文章基本信息

标题：The Ambiguity of Kant’s Concept of Happiness
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作者：Thomas Marshall
期刊名称：Reason Papers : A Journal of Interdisciplinary Normative Studies
印刷版ISSN：0363-1893
出版年度：2003
卷号：26
页码：21-28
出版社：Reason Papers
摘要：My analysis of Kant's concept of happiness is motivated by a concern with the role it plays in his ethical system. Typically in ethics, happiness can be viewed as either subjective or objective. The former claims that happiness is a feeling of some sort or other; and it may or may not play a role in ethics. For the latter, happiness is not equated with feelings or the fulfillment of inclinations. In addition, it is taken as the reason or incentive to live a moral life. There are to be two issues that arise when examining Kant's concept of happiness. First, because he generally takes happiness to be subjective, he found it almost impossible to find a place for happiness in his ethical system. Second, because he tried to accommodate the need for happiness in ethics, his use of the concept ends up being ambiguous. This second point indicates that while he primarily understood happiness as subjective, he also used the term in ways that did not coincide with a subjective account. Kant's struggle with the concept indicates that he recognized a viable ethical system must analyze the concept, if for no other reason that its motivational value