Concept
Constitutivism
Overview
Constitutivism is the position in meta-ethics which links what we ought to do morally with the rules about our make up as agents who perform actions of any kind. It claims to answer doubts about the validity of moral judgements, and about moral objectivity, by explaining that we cannot help but act, therefore we act in accordance with moral rules which are essential to any acting being.
Although a recent development in moral philosophy, it has its roots in the work of Kant in moral philosophy.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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But its business is to hinder the hindrances to freedom: to establish a social condition of outward order in which truly moral acts may gradually evolve a kingdom of humanity. Thus while the State does not have a directly moral scope of action (since the coercion of motive is a moral absurdity), it does have a moral basis and an ultimate moral function.
John Dewey, German philosophy and politics
Close in meaning to Constitutivism; the term itself is not named.
What is essential in the moral worth of actions is that the moral law should directly determine the will. If the determination of the will takes place in conformity indeed to the moral law, but only by means of a feeling, no matter of what kind, which has to be presupposed in order that the law may be sufficient to…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason
The author is tied to Constitutivism in the knowledge graph.
This, as well as Kant’s theory of law, which very falsely deduces the institution of the state as a moral duty from his categorical imperative, has, even in the most recent times, repeatedly occasioned the very extraordinary error that the state is an institution for furthering morality; that it arises from the endeavour after this, and is, consequently, directed against egoism. As if the inward disposition, to…
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
Close in meaning to Constitutivism; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Constitutivism
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Metaepistemology.