Kant and moral imputation: Conscience and the riddle of the given

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 78, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 609-627

  Howard, Jason J ^a  

^a VITERBO UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 74849116980     PISSN: 10513558     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/acpq200478444     Document Type: Review

References (27)

1. Stefan Hübsch points out the importance of conscience not only for Kant, but also for the subsequent development of German idealism. As he explains, conscience was an important concern throughout Kant's development, from his early Lectures on Ethics to the Metaphysics of Morals, remaining fairly uniform throughout. Despite such uniformity, it remains one of the most neglected and misunderstood concepts of Kant's practical philosophy. See Stefan Hübsch, Philosophie und Gewissen: Beiträge zur Rehabiliterung des philosophischen Gewissensbegriffs (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), 95.
2. See H. J. Patton, "Conscience and Kant", Kant-Studien 62(1971):239-51.
3. For a case in point, see Philip Stratton-Lake, Kant, Duty and Moral Worth (New York: Routledge, 2000).
4. See, for example, Donald Scheid, "Kant's Retributivism", Ethics 93(1983):262-82
5. and Sarah Holtman, "Toward Social Reform: Kant's Penal Theory Reinterpreted", Utilitas 9(1997):3-21.
6. See Allen W. Wood, "Kant's Compatibilism", in Self and Nature in Kant's Philosophy, ed. Allen W. Wood (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984), 73-101, at 74.
7. See Thomas E. Hill, "Punishment, Conscience, and Moral Worth", in Kant's Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretive Essays, ed. Mark Timmons (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 233-55.
8. For a good example of the former case see Rex Patrick Stevens, Kant on Moral Practice: A Study of Moral Success and Failure (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1981)
9. while for the latter look to H. D. Kittsteiner, "Kant and Casuistry", in Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe, ed. Edmund Leites (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 185-213
10. and M. G. J. Beets, Reality and Freedom: Reflections on Kant's Moral Philosophy (Delft, Holland: Eburon, 1988).
11. See Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, ed. and trans. Peter Heath (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 4-36 (= Akademie-Ausgabe 27:3-78).
12. See Henry E. Allison, Idealism and Freedom: Essays on Kant's Theoretical and Practical Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 142.
13. The first time Kant discusses conscience in his more mature works is in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, where he mentions it twice. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 41-108 (4:385-463), at 59 (4:405) and 74 (4:423).
14. Compare the "Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar", in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, trans. Allan Bloom (London: Penguin Classics, 1991), 266-313, esp. 290.
15. See Willem Heubült, Die Gewissenslehre Kants in ihrer Endform von 1797 (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1980), 17-20.
16. Metaphysics of Morals, 530 (6:401).
17. See Lectures on Ethics, 135 (27:357) and 328 (27:576).
18. Recent literature on Kant has tended to stress this aspect in order to meet the charges of formalism often leveled against Kant, especially by Hegel. For a good example of such efforts, see Barbara Herman, "The Practice of Moral Judgments", Journal of Philosophy 82(1985):415-36.
19. Immanuel Kant, On the Miscarriage of all Philosophical Trials in Theodicy, trans. George Di-Giovanni, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Religion and Rational Theology, ed. and trans. Allen W. Wood and George DiGiovanni (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 19-39 (8:253-70), at 34 (8:268).
20. Critique of Practical Reason, 219 (5:98).
21. See Hans Lenk, Einführung in die angewandte Ethik: Verantwortlichkeit und Gewissen (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1997), 21-2.
22. See also Kant's Lectures on Ethics, 132 (27:354).
23. See A. E. Teale, Kantian Ethics (London: Oxford University Press, 1951; repr. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975), 245.
24. See Georg Römpp, Ethik des Selbstbewuβtseins. der Andere in der idealistischen Grundlegung der Philosophie: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1999), 85, 107-8.
25. Rex Patrick Stevens notes that the relationship between conscience and the subject is a "rationally-constructed ideal designed by me to defeat my own natural tendencies to overlook my duties and to dismiss judgements unfavorable to my inclinations" (Kant on Moral Practice, 83).
26. The problem with this explanation is that it implies that I construct this ideal myself, which undermines the very point that Kant is attempting to explain, namely, I do not give myself a conscience. H. D. Kittsteiner seems to make a similar mistake in equating conscience with practical reason in the guise of "respect for the moral law" ("Kant and Casuistry", 187).
27. M. G. J. Beets follows this line in seeing conscience as the judgment of reason (Vernunft) on the understanding (Verstand) (Reality and Freedom, 65).