Austin Community College Immanuel Kants Moral Philosophy The Good Will Discussion

Please READ EVERYTHING

600 words discussion

Meta-ethics is a domain of philosophical inquiry focused on questions concerning the nature of ethical categories and frameworks as such, rather than with more directly normative ethical questions concerning what is or is not ethical and why. We began the semester in attempting to see the necessity of rejecting relativistic or egoistic reductions of ethics as a precondition for engaging in any sort of moral reasoning in the first place. Now that we have familiarized ourselves with the major ethical frameworks, our engagement with meta-ethics this week presents us with the opportunity to return to these questions about what the ultimate basis or nature of morality consists in. For this week’s discussion, we will be focusing on the meta-ethical issue of the connection between free will and moral responsibility.

Last week, we saw that Kant argued we must believe in free will as a necessary precondition for practical and moral reasoning. Even if I took every pain to avoid doing so, any time I deliberate in order to make a decision, I tacitly assume that I have free will. This free will, Kant argues, is a necessary precondition for morality – particularly insofar as doing right or wrong seems to imply either blameworthiness or praiseworthiness. In this week’s reading, we are presented with a dialogue from De Sade in which this very freedom of the will is denied, and the consequences of this denial for undermining moral responsibility are laid bare. If all of our actions are determined by natural causality, then from the perspective of nature, Sade argues that crime and vice must be viewed as equally “natural” as moral or virtuous living. If all events and actions are fated in advance, then the intelligibility of moral praise and blame comes into question – insofar as we place praise and blame on people for things they had control over and not for things that they did not.

Do we have the freedom to make our own choices? If not, does this necessarily mean we have to abandon moral responsibility, or is it instead the case that we simply have to reassess what exactly we mean by moral responsibility? In explaining your answer, try to include a discussion of how this question applies to your own view of ethics and moral responsibility.

Reading attached

peer response 300 words

Libbie Roberts

We do have to freedom to make our own choices. Due to the international human rights law, we have the ability to make our own decisions, we decide what we can and can not do with our money, our homes, etc. We also do not have to reassess moral responsibility because everyone has had the same moral standards for years on end. Your conscience will tell you right from wrong, on top of you already knowing the right and wrong thing to do. Moral responsibility shouldn’t change and you shouldn’t have to reassess it. It will always be the same, you will always come down to the same point.

Journal1 full page

Journal assignments are to be one page long, single-spaced, with default margins. In your bi-weekly journal assignments, you will identify a key topic or concept from the previous week and develop some arguments, questions, or reflections that occurred to you in thinking about that topic or concept. Citations of readings assigned in this course will be mandatory for all journal assignments. These are supposed to be reading journals, so it should not be an undue burden to provide quotations from the readings you are reflecting on and discussing.

Will attach reading for previous week as well.