Kant's Impure Ethics: From Rational Beings to Human Beings

by Robert B. Louden

This is the first book-length study in any language to examine in detail and critically assess the second part of Kant's ethics--an empirical, impure part, which determines how best to apply pure principles to the human situation. Drawing attention to Kant's under-explored impure ethics, this revealing investigation refutes the common and long-standing misperception that Kants ethics advocates empty formalism. Making detailed use of a variety of Kantian texts never before translated into English, author Robert B. Louden reassesses the strengths and weaknesses of Kantian ethics as a whole, once the second part is re-admitted to its rightful place within Kant's practical philosophy.

276 pages, Paperback

First published January 13, 1999

Reviews

[Alfredo Nicolás Dueñas]

First and last chapters are really where the things that are really interesting to me can be found. It is basically an exploration of Kant’s acknowledgement that the nature of ethics as a pure enterprise is doomed, and it requires a second “impure side” in order to be made pragmatic for the moralization of people, through art, religion, and culture. This wards of the longstanding criticism that Kantian ethics are an empty formalism (re: Hegel, Bernard Williams), and proves that Kant had in mind a grounded version of ethics that complemented pure ethics.

We need 1) moral education, 2) institutional support, 3) judgment, and 4) an ought that becomes an is.

It seems, all in all, that Kant’s assessment of the phenomenological aspect of moral formation is much like the virtue ethicist might propose. And because of that, it seems to necessarily clash with the “first part” of his ethics, meaning the pure ones. It seems hard to square (even if Louden is enthusiastic in doing so) the challenge of the formulations of the categorical imperative with the heavily empirical nature of the second part of Kant’s ethics.