This dissertation proposes a phenomenological investigation into value and feeling in classical and "neo-" Confucianism, particularly in the works of Mencius and Wang Yangming, in light of the German phenomenologist Max Scheler's clarification of human experience and theory of value. The phenomenological method and attitude, which seek essence by resorting to concrete personal and interpersonal experience rather than relying on the presuppositions of conceptual systems, offers a fresh and insightful perspective from which to examine the experiential pattern of morals in Confucian tradition. In order to illustrate how moral feelings and values establish each other, I examine the feeling-value correlations of love, sympathy and ren, shame and righteousness, respect and ritual propriety, and approval and wisdom, developed from Mencius' discussion on four initial moral emotions. This work not only clarifies the optimal experience of moral feelings, but also points out the concrete contents of what Wang Yangming calls the pure knowing of Heavenly principle. This phenomenological presentation of Confucian values, especially as mediated by Wang with some clarification through Scheler's thought, opposes both the dogmatic and relativist conceptions of principle (li) and the abstract interpretations of "pure knowing" (liang zhi) as having no concrete content, and thus it is relevantly applicable in directing our moral lives. The clarification of experience in different traditions is significant for research in both phenomenology and Chinese philosophy, and the experiential analysis made possible by this approach offers greater possibilities for mutual understanding among various cultures in the world.

In contrast to his rationalist predecessors, Kant insists that feeling has a pos- itive role to play in moral life. But the exact nature of this role is far from clear. As much as Kant insists that moral action must proceed from a feeling of respect, he maintains with equal insistence that the objective basis of acting from duty must come from practical reason alone, and that when we act from duty we must exclude sensibility from the determining grounds of choice. In what way, then, is respect for the law a feeling? And what place does this feeling have—if any—in Kant’s ethics? The aim of my dissertation is to answer these questions, in part through a close engagement with Kant’s second Critique. I provide a close reading of his claim that our recognition of the moral law must effect both painful and pleasurable feelings in us, and I argue that these feelings, for Kant, are meant to explain how the moral law can figure into the basis of a maxim. By showing why our recognition of the law must be painful from the perspective of self-love, but pleasurable from the perspective of practical reason, Kant is able to show how our desires can acquire normative direction. On my reading, then, the theory of moral sensibility we find in the second Critique addresses a rather troubling form of skepticism: skepticism about moral motivation.In the course of defending this claim, I provide an alternative reading of the development of Kant’s project of moral justification from Groundwork III to the second Critique. Against a wide-spread view in the literature, I suggest that what changes between these texts is not a direction of argument (from freedom to morality, or morality to freedom), but a methodological shift toward the concept of human sensibility. In the later work, I argue, Kant develops a novel approach to moral feeling from the perspective of the deliberating agent; and this in turn clears room in Kant’s ethics for a new kind of a priori knowledge—namely, knowledge of what the activity of practical reason must feel like. The broader aim of my dissertation is thus to put Kant’s work on meta-ethics and moral psychology in closer proximity.

In contrast to his rationalist predecessors, Kant insists that feeling has a pos- itive role to play in moral life. But the exact nature of this role is far from clear. As much as Kant insists that moral action must proceed from a feeling of respect, he maintains with equal insistence that the objective basis of acting from duty must come from practical reason alone, and that when we act from duty we must exclude sensibility from the determining grounds of choice. In what way, then, is respect for the law a feeling? And what place does this feeling have—if any—in Kant’s ethics? The aim of my dissertation is to answer these questions, in part through a close engagement with Kant’s second Critique. I provide a close reading of his claim that our recognition of the moral law must effect both painful and pleasurable feelings in us, and I argue that these feelings, for Kant, are meant to explain how the moral law can figure into the basis of a maxim. By showing why our recognition of the law must be painful from the perspective of self-love, but pleasurable from the perspective of practical reason, Kant is able to show how our desires can acquire normative direction. On my reading, then, the theory of moral sensibility we find in the second Critique addresses a rather troubling form of skepticism: skepticism about moral motivation.In the course of defending this claim, I provide an alternative reading of the development of Kant’s project of moral justification from Groundwork III to the second Critique. Against a wide-spread view in the literature, I suggest that what changes between these texts is not a direction of argument (from freedom to morality, or morality to freedom), but a methodological shift toward the concept of human sensibility. In the later work, I argue, Kant develops a novel approach to moral feeling from the perspective of the deliberating agent; and this in turn clears room in Kant’s ethics for a new kind of a priori knowledge—namely, knowledge of what the activity of practical reason must feel like. The broader aim of my dissertation is thus to put Kant’s work on meta-ethics and moral psychology in closer proximity.

Kant denies that evil qua evil can be an incentive to human beings. Is this a fact about what sorts of reasons human beings find interesting? Or, is it rooted entirely in Kant’s notion of human freedom? I focus on key facets of Kant’s system: human freedom, immorality and incentives. With an understanding of these concepts based in Christine Korsgaard’s reading of Kant’s moral theory, I argue that the impossibility of acting solely from evil qua evil is not rooted in human incentives and that if we were able to represent an unconditioned principle of immorality, we would have as powerful an incentive to act in accordance with it as we do to act in accordance with the categorical imperative. Finally, I argue that the impossibility of human beings’ having evil qua evil as an incentive is grounded in the limited nature of our positive conception of freedom.

