Kant's Theory of Freedom

Kant's Ethical Thought

Saints and heroes

Dignity and Practical Reason in Kant's Moral Theory

In the Doctrine of Virtue Kant stipulates that ‘Love is a matter of feeling, not of willing . . . so a duty to love is an absurdity.’ Nonetheless, in the same work Kant claims that we have duties of love to other human beings. According to Kant, the kind of love which is commanded by duty is practical love. This paper defends the view that the duty of practical love articulated in the Doctrine of Virtue is distinct from the duty of beneficence and best understood as a duty of self-transformation, which agents observe by cultivating a benevolent disposition and practical beneficent desires.

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Kantian practical love

In the Doctrine of Virtue Kant divides duties of love into three categories: beneficent activity (Wohltatigkeit), gratitude (Dankbarkeit) and Teilnehmung – commonly referred to as the duty of sympathy (MS 6: 452). In this paper I will argue that the content and scope of the third duty of love has been underestimated by both critics and defenders of Kant's ethical theory. The account which pervades the secondary literature maintains that the third duty of love includes only two components: an obligation to make use of our natural receptivity to sympathetic feelings as a means to fulfilling other duties of love, and an indirect duty to cultivate these feelings. As a result, Kant's duty of sympathy has been widely regarded as a duty whose value is derived from the way in which it serves other duties, in particular, the duty of beneficent activity, which obliges agents ‘to promote according to one's means the happiness of others in need’ (MS 6: 453). Teilnehmung has thus assumed something of a second-class status among the duties to others. My aim in this paper is to demonstrate that the prevailing account of Kant's third duty of love is incomplete.

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Active Sympathetic Participation: Reconsidering Kant's Duty of Sympathy

This paper demonstrates that accounting for the moral harm of selecting for deafness is not as simple or obvious as the widespread negative response from the hearing community would suggest. The central questions addressed by the paper are whether our moral disquiet with regard to selecting for deafness can be adequately defended, and if so, what this might entail. The paper considers several different strategies for accounting for the supposed moral harm of selecting for deafness and concludes that the deaf case cannot be treated in isolation. Accounting for the moral harm of selecting for deafness necessarily entails moral implications for other cases of procreation and procreative decision-making, including unassisted coital reproduction. The lesson to be learned from the deaf case is that we need norms that govern not just the use of reproductive technology, but procreation and procreative decision-making in all of its various forms.

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On the supposed moral harm of selecting for deafness.

Beneficence and other duties of love in The metaphysics of morals

The fact that Kantian beneficence is constrained by Kantian respect appears to seriously restrict the Kantian's moral response to agents who have embraced self-destructive ends. In this paper I defend the Kantian duties of love and respect by arguing that Kantians can recognize attempts to get an agent to change her ends as a legitimate form of beneficence. My argument depends on two key premises. First, that rational nature is not identical to the capacity to set ends, and second, that an agent's conception of her happiness is not identical to the satisfaction of her ends.

Melissa Seymour Fahmy

Papers

Active Sympathetic Participation: Reconsidering Kant's Duty of Sympathy

Kantian practical love

On the supposed moral harm of selecting for deafness.

Beneficence and other duties of love in The metaphysics of morals

Love, respect, and interfering with others