Phil 320: Kant’s Moral Philosophy

Phil 320: Kant’s Moral Philosophy

Prof. Patrick Frierson

Office Hours (Olin East 124): 2:30-5 PM Tuesday, 1:30-3 PM Wednesday, and by appointment

Course Goals: There are five central goals in this course. First, in terms of knowledge of content, you will develop a deep understanding of the basic structure and several particular details of Kant’s moral philosophy. Second, you will improve your skills at formulating a philosophically interesting interpretive thesis about an important philosopher and defending that thesis in writing. Third, you will learn to defend your philosophical claims orally. Fourth, you will learn to be an excellent philosophical critic and discussant. And finally and most importantly, you will develop your capacities to pursue wisdom and insight with respect to morality and ethics; that is, you will learn to philosophize.

Content: This course consists in a broad study of Kant’s moral philosophy. We begin with Kant’s Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals, his most popular writing on moral philosophy. We then look at the relationship between morality and the rest of Kant’s philosophy through studying the Critique of Practical Reason, along with some selections from the Critique of Pure Reason. Then we turn to the problem of human evil, which Kant emphasizes in his Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Finally, we look at particular issues in Kant’s moral philosophy, focusing in particular on his political philosophy and his discussions of human virtue. Both of these are discussed in the Metaphysics of Morals. Throughout the course, there are opportunities for customizing its content. Thus during week 6, you can choose to focus on Kant’s argument for the existence of God or on Kant’s aesthetics; and during week 8, you can focus on Kant’s doctrine of “grace” or on the role of moral community in his thought. The last two weeks of the semester provide a particularly important scope for choice, and we’ll need to settle on the content of those at the start of the semester since what we choose will determine which additional books (if any) you need to purchase for this course. During those two weeks, we can look at

(1) Contemporary (21^st century) Kantian moral theories. (Several of the most important moral theories today are broadly Kantian, and I’ll lay out some options for these.) If you choose this option, we’ll purchase one or two additional books laying out contemporary neo-Kantian moral theories.

(2) Particular issues in applying Kant’s ethics (for which I’d ask a friend of mine for a draft of a book he’s writing that deals with various applied topics, but we could talk about either topics Kant discusses (see list below) or apply Kant to issues of contemporary applied ethics). Depending upon which topics we choose, there will be various other books/articles that we’ll need to either purchase or have on reserve.

(3) Kant’s early moral theory. (In the 1760’s, 20 years before the moral theory for which he became famous, Kant developed a quite different approach to ethics. I’ve recently edited a collection of his writings and lectures from this period that shows the basic elements of this early ethical theory and the first steps from that early theory to his later thought. This material also includes important stuff on Kant’s attitudes towards women and other ethnicities.) For this, we’d buy Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime and other writings and I’d put some other material on reserve.

Throughout the course of the semester, our reading of Kant will be enriched by reading selected secondary sources. The two most important secondary sources for the course are Creating the Kingdom of Ends (by Christine Korsgaard) and Kant’s Ethical Theory (by Allen Wood).

Course Format and Requirements: This course is a tutorial. The class is divided into pairs, and each pair will meet with me once a week for 75-90 minutes. During each weekly meeting, one student will be responsible for a paper discussing issues related to the reading for the day. Although I have provided one or more questions for each week, the papers can be on any topic related to the primary reading. You are expected to take the secondary sources into account where they are relevant. You are also invited to look for additional secondary sources, and you should make use of at least two “outside” secondary sources over the course of the semester. Tips on finding secondary sources are available here. Your papers should be between 1400 and 1800 words.

The other student will be responsible for responding to that paper. The tutorial will begin with the first student reading her/his paper. Then the other student will respond, and we will have an intensive discussion of the material. At the end of the semester, each student will have the chance to expand one of their tutorial papers into a longer final essay (1600-2000 words; this expansion is not required). Evaluation will be based on written work (60%), oral participation in the tutorial (20%), and critiques (20%). (I will be commenting on papers orally, as part of the tutorial itself. If you would like to know where you stand in terms of your grade, you may ask me at any time.) In addition to these weekly meetings in pairs, we will meet Tuesday evenings for lecture/discussion as a whole class. Some of these class sessions may take the form of public lectures to the Whitman community as a whole.

Papers must be turned in no later than noon on the Monday before your scheduled tutorial meeting. You should email a copy of your paper to me (frierspr@whitman.edu) as well as to your tutorial partner. (Before emailing your paper, you should save it in .doc or .docx format with the filename “YourName KMP WeekNumber.” For example, if I were turning in the paper for Week 5, I would save it as “Patrick Frierson KMP Week 5.docx”)

Books:

Cambridge Edition of the Works of Kant: Practical Philosophy (hereafter PP)

Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (hereafter R)

Kant’s Ethical Thought, by Allen Wood (hereafter Wood)

Creating the Kingdom of Ends, by Christine Korsgaard (hereafter Korsgaard)

Books on Reserve: (I may additional books to the reserve shelves over the course of the semester.)

