Alle Publikationen
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2020
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(2020): Kant's notion of a transcendental schema. The constitution of objective cognition between epistemology and psychology. Berlin: Peter Lang AG (Studia philosophica et historica)Keywords: Kant, Philosophie, Philosophy, Psychologie, schema, Schemata, Schematheorie, Schematism, Schematismus
2018
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(2018): Voluntary Simplicity Strongly Backed by All Three Main Normative-Ethical Traditions. In: Ethical Perspectives 25 (1), S. 87-116
Abstract: We examine the growing ‘Voluntary Simplicity’ (VS) movement from the perspectives of Utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, and Virtue Ethics. We argue that, from each of these three diverse perspectives, there is a compelling argument to the conclusion that citizens of the ‘developed’ world ought to embrace such simplicity in their own lives, and to facilitate its greater adoption societally and globally. We conclude by asking why it is that this compelling conclusion has not already been more widely found and acted upon. In reflecting on this question we outline some arguments for why a culture of voluntary simplicity may be needed to drive political and macroeconomic change.
2017
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(2017): Social Conceptions of Moral Agency in Hegel and Sellars. In: International Journal of Philosophical Studies 25 (2), S. 249-265. DOI: 10.1080/09672559.2016.1276950
Abstract: This essay contributes to our understanding of the relation between the philosophies of Hegel and Sellars. While most treatments of this relation have focused on metaphysics or epistemology, I focus on ethics, and in particular on the formulation of moral agency. I argue that Hegel and Sellars arrive at a similar metaphilosophical rejection of individual moral agency in favor of conceptions of moral agency as the outcome of social mediation. To demonstrate this, I trace how Hegel and Sellars offer parallel resolutions of the Kantian paradox': the apparent problem that, in Kantian ethics, moral agents must both freely self-legislate the moral law unto themselves and stand in a dutiful relation to the moral law as a necessary function of practical reason. Drawing Hegel and Sellars together in this way casts new light on Sellars's understudied ethical theory and further evidences the contemporary relevance of Hegel's moral philosophy.
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(2017): Kant, Oppression, and the Possibility of Nonculpable Failures to Respect Oneself. In: The Southern Journal of Philosophy 55 (3), S. 285-305. DOI: 10.1111/sjp.12242
Abstract: I argue that Kant's ethical framework cannot countenance a certain kind of failure to respect oneself that can occur within oppressive social contexts. Kant's assumption that any person, qua rational being, has guaranteed epistemic access to the moral law as the standard of good action and the capacity to act upon this standard makes autonomy an achievement within the individual agent's power, but this is contrary to a feminist understanding of autonomy as a relational achievement that can be thwarted by the systematic attack on autonomy that occurs within oppressive social conditions. Insofar as Kant's negative duty of self-respect is unable to accommodate the ways immersion in oppressive social environments can warp an individual's understanding of what she is owed and capable of as a moral agent, it perpetuates the cruelty of unjust social systems in the guise of respecting individual autonomy. I conclude by considering Carol Hay's argument that those who are oppressed have an obligation to themselves to resist their own oppression, in order to explore how this limitation in how Kant conceives of the duty to respect the self may reach expression in contemporary ethical theory inspired by Kant.
Keywords: agency, Autonomie, Diskriminierung, Disziplin, Ethik, feminism, Feminismus, Gender, Handlungsmacht, Hay, Kant, Macht, Modelle/Theorien, Moral, moral agents, moralische Gesetze, moralisches Wissen, Moralphilosophie, oppressive social systems, Philosophie, Respekt, social systems, ethics, Three main normative ethic perspectives Kant, Utilitarismus virtue ethics, Unterdrückungssysteme 2016
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(2016): The ethics of everyday life. Moral theology, social anthropology, and the imagination of the human. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press
Abstract: What should the opportunities and demands of my spouse’s work mean for me given the opportunities and demands of my own work? Should we move away from our extended family for a better job? Should we have children now? What kind of education do we owe our children? How do we balance the demands of our aging parents with the demands of our children? Do my spouse and my children really know how much I love them? How much should we be giving to the church and to this or that cause? Is it okay to drive this safer car and to drive it as much as I do given how much CO2 it emits? Should I really order a steak? I suspect that these are the sorts of moral questions that bedevil a majority of individuals most of the time—nothing glamorous, nothing exciting, only the warp and woof of our daily lives. We want to live faithfully and well, knowing that to live such a life will require a thousand little decisions that may have unintended ethical consequences. [End Page 379] The typical class in ethics, even Christian ethics or moral theology, and the typical anthology used in such a class follows a standard formula. The first part of the class/book is devoted to an examination of the major theories on offer and includes an account of deontological or nonconsequentialist theories (the nature of the act is what makes it wrong or right) with the greatest attention devoted to variations of Kantian ethics. It also includes various permutations of consequentialist or utilitarian ethics (do the greatest good, however that is understood, for the greatest number of people). This, in turn, is typically followed by an introduction to virtue ethics in some shape or form. After this groundwork is laid, students are then given the opportunity to sink their teeth into the juicy bits, namely the “application” of these theories and their guiding principles to a fairly standard set of moral problems, many of which are bioethical problems, including beginning of life issues such as cloning, in vitro fertilization and Assisted Reproductive Technologies, and abortion, and end of life issues such as euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. Other issues include the intentional taking of human life in war and capital punishment; hunger and poverty; and environmental responsibilities and animal welfare. Students who complete such a class may emerge relieved that morality, having so little to do with their daily lives, is not quite as demanding as they had feared. After all, how likely is it that they will come face to face with any of these hard moral problems, much less more than one? And if they should perchance encounter one of these problems, they need only to plug the moral principle into it. “Ethics is really pretty simple,” they may think. Michael Banner, Dean and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, is hardly the first to notice how distorting and unhelpful is the reduction of ethics to an attempted resolution of a hard moral problem. Moral quandaries are but a minor part of the moral life. Unlike earlier critics like Alasdair MacIntyre, who turned to Aristotle to forge a retrieval of an ethics of virtue as an alternative to an ethics of hard cases, Banner commends an “everyday ethics,” an ethics of the course of life (and says not a word about virtue). And where earlier critics, especially MacIntyre, find modern morality, both in theory and in practice, incoherent, Banner is dismissive only of the practices of most modern moral theorists (in particular, bioethicists), and not modern moral practices themselves. Indeed, moral theory should attend to moral phenomena. [End Page 380] Furthermore, because cultural anthropology (in Britain “social anthropology”) is the discipline in which moral phenomena is most closely examined and described, moral theology must partner with social anthropology. Moral theology will do its appropriate work only through its...
