Proaktives, reaktives und reziprokes Wohlwollen. Kants System der Liebespflichten

Abstract

Kant’s duties of love include the duties of beneficence, gratitude, and sympathetic participation. But what is it that allows Kant to bring such seemingly quite heterogeneous duties under one concept, especially under the concept of love? I will argue that it is benevolence as an essential element of love that takes on this unifying role. In order to understand this role of benevolence as the unifying element of the three duties of love, the concept of benevolence will first be analyzed (part 1). Against this background, all three duties of love are then reassessed. Beneficence will be shown to be a proactive form of benevolence (part 2), gratitude to be a reactive form of benevolence (part 3), and sympathetic participation is understood as a form of reciprocal benevolence (part 4).