Critical Studies in Education

Abstract Kant’s doctrine of the compatibility of the causal determinism of the natural world with causation through freedom brought a new approach to the debate on freedom and necessity that did not meet with everyone’s approval. In 1788, Johann Heinrich August Ulrich presented his Eleutheriologie, a comprehensive critique of Kant’s doctrine and at the same time a proposal for a deterministic moral theory. Kant read the Eleutheriologie, as evidenced by a few notes, and his friend Christian Jakob Kraus published a review of the work. Both responded to Ulrich’s objections by denying the possibility of a determinist moral theory and taking this as an argument in favour of the critical doctrine. In this article, I reconstruct Ulrich’s critique and his determinist moral theory as well as Kant’s and Kraus’s defences. In this early debate, both sides developed strategies that would recur in the following debate on the Kantian theory of freedom.

Abstract In his understanding of imputation, developed centrally in the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant favors the point of view of the (real and ideal) judge who applies the moral law to an acting person. Reinhold, on the other hand, when speaking of imputation, emphasizes the role of the autonomous and scrupulous acting person. This is a consequence of his view that free will is the faculty of a morally capable person to decide for or against the moral law. Considering the relevant insights of both positions, I argue that the notion of imputation should be understood in a multi-perspective manner and in the sense of a multi-place relation.

Abstract Moral judgements usually concern the moral responsibility of an acting person. Someone is considered praiseworthy or blameworthy for an action based on whether that action is in accordance with or against moral norms. On a Kantian account, the essential issue is the motivation of the acting person, as this is a criterion for being a moral cause of the action i.e. for intending it. Only moral causation permits the moral imputation of the action to the acting person, and moral motivation always implies the use of practical reason as the capacity of acting in accordance with rules (categorical or hypothetical). Giving priority to one of these leads to either moral merit or moral guilt. The morally guilty person treats himself or others merely as a means rather than respecting himself or others as persons, i.e. as individuals able to act according to their own aims. We find such an account in Johann Christoph Hoffbauer’s interpretation of Kant’s theory of free will. While Kant is occasionally accused of inconsistency in claiming both that evil actions are real and imputable and that only good actions are free (and therefore imputable), Hoffbauer offers a consistent version of Kant’s theory of free will. In this paper, I analyze his interpretation, first sketching its pre-Kantian theoretical context and then discussing Hoffbauer’s Kantian interpretation of the concepts of will and the faculty of choice, using the case of a lie as an illustration.

Abstract C. C. E. Schmid began his academic career as a Kantian and became an influential commentator on Kant’s works. In the course of his career, however, he devoted himself increasingly to the philosophical treatment of empirical topics. Schmid’s turn towards the empirical is evident in his Attempt at a Moral Philosophy and is further developed in his Empirical Psychology and Physiology, Treated Philosophically. This paper examines Schmid’s change of perspective by focusing on his concept of moral imputability. It argues that while Schmid adheres to Kant’s terminology, he interprets the terms “incentive” (Triebfeder) and “moral feeling” differently from Kant. Schmid locates the concepts of incentive and moral feeling in the realm of sensibility, which has significant implications for his concept of moral imputability. For him, the latter is no longer linked to the question of transcendental freedom.

Abstract This paper reconstructs Fichte’s theory of moral imputability. The paper argues that Fichte attempts to solve the problem of attributing immoral actions by introducing his concept of moral inertia, thereby drawing on Leibniz’s account. According to Fichte’s System of Ethics, moral inertia is not merely a state of moral passivity but can be attributed to laziness with regard to reflection, due to moral self-deception. The paper analyzes three kinds of moral self-deception and interprets them in light of what Fichte calls the “power of inertia”. Finally, the paper discusses possible ways to escape our self-inflicted inertia, thereby drawing on Kant’s conception of enlightenment.

Abstract In this article I attempt to explain Kant’s notoriously obscure argument for the principle that every rational being should be treated as an “end,” and not merely as a means. I take my lead from the appearance in the argument of terms and ideas that he uses earlier in the Groundwork to express two distinctive features of moral value and to make a related claim about how moral value is achieved. I argue that, of the candidates for the “end” of moral action that Kant considers, only rational beings instantiate both of these features and satisfy the related claim. I also argue that these features and this claim explain why no other candidates need be considered and why moral actions must have an “end” at all. Thus I show that these features and this claim resolve the puzzles posed by Kant’s own argument and make sense of some of the remarks that he makes in it.

Abstract Jens Timmermann challenges the prevailing view that Kant held an intellectualist conception of moral failure, instead arguing that there are two distinct types of practical failure within Kantian ethics. The first type belongs to the domain of hypothetical imperatives, the second to the domain of categorical imperatives. The former can be regarded as an epistemological failure, while the latter is a failure of the will and is ultimately inexplicable. On his view, Kant therefore held a hybrid theory of practical failure. I disagree with Timmermann’s explanation, and this for two reasons. First, Timmermann follows Socrates in denying the impossibility of incontinence in the prudential realm. In reality, however, there are many situations where the agent knows that an action will contribute to his happiness but fails to do so. In other words, there is such a thing as incontinence with regard to hypothetical imperatives. Second, Timmermann’s interpretation is based on the basic assumption that hypothetical imperatives are the embodiment not of freedom but of heteronomy. However, Timmermann sometimes admits that we act freely in the pursuit of happiness. Hypothetical imperatives, in my view, are also the embodiment of human freedom because they are the activity of the human will.

Abstract In 1924 the artist Luise Staudinger issued a bronze medal featuring a portrait of Kant on one side and a famous passage from Kant on the other: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence […]: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” To this Staudinger added an illustration of a naked young man kneeling with outstretched arms, described by the artist as a man in prayer. Yet this does not seem to fit the meaning of Kant’s words. This paper shows that Luise Staudinger was implicitly referring to her father, Franz Staudinger. In his writings, Staudinger taught that he who truly lives up to the moral law always does what he ought to do out of his own free will and with devotion. It is in fact devotion (Hingabe) that is the key to Luise Staudinger’s illustration. The young man is not in prayer; instead, the figure symbolizes a state of mind, namely obedience to the moral law out of devotion to it.