Kant on Moral Praiseworthiness vs. Moral Worth

In this talk, I focus on Kant’s claim that certain actions – like the Sympathetic Helper’s in Groundwork I – are morally praiseworthy yet do not have moral worth, and I provide a novel account of what this notion of moral praiseworthiness as distinct from moral worth is about. I argue that a morally praiseworthy action is an action done from an emotion that displays a certain quality, namely emotional aptness. One’s emotion displays this quality if it is the result of the subject training her faculties to react to a certain object/state of affairs in a way that she judges appropriate. I argue that this notion of moral praiseworthiness (a) fills a gap in the literature, (b) can be clearly distinguished from the notion of moral worth within Kant’s ethics, and (c) highlights how two distinctively moral forms of evaluations – i.e., moral praiseworthiness and moral worth – can fulfill different roles within Kant’s moral theory.

Martin Favaretto
https://www.martinafavarettophilosophy.com/research-1
Postdoctoral Fellow
Faculty of Philosophy
University of Groningen

About the Speaker:

My primary interests lie in ethics (especially normative ethics and moral psychology) and the history of ethics (especially Kant's ethics). I am also interested in social and political philosophy, feminist philosophy, and applied ethics. My research focuses on questions pertaining to what it is to act rationally and how emotions influence our capacity to act rationally. I am interested in answers to these questions that we can find in the history of ethics and in contemporary ethics.

In my dissertation, I focus on the significance of Kant’s Incorporation Thesis for his account of rational agency. Relatedly, my dissertation investigates how emotions in general, and certain emotions in particular – specifically, affects and passions – are incorporated into maxims.

My research on emotions and rational agency also extends to issues in social philosophy and feminist philosophy. Moreover, I have three other research projects, the first one on the significance of Kant’s views on race for his ethical theory, the second one on Fichte’s conception of conscience, and a third concerning artificial intelligence and bioethics.

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This is a talk with audience Q&A presented by the University of Toronto's Centre for Ethics that is free to attend and open to the public. Free pizza and refreshments will be provided at the event. The talk will also be streamed online with live chat here [to be posted].

About the Centre for Ethics (http://ethics.utoronto.ca):

The Centre for Ethics is an interdisciplinary centre aimed at advancing research and teaching in the field of ethics, broadly defined. The Centre seeks to bring together the theoretical and practical knowledge of diverse scholars, students, public servants and social leaders in order to increase understanding of the ethical dimensions of individual, social, and political life.

In pursuit of its interdisciplinary mission, the Centre fosters lines of inquiry such as (1) foundations of ethics, which encompasses the history of ethics and core concepts in the philosophical study of ethics; (2) ethics in action, which relates theory to practice in key domains of social life, including bioethics, business ethics, and ethics in the public sphere; and (3) ethics in translation, which draws upon the rich multiculturalism of the City of Toronto and addresses the ethics of multicultural societies, ethical discourse across religious and cultural boundaries, and the ethics of international society.

The Ethics of A.I. Lab at the Centre For Ethics recently appeared on a list of 10 organizations leading the way in ethical A.I.: https://ocean.sagepub.com/blog/10-organizations-leading-the-way-in-ethical-ai