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18 JRE 533 (2010)
Kantian Provisional Duties

handle is hein.journals/jaret18 and id is 546 raw text is: Kantian Provisional Duties Heather M. Roff From Kant's critical works to his ethical works he never viewed the world in simplistic terms. He continually sought to find new, more complicated, ways of answering fundamental philosophical questions. Instead of taking sides in a debate, he often sought out a third option: an option between the dichotomy of empiricism and rationalism, a position for human beings between the noumenal and phenom- enal realms, an understanding of moral action for beings subject to both freedom and nature. Kant uses dichotomies in his thinking quite often, but he does so to show that, while they are helpful, they are often incomplete and not the end of the story. Inevitably, though, like all great theories, his are not immune from criticism. Despite these criticisms, like empty formalism or an inability to take into ac- count particular cases or cultural practices, Kantian moral and political theory still provide one of the major approaches in contemporary moral and political philoso- phy. However, his moral theory still continues to puzzle scholars when it comes to the relationship between right and virtue and his resulting taxonomy of duties. As Marcus Willaschek charges, the Doctrine of Right does not belong in Kant's moral theory, and that, due to its inclusion, Kant's system of moral duties is neither con- sistent nor complete.' Others, like Nelson Potter and Otfried H6ffe, find no prob- lem with Kant's derivation of right from the moral law, and therefore find no prob- lems with the duties derived from it.2 While some, like Katrin Flikschuh, explain the relationship as separate yet complementary.3 Yet, these scholars point to a ftm- damental tension in Kant's moral theory, a tension which then gives rise to ques- 1 Willaschek claims that because juridical laws can be obeyed for heterogeneous reasons, juridical laws cannot be derived from a categorical imperative that demands obedience for the sake of the law and nothing else. Marcus Willaschek, Why the Doctrine of Right does not belong in the Metaphysics of Morals, Annual Review for Law and Ethics Vol. 5, 1997, p. 208. 2 Cf. Nelson Potter, Applying the Categorical Imperative in Kant's Rechtslehre Annual Review of Law and Ethics Vol. 11, 2003, pp. 37 51. Otjried H6fJe, Categorical Principles of Law, Mark Migotti trns., University Park: Penn State Press, 2002. 3 Katrin Flikschuh, Justice without Virtue, in Lara Denis ed.: Kant's Metaphysics of Morals: A Critical Guide, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming. Flikschuh argues that one can be just without being virtuous, and that Willaschek's worry that heterono- mous, and therefore nonautonomous, lawgiving robs justice of is moral status is unfounded because justice does not depend so much on individual subjective, traditionally autonomous, willing as it does on a public objective unified will.

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