Professor Predrag Cicovacki (USA)
The Problem of Moral Authority in Kant and Post-Kantian Ethics

Session 1: Three Pillars of Kant’s Ethics (Lecture)

We will begin by discussing the problem of moral authority, the best expression of which is found in Plato's Laws , where he confronts two extreme views: (1) Protagoras's view: Man is the measure of all things, and (2) the traditional ancient view, also defended by Plato, God is the measure of all things.

With this framework in mind, we will approach Kant's ethics. Kant's complex view will be reconstructed on the basis of its three most fundamental pillars: (i) the moral sense and conscience of the common man, (ii) the formal exactness of the moral principles that makes morality similar to mathematics, and finally (iii) the ideal, Platonic nature of the moral norms. The rest of the lecture will consist in the further clarification of each of the pillars.

Like Protagoras, Kant thought that it would be foolish to attempt introducing new moral principles since all of us already have a (more or less) developed sense of what is right and wrong. The task of a philosopher with respect to morality is not to construct a new moral system but to recover what has been forgotten due to the influence of weak will and the pursuit of self-interest. Kant's reconstruction of morality, however, with its elaborate system of duties, rights, and imperatives, resembles more an axiomatic geometrical system than a common sense approach. Moreover, in his attempts to formalize the central concepts of morality, he was not sufficiently attentive to the distinction between the moral norms as the principles of general orientation, and the same norms as specific guidelines for actions. Kant's third pillar, his Platonic ideal of morality, is found in his conception of the Highest Good. Like Plato, Kant thought that the principles of morality cannot be obtained and evaluated by means of experience, since they stand above it and provide the ideals and archetypes which we ought to approximate as much as possible.

After the preliminary investigation of the three pillars, it will become clearer that Kant has the elements of both Protagora's view and Plato's view with regard to the issue of moral authority. The next lectures should help us understand exactly where Kant stands with respect to these two extreme possibilities.

Recommended Literature (in order of importance for this lecture)

• Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals , trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993).
• Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason , trans. Lewis White Beck (Upper Saddle River, NJ.: Prentice Hall, 1993), especially chapters on the Highest Good and Methodology, pp. 116-171.
• Predrag Cicovacki, Between Truth and Illusion: Kant at the Crossroads of Modernity (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), ch. 7, “Moral Illusions,” pp. 103-118.
• Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Penguin, 1968), ch. 3, “What is Authority?” pp. 91-141.