ABOUT

Pauline Kleingeld is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Groningen. Earlier she taught at Leiden University and at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of Kant and Cosmopolitanism (CUP 2012), Fortschritt und Vernunft: Zur Geschichtsphilosophie Kants (Königshausen und Neumann 1995) and numerous articles. Her academic interests are in ethics and political philosophy, with a special focus on Kant and Kantian theory.

ABSTRACT

In the first section of his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (G1), Immanuel Kant claims to identify the supreme principle of morality. After famous discussions of the idea of a ‘good will’, ‘acting from duty’ and ‘respect’, he concludes that the highest moral principle is the following: ‘I ought never to proceed except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law’ (G 4:402). He claims that this principle implicitly governs ordinary moral practices and convictions. It is the ‘supreme’ moral principle in that it is a meta-principle by means of which substantive Kantian moral principles — such as ‘help others in need’ or ‘never lie’ — can be derived. Because Kant’s argument draws on moral convictions that are still widely shared, and because his conclusion articulates a paradigmatic position in moral theory, G1 has become one of the most renowned texts in the history of philosophy.

The structure of Kant’s argument towards the identification of the supreme principle, however, has long been the subject of debate. Three serious difficulties stand out in the literature, and they all concern the most important steps of his argument:

(1) Kant presents his argument as consisting of three propositions and a conclusion, but he labels only the second and third propositions as such. He does not make explicit what he takes the first proposition to be. In recent decades at least a dozen candidates have been put forward in the literature (see Steigleder 2022).

(2) Kant claims that the third proposition follows from the first and the second, but it is widely regarded unclear how it is supposed to follow.

(3) Kant’s final step to the formulation of the supreme principle is often said to be a jump over a gap, rather than a careful step that follows from the preceding argument.

As a result, Kant’s reasoning towards the supreme moral principle seems more like a series of assertions and fragmentary arguments rather than a single argumentative chain.

In this paper, I argue that Kant’s views on philosophical method shed new light on the structure and direction of his argument in G1. It has gone unnoticed that this argument consists of a chain of regressive inferences. I first explain the current positions in the literature regarding Kant’s method in G1 (§2). I then turn to Kant’s views on method (§3). Using his description of the so-called ‘analytic method’, I reconstruct the argument of G1 as a regressive chain. I argue that this reconstruction suggests solutions to the three main difficulties diagnosed in the literature, although several unclarities remain (§4).

ABOUT

Léa Salje is an associate professor at the University of Leeds. She joined Leeds in 2015 on a postdoc, and has been there ever since. Before that she did a PhD at UCL. She works in Philosophy of Mind, mostly on issues around self-knowledge and first person thought. Her first monograph Saying What One Thinks (forthcoming with OUP), is about the special form of self-knowledge we get by putting our thoughts into words.

ABOUT

Claire Field is a postdoc at the University of Zürich, where she is a member of the Zürich Epistemology Group on Rationality. Previously, she has held positions at Glasgow, Stirling, and UCL. Her research lies primarily in epistemology, and includes projects on the epistemology of normative beliefs, rational risk-taking, level-(in)coherence, the normativity of logic, and the philosophical implications of neurodiversity.

ABSTRACT

The requirements of structural rationality prohibit incoherence, but paradigmatic examples of incoherence are very diverse. Beyond an intuitive sense that incoherent attitudes do not fit together in the right way, it is difficult to characterize precisely what, if anything, unifies these examples. This paper offers a new analysis of incoherence based on the idea that attitudes are incoherent when they are unintelligible given the conceptual background in play. I argue that this analysis offers a major theoretical advantage: it allows us to make progress in debates about foundational issues, such as the nature of truth, logic, and belief.

ABOUT

Eric Schliesser is professor of Political Science, with a focus on Political Theory, at the University of Amsterdam. He was previously affiliated with Syracuse University, Leiden University, and Ghent University among others. Schliesser has published on early modern philosophy, philosophy of economics, the history of analytic philosophy, the history of feminism, and metaphilosophy. His publications include his monograph, Adam Smith: Systematic philosopher and Public Thinker (OUP, 2017). He has edited numerous volumes including (inter alia) Newton and empiricism. (OUP, with Zvi Biener, 2014); Sympathy, a History of a Concept (OUP, 2015); Ten Neglected Classics of philosophy (Oxford, 2017), Neglected Classics of Philosophy, Vol 2 (Oxford 2022), and a translation of Sophie de Grouchy’s Letters on Sympathy (together with Sandrine Berges, Oxford 2019). He keeps a daily blog Digressionsnimpressions.

ABOUT

Christopher Cowie is Associate Professor at the University of Durham. He was previously Junior Research Fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge and has held visiting fellowships at Harvard and Stanford. He is originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is currently working on the implications of axiological paradox, and, unrelatedly, the philosophy of the search for alien life.

