivity. In section 2, I show why Rauscher’s naturalism turns categorical imperatives into mere fictions that are either not really categorical or in fact overly demanding. In section 3, I turn to the notion of transcendental freedom, which seems to pose a problem for Rauscher’s naturalist interpretation. Rauscher makes room for his nat- uralism by restricting Kant’s notion of transcendental freedom to the act of self-legislation and operates with a compatibilist notion of freedom at the level of choice. I argue that this view is not only incompatible with Kant’s account of acting from duty but also cannot do justice to Kant’s definition of freedom of choice as the ‘capacity of pure reason to be by itself practical’. In section 4, I turn to what Rauscher calls the priority of theoretical reason over practical reason, or, as he also puts it, the ‘priority of belief’ over ‘determination of action’. I argue that the distinction between ‘belief’ and ‘action’, as Rauscher draws it, cuts right through Kant’s notion of a prac- tical belief and a practical postulate. If Rauscher is willing to let these notions go, he must also give up on Kant’s doctrine of the highest good. Finally, I return to Rauscher’s moral ontology. In particular, I discuss two of his claims: (i) moral realists run into Kant’s heteronomy objection, and (ii) moral idealists should give up on the notion of intrinsic moral value properties. I argue against both claims and offer an alternative account.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Kant’s moral philosophy has given rise to what since John Rawls’ seminal lec-ture has come to be ... more Kant’s moral philosophy has given rise to what since John Rawls’ seminal lec-ture has come to be known as moral constructivism. Being a Neo-Kantian in ethics is equated with being a constructivist. Yet, since Kant explicitly holds that cognition through the construction of concepts is limited to mathematics (CPR, B 741), advocates of the Kantian letter will still find it baffling to refer to Kant’s ethics with the term “constructivism”. In light of this claim, it seems at best confusing to call a position which is intended to be Kantian in spirit “con-structivism”. Yet, constructivists still believe that the label “constructivism” best picks out what turns out to be the Kantian alternative to moral realism and an-ti-realism. In this paper I want to show why “Kantian” constructivism, despite its many Kantian features, marks a departure from Kant’s project with respect to its most fundamental metaethical commitment.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
In applied ethics, Kant’s moral law is often considered a top-down principle. Particular moral ru... more In applied ethics, Kant’s moral law is often considered a top-down principle. Particular moral rules or duties are derived from a higher-order principle: the categorical imperative. Yet it is often thought that the moral rules derived from this principle are too rigid, divorced from moral reality in all its complexity. When Kant is pressed on his rigorism, he famously bites the bullet (VRML, AA 08: 426f.). Kant scholars, by contrast, respond to this by turning to the casuistry in Kant’s Doctrine of Virtue. The general strategy is to embrace Kant’s critics by softening his rigorism. Jens Timmermann, for example, claims that the casuistic questions “suffice to draw any simple and easy-to-follow rules of morality (such as ‘Do not kill yourself’) into doubt”. This kind of response is philosophically sound, and it does make Kant’s ethics more plausible. It cannot be made, however, without substantially revising Kant’s ethics.
In this paper, I show why the scope of Kant’s casuistry is restricted and does not leave room for genuine exceptions. If we distinguish between two kinds of exceptions, however, we can escape the rigorism charge and make room for a more substantive applied ethics in Kant. With this said, this move will make it necessary to reconsider Kant’s distinction between perfect and imperfect duties. I believe that Kantians should be committed to the claim that we have a perfect duty to act from the categorical imperative. This claim does not also commit them, however, to particular perfect duties. In giving up on the notion of perfect duties at the material level, we can soften Kant’s rigorism and make room for genuine moral deliberation and interpretation without descending into moral skepticism.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
In the Religion, Kant does not only claim that “evil” is a valid category of moral philosophy, bu... more In the Religion, Kant does not only claim that “evil” is a valid category of moral philosophy, but also that the human being as a species is evil by nature. Critics have raised the objection that Kant rests content with several “crying examples” as justifying reasons for his claim. In their view Kant overlooks the fact that the claim involves a synthetic a priori judgment and thus should require for its justification a “transcendental deduction” (O’Conner 1985, p. 298; Allison 1990; pp. 154-157; Timmons 1994, pp. 136-140; Michalson 1990, p. 37, p. 67f.). However, there is no indication even of the preliminary steps of this deduction in the Religion. Attempts have thus been made to reconstruct the missing transcendental deduction (Allison 1990; pp. 154-157). Against these objections, I would like to investigate more closely the purpose of Kant’s contention that there is a general propensity in human beings to evil and show why it is justified within the frame-work of his assumptions. My central claim is that there is an epistemic asymmetry be-tween morally good and morally evil actions which enables us to infer a priori a propensity to evil.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Comparing Kant and Sartre, 2016
