Bulletin n. 2/2016 | ||
December 2016 | ||
Paul Guyer |
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The Twofold Morality of Recht: Once More Unto the Breach | ||
in Kant-Studien , Volume 107, Issue 1 (Mar 2016) , 2016 , 34–63 | ||
Abstract Authors such as Allen Wood and Marcus Willaschek continue to argue that Kant’s doctrine of right is “independent” of or “freestanding” from his moral theory, as Thomas Pogge earlier put it. I argue that some of the recent arguments in behalf of this position repeat mistakes made by Johann Gottlieb Fichte before Kant had even published his own doctrine of right, and depend upon confusing his account of moral obligation with his account of morally estimable motivation. In particular, I argue that on Kant’s moral theory perfect duties, generally duties of omission, must be fulfilled regardless of motivation, even though agents earn moral esteem only for fulfilling even these duties out of respect for the moral law, and that this requirement is what creates the conceptual space for duties of right as part of rather than independent from Kant’s moral theory. | ||