Kant and the Ethics of Humility: A Story of Dependence, Corruption and Virtue

KANT AND THE ETHICS OF HUMILITY

In recent years, philosophers have either ignored the virtue of humility or found it to be in need of radical redefinition. But humility is a central human virtue, and it is the purpose of this book to defend that claim from a Kantian point of view. Jeanine Grenberg argues that we can indeed speak of Aristotelian-style, but still deeply Kantian, virtuous character traits. She proposes moving from focus on action to focus on person, not leaving the former behind, but instead taking it up within a larger, more satisfying Kantian moral theory. Using examples from literature as well as philosophy, she shows that there is a Kantian virtue theory to be explored in which humility plays a central role. Her book will have a wide appeal to readers not only in Kant studies but also in theological ethics and moral psychology. jeani ne grenberg is Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. Olaf College, Minnesota.

KANT AND THE ETHICS OF HUMILITY A Story of Dependence, Corruption, and Virtue

JEANINE GRENBERG St. Olaf College, Minnesota

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C Jeanine Grenberg 2005

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data Grenberg, Jeanine. Kant and the ethics of humility : a story of dependence, corruption, and virtue / Jeanine Grenberg. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. isbn 0 521 84681 1 (hardback) 1. Humility. 2. Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804 – Ethics. i. Title. bj1533.h93g74 2005 179 9 – dc22 2004056824 isbn 0 521 84681 1 hardback

To Anthony, the love of my life

Contents

Acknowledgments

page ix

Introduction

1

part i k a nt i a n v i rt u e 1 Dependent and corrupt rational agency

15

2 Constraints on any possible Kantian account of virtue

49

3 A Kantian account of virtue

80

pa rt i i a k a n t ia n re s po n s e to re ce n t accou n ts o f h u m il it y 4 A Kantian response to recent accounts of humility

107

pa rt i ii t he k a n ti a n v i rtu e o f hu m i l i t y 5 The Kantian virtue of humility

133

6 Humility and self-respect

163

7 The humble person

193

part iv t h e v i rt u e s o f k a n t ia n h u m i li t y 8 The humble pursuit of self-knowledge

217

9 The humble pursuit of respect for persons

242

Conclusion

252

References Index

259 263 vii

Acknowledgments

Trying to thank all of the people and institutions who have contributed to the publication of this book seems an impossible task. But then so, at one time, did the very publication of this book. So, with actuality as the proof of possibility on the latter score, I endeavor here to accomplish the former, that is, to express my gratitude to the many persons and institutions without whom and which this book would not have been possible, or actual. No bit of this book overlaps with my dissertation, but I could not have written this book without having engaged in that earlier project, a set of reflections on the import of Kant’s moral feeling of respect for understanding motivation to moral action. I am grateful to the Woodrow Wilson Foundation for giving me a Charlotte Newcombe Fellowship to facilitate completion of that work. I am grateful also to those members of the Emory University Philosophy Department who helped to create a lively and challenging intellectual environment amidst difficult times, and particularly to Rudi Makkreel, Don Rutherford, Tom Flynn, Nick Fotion, and Pam Hall. The dissertation would not have become this book without Thomas Hill’s capacity for envisioning what was trying to emerge from my dissertation work. I am grateful to him for suggesting to me, after reading one of my dissertation chapters, that perhaps it was not so much “reason” or “feeling” as “character” that I was really interested in. The writing of the book itself was made possible by major grants from the American Association of University Women and the American Council of Learned Societies. The time and space these grants gave me to lose myself in my own mind were absolutely critical for completion of my thoughts, and I will always be grateful to these institutions for those gifts. But empty time and space only take a writer so far. At some point, I needed to share my ideas with others, and I have been very fortunate to have many people, from many and varied places and philosophical points of view, take the time to read and comment on sections of the book. It must be said that the only people to have read the entire book in draft form are ix

x

Acknowledgments

two anonymous readers from Cambridge University Press, both of whom were everything and more than I could have hoped for in press reviewers. Their careful reading and incisive comments and recommendations helped to make this work more coherent and, ultimately, more meaningful. Henry Allison’s willingness to read early drafts of Parts I and II helped to keep me an honest Kantian, and taught me to appreciate even more than I had previously what a fine reader of texts Dr. Allison is. He understood not only what I had written, but also what I meant to have written, and that was a great gift. Allen Wood has also been a tireless supporter of my work, sending me copious email comments both on drafts and on odd thoughts I would have here and there, but always with his unique blend of a Kantianism-cum-Marxism that would make me smile. Paul Guyer provided crucial support and advice at various points in the project. Although I take Onora O’Neill to task philosophically in the forthcoming pages, I am also grateful to her for the time she spent reading a very early overview of the book project and for reminding me early on in the project that Uriah Heep was not to be overlooked. That I broadened her suggestion somewhat by introducing not only Uriah but a whole range of literary figures to people my writing is not, perhaps, what she intended me to take from her suggestion, but I am grateful to her nonetheless. I am grateful also to Don Rutherford for introducing me to the work of O’Neill and for helping to make me the kind of philosopher who could hope to write a book like this. There are many other individuals who have patiently read pieces of this book project and have provided helpful comments and suggestions along the way: members of the Minnesota Monthly Moral Philosophy Meeting (“4M”) and also members of my own St. Olaf College Philosophy Department provided regular, helpful, and challenging feedback to earlier drafts of several chapters; members of the Philosophy Department at St. Cloud State in Minnesota and of the Philosophy Group at the University of Hertfordshire did similarly with an earlier version of chapter 3. I am particularly indebted to Martin Gunderson, Henry West, Sarah Holtman, Valerie Tiberius, and Ed Langerak. Sharon Anderson-Gold’s role as a commentator on an earlier version of chapter 1 during an APA meeting of the North American Kant Society helped me to fine-tune and focus what had until then been rather unclear thoughts. My editor at Cambridge University Press, Hilary Gaskin, has proved exceedingly efficient, competent, and extraordinarily patient through every step in the process, and for all of these things I am grateful to her.

Acknowledgments

xi

Finally, I want to thank my skeptical philosopher-historian-theologian husband, Anthony Rudd, for being the font of patience and support that he is. His calming influence on me during months of writing (Me: “Problem? Problem?? What do you mean, ‘the problem I’m having with chapter 3’?? I’m not having a problem with chapter 3!!” Him: “No, of course not darling, quite right. I’m glad things are going so well.”) and the acute philosophical insight he brought to endless English lunchtime discussions of my workin-progress were the stable foundation upon which I rested my soul, and without which this book would not have come to be. To him, both my gratitude and my love.

Introduction

Had [George Washington] been merely humble, he would probably have shrunk back irresolute, afraid of trusting to himself the direction of an enterprise, on which so much depended. Mary Wollstonecraft (1996, 124)

[H]umility . . . and the whole train of the monkish virtues; for what reason are they everywhere rejected by men of sense, but because they serve to no manner of purpose . . . ? We justly, therefore, transfer them to the opposite column, and place them in the catalogue of vices. David Hume (1994, 219/270)

Lily would have liked to pay him a compliment; you’re not humble, Mr. Bankes, she would have liked to have said. Virginia Woolf (1992)

Humility is a curious virtue with a checkered history. There is no dearth of portrayals of it throughout history, in literature, philosophy, theology, and art, yet there is little agreement about what exactly it would mean to be humble, and even less about whether it would be a good thing or not. If there is any general consensus to be found about its status as a virtue, it is its wholesale rejection as suggested in the quotes above. Lack of clarity on a definition for humility and humility’s general rejection as a virtue are not, however, unconnected phenomena, for the former encourages the latter. Any defense of the virtue needs, then, to come to terms with confusions about its definition. Let’s look at some of the ways that humility has been understood, and the associations it has acquired which have led to this impasse. The most common strand of historical portrayals of humility presents the virtue as one associated with meekness, and a principled sense of one’s inferiority. The figure of Griselda in Christine de Pizan’s early fifteenthcentury work, Book of the City of Ladies,1 a figure to whom we shall return in our chapter 4 discussion of recent accounts of humility, is a paradigmatic 1

de Pizan, 1982.

1

2

Kant and the Ethics of Humility

example of this sort of humility. Griselda is a peasant who is unexpectedly taken as the wife of a powerful Marquis. When her husband, as a test of her character, takes away her children, claiming that he will kill them (in fact, he sends them away to be cared for elsewhere), and then divorces her, Griselda’s “humble” response is only the following: I have always known very well and often thought there could never be any comparison between your nobility and magnificence and my poverty, nor have I ever reputed myself worthy enough to be either your wife or your maid. (ii.50.1/172)

When Griselda thus passes all these “tests,” the Marquis reveals his deceptions to her, taking her on in a second marriage, and praising her specifically for the “great love, obedience and proven humility which you feel for me” (ii.50.4). To gain this sort of praise for one’s virtue, one must thus be willing to subordinate oneself to others, to reject one’s own power of agency, and to admit that one is lesser than, inferior to, others. We can go back even farther for such images of humility tied to inferiority, meekness, and loss of agency. St. Paul speaks of the need for humble women to wear coverings on their head “as a sign of authority” (1 Corinthians 11:3–11), and of their need to refrain from speaking publically (1 Corinthians 14:34–35). Centuries after Paul, Christian thinkers like St. Benedict and Bernard of Clairvaux continue the association of humility with inferiority, pushing it even further, toward a principled sense of one’s worthlessness. Consider, for example, St. Benedict’s striking articulation of Steps Six and Seven of the “steps of humility”: The sixth degree of humility is that a monk be content with the poorest and worst of everything, and that in every occupation assigned him he consider himself a bad and worthless workman . . . The seventh degree of humility is that he consider himself lower and of less account than anyone else, and this not only in verbal protestation but also with the most heartfelt inner conviction, humbling himself and saying with the Prophet, ‘But I am a worm and no man, the scorn of men and the outcast of the people.’2

Given its persistent associations with inferiority, powerlessness, and worthlessness, it’s no surprise, then, that humility is a difficult virtue with which to come to terms. History records for us a variety of attempts to do so. The thinkers quoted at the opening of this introduction articulate the most common response to this history of humility: simply reject it. Humility “serves no manner of purpose” and reveals only a fault in one’s character, an incapacity to engage in great actions. So abandon it. 2

Benedict (St.), 1948, 27.

Introduction

3

And although this seems to be the point where we find ourselves now, humility has not always been simply rejected. It has also been the most commonly falsified of the virtues. Instead of rejecting the admittedly onerous admissions of inferiority and worthlessness which it seems to demand, some seek to manipulate the perception of oneself as humble for their own purposes. And indeed it makes sense that one would be tempted to reap the benefits of humility – social admiration, even veneration – without really accepting one’s actual worthlessness or inferiority. Perhaps the most familiar figure of falsified humility is Uriah Heep from Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield.3 Uriah repeatedly declares in a hypocritical and self-centered way that he is “so very ’umble” (Dickens, 1983, 311). When, for example, David suggests that Uriah, who works as an assistant to David’s father-figure, Mr. Wickfield, must be “quite a great lawyer,” Uriah protests “Oh, no! I’m a very ’umble person” (1983, 291). When David offers to teach him Latin, Uriah insists “I am sure it’s very kind of you to make the offer, but I am much too ’umble to accept it.” Even Uriah’s body language expresses his lower state: “He had a way of writhing when he wanted to express enthusiasm, which was very ugly . . . snaky twistings of his throat and body” (1983, 292). Although it is quite awhile before David identifies Uriah’s writhings and protestations specifically as false humility, he knows from the very beginning that Uriah is shifty and not to be trusted. He says, for example, having just shaken hands with Uriah, that “his hand felt like a fish, in the dark” (1983, 293), and that being with Uriah left him with a sense of “uneasiness” (1983, 293). Agnes, David’s childhood friend and daughter of Uriah’s employer, Mr. Wickfield, is, however, the first to put words to the concern. She suspects that Uriah, while claiming to be an underling to her father, has actually begun to manipulate the latter’s finances in his own favor. “‘His ascendancy over papa,’ said Agnes, ‘is very great. He professes humility and gratitude – with truth, perhaps: I hope so – but his position is really one of power, and I fear he makes a hard use of his power’” (Dickens, 1983, 429). Agnes is, of course, right, and David himself eventually “fully comprehended . . . what a base, unrelenting, and revengeful spirit” Uriah actually was (1983, 639). This false humility is a complex state, but Uriah himself explains it and its genesis better than anyone else could in response to queries from David: 3

Dickens, 1983.

4

Kant and the Ethics of Humility

How little you think of the rightful ’umbleness of a person in my station, Master Copperfield! Father and me was both brought up at a foundation school for boys; and mother, she was likewise brought up at a public, sort of charitable, establishment. They taught us all a great deal of ’umbleness – not much else that I know of, from morning to night. We was to be ’umble to this person, and ’umble to that; and to pull off our caps here, and to make bows there; and always to know our place, and abase ourselves before our betters. And we had such a lot of betters! Father got the monitor-medal by being ’umble. So did I. Father got made a sexton by being ’umble. He had the character, among the gentlefolks, of being such a well-behaved man, that they were determined to bring him in. ‘Be ’umble, Uriah,’ says father to me, ‘and you’ll get on. It was what was always being dinned into you and me at school; it’s what goes down best. Be ’umble,’ says father, ‘and you’ll do!’ And really it ain’t done bad! (Dickens, 1983, 639)

Uriah has been raised in a culture which affirms the value of humility based in inferiority. But what he has learned by being raised this way is that other people like it when he presents himself as being beneath them. He has learned a lesson that those on the lower rungs of society must in order to succeed: that he must maintain at least the appearance of inferiority before his social superiors, thus sending the message to them that he intends to stay in the lower place to which he has been assigned. Uriah thus takes advantage of this vanity of others and turns it to his own purposes. His “’umility” is actually a great cunning, a complex way of getting what he wants out of life, and getting it in the only way “a person in [his] station” could. But his, and others’, willingness to falsify the state have left the would-be virtue of humility in even worse straits than when it was a perhaps unfortunate, but at least honest, affirmation of one’s inferiority. Another alternative to the simple rejection of humility is to put it in a glass case as an object of admiration. Humility is proper for the saints, the beggars, those rare, and not entirely human, blessed people who seem more to be visiting this world than residing in it. But it is not a virtue for the common person, nor should it be expected to be. One can see the temptation toward this approach as well: in a world where humility is twisted, or abandoned, the truly humble must become more than commonly virtuous, and one can see why most of us, while not wanting to reject the virtue, and indeed admiring it deeply, would also not want to expect it of ourselves. We thus look up to those saintly persons who maintain an allegiance to their virtue, whatever the consequences. They are portrayed, in literature and in life, as possessing great strength, and indeed, they do. But that strength involves enduring what they should not have to, what none of us could imagine enduring in our own lives. Some literally become martyrs for humility. These persons have a strength

Introduction

5

greater than any “normal” person has, or could be expected to have. They are “saints.” There is something grand and impressive about the idea of humility as a saintly virtue. The problem is that such a view of humility makes it a virtue only for saints and no longer for the common person. The common person insists upon different principles: entering the fray, engaging in the competition, revealing Uriah for his falseness (as Macawber eventually goes on to do), getting angry, refusing to stand for the injustices that surround one, perhaps even presenting oneself as better and stronger, if only, like Uriah, in an attempt to save oneself, to utilize what few tools one has to protect and further oneself. The saintly humble, on the other hand, while they are recognized for their excellence in virtue, are thereby raised onto an inaccessible pedestal that no one dare try to reach. Humility is, ironically, thereby displaced from the center of a virtuous life no less than if it had been outright rejected or falsified. It seems then that only the self-contemptuous, the duplicitous, and the saints are willing to take on the virtue of humility. We might pity the selfabasers, despise the deceivers, and admire the saints; but in no case are we, the common persons, tempted, willingly and in full knowledge thereof, to emulate the humble states thus portrayed. With such a checkered history, it is not surprising that humility has been abandoned as a central virtue, and that twentieth and twenty-first-century thinkers have done little to reintegrate it into contemporary moral consciousness. There have, however, been some recent attempts to rehabilitate humility as a virtue. Perhaps in an effort to avoid at least humility-as-inferiority and the temptation toward deceptive humility, some recent writers have sought to make humility the virtue of an extraordinary person. For such writers, humility becomes more like, or at least compatible with, Aristotelian magnanimity, a virtue which reflects the unusually gifted person’s admirable handling of the fact of her own superiority. For Stephen Hare,4 for example, magnanimity and humility come together as a simple case of accurate self-assessment: “[T]he great soul illustrates precisely this special case of humility, accurate assessment of one’s own relative moral superiority” (Hare, 1996b, 240). Howard J. Curzer5 also identifies magnanimity with humility when he suggests that “[f ]ar from being viciously proud, the megalopsychos actually possesses the essential characteristic of Christian humility, the knowledge of his level of excellence” (Curzer, 1991, 149). And David Statman,6 though he speaks more of a behavioristic sense of modesty instead of the deeper disposition of humility, claims that the modest person 4

Hare, 1996b.

5

Curzer, 1991.

6

Statman, 1992.

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Kant and the Ethics of Humility

needs to judge that she “is far above most other human beings” (Statman, 1992, 436), since modesty, for him, is “the required perspective . . . not . . . of the ordinary man, but . . . of the extraordinary” (Statman, 1992, 427). Though the clear effort here is to remove humility from its marginalization as a virtue, the thought of rehabilitating humility by associating it with superiority is counter-intuitive at best. And, when set against the backdrop of the varying historical associations we have found for humility, these new assessments of the state only further complicate and confuse the question of what humility really is. This dizzying patchwork of portrayals of the humble person, culminating in an effort to define the state as something precisely opposite from what it began as, leads one to suspect that, in the end, we don’t really know what humility is. The result is its further marginalization. Once seen to be at the very center of a virtuous life, humility is now, in a twenty-first-century secular version of saintliness, thought appropriate only to the truly extraordinary among us. Worse, for most of us, it is simply not thought of at all. I believe that humility can be rehabilitated more successfully than these recent accounts have done. Humility is indeed a central human virtue, and we needn’t turn it into something it’s not in order to rescue it from the dustbin of the virtues. Difficulties in coming to terms with humility are not, however, unexpected. Indeed, to give an account of a virtue which is meant to bring us to terms with our own limits promises to be a difficult task. There is something ironic in the very nature of the task of handling limit in an exemplary way. That balance of admitting limit, but in a way that is admirable, tempts us instead to find a way secretly to transcend that limit which is admitted, and it may be that most any effort to define humility is susceptible to such distortions. As such, to handle the fact of one’s limit in a way that is admirable or exemplary is a slippery, difficult thing to do. We must admit, though, that any study of humility must do just this: come to terms with morally relevant human limits. The fact of human limit is undeniable. We are faced with the fact of our finitude every day: we all make mistakes in both perception and judgment; we are all subject to painful and debilitating illness and disease; we are unable to contain cataclysmic meteorological events like tornados, floods, hurricanes, and mudslides; we all need sleep, food, warmth; we are all susceptible to weaknesses, to error; we all die. But whether, and the extent to which, human limitation has moral significance is a less straightforward question, and this is the question we place at the basis of this study of humility. Surely, some limitations have no, or

Introduction

7

negligible, moral significance. That I can’t move mountains, or that I have poor long-term memory needn’t have a significant influence on the state of my virtue, except, perhaps, in very unusual and specific circumstances. But other sorts of limitation might be more morally significant. And if these limits were to some extent inevitable and intractable, it would be a virtue to recognize them in a morally productive way. Such a recognition established as a pervasive attitude would be humility. Any moral theory which would make humility a central virtue needs, then, to make an appreciation of human limits central to its grounding anthropology. This is what has made the history of humility such a difficult one, but clearly it is also the most important thing to come to terms with. I thus open this study with a philosophical account of that conception of human limits which would properly ground humility as a virtue. What follows is a general account of what virtue would need to be for this sort of being and ultimately a defense of humility as being central to the virtues for any being who has these morally relevant limits. In this redefinition and defense of humility as a virtue, I take Immanuel Kant as my guide. While the book is thus guided by the picture of humility I take Kant to have suggested in his own works, the overall intent is to defend philosophically the view that humility remains a virtue, and indeed a central virtue, despite its checkered history. It is with careful consideration, and at times expansion, of Kant’s ideas that we will be able to make proper sense of the virtue of humility. This may seem an odd choice of interlocutors. Many, perhaps most, wouldn’t think of Kant as a virtue theorist at all, so it is hard to see how he could help us to rehabilitate this particular virtue. But as this study will argue, familiar Kantian principles of action internalized in one’s person become character traits, and we can indeed speak then of thick, Aristotelianstyle, but still deeply Kantian, virtues. Appreciating this reading of Kant will require us to make a slow movement from focus on action to focus on person, not leaving the former behind, but instead taking it up and incorporating it within a larger and more satisfying Kantian moral theory. Kant, and Kantians, do indeed need to be as concerned with person and character as they are with action. As such, we must say that there is a Kantian virtue theory to be explored and appreciated, and a Kantian story to be told about virtuous character traits, a story in which humility plays a central role. The current work on humility is only one piece in the story of that appreciation, but it is a first step that I hope opens up a new range of possibilities for thinking about Kantian approaches to moral theory. A chapter-by-chapter summary of the book is as follows:

8

Kant and the Ethics of Humility

I begin by assuming that any account of humility must appeal to some minimal account of human nature as limited. Chapter 1 is thus devoted to providing an account of dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified rational agency, along generally Kantian lines. This account of human agency needs to be accepted in some form or another in order for humility to make sense as a virtue, and is one upon which I shall rely for the rest of the book. The rest of Part I is devoted to making sense of what virtue needs to look like for the dependent and corrupt being identified in chapter 1, and especially what import states of character could have at all in a Kantian account of virtue. Chapter 2 is devoted to some preliminary concerns related to this task, considering the various constraints we need to respect in a construction of Kantian virtue – including an assumption of human corruption as a starting point, and leading to a strong concern for principle, character, and unity of the virtues – and weighing the extent to which recent discussions of it have been cognizant of these constraints. In chapter 3, relying again upon the structures that Kant himself provides, I construct a formal definition of virtue which does not abandon the centrality of Virtue as an act of will, but which also importantly involves more Aristotelian-style virtues, that is character traits or attitudes which have both affective and cognitive components – what Kant would call “moral interests.” This account of virtue furthermore affirms a strong claim about the unity of the virtues, since any “thick” state of character that purports to be virtuous must find its grounding in the ultimate principle of a virtuous will, the so-called “moral disposition” through which one chooses to place moral principles above self-love. The most central virtues on this Kantian picture are found to be: respect for moral principles, respect for persons, and humility toward self, the latter two of which are more specific renderings of one’s general moral attitude of respect for moral principles, and are identified through appeal to the two main obligatory ends of increasing the happiness of other persons, and of pursuing perfection of self. Finally, the import of virtue and agent-based concerns generally on a Kantian account of morality is confirmed when it is argued that attention to one’s state of character is necessary to assure that one’s maxims, especially those related to fulfillment of imperfect duties of virtue, can be truly prescriptive for action. Part II is an assessment of recent accounts of the virtue of humility from a Kantian point of view. In chapter 4, I retrospectively defend my assumption in chapter 1 that we must provide an account of limited human nature in order to make sense of the virtue of humility. I do this in part by finding

Introduction

9

contemporary discussions which abandon claims about human nature, and seek instead to defend a more empirical, behavioristic humility or modesty based on self–other comparison, to be ineffectual. Humility based in self– other comparison is ineffectual because it inadvertently ends up affirming just what these commentators are wanting to avoid, viz., associations of humility with inferiority or, alternatively, superiority. Part III is devoted to defining the virtue of humility. Chapter 5 is the central chapter of Part III (and, indeed, of the entire book), wherein I present an alternative, and Kantian, definition of humility, relying upon the formal structure of virtue from chapter 3 to guide the discussion and analysis. After introducing the guiding image of Cordelia from King Lear and reflecting briefly on what sort of transcendent standard would ground such a person’s character, I turn to a positive definition of humility. Humility is a proper perspective on self in light not of comparison of self against other persons, but of one’s commitment to the pre-eminent value of moral principles. This attitude is described first from the point of view of the judgments – and especially judgments about the self as agent – accepted by one who is in this state, which are found to be implicit in the agent’s most general life-guiding maxim of the moral disposition. Such judgments include: that moral reasons are authoritative for her; that she is a dependent being with needs who seeks happiness; that she has a tendency illicitly to place self-love and the pursuit of happiness over her moral principles; and that all humans share the same capacity, dependence, and corrupt tendencies which she attributes to herself. I then turn to a discussion of the feelings and affects which a person committed to these judgments would experience, cultivate, and make part of her settled character. It turns out that these feelings can be best understood as that set of affective responses of which Kant speaks under the title of “moral feeling,” that is, constraint or humiliation of self based in an awareness of one’s tendency to value the self and one’s inclinations improperly, combined with a feeling of self-exultation in the recognition of oneself as a capable rational agent. Chapter 6 considers and defends a potentially controversial element of our just completed definition of humility: its necessary connection with self-respect. Indeed, the necessary relationship between humility and self-respect is one of mutual dependence: while self-respect is a necessary condition for humility, humility is also a necessary condition for self-respect. Essentially, neither humility nor self-respect can be virtuous states without reference to each other, and acceptance of this necessary relationship of mutual dependence is a keystone in the project of rehabilitating humility. This chapter thus defends this necessary relation and, in so doing,

10

Kant and the Ethics of Humility

retrospectively defends the reliability of the maxim of the moral disposition as a guide in the development of one’s character. Chapter 7 steps back from the details of this just completed account of humility and begins to draw a picture of the agent guided by a metaattitude of humility. One central theme of this chapter is the assertion that the humble person is deeply committed to her belief in the equal dignity and shared limits of all persons. Without such belief, one’s self-assessment vis a` vis moral principles would slide into an assumption of one’s inferiority or superiority vis a` vis other persons; and this would destroy the virtue of one’s self-assessment. Instead of admitting inferiority or superiority, one’s humility operates as the perspective from which one alters one’s attitude toward persons generally: instead of viewing one’s interactions with others as an opportunity for competitive claims of inferiority and superiority, they become an opportunity for the affirmation of equal dignity, and sympathetic tolerance (but not simple, unquestioning acceptance) of all persons’ moral limits. The deeply held values of the humble person also allow her to utilize her appreciation of the value of moral principles as a point of view from which to gain perspective on the fact of her own dependent nature and her pursuit of happiness. I end chapter 7 with some preliminary reflections on the humble person’s transformation of problematic self–other comparison into morally tolerable reliance on exemplars in her pursuit of virtue. Having rejected self–other comparison as a means for grounding the state of humility in chapter 4, and remembering Kant’s own hesitations about the use of examples in morality, any taking of another person as a moral guide for Kantians will need to be a limited one. But Kantian commitment to character also demands a commitment to more concrete and individual moral ideals or exemplars, and the possibility of such dependence should be pursued in more detail. Part IV begins a larger discussion of what effect an acceptance of humility as thus defined has on the overall character and actions of the humble person. The first of these chapters (chapter 8) is concerned with duties toward self, and the final chapter (chapter 9) with duties toward others. Both allow us to affirm certain intuitively familiar aspects of the humble person, but now more carefully informed by the preceding account. Chapter 8 considers the impact this account of humility has on understanding the Kantian attitude toward obligatory self-knowledge, arguing that humility is the only attitude with which to approach successfully this obligatory pursuit. Simultaneously, this chapter determines the proper limits to obligatory self-knowledge: given the Kantian’s strong skepticism about an agent’s ability to know herself, any excessive demand to achieve such

Introduction

11

self-knowledge would undermine both agency and the pursuit of virtue. We have, however, already determined (in chapter 3) that a certain level of self-assessment is needed in order to fulfill one’s imperfect duties adequately. A limited and fallible, but still possible, pursuit of self-knowledge, undertaken with a confident attitude and guided ultimately by practical (instead of merely theoretical) demands, assures, however, that the pursuit of self-knowledge does not become a counter-productive one. It is the combination of substantial knowledge about what kind of being one is combined with derivative, and fallible, insight into particular facts and idiosyncracies of one’s motives and character that, together, comprise that self-knowledge which is obligatory for finite rational agents. It is only with an attitude of humble confidence, or epistemic humility, that one can successfully undertake fulfillment of this duty of self-knowledge. Chapter 9 is a brief and preliminary consideration of what humility means for the fulfillment of one’s duties toward others. Although one might be tempted to see the judgments and feelings constituting humility as overly self-centered, it is the stabilization of this state in a person that actually helps to clear the static of self-love and allows the humble person to become more genuinely perceptive of and open to the precise needs of the moral world around her. Humility is, in fact, a prerequisite for the true fulfillment of a whole variety of duties toward others, though I will focus on beneficence and, to a lesser extent, gratitude. To make this argument, I return to a discussion of Alyosha from the Brothers Karamazov first introduced in chapter 3, showing that his beneficence toward Snegirev could not be genuine until it was guided by humility. I conclude by dwelling, one final time, on an image from Dostoevsky, this time in the person of Zosima, Alyosha’s spiritual guide. Humility is affirmed as an unusual and original, but entirely human and achievable, state of virtue.

pa rt i

Kantian virtue

c h a pt e r 1

Dependent and corrupt rational agency

Recent accounts of humility, such as Norvin Richards’,1 emphatically set aside any “Catholic metaphysics” that might ground the state, finding its view of human nature – one which asks us to consider ourselves as “contemptible” and “foul” – to be deeply problematic.2 Richards turns instead to an empirical and behavioral analysis of humility, focusing upon an individual agent’s awareness of the flaws, failings, and limits specific to her to ground humility. For example, when he asks what it would mean to be “humble” about having a scholarly article accepted for publication in a prestigious journal, he says the following: Suppose, for example, that you have just had an article accepted by a leading journal. You have never been successful there before. In fact, this is much better than you ever did earlier in your career, and as you think of your progress, you are pleased. There are other ways to look at things, though. How does your work compare to what your colleagues are doing? To the work of contemporaries at similar institutions? To that of the leading philosophers of the day? To the Nichomachean Ethics, or the Theory of Descriptions? (Richards, 1992, 6)

In order to put his accomplishments in perspective, and thus attain a proper humility, the person in this example needs to compare them against the accomplishments of others and, presumably, find his own lacking in the comparison. This empirical, behavioral analysis, centered around making these sorts of comparative judgments, is what Richards utilizes instead of 1 2

Richards, 1988. Portions reprinted in Richards, 1992. I make appeal both to the book and article versions, and note to which I refer at each point. He reminds us of “Bernard of Clairvaux’s theory that all of us are contemptible and thus that any self-assertion is overreaching” (Richards, 1992, 8), and of “Saint Paul, Saint Augustine and Martin Luther,” who claim that “because God and his works are so magnificent, whatever you are or have done is trivial by comparison, and your human pride in who you are or what you have done is laughable” (Richards, 1992, 7). His appeal to St. Ignatius Loyola is perhaps the most striking: “Regardless of who I am, as Ignatius Loyola puts it, to understand myself would be ‘to look upon myself as a wound and ulcer whence have come forth so many sins and so many iniquities, and poison so utterly foul’” (Richards, 1992, 169).

15

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an account of human nature to ground humility; and many other recent accounts of humility follow suit.3 It may be that human agents have such flaws, and even need to recognize and accept them. But such flaws do not constitute the central concern when we seek to understand humility. Any humility based on flaws would, first of all, be one that might eventually be removed or remedied. I am capable of becoming more sympathetic, a better philosopher, etc.; and with a proper attitude, I may, over the long term, modify these aspects of myself, thus expurgating any need for the humility which these flaws grounded. Humility thus becomes not a desirable state, but rather a state for which one hopes eventually to lose the need.4 More problematically, a humility based on agent-specific and potentially alterable flaws cannot avoid sanctioning what Allen Wood has called a “comparative-competitive” tendency among persons.5 In order to assess her flaws and limits, an agent must compare herself with other agents. She is thus forced to look at herself not simply as “good” or “in need of improvement,” but as “better” or “worse” than others. Basing humility on idiosyncratic flaws and failings thus moves us not toward proper humility, but toward sharp stratifications in levels of basic worth and, ultimately, to servility, oppression, and dissimulation. We will consider these problems with contemporary accounts of humility more fully in chapter 4, but for now I accept as an assumption of the forthcoming account of humility what will there be more fully argued: to ground humility, we must appeal not to idiosyncratic flaws of individual agents, but instead to the limits and failings all humans share in common. You cannot, however, base humility on shared human characteristics unless you have some notion of those characteristics which humans share, that is, without some account of human nature. Humility makes sense only if we accept a picture of human nature which finds a universal need for it, and it is with an articulation of this picture of human nature that this study of humility must begin. 3

4

5

Horner (1998) speaks of humility as a state which “honors others and esteems them as superior” (434). Hare (1996) speaks of moral humility as “accurate assessment of one’s own relative moral superiority” (240). And Morgan (2001) claims that humility involves believing oneself “to be beneath others . . . in order to bring about an evaluative equilibrium” (315–316). Unless, of course, one believes human nature to be naturally “flawed”; but this is just what Richards rejected when he rejected “Catholic metaphysics.” He has been accused, though, of unintentionally introducing some aspects of this world view to inform his account. Schueler (1997, 467–485), for example, suggests that, on Richards’ account, “an accurate view of one’s accomplishments will always reveal a relatively low opinion to be the correct one,” and that this assumption has “much the same effect as the theological assumption . . . which gives the agent no credit at all for his or her accomplishments” (473). Wood, 1999, 132–139.

Dependent and corrupt rational agency

17

Such an approach might seem, however, to return us to the “Catholic metaphysics” which Richards so emphatically rejects. It is not my intent here to consider the extent to which Richards is correct in his estimation and rejection of Christian thinkers from Augustine to St. Ignatius, but we can take a more general point from his approach: even if Richards is wrong about his reading of these thinkers, he makes a reasonable ethical point when he emphasizes that the virtue of humility should not demand self-hatred of its possessors. If efforts to justify self-hatred are made within the accounts of humility supported by Augustine, St. Ignatius, etc., then we should reject them; if not, not. The point we can take from Richards is then that humility cannot be simply an opportunity for self-hatred. We need to find a middle road between a humility grounded in excessively selfflagellating accounts of sinful human nature on the one hand, and Richards’ account of humility which is grounded, problematically, only in empirical and behavioral human flaws, without any account of human nature. This middle road can be found by turning to a Kantian conception of human agency. The Kantian agent is a dependent and corrupt agent who, because of Kant’s deep and unwavering commitment to the dignity of rational nature, needn’t fall into the excesses of self-contempt that Richards rightly rejects.6 It is upon this philosophical account of a dependent and corrupt, but dignified, rational agent that I rely to ground humility.7 It is significant that contemporary discussions of Kantian agency have focused more on the capacities of agency than its limits. What exactly the capacities of agency are,8 how its absolute worth is grounded,9 how it 6

7

8 9

This Kantian perspective on human nature might also provide a point of view which allows us to reinterpret Augustine, Ignatius, et al. in a more attractive way than Richards does. That is not my intent in this chapter, but the Kantian account of human nature appropriate to the virtue of humility which is this book’s intent is potentially compatible (though not identical) with these more traditional Christian accounts of both human nature and humility. What is crucially different about the forthcoming account is that I seek here an understanding of human nature (and, ultimately, of the virtue of humility) which is not necessarily religious, that is, not necessarily involving appeal to belief in a higher being. Though such appeal is not necessary, it is also not incompatible. Other of Richards’ unspoken commitments show that he is not really at odds with this general conception of agency. There is, despite his tendency to rely upon comparative judgments of oneself against others to gain that perspective on self which is humility, also a recurring sense not only of the shared weaknesses of human agents, but also of the equal dignity of persons. When, for example, he speaks of the humble person being forgiving of the foibles of other persons, he suggests that this is warranted since “the other person is (merely) human, like oneself, and therefore bound to err in minor, perhaps familiar, ways” (Richards, 1988, 258). Richards does, however, seem unaware of the tensions between such affirmations of human solidarity on the one hand, and his avoidance of grounding claims of human nature on the other. He also side-steps the questions of what makes us all worthy of equal treatment and what grounds an equal susceptibility to error. See, for example, Korsgaard, 1996a. In addition to Korsgaard, see also Wood, 1999. Thomas Hill expresses some skepticism about the possibility of grounding the dignity of persons in their capacity for practical rationality in Hill, 2000.

