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Chapter 4 - Kant’s Search for a Metaphysics of Morals

The Feyerabend Lectures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2025

Frederick Rauscher
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
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Summary

Kant’s 1784 lectures on Achenwall is commonly known as the Feyerabend lectures because the manuscript was attributed to Gottfried Feyerabend. These lectures range over the topics eventually treated in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals (1798), which include both right and ethics. From these lectures we learn how Kant thought about the concepts of end in itself, self-sufficient end and human dignity just prior to writing the Groundwork (1785). Kant accepts much of what he finds in Achenwall, but also advances criticisms of the concept of obligation found in Achenwall and also in Baumgarten. He also rejects Achenwall’s attempt to justify coercion of duties of right simply through the distinction, common in the tradition since Pufundorf, between perfect and imperfect duties. The present discussion concludes that in the 1780s Kant’s position on the relation of right to ethics was still unclear. He appears to base right on the ethical value of humanity as end in itself, but also worries that grounding right on an ethical principle cannot explain why duties of right may be coerced.

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Kant's Lectures on Political Philosophy
A Critical Guide
, pp. 66 - 83
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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