Thinking about the Exceptions. Violence, Equality and Dignity from Kant

Abstract

This essay undertakes a critical interrogation of the notion of moral exception from a certain understanding of Kant´s categorical morality. The overall goals are systematic, rather that exegetical. The general objective is to think the notions of moral exceptionality and violence, together with those of equality and dignity. The essay makes a series of mutually related claims: that moral violence is a break or rupture of moral equality; that equality is part of an action´s conditions of assent; that, in the absence of conditions of assent, the bindingness of moral duties dissapears. Exceptions may be understood, accordingly, as a product of a local rupture of conditions of assent, without thereby discrediting morality as a whole. On the contrary, when properly understood, exceptions are done within morality, and for morality´s sake. Furthermore, the essay suggests a notion of Kantian dignity —understood as a limit concept, rather than as the concept of an intrinsic value of agents—which is not only compatible but also supplements the proposed notion of moral equality.