The Salon, University of Tasmania at the Hedberg ,19-27 Campbell Street, Hobart
Summary:Gwen Nettlefold Memorial Lecture by Associate Professor Melissa Merritt
Presenter(s):
- Associate Professor Melissa Merritt
"Everyone has a price at which he sells himself" : Immanuel Kant quotes this remark in the 1793 Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone, ostensibly attributing it to "a member of English Parliament" — possibly thinking of William Wyndham, who adduced it as an "old maxim" in a 1734 session of the House of Commons (although the quotation is often misattributed to Horace Walpole). Without attempting to speculate about the details of Kant's attribution of the remark, Merritt argues that the context of the quotation in the Religion alludes to the arresting pedagogical practices of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, who famously said that "different people sell themselves at different prices" (Discourses 1.2). Merritt argues that there are two sides of Epictetus's pedagogical strategies: a jolting side meant to expose self-deception and practical inconsistency; and an uplifting side meant to arouse the resources by which it is possible to progress towards virtue — specifically, our sense of kinship with the divine insofar as we are rational. Merritt argues that Kant develops a conception of self-respect in later practical works that plausibly draws on Epictetus, and his distinctive version of the traditional Stoic account of rational agency.
About the Speaker
Melissa Merritt is Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales and was an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2019-2022). She is the author of Kant on Reflection and Virtue (Cambridge University Press, 2018), which won the 2019 North American Kant Society Book Prize, and The Sublime (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Her work on Kant focuses mostly on his ethics and moral psychology, and his understanding of the essentially reflective nature of the rational mind. She is currently working on a long-term project on the significance of Stoicism for Kant and contemporary ethics.
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