Volume 116, Issue 1

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.