A Moral Metaphysics and a Metaphysics of Morals: Xunzi and Kant

Abstract

I explore two important ways of thinking that the philosophical understanding of morality requires metaphysics: the moral metaphysics I ascribe to Xunzi and Kant’s metaphysics of morals. Both Xunzi and Kant held that a metaphysics of nature is inadequate for a metaphysical understanding of human moral agency. Xunzi invoked the human Dao to allow for the agency of the heart-mind, and Kant invoked the Categorical Imperative to allow for the agency of the moral self. Both Xunzi and Kant stretched metaphysics through rejecting the wrong sorts of rigour as preventing us from having an appropriate understanding of metaphysics and morality. I turn to their different placements of humanity that reflect deep differences in Xunzi’s and Kant’s underlying metaphysics. Xunzi placed humanity as a virtue or power that allows our psychology to become a moral psychology. Kant placed humanity as an ideal that allows our psychology to be a moral psychology.