Volume 63, Issue 2, June 2023
Toshiro Osawa
Pages 205-221
https://doi.org/10.5840/ipq202419227
Kant¡¯s Notion of an Erring Conscience Reconsidered
Vis-¨¤-vis Baumgarten
This paper reinterprets Kant¡¯s argument that conscience cannot err, in light of assessing the influence of Baumgarten¡¯s opposite argument about an erring conscience. I thereby argue that, contra Kant and in agreement with Baumgarten, we have a duty to acquire the capacity of conscience and that we must develop our acute awareness of handling unwelcome events precisely because conscience is involved in deciding the inherent goodness of an action and yet prone to make mistakes. In substantiating this argument, I demonstrate that it is helpful to demarcate self-judgment as a separate faculty in Kant¡¯s theory of conscience.