Faviola Rivera Castro

I criticize the widely accepted “practical” interpretation of the universality test contained in Kant’s first formula of the categorical imperative in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals – the formula of the universal law of nature. I argue that this interpretation does not work for contradictions in conception because it wrongly takes contradictions in the will as the model for them and, as a consequence, cannot establish a clear distinction between the two kinds of contradiction. This interpretation also assumes an understanding of universality that departs from Kant’s own and, cannot, for this reason, capture the kind of contradiction that he explicitly claims to establish. I provide an alternative interpretation, which I call revised logical interpretation, that allows us to account for contradictions in conception, including those examples that the practical interpretation cannot handle, as well as to establish a clear distinction between the two kinds of contradiction.

De acuerdo con Hume, las evaluaciones morales se basan en los sentimientos de aprobación o de desaprobación que experimentamos al contemplar el carácter de una persona desde un punto de vista general. También sostiene que la adopción de esta perspectiva no se debe a una exigencia de la razón, sino que obedece a operaciones naturales de la imaginación. En este trabajo discuto la pregunta sobre el mecanismo psicológico por el que adoptamos este punto de vista general. Para ello explico primero otras operaciones de la imaginación que son centrales en las evaluaciones morales: la asociación de percepciones en la producción de las pasiones del amor, el orgullo, el odio y la humildad; la transmisión de fuerza y vivacidad entre las percepciones; y la simpatía. A continuación señalo que el supuesto mecanismo natural de la imaginación por el cual adoptaríamos el punto de vista general parece no poder existir. Sugiero que, en lugar de ello, esta perspectiva puede concebirse como una construcción social o, como Hume diría, un "artificio" de los seres humanos. Si esto último es plausible, sin embargo, se desdibuja la distinción entre virtudes naturales y artificiales

Perfect ethical duties have usually puzzled commentators on Kant's ethics because they do not fit neatly within his taxonomy of duties. Ethical duties require the adoption of maxims of ends: the happiness of others and one's own perfection are Kant's two main categories. These duties, he claims, are of wide obligation because they do not specify what in particular one ought to do, when, and how much. They leave ‘a latitude for free choice’ as he puts it. Perfect duties, however, such as the duties of respect, to avoid suicide, lying, and servility, do not appear to require the adoption of ends but only the performance or omission of specific types of actions. The puzzle is how these duties can be ethical, and therefore wide. Faced with this difficulty, Mary Gregor denies that perfect ethical duties are wide. She claims that they are an ‘anomaly’ and that they do not belong to ethics proper but to moral philosophy in general. She argues that these duties are derived from the categorical imperative, instead of, as Kant himself appears to have thought, the first principle of virtue. Taking a very different approach, Onora O'Neill finds the perfect/imperfect distinction of little importance and suggests doing without it altogether. Most other interpreters also assume that ‘wide’ is opposed to ‘perfect’ so that a wide perfect duty is a conceptual impossibility.

Friends and foes of liberal neutrality assume that neutrality presupposes pluralism. On this view, the state should be neutral among the many permissible conceptions of the individual good that citizens affirm. I argue that neutrality need not be construed as a response to pluralism. I focus on the case of specifically religious neutrality and argue that it can be an appropriate political response to what I call “the fact of religious hegemony,” which is a social scenario in which a particular religion is unanimously recognized as dominant. Religious neutrality, in this kind of context, requires the state to avoid all religious words and symbols that can be taken as an expression of endorsement or criticism of religion. I take this conception of religious neutrality from both political history and current political practice and discourse. Neutrality was originally conceived of as a proper political response in contexts of religious hegemony both in France and in Mexico. Today, and despite the growth of religious pluralism, this conception continues to be a live political posture in the places where it first originated. I call it “neutrality as independence from religion” and argue that it differs from liberal neutrality in crucial respects.

In this thesis I consider two common, though directly opposed, interpretations of Kantian morality. According to what I call "the other-regarding interpretation," Kantian morality is primarily about the regulation of human interaction. According to what I call "the private and internal interpretation," Kantian morality is primarily self-regarding since what chiefly matters, on this view, is adopting moral motives. I argue that both interpretations rest on a failure to understand Kant's distinction between ethics and justice , a distinction which he introduces in The Metaphysics of Morals, on which I primarily focus. As I interpret this distinction, ethics addresses the question about the supreme individual good , whereas justice addresses the question how to make possible the coexistence of the freedom of action of a plurality of agents who pursue their personal ends. I argue that the other-regarding interpretation tends to reduce morality to justice , whereas the internal and private interpretation reduces morality to ethics and cannot accommodate Kantian justice as part of morality. I focus most of my attention on the former view because it has been significantly more influential in recent debates. Against this view, I argue that ethics, on Kant's account, is about the pursuit of the supreme individual good , and not about the regulation of human interaction. The tendency to reduce morality to justice is manifest in the thesis that the justification of principles of personal morality rest upon an agreement as well as in a certain version of the thesis of the priority of the right over the good. Both theses are present in the work of Jurgen Habermas. The use of agreement is common among followers of John Rawls's who attempt to extend his Contractarian justification of principles of justice to the domain of personal morality. Such an extension, I argue, presupposes an understanding of personal morality by analogy with justice. Paradoxically, these two theses are regarded as "Kantian," though they have contributed to the distortion in recent debates of what I argue is central to Kant's ethics

Los defensores de la ética de la virtud usualmente califican a la ética kantiana como una moralidad centrada en el acto porque, sostienen, su principal objeto de evaluación moral son los actos particulares, con lo cual un acto puede ser moralmente bueno a pesar de que el carácter de quien lo lleva a cabo no sea virtuoso. Sostienen que, por el contrario, la ética debe centrarse en el carácter de las personas, de modo que un acto es moralmente valioso sólo cuando es la expresión de un carácter virtuoso. El propósito de este artículo es mostrar que, en contra de lo que sostienen los partidarios de la ética de la virtud, el principal objeto de evaluación moral en la ética kantiana es el carácter de las personas. El imperativo categórico no exige la realización de actos particulares, sino la adopción de máximas de fines, las cuales son principios para una vida completa. Sostengo que la adopción de estas máximas necesariamente requiere la adquisición de un carácter virtuoso, de tal modo que quien se compromete sinceramente con los principios éticos lleva a cabo acciones buenas y tiene también un carácter moral