Henry Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom

Henry Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste

Henry Allison, Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary

Lara Denis, Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: A Critical Guide

Frierson, Patrick, Freedom and Anthropology in Kant’s Moral Philosophy

Frierson, Patrick, What is the Human Being?

Frierson, Patrick, Kant’s Empirical Psychology

Jeanine Grenberg, Kant and the Ethics of Humility

Jeanine Grenberg, Kant’s Defense of Common Moral Experience

Herman, Barbara, The Practice of Moral Judgment

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (ed. Guyer and Wood)

Kate Moran, Community and Progress in Kant’s Moral Philosophy

Arthur Ripstein, Force and Freedom

Dieter Schonecker and Allen Wood, Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork…

Timeline

(Some secondary readings may be changed over the course of the semester)

Prelim class: Read Wood 1 – 14, Korsgaard 3 – 42

Week One: Kant’s argument for the Categorical Imperative

Primary Source Reading: Grounding, Part One (pp. 39 – 60)

Required Secondary Sources: Korsgaard 43-76, Wood 17-49 (also recommended: 50-75)

Optional: Allison, Groundwork pp. 71-148; Schonecker and Wood 32-94

What is the central argument of Grounding I? Based on the reading, what seem to have been the most important challenges that Kant’s morality had to meet in his own day? What are the most important challenges that his morality needs to meet today? Is the argument of Grounding I successful?

Week Two: The Formulae of the Categorical Imperative

Primary Source Reading: Grounding II (pp. 61-93)

Required Secondary Sources: Korsgaard 77-132, Wood 76-155

Optional: Allison Groundwork pp. 176-272; Schonecker and Wood 95-174 (especially 122-171).

What is the relationship between the different forms of the categorical imperative? In particular, are the Formula of Universal Law and the Formula of Humanity simply two different forms of the same law or are they fundamentally different laws with different practical results? Which formula is better? Why?

Week Three: Autonomy and Freedom

Primary Source Reading: Grounding II – III (pp. 61-108), “What is Enlightenment?” (pp. 17-22)

Required Secondary Sources: Korsgaard 159-187, Wood 156-192, Henry Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom, pp. 85-106.

Optional: Allison, Groundwork, 273-363; Schonecker and Wood, 175-218; Skorupski, “Autonomy and Impartiality,” in Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Critical Guide (ed. J. Timmerman, available in Penrose but not on reserve), Andrews Reath, “Autonomy of the Will as the Foundation of Morality,” in Agency and Autonomy in Kant’s Moral Theory, pp. 121-72.

In what sense is “autonomy” the supreme principle of morality? How does this relate to Kant’s earlier explanation of the categorical imperative?

What is the relationship between freedom and autonomy?

How does “What is Enlightenment?” relate to the Groundwork?

Week Four: Kant’s Argument(s) for Freedom and Its Relation to Morality

Primary Source Reading: Critique of Pure Reason (on reserve), pp. Bviii-xliv (especially xxix-xxx), 484-89, 511-14, 532-46; Grounding III (pp. 94-108); and Critique of Practical Reason (pp. 139-85, especially pp. 173-80).

Required Secondary Sources: Korsgaard pp. 159-187, Henry Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom, 214-49; Ameriks “Kant’s Deduction of Freedom and Morality.”

; Markus Kohl, “Kant on Determinism and the Categorical Imperative”

Optional: Allison, Groundwork, 273-363; Schonecker and Wood, 175-218.

How does Kant defend the claim that human beings are free?

Does Kant change his mind about the relationship between freedom and morality between the Grounding and the second Critique? If so, why would he change his mind? Which position is stronger?

Week Five: Respect for the Moral Law

Primary Reading: Critique of Practical Reason (pp. 186-225, especially 198-210)

Required Secondary Sources: You must read at least 4 of the following sources: Allison Kant’s Theory of Freedom 107-128; McCarty, “Kantian Moral Motivation and the Feeling of Respect”; Herman “On the value of acting from the motive of duty” in The Practice of Moral Judgment (on reserve), pp. 1-22; Reath, “Kant’s Theory of Moral Sensibility: Respect for the Moral Law…”; Frierson, Kant’s Empirical Psychology, pp. 116-166; Grenberg, Kant’s Defense of Common Moral Experience (on reserve), pp. 15-76; review Wood 42-9.