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

Session 2: Reactions to Kant's Ethics (Lecture)

Despite an overwhelmingly positive reception of Kant's ethics, his ethical approach has always had its critics as well. In this lecture we will look at two kinds of criticisms: (i) internal, which emerge from a consistent development and application of Kant's own pillars, and (ii) external, which point out that Kant has neglected or overlooked some important considerations in his conception of morality.

Among the internal criticism, we will discuss the internal (in)consistency of the first and the second of Kant's pillars, and also some criticism to his third pillar, his Platonic ideal of morality. Kant argued 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. This may well be so, but then we are required to show that these ideals and archetypes are genuine and vital, rather than mere arbitrary constructions and unfounded utopias. There are legitimate criticisms that Kant did not succeed in doing so, and the failure of his lofty claims concerning the role of reason and the highest human vocation should force us to rethink the role of rationality in moral experience.

Many external criticisms continue this line of thought and bring us back to the reconsideration of the problem of moral authority. Kant does not accept that God is the measure of all things, but his understanding of the thesis that man is the measure of all things is peculiar because it is not based on the understand of man's nature as a whole, but only on Kant's focus on good will and pure reason. Some specific criticisms - dealing with the distinction of nature and convention, as raised against Kant by Richard Taylor - will be developed in more detail.

Recommended Literature (in order of importance for this lecture)

• Predrag Cicovacki, Between Truth and Illusion: Kant at the Crossroads of Modernity (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), ch. 7, “Moral Illusions,” pp. 103-118.
• Richard Taylor, Good and Evil (New York: Macmillan, 1970).
• 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.