Love, Respect, and Interfering with Others
نویسنده
چکیده
The fact that Kantian beneficence is constrained by Kantian respect appears to seriously restrict the Kantian’s moral response to agents who have embraced self-destructive ends. In this paper I defend the Kantian duties of love and respect by arguing that Kantians can recognize attempts to get an agent to change her ends as a legitimate form of beneficence. My argument depends on two key premises. First, that rational nature is not identical to the capacity to set ends, and second, that an agent’s conception of her happiness is not identical to the satisfaction of her ends.papq_1390 174..192 Obligations of beneficence direct us to help others or do good to others. Nearly all contemporary ethical theories acknowledge some duty of beneficence and Kant’s ethics is no exception. Kant maintains we are to make the happiness of others our end and promote, according to our means, the happiness of those in need. Kant notably frames obligatory beneficence in terms of happiness rather than basic welfare or human flourishing. Kant endorses the view that happiness is a highly idiosyncratic notion and makes it clear that we are to promote the happiness of others in accordance with their conception of happiness, not ours. An agent’s happiness is thus not limited to her basic welfare nor is it synonymous with her flourishing. While the latter has its roots in some set of objective criteria (what constitutes a good human life), happiness is subjectively determined to a much greater degree. Kant’s insistence that we promote others’ happiness as they understand it is evidence of how the norm of respect for persons directly informs and constrains the duty of beneficence. Paternalism appears to be unequivocally rejected. These two features of Kantian beneficence – a focus on happiness rather than flourishing and the rejection of paternalism – make Kant’s formulation of obligatory beneficence an attractive one. Kantian beneficence is Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 92 (2011) 174–192
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