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Kant’s Defense of Human Moral Status
- Journal of the History of Philosophy
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 47, Number 1, January 2009
- pp. 59-101
- 10.1353/hph.0.0083
- Article
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The determination of individual moral status is a central factor in the ethical evaluation of controversial practices such as elective abortion, human embryo-destructive research, and the care of the severely disabled and those in persistent vegetative states. A review of recent work on Kant reveals the need for a careful examination of the content of Kant’s biological and psychological theories and their relation to his views about moral status. Such an examination, in conjunction with Kant’s practical-metaphysical analysis of the origins of freedom, reveals Kant’s principled basis for his contention that all human beings possess moral status.