Imputation (ethics)
Imputation (from the Latin imputare , to imputate , to attribute) or imputation denotes in moral theory a judgment about an act, an action or a behavior. The verdict claims that an offender freely caused an act that he committed. It is said that the act is "imputed" to the individual by the judgment, i. H. the deed is regarded as his free work; he is declared its free author, its free author. The prerequisite for an act to be imputable is the individual's sanity; if the intellect or will are inhibited, the individual is in a state of complete or partial insanity .
In a religious context, imputation is about the assertion that it is possible for the perpetrator to be good and bad. Since scholasticism, it has been disputed among the great philosophers whether the assertion of free causation relates only to the action ( freedom of action ) or also to the will that evokes the action ( freedom of will ). Another controversial issue relates to whether and to what extent not only the deeds can be attributed to the perpetrator as his free work, but also the consequences of these acts.
Kant connects the concept of imputation with the distinction between two types of causation. An act, he explains, can only be justifiably imputed to someone if it forms the beginning of a new chain of causes, but is not itself caused. He calls this uncaused causation “ transcendental freedom ”, “absolute spontaneity ” or “causality from freedom” and contrasts it with “natural causality”, in which each cause is itself caused. According to Kant, an action that is freely caused, i.e. imputable, can only be explained by the fact that the agent orients himself to a law .
The concept of imputation is linked in ethics with that of responsibility . Some authors tie the responsibility of an individual for an act to imputability, that is, to sane, others (such as Sören Kierkegaard , Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann ) make a strict distinction between imputability and responsibility.
literature
- Article " Attribution ". In: Rudolf Eisler: Dictionary of Philosophical Terms (1904) http://www.textlog.de/eisler_woerterbuch.html
- Article " Imputation ". In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy. Ed. V. Joachim Ritter and Karlfried founders. Volume 4. Basel a. a .: Schwabe 1976, column 274-277
Individual evidence
- ^ Christian Wolff , Philosophia practica I, § 527
- ↑ Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 476