What should we treat as an end in itself?

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 77, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 268-288

  Dean, Richard ^a  

^a The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill   (United States)

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EID: 60949838369     PISSN: 02790750     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0114.1996.tb00171.x     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. Kant, Immanuel, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, tr. H.J. Paton (New York: Harper & Row, 1964). References to this work will be made parenthetically, and it will be abbreviated as Groundwork. Page numbers given will be from the Prussian Academy edition. The passage cited above is from Groundwork 429
2. Paton, H.J., The Categorical Imperative, pp. 168-9, p. 177. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1947)
3. Korsgaard, Christine, "Kant's Formula of Humanity," Kantstudien 77, 1986, pp. 183-202. Below I will examine some of the reasons she offers in favor of her reading
4. Wood, Allen, "Humanity As End In Itself," delivered at the Eighth International Kant Congress, 5 March 1995
5. Hill, Thomas E. Jr., "Humanity as an End in Itself" in Dignity and Practical Reason, pp. 38-57. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1992)
6. Hill, Thomas E. Jr., "Humanity as an End in Itself," p. 41
7. and "Kant's Anti-Moralistic Strain," p. 178 in Dignity and Practical Reason
8. Some other contemporary commentators who have not dealt as explicitly with interpreting the humanity formulation of the Categorical Imperative nevertheless often sound as if they take humanity to be something more like minimally rational nature than like a good will. See, e.g., Barbara Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment, p. 67 and p. 388 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993)
9. or Onora O'Neill, Constructions of Reason, pp. 137-8. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1989)
10. Kant, Immanuel, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, tr. Theodore M. Green and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London: Harper & Row, 1960)
11. and The Metaphysics of Morals, tr. Mary Gregor (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991). References to these will be given parenthetically, and the works will be referred to as Religion and MM when they are in parentheses. Page numbers are from the Prussian Academy edition
12. See e.g. Metaphysics of Morals 225-227
13. Religion 26, 36-37
14. and Critique of Practical Reason 73-74
15. References to Critique of Practical Reason are to the Lewis White Beck translation (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1985). References will be made parenthetically, with the title abbreviated as Second Critique, and page numbers will be from the Prussian Academy edition
16. Korsgaard recognizes that Kant says the good will is the condition of all other goods, but she does not resolve the problems this creates for her reading of 'humanity'. She suggests that there is not a tension between the two, but does not satisfactorily explain why there is not, in "Kant's Formula of Humanity," p. 197
17. Allen Wood and others have expressed this concern in conversation, and Thomas Hill expresses at least the spirit of the worry in "Kant's Anti-Moralistic Strain" in Dignity and Practical Reason, pp. 176-95
18. and "Social Snobbery and Human Dignity" in Autonomy and Self-Respect, pp. 155-72. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991)
19. For a fuller discussion of this topic, see Engstrom, Stephen, "The Concept of the Highest Good in Kant's Moral Theory," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. LII, no. 4, Dec. 1992, pp. 747-80
20. Korsgaard, "Kant's Formula of Humanity," p. 189
21. Wood, "Humanity as End in Itself" p. 11
22. This would not be the only case in which Kant uses 'humanity' loosely, to mean something different from what it means in the humanity formulation. Another example is when he uses 'humanity' to mean something like sympathy, or "the susceptibility, given by nature itself, to feel joy and sadness in common with others" (MM 456)