Autonomy and Moral Emotion — A Response to the Conciliatory Proposition of Kant`s Morality

Abstract

German philosopher Kant, in his moral philosophy, made a clear distinction between categorical imperative and hypothetical imperative. Under his three propositions of morality, Kant argued that only actions motivated by maxims (or moral principles) rather than any other emotional feelings could produce moral worth. Since then, the criticism from Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and a series of reconciling propositions from other later scholars such as Paten, Henson towards such Kantian dichotomy have never ended. This sets the main focus of my article.The article is divided into three parts: the first part expounds the content and ethical basis of Kantian philosophy by explaining the epistemological gap between noumenon and phenomenon. The second part focuses on four different reconciling propositions proposed by Paton, Henson, Herman, and Allison as well as their shared issue: they all try to revise the conclusion within Kantian philosophy in a theory of motivation outside the Kantian philosophy. By tracing back to the three propositions and the relationship between autonomy and heteronomy, the last part offers the article’s own argument: though Kant denies emotion as a motivation to produce moral worth, he does not exclude it from the inevitable concomitant from phenomena.