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confers value on the world,10 and the extent to which it grounds dignity and self-respect11 are all topics that have occupied recent commentators. Some do take care to point out various limits of and problems with the exercise of this agency.12 For others, however, the limits of human agency are often taken for granted, or mentioned only in passing, as something that needn’t be dwelt upon. Of course, we can expect human agents to undertake the exercise of their agency “with reasonable expectations,” “within proper limits,” “to the extent that is possible,” and so on. This failure to reflect significantly on the limits of the very same agency which grounds dignity and respect for persons is perhaps also one reason why humility has likewise not been a major topic of discussion.13 I do not intend to retrace the ground of those commentators who articulate and defend the powers and worth of the Kantian agent. I am generally sympathetic to the picture of a capable and dignified rational agent with the combined capacities of end-setting and self-legislation which make possible freedom of action and the development of identity, and especially moral identity.14 I will instead in this chapter consider the limits and failings of this same capable and dignified rational agency, articulating an account of human nature which will, in later chapters, inform our understanding of the virtue of humility. My intent in these discussions is not to prove human agents to be dependent and corrupt, for, as we shall see, that is painfully obvious in some instances, and a matter of moral intuition in others.15 Rather, I draw a picture of dependent and corrupt agency in a way that I hope will engage our moral and psychological intuitions. 10 11 12

13

14

15

See especially Korsgaard’s and Wood’s discussions of affirming the value of things through regressive appeal to agency: Korsgaard and Wood, 1999, 127. See especially: Hill, 1991; and the many pieces anthologized in Dignity, Character and Self-Respect, Dillon, 1995. Hill’s reflections on terrorism (2000) lead him to emphasize the import of recognizing limits in our moral judgment. Wood reflects briefly on the nature of Kant’s conception of humility (Wood, 1999, 133–136). Allison, 1990; and Wood, 1999, 283–290, are the most interesting exceptions to this failure to reflect on the limits of the Kantian agent. Their competing accounts of the radical evil of human agency are worthy of further consideration, a task I will take up near the end of this chapter. There are, of course, various disagreements in the literature about how this agent is best understood. The current project of articulating an understanding of human nature sufficient to ground humility can, however, tolerate a variety of interpretations of the exact nature of the capacities of the human agent. For discussions of these variations in understanding, see: Allison, 1990; Korsgaard, 1996a; Smith, 1994; and Wood, 1999. Kant himself concurs, at least some of the time, with this lack of need for proof: “We can spare ourselves the formal proof that there must be such a corrupt propensity rooted in the human being, in view of the multitude of woeful examples that the experience of human deeds parades before us” (6:32–33/56).

Dependent and corrupt rational agency

19

how n ot to co n c ei ve o f hu m a n ag e n c y A formal definition of what the perfection of rational agency would be will provide a helpful foil against which to appreciate the Kantian account of dependence and corruption to come. As end-setters and self-legislators with a capacity to form their own identity, perfect agents would not adopt or pursue ends in a merely erratic and unguided way. The greatest perfection of agency would be not only to achieve particular ends, nor even a mere aggregate of them, but also to achieve perfect coherence, unity, and harmony in the setting, pursuit, and accomplishment of ends overall. The content of one’s ends could not be inherently opposed to each other. The agent would not pursue certain ends in one direction only to counteract her own activity by pursuing others which led in opposite, contradictory, and self-defeating directions. Rather, her particular ends would be guided by some overall principle, or by several non-conflicting and mutually enhancing principles which assured their overall coherence. Furthermore, the agent pursuing these ends would herself be nonconflicted and perfectly suited to the accomplishment of these ends. To be perfect in relation to a particular end would be to have all those properties essential to bringing about that end, with no other properties in conflict with it.16 But to be perfect qua agent, that is, in relation to endsetting overall, all properties of the agent would be in harmony with her overall, complete and proper ends, which are themselves unified and nonconflicting. The perfect agent would have all qualities or dispositions necessary to bring about an entire set of integrated, non-conflicting ends, and none which undermined such pursuit. This being who maintained a perfect harmony between her characteristics and dispositions on the one hand, and her most proper, unconflicted and principle-guided ends on the other would be what Kant at times calls a “res integra” (6:57–58n/77–78n), literally, an integrated thing. The Stoic philosopher Seneca takes perfect agency as just described to be achievable,17 taking what he understands as the two necessary and sufficient ends of humanity – virtue and happiness – to be compatible and non-conflicting, and achievable in one fell swoop by the perfection of the 16 17

As Kant notes, one definition of perfection is “the harmony of a thing’s properties with an end” (6:386/150), the “thing” in question here being the human agent. Seneca, 1958. I rely upon Seneca here in part because I find he portrays one of the more extreme accounts of Stoicism. Other Stoics – Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and maybe even a more sympathetic reading of Seneca which was willing to abandon certain doctrines – might be read as more sympathetic with the Kantian agent that will emerge as this chapter progresses.

20

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peculiarly human good of “reason.”18 In so doing, he follows a long tradition in classical philosophy, going back to Aristotle who, in his conception of eudaemonia, made no strong distinction between virtue and happiness. To live the good life, to become most fully what one was meant to be, was simultaneously to become virtuous and to attain fulfillment, human flourishing, or happiness. The perfect coincidence of happiness and virtue is, however, achieved only at a price: by recognizing the perfection of reason as the only good and, thereby, becoming thoroughly indifferent to objects and persons in the world around one, and also to one’s inability to control these things external to one’s agency. Whereas Aristotle would grant that there is such a thing as “external goods” and that both virtue and happiness are contingent to some extent upon their presence or absence,19 Aristotle’s external goods aren’t goods at all for Seneca, and that precisely because they are external to the rational soul of man and its activities, which are the only true goods.20 It is only through such indifference that Seneca can assert a strong connection between happiness and virtue, one approaching an identity of the two ends. Virtue and happiness coincide because other elements of human existence normally thought to impact on happiness are eliminated from consideration. The demands of happiness do not exceed the demands of a self-sufficient virtue. Indifference thus allows the finite agent to sidestep the influence that nasty facts of human existence might have on his pursuit of happiness. All that is necessary for either is the appropriate internal state of one’s soul. Seneca thus insists that “the happy life . . . is the issue of virtue” (Seneca, 1958, 212, emphasis added), and even, having just defined the “good” as virtue, that “the efficient cause of the happy life is the good” (Seneca, 1958, 259). 18

19

20

Consider, for example, the following passage in which the perfect realization of human rational capacities is described, almost simultaneously, as “happiness” and then as “virtue”: What is peculiar to man? Reason. When this is right and perfected his measure of happiness is full. Hence, if an entity is praiseworthy and has attained the limit of its nature when it has perfected its peculiar good, and if man’s peculiar good is reason, then if a man has perfected his reason he is praiseworthy and has attained the limit of his nature. This perfect reason is called virtue, and is equivalent to the honorable. (Seneca, 210) See, for example, Nicomachean Ethics, i.10, where Aristotle admits that a fate like Priam’s can undermine the blessedness of life: “Why then should we not say that he is happy who is active in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life? Or must we add ‘and who is destined to live thus and die as befits his life’?” (Aristotle, 1962, 1101a12–15). Consider, for example, the following: “the good lies not in the thing but in the quality of selection. Our modes of action, not the things we do, are honorable . . . If I have the choice I shall take health and strength, but the good involved will not be these things per se but my choice of them” (Seneca, 1958, 242).

Dependent and corrupt rational agency

21

The Stoics do not pretend that an attitude of indifference is easily achieved, or achievable without a certain loss; Seneca even admits that he will pursue the “indifferents,” that is, the objects of indifference.21 But the Stoics’ bottom line is that the indifferents are, literally, indifferent to the virtuous and happy person. It does not matter one way or the other, for virtue or for happiness, whether the objects of indifference flourish or falter. Furthermore, having no inherent limitation that blocks the pursuit of their proper end, humans are capable of becoming indifferent and thereby achieving the single non-contradictory end of virtue and happiness perfectly. Although most of us will not attain this perfection, some will. Those that do can claim a quasi-divine status.22 Despite the fact that they are limited by the extent to which they can influence the world external to them, it is possible for humans to become a res integra. Despite his appreciation of Stoic philosophy more generally speaking, Kant believed that the Stoics misunderstood human nature, and therefore human virtue: they “imagined virtue . . . as completely attainable in this life” and thereby “exaggerated the moral capacity of man . . . beyond all the limits of his nature” when they constructed their accounts of virtue and happiness, “making [man’s moral capacity] into something which is contradicted by all our knowledge of men” (4:127–128/133). The indifference of the Stoic agent indicates further that the Stoics even believed their virtuous person to be independent of nature more generally, indeed, “like a god in the consciousness of the excellence of his person, wholly independent of nature (as regards his own contentment), exposing him to the ends of life but not subjecting him to them” (4:127/133, emphasis added). The precise view of human nature to which Kant refers to in these passages is unclear. In them, he focuses more on how Stoics go beyond human nature than on what this nature is that they are surpassing. It is, however, possible to give these references to human nature more content 21

22

See, for example, Seneca, 1958, 240: “Well then,” says the opposition, “if virtue is not impeded by good health and repose and freedom from pain, will you not seek these things?” Of course I shall, not, however, because they are goods but because they are in accordance with nature and because I shall avail myself of them judiciously. And what good will they involve? Simply this: proper choice. Consider, for example, Seneca, 1958, 246: [W]here “virtue and spirit are present in his frame” (Aeneid 5.363) a man is equal to the gods. He remembers his origin and makes it his goal. It is never wrong to attempt to regain the heights from which you have descended. Why should you not believe that there is an element of the divine in what is part of God? The totality in which we are contained is one, and it is god; and we are his partners and his members . . . [O]ur soul . . .was fashioned by Nature to desire equality with the gods.

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by looking at other of Kant’s writings. But we should do so cautiously for several reasons. First, it is clearly crucial for Kant to avoid any dependence on claims of human nature to ground the basic principles of his ethics. But this fundamental task of grounding the most basic principle of morality is not his project here. Rather, he is concerned with the question of the “highest good,” with the possible employment of moral principles, and with the achievement thereby of both virtue and happiness. It is with such questions that appeal to human nature becomes more apropos. Even with this more circumscribed project, we should remain cautious: to introduce too robust a notion of human nature is to introduce indefensible claims at the basis of our story of humility. Yet, as I have already suggested, it is impossible to appreciate the grounding and need for humility without some shared conception of those types of beings who require it. As such, I take what I hope will be a middle road between a robust and indefensible account of human nature on the one hand, and a refusal, on the other, to admit any plausible characteristics of human nature because of a lack of absolute proof. I thus introduce two claims about the human condition to fill out Kant’s references to human nature: human beings are (firstly) dependent beings who (secondly) share an unavoidable tendency toward corruption. If we accept these minimal claims about human nature, we will be that much closer to appreciating the need that humans have for humility. The Dependency Thesis and the Corruption Thesis militate against Stoic understandings of both virtue and happiness, and demand a different approach to them which, as we shall see in this and further chapters, can only go through humility. t h e d e pe n d en c y th e s i s Dependence and happiness I begin with an account of the Dependency Thesis, a point closely related to the question of how to define human happiness. Kant rejects the Stoic conviction that happiness is a direct effect of the achievement of virtue because such a view ignores any component of happiness other than moral happiness; or, as Kant puts it, ignores anything other than “contentment with one’s own personal worth” resulting from “consciousness of [one’s own] moral character” (4:127/134). Surely, whatever one’s account of happiness, it is reasonable to expect that achievement of virtue would be considered one important component of it. Failure to achieve any level

Dependent and corrupt rational agency

23

of moral competency would, in any event, be a genuine obstacle to happiness. But Kant emphatically rejects the idea that the achievement of virtue could be the singular and complete “efficient cause” (Seneca, 1958, 259) of happiness. We can best appreciate Kant’s alternate definition of happiness by understanding his claim that human beings are sensible rational beings, distinguishable from non-sensible rational agents like God whose intellect is not related to or limited by sensibility.23 This is a most basic assertion of the Transcendental Aesthetic: a sensible rational being is that sort of rational being who relies not simply on the activity of thought (concepts), but also on receptivity (intuition) in order to engage in their own proper rational activities. Sensible rational beings are thus, by definition, dependent beings. They are not utterly self-sufficient but, rather, depend upon being affected by the world around them in order to engage in rational activity. Rae Langton’s account of transcendental idealism as affirming an epistemic humility24 plays upon this same point of dependence. According to her, because our intuition is merely sensible, the only way we can know things is to be affected by them. This, combined with what she calls the Irreducibility Thesis (that is, the claim, contra Leibniz, that “the relations and relational properties of substances are not reducible to the intrinsic properties of substances”),25 leads to the need for epistemic humility: we can know a thing’s relational properties, but not its intrinsic properties; or, in more Kantian language, we cannot know things as they are in themselves.26 I am sympathetic with Langton’s account of the situation of the sensible rational being, and particularly with her movement from the fact of affection to the need for epistemic humility. It makes sense to expect, given Kant’s architectonic proclivities, that there would be a practical analogue to this theoretical story of affection and humility.27 And, indeed, there is. The relation to things in the external world more significant for 23

24 27

“The capacity (receptivity) to acquire representations through the way in which we are affected by objects is called sensibility. Objects are therefore given to us by means of sensibility, and it alone affords us intuitions; but they are thought through the understanding. But all thought, whether straightaway (directe) or through a detour (indirecte), must ultimately be related to intuitions, thus, in our case, to sensibility, since there is no other way in which objects can be given to us” (a19=b33/155). 25 Langton, 1998, 124. 26 Langton, 1998, 12–14. Langton, 1998. Something similar to this is suggested by Karl Ameriks (2000), when he says that Kant is committed to a “modest systematicity.” According to Ameriks, Kant’s philosophical system as a whole “intentionally contain[s] several clear limits, all linked by a respect for common sense” (Ameriks, 2000, 63). Although he is speaking here of the limits of philosophical inquiry and not of human capacities as such, he identifies in Kant an architectonic tendency to recognize limits, variously conceived, as philosophically relevant.

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practical purposes is that of inclination, or desire and, more generally, the experience of feelings. Things affect us: they act on us in such a way as to produce feelings and inclinations in us directed toward, or away from, those objects.28 Although we cannot have theoretical knowledge without being affected, Kant is not so much of a moral skeptic as to take the more Humean route of asserting that we can act morally only by being affected, or caused, to so act.29 Rather, because we acquire a dependence on the existence of those things that affect us, the fact of practical affection has a significant influence on how we understand that other main end of human agency, happiness. Instead of seeing happiness as a direct effect of the purely intellectual activity of the rational soul, as a simple effect of virtue, Kant instead sees happiness as the sum of the fulfillment of all our inclinations or desires.30 The pursuit of such a happiness cognizant of affection and dependence is, furthermore, a legitimate one as long as the ends which one seeks are not in conflict with moral principles.31 When limited in this way, the pursuit of happiness becomes the pursuit of “rational self-love,” that is, the legitimate pursuit and achievement of those things external to us that satisfy and fulfill our needs and desires. Some would find this definition of happiness overly simplistic: surely, happiness is related to the activity of the agent and not merely to the fulfillment of her needs from forces outside of her; and, surely, it must be possible to understand the happiness of a sensible rational being as something more than the fulfillment of just any set of desires. Kant does not disagree with any of this entirely;32 it is not, however, my intention to give a complete account of Kantian happiness which would resolve all 28

29

30 31 32

As Kant notes, “natural inclinations do not have us for their author” (6:35/57–58). This is, in itself, an overly simplistic account of such affection, for it is surely true that an agent can, through selfinitiated rational reflection, influence the course of her feelings and desires. See 6:211ff/11ff, for one spot where Kant considers such possibilities in more detail. See also Grenberg, 2001, 153–179. Though there are passages in which Kant suggests something remarkably similar to this. Consider, for example, 5:80/68: “All three concepts . . . – that of an incentive, of an interest and of a maxim – can be applied only to finite beings. For they all presuppose a limitation of the nature of a being . . .; they presuppose a need to be impelled to activity by something because an internal obstacle is opposed to it.” Passages like this raise interesting questions and challenges for any would-be Kantian account of moral motivation. See, for example, 4:405/73, where Kant speaks of “needs and inclinations, whose total satisfaction [the agent] grasps under the name of ‘happiness’.” “[When] selfishness, natural and active in us even prior to the moral law, is restricted by the moral law to agreement with the law; when this is done, selfishness is called rational self-love” (4:73/76). He speaks, for example, of the particular import of the “contentment” following upon the exercise of virtue (4:127/134), and other ways of reconciling the exercise of rationality with the experience and fulfillment of inclinations.

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25

these questions. A more limited point can, however, be taken from Kant’s association of happiness with the fulfillment of inclinations: it follows from the Dependency Thesis that any definition of happiness must take account of inclinations and desires, and not simply, as the Stoics do, by being indifferent to them and their objects. Rather, we must insistently include the human susceptibility to inclinations, and the hope of their fulfillment, as a legitimate human concern and, as a necessary part of any definition of human happiness. Doing so is simply to admit that the dependence of human agents is significant enough a part of those agents to influence any understanding of their overall flourishing. Others might say that the practical activity proper to humans needn’t involve the pursuit of happiness as thus defined. The goal of a rational being is to be successfully rational, and a capable rational agent can follow the laws of reason without concern for the state of her desires or of the world around her. Although we must admit a limited dependence on things external to us – food, air, and water, for example – this dependence should not be glorified as an end of human agency. To take such a stance is to affirm that one thing in Seneca’s thought that a Kantian might be tempted to affirm: his claim that the good is found only in one’s choice of an object, and not in the object itself.33 But, whereas Seneca insists that it is not the object of choice at all but only the activity of choosing which holds value, the Kantian is committed to conferring true, albeit relative, value to the object of choice through the act of choosing.34 Kantians cannot, as the Stoics do, refuse all value to persons and things in the external world. By making choices, even as a mere means to her happiness, the rational agent confers a value upon those things chosen. Surely, some will make poor choices about what and who to depend upon, but this does not deny that, whatever the choice, the object chosen obtains at least a relative and defeasible value in the process. To claim Stoic indifference is literally to put the dependent agent into a state of contradiction, rejecting the value of that upon which she has conferred value in the exercise of her agency. 33

34

“The good lies not in the thing but in the quality of selection. Our modes of action, not the things we do, are honorable . . . If I have the choice I shall take health and strength, but the good involved will not be these things per se but my choice of them” (Seneca, 1958, 242). I assume here the argument, first presented by Korsgaard (1986/1996a), and further supported by Wood, that rational agents have a “value conferring status” relative to the end they set (Korsgaard, quoted in Wood, 1999, 127). If Seneca were to move toward the Kantian position, that is, to assert that objects of choice do themselves hold value, he would need to abandon his stance on indifference. For how could one be indifferent to – that is, refuse value to – that upon which one has just conferred value?

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Kant thus rejects Stoic indifference as a cop out, a refusal of a specifically human life. To be true to the human condition, we need not only to admit that the external world is out of our control; we need, further, to admit that this matters, that we need to attribute value to the world of persons and objects outside of us. We are members of a physical and social world. We can’t be indifferent to the world around us and still engage in the rational or practical activity proper to us. Kant’s reliance, in his definition of happiness, upon things external to us which affect us through feeling and inclination is thus a practical analogue of our theoretical dependence on sensible intuition. An agent hoping for happiness depends on the object of her desire to be present and acting on her, that is, affecting her. Inclination is thus an expression of the practical dependence a finite agent has on the world around her. The Dependency Thesis is thus as follows: humans, to engage in the practical activity proper to them, and especially in the practical pursuit of happiness, must admit reliance upon persons and things external to them. The legitimate, and indeed unavoidable, pursuit of the fulfillment of one’s inclinations is one proper end of dependent rational agency.35 Loss of the dream of perfect happiness A further, and significant, point that Langton makes in arguing for her epistemic humility reading of Transcendental Idealism is the importance of recognizing (or at least noting that Kant recognized) that in admitting our failure to know things in themselves, we have lost something, something the loss of which we – and Kant – grieve. This point is central to her rejection of Allison, whose reading of Transcendental Idealism she says gives us no reason to grieve the loss of knowledge of things-in-themselves. (Langton, 1998, 10) There is a similar loss, and grieving, that occurs for dependent agents on the practical level. Just as sensibility on the theoretical level prevents perfect knowledge, practical sensibility – the fact of being affected by things external to us that inspire desires and needs in us – prevents perfect happiness. The dependent agent must give up the Stoic dream of perfect happiness. A challenge to the pursuit of happiness as just defined is seen first, and most obviously, in the fact that, while human happiness depends quite 35

As Kant asserts, to seek the satisfaction of one’s inclinations overall is “one end that can be presupposed as actual in all rational beings (so far as they are dependent beings)” (4:415/83).

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centrally on the presence and well-being of those innumerable things and persons upon which we confer value, humans do not have complete control over that world they value. Instead of Stoic indifference, a Kantian agent thus needs to admit to the pursuit of happiness the unavoidable obstacle of the grieving of the loss of people and things she has come to value. To do so is simply to recognize the value that some person or object has – or had – and, more deeply, to affirm the human capacity for recognizing value in them. Examples of such loss are painfully numerous in human life. The loss of loved ones through death or separation is the most obvious and omnipresent case of an agent losing something upon which she has depended. But loss could also involve the loss of some aspect of oneself (for example, the loss of a particular capacity like soccer- or flute-playing through disability) or of some inanimate object that has become inseparably identified with oneself for better or worse (for example, Toni Morrison losing her nearly completed manuscript in a fire, or a drug addict losing access to her next fix because of lack of money). More poignantly painful are those losses which can be traced back to our own limited abilities. A woman safe in a lifeboat after the Greek ferry incident of September 2000, wished that there could have been enough room in her lifeboat for everyone; she wished that she could have saved everyone who ended up drowning, but of course, she could not. To accept the dependence of human agents is to accept that those things which help constitute one’s happiness will not always be present, and further, that such agents have reason to grieve the losses which inevitably visit upon them. A further instability inherent in this Kantian form of happiness is that the agent encounters uncertainty about what it is upon which she should confer value. Indeed, Kant suggests that human reason is particularly unsuited for determining the content of one’s happiness.36 It is not so much that the calculation of what one’s desires are in any particular instance, or of how to satisfy any particular inclination, confounds reason. Indeed, this is simple 36

“[T]he concept of happiness is so indeterminate a concept that although every man wants to attain happiness, he can never say definitely and in unison with himself what it really is that he wants and wills. The reason for this is that all the elements which belong to the concept of happiness are without exception empirical – that is, they must be borrowed from experience; but that none the less there is required for the Idea of happiness an absolute whole, a maximum of well-being in my present, and in every future, state. Now it is impossible for the most intelligent, and at the same time most powerful, but nevertheless finite, being to form here a determinate concept of what he really wills . . . In short, he has no principle by which he is able to decide with complete certainty what will make him truly happy, since for this he would require omniscience” (4:418/85–86).

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enough to accomplish. The problem is, rather, that happiness would consist of the fulfillment of all one’s inclinations, of bringing all one’s various inclinations into a single whole under one guiding principle; and it is impossible to know with complete certainty what precise set of fulfilled inclinations would in fact constitute one’s happiness. The determination of the end of happiness confounds reason by its complexity, indeterminateness, and scale. The realm of human desire is so large, multifarious, that a finite human intellect could never hope to bring all its elements under one principle. The examples Kant provides of difficulties in the attempt to determine the content of one’s happiness are part and parcel of trying to construct a livable human life: Is it riches that he wants? How much anxiety, envy, and pestering might he not bring in this way on his own head! Is it knowledge and insight? This might perhaps merely give him an eye so sharp that it would make evils at present hidden from him and yet unavoidable seem all the more frightful, or would add a load of still further needs to the desires which already give him trouble enough. Is it long life? Who will guarantee that it would not be a long misery? Is it at least health? How often has infirmity of body kept a man from excesses into which perfect health would have let him fall! – and so on. (4:418/85–86)

There is no formula upon which an agent can rely to calculate what will or will not make her happy overall, all things considered. Like all empirical arenas, the field of one’s desires is too various, too subject to changing circumstances and influences, to assure any formula for their overall satisfaction. Although a goal of agency is to determine what it is that we desire all things considered, the human agent cannot consider all things. This is not to say, however, that the agent’s freedom to pursue happiness is thereby completely undermined. One does not need to have considered or achieved all things to be able to say that she avoided a mere instinctual push to action. But the limits of the human pursuit of happiness are nonetheless more firmly established. Because of the fact of practical affection and dependence, human agents need to take the pursuit of happiness as an ever-continuing and fallible one, never fully achieved, subject to continual review and refinement, and, quite possibly, to failure. As Kant puts it, the most we can hope for is that our inclinations “can be brought into a fairly tolerable system, whereupon their satisfaction is called happiness” (4:73/76). The price of rejecting Stoic indifference is the loss of the dream of perfect happiness.

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co r ru p ti o n t he s i s The ultimate story to be told is that just as Langton moves from sensible affection to epistemic humility, the fact of our practical affection and dependence leads to a practical, or moral, humility. This is a story, however, that, on the practical level, needs to take a detour on the road of radical evil to make sense. I thus turn to consideration of our second main claim about the limits of human nature, the Corruption Thesis. A brief contrast with Aristotle sets the stage: Aristotle defends a picture of the human agent who is naturally drawn toward the good; and whose failures in virtue can be understood, most often, in the language of weakness of will, or akrasia. But Kant defends a picture of the human agent subject to, and responsible for, a radical evil of her own making. Knowing the right thing to do thus doesn’t guarantee that the right thing will be done, and that not because of weakness, but out of one’s own choice for the lesser good. The human agent is not a quasi-divine Stoic res integra,37 but a being at odds with itself.38 Kant explains this radical evil as a tendency of the human agent to place her incentive toward happiness and self-love above her incentive toward morality.39 Instead of moving naturally toward rational self-love, the human agent tends, through her propensity for evil, toward “self-conceit” (4:73/76), making self-love the primary condition of action. This inebriation with the self is the legitimate fact of human dependency run amuck. The satisfaction of one’s needs and wants is taken as the primary end of action, placing 37

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Consider, for example, 6:57–58n/77–78n, emphasis added: “[The Stoics] drew the moral laws directly from reason, the sole legislator, commanding absolutely through its laws. And so was everything quite correctly apportioned . . . provided that one attributes to the human being an uncorrupted will, unhesitatingly incorporating these laws into its maxims. The mistake of those philosophers, however, lay in just this last presupposition. For no matter how far back we direct our attention to our moral state, we find that this state is no longer res integra, and that we must rather start by dislodging from its possession the evil which has already taken up position there.” Although Kant finds these problems with the Stoics, he also finds something admirable in the idea of virtue as an internal state of the soul in self-control. But the Stoics go beyond defining virtue as the self-controlled rational soul when they insist that this internal state can be achieved perfectly. Virtue, for the Stoics, is not only a purely internal attitude of strength and courage; it is, furthermore, a quasi-divine, completely pure and perfect state of character. Kant is willing to accept something of the former (although even this acceptance will be attenuated), but he emphatically rejects the latter because of a belief in the unavoidable fact of the corruption of human agency. “The difference, whether the human being is good or evil, must not lie in the difference between the incentives that he incorporates into his maxim . . . but in their subordination . . .: which of the two [predispositions] he makes the condition of the other. It follows that the human being (even the best) is evil only because he reverses the moral order of his incentives in incorporating them into his maxims” (6:36/59).

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conditions upon any possible action: when acting, the agent first and foremost asks herself whether the intended action will fulfill an inclination. Morality thus becomes a secondary interest, an interest that is pursued only, and to the extent that, it is compatible with one’s inclinations.40 It is important to appreciate the radical nature of this corruption. The evil of human agency is not radical by being evil for evil’s sake; it is, after all, evil for the sake of the self and perceived happiness. But Kant does insist that the human tendency toward corruption is pervasive, in two ways. First, instead of applying only to singular actions, this tendency is lodged in an agent’s most general and life-guiding principle of action, one which influences each of an agent’s acts.41 Secondly, it is attributable not to specific individuals, but to human nature overall: invariably, humans have a general tendency to place their pursuit of self-love above their concern to be moral. It is important for our forthcoming account of humility that we understand Kant’s claim of radical evil properly. Humility will, in part, be a reaction to and amelioration of the human’s state of radical evil; as such, the account of radical evil clarifies, again in part, what it is in the self about which the humble agent gains perspective and, to some extent, stands above. Given our acceptance of the Dependency Thesis, we need, then, an understanding of radical evil which takes adequate account of Kant’s own claims about the relationship of dependency, as just discussed, and radical evil or corruption. Such concerns are, as we shall see, at the heart of Allen Wood’s recent criticism of Henry Allison’s understanding of radical evil, and they need to be at the heart of our discussion as well.42 I shall be somewhat sympathetic with Wood’s concerns about Allison’s account, for, as we shall see, we do need a more adequate appreciation for how dependence and inclination fit into the corruption story than what Allison provides. But I will be less sympathetic with Wood’s own understanding of radical evil which is radically social in its nature. That is, for Wood, the propensity toward evil in humans is understood to develop only when humans interact with each other. Such a reading fails to appreciate 40

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It is worthy of note that Kant does not assume that, in this process, the agent engages in a conscious ordering of ends. There is choice involved in making self-love a significant end of action, but it may be only late – or never – in this project that the agent recognizes that she has made it the ultimate end of action, that is, that she has prioritized self-love over every other concern, including moral concerns. See Allison, 1990, 153. As Allison (1990) notes, radical evil is radical in that it is “the root or ground of the very possibility of all moral evil” (147) and “because it corrupts the ground of all maxims” (6:37/59, quoted in Allison, 1990, 153). Wood’s critique can be found in Wood, 1999, ch. 9, 283ff. Allison’s position, which Wood critiques, is in Allison, 1990, ch. 8, 146ff.

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fully how an individual human’s nature as a dependent being primes her to take up the socially expressed attitude that Wood describes. And without this appreciation for how evil is rooted in the dependent nature of an individual human being, we lack any ultimate basis for asserting that humility, which is the amelioration of this radical evil, is a genuine, firstperson recognition of one’s own limits as an agent. A humility based on Wood’s understanding of radical evil would be most centrally (and perhaps exclusively) a social humility, that is, an awareness of the limits of human society, and a desire to be aware of such limits in the exercise of one’s agency. We shall see, however, that Kant is emphatic about important individual aspects of both radical evil and humility, and although we will find some interest in emphasizing the social expression of evil which Wood proposes, it will be important not to reduce radical evil to its social expression. This doesn’t mean that we should entirely reject an understanding of human limit expressed socially; but we need to begin with the individual and not reduce evil (nor any corresponding account of humility) to a social phenomenon. Problems with current accounts of radical evil Let us consider, then, the competing accounts of Henry Allison and Allen Wood,43 the main question of which is how to explain the existence of this universally attributable general tendency to place concerns for self-love above morality. Allison, as part of his “deduction” of what he asserts is Kant’s synthetic a priori claim of the universal attribution of radical evil, appeals to human finitude: a finite will – that is, a will affected by sensible inclinations and thus interested in the pursuit of happiness – cannot be said to have a general propensity toward the good. That is, it is not possible for this sort of being to have “a kind of spontaneous preference for the impersonal requirements of morality over one’s own needs as a rational animal with a built-in desire for happiness” (Allison, 1990, 155). Rather, because humans are sensible, desiring beings, they “are never beyond the possibility of temptation and the need for moral constraint” (Allison, 1990, 156). That fact, combined with Kant’s “rigorism,” that is, his assertion that all wills are either good or evil, means that humans must have a propensity toward evil, as this is the only alternative (ibid.). If all wills can be only inherently good or inherently evil, and we admit that they cannot be inherently good, then they must be inherently evil. 43

Sharon Anderson-Gold (1991) is another person who has taken up these issues.

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Wood, however, finds Allison’s approach “especially unpromising” (Wood, 1999, 287n7), since, according to him, Allison tries to explain evil as “only a trivial practical corollary of our finitude” (ibid.). He sees Allison’s appeal to finitude merely as an appeal to the fact that we are desiring, sensible beings; and the mere fact we are desiring, sensible beings does nothing to assure that we are also evil, for Kant himself asserts quite clearly that it is not our inclinations that are evil, but our choice.44 As Wood claims: from the finitude of a will (or the presence to it of desires other than those promoted by pure reason) it simply does not follow that it is not holy . . . Even if we did know that the human will is not holy, this would tell us only that it does not necessarily follow the moral law, not that it displays a propensity not to follow the law. (Wood, 1999, 287n7)

Wood’s rejection of Allison’s approach is further supported by his claim that Kant sees the admittedly theoretical state of the individual finite agent, apart from society, to be a happy and tranquil one: “Considered in abstraction from the effects of society, the natural desires of human beings are moderate, and they are disposed to contentment” (Wood, 1999, 288). If our nature apart from society encourages us to be happy and tranquil, there is no reason to expect that our desires will necessarily ground a propensity to violate moral laws. For Wood, then, the propensity toward evil is explained not by mere appeal to the finite and desiring nature of an individual agent, and not through an “a priori deduction” of the universal attribution of radical evil, but instead by appeal to Kant’s more “anthropological” (even “empirical”) claim of “unsocial sociability”: a human being’s “fear of his own worthlessness in the sight of others” inspires “social comparisons and antagonisms” (Wood, 1999, 288) that lead him away from his original state of contentment, toward self-conceit (that is, the tendency to make self-love a primary condition of action), and ultimately toward “the unjust desire to gain [superiority] over others” (6:27/51, quoted in Wood, 1999, 288). Radical evil is, for Wood, a social phenomenon, inspired by the way human beings invariably act in social situations: with a fear of their own worthlessness in the face of the social pressures around them. Wood thus describes radical 44

“Now, the ground of this evil cannot . . . be placed, as is commonly done, in the sensuous nature of the human being, and in the natural inclinations originating from it. For not only do these bear no direct relation to evil . . .: we also cannot presume ourselves responsible for their existence (we cannot because, as conatural to us, natural inclinations do not have us for their author), though we can well be responsible for the propensity to evil” (6:35/57–58). Allison is, of course, aware of, and in agreement with this point (Allison, 1990, 155–156), but believes that his own account does not make one’s sensible nature “directly responsible for our moral failings” (Allison, 1990, 156).

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evil as having a social “character” and “source” (Wood, 1999, 289), for the fear at its basis is engaged only “in the sight of others.” Despite his assertion of the social source of radical evil, Wood remains committed to the idea that Kant is “an ‘individualist’ about moral responsibility for evil,” since “the social character and source of evil . . . do not give us any excuse to transfer to nature, providence, or other people the blame for what we do” (Wood, 1999, 289). His argument here is that there is no other entity, on a Kantian account of things, to which we could appeal in a claim of “group responsibility.” To attempt to place responsibility for radical evil on a group, or even a power outside of us like God or nature, “would entirely misunderstand the regulative role of natural teleology in guiding our reflective judgment if we were to think of natural ends as intended effects of voluntary efficient causes (such as God or nature)” (Wood, 1999, 289). We cannot intelligibly think of God, nature, or society as having a will, and thus cannot understand these things or beings to be a proper locus of responsibility. One’s choice, then, to act on this fear of worthlessness is, apparently, one’s own, even though its appearance within the individual agent requires the non-individualistic condition of the social scene. On my own, I am happy and content, but when placed in society, I choose, because of my fear of being seen as worthless, to engage in comparative-competitive games of superiority. I am deeply sympathetic with Wood’s claim that radical evil expresses itself on the social stage through games of superiority (and presumably also of inferiority, though he does not explicitly suggest this alternative). But Wood’s dismissal of Allison’s appeal to human dependence and finitude, combined with his failure to clarify the role of that dependence more adequately within his own account, make that account ultimately unsatisfying. Presumably, though he does not state this clearly, Wood would not deny that the social story he tells takes the finitude of the social agents for granted. He thus would not deny that the story he tells is applicable only to finite rational agents. But his failure to state this specifically and, further, to consider in what exact way such finitude acts as a condition for the development of radical evil, prevent his account from being fully satisfying. The biggest problem for Wood is this: why is it that human beings, when in the presence of others, tend toward this fear of their own worthlessness? Why not just maintain one’s happy and contented state in a more communal setting? One could, perhaps, appeal to a quasi-Rousseauian account of scarcity of resources to explain the development of fear amongst otherwise content beings in a social situation. But this is not Wood’s, or Kant’s, story.

