Volume 25, Number 1
July 2023
ARTICLE

Kant and the Balance of Moral Forces

Volume 25, Number 1, July 2023, Pages 22–58
https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v25i1.1094
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Abstract

In the Doctrine of Virtue, Kant draws an analogy between the physical forces of repulsion and attraction and the moral forces of respect and love. I argue that we should interpret this passage as endorsing a moral version of the balancing argument from his natural philosophy. There, Kant argues that purely repulsive and attractive bodies respectively face problems of total dispersion and collapse. I argue that purely respectful and loving humans respectively face analogous problems of total moral dispersion and collapse. I conclude by drawing some significant implications of this moral balancing argument for contemporary theorizing about moral interactions, relationships, and communities.
Copyright © 2023 Santiago Sanchez Borboa
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
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