Post-Kantian European Philosophy Seminar (Tuesday - Week 6, MT23)

Human beings are social animals that naturally desire approbation. We are also self-conscious animals that are capable of subjecting this aspect of our nature to appraisal. My aim will be to chart a middle course between two ways of responding to this question alive, to some extent, in the European philosophical tradition. According to the Moralist, our approbative nature is in tension with our better nature as, as Iris Murdoch put it, ‘spiritual animals that love the good’. According to the Apologist, by contrast, our desire for approbation can be domesticated, taking a form that is compatible with, perhaps even necessary for, virtue. I will try to draw out a way in which each of these tendencies rests on a distorted conception of human life, and to make room for the thought that the appropriate normative orientation to our approbative nature is one of ambivalence. 

Post-Kantian European Philosophy Seminar Convenors: Joseph Schear, Manuel Dries, Kate Kirkpatrick and Mark Wrathall