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It is, after all, not so much a fear for survival that is inspired on Kant’s account, but a fear of worthlessness. Appeal to the mere presence and recognition of other happy and content beings is similarly unsatisfying: happy and content beings encountering happy and content beings doesn’t seem to demand the development of fear and competition among these beings in a social situation. If some of these beings were to begin over-asserting themselves, then Wood’s picture would follow. But why would even one happy and content being, with nothing more than a desire for equality, feel motivated to over-assert herself? Without a more extended reflection on the fact of human dependency, and the way it acts as a condition in this process, this question has no answer. All we can say is that beings who, on their own, would be happy and content, become unhappy, comparative, and competitive when put in a social situation: that’s just the way humans are socially. Kant’s own discussion of the development of competitive and jealous tendencies in the social situation, to which Wood appeals in making his argument (6:27/51, cited in Wood, 1999, 288), has moments of being equally unsatisfying. Consider the following passage from Kant’s discussion of the original predispositions of human nature in the Religion. Having just described the most basic predisposition, a “physical” and non-rational selflove which involves interest in one’s own preservation, propagation, and community, Kant asserts that this self-love, combined with reason, leads to another level of self-love: Only in comparison with others does one judge oneself happy or unhappy. Out of this self-love [combined with reason] originates the inclination to gain worth in the opinion of others, originally, of course, merely equal worth: not allowing anyone superiority over oneself, bound up with the constant anxiety that others might be striving for ascendancy; but from this arises gradually an unjust desire to acquire superiority for oneself over others. Upon this, namely, upon jealousy and rivalry, can be grafted the greatest vices of secret or open hostility to all whom we consider alien to us. These vices, however, do not really issue from nature as their root but are rather inclinations, in the face of the anxious endeavor of others to attain a hateful superiority over us, to procure it for ourselves over them for the sake of security, as preventive measure. (6:27/51)

In this section, Kant is giving his own account of how a natural desire for equality becomes a desire for inequality. But Kant’s own explanation for how a being who desires only equality becomes one who desires superiority, or inequality, is, like Wood’s explanation of the movement from contentment to competitiveness, somewhat lacking. How exactly is it that the human species moves from a desire for equality to a desire for inequality? Kant says that this latter desire “arises gradually” when the desire for equality

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mixes with a “constant anxiety” about whether others are trying to achieve superiority over us. But if everyone else has that desire for equal worth, and indeed that natural happiness and contentment of which Wood and Kant have spoken, the birth of this “constant anxiety” is unmotivated. It seems to come from nowhere. There is, then, a gap in this social story of the origin of radical evil: we cannot explain, in social terms alone, why it is that fear and anxiety develop in social situations. It is curious that Wood, and Kant – at least in this passage – don’t clarify how human finitude and dependency fit into this picture, for so doing would allow them to fill this gap, and make this account of the origin of radical evil more compelling. And although inclinations themselves and the fact of human dependency are not evil, surely it would make sense to expect unsocial sociability, that fear of one’s own worthlessness in the sight of others, to find its footing in the propensities of an individual finite being. But Wood provides no such account and, as such, his story of the development of radical evil is lacking. Wood’s assertion that radical evil, despite its social source, has a purely individual culpability is also compromised: why should I consider my tendency to place concerns of self above concerns of morality something for which I am ultimately responsible when, without the corrosive influence of other persons, my desires are “moderate,” “tranquil,” and “undemanding” (Wood, 1999, 288–289)? Wood claims that “the social character and source of evil . . . do not give us any excuse to transfer to nature, providence, or other people the blame for what we do” (Wood, 1999, 289). But why is it not the fault of “society” that I’ve become the way I am? It is natural to suspect, given Wood’s account of the social origin and character of evil, one which can be understood as an assertion that the social context is a necessary condition for the development of such evil, that there is at least the possibility of undermining individual responsibility for its formation; but Wood does not seem concerned with this possibility. The only argument he gives to counter such concerns is that a Kantian account of things simply does not leave room for the attribution of group responsibility; there is no “social will” or “will of nature” to which to ascribe responsibility. Presumably, then, the only will involved in the choice of radical evil is one’s own, and one remains responsible. But even if we admit that God or nature or society is not a rational will with intentions and maxims, the story of the social conditions of evil that Wood gives could still be construed as large forces outside the agent and impinging on her which undermine individual responsibility for her choice. The necessary (and sufficient?) social conditions of the origin of evil lead us to fear

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that either specific individuals (“He made me over-assert myself!”) or nonrational pressures in the world (“The world was just too much for me, it has overwhelmed me!”) could be appealed to as the true “source” of evil, the impossibility of attributing culpability to these forces notwithstanding. We don’t need to appeal to the intentions of a group rational will in order to feel that our own culpability for action has been undermined. Even Kant’s own language, cited by Wood in the course of his argument (Wood, 1999, 289), can make us suspect either or both of these possibilities: Envy, tyranny, greed, and the malignant inclinations associated with these, assail his nature, which on its own is undemanding, as soon as he is among human beings; nor is it even necessary to presuppose that these are sunk into evil and are examples to lead him astray; it suffices that they are there, that they surround him, and that they are human beings, and they will mutually corrupt one another’s moral predispositions and make one another evil. (6:93–94, emphases removed and added)

The picture here almost seems to be one in which we corrupt each other, such that I am responsible for your evil, and vice-versa. But this is an unsatisfying account of a radical evil for which I am to take individual responsibility. If we had some better account of that “fear of worthlessness in the face of others,” an account which showed our comparative–competitive tendencies to be more a result of individual choice than of coercion through social pressures, then perhaps we could find individual culpability at the base of this social account. But Wood provides no such account. We are left, then, with the worry that the social conditions of evil could undermine individual responsibility for it. Further reflection upon finitude – or in my language, upon the situation of dependent rational beings – will allow us to resolve at least the main aspects of Allison’s and Wood’s apparently competing accounts of radical evil to each other, and in so doing to move toward a more compelling account of both the origin of radical evil and individual responsibility for it. We need to appeal to a more robust understanding of the role of finitude in the individual agent to make sense of the origin of evil; and, in so doing, we will find that the social expression of evil, although perhaps the most egregious form of it, is not the only expression of radical evil. A non-trivial basis in the dependent individual for radical evil As we have seen, Allison asserts that, as sensible, desiring beings, we must admit that our inclinations “are neither completely in our control nor necessarily in agreement with the dictates of morality” (Allison, 1990, 156). We

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are thus “never beyond the possibility of temptation” (ibid.), and presumably never beyond the temptation to engage in the comparative-competitive games of unsocial sociability. It is perhaps understandable that Wood sees Allison’s appeal here to be merely an appeal to the already discredited “inclinations are naturally bad” theory. Allison himself admits that he should have dwelt more on why happiness is a necessary end for humans. He thus asserts in a response to Wood that “happiness must always insist on its ‘rights,’ which entails that there will always be ‘resistance’ to the demands of morality when they infringe on them.”45 This is, however, only marginally more satisfying than Allison’s original account. We are still left wondering whether a person’s assertion of their right of happiness might never find itself needing to resist the demands of morality. An assertion of one’s rights need not be an over-assertion of them. Allison’s deduction seems to prove only the possibility of temptation, not the certainty of a tendency to choose against the moral law. And this was Wood’s original complaint about Allison’s position (Wood, 1999, 287n7). Allison’s account is further compromised by his original appeal to “the fact that inclinations are not ‘completely in our control’” (Allison, 1990, 156) since this makes it seem as if the resulting tendency toward evil is also not in our control, and thus not our responsibility. Why, then, is the pursuit of happiness necessarily in conflict with morality, and how do we confirm our responsibility for it? Wood appeals to a fear of worthlessness in the sight of others to fill the gap here, but as we have seen, this appeal is similarly unmotivated: there is no explanation for why the human’s natural desire for equality becomes a fear-inspired desire for inequality in the presence of others. What we need is to reflect more carefully on the dependent rational being’s pursuit of happiness. The just completed discussion of the fragile condition of a dependent rational being in her pursuit of happiness, and the loss of the dream of perfect happiness, provides just the psychological and anthropological reflections necessary for making Allison’s appeal to happiness more robust, and thus for asserting a more individual and prior basis for the comparative-competitive tendencies of which Wood has spoken. As we know, then, dependent agents seek a happiness based in part upon meeting the needs inherent in their dependent natures. Dependent beings cannot deny having reason to seek out persons and things in the world who and which meet their needs and wants. The legitimate pursuit of happiness through satisfaction of inclinations, the pursuit of rational self-love, is, as 45

Allison (2001, 609), emphasis added.

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we have seen, a corollary of the Dependency Thesis. In the pursuit of this end, however, agents discover other sorts of demands being placed upon them, demands which issue from other legitimate sources of value in the world. Although some might experience these demands as constraints coming purely from without – for example, that the owner of the grocery store doesn’t like it when I steal chocolate ice cream to satisfy my cravings – it is ultimately from within, from an equally primordial sense that, in addition to acting for things I need and want, I am as an agent interested also in acting for what I should do, that I discover this further end of human agency: an interest in morality.46 When the dependent agent pursues self-love legitimately, or when her happiness, fortunately, is not in direct conflict with these moral demands, she is able to condition her pursuit of happiness by those moral demands which she recognizes to be as much a part of her as her dependency. There is, nonetheless, a natural tension between these two legitimate ends of the finite agent, that “possibility of temptation” (Allison, 1990, 156) of which Allison spoke. But this possible tension is made actual and necessary by the already mentioned instability and uncertainty attendant upon the dependent agent’s pursuit of happiness. The dependent agent seeking to love herself properly is forced to admit the loss of the dream of perfect happiness. And it is only in the face of this inevitable loss that we can understand the anxiety of individual finite agents not just in social situations, but more generally. Dependent agents in this unstable condition tend not just to “assert” their right to happiness, but to get anxious about further loss, and thus to over-assert their right to happiness. That is, they tend, even apart from the social situation of which Wood speaks, to cling to whatever they can get, and to fear the loss of what they already have. They tend, that is, toward seeing their loss and resulting fear as a good reason for choosing self-conceit, an excessive concern for satisfying their desires. It is in the face of loss that anxiety is produced and evil is born. With the loss of the dream of perfect happiness, the pursuit of self-love becomes fraught with the fear of loss and the over-assertion of one’s needs and desires. It is here that unsocial sociability, those comparative–competitive hopes for superiority and fears of inferiority, find their footing: “Perhaps I won’t achieve perfect happiness,” say some, “but I can at least get more than 46

It is not my intent to explore in detail whether and how an interest in morality develops for human agents. But it is worth mentioning at this point that, on a certain reading of the Kantian scheme of things, morality isn’t about starting from ground zero and working up to a rationally defended interest in morality; rather, we discover ourselves as moral beings and seek to understand what that means. For further reflections on this point, see Hill, 2000.

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you.” “Not only can I not attain perfect happiness,” say others, “but I fear others may not allow me to get even what I most need.” In the face of the loss of the dream of perfect happiness, the legitimate pursuit of selflove goes wrong, the dependent rational agent acquires a tendency to value herself improperly relative to other important objects of moral value, and she thus engages in judgments, choices, and behaviors which, on the social level, express comparative-competitive tendencies. She is primed, by her own internal conflict, to engage in the social games of one-upmanship of which Wood speaks. Unsocial sociability is not the source, but the ultimate expression, of radical evil.47 Wood’s appeal to the necessarily social source of radical evil thus fails to recognize that, although radical evil clearly finds its most grandiose expressions in the social world, the terms of the conflict which produces self-conceit are already situated internally. It is in the internal conflict of trying to satisfy an uncertain happiness in the face of the demands of morality that “rational self-love” becomes “self-conceit,” and the games of unsocial sociability begin. All of this is not to say that we are not naturally social beings, nor that there was some time previous to social interaction in which the lone individual discovered herself as evil. It is just to say that the individual human being has sufficient conditions for evil within herself, and needn’t appeal to her social condition in order to explain her tendency toward evil. Even if we could, by experiment, isolate an individual entirely from society, sufficient conditions for radical evil would pertain. This is, perhaps, just an affirmation of the situation of an autonomous being: just as I find the ground for morality within myself, so too can I find the ground for evil. We can, however, understand the social expression of evil as a particular form of expressing this loss, and thus fill the gap in the story of the movement from desire for equality to desire for inequality that we considered earlier. On the social stage, one’s loss comes into contact not simply with one’s moral consciousness broadly construed, but with one’s innate sense of justice, what Kant has called a desire for “equal worth” (6:27/51).48 On its own, the desire for equality would remain just that, but because finite agents come to the social scene already with their sense of loss, and not with that simply “contentedness” that Wood asserted, they are again more primed to take the presence of others as a threat. They are, that is, in a 47 48

Or, as Allison puts it, unsocial sociability is the “major empirical expression or schema” of the propensity toward radical evil (Allison, 2001, 610). I am grateful to Sharon Anderson-Gold for discussions that pointed me toward the import of this point.

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position which helps us to understand why they would take the presence of others as a reason to fear their own worthlessness and thus as a reason to overassert their own “rights.” Loss of perfect happiness is thus more basic than the human expression of fear of worthlessness in the face of others, and is indeed a condition for that fear. Once again, though, this social reading of the expression of radical evil is only one version of it, for we can understand the loss of happiness and thus the desire to overassert oneself even in non-social contexts. We do not require the presence of other persons in order to explain the birth of radical evil. The ultimate story of evil hence leaves room for a story of the overassertion of self that is not a social phenomenon. There are violations of the moral law which are not violation of others’ rights, and this makes sense within Kant’s larger description in the Metaphysics of Morals of duties to self. A failure to develop one’s talents out of laziness would be one example of a non-socially inspired tendency to place self-love over the moral law. Of course, we can never fully exit society so as to prove empirically that the sufficient conditions for such overassertion are present within the individual agent, and we have to admit that because the situation of the isolated individual is an abstraction, there is no example of self-violation that does not in fact have its social dimensions. The point, however, remains: we needn’t always appeal to these social factors to find a sufficient explanation of one’s tendency to privilege self over the moral law. Evil is not expressed only on the social level, so our account of it shouldn’t be reduced to that. Such a reading of the ground of radical evil is also more in line with Kant’s discussion in the Religion of one’s most basic life-guiding maxim. As we have seen, our most basic maxim is either one in which we place concerns of self-love above those of morality, or vice-versa, one in which we place concerns of morality over self-love (6:36/59). It is important to emphasize the terms of these general maxims. Kant is not suggesting that the possibilities for our most basic moral stance involve the question of whether we assert ourselves above others, or whether we value all persons’ claims equally. But one suspects that this is what would follow if the Wood story were the right one. Instead, Kant asserts that these most basic evil and virtuous maxims are not centrally about me versus other people, but me against the moral law itself. The heart of an immoral character is that it is one in which I place the demands of self-love above the demands of morality, without any necessary reference to the legitimate demands of others (though obviously to place oneself above others would be one way of placing oneself above the moral law).

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The fact that one can find the conditions for radical evil within the individual finite agent herself is, finally, the point to which we need to return in order to assure individual responsibility for evil. Such responsibility would make no sense if the ultimate cause of evil weren’t traceable to the choice of the individual. But on Wood’s account, it is difficult to assure that individual choice has not been undermined by social pressures. On our account, the fear that an individual agent brings to social situations is the result of a choice about how to handle the loss of happiness and the fears that follow from that. Our account thus helps us to see that such individuals at least had choices in the way they managed their loss and fear (indeed, the forthcoming account of humility will highlight another “choice” that can be made in the face of the fact of dependency and loss). Social pressures, God and other people did not “force” them to privilege themselves. Rather, they took their loss and fear as a reason for preferring inequality to equality. Why, though, would Wood be tempted to think that Kant had a more thoroughly social story of the origin of radical evil? He bases his assertion that evil has a social source most centrally on a citation from Kant’s Religion (6:93–94/105–106, cited in Wood, 1999, 289), one in which Kant certainly does claim that humans are disturbed from a “moderate and tranquil” existence by interactions with other persons. Kant’s main point in this section is, however, that the individual could never become good without a good society, that as long as we are subject to bad social interactions, we will never temper our tendency toward evil. And this is a somewhat more limited claim than Wood’s stronger one that the ultimate, even singular, source of all human evil is social. One can certainly agree with Kant that evil expresses itself most egregiously in the social realm, and even that these social expressions aggravate and encourage one’s already existing propensity toward evil, making it certain that the human race would never recover from it if submitted regularly to corrupt societies. What is more difficult to grant is the idea that humans, apart from society, would be necessarily and unshakeably “tranquil”and “undemanding,” lacking any evil at all. Surely, even Kant does not really believe that the situation of the individual dependent rational being is one of quasi-Stoic tranquillity. To the extent that he does imply this in the passage quoted by Wood, he has overstated his point for rhetorical flourish. For we have already seen the many tensions and difficulties which Kant himself identifies as being incumbent upon an individual dependent agent seeking happiness, and the individual context for radical evil is only confirmed by the Religion and Kant’s ethical works overall. The terms of the conflict that assures the ascendency of self-love over morality are already set in the individual.

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Wood is right, though, that it is not the simple fact of being desiring beings that accounts for radical evil. But this was never claimed by Allison, or Kant. Allison had asserted that it is not possible for finite beings spontaneously to prefer the demands of morality over their own pursuit of happiness (Allison, 1990, 155). My account shows this to be true, but provides further explanation for it. For, on my account, this lack of spontaneous preference for morality is explained not simply by the fact that one is a desiring being, but rather by the fact that our desire points toward our pursuit of happiness in the face of a lack of Stoic self-sufficiency, and this explains how the finite being is primed for choosing self-conceit and the resulting games of unsocial sociability. Wood is also right, then, that radical evil plays itself out most egregiously in a social context. But Allison is right in that this social drama is made inevitable by the fact of human finitude, that is, by the human susceptibility to inclination and the resulting loss of the dream of perfect happiness. A secular (at times gentler), but (always) radical evil To what extent, then, have we proven the universal attribution of this state to finite beings? It is tempting perhaps, despite Allison’s more rigorous conditions for it, to see the preceding argument as a transcendental deduction: beginning with the truth of the comparative-competitive tendencies of human beings in social contexts, we show the conditions for the possibility of such a truth, viz., the universally attributable experience of loss in a finite being. But this “truth” is not a synthetic a priori truth, and this “condition” is an anthropological or psychological one. I am thus, in the end, somewhat skeptical about whether we can call the preceding argument a straightforward proof or deduction of radical evil. Because of its appeal to anthropological and psychological elements, my own account is perhaps not the straightforward deduction Allison would prefer. I am thus in agreement with Wood that the account of radical evil is more “anthropological,” perhaps even “psychological,” and I suspect that Allison too would find this account too anthropological for an a priori deduction. Nonetheless, even Allison does admit that radical evil, in that it is a claim attributed to humans, is in at least this most basic sense, an “anthropological” claim49 and, in any event, such reflections are just what is necessary to make the appeal to finitude more convincing. 49

Allison, 2001, 608.

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We can, at this point, state the Corruption Thesis in its most general formulation: humans tend to value the self improperly relative to other objects of moral value. I find my own account of this radical evil to be not so much that a priori proof for which Allison was searching, but more a likely story, the acceptance of which is predicated upon its psychological plausibility. The purpose of this final section is thus the more modest one of showing that an explanation of immoral acts in terms of the Corruption Thesis, the claim that humans tend to value the self improperly relative to other objects of moral concern, is both psychologically compelling and encompasses a rather broad variety of cases.50 The psychological plausibility of the Corruption Thesis is hampered by its history. “Corruption” and “evil” are words with moralistic overtones, most often equated with the universal attribution to the human species of pride, arrogance, and a crass self-interest. Kant’s own language of self-conceit, and Wood’s emphasis on the language of “superiority” to the exclusion of “inferiority,” both encourage this assumption. But many, perhaps most, of us would be hesitant to attribute such a tendency to all of humanity: what of those of us who fail to value ourselves enough? What about persons who seem naturally generous, not self-centered? It just doesn’t seem like all people in the world struggle with a tendency toward arrogance. The account of misguided self-love just provided can, however, be interpreted more broadly, not just as arrogance, but as a tendency to misconstrue, in a whole variety of ways, the needs and value of the self relative to other objects of moral value. Although it will remain true that corruption is always a case of self-absorption or self-fascination of one sort or another, we will, nonetheless, be able to place a broader range of cases under the title of corruption, thus making it a much more powerful interpretive thesis. Subversion of the moral law through simple arrogance is surely one possible way to understand corruption. It is the psychological expression of radical evil that Kant himself focused on most, and is perhaps one of the more popular ways of viewing it in the history of western thought. But this is not the only way to corrupt agency. There are other, perhaps somewhat 50

One might be tempted to assert along with this that misguided self-love is the “root of all evil.” Although I find such a position compelling, and although I also have an interest in interpreting self-love as broadly as possible, it is not my claim here that misguided self-love is necessarily the singular root of all immorality, nor that absolutely every case of immoral action can be reduced to an account of self-love gone wrong. Though I am tempted by that strong claim, it is more than we need here. All that is necessary for our current purposes is that the tendency to value the self improperly is pervasive (that is, that all humans struggle with it in one way or another), not that it is always and everywhere the only necessary and sufficient explanation for any immoral act.

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gentler, but no less radical, ways of understanding this agent corruption of which Kant speaks. Julian of Norwich51 provides a helpful image for us in understanding an interpretation of radical evil different than simple arrogance. She speaks of a servant who has been sent on an important task by his master: [H]e starts off at once, running with all speed, in his love to do what his master wanted. And without warning he falls headlong into a deep ditch, and injures himself very badly. And though he groans and moans and cries and struggles he is quite unable to get up or help himself in any way. To crown all, he could get no relief of any sort: he could not even turn his head to look at the lord who loved him . . . [H]e was temporarily so weak and bemused that he gave vent to his feelings, as he suffered his pains. (Julian, 141, chapter 51)

Arrogance involves the excessive valuing of one’s agency. But in this story, the servant is presented as corrupting his agency in a different way: he finds himself so weak as to lack any agency at all. The corrupted agent with whom I am concerned, similar to Julian’s, perceives herself as weak and incapacitated, as lacking agency. But she is, in other ways, somewhat different. First, Julian’s servant is truly, but only temporarily, incapacitated: he is “injured” and cannot get out of the ditch. In contrast, the agent of whom I speak is not truly incapacitated; she has, rather, a tendency only to believe herself to be. In fact, she is not incapacitated but simply chooses not to take up her agency. She seeks to reject a power that in fact she does, or at least could, have. My agent thus perverts her own agency, not by placing excessive value on it, but through a tendency to place less value on it than is warranted. The picture here is not of a vain, self-conceited agent, but of a self-abasing, even a self-annihilating, one. The irony of this tendency to devalue one’s agency is that it is based on an excessive awe in the face of agency itself, considered “objectively.” The self-abasing agent may be very impressed with how agency is displayed by other persons. It is only once she considers agency in relation to herself that she rejects it. This is the heart of this agent’s self-absorption: she is absorbed not by the power of her agency, but by her perceived incapacity. In thus devaluing her agency, this agent loses the perspective necessary for pursuing both rational self-love and morality. First, her self-absorption leads her to a devaluing of moral principles, for her tendency toward belief in and fascination with her own worthlessness places a concern for self – here, a fascination with the failures of the self – above concern for moral principles, thus ironically making the former, and not the latter, the ultimate guide in 51

Julian of Norwich, 1966.

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her end-setting. She maintains a stated appreciation for moral principles which so overpowers her appreciation for herself as agent of them, that she undermines her own agency and, thereby, actually rejects and devalues the moral law which she believes she is valuing. The self-abasing agent has also lost any proper perspective on her pursuit of self-love. For, when this agent rejects her agency, she also rejects any claim to, or value of her desires or inclinations; she thus also rejects the legitimacy of her pursuit even of rational self-love. In fact, the self-annihilating agent at once has excessive and insufficient concern for her pursuit of self-love. On the one hand, she believes her concerns, hopes, desires, and abilities to hold no value at all. Ironically though, this belief in their valuelessness leads her not to ignore them, but, again, to lose herself in them. So, on the other hand, she is continually absorbed with herself, and especially her own failures and incapacities. She thus fails to achieve that perspective of “rational self-love” which would express a proper balancing of her ends of happiness and morality. Instead of tending toward vanity, this agent tends toward despair and self-annihilation. This corrupted agent can thus be understood within the Kantian framework of radical evil, as a sort of mirror image of the arrogant agent. Both are faced with the same two ends of morality and self-love; and in both, an inherent tendency toward excessive emphasis on the self – either through over-valuing of one’s concerns, or through fascination with one’s incapacities and failures – is the source of corruption. The result for both is, however, the same: their agency is disfigured, corrupted by a tendency which prevents the unconflicted achievement of the goals of happiness and virtue and, with that, the perfect unity of the agent. The agent is not a res integra, but a being whose own propensities place her at odds with herself and leave the project that is her self in pieces. The Alyosha case These images of arrogance and self-annihilation are, however, only the extreme endpoints of a broad continuum. Let us consider, then, one further case to affirm the breadth of application of this story of self-love gone wrong: the case of Alyosha Karamazov, from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov.52 The situation is this: Alyosha, a monk in the local monastery, is asked by Katerina, the girlfriend of his brother Dmitry, to go on an errand. Katerina is embarrassed by Dmitry’s recent actions. He has, in a 52

Dostoevsky, 1958.

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drunken rage, publically insulted another man – Snegirev – by beating him up and dragging him around the streets by his beard. Snegirev’s son is, as a result, subjected to bullying and insults from his schoolmates who, cognizant of the street-dragging scene, call him names like “backscrubber.” Katerina, hoping to make amends, but suspecting that Snegirev would not accept apologies either from her or Dmitry directly, asks Alyosha to visit Snegirev and offer him two hundred rubles, not so much in recompense, but as a sign of apology and beneficence toward him. It should be noted that Snegirev needs the money – he is poor, and is struggling desperately to support his wife and three children, one of whom has a severe physical disability (she has a hunchback). Alyosha’s first visit to Snegirev appears, at first, to be going well. Although Snegirev’s children try to discourage him from accepting Alyosha’s advances, he meets privately with Alyosha, and seems on the brink of accepting the gift. Indeed, he reflects excitedly on what having the money could allow for him and his family, the dreams it would allow them to pursue. Alyosha gets excited as well and, caught up in Snegirev’s hopes and dreams, offers him even more money, some of his own, to help his cause. This leads Snegirev to a sudden change of heart, which is obvious at first in his face (he had in his eyes “the look of a man who had suddenly decided to jump off a mountain peak” (Dostoevsky, 1958, 252)), but then is fully expressed when Snegirev takes the two hundred rubles in his hands, crumples them up, and throws them on the ground with disdain: “‘Kindly transmit to those who sent you that the backscrubber’s honor is not for sale!’ he cried, waving his finger in the air” (Dostoevsky, 1958, 253). He then runs away from Alyosha, though not without obvious mixed feelings, stopping once, turning around and blowing Alyosha a kiss, but shouting ultimately, “‘And how could I explain to my boy why I accepted your money for having been disgraced!’” (Dostoevsky, 1958, 253). Alyosha has not done an overtly bad thing here, but his efforts at generosity have missed the moral mark: he gets so caught up in a childlike fascination with the possibility of doing good for someone else that he fails to recognize the true needs of the person toward whom he is seeking to be beneficent: Snegirev needs the money, but even more, he needs to maintain his dignity when accepting it. Alyosha’s excitement about giving Snegirev more and more money is something which makes Alyosha feel good, but which entirely, if inadvertently, ignores Snegirev’s true needs. Alyosha’s generosity thus appears more self- than othercentered. He has let an unbridled fascination with self undermine his moral intent.

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The case of Alyosha is another example which reveals the interpretive power of Kant’s definition of radical evil: Alyosha’s child-like desire to be generous to Snegirev exemplifies a tendency to find one’s own projects, whatever they are (even the project of being generous to others), to be the most important thing; and, crucially in Alyosha’s case, to be more important than any awareness of the equal dignity and shared limits of all persons. Alyosha needs to learn that the reason he failed in helping Snegirev is that he was thinking too little about Snegirev’s position and needs, and that he was too absorbed in himself, even in his efforts at beneficence. Alyosha’s spontaneous generosity was, at bottom, a self-absorption. We must, perhaps, along with this universal attribution of corruption, also accept a reasonably equal culpability of all agents for the existence of the tendency itself; the acceptance of a quasi-universal attribution of corruption does not mean, however, that the culpability of agents expressing this tendency is equal. In all the examples presented here, not the tendency itself, but the actual implementation and expression of this universally attributable tendency is subject to varying levels of consciousness and choice, and thus blameworthiness. Alyosha’s self-absorption is rather unreflective, and he is able to be aware of his failing when he does reflect on it.53 Because he is acting out of a childishness that, once recognized, he deals with instead of letting it grow into a sedimented character trait, he thus seems a less culpable and less offensive example of ways in which one might value oneself improperly relative to other objects of moral value. One might, similarly, be more sympathetic and less accusatory of someone whose unbalanced expression of love of self is explained in part by a poor upbringing and lack of basic human needs. But certain expressions of evil are both more offensive and more blameworthy than any of these. One can, for example, choose a life for oneself that both affirms self-centeredness and issues in the emotional abuse of others. But even Alyosha’s unreflective narcissism could become more blameworthy if it continued unfettered and unattended to throughout his life. If, at seventy-five, Alyosha were still blithely going about “helping” people in a way that ignored their true needs, despite having had numerous experiences like the one with Snegirev, then his state would be more offensive and blameworthy. All persons have a tendency to go wrong in self-love, but the ways they go wrong are influenced in part by their circumstances, and in part by the choices they make either to affirm or reject the excesses or deficiencies of a corrupt nature. 53

See Dostoevsky, 1958, 257–258.

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Kant’s account of radical evil thus allows us to make a general claim about the human condition: human beings are desiring and needy beings who tend in a whole variety of ways to value the self improperly relative to other objects of moral value. The challenge of the human condition is to take on the task of learning to love the self well, that is, to love the self in a way that does not undermine our equally inherent end of being moral. We thus leave this chapter with an account of human nature as dependent and corrupt that has been lacking in recent accounts of humility. This picture will, from this point on, set the agenda not just for an account of humility, but, as we shall see in the following chapters, for virtue in general. So, although I recognize that the language of “corruption” may continue to have, for some, rather heavy-handed and moralistic overtones, that language will pepper our discussion from here on in. I find no way to avoid its usage, since any other term that would be less offensive to philosophical ears (such as “imperfection,” “limitation,” or “finitude”) is less offensive precisely because it is a weaker claim. I hope, though, that I have shown corruption to be a more psychologically plausible and intuitively acceptable thesis than it might initially be taken to be and, further, that it is importantly tied to what may be a more familiar form of human limitation, dependence broadly construed. From this point on, the task is one of understanding the contours of virtue for the kind of being with these tendencies.

c h a p t er 2

Constraints on any possible Kantian account of virtue

Before turning to an account of humility as the virtuous corrective to the situation of the dependent and corrupt rational agent, we must first consider the perspective from which it will make sense to speak of virtue at all in Kantian terms. Many might question whether Kant is a virtue theorist, but what we shall discover in this and the following chapter is that a Kantian ethical system does indeed recognize the moral import of questions of character and virtue, and further, that what makes a Kantian approach to virtue distinctive is that it finds its starting point in the picture of dependent and corrupt agency we have just defended. I take this latter point as the guide for this current preliminary chapter on Kantian virtue: Kantians generally accept some version of the Corruption Thesis, and we must therefore appreciate that any Kantian theory of virtue will be made distinctive by that fact. Whatever virtue is, it needs to be appropriate to this sort of dependent and corrupt, yet capable and dignified being. This chapter is devoted, then, to an overview of some necessary qualities of a distinctively Kantian virtue theory, the articulation of which locates Kantian virtue within the range of possible approaches to the topic. We shall see that these qualities at once distinguish Kantian virtue from, yet retain a relationship to, traditional, more Aristotelian-inspired approaches to virtue theory. With this general framework in mind, we turn, in the next chapter, to our positive account of Kantian virtue. a m el i o r ati o n ve r s u s e xc e lle n ce Any Kantian account of virtue must find its starting point as a reaction to the acceptance of the Corruption Thesis. But many, perhaps most, contemporary accounts of virtue have avoided the consideration of human corruption, in part because they take their cue from Aristotle, who has a somewhat different picture of human nature from Kant. These differing conceptions of human nature have their effect on the way each understands 49

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virtue. An Aristotelian might be happy to assume a natural predisposition to the good and then investigate the heights of moral excellence possible for such naturally inclined beings. But according to Kant, although we do have a predisposition to the good, that predisposition is complicated by a simultaneous tendency to prefer the self over morality; as such, [w]e cannot start out in the ethical training of our conatural moral predisposition to the good with an innocence which is natural to us but must rather begin from the presupposition of a depravity of our power of choice in adopting maxims contrary to the original ethical predisposition; and, since the propensity to this [depravity] is inextirpable, with unremitting counteraction against it. (6:51/70)

Any account of virtue which would proceed from an acceptance of the Corruption Thesis demands, then, that we take into consideration not only excellences, but also (and perhaps more basically) the remedial, ameliorative work that needs to be done to counteract this basic corruption of the human being. The Aristotelian picture of human nature and thus of virtue is, perhaps, more commonly accepted than the Kantian version. The rejection of the Kantian picture of human nature as a starting point for the pursuit of virtue is, however, unfortunate, because, properly construed, the idea of corruption can be a powerful tool for the construction of an appropriately human theory of virtue. The attribution to all humans of a tendency to value the self improperly is, whatever the overtones of the language of corruption and depravity, an apt starting point, one which will help us articulate more adequately the nature and range of human excellences. The rejection of corruption as a starting point for virtue is due, in part, to the worry, considered in the previous chapter, that corruption is too narrow a conception of human failures. We have already seen, though, that it is wrong to assume that the claim of radical evil is one which would assert arrogance of all humans, for not just prideful arrogance, but selfdeprecation and even an unthinkingly generous nature can all fit under our general heading of self-love gone wrong. Indeed, the breadth with which we can consider the possible ways in which the self is improperly valued makes clear that one should not reject the Corruption Thesis for its narrowness. There is, however, another related concern that would lead some virtue theorists to reject corruption as a starting point for virtue. The fear is that acceptance of the universal attribution of radical evil would warp any resulting catalogue of virtues, especially in that it would leave no room for virtues as genuine excellences of human character. It is thought, then, that we would have to accept that virtuous states of character are in place only for the ameliorative purpose of responding to and seeking to make up for

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the natural failings of human nature, not that they are true and unmitigated human excellences as such. On such a picture, the virtuous person would not be so much excellent as she would merely be said to have recovered from her failings, achieving perhaps only a neutral attitude with regard to morality. And virtues themselves would not be excellences as such but only band-aids, or coverings, for the vices of humanity. But such a picture seems inadequate to our intuitions about what “virtue” is and should be. Because the Corruption Thesis would lead us to this warped, merely ameliorative account of the virtues, it should be rejected. It would, however, be a mistake to assume that acceptance of the Corruption Thesis would allow only such a minimalist reading of virtue, and this because it would also be a mistake to assume that a developed state of character could only be either ameliorative or an excellence. In fact, upon closer inspection, we shall see that it is failure to accept some version of human limit that leads to a warped conception of virtue; and that we are able to construct a better, more apt, more human conception of virtue as excellence when we do assume the Corruption Thesis (or some similar admission of human limit) as a starting point and admit a certain ameliorative quality to the resulting virtues. Virtue, for Kantians, must be at least in part ameliorative, because Kantians accept some version of the picture of radical evil of which we have spoken. But this fact does not so much remove the possibility of human agents developing excellences as it places such possibility within the context of specifically finite rational agency. We should begin by appreciating first that when we do not accept some statement on human limit like the Corruption Thesis, we are led to a particularly warped image of human virtue. We can best appreciate this by looking at the excesses to which those theorists who do not take such a context of finitude as their guide are led, and the negative effect this omission has on the quality of virtue which they go on to defend. For those virtue theorists who do not inform their study of virtue with at least some account of human limit, the account of the virtues which they go on to defend can seem particularly inappropriate to a normal human life; and the portrayal of the virtuous person can end up seeming not merely (or perhaps at all) virtuous, but more a perfect, timeless vision of flawless self-satisfaction, somehow beyond being human, more like a little god, and not at all recognizable in people that we might actually meet. Contemporary accounts of humility and modesty are particularly prone to this tendency. Statman’s description of the “extraordinary” modest person, Hare’s defense of the magnanimous humble person, and Curzer’s defense of one who asserts her superiority regularly precisely because she really is as superior as she thinks she is are good examples. Despite wanting

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to emphasize how a belief in the equal value of persons is the primary value for what he calls “modesty” instead of humility, Statman says that the modest person needs to judge that he “is far above most other human beings” (Statman, 1992, 436), since modesty, for him, is “the required perspective . . . not . . . of the ordinary man, but . . . of the extraordinary” (Statman, 1992, 427). For Hare, magnanimity and humility come together as a simple case of accurate self-assessment: “[T]he great soul illustrates precisely this special case of humility, accurate assessment of one’s own relative moral superiority” (Hare, 1996b, 240). Curzer vigorously defends the magnanimous man’s tendency to believe other people inferior to him and even his tendency occasionally to act in ways that display this disdain by asserting: “But these opinions are accurate. The megalopsychos should not be blamed for holding true beliefs” (Curzer, 1991, 136). What we end up with on these accounts is a picture of the virtuous person not particularly applicable to common human lives. The claims of superiority made by these authors could be best justified if some people are in fact perfectly and unchangingly virtuous, never failing in the exercise of their perfectly attained virtues, for such a person would be truly warranted in holding superiority as a consistent and pervasive attitude. But do we really know people like that? It’s hard to imagine anyone judging themselves worthy of being Statman’s or Curzer’s extraordinary person, in part because it is hard to imagine someone who can’t conceive of herself, now or in the future, as succumbing to a weakness or being prone to failure. Such accounts of virtue thus do little to give moral guidance to those of us who suspect we could be prone to an occasional weakness or failure. Underneath these claims of superiority is the assumption, then, that the virtuous person is limitless and perfect, indeed almost god-like. Statman suggests this point explicitly when he speaks with apparent approbation of “some philosophers [who] argue that the excellent person is not ‘merely human’ but is almost divine” (Statman, 1992, 428). Understanding these accounts in such a divine light only confirms their heritage in Aristotle who, at times, suggested that his magnanimous man was quasi-divine.1 In 1

See especially, Aristotle, 1962, book x, chapter 7. This famous discussion of the contemplative, divine virtuous person is not, however, the only place to find Aristotle’s association of the virtuous person with the divine. He suggests, for example, as early as Book iii of the Nicomachean Ethics that the just deserts of the magnanimous man are akin to those we would offer to the gods: “If, then, [the magnanimous man] deserves and claims great things, and above all the greatest things, he will be concerned with one thing in particular. Desert is relative to external goods; and the greatest of these, we should say, is that which we render to the gods, and which people of position most aim at, and which is the prize appointed for the noblest deeds; and this is honour” (1962, 1123b15–1123b26/90, emphasis added).

