DEKANT · The Division of Ethics from Political Philosophy: Kant and Baumgarten on Right, Virtue, and Justice

The Division of Ethics from Political Philosophy: Kant and Baumgarten on Right, Virtue, and Justice

The problem being addressed is the division of ethics from political philosophy in the Kantian tradition. On the one hand, Kant separated political philosophy and ethics significantly clearly. On the other hand, the ethics of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Kant's immediate predecessor, handles both the issues of political philosophy and the issues of ethics, so understood in the Kantian tradition. Since the Kantian tradition is so influential in our ways of thinking today, the separation between ethics and political philosophy is no exception in that we tend to think that the issues of political philosophy and those of ethics must be handled separately. Baumgarten's conception of ethics challenges this assumption. Reflecting on the separation between ethics and political philosophy is important for society, since this separation is imprinted in our minds in solving the issues of political philosophy and those of ethics. But we exclude the possibility of thinking that it might be more fruitful to conceive of a new system of ethics, where the issues of political philosophy and those of ethics, so understood in the Kantian tradition, are solved in a unified manner in that we conceptualise the possible connections between the issues of political philosophy and those of ethics and solve these issues by deconstructing the Kantian tradition of the separation between ethics and political philosophy. DEKANT is based on the hypothesis that the concept of justice is crucial to seeking this unified system of ethics in that the concept of justice is deployed, both explicitly and implicitly, in both ethics and political philosophy in the Kantian tradition. Thus, the objectives of DEKANT are 1) analysing how justice is the key concept for understanding Baumgarten’s ethics, contrary to our common perception that justice is the object of political philosophy; 2) analysing what ethics means for Baumgarten, given that it includes what we might call both ethics and political philosophy today; 3) analysing why Kant divides what he calls the ‘metaphysics of morals’ into the ‘doctrine of right’ and the ‘doctrine of virtue’, political philosophy and ethics; 4) analysing why Kant uses political and legal terms in the domain of ethics; 5) analysing how Kant handles justice in relation to both ethics and political philosophy; 6) identifying how the existing literature deals with the problems in Kant’s use of political/legal terms in his ethics; 7) identifying how the existing literature deals with the problems in Kant’s division of political philosophy and ethics, right and virtue; 8) evaluating how Kant’s conception of political/legal enforcement at the level of political entities impacts the shaping of ethical principles at the level of individuals, and how this impact could be better captured by Baumgarten’s unified model of ethics and political philosophy; and 9) developing a refined concept of justice to answer the questions spelt out in point 8.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз