Maria Cristina Borges

Kant has often been criticized for holding a very negative vision of women, according to which they are less rational and less morally valuable than men. I shall argue quite the opposite. I will show that, in spite of some minor pejorative comments, Kant held that women fit better the ideal of a moral person than men. This is due to some qualities of the female sex, mainly women’s capacity for self–control and the capacity for having moral emotions such as sympathy and compassion. Moreover, women show their master of emotions and passions when they are able to use their emotional sensitivity and self-control to master the feelings and passions of men.

In this chapter, I aim at analyzing the importance of beauty for contemporary women. I begin by showing some traditional views in the history of philosophy, such as Kant’s conception that “woman is beautiful while man is sublime.” I claim that beauty is still considered one of the main assets for women, not only in the “dating scene” but also in the pursue of a carrier. I show the criticism of beauty practices in the feminist literature. From the 20th century on, we see that aesthetic procedures and cosmetic surgeries can be enjoyed by an increasing number of women. If, on the one hand, this indicates a greater autonomy in relation to the body, on the other hand, being beautiful becomes a moral duty. At the end, I investigate whether beauty is always oppressive, or we could create a new inclusive idea that incorporates a plurality of bodies.

In this chapter, I aim to elucidate the relationship between passions and evil in Kant’s philosophy. I begin by explaining the difference between affects and passions in the text Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, in which Kant claims that both affects and passions are illnesses of the mind, because they hinder the sovereignty of reason. I argue that passions, however, represent a greater threat to pure reason than affects. Next, I relate affects and passions to the varying degrees of the propensity to evil in the Religion. Finally, I analyse the idea of an ethical community as a means of overcoming evil, which goes beyond the political and anthropological solutions offered by Kant.

In this paper, I analyze the place of the Metaphysics of morals in the Kantian system. I claim that this work is the passage between a pure part of ethics and a practical anthropology. Although this book was first conceived to be a pure moral theory - moralia pura-, it ended up dealing with principle of applications of the moral law to sensible moral beings- philosophia moralis applicata. I also hold that the Doctrine of Virtue presents some sensible elements that are important to understand how morality affects us.

Kant is usually considered a cold moralist who does not give any importance to feeling and emotions. In this paper I show that Kant has a place for love although he uses this word in different meanings through his work. I will analyze the use and meaning of five different uses of the term love: self-love, practical love, love as affect, love as passion, and sexual love. I show that Kant has a place for love in his theory, in a plurality of shades and meanings, going from the practical love to romantic love. Some of their expressions are meaningful for the moral life, such as practical love, some are not. Kant portrait romantic love as a silly affect, sometimes as a dangerous passion who can even call for medication. And about sex, he claims that it is nothing but the use of the other as a means, which may obtain a higher juridical status if this use is reciprocal, in the case of marriage.

Nesse artigo, mostrarei como Kant antecipa a utilização de estratégias fisiológicas para o controle de afetos que escapam ao nosso controle racional. Inicio apresentando a concepção kantiana de afetos e paixões como doenças da mente. Abordarei, então, a concepção de amor em Kant, comparando-a com a abordagem contemporânea deste sentimento por Brian Arp e Julian Savulescu em Love is the Drug: the chemical future of our relationships. Kant concebia os afetos como estados de carência ou excesso de excitação, seguindo a divisão do médico John Brown das doenças em astênicas e estênicas. Quando esses afetos são excessivos, ou excluem o domínio da razão, eles podem dar origem a doenças da mente, as quais, em casos extremos, devem ser curadas mediante uma estratégia medicamentosa. Por fim, mostro que a estratégia de utilização de medicamentos para regular afetos intensos não era estranha à teoria kantiana. Palavras-chave: afeto, paixão, amor, Kant, cura.

In this paper, I aim at explaining the difference Kant makes between emotion, the beautiful and the sublime. I begin by explaining what an emotion is, showing that it refers to feelings that are related to desire. In contrast, I show that the feeling of beautiful and the sublime give us an inactive delight, that is not related to an interest in the object. The feeling of beautiful is related to the judgment of taste, and it has a universal validity for everyone. I ask then if we can judge art without any emotion at all. According to Kant, not only one can, but one should, since pure judgment of taste is independent from charm and commotion. At the end, I ask if it is possible to enjoy music without emotion. For a lover of music, perhaps the emotion it provokes is the main reason to like it. I show that this is probably the reason why music is considered to have the last place in the beautiful arts for Kant.

In this paper, I analyze the place of the Metaphysics of morals in the Kantian system. I claim that this work is the passage between a pure part of ethics and a practical anthropology. Although this book was first conceived to be a pure moral theory - moralia pura-, it ended up dealing with principle of applications of the moral law to sensible moral beings- philosophia moralis applicata. I also hold that the Doctrine of Virtue presents some sensible elements that are important to understand how morality affects us.

Kant is categorical about the relation between virtue and the controlling of inclinations:Since virtue is based on inner freedom it contains a positive command to a human being, namely to bring all his capacities and inclinations under his reason's control and so to rule over himself. Virtue presupposes apathy, in the sense of absence of affects. Kant revives the stoic ideal of tranquilitas as a necessary condition for virtue: ‘The true strength of virtue is a tranquil mind’. In the Anthropology and the Doctrine of Virtue, apathy is taken in the sense of freedom from affects. In these texts, Kant maintains that we must strive toward a state in which affects are absent.

Nesse artigo, eu apresento a teoria kantiana do mal. Mostrarei que Kant divide o mal em três níveis: fraqueza, impureza e perversidade, relacionando-os com afetos e paixões. Eu defendo que Kant apresenta várias formas de curar o mal nos diversos textos, tais como Doutrina da Virtude, Antropologia, Ideia para uma história universal do ponto de vista cosmopolita e Religião nos limites da simples razão. Eu tentarei mostrar que a virtude é impotente para curar o mal e que Kant apresenta uma comunidade ética para esse fim. Por fim, eu compararei a construção de comunidade ética com o estabelecimento de uma sociedade civil jurídica.

In this paper, I aim at relating passions to evil in Kant's philosophy. I begin by explaining the difference between affects and passions in the text Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Kant claims that both affects and passions are illnesses of the mind, because both affect and passion hinder the sovereignty of reason. I show that passions are worse than affects for the purpose of pure reason. Second, I relate affects and passions to the degrees of the propensity to evil in the Religion. I analyze the idea of an ethical community as a way to overcome the evil, which goes beyond political and anthropological solutions suggested by Kant.

In this paper, I shall discuss the relation between practical reason and emotions in Kant. First, I begin by explaining why knowledge of emotions is important for the transcendental project in the moral domain, understood as the claim that reason can determine our actions, in spite of our inclinations. Second, I explain the definition of affects and passions in Kant's philosophy and relate the two to feelings and the faculty of desire. I then question the possibility of controlling emotions, showing that it is, if not an altogether impossible task, at least a difficult one. I show that while affects present a momentary loss of control, they can still coexist with practical reason. Passions, however, may ground principles for actions, and represent a serious danger for rational mastery over inclinations.