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the end, such contemporary versions of Aristotelian magnanimity seem more appropriate to timeless and unchangeable divine beings. But this is a rather tough assumption to swallow. Understanding these thinkers in this light simply confirms that these accounts are not particularly helpful for constructing a theory of human virtue. Not every virtue theorist who rejects the Corruption Thesis would support such excesses in their catalogue of virtues. But without something in their theories to ground limits which prevent these excesses, they seem forced to admit these extremes as possible results of their approach. Without some sort of grounding in human finitude, theories of virtue are led to such extremes. But acceptance of a virtue theory premised on the Corruption Thesis allows us to avoid such counter-intuitive images of the virtuous person. Let’s look more carefully at what it would mean to appreciate the interrelationship of amelioration and excellence within a human conception of virtue. First, on the assumption of the Corruption Thesis, we need to admit that virtue is indeed in part ameliorative. Not only is there no natural or assured development of highly moral states; furthermore, the starting point for one’s moral pursuits is not even one of simple neutrality toward morality. Humans are, rather, the sorts of beings who will always carry within themselves not only a predisposition to the good, but also, through their own pursuit of self-love, the possibility of choosing to undermine their own pursuit of morality in the name of self-love. It is inevitably necessary for the would-be virtuous agent to be aware of the need to clear the static of self-love run amuck, and it is within this realm that virtue must be pursued. Virtues must be, in part, a corrective to human corruption. Yet the very same development of character which will be ameliorative in this sense will not be merely ameliorative. The remedial work in which one engages as a corrective to one’s corrupt state does not merely move a finite agent from an immoral stance to a neutral moral stance. Rather, to respond well to one’s state of dependence and corruption is to acquire excellence. To overcome one’s tendency to ignore other people’s needs, for example, does not place one merely at a neutral point; rather it makes a person a genuinely sympathetic and beneficent person. Or to come to terms with one’s life-long tendency to undervalue oneself or to ignore one’s own needs is not merely to remove a negative aspect of one’s character, achieving merely a neutral attitude toward oneself; it is, rather, to gain self-respect as an excellence. To say that these virtues are, in part, a reaction to the failings of human nature is thus not to say that being, for example, sympathetic or humble

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is not an excellence, or that the virtuous trait is a warped or mitigated one. It is only to say that it is excellence as pursued by, and in the manner of, a finite rational being. The humble person may be humble in virtue of recognizing her agent limits; but she will also be excellent in the way that that recognition informs her treatment of herself and others. Her ability to be responsive to people’s needs and failings would, for example, be exemplary. The fact that these virtues were accomplished in part as a reaction to human dependence and corruption does not make the resulting trait warped or less a virtue. To the contrary, it is in virtue of this history of its development, and the continual admission of its possible loss, that this state of character can be recognized more authentically as a human excellence. And one can indeed imagine being willing to call persons in possession of these virtues “excellent,” or to say that they “excel” in being human. There are standards to which all humans are held, and there are some humans particularly apt at internalizing these standards into their characters. The fact that even these excellent persons must admit both the perpetual possibility of rejecting those standards they espouse as their own, and an ongoing need for attentiveness to that possibility, does nothing to undermine their excellence. Indeed, such balanced attentiveness is part of that excellence, for the admirable recognition of limit is an important part of what it would mean to be an excellent human being. Virtues which result from a premise of the Corruption Thesis are thus simultaneously ameliorative and excellences. Finally, admitting the context of dependent and corrupt rational agency also assures a more familiar, applicable and intuitively acceptable catalogue of virtues. A catalogue of virtues informed by the Corruption Thesis would not move toward those virtues affirming one’s superiority, or even one’s unchanging excellence, for a recognition of one’s limits would need to be a pervasive aspect of one’s person. Refusing these aspects of any would-be catalogue of the virtues thus results in a catalogue of the virtues informed by the Corruption Thesis having a rather different character from one uninformed by the Corruption Thesis (or some similar admission of human limit). Sympathy and toleration would, for example, hold a necessarily high place in any catalogue of virtues premised on the dependent and corrupt status of its bearers, certainly a higher position than any virtue dedicated to coming to terms with one’s superiority. Humility too will, as we shall see, play a central role in any such catalogue, for it is handling one’s intractable limits (as opposed to one’s unquestioned superiorities) in an admirable way

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that will become more central to a well-lived human life. The irony, then, of accepting what is (for some) a counter-intuitive starting point of corruption is that such an approach yields a more intuitively familiar account of virtues as excellences. There will, then, be authentic excellences of character in a Kantian system of virtue, but they will be the excellences of a dependent and corrupt but practically rational, capable, and dignified being, and the bearers of these excellences will be prevented from becoming little divinities in virtue of their appearance within the context of a preceding, and continuing, need for amelioration. Accepting the Corruption Thesis will not relegate us to an unsatisfying account of merely ameliorative virtue, but will, rather, allow us to move toward a distinctive and workable definition of human virtue as incorporating excellence and amelioration, one which is not only appropriate to a corrupt, but capable, agent, but also one that is ultimately more familiar to and helpful for us non-divine human beings. In the end, by starting with the Corruption Thesis, we come to a picture of the virtuous person that is humanly conceivable. These virtuous persons are people that we recognize and know. They might even be people that a normal person could genuinely take as models in one’s own pursuit of virtue. p r i n c i pl e d v i rt u e A further Kantian constraint on virtue is that virtuous action must be autonomous action. The choice of the life-guiding maxim of the moral disposition – that maxim in which one asserts the primary value of moral principles, and makes the pursuit of self-love conditional on its agreement with these principles – is the ultimate expression of an agent’s autonomous and virtuous self. The choice of this maxim is a rejection of the excesses of a corrupt nature, and an affirmation of one’s capacity to act for reasons not grounded in one’s pursuit of self-love, but which are no less one’s own thereby. Because of this grounding in an autonomously chosen maxim, the resulting account of virtue will differ in some important ways from (at least a certain reading of ) Aristotle, and from some modern variants of virtue ethics. Most centrally, although moral action will indeed be that action done by a particular sort of person with certain identifiable traits of character, the ultimate source of one’s virtuous character will not be these thick states of character as such, but that more fundamental act of the autonomous will,

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the adoption of the maxim of the moral disposition. It will be true, then, that for an action to be moral, it must be undertaken by a certain kind of person (that is, a person with particular states of character); but these states of character are a moral mark only because they are grounded in proper principle, and it is ultimately to this autonomously chosen principle of the will that we must appeal to assess the morality of the act or the person. Some would assert that if virtue needs to be founded on a principle, it isn’t true virtue theory, since the virtue or character trait itself isn’t the ultimate point of moral evaluation. But this criticism reflects a failure to understand the relationship of principles to virtues and, with that, a failure to get to the heart of what makes virtues virtues in the first place. Principle should not be thought to be something entirely distinct from virtue, a mere appendage to the virtues, something added on to them as a supplement. It is, rather, something integral to virtue itself, and indeed, that thing which defines a virtue as a virtue. For, without appeal to principle, that is, to some guiding value of the person, we can’t understand what is virtuous – good or valuable – about the state of character under consideration. To deny this relationship of virtue to principle would be as much as to say that the value of a particular state of character is inarticulable. There may be some virtue theorists willing to go to such extremes, but it would hardly be a requirement of any virtue theory that one do so. To affirm that principle is the ultimate realm of moral evaluation thus does not undermine virtue theory; rather, it affirms the moral centrality of just that thing which makes a virtue a virtue at all. This definitional relationship of principle to virtue holds even for that paradigmatic virtue theorist, Aristotle. Korsgaard has shown that we can indeed find in Aristotle an appeal to principle underlying the virtues in the singular moral demand to act for the sake of the noble.2 Aristotle’s “full” virtues are thus girded by this principle, finding their value in it. What makes a virtue a virtue, even for Aristotle, is that it is a state of character that can be seen to be an expression of the deepest moral values of the person. Even Aristotle’s willingness to allow also for a “natural” virtue which does not know itself and is thus not consciously guided by principle is not so much an alteration of this relation of principle and virtue as it is a faith in human nature that Kant would reject: for Kant, the appeal to principle, because of our acceptance of the Corruption Thesis, needs to be explicit; but for Aristotle, who accepts a natural and more unfettered 2

In Korsgaard (1996b).

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tendency toward the good, an implicit appeal to principle can be sufficient to ground a lower level of virtue.3 This more explicit role that autonomously chosen principles play on a Kantian account of virtue is furthermore, unlike Aristotle’s approach to the virtues, traceable at least in part back to an acceptance of the Corruption Thesis. If humans did not have an inherent tendency to value the self improperly in a way that has the potential to undermine one’s actions and character, the role of autonomously held principles underlying character would be less obvious. A ship already heading the right direction needn’t check on the positioning of its rudder. But humans are naturally drawn toward improper valuing of the self. As such, the principle underlying Kantian virtue – that is, the maxim of the moral disposition – becomes even more crucial: it not only acts to define those values which inform one’s character trait; beyond that, it acts as that guiding rudder to keep one’s development of character on the straight-and-narrow, and needs to be more explicitly held in virtue of this role which it plays. Worries that a virtue informed by principle is not a true virtue are thus misguided. The approach put forward here is in fact not entirely dissimilar to various extant approaches to virtue theory unrelated to interpretation of Kant or Aristotle, as for example Kurt Baier’s “Radical Virtue Ethics,”4 where an approach similar to my own which grounds virtue in principle is found not to be a “radical” virtue ethic, but a virtue ethic nonetheless. And I take my own approach to Kantian virtue, one in which central maxims of action are instantiated in thick, Aristotelian-style character traits, to be in general sympathy with Audi’s suggestion that “[m]oral virtue seems best construed as a kind of internalization of moral values or perhaps moral principles or other standards of moral conduct” (Audi, 1995, 469), and with Allison when he notes that “virtue requires correct principles and consists essentially in a disposition (Gesinnung) or way of thinking (Denkungsart) that has thoroughly internalized these principles” (Allison, 1990, 165). O’Neill5 suggests a similar relationship between principles and at least some sorts of virtues when she claims that “[v]irtues of justice embody principles of justice in characters and lives, as just laws or institutions embody them in political, social and economic structures” (O’Neill, 1996b, 187). Similarly, Louden6 suggests that “Kant’s notion of 3

4

Audi (1995) makes a finer distinction between Kantian and Aristotelian virtue ethics. For him, the distinction between the two is a point of moral epistemology: Aristotle knows the principles of morality only by appeal to character; but for Kant, we can access the principle independently of its instantiation in a particular character (Audi, 1995, 462). 5 O’Neill, 1996b. 6 Louden, 1986. Baier, 1988.

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action aus Pflict means . . . that one strives for a way of life in which all of one’s acts are a manifestation of a character which is in harmony with moral law” (Louden, 1986, 487). A Kantian approach to virtue will show, in the end, that virtue ethics and principle-based ethics can work together: to the extent that an ethics is committed to a certain principle, it will be possible – indeed, necessary – to assess certain thicker qualities of the agent which either support or detract from, affirm or deny, those principles. k a n ti a n co n c er n f o r c h a r ac te r These distinguishing qualities of Kantian virtue – that it starts from an assumption of dependency and corruption, that it is thus in part necessarily ameliorative, and necessarily based in principle – do not, however, on my account distance it so far from the central concerns of contemporary, more Aristotelian-inspired, discussions of virtue as to make it unfamiliar or unintelligible to them. This is, in part, because, although Kant’s corruptioninformed and more principle- and act-based approach to morality will influence his understanding of virtue and alter the context for the pursuit of excellence, this will not mean the abandonment of a more Aristotelian concern for character, and especially not the abandonment of Aristotelianstyle thick – that is, affective/rational – character traits, or hexis. Character, in the more traditional Aristotelian understanding of the term, does indeed matter in a Kantian account of virtue, and this will make a Kantian account of it more familiar to traditional virtue theorists. Although commentators have begun to argue for a Kantian notion of virtue,7 I find no clear effort in the literature to interpret Kant as having a strong concern for thick, Aristotelian-style character traits. This may be, in part, because the necessary focus on action as the venue for moral evaluation lingers and mitigates the extent to which Kantians are willing to consider character, even as they take up the Kantian category of virtue. We should, then, take this question of the moral relevance of character on a Kantian account of morality head on: why would character matter for Kant? One thinks more easily of actions, or perhaps at best motives of action, as being the Kantian theater of moral assessment. But it is less obvious whether this focus on motives entails primary concern for the moral act or the moral agent (and thus on character and virtue). Twentiethcentury interpretations of Kant have generally focused on the import of action, placing Kantian approaches to morality next to utilitarianism, and 7

See, for example: Allison, 1990; Audi, 1995; Louden, 1986; O’Neill, 1996a, 1996b.

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this is why an appeal to character seems odd.8 Henry Allison has, however, rightly challenged any interpretation of the motive of duty which fails to take a perspective beyond the individual act. An action from duty must be action from an agent with a good will and, furthermore, “the goodness of a good will is itself a function of its character” (Allison, 1990, 116).9 Questions of character can thus not be put to the side when considering the Kantian motive of duty.10 Even if we were to decide that Kant is concerned primarily with action, we could not thereby ignore questions of character. Furthermore, it is precisely because Kant accepts some version of the Corruption Thesis that an appeal to character in the sense of a moral or evil disposition [Gesinnung] is necessary in the evaluation of moral motives. Kant suggests, as part of his discussion of radical evil in the Religion, that relying on qualities of action alone doesn’t get us very far at all in assessing the morality of an action. It is entirely possible that someone with an evil disposition – that is, one who generally holds the pursuit of self-love in higher esteem than moral principles – might occasionally engage in acts which conform to moral principles.11 Such acts could not, however, be done simply “because it is the moral thing to do.” Rather, since this agent generally holds the pursuit of self-love more highly than moral principles, they would be done “because it is the moral thing to do and because there are no other conflicting ends of self-love which get in the way of the act’s completion.” But an act done from this motive could not be said to be done from the motive of duty. It is a corrupted moral motive, not a pure one. To 8

9

10

11

Even more recent interpreters concerned with emotion and character are still committed to the idea that analysis of motives needs to focus on an analysis of individual actions. See especially Henson (1979, 39–54); and Herman (1981, 359–82) (reprinted in Herman, 1993). Even O’Neill (1996b), who is committed to reading Kant as a virtue theorist, finds that virtue is a founded phenomenon, parasitical on what would constitute right action. Other commentators, in addition to Allison, who have encouraged us to consider the motive of duty in the context of character, and especially the good will, include: Sorrell, 1987; Ameriks, 1989; and Harbison, 1980. Although Kant does, even as early as Groundwork I, introduce his discussion of the motive of duty within the context of the good will (4:393ff/61ff ) and appeals in passing to the “worth of character” of the friend of humanity (4:398/66), his discussion there is more an analysis of individual acts, and not of how qualities of act proceed from an abiding structure of motives, that is, from a certain kind of agent. I thus do not follow Allison when he sees this strong concern for character to be present even as early as Groundwork I, and find a certain sympathy with commentators like Wood who find the purposes of Groundwork I to be essentially different from any concerned with character. But the focus of concern in Kant’s later discussions of the motive of duty does eventually shift to include concern for the overall disposition of the acting agent. So we see, for example, in the Metaphysics of Morals, that “the duty of assessing the worth of one’s actions not by their legality alone but also by their morality” is akin to assessing “one’s disposition [Gesinnung]” (6:393/155). “In this reversal of incentives through a human being’s maxim contrary to the moral order, actions can still turn out to be as much in conformity to the law as if they had originated from true principles” (6:36–37/59).

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be pure, the moral motive would need to be unconditional; it would need to be done simply and only “because it is the moral thing to do.” If analysis merely on the level of individual action doesn’t allow us to distinguish between the good or evil meta-principle guiding it, then determination of whether the agent has acted out of the motive of duty in any particular instance must also involve appeal to one’s underlying and life-guiding maxim, that is, to what Kant calls the underlying disposition [Gesinnung], or structure of motives, of the acting agent. Once we accept human corruption, a concern for motive (which began as a concern for evaluation of individual acts) is turned into a concern for disposition (which appeals to a more stable, abiding value structure of the acting agent – her disposition to place moral principles above self-love, or vice-versa – and not just to the reasons for one specific act). Thick, Aristotelian-style character traits? This does not yet, of course, show that character in the more traditional, Aristotelian sense of it is a Kantian concern. To do that, we need to investigate further a notion of character which includes appeal not only to a life-guiding maxim, but also to how that maxim is integrated into one’s affective life, and further, why such internalization would be morally important. The stage is nonetheless set for raising these questions, and I will do so in the following chapter. As those arguments will reveal, I am ultimately committed to affirming the import for Kantians of character in the more traditional and familiar Aristotelian sense of the term, including an appeal to the settled rational and affective state of the agent. One reason that character in this sense is important takes us back, once again, to the Corruption Thesis: agents who lacked such an internalization of maxims on the level of affect, or even who lacked adequate awareness of their emotional state overall, will, in the face of their tendency to value the self improperly relative to other objects of moral value, prove ultimately incapable of acting (or at least be unlikely to act) on those maxims they claim as their own. Kantians thus need to be committed to the moral investigation of character. A recent and important account of Kantian virtue from Onora O’Neill (1996b), has, however, developed an interpretation of Kantian virtue without strong reliance upon such thick, affective-rational Aristotelian-style character traits. In anticipation of my own forthcoming argument to the contrary, I thus turn to a consideration of her approach, one which provides a helpful foil to my own account, and which, along the way, raises questions about the balance of Kantian moral concern for act and agent.

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O’Neill’s approach to understanding virtue is based on an investigation of different sorts of universal obligations that can be identified. A duty of justice “is a matter of perfect obligation matched by rights” (O’Neill, 1996b, 184). But there are also duties of virtue, and although these “[r]equired virtues . . . will also make demands that fall on all,” they are to be distinguished from duties of justice in that they “will not specify recipients and occasions for virtuous action” (ibid.). Although O’Neill goes on to consider four types of obligatory virtues that would follow from this definition, two of which make important reference to character,12 she does not consider in any detail what it would mean for virtues of character to, in her language, “embody” principles. Her main concern overall is to show, rather, that there are in fact “required” virtues, and it is in her discussion of the social virtues that she shows this to be the case, culminating in her assertion that “agents have reason to reject principles of indifference and neglect” (O’Neill, 1996b, 193), and as such must take on certain social virtues as obligatory. I am sympathetic with the idea of showing some central virtues to be obligatory and also with the idea that some Kantian virtues would be social in the way O’Neill pursues them, but I am perplexed by O’Neill’s avoidance of issues and details of character throughout her discussion of these obligatory virtues. On the one hand, it could be said that O’Neill avoids questions about character only because she is concerned to make different points about Kantian virtue. She admits, for example, that she is setting aside any further discussion of her “executive” class of virtues because such discussion would require “an ample account of agency, motivation and moral psychology” which she is not prepared to give (O’Neill, 1996b, 188), and her own pressing concerns about virtue seem to be more about articulating the so-called “social virtues.” But O’Neill also asserts that because these executive virtues are of such central and obvious importance, their status as “required virtues” is also somewhat uncontroversial and less in need of defense (O’Neill, 1996b, 185). This claim of non-controversiality is a curious one. It is perhaps the case that few would deny the value or obligatory status of states like courage and self-respect, or the need for such states as instrumental to action. But even if the articulation of O’Neill’s executive virtues would turn out to be uncontroversial in this sense, it can hardly be thought that the assertion of Kantian-inspired virtues with a robust appeal to Aristotelian-style character 12

Her “virtues of justice embody principles of justice in characters and lives” (O’Neill, 1996b, 185). And her “executive virtues,” which would include such states as “self-respect, self-control and decisiveness; courage and endurance” (O’Neill, 1996b, 187) are “instrumentally required traits of character” (O’Neill, 1996b, 188).

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traits, or the connection of Kantian principles of action with virtuous states of character, would be uncontroversial. In any event, if it is simply the case that O’Neill has not yet devoted her attention to questions of moral psychology, we might at this point simply plug in the missing account of character traits, at least for her virtues of justice and executive virtues which she admits have an important relationship to character. But when we try to do this using O’Neill’s own reflections as a guide, we not only fall short in trying to find clues about the nature of character, but further, and more problematically, we discover commitments which make it seem that O’Neill would find such an account not only less important, but also unnecessary and even counter-productive. It is both in her Towards Justice and Virtue account of virtue, which focuses on the social virtues, and in a work published in the same year, “Kant’s Virtues” (1996a), that O’Neill provides the most plausible framework for understanding what virtue would be in Kantian terms. In the latter article we discover, furthermore, that her book’s emphasis on social virtues emerges out of a concern to respond to communitarian charges against Kantian ethics as overly interior. Focusing on the question of how Kant defines virtue, as opposed to justice, by making a distinction between duties that are, respectively, either internally or externally legislated and enforced, O’Neill expresses her worry about internally legislated duties of virtue thus: This reconstruction of what virtue is may seem to be achieved at the cost of making it an individual, inward and private affair. By driving the virtues into the self, and specifically into the will, Kant may open himself to one of the criticisms often made of his ethics as a whole, namely that he rests too much upon the fragile structure of the voluntary, and specifically of introspection. (O’Neill, 1996a, 85)

The communitarian concern that Kantian virtue would lay too much emphasis on introspection and the pursuit of self-knowledge thus weighs heavily on O’Neill. The fear is that any such moral demands for selfreflection would inevitably get caught up in the morass of questions related to Kant’s concerns for the opacity of the self to the self, and especially in the question of whether or not one “has” the principle or virtue in question. Focusing too much on seeking answers to questions like these which Kant emphatically asserts cannot be found would cause an agent to become overly concerned with interior questions. Too interior a conception of virtue would thus lose its crucial connection to action through the need for excessive, and ultimately counter-productive, navel-gazing.

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To avoid such problems about whether the self ever could know about herself what she would need to on a more interior view of virtue, O’Neill thus constructs a picture of Kantian virtue with only the most minimal demands of interiority. According to her, the interiority of duties of virtue is “no more than the impossibility of enforcing such practical principles by external legislation” (O’Neill, 1996a, 97). As such, we can consider the task of understanding one’s character – that is, the question of whether or not one actually “has” the maxim on which she is considering acting – to be more a “theoretical task” than a practical one (O’Neill, 1996a, 96). The more central and genuinely ethical question for a Kantian is not of what maxim one has – that is, the character-based question of who one is – but rather the more action-based question of how a maxim guides us in what to do. Her definition of Kantian virtue thus becomes more action- than character-based, as she relies for guidance on the assertion that “maxims are defined by Kant as practical principles, whose primary relevance is for agents who seek to work out what to do” (O’Neill, 1996a, 94), instead of offering any guidance on what maxims one has or who one is. As such, the interiority of duties of virtue does not require any commitments about the nature of one’s character or any self-knowledge thereof. Rather, it requires us to admit only, more minimally, that these duties involve “a certain sort of effort which nobody else [than oneself] can supply,” an effort which comes to terms courageously with the fact that one’s desires are not necessarily in agreement with moral demands (O’Neill, 1996a, 96). There are two aspects of this account which are important to emphasize for current concerns. First, O’Neill’s minimalist account of interiority leads her to reduce the practical demand for introspection on one’s character literally to nothing. According to her, questions of self-knowledge are theoretical, not practical (O’Neill, 1996a, 96); and the practical moral demands that are placed upon us in duties of virtue can be accomplished “even if we were wholly opaque to ourselves and to others, and lacked even the limited and fallible capacities for introspection Kant credits us with” (O’Neill, 1996a, 95). The second, and related, point is that, because O’Neill wants to avoid the theoretical question of whether one has a maxim or not, she finds it sufficient to think of virtuous engagement in moral activity – this “effort” which she identifies as the central virtue of “courage” – in terms of the proper deployment of maxims of action instead of as a more robust Aristotelian-style character trait. Instead of speaking about character as such in any Aristotelian-style fashion, we can instead speak of that “certain sort of effort” with which one deploys one’s maxim of action. One might even suggest

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more strongly, although O’Neill does not state it explicitly, that because the task of understanding one’s character is more a theoretical task than a practical one, we can set aside not only concerns about self-knowledge, but also definitional concerns about the nature of moral character. For O’Neill, and “for Kant, virtue is not so much an account of what agents ought to be, as of what they ought actively to strive towards” (O’Neill, 1996a, 96). As such, truly practical (as opposed to merely theoretical) concerns about how best to define a moral character are, at best, put on the back burner. Such an account makes clear that, for O’Neill, Kantian virtue needs relentlessly to emphasize action and how to act well, and can afford to set aside both questions of knowledge of one’s character and questions about what would constitute a moral character, as more theoretical than practical concerns. It would appear, then, that to be successful in fulfilling, for example, my duty of beneficence, I don’t need to be or to know myself as a beneficent person. Rather, I need only to engage in beneficent acts out of a particular sort of courageous effort in facing the possibility of contrary desires. O’Neill’s action-based commitments in this short article are affirmed further throughout Toward Justice and Virtue. For example, although O’Neill does not want the value of sympathy, altruism, or other “social” virtues to be merely instrumental to another goal, as, for example, to self-interest or the common good (O’Neill, 1996b, 188), her account of virtue generally does imply that virtues are at best instrumental to the demands of action: we need to be, for example, sympathetic, because “spheres of action must be linked . . . by continuities of character which support continuities of activity” (O’Neill, 1996b, 185, emphasis added). Similarly, when responding to “‘agent-centred’ or ‘practice-centred’” approaches to ethics which would criticize Kantians for “focus[ing] too little on the sources and embodiments of action,” O’Neill asserts the following: [V]irtue and vice could not be discussed without presupposing that practical reasoning focuses primarily on action, and hence on descriptions of action, which may form the content of principles of action . . . [W]hether virtues are thought of as dispositions or as traits of character, they are still individuated by reference to characteristic, intelligible patterns of action and sensitivity. The fact that virtue ethics takes the sources of action as the fundamental locus of ethical concern in no way exempts it from taking intelligibly described action as the basic focus of ethical reasoning: traits of character are intelligible and distinguishable only

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if their characteristic expression in action and attitudes is intelligible. (O’Neill, 1996b, 72–73)13

O’Neill clearly takes action as the primary ethical category for a Kantian. When all of these reflections on self-knowledge, character, and action are put together, O’Neill’s avoidance of the psychological side of virtue begins to look not just like a setting aside of issues for a later date, but more a principled avoidance of those issues that would weaken attention to morality’s central concern, virtuous action. Despite O’Neill’s clear interest in resolving concerns of justice and virtue, Kant does in the end seem to be, for her, an ethicist concerned primarily with action. And this larger ethical commitment demands that she underplay the value of any strong appeal to a thicker, more Aristotelian-style sense of character. On her picture of the venue of moral relevance, it would in fact be quite important to avoid dwelling on the nature of character in a way that had the potential to detach it from its grounding in action: morality is about action, and we should be concerned about character only to the extent that it has the potential to enhance or detract from our capacity to act. But we are capable of fulfilling duties of virtue without concern for the nature of one’s character; therefore, we need not be concerned with character, for such merely theoretical reflections would remove us from the central ethical questions at hand. Reflection on character is more a theoretical than a practical concern, and should be avoided to the extent that it draws us unproductively away from our practical focus. We have reason, then, to avoid undue reflection on character, not just to be indifferent about whether we investigate it in more depth or not. In any event, we cannot simply plug in a robust picture of thick Aristotelian-style character traits for O’Neill’s virtues because her commitments to an action-based morality and to avoiding an overly-interior picture of virtue lead her to pursue a definition of virtue that is a more thin, austere, and action-based one. In the face of severe epistemic limits on what we can know about having a maxim, O’Neill turns instead to the 13

Later, in her criticism of “particularist” approaches to morality which tend to focus on the value of perception in an ethical life, she notes that “[j]udgements about the nature of a case do not yield practical judgements about what is to be done” (O’Neill, 1996b, 87). And later, she says the following: Even the most nuanced and sensitive articulation of cases does not determine what it would be right or just, good or virtuous to do about them. It is only because so many practical principles are embedded in characters and institutions, so have become received views, that it can sometimes seem that fixing on a description is all that is required. But the moral life is a matter of action, not of connoisseurship. (O’Neill, 1996b, 87–88, emphasis removed and added)

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more practical task of figuring out how to act on maxims, and such a view leaves little, if any, room for understanding virtue in terms of character. One cannot deny that a Kantian would expect any appeal to character to play a role instrumental to action, and that we need therefore to recognize a strong relationship between virtue and patterns of action as O’Neill suggests. Even Aristotle would not disagree with this. There is, furthermore, something right about the avoidance of undue reflection on character and the emphasis on the possibility of social virtues on a Kantian account of virtue. But the question is whether O’Neill has drawn the line between due and undue attention to character properly, and, more generally, whether Kantians’ undoubted emphasis on action allows us to set aside psychological questions about the virtues, and still retain an adequate account of both moral action and virtue. Is O’Neill justified in setting aside investigation of psychological dimensions of the virtues in the name of concern for action? Has she drawn the line correctly for where reflection on character is morally productive and when it ceases so to be? I am, on the one hand, sympathetic with O’Neill’s concerns. She takes the communitarian critique as seriously as she does in the face of a body of literature in ethics – spearheaded by Martha Nussbaum, but visible in a variety of thinkers – that has emphasized the value of character and moral perception to an extent that makes one wonder whether a concern for action has been lost entirely.14 O’Neill’s corrective here is, in that respect, a welcome and necessary one: we mustn’t forget that the moral life is centrally concerned with acting well. There is a danger here, though, of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. In affirming that an emphasis on character and perception does not justify ignoring central moral questions of action, we cannot thereby ignore issues of character, especially those that would impinge upon action. O’Neill does not explicitly state that she wants to avoid these issues of character, but her corpus of work to date indicates no effort to prevent her from moving to the opposite extreme of characterand perception-based theorists like Nussbaum. The maxim-based picture of virtue which we saw in “Kant’s Virtues” seems to draw that line between concern for action and concern for character in a particularly conservative way. Not only does her conception of the virtue of courage leave no room, on its own, to speak in any depth of the cultivation of affective states in relation to one’s principles; beyond that, her refusal to require any practical pursuit of self-knowledge in order to successfully act on one’s chosen maxims seems too narrow a moral space 14

See, for example, Nussbaum, 1990.

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for self-reflection upon character. Her setting aside of further reflection on the more psychological, motivational, and specifically affective aspects of character in her later work fits this same pattern. O’Neill appeals only to a thin maxim-based account of virtue, refuses a role for self-knowledge in action, puts questions about character in any thicker sense on the back burner, and focuses her attentions on the social virtues because she is ultimately concerned to emphasize virtue’s supportive role vis a` vis action. All of these positions are so many ways to assure that concern for character does not pull us away from that focus on action which she takes to be most central.15 But all of this is to draw the line between concern for action and concern for character too much on the side of the former. O’Neill wants to avoid concern for character, but in fact Kantians do need to be concerned both about the quality of a moral character and any individual agent’s selfknowledge thereof. First, even if the value of character turns out to be only instrumental to a Kantian concern for action, we need a more robust Kantian structure for character than what O’Neill provides, because we can’t understand what these instrumental states are fully until we consider the ways in which principles are made pervasive in the human being as such. Such problems arise even for O’Neill’s account which wants to avoid such questions. They arise because it becomes difficult to understand O’Neill’s own reference to courage as a way of deploying maxims without referring to qualities of character which she wants to avoid. It is, in fact, difficult to ascertain from O’Neill’s brief comments on it what courage, this way of deploying maxims, really comes down to. It is clear from her discussion that she wants to avoid talking about courage as a character trait, as questions of having a maxim are theoretical, not practical concerns, and virtue itself is more a question of “what [agents] ought actively to strive for” instead of a way of being. But once we rule out courage as a state of character, it becomes less clear what it is. In particular, without reference to some settled state of the agent, it is difficult to know what to call the identified state at all. 15

It is my general sense in reading O’Neill that she emphasizes action in this way out of a deep ethical concern for the state of the world. There are times when this deep ethical concern seems, in an indirect sort of way, to be rooted in her recognition of the potential effects of what I have called “dependence” and “corruption.” Her virtue of courage, for example, is premised on the assumption that “there is no guarantee that all the desires we happen to have will harmonize with morality” (O’Neill, 1996a, 96). And it is this awareness of human imperfection that leads her to consider in detail what needs to be true of institutions, persons and social relations to assure that such tendencies are recognized and put in check (see, for example, O’Neill, 1996b, 191). Although I do not share with O’Neill the belief that concern for action mitigates the extent to which we need to explore the nature of character, I am deeply sympathetic with the concerns that drive her account.

