Kant and Mill Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Kant and Mill - Essay Example Kant does not disregard practical anthropology in the Foundations because he believes it is unimportant.As we know,Kant did discuss practical anthropology in numerous works on ethics and education.However,in order to understand moral action in the empirical world,Kant contends that moral action as such has to be understood first. Thus Kant ventures into a study that tries to supply the principles of moral action as such, or tries to supply the principles for "rational beings in general," which we can interpret in this context as moral subjects. One can found the same tension in Kant's ethical writings. In fact, I would say the tension is more pronounced in Kant's ethical writings, because Kant never corrects the tension in this area by rewriting any of his ethical texts. Particularly, I have found the tension between what I could call a phenomenological approach and a strict transcendental approach in Kant's two main texts on morality, viz., the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Mora ls and the Critique of Practical Reason. In order to perform the phenomenological reading, I want to look at Kant's text entitled the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. The purpose of the phenomenological reading is to see if it is possible to sight within moral phenomena the essence of morality as expressed by Kant. This reading constitutes a constructive interpretation of Kantian morality.What is important to note here is that both ethics and physics have their empirical and rational parts, or their posterior) and a priori parts. Kant's concern in the Foundations is with ethics, and particularly ethics in its a priori character. In other words, Kant is not concerned with moral actions as they occur in the everyday world. Instead, Kant is concerned with what constitutes moral action as such, which Kant refers to as pure moral philosophy, a mode of ethics freed from any social and practical anthropology that would only study ethical behavior as it manifested itself in specific human interactions. The basic idea then is that "the ground of obligation must not be sought in the nature of man or in the circumstances in which he is placed" (Kant , 64). Instead, the ground for obligation must be sought within moral consciousness. This idea of seeking for the ground for obligation in moral consciousness has phenomenological overtones. Kant wants to bracket the natural standpoint, place it under suspension, to come to the structures of consciousness that constitute morality. Precisely what is bracketed is practical anthropology, which is the way of understanding morality in our everyday world. Once Kant has bracketed the natural attitude, he can then direct his attention to moral consciousness. The aspect of consciousness that presents itself for investigation in moral consciousness is the will. In the Foundations, Kant wants to understand what constitutes a good will, which I understand as moral consciousness. Moral consciousness is consciousness of what I ought to do, or, as Kant states, it is consciousness of what is good without qualification. Understood this way, moral consciousness is intentional; it is "consciousness of what is good." If Kant concerns himself with moral consciousness, then I could call Kant's investigation a study of moral intentionality. Within such a study, I am interested in looking at my actions in terms of the willing and the willed as such. The willing and the willed as such correspond to the noetic and noematic elements of moral consciousness. Within this structure of investigation, I am not concerned with an act as it is considered in the natural standpoint, which would consider the act in terms of its actual consequences or empirical manifestation. Both actual consequences and empirical manifestations are transcendent senses of a moral act, i.e., an act immersed in the world of facts and affairs". Instead I am looking both at the moral subject's act of willing and at what is willed in the how of its