Hegel's Reading of the Problem of Formalism in Kant's Ethics: Can Kant's Religious Anthropology provide a Solution?

Document Type : Original Research

Author
Seyede Masoume Mousavi
Ph.D. student of philosophy of religion, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran
10.30497/prr.2019.2598
Abstract
This article is an attempt to explain and then critique the Hegel's ideas on the challenge of Formalism in Kant's ethics. Hegel is well known as the most important philosopher who articulated critique of formalism against Kant's ethical thought. He dealt with this problem in different works and from different aspects. By formalism, Hegel means that Kantian moral rule as a moral form does not entail any moral content. By appealing to such notions as transcendentality of freedom, false affirmations and negations, and Jewishness of Kantian ethics, Hegel argues for inapplicability and emptiness of Kantian ethics. To secure Kantian ethics from the criticism of Hegel, one might appeal to some readings of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason appeared in the works of some commentators of Kant like Cassirer and John Hare. They claim that religious anthropology and other religious aspects of Kant's thought, through schematization of ethics, help Kant's ethical thought to transform from a purely rational approach to a view that makes room for concrete aspects of moral action and moral agent. In this article, I shall show that while this approach saves Kantian ethics from being abstract, it fails to solve the problem of false affirmations and negations as well as the emphasis on good will.
Keywords
Formalism in Ethics
Transcendental Freedom
False Affirmations and Negations
Religious Anthropology
Good Will
برلین، آیزایا.۱۳۸۰. چهار مقاله دربارۀ آزادی. ترجمۀ محمدعلی موحد. تهران: خوارزمی.
ریتر، یوآخیم، کارلفرید گروندر، و گتفرید گابریل. 1394. فرهنگ‌نامۀ تاریخی مفاهیم فلسفه (جلد سوم: فلسفۀ اخلاق). تهران: مؤسسۀ پژوهشی حکمت و فلسفۀ ایران و مؤسسۀ فرهنگی‌ـ‌پژوهشی نوارغنون.
Ameriks, Karl. 2000. Kant and the Fate of Autonomy. New York. Cambridge University Press.
Cassirer, Ernst. 1981. Kant's Life and Thought. Translated by James Haden. Yale University Press.
Fireston, Chris L. and Nathan Jacobs. 2008. In Defense of Kants Religion. Indiana University Press.
Hare, John E. 1996. The Moral Gap; Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and Gods Assistance. Clarendon Press.
Hegel, Friedrich. 1948. On Christianity; Early Theological Writings. Translated by T. M. Knox, The University of Chicago Press.
Hegel, Friedrich. 1977. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hegel, Friedrich. 2008. Outlines of the Philosophy of Right. Translated by T. M. Knox. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Houlgate, Stephen. 2013. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Kant, Immanuel. 1889. The Critique of Practical Reason. Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1997a. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Mary Gregor. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1997b. Lectures on Ethics. Translated by Peter Heath & edited by Peter Haeth and J. B. Schneewind. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 2009. Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. Translated by Werner S. Pluhar. Hackett Publishing Company.
Kant, Immanuel. 2012. Lectures on Antropology. Translated by Robert R. Clewis, Robert B. Louden, G. Felicitas Munzel And Allen W. Wood. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Legenhausen, Muhammad. 2015. "Religion in Hegels Refutation of Moral Skepticism." In 3rd International Conference on Contemporary Philosophy of Religion.
MacCumber, John. 2014. Understanding Hegel's Critique of Kant. California: Stanford Universiy Press.
Stern, Robert. 2015. Kantian Ethics Kantian Ethics: Value, Agency, and Obligation. Oxford University Press.
Wood, Allen W. 1990. Hegel's Ethical Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press.