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Immanuel Kant: Tugendlehre, 2019
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, 2007
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Freiheit und Moral in Grundlegung III, 2016
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Die „Kategorien der Freiheit“ in Kants praktischer Philosophie, 2016
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Papers by Jochen Bojanowski
Despite the growing literature on Kant’s moral epistemology and moral epistemology the question remains open what Kant’s answer to this apparent dilemma is. According to the moral realist the objectivity of our moral judgments can only be preserved if moral values are independent of our voluntary approval. Objectivity requires that there are mind-independent moral facts so that our moral judgments can be true or false. Since Kant wants to hold on to the objectivity of our moral judgments, he would need to endorse the second horn of the dilemma. Thus, many have tried to ascribe some sort of realism to Kant. Allen Wood, for example, claims that Kant “is a moral realist in the most agreed-upon sense that term has in contemporary metaphysics and metaethics. [Since] Kant holds that moral truth is irreducible either to what people think or to the results of any verification procedures […].“ (Wood 1999, 157 f.). According to the moral realist interpretation the categorical imperative in its universal law formulation is merely a reliable goodness-tracking device. It detects moral goodness but is not itself the source of the good (Stern, Stratton-Lake, Langton, Timmons et al.). The mind-independent moral facts, which the moral realist takes to be necessary in order to account for objectivity, are facts about how our actions relate to what is absolutely valuable: our “humanity”.
John Rawls and Christine Korsgaard, by contrast, hold that the procedure itself is the source of values. “Values for Kant are constructed by a procedure of making laws for ourselves […] [and are then] projected onto the world” (Korsgaard, SN 112). Many have argued that Rawls’ and Korsgaard’s constructivism makes moral facts dependent on our choices and thus commits them to anti-realism (Cohen 1996, Nagel 1996, Stern 2012). According to these critics, Kantians either have to give up on the objectivity of moral judgments or on constructivism. Korsgaard, by contrast, believes that even though she rejects the second horn of the dilemma, this does not necessarily lead into anti-realism or subjectivism. Since there is a correct procedure through which we arrive at our particular moral judgments, the objectivity of these judgments is preserved and moral values are not merely subjective.
Sharon Street has recently argued that Rawlsian constructivism is merely “restricted”; it cannot count as a metaethical theory at all because it is begging the question at issue. It purports to explain why and how something has value, but in fact the procedure (the original position and the veil of ignorance) simply presupposes freedom and equality to be good. All other results of the construction procedure owe their value properties to this initial presupposition. Korsgaard’s constructivism attempts to overcome the restrictedness and is, in contrast to Rawls’ constructivism, not merely a normative constructivism but indeed a metaethical constructivism. But her attempt is, according to Street, based on the false assumption that we can derive certain “substantive values” from a “purely formal understanding of the nature of practical reason“ (Street 2008, 244).
This rough sketch shows how wide ranging the disagreement about Kant’s moral epistemology and ontology has become. On a deeper level it reveals our fundamental dissatisfaction with the way some conceptual distinctions are drawn in contemporary metaethics. Thinking through Kant’s theory will put us in a position to see some of the presuppositions we have been taking for granted more clearly. The Kantian view I attempt to lay out in this paper is supposed to dissolve the secular version of the Euthyphro dilemma. In responding to this dilemma we need to get clear about the source or the origin of our moral knowledge: Voluntary approval or mind-independent moral facts? Projectivism or detectivism? Construction or given? I believe that all these ways of articulating the problem turn out, on closer inspection, to be false alternatives.
I don’t think that the prescriptivism that Sensen wants to ascribe to Kant adequately captures his view. If idealism is the view that the existence of objects depends on the cognition of those objects, I would like to suggest that Kant’s alternative view, which fundamentally departs from other views in contemporary metaethics, is most accurately represented as “moral idealism”.
In this paper, I show why the scope of Kant’s casuistry is restricted and does not leave room for genuine exceptions. If we distinguish between two kinds of exceptions, however, we can escape the rigorism charge and make room for a more substantive applied ethics in Kant. With this said, this move will make it necessary to reconsider Kant’s distinction between perfect and imperfect duties. I believe that Kantians should be committed to the claim that we have a perfect duty to act from the categorical imperative. This claim does not also commit them, however, to particular perfect duties. In giving up on the notion of perfect duties at the material level, we can soften Kant’s rigorism and make room for genuine moral deliberation and interpretation without descending into moral skepticism.
