Is Kantian Ethics Morally Alienating? Comments on Mudd

Kant’s philosophy is notoriously based on the dichotomy between the phenomenal and the noumenal world. This dichotomy digs a rift across human nature by separating the animal and the rational parts of it, its heteronomous and autonomous components, duty and self-love. Such a dichotomy, according to Sasha Mudd, apparently gives rise to two forms of alienation: moral alienation and practical alienation. On Mudd’s account, Kant successfully escapes the first kind of alienation through his doctrine of respect. Here I argue, contra Mudd, that there are at least two ways in which Kant leaves moral agents morally alienated, i.e., alienated from important dimensions of morality itself.