Onof, Christian Jerome; (2004) The ethics of dutiful faith: Individuated quest and Kantian imperative. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis develops an ethical theory that is designed to address central problems in Kant's ethics in a manner compatible with a phenomenological interpretation of being human. To carry out this task, the work is divided into three parts. In Part One, a critical examination and reconstruction of the central tenets of Kant's ethics is undertaken. This leads to the identification of three related problems. These concern the indeterminacy of moral action, the nature of moral motivation and the grounding of Kant's ethics. The phenomenological investigation presented in Part Two assesses critically, and draws upon, some of Heidegger and Sartre's existential insights, to construct a new interpretation of what it is to be human. The key concepts of the Quest for absolute meaning, and constructive committed faith in an absolute featuring a rôle for a notion of self, are here introduced. In Part Three, these concepts guide the development of a modified Kantian ethics, the Ethics of Dutiful Faith. This theory is first elaborated on the basis of a fundamental questioning about the grounds for action. This leads to the identification of the same concept of committed and constructive faith as has been developed in Part Two, as providing the only satisfactory answer to the demand for justification of one's action. This notion of faith can however only be directed at a transcendent absolute insofar as it entails the normativity of the constraints of duty. By properly understanding the intersubjective implications of this fact, the basic principles of the Ethics of Dutiful Faith can be formulated. This theory provides answers to the problems in Kant's ethics identified in Part One. It is moreover both in line with the spirit of Kant's critical philosophy, and coherent with the phenomenological interpretation presented in Part Two.

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