Aniket Chakravorty (New College): 'Opacity and Examples: A tension in Kant’s work?'
Abstract: A notable feature of Immanuel Kant’s ethics is that he endorses the opacity thesis – the view that we can never know if an action is morally worthy. Given this commitment, it is strange that Kant thinks empirical examples of morally worthy action play an important role in moral education, as sources of inspiration and demonstrations of the possibility of such action. This view seems to be inconsistent with the opacity thesis, if these examples are taken literally. As a result, I argue that we should treat these examples as symbols of morally worthy action. This allows examples to maintain their role within moral education, without threatening the Opacity thesis. In §1 I outline the Opacity thesis. In §2 I elaborate on the role examples are supposed to play within the second critique. In §3 I show how Opacity and Kant’s use of examples seemingly contradict each other. Finally, in §4, I show that by treating examples as symbols of morally worthy action, we can avoid this tension. I conclude in §5.