ABSTRACT

To act rightly is to act in accordance with moral demands. But what grounds moral demands? Much contemporary moral philosophy tends to take a non-relational approach to answering this question. According to non-relational moral theories, to act rightly is to act in a way that honours or promotes the (non-relational) moral properties of individuals, for example their well-being or their rights. According to relational moral theories, by contrast, at least some moral demands are grounded in a relation between individuals. To act rightly, is to act in accordance with what our moral relations to other individuals demand from us. Within relational theories, there is a further distinction to be drawn. Most contemporary relational theories presuppose that moral relations are determined by relational moral properties of the individuals involved. Call this account of relational moral demands individuals-first relationalism. Radical relationalism, by contrast, rejects the normative priority of moral properties of individuals – whether they are relational or non-relational properties. Instead, it has a relations-first structure. My aim in this paper is to argue that some moral demands are radically relational.

ABOUT

Fabienne Peter is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, specialising in moral and political philosophy and in social epistemology, including political epistemology. She has published extensively on political legitimacy and democratic theory. Her current research is in meta-ethics. She served as Head of Department at Warwick from 2017 to 2020. Before joining Warwick, she was a postdoc at Harvard University and then an assistant professor at the University of Basel. She has also held visiting positions at the Research School of Social Sciences at ANU and the Murphy Institute at Tulane University. She has previously been an editor of Economics and Philosophy and is currently an Associate Editor of the Journal of Moral Philosophy.

ABSTRACT

Many of our practices presuppose moral responsibility. Arguably, agents can only be morally responsible if they are able to act otherwise than they do. Compatibilists and incompatibilists traditionally disagree about whether determinism precludes the ability to do otherwise, often reaching an impasse because they endorse different readings of “able to do otherwise”. I argue that the correct reading of “able to do otherwise” depends on the purposes of our responsibility-entailing practices. Practices serving different purposes may warrant different readings. Consequently, there may be no single independently ascertainable definition of freedom to do otherwise that justifies our responsibility-entailing practices wholesale

ABOUT

Nadine Elzein is an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick. She completed her PhD at University College London, and has held posts at the University of Oxford, King’s College London, the University of Southampton, and University College London. Her research focuses predominantly on free will, moral responsibility, blame, and determinism. She has a present writing project with OUP on this theme.

ABSTRACT

Christine Korsgaard famously argued that even if we accept the metaphysical theory that there are no selves or persons, the practical standpoint requires us to think of ourselves as unified over time. It is the ability to choose and deliberate, make plans and act that requires me to construct an identity for myself. This practical requirement is antithetical to the Buddhist no-self view. Buddhists argue that it is primarily ignorance about our identity that is responsible for suffering, and that this ignorance consists not just in having a false belief in a metaphysical self but also our ordinary self-conception as being unified across time: our ‘I’-sense, so to say. Buddhists claim that this ‘I’-sense is the real culprit and the source of existential suffering. The Buddhist project of eliminating, or at least reducing, suffering is concerned with arguments to show that there is no metaphysical self and that ‘I’-sense is an illusion that we must get rid of. If Korsgaard is right, it seems that the Buddhist project is in deep trouble. I shall argue that Korsgaard’s requirement is too strong. The Buddhist project is sound and Buddhists at all stages of their practice can continue to choose and deliberate, make plans and act

ABOUT MONIMA

Monima Chadha is Professor of Indian Philosophy at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research interests are in metaphysics and philosophy of mind in classical Indian and contemporary Western traditions. In recent years, she has written a book Selfless Minds (OUP, 2023) and many articles on Buddhist no-self views and their implications for our concepts of subjectivity, agency, responsibility, and ethical life.

In this podcast, Aristotelian Society officers Dr Jess Leech and Dr Ellie Robson talk to Peter Momtchiloff - commissioning editor for philosophy at Oxford University Press from 1993-2023. Following three decades in this role, we get Peter's thoughts on what he has seen and learned from his time at OUP including questions like: What are some of your most memorable encounters in the job? What are some of the biggest changes you’ve witnessed over 30 years – for good and for bad – in philosophy? Are there any common struggles for first time authors? How should you approach publishers?

This podcast is an audio recording of an interview with Peter Momtchiloff - at the Aristotelian Society on 23rd July 2024.

In this podcast, Aristotelian Society officers Dr Jess Leech and Dr Ellie Robson talk to Peter Momtchiloff - commissioning editor for philosophy at Oxford University Press from 1993-2023. Following three decades in this role, we get Peter's thoughts on what he has seen and learned from his time at OUP including questions like: What are some of your most memorable encounters in the job? What are some of the biggest changes you’ve witnessed over 30 years – for good and for bad – in philosophy? Are there any common struggles for first time authors? How should you approach publishers?

This podcast is an audio recording of an interview with Peter Momtchiloff - at the Aristotelian Society on 23rd July 2024.