Hegel's Reading of the Problem of Formalism in Kant's Ethics: Can Kant's Religious Anthropology provide a Solution?

Abstract

This article is an attempt to explain and then critique the Hegel's ideas on the challenge of Formalism in Kant's ethics. Hegel is well known as the most important philosopher who articulated critique of formalism against Kant's ethical thought. He dealt with this problem in different works and from different aspects. By formalism, Hegel means that Kantian moral rule as a moral form does not entail any moral content. By appealing to such notions as transcendentality of freedom, false affirmations and negations, and Jewishness of Kantian ethics, Hegel argues for inapplicability and emptiness of Kantian ethics. To secure Kantian ethics from the criticism of Hegel, one might appeal to some readings of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason appeared in the works of some commentators of Kant like Cassirer and John Hare. They claim that religious anthropology and other religious aspects of Kant's thought, through schematization of ethics, help Kant's ethical thought to transform from a purely rational approach to a view that makes room for concrete aspects of moral action and moral agent. In this article, I shall show that while this approach saves Kantian ethics from being abstract, it fails to solve the problem of false affirmations and negations as well as the emphasis on good will.

Keywords

• formalism in ethics
• transcendental freedom
• false affirmations and negations
• religious anthropology
• good will