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One might call it more a settled policy of action than a settled way of being, making courage a particular sort of maxim held in the proper way, though even here I would question whether we can speak of any mode of action being “settled” for an agent without attention to how the values implicit in that maxim of action do or do not pervade one’s emotional life. Perhaps with such concerns in mind, O’Neill does, in her brief discussion of courage, speak of things that we might be tempted to call “settled emotional states.” She quotes Kant, for example, who speaks of the need for “a tranquil mind with a deliberate and firm resolution to put the law of virtue into practice” in the face of the admission that “there is no guarantee that all the desires we happen to have will harmonize with morality” (O’Neill, 1996a, 96). But such an appeal to something approaching a character-based virtue of self-mastery is clearly in tension with her claim, within the same paragraph, that virtue needs to be concerned with how one ought to act, and with her earlier implication that the question of who one is is a merely theoretical concern. To maintain her strong stance on the merely theoretical status of questions of self-knowledge and the nature of a moral character, and her related turn to emphasis on action over character, she cannot appeal to this central virtue of courage as a character trait. O’Neill’s own later admission, in her book, that articulation of executive virtues like courage would indeed demand discussion of matters of motivation and moral psychology that are not forthcoming in either her article or book discussion of it suggests that she would accept this point. But because she sets questions of executive virtues aside, we cannot know what direction she would take in articulating a more robust account. And her more actionand maxim-based account of courage in “Kant’s Virtues” leads one to suspect that her own, as yet not forthcoming, account of the psychological, motivational aspects of executive virtues would be along these more austere maxim- and action-based lines. As such, I would call her story of virtue, as it stands now, at best virtue as a disposition to action (as opposed to a trait of character), and more likely, as a bare framework for that disposition that still needs to be filled in. O’Neill’s own need for a clearer conception of character extends beyond this virtue of courage. Indeed, although she admits that full articulation of her executive virtues would demand more psychological and motivational reflections, even her non-executive (and, presumably, less character-based) virtues – including especially such potentially psychologically robust virtues as altruism and sympathy under her category of “social virtues” – don’t

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seem to be fully articulated without consideration of issues of character and psychology which O’Neill eschews. Those committed to defending any Kantian notion of virtue, even if only as instrumental to action, thus could not really say that we’ve provided a satisfying overview of virtue until we have considered the attribution of thick character traits in more detail. The appeal O’Neill does make to maxims would remain crucial on any articulation of these virtues, but our own account will show that maxims are more the principle of virtuous character traits – the value judgments which guide the development of them – than those virtuous traits themselves. We need to make more sense of the settled state of the agent in order to give a satisfying account of even these more action-focused virtues of which O’Neill speaks. This deeper appreciation for the nature of the internalization of principles of action into traits of character is necessary, most crucially, because, contra O’Neill, such internalization, and reflection upon one’s resulting character, will be requirements in the development of a fully moral life. As chapter 3 will argue, agents who lacked such an internalization of maxims on the level of affect, or even who lacked adequate awareness of their character and their emotional state overall, will, in the face of their tendency to value the self improperly relative to other objects of moral value, prove ultimately incapable of acting (or at least unlikely to act) on those maxims they claim as their own. As such, any account of virtue which did not emphasize this thicker account of virtues as traits of character would be lacking. The main goal of chapter 3 is, then, to provide a Kantian account of the internalization of principles in one’s character, and to show that some level of attention to and introspection of this character is necessary for virtue. There are good reasons for investigating character more deeply than O’Neill does even if we end up accepting action as the ultimate venue of moral concern. It would, of course, be nothing better than perverse to suggest that some introspection is both morally required but practically impossible. It is not until chapter 8, on the other side of my positive account of the virtue of humility, that I address this concern, showing that the limited access to the self necessary for moral purposes is in fact possible from a humble perspective. O’Neill wants to avoid any moral obligation to selfknowledge, and thus repeatedly emphasizes that Kant holds we can never know ourselves perfectly. But Kant himself does not take the difficulty of knowing oneself as a reason to avoid a duty of self-knowledge. Indeed, next to his assertions of the ultimate unknowability of the self, he also insists

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that knowing oneself is not only a duty, it is “the First Command of all Duties to Oneself” (6:441/191). O’Neill recognizes this assertion of Kant’s, but abandons any commitment to it, saying that trying to fulfill such a duty would leave us only with a “desperate strategy” of interior assessment judged against actual actions that ultimately leaves us in the position of “finding out what our maxim is by waiting to find out what we do” (O’Neill, 1996a, 94). O’Neill has, however, failed to appreciate the perspective from which it can make sense to engage in a task where perfect achievement of one’s goal is impossible. Chapter 8 will show that the tension between a duty of selfknowledge and the impossibility of perfect self-knowledge is not a perverse contradiction, leaving us in desperate straits, but rather an opportunity for humility. It will be from a humble perspective that a finite rational agent can engage in that pursuit of self-knowledge necessary for virtue without falling into despair. Overall then, we need to abandon the assumption that Kantian moral theory is concerned exclusively with action; and we need, therefore, to make more room for character in Kantian virtue ethics than O’Neill’s accounts allow. Some level of introspection on one’s character is both necessary for acting on one’s duties of virtue, and possible without falling into despair about one’s lack of perfect self-knowledge. Furthermore, virtues cannot be articulated as mere policies of action without appeal to their internalization in the affective and emotive attitudes of the agent. We need a larger, thicker conception of virtue to make sense of the important role virtue plays in moral action. Showing all this to be the case will be an ongoing concern of the following study of Kantian humility.16 It should be noted, finally, that the Kantian acceptance of a variety of Aristotelian-style virtuous character traits for which I will argue in the following chapter prevents a Kantian account of virtue from being too distant from other contemporary accounts of virtue to be recognizable. This is a fact to be welcomed, for we would do well to avoid an account of Kantian virtue that would make it unnecessarily foreign and unfamiliar to the great number of virtue theorists who focus primarily upon such virtues. Such a Kantian account of virtue would lack an important, potentially fruitful connection point between itself and this large body of literature 16

Louden is a commentator more willing to consider the import of feeling states for a Kantian notion of virtue, and, more generally, he does seem to be moving toward an account of Kantian ethics that is concerned equally with act and with agent. But he engages in only a preliminary discussion of such matters. Nonetheless, the formal structure Louden puts forward – one in which “emotions that have been trained by reason to work in harmony with reason” (Louden, 1986, 487) are welcomed into a Kantian “virtuous disposition” (tugendliche Gesinnung) – is one with which I am in general sympathy, and upon which I seek to build in the forthcoming account.

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on virtue which has made a concern for character in the thick sense its central concern. A Kantian theorist may not be justified in limiting herself to the investigation of character, but she also cannot simply set it aside. If the connection to character and the familiar concerns of virtue can be responsibly drawn on a Kantian approach to virtue, it should be so drawn. The development of an adequate Kantian account of thick character traits will, then, be a central concern of the forthcoming chapter. Kant’s concern for character can be shown to develop at this thicker, more pervasive level of the whole person, and not just on the thinner, more act-based level of concern for the development of one’s maxims. Expansion of this picture will also allow us to consider from a more informed perspective the question of whether character has a value apart from its instrumental value vis a` vis action. We will, thus, be concerned to draw this picture of where character in this thick sense can be placed in a Kantian account of virtue. u n i t y o f th e v i rt u e s There is a final aspect of Kantian virtue upon which to reflect before moving to our account of it, consideration of which returns us to the influence of the Corruption Thesis: any Kantian account of virtue that accepts the Corruption Thesis needs also to admit a basic unity underlying more specific virtuous character traits. It will be helpful to clarify what could, and must, be meant by this. There are at least two ways that one can think of individual character traits, or virtues, being unified. First, and more weakly, one could say that all virtuous character traits can be traced back to a common principle. This is a claim about what it is that makes any particular character trait a virtue. A unity-of-virtues assertion would be that it is always the same general principle that would make a virtue a virtue. A second, and stronger, unity of virtues claim is that it is impossible to have any one virtuous character trait without having all such relevant traits. This point can be taken in either a conceptual/logical or psychological sense.17 The logical claim of unity would be the assertion that certain logical relations obtain among states of character unified in the first sense, that is, among states of character grounded in a common principle. If these states come from a common principle, it might be thought that this results in certain necessary relations obtaining amongst these states themselves such that an adequate conceptual account of them cannot be given without 17

I am grateful to discussants in a seminar at St. Cloud State University for helping me to appreciate this distinction.

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appeal to some or all of the others. There might, for example, be asserted a logical unity between attitudes of respect for oneself, others, and the moral law, since it is persons’ status as enactors of the moral law that is said to ground respect for persons generally. We thus could not make conceptual sense of what it would mean to say that an agent is “respectful” of persons, including herself, without appealing to the need to respect morality generally. The psychological claim of unity would be an assertion about what is necessary actually to possess these virtues in one’s character. Whatever the conceptual relations among the relevant states, it might be that particular finite agents are incapable of truly holding the values of one of the states without also possessing those of one or more of the others. One could, for example, say that it is impossible to be a truly grateful person without being a truly beneficent person. Gratitude is a response to beneficence, and it would therefore seem that one who claimed to be grateful without understanding in a first-person sort of way what it means to be beneficent wouldn’t really know what they were saying. She might be approaching an attitude of gratitude, but without a fuller appreciation for the meaning of giving and receiving more broadly speaking, she couldn’t really be said to be grateful. In both the logical and psychological cases, the strongest unity-of-virtues claim would be not only that these sorts of relations obtain among some virtues, but that virtue is an all or nothing proposition: virtues can be neither understood nor acquired independently of each other. One can see how, on certain readings of it, such a claim would follow from the first, weaker, unity point: any states grounded in a common principle (the first sense of unity) would, in virtue of that grounding, possess certain logical connections to all other virtues such that it would be both logically and psychologically impossible to have one without having all of them. Where does the Kantian stand on these varying claims of unity? It is at least the case that Kantian virtue must accept the first, weakest, unity claim that all virtues are grounded in a common principle. The relevant principle is the maxim of the moral disposition. The way in which it forms the basis of any individual virtuous character trait will become clear in the following chapter. To anticipate that discussion, however: the maxim of the moral disposition is that principle which is internalized relative to various objects of moral concern. With varying specifying objects of moral concern – the self, persons generally, or the moral law itself – we find various virtues, but the principle which guides the development of one’s virtuous attitudes

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toward these objects of moral concern – that one make one’s pursuit of self-love conditional upon the demands of morality – is the same. It makes sense that Kantian virtues would be unified in this way given both the need to appeal to an act of the autonomous will mentioned earlier, and the context of the Corruption Thesis within which all pursuit of virtue occurs. We must grant that whatever is virtuous for Kant is in some way a counteraction against human corruption. That is, we must understand each virtuous trait as a trait which successfully clears the static of self-love relative to more specific objects of moral concern; and further, that this success in overcoming improper self-love is what makes the relevant character trait a virtue in the first place. The maxims deployed by an autonomous will can be viewed, in this light, as that which provides us with tools for such reaction to corruption. So, for example, as the forthcoming account will show, to respect others is a virtue, and it can be understood as a virtue precisely because it is an attitude toward others which allows me to see them not through the comparative-competitive lenses of self-love, but through the lenses of equal worth of all persons; that is, to see them in a way that reflects my will’s general maxim to value moral principles in a way that conditions my pursuit of self-love. Kantian virtues must thus be thought of as unified with each other in this sense, and not simply as a list of unrelated character traits, because they are those character traits which can be traced back to a common principle, maxim or act of will. Because there is a more singular way of understanding both the opponent of virtue (viz., corruption) and its antidote (viz., the autonomous will acting to clear the static of self-love), virtues themselves will share a common defining principle: the overcoming of a tendency to value the self improperly in relation to myriad possible objects of moral concern.18 The moral Gesinnung, understood both as a reaction to corruption and an autonomous act of will, is Kant’s way of introducing that singular principle of virtue. It is as so many expressions of this one underlying principle of the moral disposition that individual virtues find their ultimate meaning, justification, and unity. Any Kantian virtue theorist who accepts the premises of autonomy and corruption must thus accept the need for the unity of virtues at least to this extent. 18

Though he does not pursue the point to the level of identifying and defining individual virtues, Allison does recognize a similar role that the fact of corruption must play in understanding the development of our moral lives when he notes that “the doctrine of radical evil not only defines our moral condition but also sets the moral agenda for finite, imperfect beings such as ourselves, namely, to struggle to the best of our ability against an ineliminable reluctance to subordinate the requirements of our sensuous nature to the dictates of morality” (Allison, 1990, 162).

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Recent articulations of a Kantian approach to virtue do not, however, seem sufficiently appreciative of this most basic unity constraint. O’Neill is, once again, a helpful touchpoint. On the one hand, she seems to recognize the importance of virtue being based in a single principle. She rejects the idea that virtue could be “no more than a mosaic of traits and excellences, each of them required only for some specific context or relationship” (O’Neill, 1996b, 185). Furthermore, as we have seen, she identifies courage as a central virtue. One must, she says, always deploy our maxims courageously since “there is no guarantee that all the desires we happen to have will harmonize with morality,” so one always needs courage, presumably to face one’s fears about whether one is capable of or interested in overcoming their influence (though she does not state this explicitly), and thus to have strength of selfmastery necessary to keep oneself in line (O’Neill, 1996a, 96). Indeed, she even calls the virtue of courage a “regulative” virtue, one which is “needed for all the variously directed virtues that constitute ethica” (ibid.). This is an approach not unlike our own which highlights the centrality in any Kantian virtue theory of appreciating the challenges introduced by the Corruption Thesis, and which highlights a “core” of virtue which is a response to it. Although I believe that once such matters are considered in more detail, we will find that the attitude proper to overcoming one’s corrupt tendencies is not so much courage as humility (albeit, perhaps, a courageous humility), I am nonetheless deeply sympathetic to O’Neill’s emphasis on this virtue. But we have already seen that O’Neill provides only the barest outline of it. Furthermore, in Towards Justice and Virtue, O’Neill presents a preliminary catalogue of the virtues which makes me uncertain of their relationship to courage, since, on this expanded account, courage is only one among a variety of “executive virtues”which she does not go on to explore in any detail (O’Neill, 1996b, 186ff ). O’Neill admits that the three main types of required virtues that she suggests – virtues of justice, executive virtues, and social virtues – are simply part of a “preliminary” plan (O’Neill, 1996b, 187), and so, although any singular principle that might unite these various virtues, or that might show every other virtue’s relationship to courage, is not yet to hand, perhaps one could eventually be provided. But it is not immediately clear to me how these three sets of virtues could find their source in a common, singular principle. It could, perhaps, be that any virtue needs to be pursued “with courage.” But without further elaboration, this assertion does not get to the heart of this unity demand, viz., that the guiding principle common to all virtues be also the principle that makes the resulting virtue a virtue. Without further articulation, the role of courage as a central and defining virtue

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remains unclear. O’Neill’s proposed catalogue of the virtues thus doesn’t seem to take sufficiently into account Kant’s concern for an ultimate singular principle for individual virtues; the forthcoming account will, however, privilege this constraint. Kantian concern for logical and psychological unity of the virtues The question of whether any Kantian theory of virtue must adhere to some version of the second, stronger, unity of virtues claim, on either the logical or psychological level, is more complex. On the one hand, Kant seems to accept both the logical and psychological unity claims, that is, that one cannot conceptualize a single virtue without appeal to all others, and thus cannot acquire any virtue without having them all. To be virtuous is to claim the maxim of the moral disposition as one’s grounding principle, and Kant himself emphasizes that acceptance of it is akin to an all-at-once conversion,19 not unlike Saul being struck on the road to Damascus and thereby taking on so profound and pervasive a moral change that one can only describe him by a different name, Paul. If this is what it is to become virtuous, then it would seem that one would acquire all the virtues at once and not in a piecemeal fashion, and this precisely because they all just are conceptually part-and-parcel of one single principle. They are all based in the new principle which one takes on, and that principle’s internalization is immediate and complete. Such an understanding of the acquisition of the virtues would seem to suggest Kant’s acceptance of both the logical and psychological versions of the second unity claim. But other aspects of Kant’s writing indicate a less strong acceptance of at least the psychological unity claim. Despite his Religion claims that the new man is put on all at once, in the Metaphysics of Morals, we find that the human agent becomes a good person “only in incessant laboring and becoming” through which he “find[s] himself upon the good . . . path of constant progress from bad to better” (6:48/68, emphasis removed). Although the taking on of the maxim of the moral disposition is described as a sort of revolution, the process of internalizing that maxim is portrayed as one that must occur in time and can never be thought to be completed perfectly. 19

“[T]hat a human being should become not merely legally good but morally good (pleasing to God) that is, virtuous according to the intelligible character [of virtue] . . . – that . . . cannot be effected through gradual reform but must rather be effected through a revolution in the disposition of the human being (a transition to the maxim of holiness of disposition). And so a ‘new man’ can come about only through a kind of rebirth, as it were a new creation . . . and change of heart” (6:47/68).

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And it seems, given his acceptance of radical evil, and to avoid admitting that virtue was absolutely impossible to obtain, that Kant would have to mitigate his acceptance of the psychological unity claim. For, to expect that an agent could make those psychological changes necessary for such internalization all at once, in an instant, or that the guiding principle could be internalized so perfectly as to make the finite agent a res integra, does indeed seem an unreasonable demand to place upon a dependent, corrupt, and finite agent. In internalizing the principle of the moral disposition relative to the moral value of other persons, for example, can I expect to become a sympathetic, grateful, and beneficent person all at once? Perhaps the gratitude kicks in first, if only because such a state is more closely related to the self. But as that sets in, it may become clearer to this person that beneficence is only the logical flip side of her gratitude, and she may therefore, again over time, become more beneficent. In any event, once we accept the Corruption Thesis, we would have to admit that the perfect acquisition of even one virtue is impossible, and that it would make more sense to accept the idea of constant progress toward, but not perfect attainment of, virtue. There is, then, a tension in Kant’s own writings about how to handle the logical and psychological versions of the unity of virtues claim. Resolution of this tension is, however, possible on a Kantian scheme of things. In the end, Kantians accept a less strong version of this unity claim, accepting its logical version, but rejecting its psychological version, at least in any straightforward sense. Although it is true that, strictly speaking, certain logical relations hold among the various virtues understood conceptually, psychological limitations prevent us from maintaining this logical rigor on the psychological level of individual acquisition of the virtues. The fact of the matter for finite agents is that individual virtues – each of which represents a different internalization of that maxim of the moral disposition which one takes on all at once – must be pursued more piecemeal, throughout time. This is not to deny that to have any virtue perfectly would indeed involve having all the others perfectly. It is, rather, to admit that such perfect internalization is not possible for human agents, and that we must understand human virtue in light of this fact. We cannot assert that one can actually acquire all the virtues only all at once, because this is not possible for human agents.20 20

Kant recognizes this fact when he emphasizes that it would only be a divine being “to whom this endless progress [toward virtue] is [in fact] a unity” (6:48/68).

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Instead of holding the strong psychological unity claim and thus expecting such perfection of virtue to be attainable in one’s lifetime, the would-be virtuous person instead holds a logical ideal of the necessary relations among and unity of all virtues, summarized in an image of the perfect internalization of the maxim of the moral disposition, as a psychological guide – what Kant calls a “regulative ideal” – in the slow, piecemeal pursuit of individual virtues. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant describes regulative ideals thus: [H]uman reason contains not only ideas but also ideals, which . . . have practical power (as regulative principles) grounding the possibility of the perfection of certain actions . . . Thus just as the idea gives the rule, so the ideal in such a case serves as the original image . . . ; and we have no other standard for our action than the conduct of this divine human being, with which we can compare ourselves, judging ourselves and thereby improving ourselves, even though we can never reach the standard. (a569=b597/552)

A regulative ideal of the perfect acquisition of the virtues, though it “exists merely in thoughts” and is thus inherently unobtainable, serves nonetheless as a standard for action. It consists in an “image” that the moral agent holds before herself as a guide in her pursuit of virtue. That Kant describes this image as a “divine person” is something that will be considered at more length in the end of chapter 7. For now, we can appreciate that, whatever form this image takes, the image of perfect psychological unity of virtues plays an important guiding role for the finite moral agent. Although she understands moral progress to be a slow temporal process, one in which she acquires certain virtues imperfectly but still needs to work upon them and others, the moral agent realizes also that from a timeless, divine (or at least logical) perspective, virtue is a whole, and her endless progress is in fact pointed toward this perfect “unity” (6:48/68). The would-be virtuous agent must thus hold the strict psychological unity of virtues picture as a regulative, and inherently unattainable, ideal, but at the same time utilize this ideal in her pursuit of virtue over time. Kant thus accepts the strict logical requirement of the unity of virtues, and both accepts and rejects the stronger psychological unity claim. He accepts this latter claim in that he would need to admit that perfect attainment of any one virtue would demand attainment of all the virtues. He denies it, though, in that such perfect attainment of virtue is not taken to be a human possibility, nor ultimately a proper human standard. The perfect attainment of any one and therefore all the virtues is not so much

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something that is actually expected of human agents as it is a necessary model, ideal, or guide for them in the ongoing pursuit of virtue. We must, furthermore, take this fact into account when making sense of how to attribute the predicate “virtuous” of any particular individual. It is literally impossible for any finite agent to internalize perfectly the maxim of the moral disposition. This is clear from the ever present possibility of choosing to value the self improperly. But this is not to say that no finite agent is virtuous at all. The demand that one be virtuous is fulfilled not by perfectly internalizing the moral disposition, but rather by holding that vision of perfect internalization as a regulative ideal in one’s ongoing progress toward virtue. As such, we can speak of someone being “virtuous” without needing it to be true of them that they have perfectly internalized the moral disposition. People can be at different points along the continuum where the endpoint is perfect virtue. And it makes sense to say of a person that she is virtuous in this way or that without asserting perfect internalization of the maxim of the moral disposition, or even perfect internalization of that particular aspect of it. Our duty is to pursue perfect internalization of the moral disposition, but with the realization that such perfect internalization is impossible; and one can be determined virtuous through some combination of partial acquisition of such internalization combined with an attitude which affirms the ongoing nature of the pursuit of virtue and one’s intent to continue pursuing it. How the second unity point applies within a Kantian account of virtue can, and should, be pursued further, with particular attention to the precise relationships among the various virtues that result from application at varying levels of specificity to particular objects of moral concern. This is not, however, the task of this current study which is instead pointed at an articulation of only one of these virtues, viz., humility. We can, however, at this point assert that a Kantian account of virtue must be influenced by several unity claims: first, any character trait to be called a virtue must be so called in virtue of its relation to a single, common virtuous principle of the will; secondly, this means that a logical understanding of one virtue demands reference to all others; thirdly, although perfect acquisition of any one virtue would thus demand perfect acquisition of all others, such perfect acquisition cannot be expected of finite agents; as such, any wouldbe virtuous person must instead hold a logical and psychological ideal of the unity of all virtues in the moral disposition as a psychological guide and regulative ideal as she pursues her own development of virtue. Further

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elaboration of the import of this unity constraint on a full catalogue of the virtues must await further studies. co n clu s i o n We have then a general outline of the constraints upon any Kantian account of virtue. A Kantian approach to virtue is distinguished by the fact that it starts from an assumption of dependency and corruption, that it is thus in part necessarily ameliorative, and necessarily based in principle. But such importantly different starting points do not prevent it from being concerned with many traditional aspects of virtue theory, including questions about those states of character to be found in the virtuous person and related questions about self-knowledge of one’s state and about the necessary unity of those virtues in the virtuous person. The importantly different starting points for Kantian virtue thus do not, on my account, distance virtue so far from the central concerns of contemporary, more Aristotelian-inspired, discussions as to make it unfamiliar or unintelligible to them. I turn now to a development of this Kantian variant of virtue.

c ha pt e r 3

A Kantian account of virtue

Let us turn, then, to a Kantian account of virtue which is cognizant of the constraints of the previous chapter, focusing particularly on the articulation of thick, Aristotelian-style character traits for dependent and corrupt moral agents. f ro m v irtu e to v i rt u e s One might be tempted simply to see Kant’s appeal to the moral disposition [Gesinnung] discussed in the last chapter at the basis of one’s motives as a quasi-Aristotelian hexis, or character trait. But Allison has already, with good reason, sharply distinguished this moral Gesinnung from Aristotle’s familiar notion of hexis, showing that, unless we do so, we place Kant in some intractable situations. A moral disposition is not so much an empirically identifiable state of character as it is a singular, general, and life-guiding maxim, policy, or principle of choice, one that reflects the overall value structure of the agent, and indeed, one that is essentially inscrutable to us.1 But Allison has also rightly associated Kant’s notion of virtue with the moral disposition. According to him, virtue just is this moral disposition serving in a particular capacity, viz., as “an actual ability to control one’s inclinations insofar as they conflict with moral requirements” (Allison, 1990, 163). To be virtuous, then, is to have the capacity to control the course of one’s inclinations by the considered judgment that moral principles present a source of value which trumps that of self-love. 1

In Kant’s words, a disposition is “the first subjective ground of the adoption of maxims” (6:25/50), or “a subjective principle of maxims” (Rel 6:37/60), which “applies to the entire use of freedom universally” (6:25/50). Allison’s gloss on this is that this most general life-guiding maxim is “a kind of meta-reason or supreme value with respect to which we decide on particular courses of action (rather than functioning as a fixed habitus that casually conditions our subsequent choices) (Allison, 1990, 143).

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One could also perhaps, as Allison and others do, speak of such a quality of will as a quality of character or a character trait.2 Although such terminology may be correct in strictly Kantian terms, to equate the moral disposition, even in its more specific role of controlling inclinations, with a character trait is confusing to someone seeking a thicker sense of character; for, one is once again tempted to think that, although the moral disposition is a quality of will, its implementation in virtue is now to be understood more thickly as a quasi-Aristotelian state of character. This is not, however, the case. If it is character in the thicker Aristotelian sense with which we are concerned, it would be better to describe the moral disposition in its role of constraining inclination not so much as a character trait, but as a principle of character, that is, as that value by which one guides the construction of one’s character. None of this means, however, that concern for character in the thicker, quasi-Aristotelian sense is entirely abandoned by Kant. Indeed, it makes sense to expect that a person who truly acts from this moral disposition would have a particular sort of character in this thicker Aristotelian sense. The struggle guided by one’s Virtue, that is, this attempt to control one’s inclinations by appeal to the principle of the moral disposition, could indeed issue in virtues, that is, states of character, more thickly and traditionally conceived. Kant himself does not often speak in any concerted way of virtues in this sense, but there are aspects of his thought which, when put together, can construct just this sense of Kantian virtues. First, Kant’s notion of “interest” [Interresse] is a promising place to look for a Kantian conception of thick character traits, more promising, in particular, than any mere appeal to maxims. Whereas a maxim, as a subjective principle of action, involves no necessary appeal to feeling, interest does, thus making it more akin not so much to hexis as to the more complex Aristotelian notion of “deliberative desire.” I have argued this point at more length elsewhere;3 for current purposes, though, I provide a summary of that argument. Kant defines an “interest” as “a connection of pleasure with the capacity for desire that the understanding judges to hold as a general rule” (6:212/12). An interest is thus not merely a feeling or desire, but is a state that involves also judgments made about one’s affective state, how that affective state influences one’s desires, the way that this affective-desire state connects the agent to a particular object or end, and the endorsement of such emotional attachments as “good.” For example, I might recognize a feeling, or set of 2

See, for example, Allison, 1990, 162–163. See also Munzel, 1999.

3

See Grenberg, 2001.

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feelings, which draw me to a particular object or end, for example, the welfare of my children. I thus identify, and make conscious to myself, that I feel fear when my children are endangered, worried or empathetic when they are in need, and satisfied or proud when they are flourishing. It is in these judgments that we identify not only the general category of the feeling-type (e.g., “fear”), but also gain an appreciation for what this type of feeling-relation means for my connection to the object in question. Furthermore, this cultivated affective state must hold “as a general rule” (6:212/12) that is, as a settled pattern of affective expression and rational endorsement, or a character trait. An interest is thus strikingly similar to what Aristotle describes as a state of “deliberative desire” (1962, 1113a,7– 9/63), in which “the reasoning must be true and the desire correct; that is, reasoning must affirm what desire pursues” (1962, 1139a,24–26/148). The state of the agent pursuing choice is thus “either intelligence motivated by desire or desire operating through thought” (1962, 1139b,35/149). Louden has suggested that Kant and Aristotle are in agreement on this point, and that even certain “phenomenal emotions (the most important of which are joy, sympathy, and love)” can be “trained by reason to work in harmony with reason” (Louden, 1986, 487). My account of interest, and the forthcoming discussion of the virtuous disposition consisting of interests guided by the maxim of the moral disposition, thus provide a more explicit Kantian structure for finding this parallel between Kant and Aristotle that Louden suggests. From this point on, I will use the language of a “state of character,” a “character trait,” an “attitude,” and an “interest” equivalently. Application of this notion of interest allows us to move from the thinner notion of the maxim of the moral disposition to a thicker sense of Aristotelian-style character traits, or virtuous “interests,” which together constitute a virtuous character. Consider, for example, this passage from the Metaphysics of Morals in which Kant speaks of what he calls the “virtuous disposition”: Man has a duty to carry the cultivation of his will up to the purest virtuous disposition [Gesinnung] . . . This disposition is inner morally practical perfection. Since it is a feeling of the effect that the lawgiving will within man exercises on his capacity to act in accordance with his will, it is called moral feeling, a special sense . . . as it were . . . It is a moral perfection, by which one makes one’s object every particular end that is also a duty. (6:387/151)

This passage is confusing, because what Kant initially describes as a cultivation of the “will” (thus suggesting Allison’s more austere sense of character or virtue) ends up being equated with the cultivation of a particular “moral

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feeling” (thus suggesting that thicker, Aristotelian sense of virtue). Furthermore, “virtue” and “disposition” are here put together in the language of a “virtuous disposition” instead of the “moral disposition” of the Religion. It should not, of course, be taken for granted that Kant’s passing appeal to “feeling” is an appeal to thick character traits. But the preceding account of interest allows us to make this move more carefully, using Kant’s own ideas to do so. And this seems an improvement on the current situation: surely, Kant can’t mean that one’s virtuous disposition just is a feeling. This would not only be a poor account of what a disposition is; it would also threaten to undermine that autonomy found to be such a crucial basis of the moral disposition being internalized. But appeal to moral feeling as an affective aspect of an interest makes Kant’s appeal to it less susceptible to these problems. This confusing passage, when supplemented with the notion of interest, thus issues in a Kantian conception of virtue which recognizes the import of Aristotelian-style character traits: if the will is cultivated properly, that is, if its guiding principle of the moral disposition is fully adopted and deployed in specific constraints of inclination and toward specific moral objects, then this moral will will have its effect more pervasively on the agent holding it and, especially on the feelings of the agent. “Moral feeling” would not, then, be the activity of the will which deploys the maxim of the moral disposition, but would be the effect of so doing. And this is what would be meant by describing it as “a feeling of the effect that the lawgiving will within man exercises on his capacity to act in accordance with his will.” The resulting “purest virtuous disposition” would thus itself not be merely a state of the will, but a thicker affective-rational attitude or character trait, indeed, a cultivated moral interest, guided by the maxim of the moral disposition. Of course, an interest does not itself refer to one’s character overall, but only to relatively discrete aspects of it, for example, an interest in the welfare of one’s children, in playing the flute, or in doing philosophy. Character can, however, be easily defined at this point as the complete set of one’s actual interests, and is thus to be distinguished from the moral disposition, as the former is not a singular principle or general maxim, but a conglomeration of developed interests, or character traits, taken as a whole.4 In a virtuous person, though, the moral disposition and one’s character are importantly related. Indeed, for the virtuous person, the maxim of the 4

Kant certainly at times uses the term “character” [Charakter], as Allison does, to speak more of the character of the will than the empirically identifiable attitudes of the agent overall; but from this point onward, when I speak of character, I will be speaking of it in the thicker, more Aristotelian sense of the term, one which associates it with this virtuous disposition.

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moral disposition would act as the organizational principle of her character, providing the ultimate explanation of the development of the various interests which constitute it. As the general principle, “meta-reason,” or value structure according to which an agent determines her more specific choices and values, it would guide every choice, every practical judgment, every cultivation and constraint of feeling, every development of interest, and, ultimately, the overall development of character. A virtuous character can thus be understood as an overall state of character guided by the repeated application of the moral disposition to various objects of value, and accomplished through the slow process of interest formation. To the extent that one’s character is in fact guided by this moral disposition, it will itself become an expression or internalization of the values implicit in the moral disposition itself, but now specified toward specific objects of moral concern. Despite consisting of a cluster of interests, then, there is something singular about this resulting virtuous character. Because guided by a singular moral disposition, certain aspects of one’s character – themselves a variety of interests – can also be described, as Kant does here, as a singular virtuous disposition. We should, then, draw a conceptual distinction between the moral disposition and the virtuous disposition. The former is a quality of will which, when adopted and deployed in the constraint of one’s affective life, is internalized as the virtuous disposition, that is, in her character. Virtue is, then, a state of strength of the will guided by the moral disposition, one in which the value structure of the moral disposition is expressed in one’s character as various virtues, or character traits, which constitute the virtuous disposition. We can, furthermore, through this account make more precise sense of the unity claims discussed in the preceding chapter. Virtues are indeed unified in the sense that they follow from the single unifying principle of the maxim of the moral disposition. But Kant’s claim, in the Metaphysics of Morals, that virtue is both unitary and several can also make sense on this picture. When Kant speaks of virtue being “one and the same” (6:395/157), we can understand him to be speaking of the moral disposition acting in its role of controlling inclination, or alternatively, of the resulting virtuous disposition taken as a whole, that is, as guided by its principle of the moral disposition. When he speaks, though, of “several virtues,” we can understand him as referring to the states of character which result from applying the moral disposition to specific objects and ends of moral concern. Virtue, while relying on a single grounding principle, thus becomes multiple, indeed, as multiple as the possible ends that can be made one’s duty.

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This account of the internalization of the maxim of the moral disposition into the virtuous disposition is also an answer to O’Neill’s question, raised in conjunction with R¨udiger Bittner’s similar concerns, about what exactly it could mean not simply to employ, but also to “have” a maxim (O’Neill, 1996a, 93–94 and 94n25). The agent who internalizes the moral disposition in the way described above is not simply one who acts on this maxim; further, she has that maxim, that is, the maxim is integral to her person. To “have,” or to have “adopted” a maxim thus means to have internalized it, or better, to be in the continual, ongoing process of internalizing the values stated in the maxim into one’s character, that is, into the various interests which constitute one’s character. To “have” the maxim of the moral disposition, then, would be to have a virtuous disposition. Finally, grounding Kantian virtue in this thicker notion of an interest distinguishes my account of virtue from O’Neill’s by making more room for character. As we have seen, O’Neill sees the virtue of courage more thinly as a way of deploying maxims of action, but not as a character trait as such. Our account of an interest shows, however, a way in which both affective and rational aspects of the person are included in an account of virtue without abandoning concern for the central Kantian idea of a maxim. Kantian virtue can make sense of an appeal to the character of the acting agent. And, as the course of this chapter will show, this thicker conception of virtue is necessary for making sense even of Kant’s commitment to moral action. in t im at io n s o f a k a n ti a n v i rtu ou s ag e n t Let us, then, make further sense of the virtues that would result from internalization of the maxim of the moral disposition in its role as Virtue. One is tempted, perhaps, to understand the control of feelings and inclinations by Virtue as a harsh constraint. It is, of course, always possible, given the Corruption Thesis, that there will be some rogue feelings, inclinations, or interests to be restrained. But Kant’s appeal to the positive role of moral feeling suggests that control can be understood also, more subtly, as the cultivation of one’s emotional life and character. To constrain an inclination in this more specifically moral sense would mean, then, in the short term, to prevent an experienced inclination from being made the basis or reason for a possible maxim of action; and, in the long term, from being made a stable aspect of one’s interests and, ultimately, of one’s character; and all this because the attachment it encourages is found to be incompatible with the value structure of the moral disposition. But to cultivate one’s feelings and inclinations morally would mean to accept and encourage them as aspects

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of interests which express and support the value structure of the moral disposition. Depending, then, upon the nature of the feelings and judgments involved, various interests guided by Virtue will be more or less central to the virtuous disposition: some rejected entirely, others simply supporting the virtuous disposition, and still others actually constituting the virtuous disposition itself. Let’s look more closely at this hierarchy of interests. Most obviously, the activity of Virtue can prevent the development of those interests in obvious and regular conflict with the values of the moral disposition. To have an interest in profit at whatever cost, or in hurting persons and beings less powerful than oneself as a way of relieving anger would be examples of such illicit interests. Without the strength of Virtue, which acts to discourage making rogue inclinations the basis of such reasons and interests, human agents would be more inclined to do so, weakening, and ultimately undermining, their moral commitment. This reduction of rogue interests cannot promise 100 percent success; but it can at least reduce those states of desire which produce genuine direct conflict with the agent’s moral commitment. On the more positive side, Virtue can be the means by which one seeks to cultivate those feelings, inclinations, and interests which support the moral disposition, and which help further to counteract the tendency to choose against one’s claimed moral commitment. A sympathetic character could be one example of such a state. Allison, when suggesting just such a possibility, is careful to characterize feelings of sympathy as weapons against corruption, though not as a direct motivating force to moral action, or indeed, as a virtue per se.5 In my terms, this means that although a sympathetic character can often serve as a support to one’s moral ends, and cultivation of it is morally exemplary, sympathy in itself is not an interest that can be considered constitutive of the virtuous disposition, because it could not be said to have a non-contingent relationship to the moral disposition.6 There is, however, another set of interests that could be cultivated, those which directly and non-contingently express the value structure of the moral disposition itself. These interests, which would constitute the virtuous 5 6

See Allison, 1990, 167. The best example I have found to support the idea that states like sympathy and generosity do not have a non-contingent relationship to moral principles is in Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov when Alyosha attempts to be beneficent toward Snegirev, as was discussed in chapter 1. Alyosha feels genuinely, if unthinkingly, sympathetic toward Snegirev’s plight, and this unthinking sympathy is precisely what prevents him from succeeding in his moral task of beneficence, which demands a keener awareness of Snegirev’s need for preservation of his dignity. It may be that there is a state of morally informed sympathy that could integrate and preserve a non-contingent relationship to moral principles, but this sympathy would need to be some sort of internalization of the maxim of the moral disposition in order to have such a property.