2015
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(2015): Adorno's View of Life. In: FRONTIERS OF PHILOSOPHY IN CHINA (10/3), S. 444-456
Abstract: The aim of this article is to reflect on the dialectic of the individual's life and death in terms of Adorno's moral philosophy, specifically through a thorough reading of his Negative Dialectics and other key works on the subject. I hold that there are two aspects of the dialectic of life within the context of Adorno's "nonidentity": one involves exploring the false identification, due to the reification of modern society, of the individual's life experience with her or his death experience, while the other involves preserving the dialectical and irreducible tension between the theoretical contemplation of life and of historical conditions, as well as specific social systems. Heidegger's ontological philosophy concerning Dasein and Kant's categorical imperative will also be discussed in order to fully understand Adorno's moral philosophy and his idea of nonidentity. From my point of view, Adorno's moral philosophy is the prime motivator of his unique concept of nonidentity, and has influenced contemporary political philosophical concepts such as biopolitics (cf. G. Agamben).
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(2015): THE DEPTH OF CIVILIZING FEATURES. NEGATIVE DIALECTICS BETWEEN POLITENESS AND MORALITY IN KANT’S ANTHROPOLOGY. In: ENDOXA-SERIES FILOSOFICAS (35), S. 119-138
Abstract: This paper tackles the contribution that the beautiful appearance of virtue, whose multiplicity of forms can be gathered under the generic name of decorum, offers to the civilizing process and also to the progressive moralization of mankind according to Kant’s Moral Anthropology. First, I will focus on the homiletic virtues analyzed in the Metaphysics of Morals, that is, loquacity, politeness, hospitality and indulgence, which bring about a trompe l’oeil inside the subject, always prone to selfishness and to the perversion of its practical drives. Secondly, I will analyze the relationship between these “supplements of virtue,” good social manners, and an undeniable anthropological fact, that is, the weakness of human nature and the need to use aesthetic crutches to get accustomed to acting in accordance with pure practical principles. Finally, I will cast light on the importance that parerga deserves according to Kant, who argues that these special virtues must be cultivated in the midst of social life, that is to say, always in contact with others. On the contrary, moral appearance produced by the individual subject ought to be banned unequivocally, because everyone must avoid falling into false illusions about the purity of her or his own intentions.
2010
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(2010): Kant on the Highest Moral-Physical Good. The Social Aspect of Kant's Moral Philosophy. In: Kantian Review 15 (01), S. 1-36. DOI: 10.1017/S1369415400002351
1977
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(1977): Two Kinds of Respect. In: Ethics 88 (1), S. 36-49. DOI: 10.1086/292054
Abstract: S. 39: "My project in this paper is to develop the initial distinction which I have drawn between recognition and appraisal respect into a more detailed and specific account of each. These accounts will not merely be of intrinsic interest. Ultimately I will use them to illuminate the puzzles with which this paper began and to understand the idea of self-respect." 42 " Thus, insofar as respect within such a pursuit will depend on an appraisal of the participant from the perspective of whatever standards are held to be appropriate to the pursuit, such respect will depend on a judgement to which excellences of character are thought relevant. Note that exactly what aspect of the person's character is thought to be relevant in this instance is his recognition respect (or lack of it) for the standards of the pursuit." 44 "This attitude fails of being appraisal respect in that my having it toward the person is conditional on those traits being such as to make him server a particular purpose that I happen to have" 44 - 45 "To sum up: Appraisal respect is an attitude of positive appraisal of a person either judged as a person or as engaged in some more specific pursuit. In the first case, the appropriate grounds are features of the person's character: dispositions to act for particular reasons or a higher-level disposition to act for the best reasons. In the second case, though features of character do not exhaust the appropriate grounds for appraisal respect, some such character traits will be relevant (recognition respect for the standards of a particular pursuit). Also, the other features which constitute the appoprate excellences of the pursuit must be related to traits of character in the way specified. In both cases, the positive appraisal of the person, and of his traits, must be categorical. It cannot depend on the fact that the person, because of his traits, serves an interest or purpose of one's own." 45 "To have recognition respect for someone as a person is to give appropriate weight to the fact that he or she is a person by being willing to constrain one's behaviour in ways required by that fact." 45 "This is rather different from having an attitude of appraisal respect for someone as a person. The latter is a positive appraisal of an individual made with regard to those features which are excellences of persons. As such, it is not owed to everone, for it may or may not be merited. When it is, what is merited is just the positive appraisal itself." 47 "Second, the only beings who are approriate objects of appraisal respect are those who are capable of acting for reasons and hence capable of conceiving of various facts as meriting more or less consideration in deliberation."
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