Sages, Sympathy, and Suffering in Kant’s Theory of Friendship

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21408838
AutoresBenjamin Vilhauer (0000-0001-5692-3945, The Graduate Center, CUNY, autor de correspondencia)
Año2021
Volumen51
Número6
Páginas452-467
Fecha de publicación2021-08-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCanadian Journal of Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0045-5091 • E-ISSN: 1911-0820
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/can.2022.1
OpenAlexW4236255735
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas23

Kant’s theory of friendship is crucial in defending his ethics against the longstanding charge of emotional detachment. But his theory of friendship is vulnerable to this charge too: the Kantian sage can appear to reject sympathetic suffering when she cannot help a suffering friend. I argue that Kant is committed to the view that both sages and ordinary people must suffer in sympathy with friends even when they cannot help, because sympathy is necessary to fulfill the imperfect duty to adopt others’ merely permissible ends (MPEs), and we ought to take friends’ MPEs as our own. MPEs are individuated in terms of concepts which include marks of the first person, and no marks of law other than permissibility. To adopt ends of others individuated in terms of such concepts rather than merely promote them as means to different ends, those concepts must engage with one’s feelings in a way that requires sympathy

Duty · Epistemology · Feeling · Friendship · Imperfect · Kantian ethics · Sociology · Sympathy · Theology · Free Will and Agency · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · War, Ethics, and Justification