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disposition itself, are the fullest interpretation of Kant’s original appeal to moral feeling as an effect of the rational will. Let’s look more carefully at what such “moral interests” – or more simply, virtues – would be. We need first to appreciate the objects of value with which these moral interests would be concerned, and those ends which would be determined in relation to them. For, just as more garden-variety interests appeal to precise objects and ends – the welfare of one’s children, or the pursuit of philosophy as a career – moral interests must also have their objects and ends. In Kant’s language, this means making sense of obligatory ends, or ends that are also duties.7 Once we understand these obligatory ends, we can then make more sense of the interests, or attitudes, the agent has as she takes them up. There is, from a formal perspective, only one moral object, one obligatory moral end related to it, and thus only one corresponding virtuous attitude which would constitute its internalization: the object is the moral law, one’s end is to act on its principles, and one’s corresponding attitude toward that end, which is affectively described as “moral feeling,” and which is characterized by placing the value of moral principles above the pursuit of self-love, is one of respect for the moral law.8 Respect for moral principles would thus be the most central Kantian virtue. But when the moral disposition is inspected more closely, two more specific objects of value, with their corresponding ends and attitudes, emerge. The maxim of the moral disposition states that moral principles are the primary value by which to guide action; but, more specifically, these principles are valued more highly than – and are made a condition for the satisfaction of – interests of self-love, the latter of which are recognized as tending toward excess, and are to be constrained such that they conform with moral principles. An agent affirming the moral disposition would, then, as necessary assumptions of that maxim, affirm the following set of propositions: (1) Moral reasons are the source of pre-eminent and untrumpable value. (2) Moral reasons are authoritative for me; I am a being capable of acting on moral reasons, and thereby a source of absolute worth. (3) I am a dependent being with needs who seeks happiness, and who grounds reasons for action on this basis. 7

8

I am assuming here an understanding of the complementary relationship between ends and interests as discussed in Grenberg, 2001. See 6:382ff/147ff for Kant’s most general discussion of ends which are also duties. For discussions of Kant’s notion of respect for the moral law, see especially 4:400–401/68–69, and 5:71ff/62ff.

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(4) I have a tendency illicitly to place this pursuit of happiness/self-love over my commitment to moral principles. (5) All persons share the same capacity, dependence, and corrupt tendencies which I attribute to myself.9 (6) Despite these tendencies, I recognize that moral reasons take precedence over those reasons for action grounded in my search for happiness/ self-love, and am committed to making them the primary value in my character and actions. An agent who accepts the moral disposition needs, obviously, to value moral principles, as noted in Judgment no. 1. But acting out of respect for moral principles demands also the proper valuing of persons generally (as noted in Judgment no. 5), and of the self (as noted in Judgment no. 2 and complicated in Judgments nos. 3–5). Persons generally and the self are, then, two more precise objects of value with which a moral agent seeking to internalize the moral disposition needs to be concerned. To specify one’s most basic moral commitment in these ways is just to say that there are certain, and most basic, questions of valuing that a moral agent will ask herself. Recognizing moral principles as holding ultimate value, she will ask not simply what place moral principles should have in her hierarchy of valuing, but also: (a) What does a valuing of moral principles as primary mean for my attitude toward persons generally? (b) What does a valuing of moral principles as primary mean for my attitude toward myself as a moral agent? The general commitment to placing moral principles above one’s pursuit of self-love is thus specified into the questions of how, given my commitment to moral principles, I should value the self, and persons generally. I use the language of “specification” here advisedly. It is not as if one’s real concern is to value moral principles, and that a valuing of self and persons generally is added as a subsidiary moral concern. Rather, appeal to the value of persons is simply a more specified, more precise, accounting of what it means to value morality. As such, there is not essential priority given to moral principles over persons, in some purported hierarchy of moral valuing. To value persons just is what it means to value moral principles, and vice-versa. 9

It is not, perhaps, immediately obvious why this proposition is assumed by the moral disposition. Why would I have to believe other people are like me in order for me to acquire the proper moral attitude? The answer is that acceptance of the moral disposition does not simply involve a recognition of certain facts about oneself, but also a recognition of oneself as belonging to the group of finite rational agents. For present purposes, though, I set a fuller discussion of this question aside.

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Perfection of self and the virtue of humility What, then, does the moral disposition advise about the proper valuing of self and of persons generally? It is perhaps curious, given the picture of dependent and corrupt but capable rational agents that we find implicit in the moral disposition, that Kant would identify the proper obligatory end relative to self as the perfection of self, and the obligatory end relative to other persons as the increasing of their happiness.10 How could an inherently dependent and corrupt being be obligated to perfection? Is this not a futile task, one which by definition violates the “ought implies can” principle? An obligation to increase the happiness of others is similarly perplexing: why should I increase the happiness of those beings whom I already realize have a tendency to place that pursuit above their moral ends? Should I not be obligated to decrease their happiness instead? In any event, given the similarity of all persons as suggested in Proposition no. 5, should not my valuing of self and others have a certain symmetry which this distinction in obligatory ends ignores? There is much more that can, and should, be said about these questions, but our current concern to articulate a Kantian conception of virtue – that is, to identify those interests which express the agent’s commitment to these obligatory ends – demands a more limited and tentative reflection on this deduction of obligatory ends. Let’s look, then, at one of these obligatory ends, the end of perfection of self, and consider its related interest, or virtue. The duty of self-perfection, for dependent and corrupt but capable agents, is not achievable as a direct goal, or intention. But if we follow Kant in admitting that self-perfection is not a goal to be achieved but instead a rudder by which to steer oneself, it becomes a less problematic assertion. Kant says of the duty to perfect oneself that “[i]t is a human being’s duty to strive for this perfection, but not to reach it (in this life), and his compliance with this duty can, accordingly, consist only in continual progress” (6:446/196). In describing the fulfillment of the duty of self-perfection as consisting in “continual progress,” Kant is, essentially, identifying perfection of self as a regulative ideal. As we recall from the previous chapter, in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant describes a regulative ideal as one which, though it does not and cannot exist and is thus inherently unobtainable, serves nonetheless as a standard for action. It consists in an image that the moral agent holds before herself as a guide in her pursuit of virtue. 10

See 6:385ff/150ff for Kant’s initial discussion of these two obligatory ends.

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How then does the regulative ideal of self-perfection operate for finite agents? A corrupt being, without any further impetus or guide, would inevitably tend to relax and/or misunderstand (most likely underestimate) that which is required of and possible for her in a way that makes these requirements more agreeable to the ends of self-love. This is made only the more likely when we admit that there is no incontrovertible evidence to which to appeal in assessing one’s moral progress. The dependent and corrupt agent honestly does not know how much she has or has not achieved morally.11 The temptation, then, is to be satisfied with one’s perceived moral progress, and not push oneself further, or perhaps even to deceive oneself about the extent of one’s moral duties and the extent to which one has achieved the proper disposition. And as we have seen in chapter 1, such tendencies are assured by the loss of the dream of perfect happiness. The dependent rational agent has a built-in tendency to overassert the claims of self-love. In the face, then, of the permanent possibility of undermining the stringency of moral demands through a clandestine appeal to self-love, this agent needs a clear beacon guiding her in her moral pursuits. This is the role perfection of self as a regulative ideal plays. The ideal of perfection of one’s person allows the finite agent to keep her eye on the prize, to recognize insistently the stringency of her moral obligations and the uncertainty of her moral disposition, and more reliably to identify and reject those incursions of self-love which would encourage a slow, creeping minimization of moral obligation in its own name. This perfect person does not and cannot exist as such; but without a regulative ideal of self-perfection, the project of morality would become too muddled, our goals too perverted by incursions of self-love which incline us to expect less of ourselves morally than we should. But with it, holding it before ourselves as an ideal, we are more inclined to stay on the straight and narrow, recognizing our moral obligations and the state of our dispositions, for what they are.12 What, though, would be the proper attitude with which to take up this end of self-perfection? O’Neill speaks of courage as the crucial virtue for insuring that self-mastery which dependent and corrupt beings must 11

12

Kant speaks of the opacity of one’s motives as early as in the Groundwork (see 4:407/74–75), but he importantly returns to this point in his discussion of the duty to increase one’s moral perfection (6:447/196). Whether a principle is the complete and sufficient thing to play this role of a regulative ideal in a finite being’s moral life is a point that will be considered in more depth in chapter 7. That we have already noted, in chapter 2, that a more robust, psychological unity of the virtues picture is something the finite agent must hold before herself hints at how we will need, ultimately, to turn also to a person, and not simply to a principle, as a regulative ideal.

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maintain,13 and there may be room for a certain sort of courage – that is, a facing of one’s fears – in responding to the challenges of self-mastery. But once the moral task of valuing oneself properly is understood to require taking on the duty of self-perfection as an unachievable but guiding ideal, a more central attitude to take in the pursuit of this obligation seems obvious: humility. One could not, after all, take up the end of self-perfection in the belief, or even the hope, that it could be fully achieved. To do so would be to take up that fanatical moral point-of-view beyond duty, and to misunderstand one’s nature as a dependent and corrupt being;14 or alternatively, to despair in an impossible task. One must, thus, take up the duty of self-perfection with an inherent appreciation for one’s limits as an agent, that is, with an attitude of humility. Surely, though, there is also a fear to face here: the fear that one is either incapable or worse unwilling, to constrain oneself in the ways necessary. But at the heart of this fear is the need to come to terms with intractable human limits. As such, the attitude with which one takes up the pursuit of self-perfection and self-mastery must be one which integrates a firm appreciation for the nature of those limits, that is, an attitude of humility. The obligatory end of self-perfection must not be taken up as a direct goal to be achieved, but in full awareness of the limits and corruption of one’s moral agency; in a way that does not undermine, through opposing excesses of arrogance or despair, a valuing of that same agency, nor the potential exercise of it: this is the sort of perspective on, or proper valuing of, the self with which to approach the obligatory end of self-perfection. And this confident valuing of self and exercise of one’s agency in full awareness of one’s moral limits is best described as humility. Accepting humility as the moral interest related to the obligatory end of self-perfection also helps us to make more sense of Kant’s appeal to moral feeling, often considered to be an arcane and unfamiliar affective experience. For, if humility is an interest according to our definition of it, it will be constituted in part by judgments made about various feelings related to self. Central to those many feelings are those specifically about oneself as a moral agent; and these are precisely the sort of feelings to which Kant appeals under the name of the “moral feeling of respect,” speaking of feelings of both self-exultation and self-constraint.15 As we shall see in our full discussion of 13 14

15

See O’Neill, 1996a, 84. Allison, 1990, 155 reflects interestingly on such “moral fanaticism,” saying that it is to make the mistake of thinking yourself subject to a higher morality than that of duty, the latter of which assumes the need for constraints and imperatives. See also 5:84–86, to which Allison refers. See especially the way he describes these dual feelings in the Triebfedern section of the Critique of Practical Reason (5:71ff/62ff ).

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the Kantian virtue of humility in chapter 5, properly cultivated, these moral feelings become the affective center of an attitude of moral humility, that is, of the awareness of oneself as a capable, yet also dependent and corrupt, agent that this taking up of the duty of self-perfection demands. One might also call this state “proper self-esteem,” as Kant himself does (27:348ff/129ff, emphasis added), since it is, effectively, a proper perspective on, or valuing of, the self, in light of the value of moral principles.16 I prefer the language of “humility,” however, to describe the state of valuing oneself properly overall, because the language of self-respect does little to emphasize the necessity, when valuing oneself properly, of recognizing oneself as a dependent and corrupt being. But the language of “humility,” if properly understood, could more easily encompass one’s awareness of worth. Alternatively, one might forgo any general terminology, and consider humility and self-esteem to be distinct, but necessarily related, states. I will return to these questions in chapters 5 and 6. Whatever one calls it, this Kantian account of the state is different from the humility we have seen described in contemporary literature. Although, for example, Richards (1992) and I agree that humility involves self-evaluation and issues in a certain perspective on self, we have seen that for him, such perspective is gained by comparing oneself with other persons. I, however, agree with Kant and Wood that such would-be moral comparisons are not moral at all, much less morally obligatory, but are instead invidious and at the root of much evil in the world. The Kantian humble person thus affirms her limits by comparison with the higher standard of moral principles, and not in comparison with other persons, resulting in a much more stable basis for gaining the perspective on self that constitutes humility. Courage is not abandoned on this picture, but modified: a courage concerned primarily with superiority on the battlefield, one which overcame fears related to such actions and became a belief that one was stronger and better than other persons (and which thus made one worthy of honor from others) would need to be rejected. But a humble courage – or better, a 16

Kant seems to go back and forth on how best to describe this combination of awareness of worth and awareness of limit in the human agent. But at all points, he recognizes the import of their combination. In the Lectures on Ethics, for example, he speaks of “proper self-esteem” as being a combination of humility and proper pride (27:348ff/129ff ); in the Critique of Practical Reason, he speaks of “virtue” as consisting in a “combination of humility and self-respect” (5:128/107); and in the Metaphysics of Morals, he speaks simply of the import of a “moral self-esteem” combined with a “humility” understood as “[t]he consciousness and feeling of the insignificance of one’s moral worth in comparison with the law” (6:435–436/187).

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courageous humility – in the face of one’s moral limits which encouraged an agent to engage in the fray of moral self-mastery in full awareness both of those moral limits and of the equal dignity of all persons, could become quite important, and might, indeed, be simply an aspect of one’s moral humility in action.17 A similar story can, I think, be told about how respect for persons is that interest with which one takes up the obligatory end of increasing the happiness of other persons. We can, thus, postulate a general framework of three main Kantian virtues: a general respect for moral principles which is specified into humility toward self and respect for persons. It is true that Kant himself speaks of a singular “moral interest” based, most likely, on his recognition that any moral interest, to be truly moral, would need to appeal to the single maxim of the moral disposition.18 But on my account, the moral interest, though singular when viewed from the perspective of the moral disposition, when viewed as internalized in the character of the moral agent, issues in a conglomeration of these three interests. Indeed, although I will not pursue it further here, one can see Kant moving more in the direction of that stronger unity claim discussed in the previous chapter, viz., that a perfect internalization of any of these attitudes would demand a perfect internalization of the others, such that you couldn’t really have one without the others. Such unity would be explained, in part, by each trait’s common appeal to the singular principle of the moral disposition: the maxim is not fully internalized until each of these attitudes is in place, so the full intent of each of the attitudes (which is, indeed, to support this most general life-guiding maxim of placing moral principles above self-love) is not accomplished without the presence of the other two attitudes. We would not want to push this claim so much as to make it impossible for any finite being to have any virtue at all. But it could be said that partial acquisition of some or all of these three virtues is required for adequate acquisition of any one of them. As such, to say that I have a humble respect for myself will turn out to have little moral meaning if I don’t respect others as well. To be humble about my limits as a moral agent would make little sense if I were not able, at some level, to recognize those limits as genuine agent limits, and thus as applicable to all finite rational 17

18

I take this to be the best way to understand Kant’s various appeals to “courage” and being “valiant” in the Metaphysics of Morals upon which O’Neill (1996a) focuses. See, for example, 6:405/164 and 6:484–485/227. See, for example, 4:460/128, 5:80/83, 5:79/68, and 4:460n/128n.

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agents. Humility toward self would then require an understanding and valuing of agents as such, and could make no sense without holding a strong respect for persons. Similarly, it would make little sense to say that I am respectful of persons without being simultaneously respectful of myself and of the moral law which grounds all persons’ worth. To admit such connections is to give heed to Kant’s own recognition, noted in the previous chapter, that the taking on of the moral disposition is akin to an all-at-once conversion. Appreciating these relations would not, however, demand that Kantians adhere to the strongest reading of the psychological unity of virtues claims discussed in the previous chapter, that is, that one does not acquire any virtue without holding all others perfectly. For Kantians can admit that the logical relations among these three virtues result in a strong logical unity claim, and even that some aspect of all these three virtues must be present in order for any one of them to be present. But none of this prevents us from recognizing also that the situation of the finite and dependent being prevents perfect internalization of any of the virtues and, further, requires that she take such a vision of the perfect internalization of the moral disposition, like her pursuit of self-perfection generally, as a regulative ideal, and not as an actually obtainable goal. The value of reflecting on the logical unity in a concrete way is, nonetheless, affirmed, as such reflection can assure deeper appreciation of the need to progress in a variety of virtues. With this blueprint of virtue, the Kantian commitment to an essential unity of virtues is thus further clarified. There are indeed distinct virtuous character traits on a Kantian understanding of virtue; but even as these attitudes are specified, they retain an essential unity in that they are based in the same maxim of the moral disposition, which summarizes one’s moral commitment overall. All three of these attitudes must be pursued and acquired to some extent in order for the overall disposition of the agent to be a true internalization of the original and life-guiding moral disposition. This framework does, furthermore, have the potential to contain within it many of the virtues more commonly thought of in a virtue ethics approach, such as a sympathetic character; for, as these three main virtues become more internalized, they can be specified into more and more precise states of character. An internalization of the moral disposition relative to concern for others might, for example, be specified into characteristic attitudes of beneficence, sympathy, and gratitude, all now with a non-contingent relationship to morality in virtue of their cultivation vis a` vis the maxim of the moral disposition.

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It should be emphasized, then, that it is their connection with the maxim of the moral disposition which allows these interests to have a non-contingent relationship to the moral motive. If these interests are simply an internalization of the moral disposition, then these thick states of character, although they involve affective as well as rational aspects, remain non-contingently related to the values of that maxim. Respect for moral principles, respect for persons, and humility are not simply states which, like an untutored sympathy, are essentially unrelated to the moral disposition, happening at times to be supportive of moral goals and at others to be in opposition to them (and thus in need of constraint). Rather, by introducing the values of the moral disposition to the very character of the agent, these interests directly and non-contingently express the values of the moral disposition. This account does, furthermore, suggest some interesting possibilities about how one could resolve the perennial Kantian problem of motivation to moral action, for admitting a non-contingent relationship of the interest to the moral motive does suggest that motivation to moral action could be action “from” these thick virtuous states of character, that is, from respect for moral principles, respect for persons, or from humility. Literature on this point has focused on the question of whether it is “reason” or reason in combination with “feeling” that motivates the moral agent to moral action, and also on the question of whether and to what extent the over-determination of motives is acceptable in moral motivation.19 But the preceding account allows us to stop asking the question of motivation in those terms. It is not so much that we must say that it is “reason” or “feeling” that motivates the person, or even that we must identify distinct motives and decide whether we can stack them up together or not. Rather, we can say that it is the full person, who brings with her both her rational and affective states integrated into one whole person, who is motivated. To be motivated to moral action is to have internalized the principle of the moral disposition into one’s character and thus to act regularly and reliably from a virtuous disposition. One can still, of course, say that these interests do not necessarily become the actual motivating force to moral action, for it is still to the activity of the rational will that we will ultimately appeal to explain the cultivation and resulting nature of these attitudes. It is just that these attitudes constitute a concrete and more object-specific expression in one’s character of the values of the moral disposition. On this reading, these states are simply the necessary effects of the full adoption and deployment of the moral 19

See, for example, Henson, 1979; Herman, 1981 (reprinted in Herman, 1993); and Korsgaard, 1996b.

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disposition, and are, thus, the virtuous expression of that maxim which goes on to play a variety of important roles in the virtuous person’s life. But what about once the interests are truly cultivated? Could we then say that moral action motivated simply by someone with this state of character – that is, that action engaged in by this sort of person – is action which has “moral worth”? On this account, although one must appeal to the rational will in a genetic account of the formation of the relevant character traits, it need not be appealed to in the occurrent implementation of these fully formed traits. On a strong reading, then, of what adoption and deployment of the maxim of the moral disposition would mean, action from the right motives would need to be action that is initiated by a certain sort of person, that is, by a person with a particular set of thick character traits, ones guided by the value structure of the moral disposition. If the virtuous disposition can be understood in this way as the actual motivating force to action, then some further discussion and defense of its role might be necessary so as to show that appeal to a thick character trait in motivation to moral action does not undermine Kant’s various rejections of feeling as being at the basis of morality. I do not intend to argue this stronger point in any more detail here, but the preceding account of virtue, combined with the fact that Kant declares, as early as the Groundwork, that a moral interest, one which integrates “moral feeling,” is “that in virtue of which reason becomes practical” (4:460n/128n), bodes well for providing such a defense. c ha r ac te r a n d ac ti o n : re act i on to o ’n ei l l Having articulated a genuinely Kantian sense in which thick Aristotelian style character traits can be understood, we can now return to questions about the moral import of such character traits and, with that, of the relative weight of concern for act and concern for agent on a Kantian account of practical reasoning. In chapter 2, we considered O’Neill’s firmly action-based account in which virtue is understood more thinly as the proper deployment of maxims, and in which the value of such virtues is instrumental to action. Although we have provided a thicker account of virtues as character traits, much of what we have said about them affirms the instrumental role that such traits play relative to action. It is certainly true, for example, that accepting moral interests and obligatory ends as correlative in the way just suggested helps to affirm Kant’s concern for action, since the connection of character to ends of action prevents an appeal to one’s inner moral state from sliding into a lack of concern for

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action. I thus remain sympathetic with O’Neill’s concern to emphasize that maxims can, and must be, importantly grounded in patterns of action and must be genuinely action-guiding.20 None of this removes, however, the possibility that maxims are also something one needs to have as principles of character in the thicker way that I have suggested here. Nor indeed does a concern that maxims be prescriptive obviate the need to engage in self-reflection on one’s character both for itself, and instrumentally, that is, in order to act on one’s chosen maxims well. This final section is concerned, then, to show that one must both have maxims in this thicker sense, and further, engage in a certain amount of reflection on the status of one’s character in order for maxims to be reliably action-guiding, points which I take to be in tension with O’Neill’s account. I agree with O’Neill that we should avoid excessive and counter-productive self-reflection which would discourage action. But, once we emphasize the Corruption Thesis, we must also admit that some internalization of maxims and further reflection on self are necessary for successful moral action. I will then conclude this section with brief reflections on whether Kantian ethics is concerned primarily with action or with character and with whether the latter finds its value only instrumentally. First, it may be impossible, or at best, unlikely, for maxims to guide action well unless an agent applies her practical reasoning capacities to sufficient introspection on the state of her character. Maxims, and especially the maxim of the moral disposition, in order to be more reliably action guiding, need to be informed by some reflection upon whether one has the maxim or not (or, in my terms, upon whether, and to what extent, one’s maxim has been internalized as an interest in the character of the agent). As such, O’Neill needs to give more credence to what she describes as the “introspective-attributive” process by which one seeks, fallibly, to identify whether one has a maxim or not in one’s character.21 Why would this be? The answer has to do with my acceptance of the Corruption Thesis, and the resulting likelihood of the undue influence of self-love, and even of self-deception, both in analysis of one’s own character and in deliberation about action.22 If we grant this picture of humanity, 20 21

22

On the latter point, see especially O’Neill, 1996a, 94–95. I understand this process to consist in the determination of one’s actual maxim of action to the best of one’s ability, through back-and-forth reflection upon one’s interior states and upon one’s past actions. This point about corruption is one with which I take O’Neill to be in general agreement. She asserts, for example, in her discussion of the virtue of courage, that the very need for courage arises in the first place because of the fact that “there is no guarantee that all the desires we happen to have will harmonize with morality” (O’Neill, 1996a, 96).

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then we grant also that one’s character is something that can get in the way of proper moral deliberation. This is particularly true for imperfect duties of virtue. Suppose I am trying to ask one of the deliberative questions of which O’Neill speaks, for example, “‘What must I do if I am not to be indifferent to others’ happiness?’” (O’Neill, 1996a, 94). I do, of course, have leeway in the manner and times at which I fulfill this duty to increase the happiness of others. But if there is room for judgment here, then there is also room for self-deception, or perhaps just for undue appeal to concerns of self-love, to inform the process. If this is the case, then the agent has at least some responsibility to engage in that “introspective-attributive” process which O’Neill describes and rejects as insufficient for practical purposes. An agent must compare introspection of the maxims she believes she holds with her pattern of actions not simply to know her character, but to know her character in order to guide her deliberation. Implementing these maxims will demand that due (though not undue) attention be given to character review and to consideration of the self-deception possibility. For example, I might be considering whether I should fulfill my duty to increase others’ happiness by visiting a friend or family member in need who would benefit from my presence during a difficult time. Suppose, though, that I am afraid of flying, and suppose that visiting my friend would require that I get on a plane. This fear makes my deliberative process more subject to self-deception. Perhaps I could convince myself that I don’t really have time for the visit, or that I don’t really have money for the plane ticket (when, in fact, neither of these is the case). I would thus not take up this opportunity to fulfill my duty, even though it is one which very clearly presents itself to me, and which couldn’t easily, or at all, be fulfilled by someone else (I am, perhaps, the person most well situated to give the sort of emotional support necessary). An opportunity to fulfill my duty would thus be staring me in the face, but I might reject it, through self-deception. Even knowing my maxim in general terms, and being genuinely committed to implementing it, I fail to do so. It is, of course, true that I am not required to act on every possible opportunity to implement my maxim of increasing others’ happiness; it is even true that one reason an agent might legitimately choose not to so act could be because action in a particular case would place onerous burdens upon her. This does not, however, mean that an agent is obligated to this maxim only in cases that are easy for her. Indeed, to limit one’s action in this way would be illicitly to place concerns for self-love above one’s moral commitment. It may even be that those cases of beneficent acts to which we

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are most obligated are those cases which are more difficult because of the complex web of human relationships and commitments in which we find ourselves. Katerina, in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, does seem particularly obligated to visit Dmitry in prison when he asks her to, because of the history of their relationship, and because the peace and consolation he needs is something which only a visit from her could provide him.23 But this is also a case where powerful interests of self-love make such action more difficult; and where failure to have reflected on her feelings, interests, and character would likely have prevented Katerina from engaging in it. She does, after all, initially seek to avoid visiting Dmitry.24 She does, though, eventually visit him, and it seems that being able to do so was possible only by her reflecting on the feelings of shame and the interest in self-protection which initially discouraged her from such an act. As such, I find O’Neill to be wrong when she suggests the following: Even if we were wholly opaque to ourselves and to others, and lacked even the limited and fallible capacities for introspection Kant credits us with, we could still use practical principles to guide action. When we do so we have to identify a principle – for example a principle of virtue – and to ask what might be done if we are to strive to make that principle inform our lives and our action. (O’Neill, 1996a, 95, emphasis added)

If Katerina, or the agent in my examples were “wholly opaque” to themselves, it is not likely that they would have engaged in these difficult opportunities to fulfill their duty. An agent can reflect on the prescriptive maxim all she wants, but it is only by supplementing that reflection with reflection on herself, her fears, her character, that she can apply that maxim here. Without such reflection, she would thus not have utilized the maxim of increasing other persons’ happiness in a useful prescriptive way. Indeed, given a broader, and unidentified, set of desires (for example, to value success in one’s job so highly that, in fact, it is a higher value than one’s stated moral commitments), this agent might turn down just about every opportunity to be beneficent, or only be beneficent when it didn’t get in the way of her unidentified desires and values. She wouldn’t believe that she lacked sympathy, or a desire to be beneficent; and, in fact, she wouldn’t. But she wouldn’t value beneficence sufficiently, relative to her other values, and she would thus never, or only rarely, choose to act beneficently. She would, 23 24

As Alyosha, Dmitry’s brother, asserts when he asks Katerina to visit Dmitry, “It is both possible and necessary [that you visit him]!” (Dostoevsky, 1958, 917). First she says that it is “impossible” to visit him, and that she “cannot” go because “I won’t be able to stand his looking at me.” Then she suggests that she cannot leave Dmitry’s other brother, Ivan, whom she is helping to convalesce (Dostoevsky, 1958, 917).

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in effect, use the leeway of duties of virtue to place concerns for self-love above her moral obligations. Surely, there might be people who, fortunately, do not have such desires or interests that could regularly get in the way of fulfilling a particular duty of virtue; but if this is so, it is merely fortunate. It is, then, a responsibility of the agent to engage in at least a minimal level of self-reflection not only on whether she has internalized the maxim of the moral disposition, but also upon other aspects of her character relevant to the deliberation at hand which might get in the way of her fulfilling her moral obligations. Surely, this does not obligate one to give undue attention to self over action. And attention would be “undue” precisely to the extent that it encouraged one to ignore salient details of one’s situation, or to fail to act at all. “Due” or proper attention to self would be that amount of self-reflection which would be necessary to clear the static of self-love or self-deception that might be intervening in one’s deliberative process. In the examples above, this would mean identifying the interfering interest – one’s fear of flying, one’s ambitions related to one’s work, or one’s shame about facing a former lover whom you have betrayed – and reflecting upon whether that affect or interest held significant enough value to warrant turning down the opportunity to be of assistance to the particular person in question, especially if that person is someone toward whom you are in a unique position to give assistance. It seems reasonable to expect that it would, indeed, be unreasonable to let one’s fears, ambitions, or shame to get in the way of helping a dear friend in an urgent situation; but without proper introspection, this conclusion could not be achieved. On the flip side, these reflections suggest also that it would be necessary for this agent to reflect on the status of those affects positively connected to the maxim at hand: does my general pattern of settled feelings and affects affirm that I hold the maxim of acting sympathetically toward others? That is, am I a sympathetic person? The reason that such reflection would be important is the same as the reason for investigating potentially rogue feelings: the possibility of straightforward or surreptitious subversion of one’s moral intent is a constant and live possibility, and commitment to one’s maxims – being able genuinely to say that one has them – can be affirmed and supported by assuring that these maxims have been made pervasive in one’s character. When our emotional life is in order relative to our moral commitments, we have that many fewer opportunities to choose rogue emotions as the basis of our reasons for action. We thus strengthen our moral commitments through affirmation of character. To really be a

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sympathetic person, the would-be virtuous person would need to do more than just claim a maxim of sympathy; she needs further to develop her emotional life into a certain order consonant with that maxim. If her life is not in that order, then she will be far less likely to apply her stated maxim well or at all. She will not really be a sympathetic person. To affirm one’s character in this sense would then just be to say not only that “I have a policy of acting on this maxim,” but also that “I am the kind of person who makes such actions primary in my life and person.” It is, of course, not possible for such reflections on self to issue in certain knowledge; and, even if they could, they could not guarantee that selflove would not infect one’s movement from maxim to action. Knowledge of self is indeed limited and fallible. It would be self-defeating, then, to demand perfect self-knowledge in order to act on maxims; and O’Neill is right to say that certain “limitations of self- and other-knowledge are not obstacles to the practical task of striving to live in a way that would, in the circumstances, constitute a clear enactment of virtue” (O’Neill, 1996a, 95). I will, in chapter 8, investigate in further depth the question of the level of knowledge both necessary and possible in the pursuit of the duty of selfknowledge. For now, though, we can appreciate that being entirely opaque to oneself would make it very unlikely that maxims would be employed prescriptively in the best ways possible. And the impossibility of certain self-knowledge does not remove the obligation to reflect on one’s character to the extent possible, at least to the extent that it promotes good action. Such a person who engages in some self-reflection as part of her deliberative process has been more responsible in her attempts to enact moral maxims. Kant’s concern for character thus extends both to cultivating those traits an agent should have (e.g., humility, respect, etc.), and to identifying, limiting, and working to eliminate those traits which interfere with one’s moral progress. Finally, though I will only hint at, and not fully argue it here, it is important to emphasize that the value of a good character cannot, on a Kantian scheme of things, be merely instrumental; that is, the value of character cannot be reduced to its import for action. It is misleading, then, to claim, as O’Neill does, that a Kantian conception of practical reasoning is concerned primarily with action, and that agent-based concerns become important only insofar as they are necessary to support moral action. As we saw in the previous chapter, O’Neill sees virtue as a founded phenomenon, one dependent upon, and finding its telos from, right action. To recall just one of her assertions to that effect:

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[T]he categories of virtue and vice will be indispensable. However, the need to consider all these aspects of ethical life does not show that ethical concern must focus primarily on the characters and practices which are the sources and embodiments of action, rather than on action itself . . . [V]irtue and vice could not be discussed without presupposing that practical reasoning focuses primarily on action, and hence on descriptions of action, which may form the content of principles of action. (O’Neill, 1996b, 72)

As I have shown, I do not disagree that virtue is importantly related to principles of action. But I question whether practical reasoning always focuses primarily or most centrally on action, and considers issues of character only insofar as they directly relate to action, for this would make the value of good character merely instrumental. Indeed, although the specifics of good character are guided by what constitutes right action, it does not seem Kantian to assert that the value of a good character is simply parasitical upon good action. Kant is, after all, keen to emphasize in one formulation of his principles of action – the second formulation of the Categorical Imperative – that action is constrained because persons are sources of absolute dignity. In this case, it is not the unfounded value of good action that guides character, but the absolute, unfounded value of personhood that guides action. That dignity of person is absolute, and that this fact constrains action, does not, of course, necessarily imply that the development of a virtuous character is more primary or valuable than engaging in good action, nor that practical reasoning should be aimed primarily at the development of character. But it would make sense to expect that Kant would be interested in granting a certain non-dependent, unfounded, and not just instrumental, worth to good character, irrespective of its issuing in good action. The following case makes this point nicely: imagine two persons, both entirely incapacitated, unable to speak or move. But one of these persons has a better character than the other, is, for example, more respectful and sympathetic. Would we really want to say that this character lacked value because it failed to issue in good actions? On O’Neill’s account of virtue, we don’t seem to have any other basis for the ascription of value. But accepting a claim of unfounded worth of character grounded in some way on the unfounded worth of personhood would both affirm the dignity of personhood generally and provide a way of resolving this case. It would, of course, remain the case that the sort of character that affirmed human dignity would be one which approaches being a “good will,” that is, a character properly disposed toward moral action. And so we might still need to admit that there is a loss, even a tragic loss, that this person’s character does not have the opportunity to express itself in those sorts of actions for which her character is made. But

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we could, nonetheless, affirm a non-instrumental value for that character based in the dignity of personhood this person retains. A Kantian approach to morality thus does not, in any simple or absolute sense, base the goodness of character on its ability to issue in good acts, or for that matter, base the goodness of acts solely on their issuance from a good character. It is wrong to assert that the exercise of practical reasoning is concerned primarily with one or the other. To roughly paraphrase Kant himself: good character without good actions is empty, but good action without good character is blind. It is not so much that one is essentially prior to the other as that they are inextricably linked to, and dependent upon, each other. This is, perhaps, the best way to appreciate Kant’s famous claim that there is nothing good without qualification in the world except a good will: the locus of absolute goodness is not simply “action” or “agent,” but a person disposed to act well. As such, to ask whether concern for action or concern for agent is primary in Kant is to miss the point that the goodness a Kantian seeks is the goodness of a person of absolute dignity engaged in action. Whether one considers good action or good agents the more primary object of practical reasoning in more specific situations would depend, then, upon what sort of moral question one is asking, and the moral situation in which one finds oneself. co n c lu s i o n This rough outline of a Kantian account of virtue does, of course, raise more questions than it is within the scope of this work to address adequately. I have not, for example, provided a full articulation and defense of any of the three major virtues, nor a full defense of the reciprocal necessary relations that hold among them. Nor do I mean to suggest that these are the only possible Kantian virtues, though all might be just more precise specifications of these three. I hope, however, that the acceptance of the Corruption Thesis and the framework of virtue on the end-interest model provide a promising framework within which to pursue a Kantian account of virtue, one which opens up further possibilities for a more articulated catalogue of virtues in the Aristotelian sense of thick character traits. As this work continues, I turn, of course, to a more elaborated account of that virtue which is our central concern: humility.

pa rt i i

A Kantian response to recent accounts of humility

c ha pt e r 4

A Kantian response to recent accounts of humility

co nc e rn s a b o u t rec e n t acco u n ts of h u m i l it y A review of recent accounts of humility We are now in a position to turn to the question of how best to understand the virtue of humility. We can begin with the basic assumption that humility involves gaining a perspective on one’s self. Given our acceptance of the Corruption Thesis, it is also obvious the direction in which our account will head: that within the self on which one needs to gain perspective is one’s dependence and corruption. The question that thus presents itself is of what this perspective is, and upon what the moral agent relies to gain it. Humility will ultimately be shown to be the successful effort to value oneself appropriately as a dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified being vis a` vis those moral principles which one recognizes as one’s own. Before turning to this account, it will however be valuable to consider some recent efforts to define humility, and how they are to be distinguished from our own forthcoming account. This task will occupy us for this current chapter. Traditionally, it has been in comparison to a higher deity that one gains perspective on one’s limited and corrupt state, but a secular account of humility allows for no such option.1 More recent accounts, what Stephen 1

Some have argued that if one accepts the notion of radical evil, any grounding of humility, or of any virtue at all, must appeal specifically to faith in a transcendent God. For an insightful defense of this opposing point of view from a Kantian perspective, see Hare, 1996a. Although my own account will not be specifically religious, I hope it could be specified into a less stringent religious stance than Hare’s. A religious person who took the attitude I go on to describe in chapter 5 toward moral principles, but who took them to be divine principles as well as one’s own, might be just one more example of someone taking this attitude in general. What would be important about one’s belief in God on this account is that an agent recognize herself as capable though limited in relation to God’s principles, and also that God’s principles be as much one’s own as God’s. A more stringent and necessarily religious account like Hare’s would argue, though, that human agency is incapable of getting itself out of its own mess, that moral action is impossible for humans by themselves, and that they need God to pull them out of their iniquity. This is the so-called “moral gap.”

