Kant, Ought Implies Can, the Principle of Alternate Possibilities, and Happiness

Download or read book Kant, Ought Implies Can, the Principle of Alternate Possibilities, and Happiness written by Samuel Kahn and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-12-31 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout his corpus, Kant repeatedly and resolutely denies that there is a duty to promote one’s own happiness, and most present-day Kantians seem to agree with him. In Kant, Ought Implies Can, the Principle of Alternate Possibilities, and Happiness, Samuel Kahn argues that this denial rests on two main ideas: (1) a conception of duty that makes the principle of ought implies can (OIC) and the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) analytic, and (2) the claim that humans necessarily promote their own happiness. This book defends OIC and PAP but nonetheless attacks the second idea, and it supplements this attack with two additional arguments—an interpersonal one and an intrapersonal one—for the claim that a modern day Kantian ethics should affirm a duty to promote one’s own happiness.