Kant and Applied Ethics: The Uses and Limits of Kants Practical Philosophy

For better or worse, Immanuel Kant casts a long shadow over contemporary Western thought. The philosophical and historical importance of Kant’s ethics can hardly be overestimated, yet his legacy for the wide variety of issues in applied ethics has still not been fully and fairly appreciated. In Kant and Applied Ethics , Matthew C. Altman takes a comprehensive look at Kant’s moral philosophy as it relates to the most consequential ethical discussions of our time, including same–sex marriage, corporate responsibility, physician–assisted suicide, health–care allocation, and abortion. This book explains how, by coming to grips with Kant′s legacy, we can begin to work through these debates more productively. Altman addresses both the strengths and weaknesses of Kant’s ethics, demonstrating the value of his approach for making informed judgments — Kant′s emphasis on freedom, dignity, and mutual respect is particularly compelling — while identifying the ways in which Kantian presuppositions lead us astray or restrict our vision. Kant and Applied Ethics not only makes a significant contribution to Kant scholarship, but also illuminates the moral parameters of some of our thorniest social and political controversies.

Preface vi Note on Sources and Key to Abbreviations viii Introduction: Why Kant Now 1 Part I. Applying Kant’s Ethics 11 1. Animal Suffering and Moral Character 13 2. Kant’s Strategic Importance for Environmental Ethics 45 3. Moral and Legal Arguments for Universal Health Care 71 4. The Scope of Patient Autonomy 90 Part II. Kantian Arguments against Kant’s Conclusions 115 5. Subjecting Ourselves to Capital Punishment 117 6. Same–Sex Marriage as a Means to Mutual Respect 139 Part III. Limitations of Kant’s Theory 165 7. Consent, Mail–Order Brides, and the Marriage Contract 167 8. Individual Maxims and Social Justice 194 9. The Decomposition of the Corporate Body 217 10. Becoming a Person 241 Conclusion: Emerging from Kant’s Long Shadow 283 Bibliography 289 Index 311

Matthew C. Altman is an associate professor of philosophy and chair of the Philosophy & Religious Studies Department at Central Washington University. In addition to articles in ethics, applied ethics, and the history of philosophy, he is the author of A Companion to Kant′s "Critique of Pure Reason" (2008), co–author of The Fractured Self in Freud and German Philosophy (2013), and editor of The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism (2014).