Le présent texte porte sur la question du ressort ou mobile (« Triebfeder ») de l’action morale chez Kant. L’interprétation qui y est soutenue consiste à dire qu’il n’y a pas qu’un seul ressort de ce type chez Kant, comme le soutiennent maints commentateurs, mais plutôt deux : la loi morale et le sentiment de respect. Le nerf argumentatif de cette thèse réside dans la prise en compte systématique des aspects des facultés de l’esprit humain impliquées dans la question du ressort moral chez Kant. Deux éléments jouent ici un rôle particulièrement important : (i) les deux sens explicites attribués par Kant au mot « volonté », mot qui peut signifier (a) la raison pratique et (b) la faculté de désirer, et (ii) la division de la faculté de désirer en (a) (libre) arbitre et (b) raison pratique. Plus d’une douzaine d’interprétations, réparties sur plus d’un siècle, sont analysées de manière critique, et deux modifications du manuscrit allemand de la « Critique de la raison pratique » sont proposées pour le chapitre « Des ressorts de la raison pure pratique ». / This text focuses on the question of the incentive (“Triebfeder“) of moral action in Kant’s philosophy. The interpretation that is supported here is that there isn’t only one incentive of this sort in Kantian morality, as argued by many commentators, but rather two: the moral law and the feeling of respect. The argumentative nerve of this thesis lies in the systematic consideration of aspects of the faculties of the human mind involved in the question of the moral incentive in Kant. Two elements are here particularly important: (i) the two meanings explicitly assigned by Kant to the word “will”, a word which can mean (a) practical reason and (b) the faculty of desire, and (ii) the division of the faculty of desire in (a) (free) power of choice (“Willkür”) and (b) practical reason. More than a dozen interpretations spread over a century are critically analyzed, and two changes of the German manuscript of the “Critique of practical reason” are also proposed, in the chapter “Incentives of the pure practical reason”.

This dissertation examines the claim that, unlike utilitarianism and deontology, virtue ethics ascribes a positive role to emotions in moral evaluation by taking them as the constituents of moral goodness and moral value. I wish to identify the limit and scope of this claim and to show what kind of emotion theory is suitable for explaining the essential features of virtue ethics. To do so, I defend some kind of cognitivism, the cognitive-affective theory of emotion, as the most suitable theory for virtue ethics. I argue that the moral significance that virtue ethicists assign to emotions can only be explained by such a holistic and non-reductionist account of emotions. In order to demonstrate how the virtue ethicists&rsquo / positive treatment of emotions with respect to moral evaluations works in theory, I have looked at Aristotle&rsquo / s theory of emotions and ethics, paying special attention to his notion of the &lsquo / mean relative to us.&rsquo / We shall see that the &lsquo / mean relative to us,&rsquo / which entails the existence of suitable emotions being felt by the moral agent, is justified on the basis of such an idea. The other main purpose of this dissertation is to examine whether Kant&rsquo / s ethics is compatible with virtue ethics. My interpretation is that Kant&rsquo / s position on emotions oscillates between the negative and the instrumentalist view, while Aristotle&rsquo / s view is moralist. I will argue that even the most celebrated Kantian feeling of respect does not fall under the moralist position. Although Kant recognizes emotions as morally relevant in the determination of duties of virtue, the kind of roles he assigns to them are merely aesthetic, instrumental, or ornamental and regulative, all of which are secondary to pure practical reason. But, in virtue ethics, emotions and feelings play actual causative roles. They can both influence and be influenced from reason in the determination of virtuous actions / they are therefore both causally active and morally valuable in moral actions.

本論文出自於對於康德道德哲學中同時兼具先驗性與實踐性之二重關係的研究興趣，因而於此藉由釐清康德哲學中的崇高情感與道德法則之間的關連是如何被談論的，嘗試以此整理出一些在理解上的關鍵線索。在這條主軸的引導之下，此處採取對其所涉及的相關文獻研讀與理解作為基本的脈絡開展。本論文並依從前批判期與批判期的區分將概略畫分為兩個部分︰ 第一部分︰一開始即企圖從對康德批判期美學談論的背景進行文獻上的考察，從中導引出對於康德美學與其形上學內在本有的關連，以及對絕對者/超感知者對康德方法論上的影響。接著審視《觀察》作為此時期思想實驗的產物，又是如何在康德自身的評判(即其《評著》)居於一個重要轉向的地位，在其中康德將美感與崇高感與德行關連起來的道德情感論述方，何以導向對主體意識能力的考察，而自由─自我意識與道德法則之間的關連也在這當中被觸及。 第二部份︰主要關注於康德於《基礎》與《第二批判》中「對法則的敬重」的兩重性所關涉到的一種特殊主體意識活動─即「道德意識」─的談論，其具體意涵又何以關連到康德道德性之理性奠基的先驗要求︰「終究只有一個理性」。最後以康德在《第三批判》中對反思判斷力的重新修正、予以審美經驗先驗奠基之架構，重新檢視康德如何以審美判斷─特別是「崇高判斷」─的不確定性概念關連到主體意識能力的提升；並藉由數學崇高與構想力、力學崇高與理性使命之間關係的建立與理解，繼而以此去討論，主體之特有的崇高判斷與道德法則之間本有的奠基性關連，並且何以生命情感作為一種道德意識的洞察能力，可以進行一個既是普遍有效、且與自然達到真正和諧關係的「擴延」；而從這當中誕生出來的道德情感，便根源於意志自由而作為道德行為的發生的關鍵推動力、但其自身卻仍不能作為行為之根據。