Abstract:
It is widely affirmed that human beings have irreplaceable valuable, and that we owe it to them to treat them accordingly. Many theorists have been drawn to Kantianism because they think that it alone can capture this intuition. One aim of this paper is to show that this is a mistake, and that Kantianism cannot provide an independent rational vindication, nor even a fully illuminating articulation, of irreplaceability. A further aim is to outline a broadly Aristotelian view that provides a more fitting theoretical framework for this appealing conception of human value. This critique of Kantianism extends to contemporary theorists with a broadly Kantian orientation, including Christine Korsgaard, Stephen Darwall and John Rawls. The problem with these views, at heart, is that they attempt to ground morality in respect alone. Yet it is love, not respect, that brings irreplaceability into view. The paper closes with a sketch of a virtue-theoretic theory that follows Aquinas in taking love to be a master virtue that refines the other virtues so as to ensure a continuous and practically efficacious sensitivity to the irreplaceable value of fellow human beings
Machine summary:
The paper closes with a sketch of a virtue-theoretic theory that follows Aquinas in taking love to be a master virtue that refines the other virtues so as to ensure a continuous and practically efficacious sensitivity to the irreplaceable value of fellow human beings.
Of course, the Kantian could simply stipulate that achtung involves an intuitive apprehension of the irreplaceable value associated with the capacity for freedom understood as self-legislation, and that achtung so understood, along with the irreplaceability that it brings into view, serve as fixed limitations on the task of formulating acceptable moral principles.
Neo-Kantianism and Irreplaceable Value I’ve suggested that Kant’s theory does not make full sense of the picture of human value that accounts in large part for the appeal of the theory’s substantive moral principles.
4. This, I think, is what induces Darwall to criticize Scanlon for seeking to illuminate the authority of moral reasons by invoking the intrinsic value of human relationships conditioned by mutual recognition or respect.
For this reason love, which brings with it an awareness of the irreplaceable value of human beings and their lives, can enliven and refine the evaluative sensitivity associated with any virtue.
It is this latter, Aristotelian sort of love that, in my view, provides us with whatever grip we have on the irreplaceable value of human beings.
Conclusion I have tried to show that Kantianism cannot provide an independent rational vindication, or even a fully illuminating articulation, of the irreplaceable value of our fellow human beings, and have sketched a virtue-theoretic ethical theory that can do better in this regard.