The Depth of Civilizing Features: Negative Dialectics between Politeness and Morality in Kant's Anthropology

Abstract

This paper tackles the contribution that the beautiful appearance of virtue, whose multiplicity of forms can be gathered under the generic name of decorum, offers to the civilizing process and also to the progressive morality of mankind according to Kant’s Moral Anthropology. First, I will focus on the homiletic virtues analyzed in the Metaphysics of Morals, that is,  loquacity, politeness, hospitality and indulgence, which bring about a trompe l’oeil inside the subject, always prone to selfishness and to the perversion of its practical drives. Secondly, I will analyze the relationship between these "supplements of virtue,"  good social manners, and an undeniable anthropological fact, that is, the weakness of human nature and the need to use aesthetic crutches to get accustomed to acting in accordance with pure practical principles. Finally, I will cast light on the importance that parerga deserves according to Kant, who argues that these special virtues must be cultivated in the midst of social life, that is to say, always in contact with others. On the contrary, moral appearance produced by the individual subject ought to be banned unequivocally, because everyone must avoid falling into false illusions about the purity of her or his own intentions.