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

Abstract

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 true happiness. In this respect, it is also a study of the human person as he discloses himself in feeling happy about himself, his life, and the world in which he lives. We take the phenomenon of happiness, with special reference to von Hildebrand‟s thought, as a clue which could help us better understand the important and truly personal phenomena in human life such as the human person‟s ordination to the objective reality, his vocation to build his life in response to and dialogue with the world of values, his task to live a meaningful and dignified life. In particular, we attempt to show that the experience of happiness, far from being heteronomous 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.