Zugl.: Hamburg, Univ., Diss., 2007

Throughout his work, Kant regularly glosses ‘morality’ (and cognate expressions) as ‘worthiness to be happy’ (Würdigkeit glücklich zu sein). As a rule, Kant’s commentators do not find this remarkable. Correctly understood, however, Kant’s gloss on ‘morality’ is remarkable indeed. This thesis shows why. In it, I argue that whenever we encounter Kant’s gloss, we are faced with an implicit, durable cluster of unjustified commitments; that these commitments both antedate and survive his ‘critical period’; that they are fundamentally practical in nature (i.e., that they are unexamined commitments to particular practices); and that these commitments entail a number of problematic theological consequences. I argue, in particular, that Kant’s gloss is a habit that signals, obscurely and implicitly, his antecedent commitments to the practice of capital punishment, on the one hand, and to a particular set of practical attitudes towards the happiness and unhappiness of immoral agents, on the other. I show that this habit has key implications for Kant’s thinking about the agent that he calls ‘God.’ My point of departure is Kant’s claim, in his Religion, that the human being’s particular deeds are imputable to her ‘all the way down,’ only on condition that the underlying ‘disposition’ (Gesinnung) from which they arise (according to their kind, qua moral or immoral) is imputable to her as well—that is, only if her (im)moral character may be regarded as the upshot of, or in some sense identical to, an utterly unassisted, unmotivated, originary deed on her part. I argue that Kant evades the question whether we really are permitted, without further ado, to regard this disposition (and with it an agent’s deeds) as so imputable. He simply affirms his commitment to the practice of imputing particular deeds to particular agents and, with this affirmation, affirms that he takes the warrant that it requires (the imputability of ‘Gesinnung’) to be secure. I argue, then, that the theoretical significance of imputation, as expressed in this extraordinary, evasive leap, supervenes on the urgency of the commitments that are expressed in Kant’s habitual glossing of ‘morality’ as ‘worthiness to be happy.’ The practice for which we would lack a warrant if the human being’s character were not imputable to her is the imputation of her deeds under a description (of imputation) that has immediate reference to this same ‘one’s’ punishment—specifically and only, however, to the extent that Kant takes punishments to be justifiable in none but strictly retributivist terms. These stakes and the constraining role of Kant’s habitual gloss are clearest, I argue, in his thinking about the practice of putting murderers to death—a practice, I argue, that has both a political and an eschatological significance for him.

This thesis contributes to a field of Kant’s practical philosophy that has received renewed attention, namely his moral anthropology. While it is true that Kant, in some of his best-known writings, literally says that the fundamental ground of morality must be pure and thus entirely free from admixture with anthropological principles, he nevertheless admits that these “subjective conditions” in human nature that “either hinder or help people in fulfilling the laws of the metaphysics of morals” make up the foundation of all applied ethics. In other words, in order to know if and to which extent human beings are susceptible to moral commands, we need to know our abilities as well as our limitations. Kant wrote several works about these topics and his long-term teaching of anthropology shows that he had a continuing interest in the theory of man. Moreover, it is widely acknowledged that Kant, during the mid-1760s was highly influenced by Rousseau. It is hardly a coincidence that Kant’s first reference to the “unchanging nature of human beings” appeared at the same time as Rousseau proclaimed the need of finding the true nature of man – the unmasked being who has not been damaged by social prejudice. In order to understand man and his moral capacities we need to find his true essence or what really constitutes humanity. Accordingly, a careful examination of the multifaceted characteristics of human nature is needed in order to understand the very concept of a moral being and to account for his moral progress. I will argue that Kant’s early insights about this need runs like a thread through his entire course of philosophy and that Rousseauian ideas actually affect also his critical ethics. They agree that man is sociable, but also suspicious. He has good predispositions but is likewise susceptible to corruption. My analysis will shed light on man’s eternal balance between conflicting forces and on the means needed for the progress towards the vocation of humankind. This reveals the need of knowing oneself and explains why the question: “what is the human being?” ought to be taken seriously.

Die Konstruktion nationaler Identität durch Musik ist ein Phänomen, das im 19. Jahrhundert in einigen Genres und Gattungen zu beobachten ist. Im vorliegenden Buch wird diese Bedeutsamkeit anhand des protestantischen Chorals in der Konzertouvertüre untersucht. Michael Florian Müller legt im ersten Teil seiner Studie die Entstehungsgeschichte und Theorie der Konzertouvertüre sowie die Choralrezeption der relevanten protestantischen Choräle, insbesondere die teilweise Überschreibung eines religiösen Paradigmas durch ein nationales, dar. Im Hauptteil der Arbeit beleuchtet er dann alle auffindbaren Konzertouvertüren, die sich eines protestantischen Chorals bedienen. Relevante Werke schufen dabei einerseits Komponisten, die – von Zeitgenossen wie von der Musikgeschichtsschreibung – als „bedeutend“ eingeschätzt wurden oder werden, andererseits aber auch lediglich regional bekannte Komponisten. Zusammenfassend stellt der Autor im dritten Teil des Buchs die Bedeutung des protestantischen Chorals für die Konzertouvertüre dar. In einem 'Ausblick'-Kapitel geht er auf – für die Thematik bedeutsame – Konzertouvertüren im 20. Jahrhundert sowie auf einsätzige Instrumentalkompositionen, die nicht als 'Ouvertüren' bezeichnet wurden, ein. Im Anhang der Studie sind unter anderem etliche Briefeditionen bzw. -transkriptionen – vor allem im Zusammenhang mit Sir William Sterndale Bennett – zu finden.