Eric Weil's Moral philosophy: a post-Kantian Aristotelianism

Abstract

Most scholars of Eric Weil's work agree with the claim that his perspectives are Kantian. However, one of his scholars asserted that when Kant is understood in depth and confronted with Aristotle, Weil's kantism carries a weight of reality that transforms it (C. GOLFIN, Revue Thomiste, LXIII / 3 [1963] 442-453). This statement provided the reason for this research. In fact, the perspective of Eric Weil's Moral philosophy is clearly Kantian, and more precisely, as I have shown in my PhD thesis, it is a post-hegelian kantism (M. PERINE, Filosofia e violência. Sentido e intenção da filosofia de Eric Weil, São Paulo, Loyola, 2013), to be understood from his understanding of the third Kantian Critique, as he expressed it in his work Kantian Problems (São Paulo, É Realizações, 2012). The Kantian perspective is particularly evident in statement 16 of the Moral Philosophy: "Every duty of the moral man is founded on the duty to oneself, which is the duty of being happy. The duty to oneself becomes concrete in the duty towards the other" (E. WEIL, Filosofia moral, São Paulo, É Realizações, p. 125). The present research intends to investigate how the eudemonist (Aristotelian) perspective, is composed in a coherent way with the deontological (Kantian) perspective. It is, therefore, to know how Aristotle confers to Weil's kantism "a weight of reality that transforms it". My hypothesis is that the answer must be sought in Aristotle's anthropology (= ethics), whose key to understanding lies in Metaphysics. For this, I will seek in the texts of Weil dedicated to Aristotle (E. WEIL, Essais et conférences, tome I, Paris, Plon, 1970) the evidence of proof of a post-Kantian Aristotelianism in his Moral Philosophy.