[lit-ideas] Re: The Sidgewick Problem

  • From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
  • To: wokshevs@xxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 17:09:11 -0230

Apologies for spelling errors in a recent post. It's actually "Henry Sidgewick"
and Emile "Fackenheim." (Well, if you can't even spell their names right,
Walter ...!) The latter used to be at the University of Toronto. I almost did a
Hegel course with him but at the last minute decided to go with .... oh my god,
I forgot his name! The course was held at Glendon College of York University in
the Winter term of 1980 and the prof in question wrote a book on Hegel entitled
*Towards the Sunlight*.

With a ponytail longer than his memory,

Walter O
The Rock of St. Ivan's
The Avalon

P.S. Anyone going to the CPA Congress in Saskatoon next month?



Quoting wokshevs@xxxxxx:

> 
> OK, enough with the Heidegger schwaermerei. 
> 
> I've recently been told about a complaint that Henry Sidgwick (and
> Falkenheim,
> apparently) had regarding Kant's moral theory as presented in the Groundwork
> and the second Critique. But my informant doesn't know where S. wrote about
> it.
> The criticism is that because the will is pure practical reason, any immoral
> act is necessarily an unfree act and, as such, the agent cannot be held
> responsible for her action. No moral imputability follows from Kant's
> doctrine
> of the "freedom" of the will. Later on, so the story goes, in the
> *Metaphysics
> of Morals* and *Religion*, Kant drew a distinction between Wille and
> Willkuer
> either because he changed his mind or because he wished to clarify his
> intention in the above two texts. 
> 
> Does anyone know where Sidgwick develops this criticism? Is the criticism
> valid?
> Didn't Bernard Williams also have a similar criticism of Kant's moral
> theory?
> 
> Walter O.
> MUN
> 
> Quoting Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
> 
> > Walter Okshevsky wrote:
> > 
> > "Phil, you gotta get a (noumenal) life!"
> > 
> > Too, too true.  I do not hear pure sound, but a motorcycle passing by the
> > window or wind through the trees.  I am, sadly, enslaved to the
> phenomenal,
> > unable to participate in such flights of Reason.
> > 
> > 
> > A soul in tension that's learning to fly
> > Condition grounded but determined to try
> > Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies
> > Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I
> > 
> > 
> > Comfortably numb in NS,
> > 
> > Phil Enns
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------
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> 
> 
> 



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