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2 results

  • 1 - The Original Empty Formalism Objection

  • Edited by James A. Clarke, University of York, Gabriel Gottlieb
  • Book:
    Practical Philosophy from Kant to Hegel
    Published online:
    16 March 2021
    Print publication:
    18 March 2021, pp 10-27

  • Summary

    The 1786 review of Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals by Hermann Andreas Pistorius raised the objection that Kant's categorical imperative is an "empty formalism" that needs an antecedent conception of the good long before Hegel made the same charge in 1802.  Kant's explicit response to Pistorius in the Critique of Practical Reason is just to double-down on the priority of the right over the good.  However, I suggest that Kant's characterization of humanity as an end in itself as the "ground of a possible categorical imperative" in the Groundwork, on the one hand, and his account of the highest good as the complete object of morality in the second Critique, on the other, together provide a much fuller and satisfactory response to the "empty formalism" objection.

  • Kantian Agents and their Significant Others

  • Nataliya Palatnik
  • Journal:
    Kantian Review / Volume 23 / Issue 2 / June 2018
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    16 May 2018, pp. 285-306
    Print publication:
    June 2018

  • Critics of Kant’s moral philosophy often object that his emphasis on individual autonomy makes him unable to account for our ‘second-personal’ or ‘bipolar’ duties. These are duties we owe to other people rather than duties we have with respect to them – as we might have duties with respect to the environment or works of art. With a recent and novel formulation of this objection as my foil, I argue that the apparent force of the ‘bipolarity’ objections rests on a failure to appreciate Kant’s inherently practical approach to ethics. On the positive side, reflection on criticisms of Kant’s treatment of ‘bipolar’ normativity helps to shed new light on his conception of practical agency and its place in his system of morals.