Stefano Bacin

I discuss Eugenio Lecaldano’s view of the search for meaning in life as presented in "Sul senso della vita" (Bologna, il Mulino, 2016), focusing on three issues. First, I suggest that an accurate account should accommodate both a prospective and a retrospective mode of the reflection on meaning in one’s own life. Second, I argue that Lecaldano’s distinction between meaningfulness and morality is underdetermined in two respects: (a) because a more flexible view of morality is able to integrate a consideration of meaningfulness in terms of the agent’s own perfection, avoiding moralistic implications, and (b) because a genuine separation between meaningfulness and morality seems to make sense only from a third-person standpoint. Third, I argue that Lecaldano’s sentimentalist view is not supported by conclusive arguments and cannot account for the possibility of a meaningful life without feelings of accomplishment and affirmation.

The chapter first discusses the general meaning of a 'doctrine of method' in Kant’s work, as well as the specific goals of the Doctrine of Method of the second Critique. The central section, then, focuses on the notion of 'receptivity to morality', which here has a central role and a quite distinct meaning. I argue that Kant’s main point in his account of how to 'make objective practical reason subjectively practical' (5:151) is that one ought to lead the individual agent to become aware of his own dignity as a moral being. In Kant’s view, recognition of this point is relevant to the overall aim of the second Critique – to show that pure reason is practical – and of moral theory itself. The task of the Doctrine of Method is to show how it is possible to make agents aware of their basic moral capacities, and through that awareness to instil genuine moral dispositions. Accordingly, the Doctrine of Method is the completion of the Critique, confirming the conclusions of the Analytic through the common use of pure practical reason and connecting them with the experience of every moral agent.

In this work, Fichte's high school years in Schulpforta are reconstructed for the first time, building on sources never considered before and throwing new light on this first phase of his intellectual biography and on his reception of the work of important figures of the Enlightenment such as Lessing, Herder, Gottsched, Gellert, and Rosseau. – The volume also includes the most important contemporary documents on Schulpforta and Fichte's texts from those years. Among these, the most relevant is his Latin speech concerning the use of rules in poetry and rhetoric. In this volume, Fichte's speech is newly translated and annotated for the first time, to provide the rich historical background

The paper argues for distinguishing two aspects in Kant’s idea of self-legislation of the moral law: the immediate character (i.e., the practical necessity) of the law itself and the lawgiving function attributed to the rational will. I argue that the novelty of Kant’s thesis chiefly consists in the combination of the two aspects, and that this solves the alleged paradoxical character of the idea of self-legislation. As it grounds on the connection of a fundamental law with a lawgiving, Kant’s view can be regarded as a novel variant of the mixed model first proposed by Suárez, with two crucial differences concerning the subject playing the role of the lawgiver and the notion of law involved. Finally, I argue that the inner structure of the idea of self-legislation shows that Kant’s view combines a realism of the moral law with a constructivism of moral obligation.

Aim of the paper is contributing to a context-informed understanding of Fichte’s theory of conscience. This crucial element in his moral philosophy (and, in fact, in his whole philosophy) represents the last of the many significant accounts of conscience in the 18th century, before in the following century the role of conscience in moral life was repeatedly put into question. Accordingly, in my paper I argue that: (1) Fichte puts forward an un-Kantian account of conscience, following, instead, a quite different model; (2) Fichte’s views on conscience grew out of a complex conceptual milieu, from which Fichte borrows important (quasi-)sentimentalist elements; (3) Fichte’s idea of the infallibility of conscience must be distinguished from other similar views put forward in the same years.