Replies: Autonomy and human dignity. A reassessment of Kant’s political legacy. Human rights, peace, progress
The paper centers on some problematic theses of my book Kant’s Political Legacy. Human Rights, Peace, Progress (UWP 2017). This reconsideration is occasioned partly by comments I received and partly by my own process of self-criticism. I focus on the point that commentators have mainly c...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | deu |
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Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Belgrade
2018-01-01
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| Series: | Filozofija i Društvo |
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| Online Access: | http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/0353-5738/2018/0353-57381804598C.pdf |
| Summary: | The paper centers on some problematic theses of my book Kant’s Political
Legacy. Human Rights, Peace, Progress (UWP 2017). This reconsideration is
occasioned partly by comments I received and partly by my own process of
self-criticism. I focus on the point that commentators have mainly
criticized, that is, the link I suggest between human dignity and our
capacity for moral behavior, or autonomy. The first part recalls the basic
features of my Kant-inspired and yet in many regards anti-Kantian account of
the relation between dignity and autonomy and replies to some criticisms
received from orthodox Kantians. The second part is strictly connected to
the first because it deals with the reasons we have to believe that we are
autonomous. While in the book I sketched Kant’s own reasons for the ‘reality
of freedom,’ as he puts it, I focus now on Bojan Kovačević’s suggestion to
look at characters in novels written by artistic geniuses (in particular Leo
Tolstoy) to find indirect evidence in favor of autonomy. This allows me to
reflect on the kind of evidence one can legitimately expect in the proof at
issue. Thirdly, I reply to a classical objection, ignored in the book, that
impacts with equal force Kant’s ethics and my own position. The problem
concerns people with temporary or permanent impairment of rational
capacities. If I let human dignity depend on our capacity for autonomous
behavior, am I committed to the counterintuitive (and rather devastating)
conclusion that children or people suffering from momentary or irreversible
loss of rational capacity, and a fortiori of autonomy, do not have dignity
and therefore do not deserve to be protected by human rights? |
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| ISSN: | 0353-5738 2334-8577 |