Perfect Duties to Oneself as an Animal Being

This chapter considers the category of duties to oneself as an animal being: duties to avoid suicide and forms of self-mutilation, sexual self-abuse, and drunkenness and gluttony. Kant’s arguments for the claim that each of these types of action is morally wrong appeals to the “humanity formula” of his supreme principle of morality (the categorical imperative). Importantly, the role of teleology in some of Kant’s arguments is discussed and a distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘moral’ teleology is introduced. The chapter argues that while Kant mentions the natural purpose of one’s sexual powers in his argument against sexual self-abuse, his argument does not depend on it. However, as explained in later chapters, Kant’s ethics does rely on appeals to moral teleology, referring to the moral end of self-perfection.

The Teleological Argument in Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

The first section of Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals contains a teleological argument, the aim of which is to show that the natural purpose of human reason lies not in securing happiness but in morality. While the teleological argument is widely considered to be digressive and unconvincing in the secondary literature, in this article I attempt to show that the argument is neither digressive nor unconvincing. I argue that it fulfills an important synthetic task in the Groundwork (even if in a preliminary manner), that it is consistent with Kant’s views on natural teleology at the time, and that the criticism of happiness contained therein is as convincing as Kant’s criticism of happiness in the rest of the treatise.

O Caráter Essencial dos Corpos Homogêneos em Aristóteles

The present paper aims at examining the characteristics that determine the essential nature of the homogeneous bodies in Aristotle, from an analysis of Meteorology IV.12, which would at the same time establish a certain relationship with other treatises of natural philosophy and also in particular with books VII and VIII of Metaphysics. With this investigation, I will delineate a certain line of argument that goes against a reading perspective considered as traditional, with certain interpretive variants, according to which Aristotle would have adopted the idea of ​​a universal teleology, in the general sense that all natural bodies would be generated for a specific goal, or for a natural purpose. According to a certain view, linked to this perspective, the teleological character of functional type of vital activities, notably expressed by the compositional arrangement of the non-homogeneous parts in the living being's complexion, would be somehow involved in the constitution of the homogeneous bodies considered in themselves and for themselves. In contrast to such a view, I will examine, in a precise way, to what extent the homogeneous bodies would comprise a certain formal factor directly involved in the characterization of their constitutional particularities, taking into account a comparative examination with other kinds of natural compositions, namely, elemental aggregates and living organisms. Thus, through this examination, I will explore the question of whether, in function of this formal factor, such bodies could present some teleological character trait, distinct from the functional type, characteristic of organic-animate constitutions.

“Kant’s Great Service to Philosophy”

This chapter introduces the purposiveness theme from Kant’s Critique of Judgment. It argues that Kant’s innovation consists in the claim that purposiveness defines the space of judgment and that purposiveness plays a much larger role in Kant’s philosophy than is usually assumed. It begins by considering Kant’s theory of judgment in the first Critique, arguing that the problem of purposiveness is already present there in a nascent form. It then turns to the third Critique, arguing that internal purposiveness (an organic model) has priority over external purposiveness (a designer-artifact model) in connection with judgment’s powers, exploring Kant’s conception of internal purposiveness of form. The concept of a natural purpose (Naturzweck) is central for understanding Kant’s expanded understanding of conceptual form. The chapter also discusses Kant’s antinomy of teleological judgment and argues against the need for positing the idea of an intuitive understanding in the resolution of that antinomy. The chapter concludes by responding to an initial objection against Hegel’s claim that purposiveness is constitutive—namely, a worry about hylozoism.

Sexual Ethics, Human Nature, and the “New” and “Old” Natural Law Theories

The major difference between “new” and “old” natural law approaches to sexual ethics is that for new natural law theorists the moral evaluation of sex acts is always determined with reference to that basic form of human flourishing which is called marriage; old natural law theorists determine the morality of sex acts also (or primarily) with reference to the natural purpose of the sexual faculties. Ultimately, the old approach relies implicitly on prior value judgments to distinguish biological facts that are axiologically or morally relevant from those that are not. It also appeals to values to ground the wrongness of immoral sex acts. In its pure form, the old natural law approach to sexual ethics lends itself to a misunderstanding of the unitive aspect of marriage. More broadly, an accurate understanding of new natural law does not run afoul of the correct interpretation of “nature” in natural law.

Taxonomy and its Pleasures

Taxonomy is our response to the proliferating variety of the natural world on the one hand, and the principle of unrelieved universality on the other. From Aristotle, through Porphyry to Linneaus, Kant and others, thinkers have struggled to develop taxonomies that could order what we know and also what we do not yet know, and this essay is a reflection on the existential desire that propels this effort. Porphyry’s tree of logic is an exhaustive account of the things we can say about the sort of beings we are; Linneaus’s system of nature reaches completion in the classification of humans; Kant discovers a way to have natural and logical forms coincide in the thought of natural purpose and purposiveness. The stakes are high. When we order the world, we order ourselves: when we enter the taxonomy, it enters us and confronts us with our judgments of kind, race and kin.

Aspects of Bio-Economic Revolution in Agriculture

Revolution, especially in science, will always be regarded with anxiety because nothing can be more terrible than the fear of a creative mind to see, after years in which he painstakingly built and effort building your own system, placed the foundation of what was thought to be granite truth, that a heretic, came amiss, it looks like a mysterious magician, his certainty that the stone was just an illusion, a disguised form of nothingness. In saying this, to reach a truly exceptional, postulated by Romanian and universal while Nicholas Georgescu - Roegen , a vision which alone would be enough to put this so little known, however, thinker, the genius category. It is the distinction between growth and development   , two words so often confused and sometimes used in theory and practice of economic thought. It essentially says N. Georgescu - Roegen - in the footsteps of his master's from Harvard, Joseph A. Schumpeter, " growth is to produce more, develop, produce different ". Dominated by the idea of perpetual accumulation, mankind has been for centuries and longer still, in constant pursuit for the "more", without understanding the truth that, in fact, natural purpose is "to be" in a context of quality - and morally - superior. Escape the trap of this "more", with its subsidiary "faster" as a solution to living better and more complete quality is necessary and possible. The starting point in bio-economic theory of N. Georgescu - Roegen was the finding that the survival of mankind has a problem entirely different from that of other species is neither exclusively biological nor exclusively economic: is bio-economic characteristics and traits depend on many asymmetries that exist between the three sources of entropy which together form the heritage of humanity - free energy, received from the sun, on the one hand, and free energy and materials ordered structures hidden in the bowels of the earth, on the other. Systems bio-economic farming involves all elements: water, air, soil, climate, plants, animals, etc., creating natural products, whether we call organic, biological, organic, etc.. Development and use growing as scientific knowledge, research, emphasizes rationality in economic activity, thus ensuring the premise to increase economic efficiency in bio-economic conditions.