Kant's Moral Psychology of the Will

康德的意志道德心理学

• 批准号: AH/E504493/1
• 负责人: Daniel Morgan
• 金额: $ 3.21万
• 依托单位: University of Bristol
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2007 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FE504493%2F1
• 关键词: Kant; Moral; Psychology; Will

The project aims to investigate Kant's views on the psychological roots of wrong-doing and evil, in order to bring them into dialogue with contemporary moral philosophical views on the subject. Kant clearly thinks that evil is at least a very prevalent characteristic of human beings; this is the main claim of a significant book in his corpus, the Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. But the exact nature of his view is rather poorly understood, and this part of Kant's ethical position has frequently been dismissed by commentators, as at best a curiosity and at worst as simply incompatible with other central views he holds about ethics. It must be said that Kant himself bears much of the responsibility for this situation, since his discussions of the topic are distressingly unclear. In particular Kant has brought significant condemnation upon himself by claiming that a formal proof of human radical evil is available, without actually telling us what that proof is supposed to be. Nevertheless the widespread tendency to ignore Kant's account of evil is a mistake, I think, since an account of how this claim fits into his moral philosophy as whole can be provided. Essentially, Kant thinks that beings with the kind of will that human beings possess have an inherent tendency to try to extend their sphere of free choice as far as possible, which necessarily involves the subjugation of the free choices of others to our own. Our free wills draw us to affirm our liberty, but also bring the tendency to extend that liberty to license. The project aims to develop this reading of Kant's moral psychology, and to suggest that contemporary moral psychology can usefully draw on these resources to help us understand better the motivation behind wrong-doing and evil.

该项目旨在调查康德关于恶行和邪恶的心理根源的观点，以便将其与当代道德哲学观点进行对话。康德显然认为邪恶至少是人类普遍存在的特征；这是他语料库中一本重要著作《纯粹理性边界内的宗教》的主要主张。但是，康德的伦理学观点的确切性质，却很少为人所了解，康德的这部分伦理学立场，常常被评论者所忽视，往好里说是一种好奇，往坏里说是与他关于伦理学的其他中心观点不相容。必须说，康德本人对这种情况负有很大责任，因为他对这个话题的讨论令人不安地不清楚。特别是康德，他声称有人类根本邪恶的正式证据，却没有告诉我们这个证据应该是什么，这给他自己带来了严重的谴责。然而，我认为，忽视康德关于恶的论述的普遍倾向是错误的，因为我们可以提供一种说明，说明这一主张如何与他的整个道德哲学相适应。本质上，康德认为具有人类那种意志的存在有一种内在的倾向，即试图尽可能地扩大他们的自由选择范围，这必然涉及到将他人的自由选择屈从于我们自己的自由选择。我们的自由意志促使我们肯定自己的自由，但也带来了将这种自由扩展到许可的倾向。该项目旨在发展康德道德心理学的这种解读，并建议当代道德心理学可以有效地利用这些资源来帮助我们更好地理解不法行为和邪恶背后的动机。