Happiness and Moral Autonomy of the Human Person: A Critical Reflection on Kant and von Hildebrand

Article

Abstract

[In English]

This article seeks to analyze the relation between happiness
and moral autonomy drawing upon the moral experience of the
human person with special focus upon the treatment of the issue
within the framework of Immanuel Kant’s and Dietrich von Hildebrand’s
philosophy of the person. Thus our aim is to find what
we can learn about the human person through the appreciation of
the experience of his/her true happiness. In this respect, it is also
a study of the human person as he/she discloses himself/herself in
feeling happy about himself/herself, his/her life, and the world in
which he/she lives. We take the phenomenon of happiness, with
special reference to von Hildebrand’s thought, as a clue which
could help us to understand better the important and truly personal
phenomena in human life such as the human person’s ordination
to the objective reality, his/her vocation to build his/her
life in response to and in dialogue with the world of values, his/
her task to live a meaningful and dignified life. In particular, we
attempt to show that the experience of happiness, far from being
heteronymous in its character and origin, is rather a distinctive
experience of personal autonomy. Thus we try to substantiate our
conviction that the true vision of happiness is an important tool
for the real understanding and solution of certain apparently paradoxical
situations related to the problem of the person’s moral
autonomy and moral freedom.