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This essay examines two interpretations of Kant's argument for the formula of humanity. Christine M. Korsgaard defends a constructivist reading of Kant's argument, maintaining that humans must view themselves as having absolute value because their power for rational choice confers value on their ends. Allen Wood, however, defends a realist interpretation of Kant's argument, maintaining that humans actually are absolutely valuable and that their choices do not confer value but rather reflect their understanding of how the objects of their choices fulfill their needs and wants and contribute to their flourishing. Though Korsgaard's reading is more consistent with Kant's prioritizing of the right over the good, this essay raises a metaethical question regarding her constructivist position, namely, ''What is meant by her claim that rational choice 'confers' value on objects?'' In developing this question, it presents a realist account of goodness that is taken from Peter Geach's ''Good and Evil.''

Although recent Kant scholarship has focused on Kant's treatment of various emotions, one that has not received much attention is love. There are three main reasons for this. First, Kant does not have a single, sustained analysis of the emotion of love; what he does say appears scattered throughout his corpus. Second, Kant identifies a number of different kinds of love, and it is not always clear which kinds are emotions or how the different kinds of love are related. Finally, in general Kant is quite critical of the emotion of love, and his critical remarks seem not to fit with the intuitions of some people when it comes to some of the more positive instances of love (e.g., the love a parent has for a child). In this paper I pursue two related aims. First, I identify and sort out the different kinds of love in Kant's writings, and I address a particular difficulty of interpretation, namely the status of love of human beings (Menschenliebe) in Kant's writings. Second, I argue that, despite Kant's criticisms of the emotion of love, he views it as an expression of our unsocial sociability, and it plays a positive and indispensible role in the moral development of human beings.

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