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Hare has called the “promising new attempts” to define humility, have instead sought such perspective in “accurate self-assessment, often with special emphasis on non-overestimation (as opposed to underestimation) of one’s merits.”2 Such emphasis on self-assessment makes these accounts broadly similar to our own forthcoming account which emphasizes a selfassessment in which one gains perspective on one’s dependent and corrupt status. But there are important differences as well, which can be revealed by a critical review of their claims. First, most of these recent accounts do not assume a picture of human nature on which to ground the state of humility; in fact, for most, appeals to claims of human nature are to be explicitly and studiously avoided. Richards, for example, insists on defining humility apart from any account of human nature. His motivation for such rejection is that he wants to set aside anything that smacks of “Catholic metaphysics” in his definition of humility, for he finds what he understands to be a Catholic view of human nature – one which he says asks us to consider ourselves as “contemptible” and “foul” – to be deeply problematic. He reminds us, for example, of “Bernard of Clairvaux’s theory that all of us are contemptible and thus that any self-assertion is overreaching” (Richards, 1992, 8), and of “Saint Paul, Saint Augustine and Martin Luther,” who claim that “because God and his works are so magnificent, whatever you are or have done is trivial by comparison, and your human pride in who you are or what you have done is laughable” (Richards, 1992, 7). His appeal to St. Ignatius Loyola is perhaps the most striking: “Regardless of who I am, as Ignatius Loyola puts it, to understand myself would be ‘to look upon myself as a wound and ulcer whence have come forth so many sins and so many iniquities, and poison so utterly foul’” (Richards, 1992, 169). Excessive claims of a worthless human nature are, for Richards, the problem with traditional accounts of humility, and his own discussion of the state thus seeks to avoid any appeal at all to such human nature claims. Statman goes even further in rejecting claims of human nature that would ground humility. He agrees with Richards that any grounding appeal to human nature should be avoided. But he suggests that even would-be secular accounts of humility such as Richards’ implicitly and problematically presuppose both a religious background and a “pessimistic” account 2

Hare, 1996b, 235. Hare includes among these “new” attempts at humility Richards, 1988, 253–260 (reprinted and expanded Richards, 1992); Driver, 1989 (reprinted Driver, 2000); and Flanagan, 1990. I would add to this list: Ben-Ze’ev, 1993; Horner, 1998; Morgan, 2001; Schueler, 1997; Snow, 1995; and Statman, 1992.

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of human nature which would accompany this (Statman, 1992, 430), a picture in which God is seen as the transcendent standard in comparison to which humans are found utterly worthless.3 Such a quasi-religious assumption of the vile, low, and essentially worthless nature of human beings is necessary in order for these commentators to make intelligible the claim that an “accurate” self-assessment is always a “low” one.4 Schueler makes a similar point: “An accurate view of one’s accomplishments . . . will always reveal a relatively low opinion to be the correct one,” and this assumption has “much the same effect as the theological assumption . . . which gives the agent no credit at all for his or her accomplishments” (Schueler, 1997, 473). But both Statman and Schueler go on to reject any such “theological assumption” at the basis of humility or modesty. Schueler says this worldview is “hard to accept” (Schueler, 1997, 471) because it is hard to accept that “no one ever genuinely deserves credit for any of her successes” (Schueler, 1997, 471). Similarly, Staman notes that this “religious tradition . . . is no longer held by most modern societies” (Statman, 1992, 432). We need instead, he says, an account of humility that does not require us to make assumptions about religious belief or the account of human nature assumed by it. Forgoing any account of human nature as well as any appeal to a transcendent standard such as God in comparison to which that human nature is found lacking, leads Statman – along with many, if not most, of the other contemporary defenders of this “new” humility – to explain the avoidance of overestimation of self by comparison of oneself not against a transcendent standard, but rather with and against other persons.5 This commitment is not always explicitly stated, but reliance upon and implicit reference to 3 4

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He cites, for example, Isaiah 64:6, which asserts that “‘all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags’” (Statman, 1992, 430). “An accurate self-assessment could lead to humility only if true understanding of human nature would show it to be weak, fragile and imperfect. Such an understanding is essential to the Jewish and Christian traditions . . . [H]umility is most intelligible within a religious frame of thought” (Statman, 1992, 431). Schueler does not explicitly eschew comparative judgments, but his account of modesty, to his credit, avoids such judgments nonetheless. The only explicit denial I have found of the usefulness of comparative judgments (and with that, more of a willingness to accept at least certain minimal claims of human nature) is in Ben-Ze’ev’s account of modesty. He asserts that modesty is a “noncomputational” state, because “such computation is insignificant in light of the basic common nature and fate (say, death) of all human beings” (Ben-Ze’ev, 1993, 237). I am generally sympathetic to this approach, but find it curious that Ben-Ze’ev finds it necessary to distinguish strongly between such modesty which involves a lack of exaggeration about oneself, and humility which he rejects, since he says it demands having a low opinion of oneself, in fact, underrating oneself.

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comparative judgments of self against other persons can almost invariably be found in these accounts. Richards, as we have already seen, speaks of gaining perspective on the value of one’s accomplishments as a philosopher by comparing them with more impressive accomplishments of other philosophers (Richards, 1988, 255; Richards, 1992, 6). Horner speaks of humility as a state which “honors others and esteems them as superior” (Horner, 1998, 434). Hare speaks also of moral humility as “accurate assessment of one’s own relative moral superiority” (Hare, 1996b, 240). And Morgan claims that humility involves believing oneself “to be beneath others . . . in order to bring about an evaluative equilibrium” (Morgan, 2001, 315–316).6 Driver, who relies problematically on an ignorance condition of modesty,7 asserts not just a low- but an under-estimation account of modesty, relying at times on comparisons with others to effect such a state.8 Even Statman, who wants to emphasize how a disposition to behave in ways which affirm the equal value of persons is a central aspect of what he calls “modesty” instead of humility, says that modest persons “can, and should, be proud of themselves” (Statman, 1992, 433), because they are “better than others with respect to their talents and accomplishments” (Statman, 1992, 433) and thus “far above most other human beings” (Statman, 1992, 436). The need for such comparative judgments thus makes modesty, for him, most appropriate to and, indeed, “the required perspective . . . not . . . of the ordinary man, but . . . of the extraordinary” (Statman, 1992, 427). Finally, tied to the rejection of claims of human nature and the turn toward self–other comparison is another tendency of most of these commentators to put forward a behavioristic account of humility or modesty, that is, an account which avoids claims about character, and focuses instead on making sense of the actions, and the dispositions to act, of the humble person. Richards (1988, 256), Schueler (1997, 479, 483–485), and Statman (1992, 433) all grant this behavioristic turn explicitly, though in slightly different ways. Statman, however, makes the point most clearly: “We have 6

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It must be admitted that, in Morgan’s account, this comparative moment is pointed ultimately toward appreciating the equal dignity of all persons. Because we all have a tendency to think too much of ourselves, it is only by moving to the opposite extreme that we can hope to find the middle ground. Once we admit though, as we have in chapter 1, that while some people express their misguided selflove through an over-valuing of the self, others express it in an under-valuing of the self, Morgan’s approach seems a curious, and dangerous, way of moving toward an appreciation for the equal dignity of persons. Flanagan’s article is an attack on modesty which assumes the agent’s ignorance. Morgan also has noted, and rejected, Driver’s problematic account, noting in a summary of Flanagan’s arguments that Driver’s account “is reduced to absurdity by its reliance on ignorance” (Morgan, 2001, 309). See Driver, 2000, 19, where Albert Einstein would be considered modest if he “viewed himself as a great physicist, just not the greatest physicist of the twentieth century.”

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no choice but to get back to some kind of a behavioral account of modesty” (1992, 433).9 It makes sense that in avoiding any appeal to human nature in grounding humility that these commentators would want also to avoid an appeal to anything that goes beyond being a form of behavior. For, we have more direct access to these external behavioral manifestations of one’s nonoverestimation of oneself than we do of any more internal, character-based reflections which would demand appeal to a quasi-religious and indefensible account of human nature.10 Objections to these accounts Recent commentators on humility have thus generally rejected any appeal to human nature to ground the state, and have turned instead to a less metaphysically complex and more empirically assessable behavioristic definition of humility, relying upon self–other comparison as a standard for selfevaluation. Why is it, though, that these commentators believe it important to reject any appeal to human nature in their accounts in favor of a more empirical, self–other comparison approach? One reason for this shift is, of course, the question of empirical assessability: these commentators want an account of humility or modesty that does not require appeal to a standard that cannot be assessed empirically. My own account of humility will not abandon questions of human nature, nor of the non-behavioristic depth of humility as a trait of character, in the name of empirical assessability. Understanding my commitment to this requires, however, that we first consider a deeper, and more problematic, motivation that these commentators have for rejecting any grounding claims of human nature, one that goes beyond concerns about empirical assessability. The general sense one gets from reading these accounts of humility and modesty is that these commentators believe any account of human nature that would ground humility is a necessarily offensive and undesirable one, one that would require us to see humanity as “vile” and “wormlike.” Statman states this most explicitly when he suggests that in order to make intelligible the claim that an “accurate” self-assessment 9

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Statman does, however, end up backtracking on this behavioral claim. Although he still wants to avoid any quasi-religious claims about human nature, he cannot avoid at least some minimal claims on the level of character: “[M]aybe the term ‘behavioural account’ for the view presented here is not very successful. The modest person not only behaves in a certain way, but also holds certain beliefs and attitudes that are at the basis of and encourage this behaviour” (Statman, 1992, 434). Nancy Snow’s work on humility (1995) is an interesting exception to this tendency to address only behavioristic aspects of humility, since she is willing to talk at least about affective as well as behavioral aspects of humility. I will consider her work in more detail in chapter 6.

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is always a “low” one, any account of human nature grounding humility would need to involve a quasi-religious assumption of humanity as “weak, fragile and imperfect” (Statman, 1992, 431), indeed as mere “‘dust and ashes’” (Genesis 28:27, quoted at Statman, 1992, 430). Such a humility would, furthermore, be, as Statman suggests, “most intelligible within a religious frame of thought” (1992, 431), but these commentators want to avoid that framework, and thus any account of the worthlessness of humanity that would go with it. These commentators thus believe that by rejecting such excessive and unsupportable claims of human nature, and relying instead on self–other comparison to ground a more empirically assessable version of the state, they will be able to avoid not only unprovable metaphysical commitments, but also those egregious connections that have historically been made between humility and excessive underestimation of self, inferiority, worthlessness, and self-hatred. Some, like Statman and Hare, even go so far as to associate humility and modesty with expressions of superiority so as to assure the avoidance of connecting these states with inferiority and self-deprecation. The assumption is that humility is indeed a virtue of proper self-evaluation, but that it is in problematic accounts of human nature that humility has gone wrong; therefore, we need an account of humility as self-evaluation that makes no assumptions about human nature. This assumption is, however, deeply misguided. In fact, by eschewing any reliance on conceptions of human nature, and thus grounding humility in – or even requiring that humility have some necessary reference to – comparison of self to others, these commentators inadvertently give approbation to just those excesses and distortions of humility they are trying to avoid. Despite themselves, they are not able to avoid the association of humility with inferiority, nor even with what is just as problematic, superiority. It is, of course, hard to see how else other than self–other comparison one could ground humility once appeal to the shared limits of humans grounded in a common nature is abandoned. But this is only to say that, whatever the epistemic challenges of it, we cannot abandon a concern for articulating some general truths about human nature when pursuing an adequate account of the virtue of humility. We must be willing to accept some most basic claims about human nature in order to provide a satisfying account of humility. Why is this so? What exactly is it about comparison of self to others that leads to these undesirable consequences, and forces us back to an at least minimal account of human nature? In the argument that follows, it will be seen that the answer to this question takes us back to our original

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acceptance of the Corruption Thesis. If we accept the picture of a human agent who inevitably struggles to value the self properly relative to other objects of moral value, then we must accept that self–other comparison is not the proper basis for an attitude which would assure proper valuing of the self. Indeed, for this sort of being, any attitude that would result from relying on self–other comparison to resolve one’s most basic questions of self-worth would be an undesirable, even an offensive, one. One’s moral evaluation of self needs to be grounded elsewhere, and it is only when it is grounded elsewhere, and is present as some other sort of already existing underlying moral strength, that self–other comparison can be engaged in productively. There are two points to make about this argument before proceeding to it. First, it is important to emphasize that I am not asserting that self– other comparisons of any and every type are always and necessarily morally egregious. What I am saying is that the perspective on self called humility cannot be grounded in such comparisons. Indeed, such comparisons can become useful, morally and otherwise, only when the static of self-love has already been somewhat cleared by other means. Once the battles of self-love have been settled adequately (though, as we know, never entirely, as this is not possible), then both moral and non-moral sorts of self–other comparison can be engaged in productively. We’ll discover, though, that a mature moral agent will find little need for most of these comparisons (with one important exception that will be noted in the end of chapter 7). Nonetheless, they will not be impossible, morally unproductive, or even morally offensive. Secondly, it is clear that I will in the forthcoming argument assume a general claim about human nature which these commentators would reject: the Corruption Thesis for which we argued in chapter 1. And it may seem odd that, in response to these commentators, I seem to assume that very “low” conception of human nature which they want to avoid. Schueler, for example, suggests that we must reject any account of humility which would admit “a relatively low opinion” of oneself, for to admit this low opinion has “much the same effect as the theological assumption . . . which gives the agent no credit at all for his or her accomplishments” (Schueler, 1997, 473). If we accept that equation, then there would be no room at all for claims of human nature that admit of limit, because any such claim would be unacceptably low. We should, however, draw a finer distinction here. It is one thing to say that we want to avoid accepting a picture of human nature as worthless, vile, and worm like. It is another to say that we want to avoid a picture of human

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nature that admits of weaknesses and flaws. The former, I suspect, most of us would intuitively agree is to be avoided. The latter is less intuitively obvious. Most would in fact intuitively accept just the opposite, that is, that humans do tend to have certain natural weaknesses and flaws. And as this story of humility unfolds, we will discover that it is indeed possible to admit certain weaknesses of human nature that do not reduce to egregious claims of worthlessness of that nature. I will thus assume in this argument a picture of human nature which accepts a certain “weakness” of humans, viz., that humans struggle to value the self properly. By showing, however, that humility’s undue association with a wormlike inferiority and worthlessness does not result from this admission about a certain weakness of human nature, but instead is the result of the excessive reliance placed upon self–other comparison, these commentators’ rejection of all claims of human nature, including the Corruption Thesis, on these grounds, and their retreat into a more behavioristic humility based on self–other comparison, are also shown to be unfounded. Claims about the limits of human nature do not necessarily lead to an admission of human inferiority and worthlessness. So, on a reasonable and intuitively acceptable assumption about certain weaknesses of human nature, we discover that it is not the Corruption Thesis but self– other comparison that these commentators need to avoid in their efforts to remove humility’s unfortunate associations with inferiority and worthlessness. Given this, we should abandon self–other comparison as a grounding for humility and, further, admit that the onus is upon these commentators to show why reliance upon some basic claims about human nature should be rejected. t he a rg um en t ag a i n s t re c en t accou n ts of h u m i li t y So, to restate the main point: you cannot ground humility on self–other comparison because humility is the perspective from which we need to engage in any morally productive self–other comparison. The point is rather similar to the one made by Kant when criticizing Hume’s account of causality: Hume believed that causal relations could be established through repeated experience of their constant conjunction. But Kant asserted that one cannot ground causality in experience in this way because the concept of causality is something we need to bring to experience in order to have an experience that involves causal relations. So, just as the pure concept of causality is a condition for the possibility of causal experiences, so too is the attitude of humility – the proper perspective on oneself as a dependent

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and corrupt being – a condition for the possibility of morally productive self–other comparison. Self–other comparison is not, then, an appropriate basis for humility, because humility is necessary in order to engage in self–other comparison productively. Why is this so? Why is self–other comparison an inadequate basis for that proper valuing of the self called humility? Essentially, trying to engage in self–other comparison without an already existing humble perspective leaves the human agent trying to do so from an untutored dependent and corrupt perspective of misguided self-love. That is, the person trying to engage in the comparative judgment is one who is already primed to value herself improperly relative to other objects of moral value. Clearly, this is not the sort of person who is going to engage well and accurately in comparison of her own value or merits against those of other persons. Let’s look more closely, though, at the challenges and ultimate results of this sort of being relying on self–other comparison as the basis for her self-evaluation. Self-valuing as a meta-attitude The first thing we need to appreciate is the centrality of questions about, and responses to, self-valuing for this sort of being. Even apart from acceptance of the Corruption Thesis, we must admit that the self is an unavoidable term in any of one’s actions: in choosing any act or being placed in any choice situation, we cannot avoid admitting that it involves me doing the acting. This may or may not be a problematic admission for one who does not accept the Corruption Thesis; but once we do accept that view of human nature, we also accept that the self is a problematic term in any choice situation. In accepting the Corruption Thesis, we accept that all humans have a tendency to value the self improperly relative to other objects of moral value. But the self is an unavoidable term in one’s actions; as such, the self presses itself to the forefront, making itself prominent in all choice situations until the question of its value is resolved or quieted in some way. In any choice situation, this sort of being cannot choose well without a resolution of the question of the value of the self in relation to other objects of potential value: how am I to value myself here? What value can I be said to have now and in this situation? In admitting that the self is a term in every choice situation for a dependent and corrupt being, we admit that this problem of self-value is an unresolved, pressing, and ubiquitous one for this agent. The self is in an unstable condition vis a` vis her own value, and so the question of how to value the self is an

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unavoidable, primary, and problematic question for the dependent and corrupt agent. The pervasiveness of questions about self-valuing assures, furthermore, that any effort to resolve these questions will result in the establishment of a similarly pervasive attitude in the self-valuing agent. The questions of selfvalue with which we are concerned are so pervasive that any way in which one characteristically responds to them will also constitute a pervasive aspect of one’s character. Untutored, one’s exercise of agency is both implicitly and explicitly guided by the pressing concerns of self-love. But once tutored – that is, once responded to in some way – that response now guides the exercise of one’s agency just as those untutored concerns had done previously. The response to these questions of valuing will be as pervasive to one’s character as the original questions were pressing. Let us dwell for a minute on what it means for one’s resolution of questions of self-value to become pervasively internalized in this way. What we are emphasizing here is that, contrary to the interpretive tendencies of recent commentators on humility, the values implicit in one’s resolution of the pressing questions of self-love do not express themselves merely on the level of actions. Rather, these values, by being affirmed regularly through judgments and actions, become internalized in one’s character in a way akin to what was described in chapter 3 as the formation of an interest. This involves not only the acceptance of judgments, but also a resulting effect on one’s affective life and ultimately one’s deeply held values and character. Furthermore, given the pressing questions of self-valuing with which this interest is concerned, this interest becomes a particularly central and pervasive one. It is not just a stable character state which is accessible in the appropriate situations and at the appropriate times, one which the agent might consider appropriate at some times and reject at others. Rather, it is the attitude with which the agent approaches every deliberation, action, and exercise of agency, a pervasive attitude with which the agent approaches every possible exercise of her moral capacities and, indeed, life itself. Whatever judgments are made in response to the pressing concerns of selfvaluing, these judgments are internalized in one’s character and become the lens through which this agent approaches the exercise of her agency generally and, indeed, that through which she observes her moral world. Such judgments, once internalized in an agent’s character, thus constitute a meta-attitude through which she engages generally in the exercise of her agency. This is the inevitable result of an attitude developed on the basis of those all-pervasive questions of self-value. The way in which one responds to these pressing questions about self-love is thus a life- and character-defining moment, having an enormous effect on who one is.

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My own account of humility, forthcoming in chapter 5, will provide what I take to be the most satisfactory response to these unavoidable questions of self-value, and thus the most desirable meta-attitude toward the self. But another way that one could seek to resolve these questions of self-worth is through reliance on self–other comparison. Let’s look more closely at what would happen if an agent chose this method for the resolution of her pressing questions of self-worth. Excessive and improper valuing of self–other comparison The question, then, is of what sort of meta-attitude results when a dependent and corrupt agent responds to her pressing questions of self-valuing attendant upon any and every exercise of her agency by determining her value through self–other comparative judgments. There are, I would assert, three possible meta-attitudes which could result from taking self–other comparison as the way to resolve the pressing questions of self-love, none of which constitutes an adequate conception of humility and, indeed, none of which is even morally acceptable. The possible results are: a meta-attitude of inferiority, a meta-attitude of superiority, and an attitude in which one wavers constantly, unstably, and obsessively between judgments of inferiority and superiority. Before looking more carefully at each of these states and the problems with them, I want first to consider the previous question of why these are the only three possible outcomes. Why, in particular, could reliance on self–other comparison to resolve basic questions of self-valuing not lead the agent to a judgment of the essential equality of persons and a meta-attitude based on this judgment? Why is this not an option? And why are the other remaining options only excessive and/or obsessive ones? Why could a person not integrate a more balanced appreciation for her inferiority and superiority into her character? To appreciate, first, why a judgment of equality (and a meta-attitude based on that judgment) is not a possible outcome of the process of self– other comparison, we need first to appreciate the nature of the judgments at the basis of self–other comparison. Any choice situation brings up the question of the value of the self; but situations in which one is faced with the comparative question of how valuable one is relative to other persons present a particular challenge in self-valuing. These judgments require of an agent that she consider her worth not simpliciter, but relative to the worth of other persons. And it should be emphasized that there is a considerable difference between the two sorts of judgments. Judging oneself as excellent or lacking in some way does not in itself demand a comparative judgment

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against other persons’ accomplishments. At most, it demands only judging oneself against some neutral standard. Although one may, at least in theory, be better or worse than other persons who hold themselves to that standard, this is not the judgment that one seeks to make. But the judgments involved in comparing oneself with other persons are inherently concerned not simply (or perhaps at all) with one’s own excellences, limitations, and failures but, more centrally, with one’s superiority or inferiority to that person or persons. These comparative judgments are thus inherently competitive judgments. They are, that is, judgments not simply about whether I am good or bad, but about whether I am better or worse than another. The interest of the one judging is not so much whether she has successfully met a standard, but only the more relative question of whether she is better or worse than others at doing so.11 When these sorts of judgments are made by a dependent and corrupt agent, her already difficult situation is made even worse. This agent is already in an unstable state, one in which she is prone to fear inferiority or overassert herself as superior. And there is nothing in the process of self–other comparison that provides this agent with a point-of-view for escaping that state and arriving instead at an appreciation of the equality of persons; in fact, self–other comparison only exacerbates the tendencies already present in this agent. These comparative-competitive judgments thus only encourage the agent to entrench that tendency she already has to respond to her dependent state by fearing her inferiority and/or over-asserting her superiority. To have any hope for arriving at a conclusion that persons shared an equal worth on some basis, these agents would at least need to be able to appeal to a neutral standard, a standard, that is, which removed them from direct comparison of themselves against others. But self–other comparison provides no such neutral standard, and the dependent and corrupt agent is left only to the affirmation and entrenchment of her worst tendencies, her tendencies, that is, to value the self improperly relative to other objects of moral value. She takes all of her interactions and choices relative to other persons as an opportunity for self–other comparison, an opportunity to find herself either more or less valuable than that person in this situation, and she does so from a perspective which encourages her to make such judgments improperly, out of anxiety about her own dependent state. Arriving at a conclusion that persons are equal is thus not a likely – or perhaps not even 11

I here utilize Wood’s language of the “comparative-competitive” mode of self-judgment. I will return, at the end of chapter 7, to Wood’s claim that the moral person must always avoid direct comparison of herself to other persons on moral grounds.

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a possible – outcome of reliance upon self–other comparison as a basis for self-evaluation. It is not just the case, though, that judgments of equality will not be made. Beyond that, when this sort of being engages in self–other comparison, her own untutored tendencies to value the self improperly relative to other objects of moral value always lead her, furthermore, toward both excessive and improper reliance on such judgments of inferiority or superiority. Let us be careful about what we mean by “excessive” and “improper” here. We are not saying that such an agent will invariably be wrong about the judgments she makes when she compares herself to others, though that is certainly a possible outcome (especially if the facts of the matter at hand suggest equality). Such a being may just as easily be right or wrong about her self-assessment in these comparative-competitive judgments. The central points are that, right or wrong, the judgments themselves will take on an excessive value for her, more value for her than they warrant; and secondly that such judgments will be employed in an improper role vis a` vis the agent’s moral development. Let’s look more closely at each of these claims. First, this agent values these judgments excessively. This is simply the result of accepting them as the means for exiting those most basic questions of self-valuing; for, as we have seen, any response to those pressing questions of self-value becomes a meta-attitude for the agent. These judgments provide for this agent the resolution to her most basic questions of self-valuing, and she has no other perspective or point-of-view from which to moderate her reliance on self–other comparison as a determination of self-worth. As such, she can’t help but to rely upon these judgments as forming the basis of a deeply and pervasively held aspect of her character. But a meta-attitude guided by judgments of superiority or inferiority, or by some combination of such judgments is, for anyone accepting even the most minimal commitment to the equal value of persons, an excessive reliance on and valuing of such judgments. We might accept that some situations could warrant, or merely allow, such judgments, but the idea that such judgments should become the point of view from which one views one’s moral world and exercises one’s agency seems excessive. The excessive reliance this agent places upon self–other comparison can be understood, in part, by appreciating our second point that, in relying on these judgments as the resolution to her most basic questions of self-valuing, this agent is asking these judgments to play a role improper to them. Indeed, she is asking these judgments to resolve a question that they can’t: the ultimate question about the worth of a finite human agent. Comparative judgments can’t get to this more basic question of whether a human has worth qua human, but this is the question that is really underneath all those

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pressing questions of self-love. An agent wants to know whether she has value. It is only in the anxious-turned-competitive state of her corruption that this most basic question of value becomes disfigured, and is expressed as a comparative one, that is, not “do I have value?” but rather “am I better or worse than you?” Trying to resolve these pressing questions of self-worth through self– other comparison is thus like trying to put a round peg in a square hole. Even if I were absolutely correct in my assessment of my value vis a` vis others on a whole range of individual cases (e.g., tennis playing, sympathy, philosophy), adding these up would not be an accurate, or satisfying, formula for assessing my self-worth overall. As such, achieving these answers would not really resolve the underlying question of self-valuing with which we started. The concern about whether I am inferior or superior, and the temptation to answer the pressing questions of one’s worth on those grounds are simply expressions of the misguided anxiety at the heart of a dependent and corrupt agent. Resolution of the question of self-worth demands an exiting of that anxiety and its comparative-competitive grounds, not a succumbing to the conditions it tries to place upon one (that is, the condition that one ask the question of self-worth in comparative-competitive terms). For one who already tends to over- or under-assert her own value in any situation, being asked to compare one’s progress and abilities, or lack thereof, with other similarly situated beings is thus only salt on the wounds of corruption. Anxiety over the loss of the dream of perfect happiness that we saw in chapter 1, which grounds the basic tendency to improperly value the self, is now combined with concern for whether I am better or worse than other finite agents. All of this is too much weight for the being who is asked to engage in comparative judgments: an already existent tendency to value the self improperly thus finds only encouragement and approbation – indeed, it finds its firmest footing – in any pursuit which highlights the varying worth of other finite beings relative to oneself. Having no perspective or point of view from which to escape or moderate her innate tendency, informed by her anxiety, to value the self improperly, such an agent can’t help but to rely on comparative judgments excessively and improperly, making them the basis of that meta-attitude with which she approaches the exercise of her agency. The process of formation of excessive meta-attitudes of self-valuing As I have already suggested, then, there will be only three possible outcomes to the finite agent’s struggle for self-valuing guided only by the tool of

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self–other comparison: a meta-attitude of inferiority, a meta-attitude of superiority, or an unstable and obsessive wavering between the two states. Let’s look at the process which leads to these outcomes. We begin by finding an agent making comparative judgments, judgments which demand a conclusion of inferiority or superiority. When I compare myself against someone else, the conclusion can’t be just that I am “good” or “bad”; nor, given the previous argument, is the conclusion going to be that I am “equal” to others. The conclusion is, rather, that I am “better” or “worse” than someone else relative to some quality or ability. These sorts of individual judgments about inferiority/superiority in specific situations are thus regularly made. Although the question of one’s value may now be settled or determined relative to one situation (for example, flute playing) or relative to one person (relative to one’s husband, for example, or to one’s boss), the impetus to make judgments of self-worth through self–other comparisons is not fully settled or removed by such episodic judgments. Indeed, the opportunities to make these sorts of judgments remain ubiquitous. In every action, every day, one has an opportunity to raise the question of one’s worth relative to the other persons with whom one comes into contact; and resolution of one’s worth through a judgment of inferiority or superiority relative to one person, specific to a particular situation or activity, does little or nothing to resolve it in other situations. Opportunities to address pressing questions of self-worth through appeal to judgments of inferiority and superiority thus remain, and in fact remain very much at the forefront of this agent’s consciousness. That the impetus for raising questions of self-worth retains its strength in this way relates back to our earlier consideration of what question is really being pursued in one’s pressing questions about self-worth presented in the guise of questions of inferiority and superiority. This is the question of one’s worth qua human, and because this underlying question cannot be resolved once-and-for-all by any particular judgment resulting from self– other comparison, this question of one’s real worth hangs in the balance, demanding resolution. There is always another possible judgment to make, another question about one’s value relative to another person vis a` vis another ability or aspect of one’s life. And there is always someone who could be better, or worse, than oneself at something. One thus pursues self–other comparison in a more and more frantic mode. Some may choose to stay in this state of constant, frantic uncertainty about the status of one’s value (and this is indeed one of our three possible outcomes), but this is a particularly unstable state, one which more typically

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seeks further resolution. The only partial resolution of this unstable state which is achievable by an agent with only the tools of self–other comparison to hand is one in which one’s individual judgments (and even the actual state of one’s abilities which these judgments reflect) are forced to coalesce into a meta-attitude of either superiority or inferiority. That is, an agent forces her individual judgments of inferiority and superiority to answer a question for which they’re not really suited, the question of her ultimate self-worth. The agent chooses sides, as it were, on the question of her selfworth, and as we have seen, the only possible outcomes of these judgments are inferiority or superiority, so the only possible meta-attitudes are ones of inferiority or superiority. She agglomerates her beliefs about her inferiority in this situation relative to this person into an assertion that she is an Inferior Person; or alternatively, her beliefs about her superiority in this situation relative to this person into an assertion that she is a Superior Person. Let’s dwell for a moment on exactly what is morally disagreeable about these meta-attitudes of inferiority and superiority. A meta-attitude of inferiority What we find as a result of reliance on self–other comparison is, first, just that sort of character that Richards, Hare, Statman, and others want to avoid: a character pervasively informed by a thorough and problematic acceptance of one’s own inferiority and worthlessness. This person is not unlike Griselda from Christine de Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies, who accepts her inferiority relative to her husband so thoroughly that her agency is emaciated, and she accepts the most obscene abuses at his hands. Griselda is in fact the perfect embodiment of an internalized meta-attitude of inferiority. She is a peasant who was chosen unexpectedly to become the wife of a Marquis. When her husband later “tests” her by telling her that she must give up her children to him to be killed (in fact, he sends them away to be cared for elsewhere), she accepts both his judgments and her inferior status without question. Her responses to her husband’s activities are all grounded in a single comparative judgment, which she states clearly: “[T]here could never be any comparison between your nobility and magnificence and my poverty, nor have I ever reputed myself worthy enough to be either your wife or your maid” (de Pizan, 1982, ii.50.1/172). Because the question of the value of the self is invariably at the forefront in a choice situation, and because Griselda has chosen to resolve this question by affirming her own inferiority relative to her husband, she can’t help but

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to develop an attitude of inferiority which acts both as a lens through which she views the world and a perspective from which she exercises – or fails to exercise – her agency. Indeed, an internalized meta-attitude of inferiority is expressed especially in the emaciation of one’s agency, for clearly, Griselda’s internalized inferiority leads her to reject most of the ways in which one might be tempted to respond to her situation. In order for her belief in her inferiority to pervade her life and actions, Griselda must quell any urge she might feel to act in the way a dignified human agent naturally would in these situations: to question her husband’s decisions, to express horror or anger about them, even simply to grieve her losses. Griselda’s choice of valuing and internalizing her inferiority prevents her from engaging in the decisive action which would prevent domination by her husband. The ultimate result for Griselda in her acceptance and internalization of her beliefs of inferiority is, then, the emaciation of her agency: she cannot at once accept humility and be a fully active and flourishing human agent. The only action in which she can engage is submission. She has become an inferior person. But when an agent interiorizes her beliefs about her inferiority in this way, she is not very far from believing not only that she is inferior, but also that she is generally worthless. In time, a pervasive belief in one’s inferiority becomes a more wholesale belief in one’s worthlessness, and self-contempt is born. Although Griselda does not speak of her own worthlessness, we needn’t search far to find such an association between an internalized sense of inferiority grounded in self–other comparison and self-contempt. Certain aspects of the Christian monastic tradition are so convinced of the psychological power that self–other comparison can wield over one’s character that they make it part of the pursuit of a humility grounded in both inferiority and worthlessness. They accept, that is, the idea that humility should be importantly tied to habits of self–other comparison which should ground a belief in one’s inferiority, and ultimately should issue in a thoroughgoing self-contempt. Consider, for example, steps 6 and 7 of Bernard of Clairvaux’s “steps of humility”: 7. To believe and admit that one is less than others. 6. To confess and to believe that one is unworthy and useless for anything.12 These steps coincide with St. Benedict’s even more striking articulation of the same: 12

Bernard of Clairvaux, 1973, 26.

