Das Wohlwollen bei Kant. Zu einer neuen Anthropologie

This paper aims to analyze the benevolence starting from the Reflexio 903 of Kant’s anthropological Nachlaβ, that depicts the figure of the Cyclops as a subject shun from sociality. The autor wants to raise the issue whether the virtue of benevolence could contribute to overcome the condition of those Cyclops , who nowadays maintain a hyper-liberal conception of justice. According to the Grundlegung der Methaphysik der Sitten, benevolence should be interpreted as the result of a phenomenological path of moral consciousness, whose figures can be represented by the four duties of love. The phenomenology of benevolence is then accompanied by the analysis of its conceptual structure. Starting from Kant’s Methaphysik der Sitten benevolence involves in fact the juridical, communicative, and ethical dimension of social coexistence. The analysis intends also to highlight that Kant’s ethical thought should not be understood as formalistic but as socially-oriented.