Book Review: Ethics Vindicated: Kant’s Transcendental Legitimation of Moral Discourse
A review of Ethics Vindicated: Kant's Transcendental Legitimation of Moral Discourse
Ermanno Bencivenga opens Ethics Vindicated by raising three questions that challenge the legitimacy of our ethical practices: How are human freedom and responsibility possible? How can we legitimately judge some actions or agents to be better or worse than others? And what kind of authority do specifically moral norms have over us? The aim of Bencivenga's book is to show that Kant provides a "successful" answer to these three questions (pp. 1-3). The interpretative thesis here is not the modest one that Kant provides suggestive insights that point in the direction of a satisfactory answer. The thesis is rather that Kant's position is essentially correct as it stands. In particular, Bencivenga treats Kant's transcendental idealism not as an embarrassment from which the practical philosophy can be isolated, but as absolutely central to a possible defense of ethical practice.