Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: A Problem with Kant’s Moral Anthropology
- I The Problem
- 1 The Asymmetry in Kant’s Conception of Freedom
- 2 Anthropology as an Empirical Science
- 3 The Moral Importance of Kant’s “Pragmatic” Anthropology
- 4 Moral Anthropology in Contemporary Neokantian Ethics
- II The Solution
- 5 Transcendental Idealism, Radical Evil, and Moral Anthropology
- 6 Moral Influence on Others
- Epilogue: Incorporating Moral Anthropology and Defending Kantian Moral Philosophy
- Notes
- References
- Index of Kant’s Works
- Name Index
- Subject Index
3 - The Moral Importance of Kant’s “Pragmatic” Anthropology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: A Problem with Kant’s Moral Anthropology
- I The Problem
- 1 The Asymmetry in Kant’s Conception of Freedom
- 2 Anthropology as an Empirical Science
- 3 The Moral Importance of Kant’s “Pragmatic” Anthropology
- 4 Moral Anthropology in Contemporary Neokantian Ethics
- II The Solution
- 5 Transcendental Idealism, Radical Evil, and Moral Anthropology
- 6 Moral Influence on Others
- Epilogue: Incorporating Moral Anthropology and Defending Kantian Moral Philosophy
- Notes
- References
- Index of Kant’s Works
- Name Index
- Subject Index
Summary
In the preceding chapter, we saw that anthropology for Kant is an empirical science with empirical subject matter. Not only is its method empirical, but the helps and hindrances that anthropology finds are empirical helps and hindrances. This anthropology will seem to raise problems for Kant's account of freedom if it is put to moral use, such that empirical helps and hindrances aid moral development. If anthropology were merely an empirical description of human beings or merely pointed out empirical influences on faculties like memory, it would not even appear to conflict with the asymmetrical account of the relation between nature and freedom outlined in Chapter 1. If Schleiermacher's criticism is to make contact with Kant's anthropology, that anthropology must be not only empirical but also morally relevant. Thus this chapter takes up the issue of the extent to which Kant's “pragmatic” anthropology is a moral anthropology.
Before showing that Kant's anthropology is moral, it is important to clear up a potential misconception about what moral anthropology involves. In particular, moral anthropology in Kant's mature moral theory is not the kind of anthropology needed to apply the categorical imperative to concrete human situations. That is, moral anthropology does not have the kind of role indicated by Kant's claim in the Groundwork that moral “laws require a power of judgment sharpened by experience … in order to distinguish in what cases they are applicable” (4:389). If this were the only role that anthropology played in acting well, anthropology would not raise any prima facie problems for Kant's account of freedom, because such an anthropology need not consider moral agency as itself susceptible to empirical influence in order to apply the moral law to human beings. To apply the general moral requirement to promote the happiness of others, one might need to know something specific about what makes people happy. And to know that false promises are immoral, one must know that human beings are capable of basing trust on promises, incapable of reading one another's minds, and so on. But none of these anthropological claims need have any bearing on the transcendental freedom of human beings.
Kant ascribes a different role to moral anthropology in his mature moral theory. Even in the Groundwork, he describes moral anthropology as important to “gain for [the moral law] access to the human will” (4:389).
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- Freedom and Anthropology in Kant's Moral Philosophy , pp. 48 - 67Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003