Despite the growing literature on Kant’s moral epistemology and moral epistemology the question remains open what Kant’s answer to this apparent dilemma is. According to the moral realist the objectivity of our moral judgments can only be preserved if moral values are independent of our voluntary approval. Objectivity requires that there are mind-independent moral facts so that our moral judgments can be true or false. Since Kant wants to hold on to the objectivity of our moral judgments, he would need to endorse the second horn of the dilemma. Thus, many have tried to ascribe some sort of realism to Kant. Allen Wood, for example, claims that Kant “is a moral realist in the most agreed-upon sense that term has in contemporary metaphysics and metaethics. [Since] Kant holds that moral truth is irreducible either to what people think or to the results of any verification procedures […].“ (Wood 1999, 157 f.). According to the moral realist interpretation the categorical imperative in its universal law formulation is merely a reliable goodness-tracking device. It detects moral goodness but is not itself the source of the good (Stern, Stratton-Lake, Langton, Timmons et al.). The mind-independent moral facts, which the moral realist takes to be necessary in order to account for objectivity, are facts about how our actions relate to what is absolutely valuable: our “humanity”.
John Rawls and Christine Korsgaard, by contrast, hold that the procedure itself is the source of values. “Values for Kant are constructed by a procedure of making laws for ourselves […] [and are then] projected onto the world” (Korsgaard, SN 112). Many have argued that Rawls’ and Korsgaard’s constructivism makes moral facts dependent on our choices and thus commits them to anti-realism (Cohen 1996, Nagel 1996, Stern 2012). According to these critics, Kantians either have to give up on the objectivity of moral judgments or on constructivism. Korsgaard, by contrast, believes that even though she rejects the second horn of the dilemma, this does not necessarily lead into anti-realism or subjectivism. Since there is a correct procedure through which we arrive at our particular moral judgments, the objectivity of these judgments is preserved and moral values are not merely subjective.
Sharon Street has recently argued that Rawlsian constructivism is merely “restricted”; it cannot count as a metaethical theory at all because it is begging the question at issue. It purports to explain why and how something has value, but in fact the procedure (the original position and the veil of ignorance) simply presupposes freedom and equality to be good. All other results of the construction procedure owe their value properties to this initial presupposition. Korsgaard’s constructivism attempts to overcome the restrictedness and is, in contrast to Rawls’ constructivism, not merely a normative constructivism but indeed a metaethical constructivism. But her attempt is, according to Street, based on the false assumption that we can derive certain “substantive values” from a “purely formal understanding of the nature of practical reason“ (Street 2008, 244).
This rough sketch shows how wide ranging the disagreement about Kant’s moral epistemology and ontology has become. On a deeper level it reveals our fundamental dissatisfaction with the way some conceptual distinctions are drawn in contemporary metaethics. Thinking through Kant’s theory will put us in a position to see some of the presuppositions we have been taking for granted more clearly. The Kantian view I attempt to lay out in this paper is supposed to dissolve the secular version of the Euthyphro dilemma. In responding to this dilemma we need to get clear about the source or the origin of our moral knowledge: Voluntary approval or mind-independent moral facts? Projectivism or detectivism? Construction or given? I believe that all these ways of articulating the problem turn out, on closer inspection, to be false alternatives.
I don’t think that the prescriptivism that Sensen wants to ascribe to Kant adequately captures his view. If idealism is the view that the existence of objects depends on the cognition of those objects, I would like to suggest that Kant’s alternative view, which fundamentally departs from other views in contemporary metaethics, is most accurately represented as “moral idealism”.
In this paper, I show why the scope of Kant’s casuistry is restricted and does not leave room for genuine exceptions. If we distinguish between two kinds of exceptions, however, we can escape the rigorism charge and make room for a more substantive applied ethics in Kant. With this said, this move will make it necessary to reconsider Kant’s distinction between perfect and imperfect duties. I believe that Kantians should be committed to the claim that we have a perfect duty to act from the categorical imperative. This claim does not also commit them, however, to particular perfect duties. In giving up on the notion of perfect duties at the material level, we can soften Kant’s rigorism and make room for genuine moral deliberation and interpretation without descending into moral skepticism.