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The sixth degree of humility is that a monk be content with the poorest and worst of everything, and that in every occupation assigned him he consider himself a bad and worthless workman . . . The seventh degree of humility is that he consider himself lower and of less account than anyone else, and this not only in verbal protestation but also with the most heartfelt inner conviction, humbling himself and saying with the Prophet, “But I am a worm and no man, the scorn of men and the outcast of the people.”13

An internalized belief in one’s inferiority that results from continual reliance on self–other comparison is thus closely tied, and leads inexorably, to a belief in one’s worthlessness. Recent writers on humility wanted to avoid just these associations of the state with worthlessness; but by beginning with the assumption that humility could be grounded in self–other comparison, we find ourselves right back in front of the all-too-familiar picture of humility associated with inferiority, worthlessness, and self-contempt. In accepting self–other comparison as a grounding for the virtue, these commentators thus place themselves on this slippery slope. Magnanimity, superiority, and the equal worth of persons The alternative, of course, is to embrace superiority instead. Although an internalized belief in one’s superiority might seem preferable to the image of internalized inferiority just considered, it is in fact no more desirable. What would it mean, then, to be a superior person, and what is problematic about such a person? First, to recognize oneself as superior is not, as some commentators seek to present it, simply a claim about excellence. If it were only this, it could perhaps be understood as a variant of proper selfrespect, for a self-respecting person could not deny something true of her. Beyond being a claim of excellence, though, we are dealing with a claim of superiority. And to judge that one is superior is, as we have seen, a different thing than to judge that one is excellent. The former doesn’t simply (or perhaps even at all) answer the question of “Am I a good person?” Rather, it answers the question “Am I better than other persons?” One claiming superiority is thus concerned not only to affirm, for example, her own virtue; she is, further, concerned to assess her virtue comparatively against that of other persons, and to affirm that her virtue is better than the virtue of others. Furthermore, although most of these commentators want to avoid discussing it on this level, we are once again affirming that because self–other 13

Benedict (St.), 1948, 27.

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comparison is being utilized in addressing one’s most basic and pressing questions about self-worth, any resulting claims of superiority do not express themselves solely on the level of judgments or actions. Ultimately, judgments of one’s superiority affirmed regularly in both judgment and action become internalized not just as any simple trait of character but more pervasively, given our acceptance of the Corruption Thesis, as a metaattitude. To affirm claims of superiority is thus not simply to admit that the superior person occasionally recognizes in her own mind that she is better than others at various things, nor even that she occasionally acts in ways which affirm this. Beyond all this, we must view her attitude of superiority as the lens through which she observes her moral world and a grounding aspect of her person. An awareness of her superiority is internalized into her character, her affects, her habits, her way of being in the world. What will such a person look like? A particularly problematic aspect of this superior person’s character is the internalized sense of arrogance with which she holds herself. The magnanimous man is a good model here. His attitude of superiority is so thoroughly integrated that it affects even the way he talks and walks. As Aristotle notes, “[a] slow step is thought proper to the magnanimous man, [also] a deep voice, and a level utterance” (1962, 1125a15/95). We do not even need, then, to appeal to certain sorts of acts of the magnanimous man – for example, acts which seek to grant himself more rights or privileges than others – in order to identify his attitude of superiority (though we would, most likely, be able to find such acts), because his very way of being in the world already implies such superiority. Arrogance is expressed not only in the self-presentation of such a superior person, but also, and relatedly, in the superior person’s tendency to over-value questions of how she is perceived and judged by others. For, when an agent is concerned not to know herself as excellent, but rather to affirm herself as superior, she becomes equally, or more, concerned not only with having a proper self-evaluation, but also with how those comparative judgments which affirm her superiority and distinguish her from other agents are made to, displayed to and evaluated by others. These comparative judgments are, after all, judgments not just about herself but about herself relative to others, and the perceptions and attitudes of those implicated in these judgments become more important thereby. Recognition of the truth of these comparative judgments by those implicated in them would, for example, be that further empirical evidence the superior person seeks to affirm her initial judgments. She thus cannot avoid being concerned to have others, and society generally, recognize the truth of these claims.

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The magnanimous man is, once again, a good model to turn to here, for Aristotle takes many opportunities to discuss the “marks” by which the magnanimous man makes his worth, and the relative inferiority of others, clear to others: [The magnanimous man] is the sort of man to confer benefits, but he is ashamed of receiving them; for the one is the mark of a superior, the other of an inferior . . . They seem also to remember any service they have done, but not those they have received (for he who receives a service is inferior to him who has done it, but the magnanimous man wishes to be superior). (Aristotle, 1962, 1124b13– 1124b14/92–93)

The magnanimous man, despite Aristotle’s own protestations to the contrary elsewhere, is indeed quite attentive to what others think about him. He “wishes to be superior,” and, as such, he does not want to seem to others to care about any assistance or attention he has received from others. This would, after all, make it seem as if he needed that attention, and was thus inferior to the giver. The magnanimous man does indeed care deeply about how he is perceived by others. He will thus treat persons differently depending upon their status in relation to him, since this is further sign to others, and to himself, of his position relative to them: It is a mark of the magnanimous man . . . to be dignified towards people who enjoy high position and good fortune, but unassuming towards those of the middle class; for it is a difficult and lofty thing to be superior to the former, but easy to be so to the latter, and a lofty bearing over the former is no mark of ill-breeding, but among humble people it is as vulgar as a display of strength against the weak. (Aristotle, 1962, 1124b16–1124b20/93)

It might seem that the magnanimous man’s “unassuming” attitude toward those of the middle class is an indication that he does not care what others think of him, since he does not take the time to display his superiority here. But this is not the case: flaunting the fact of his greater worth before such lesser persons would make it seem as if he weren’t confident in it; but he wants to be perceived as being confident in his superiority. His unassuming attitude toward them is thus, ironically, further indication of the pervasiveness of his attitude of superiority. The magnanimous man is indeed concerned to be recognized as superior by others; he just has a variety of subtle ways by which to keep those others in their place relative to himself. For anyone with at least a basic commitment to the valuing of the equal dignity of persons, this meta-attitude of superiority is thus no more desirable than an acquired meta-attitude of inferiority. It is problematic in that it

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involves arrogance both in one’s self-presentation and in one’s emphasis upon marks of distinction among persons which efface any meaningful commitment to the equal dignity of persons.14 These problematic meta-attitudes of inferiority and superiority are what result when an agent relies on self–other comparison for the resolution of her most basic questions of self-valuing. Beyond being disagreeable in themselves, these meta-attitudes of inferiority and superiority are also essentially unstable states, because the judgments on which they are based are not, as we have seen, appropriate answers to the question of self-worth really being asked. Our presumption, though, is that self–other comparison is the only tool this agent has in her pursuit of self-worth, and so these are the judgments upon which this agent relies and the most stable meta-attitude options our agent has. The only alternative to these states of inferiority and superiority is that one remain hanging in the balance, wavering back and forth between affirmations of inferiority and superiority, depending upon the context. Although this might, at first glance, seem an option preferable to the two preceding ones, because it seems that inferiority here could balance out superiority there, in fact, this result is no more preferable than the other two, as it too does not genuinely settle the original question of self-worth that started the whole process. One who is forced constantly to revisit the questions of self-worth pressing upon her is in an unbalanced and insecure state, facing that anxiety at the basis of her corruption on a daily basis. This is not a settled state of virtue but the picture of a person continually at odds with herself, continually in fear for the loss of her self-worth, and continually obsessed with the question of that worth. One pursues the question 14

Some commentators would not accept the egregiousness of internalized superiority I have presented. Statman has insisted that humility or modesty can be inoffensively linked with an affirmation of one’s superiority, and that the potentially offensive arrogant effects of affirming one’s superiority can be ameliorated by appeal to a recognition of shared equal rights. Could this work? What Statman needs for his modest person to be convincing is an account of modesty that goes all the way down to a deeply held attitude about the equality of persons. But it turns out that the modest person’s willingness to act in ways consonant with a belief in the equal value of persons simply can’t be matched as unambiguously on the level of character. This is because while the modest person’s belief about the equality of persons need only be “just a general recognition – vague as it may be – of one’s moral duty towards one’s fellow beings” (Statman, 1992, 434–435), her belief in her superiority grounds a “strong inclination” and “very powerful temptation” to disbelieve this claim of equal worth. It is hard to see how this agent manages even to acquire this disposition to act on her belief in equality, since it is so vague, and her inclination against following it is so strong and powerful. But even if this disposition to act were achieved, we have, at best, a picture of a conflicted agent, one fighting constantly against her strong inclinations; or worse, a hypocritical agent, one relenting to the demands of equal dignity on the level of action, but not in the depths of her person. In either case, it’s hard to view Statman’s modest person as someone who truly recognizes the equal worth of persons.

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of one’s self-worth incessantly, obsessively, looking to each opportunity for such comparison as yet more evidence in the ongoing determination of one’s true worth. Remaining concerns, objections For anyone committed to even the most basic valuing of the equal dignity of persons, these images of internalized inferiority, superiority, or wavering fears of self-worth are clearly repugnant. They are, however, the inevitable result of reliance upon self–other comparison in pursuit of the quelling of basic questions about self-worth. Self–other comparison is, then, to be strenuously avoided as a basis for that attitude we would be willing to call the virtue of humility. It is ironic then that contemporary commentators on humility seek to rehabilitate the state by rejecting any underlying account of human nature and relying instead on self–other comparisons. For, what the preceding account has shown is that it is reliance on self–other comparison and the competition that comes out of that, which has disfigured humility. Undue emphasis on self–other comparison is precisely where humility goes wrong, not how it can be saved. Recent commentators who have sought to remove themselves from any assumption of an association between humility/modesty and inferiority by a strong reliance on self–other comparison to ground one’s self-assessment are thus, on the assumption of the Corruption Thesis, forced back to just such an association. By focusing on competitive judgments instead of an account of human nature in the face of a transcendent standard of some sort, these commentators leave humility in a decidedly un-rehabilitated state. Of course, since these commentators try to avoid any account of human nature, they would want to reject the picture of the human agent, and the consequences of it, I have just drawn. But they do so at their peril. Indeed, it is unclear at this point why they would want to avoid reference to a shared limit or weakness of humanity. These commentators were hesitant to accept such a starting point of corrupt human nature, in part, because they assumed it would involve both necessary religious reference and an unacceptable picture of human nature as worthless. But neither of these consequences need follow. On the latter point, I have assumed only a conception of human nature which accepts a basic difficulty in loving oneself well, not one which demands of agents that they see themselves as inferior, wormlike, or worthless dust and ashes. Further, our argument here has shown that associations of inferiority and worthlessness follow most directly not from

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a shared conception of human nature as one which struggles with questions of self-worth, but instead from acceptance of self–other comparison as the response to those questions of self-worth. It is not problematic accounts of human nature that have distorted humility; rather, it is the human tendency to seek correctives for the corrupt tendencies of human nature in a deep and pervasive commitment to self–other comparison that has infected the state. Our current claim that acceptance of a dependent and corrupt nature in humans need not lead to affirmations of worthlessness will, furthermore, be bolstered in forthcoming chapters when we show the proper moral response to this state to be importantly and necessarily linked with a robust notion of self-respect. Finally, although our forthcoming account may be compatible with various religious orientations, it will not demand them. Some might still feel hesitant to accept a robust picture of human nature on epistemic grounds: we cannot prove in any empirically reliable way that all humans share the tendency toward undue self-love which I want to attribute to them, nor can we observe aspects of this nature or an underlying character resulting from it in the way we can observe behavior. We should, therefore, avoid dependence upon such unfounded assertions in any account of humility. If we find, however, that an effort to rely only on empirically justifiable starting points results in a distorted image of humility as a virtue, we are left with three choices: either accept an account of the state which we know to be inadequate, abandon any effort to define the state out of an admission of epistemic limits, or relent and seek to accept some minimal picture of human nature in an effort to provide a more acceptable picture of humility. The first option seems unreasonable at this point. The second option of ceasing and desisting is similarly undesirable in face of the important human concerns that reflection on the virtue of humility can allow. I have thus chosen the third option, and this leads me to put forward a decidedly different account of humility than those who insist on the relentless empirical route would accept. But even if we accept some picture of human dependence and corruption as a starting point, one might still insist that the descent into egregious valuing of judgments of inferiority and superiority I have asserted represents only a possible and not a necessary effect of attempting to ground humility in self–other comparisons. Surely, there are some who are able to engage in self–other comparisons without falling into such demoralizing states. But to assert this is to miss the point of chapter 1: there is a pervasiveness to the human tendency to value the self improperly that does not allow any of us to escape its effects. This is not to say that morally inoffensive

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self–other comparison is impossible. But it is to say that those who would succeed in avoiding the internalization of egregious attitudes of inferiority and superiority through self–other comparisons would do so only in one of two ways: either through a sheer coincidence, an accident of the status of their particular concerns of self-love relative to those of the other involved in the comparison (which would not seem particularly virtuous, since not attributable to the activity of the agent); or through previous successful attention to the precarious state of the human seeking to love the self properly (that is, through some other successful effort to gain perspective on oneself apart from and previous to one’s comparison of self with others which then allows that comparison to proceed without negative effects). Without some previous moral accomplishment, such consequences are inevitable, or at best, their avoidance is not virtuous but only accidental. Indeed, our own definition of humility in chapter 5, which assumes no reference to self–other comparison, is just that other possible, and more successful, effort to calm the questions about self-value that impose themselves inexorably upon the consciousness of the finite rational agent. Some people are able to engage in self–other comparison in a morally productive way. But that is only because they have been able to gain perspective on their own status as a dependent and corrupt being, and thus upon those questions of self-value that inevitably visit upon any choice situation. That is, they are able to engage in self–other comparison well only because they are already humble.

part ii i

The Kantian virtue of humility

c h a pt e r 5

The Kantian virtue of humility

We have seen humility grounded in inferiority, and associated with weakness, self-degradation, and self-contempt. We have also seen humility and modesty affiliated with superiority, magnanimity, and arrogance. Any humility grounded in self–other comparison allows only for these two unacceptable options. We have, however, in preceding chapters, also begun to build a picture of the human agent, and of values, that makes it possible for us to define the state more securely, avoiding reliance on self–other comparison but allowing the agent to achieve a perspective on herself nonetheless. Further reflection on the ideas already presented in these earlier chapters will reveal a preferable, and more transcendent, standard in relation to which an agent gains perspective on herself. She will not compare her own value, needs, and desires against those of other persons. Rather, she transcends such comparative-competitive judgments, and instead compares her status as a dependent and corrupt agent in the unavoidable pursuit of self-love against the value of moral principles to which all persons, including herself, are held equally. What we shall discover as a result of this investigation is that humility is that meta-attitude which constitutes the moral agent’s proper perspective on herself as a dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified rational agent. Through her proper appreciation for the role of moral principles in her life, the humble agent clears the static of undue self-love – those pressing questions of value which have the potential to distort the exercise of one’s agency – and thus has the value of herself in the proper place in her overall hierarchy of value. This shift in valuing will not, however, remove the opportunity for self–other comparison entirely; rather, as we shall see in chapter 7, humility provides a perspective from which to engage in self–other comparison in the most morally productive way possible, viz., as an opportunity to rely upon moral exemplars as a guide in one’s moral development. 133

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Let us turn, then, to an analysis of the meta-attitude of humility. I begin this chapter by introducing a guiding image for the developing picture of our humble person, and considering some constraints on what standards could be understood to undergird the character of such a person. I turn, then, to our positive definition of humility, articulating both the judgments and feelings which constitute the central aspects of this meta-attitude. In the following chapter, I consider questions about the relationship of humility and self-respect; and in chapter 7, I consider what acquisition of this metaattitude of humility means for the humble person’s general demeanor in the world. i n s ea rc h o f a t ra n s c en d e n t s ta n d a rd I begin with a guiding image, one which presents for us a new direction in which to head in making sense of the possibilities for a humility properly grounded: Cordelia from Shakespeare’s King Lear. Cordelia’s famous refusal to respond to her father’s questions in the sycophantic, pandering way that her sisters do is the first evidence of Cordelia’s humility and her sisters’ lack of it. Whereas Cordelia will admit the unavoidable limits of her love honestly to her father, her sisters, Goneril and Regan, instead flatter their father – who is all too susceptible to their assurances that he is in a position much superior to them – with excessive claims of love. Goneril claims, for example, that she loves Lear “[b]eyond what can be valued, rich or rare” (i.1.56); Regan goes so far as to say that she loves no one else, and takes joy in nothing else, but her father.1 These professions of love are particularly unhumble claims. True love would be some kind of proper valuing of the object of love. So, to claim as Goneril does, that she loves Lear “beyond what can be valued,” though nearly nonsensical, is at least excessive: it is a claim of love beyond love, a love of a kind not known to human beings. Regan’s claim that she has no other love than her father is also excessive, a refusal to recognize proper limits. As Cordelia herself rightly challenges: “Why have my sisters husbands if they say / They love you all?” (i.1.98). Although Lear is clearly susceptible to thinking that it is possible to be loved by one person so fully that it cannot be divided by love for others, such perfect singularity of love is humanly impossible. Duties to various persons in one’s life will, at times, demand that hard decisions be made about where one’s loving attention 1

“I profess / Myself an enemy to all other joys / Which the most precious square of sense possesses, / And find I am alone felicitate / In your dear Highness’ love” (i.1.71–75).

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will be focused. But Goneril and Regan – and Lear, to his peril – ignore such facts. The sisters, taking a lesson from Uriah Heep, present themselves as inferior to Lear so as to play on his vanities, his willingness to accept their suggestions that he is worthy of such super-human forms of love. Throughout the play, Cordelia is presented, in stark opposition to her sisters, not only as truer and more loving, but also as more humble. Indeed, the trueness of her love is revealed in the humility from which it springs, from her proper understanding of her powers and her limits. When, for example, she is asked by Lear “what can you say to draw / A third more opulent [dowry] than your sisters?” (i.1.83–84), Cordelia honestly admits that she can say “nothing” (85). Not only does she admit she cannot go beyond her sisters’ claims; she further admits that she must make a more restrained claim than they, thus re-instituting the human limits they have transgressed. She does not claim to love her father beyond his value, or beyond her own limits; rather, she loves him “According to [her] bond; no more nor less” (i.1.92). And she tells Lear that when she marries, she will accept the human constraint that her love must then be divided: “Haply, when I shall wed, / That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry / Half my love with him, half my care and duty. / Sure I shall never marry like my sisters, / To love my father all” (i.1.99–103). In humbly affirming the limits of her love, Cordelia reveals her love as true. Cordelia’s love is further revealed as humble in that she eschews comparative-competitive judgments of worth. Even after Lear has banished her from his kingdom and withdrawn her dowry, and Lear himself has been laid low, Cordelia refuses to make those judgments of inferiority and superiority which would allow her to lord over her father’s mistakes, failures, and weaknesses. When, for example, she is reunited with her father who finally wakes from his madness, not only does she not lord herself over him; she does not even presume that she should be the first to speak with him.2 As Lear begins to recognize her, she refuses to allow him to prostrate himself before her, asking instead for his blessing.3 And when Lear insists that she, unlike her sisters, has cause to kill him, she denies it.4 Not only did her love prevent Cordelia from placing her father high above her as a super-human object of love (as Goneril and Regan were all too happy to 2 3 4

“[Cordelia:] – he wakes; speak to him / [Doctor:] Madam, do you; ’tis fittest” (iv.7.42–43). “O look upon me, sir, / And hold your hands in benediction o’er me. / No, sir, you must not kneel” (iv.7.57–60). “[Lear:] If you have poison for me I will drink it. / I know you do not love me; for your sisters / Have, as I do remember, done me wrong: / You have some cause, they have not. / [Cordelia:] No cause, no cause” (iv.7.72–75).

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claim); hers is also a love that refuses to place him beneath her. Cordelia’s love is humble. It leaves no room for asserting a basic inferiority and superiority among persons. Rather, in the true humility in which it is grounded, it unites persons in their shared capacities and limits, even through the most strenuous and challenging of situations. The tragic point of Shakespeare’s play is, of course, that Cordelia’s humble love will not be rewarded. Humility might work – that is, be rewarded, or at least not be punished – in a world where all sought it. But in Cordelia’s world, excess – going beyond one’s natural limits – is the order of the day. In such a world, not only will the humble not be rewarded; Cordelia’s truest lament is that, in her world, the truly humble are guaranteed to suffer. By honestly revealing the limits of her love, she is considered insubordinate and is banished by her father. By refusing to connive against her sisters, she loses her dowry and is led to her death. Even her father, who finally recognizes her virtue, recognizes it too late. Kent, and the Fool, are the only others to recognize her virtue, but both are restrained from acting, Kent by his honesty which leads Lear to banish him, the Fool by needing to take on the ironic – and powerless – role of the fool in order to speak his truths. Shakespeare expresses his pessimism about the humble person’s place in the world most poignantly when, just before Cordelia’s death, Lear fantasizes about a world in which they could live as themselves. Not surprisingly, it is a world in which they are protected from others by living in a cage, a prison, from which they can observe the comparative-competitive games of politics from a safe distance: Come, let’s away to prison. / We two alone will sing like birds i’ th’ cage; / When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down / And ask of thee forgiveness; so we’ll live / And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh / At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues / Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too – / Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out – / And take upon’s the mystery of things / As if we were God’s spies; and we’ll wear out / In a wall’d prison packs and sects of great ones / That ebb and flow by th’ moon. (v.3.8–19)

In an ideal world, humility would reign. One would seek out “blessings” from one’s superiors only to find them prostrating themselves before you seeking “forgiveness.” And the humble person would be protected from the crass games of the “court,” the world of politics and commerce. Of course, Lear’s dream will not come true. Both he and Cordelia will die, and the injustice of their world will thereby be revealed. As Lear laments over Cordelia’s death, “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, / And thou no breath at all?” (v.3.306–307).

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Shakespeare is clearly pessimistic about whether there is genuine room in this world for the humble person. Though I am at times sympathetic with his pessimism, I am ultimately less pessimistic than he. It is my hope that our world (as opposed to Cordelia’s) could be a place where people who positively integrated an appreciation for the nature of human limits into their world view could flourish. What would be necessary is not only to be able to view the comparative-competitive games of the world from a safe distance, as Lear fantasizes. Further, when these games encroach improperly upon one’s life, the humble person would also have the resources to remove and/or protect herself from them as necessary. Indeed, as we shall see, responding to them with moral outrage, and in a way that counteracts their potential pernicious effects, would be entirely compatible with our own account of humility. This does not mean that the humble person would be entirely impervious to harm, but it would also mean that they were no more subject to it, and indeed might have more moral resources, than any other human being in a world that is not always just. And Cordelia is, despite her tragic end, a model in just this sense: her humility, far from preventing her from speaking out, is the point-of-view from which she first courageously asserts the limits of her love for her father and then later proves that humble and equalizing love despite strong temptations to lord her power over him. In refusing the games of inferiority and superiority in which her sisters reveled, she proves her virtue. Which transcendent standard? To this extent, then, we accept Cordelia as a guiding image in our pursuit of understanding humility properly. Despite my quibbles with Shakespeare about the space for a humble person in the human world, this picture of Cordelia does give us a sense of what a humble person who recognized shared human limits and who rejected the centrality of self–other comparisons might look and act like. It is toward the understanding of such a person that our pursuit of those standards undergirding humility must be pointed. We know, then, at this point that humility cannot be grounded in self– other comparison and also that the humble person would be one who both rejected the centrality of self–other comparisons and affirmed the equal worth and shared human limits of all persons. But we do not yet understand that standard which would undergird such an attitude or explain such behaviors or characters. We know that we need a standard for gaining perspective on self that transcends the self–other comparison we have found lacking, but we do not yet have a clear sense of what that standard is.

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There has been some discussion in the contemporary literature on humility of appealing to a standard which transcends comparison among persons. Hare, for example, briefly considers the possibility of appealing to a non-religious, but still somewhat transcendent standard when defining humility.5 He finds this an unattractive option, but only because he largely mischaracterizes the attempt. His description of such appeal is as follows: It is conceivable that a non-comparative kind of humility could help the gifted further to perfect their strengths by remaining dissatisfied with their attained results. Setting a higher moral standard for oneself than others do for themselves might lead one to manifest what is conventionally regarded as an outwardly humble attitude. All the same, we would still be tempted to perceive a persistent dimension of wilful ignorance in the “humble,” where “humble” is taken to mean being outwardly modest because one is perpetually dissatisfied with one’s attainments, even though they are far beyond those of most other people. (Hare, 1996b, 238)

It is not clear to me why Hare believes that appeal to a transcendent standard would necessarily involve “setting a higher moral standard for oneself than others.” It is certainly the case that some people don’t expect enough of themselves morally, that others expect too much of themselves morally, and that both can be annoying in different ways because of this. Regardless, we can still speak of moral standards to which all persons are held, and in relation to which all have warrant to find themselves at times lacking. Such evaluation is not holding oneself to a standard “higher” than what others do. There is thus no reason that appeal to a transcendent standard would necessarily result in the picture of the morally arrogant person Hare describes. Morgan, on the other hand, has insisted that we can’t make sense of humility at all without appeal to some transcendent standard or reality, even if not an explicitly religious one. According to him, without such appeal, humility ends up being far too self-centered a state when, in fact, it is the ultimate selfless state.6 I am in general sympathy with Morgan’s concern to soften the self-centeredness of current accounts. Morgan’s own description of transcendence, relying upon the writings of Murdoch and Weil, is, however, a bit too transcendent, mystical, and religiously oriented. He speaks of a reality that is “other and greater than oneself ” 5

6

“[P]erhaps humility is not a disposition to compare oneself with others at all, but rather a disposition to take a very modest view of oneself simply in relation to some transcendent and super-personal standard, such as God or some other ideal” (Hare, 1996b, 237). “‘[S]ecular’ humility is not humility at all, because naturalized humility is focused first and foremost on the self. Rather, humility is directed away from oneself and is a virtue that arises from a recognition of and attunement to a reality that is other and greater than oneself” (Morgan, 2001, 312).

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(Morgan, 2001, 312), one which is “entirely different” from us (Morgan, 2001, 313), and which “is always in some sense beyond us” (Morgan, 2001, 313). Indeed, Morgan is so fixed on the centrality of this transcendent reality, and his opposition to current accounts which are too self-centered, that his definition of humility seems to drop concern for self-evaluation entirely, in favor of contemplation of an unknowable reality beyond human grasp, and this goes too far in the opposite direction. Schueler, though in agreement with Statman and others about avoiding any transcendent standard that would involve appeal to a deity in comparison to which humans have to admit that they have no genuine accomplishments, does, late in his discussion of modesty, consider briefly the world-view that appears to inform his modest person’s behavior; and this world-view does act as a transcendent, but still secular, standard of sorts. Having completed a definition of modesty in which the modest person is one who “[has, and is] aware of having some genuine accomplishments,” but at the same time does not “care whether people evaluate one highly because of these accomplishments” (Schueler, 1997, 479), Schueler suggests that this modest person has also “taken to heart what is at least very arguably her true place in the scheme of things” (Schueler, 1997, 484). This proper sense of oneself in the order of things involves the belief that “the more one looks into the various cultural, social, educational and other factors that explain any of one’s accomplishments . . . , the less of one’s self one finds and the more important these external explanatory factors seem to be” (Schueler, 1997, 484). This recognition is, in fact, so strong that from this point of view, “all would be things totally outside one’s control” (484, emphasis added). According to Schueler, then, the modest person does not care about being highly evaluated by others for her accomplishments because, although she has attained things that, in one light, appear to be genuine accomplishments, in light of the perspective which this larger world-view imposes upon her, she recognizes that she does not in fact merit that credit. This is a curious move for Schueler to make. Such an appeal to a worldview was not in fact central to his main definition of modesty throughout the article, and its introduction late in the game leaves one with the impression that, by accepting it, we undermine the definition of modesty he has just given. Part of his definition of modesty involves, after all, his modest person “having, and being aware of having, some genuine accomplishments” (Schueler, 1997, 479, emphasis added). But if “all would be . . . totally outside one’s control” (484) in the bigger picture, it is hard to see how an agent could claim that she has an accomplishment which is genuinely her

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own. Accepting this world-view thus seems to demand that she admit that she has no “genuine” accomplishments. So now it seems that the modest person is in a conflicted state, wanting, from one perspective, to recognize her accomplishments genuinely as her own but, from another, having to admit (perhaps painfully?) that no accomplishment is genuinely hers. But surely Schueler doesn’t want to accept this latter statement. The reason he rejected religiously oriented approaches to humility and modesty in the first place was because it was “hard to accept” that they demanded of an agent that she take no credit for any of her successes (471). But this is exactly what his own modest person would have to do if she accepted the world view here suggested. Indeed, accepting the strong mitigating effect of external circumstances on one’s agency that Schueler would have us adopt would force us to accept that humans are not really agents at all, but only pawns subject to the forces and contingencies of a larger world. Schueler’s effort at introducing a quasi-transcendent standard to inform the behavior of the modest person thus fails to be satisfying. Statman, though not responding directly to Morgan, and avoiding Schueler’s secular replacement of a transcendent standard in favor of comparative claims of superiority has, as we have seen, suggested that any appeal to a transcendent standard (even on would-be secular accounts of humility like Richards’ and Flanagan’s) in fact problematically presupposes not only a religious background, but also an unacceptably low conception of human nature: God, or a God-like transcendent standard is that in comparison to which humans are found utterly worthless, and no secular replacement of this divine standard will allow us to escape these problems. He thus strenuously seeks to avoid appeal to a transcendent standard.7 I don’t think, however, that these commentators have considered all the options before retreating into more behavioral accounts of modesty or humility. Although we might grant that our interests in defending humility as a virtue can be traced back to a history of religiously informed commitments about human nature to which one may or may not want to cling, it is in fact possible to provide a philosophically respectable, and not necessarily religious, account of a transcendent standard, and the limits of human nature in the face of it, from which to gain that perspective on oneself that warrants a more intuitively familiar form of humility, without falling into the excessively low estimations of human worth about which Statman and Schueler are concerned, nor admitting Statman’s counter-intuitive image 7

Though, as we have seen earlier, even Statman can’t avoid some implicit claims about the equal worth of persons which might be thought to imply a transcendent standard for action and character.

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or Schueler’s conflicted picture of the extraordinary modest person as a result. This is precisely what our chapter 1 account of dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified human nature has suggested. It will be in further reflection on the moral implications of this picture of humanity in the face of a transcendent standard that we will be able to define humility properly. Morgan is, then, right in a sense: many current accounts of humility and modesty do seem overly self-centered; and efforts to relieve such selfcenteredness have been thus far unsuccessful. We do need to recognize the value of something other, or larger, than ourselves in the sense of those egoistic selves caught up with concerns of self-love in order to move to a more satisfactory account of humility. Although we want an account of humility that is not necessarily religious in nature, we also want to avoid the comparative-competitive model of self-assessment. We can thus appreciate the need for some quasi-transcendent standard which avoids this more egregious form of comparison but also provides that standard in comparison with which human agency can be seen to fall short without falling into worthlessness. Ben-Ze’ev is one commentator who does successfully appeal to a transcendent standard which eschews self-centeredness in his account of modesty. He suggests that computation of the worth of one’s accomplishments “is insignificant in light of the basic common nature and fate (say, death) of all human beings” (Ben-Ze’ev, 1993, 237). The common nature of humans thus acts as an equalizing standard from which humans can make more sense of themselves and their accomplishments. I am generally sympathetic to this approach, but Ben-Ze’ev does not go on to expand on this appeal to a “basic common nature and fate” of humans, leaving the precise contours of it quite vague. Furthermore, he ultimately distinguishes strongly between modesty which involves a lack of exaggeration about oneself in light of these facts, and humility which he rejects, since he says it demands having a low opinion of oneself, in fact, underrating oneself. We do not, however, need to abandon humility as a self-abnegating state of character, and a further reflection on the “common nature and fate” of humans can reveal this. We turn, then, not to comparison of oneself against an infinite being in relation to which humans are worthless, nor to comparison of oneself against other persons in relation to which one finds oneself inferior or superior, but instead to universally applicable moral principles as that aspect of one’s “common nature” in comparison with which one gains perspective on oneself as a dependent and corrupt but also capable and dignified rational agent. This standard of comparison

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removes us from the one extreme of the comparative-competitive model that results from taking other persons as one’s primary basis for comparison, but does not move us to that other extreme of a necessarily religiously transcendent standard, entirely removed from human reality, accessible (or quasi-accessible) only to those with religious beliefs or mystical tendencies, and tending toward an assessment of humans as worthless.8 The point-of-view I suggest, provided by a proper appreciation of moral principles, is thus transcendent in that it transcends the perspective of any particular agent, and certainly the wants and desires of any one individual. But on the account I propose, we don’t even transcend the self entirely, since on the Kantian account of them which I assume, moral principles are autonomously given.9 But we do transcend the self in a more limited sense: we exit the internal battles of the self in the arena of self-love, that no-win game in which the exercise of one’s agency is guided by a fear for the loss of one’s perfect happiness which leads all to hope for superiority, or to fear inferiority. This appeal to the transcendent standard of moral principles does not, however, move the agent toward an utterly other reality. It makes sense, too, that one’s standard for self-evaluation would not be something entirely foreign, other, inaccessible, and thus not truly one’s own; for certainly, in order to be held to a standard in evaluation of self, that standard must be genuinely applicable to oneself. Moral principles are, in addition to being universally applicable principles, also one’s own principles. They thus provide the most proper sort of standard: a transcendent standard which is simultaneously local, and has authority in the self-evaluation of a person claiming status as a rational being. 8

9

When Thomas Hill speaks of humility in relation to nature and the environment, he suggests that “[l]earning humility requires learning to feel that something matters besides what will affect oneself and one’s circle of associates” (Hill, 1991, 113). It is my appeal to the quasi-transcendent standard of moral principles which explains the value structure of one who is more able to adopt just this sort of perspective on the value of things other than oneself of which Hill speaks. Morgan himself admits this Kantian point when he quotes Iris Murdoch who insists that, even after Nietzsche and the death of God, “we continue to recognize moral absolutes . . . Kant was right to take our recognition of duty as something fundamental . . . We can lose God, but not Good” (Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, as quoted in Morgan, 2001, 312n35). Both Statman (1992, 434) and Ben-Ze’ev (1993, 240–241) also make passing appeal to a quasi-Kantian grounding of their accounts of modesty. Statman does not go far enough in this Kantian appeal in that he adopts Kant’s account of human worth, but not of human limit. Ben-Ze’ev, on the other hand, does speak both of equal human worth and of a “basic human limitation in comparison with the purity of the moral law which is holy and perfect” (Ben-Ze’ev, 1993, 241). As I have noted already though, Ben-Ze’ev, like Statman, draws a sharp distinction between the modesty which he finds reflected in this Kantian world-view and humility, the latter of which involves “lower[ing] our worth from its real value,” and hence also “insincerity” and “underestimation” (1993, 240).

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Importantly, though, such self-evaluation is also not a self-fascination of the sort about which Morgan expresses worries; it is indeed the opposite, for evaluation of self from the perspective of the value of moral principles clears the static of self-love, and all of the self-fascinations, absorptions, and obsessions that come with it. Indeed, it is the story of self-love gone wrong that we accepted in chapter 1, and the resulting need to remove ourselves from self-absorption of various sorts, that inspires concern for a virtue related to self-evaluation in the first place. Self-evaluation through the lens of the value of moral principles is that sort of self-attention that corrects self-absorption and allows the self to be valued properly. An agent who engages in it is thus more able to turn her attention out into the moral world without as much interference from the static of self-love. Neither is this process of self-evaluation vis a` vis moral principles a merely solipsistic affair, or a way of using one’s fascination with morality to cut oneself off from other persons. An agent seeking the proper valuing of herself in relation to moral principles needs, as we shall see, as a condition of the acquisition of a proper perspective, to recognize all persons as sharing the same capacities and limits as those that she attributes to herself, and this perspective opens her up to relating to other persons more genuinely. Reflection on her commitment to moral principles thus provides the agent with a perspective on herself as a dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified agent among other such agents. It is through the perspective which regard for moral principles gives her about her own and other persons’ agency that an agent quiets the demands of self-love, and acquires a more balanced and secure meta-attitude of humility which internalizes an appreciation for how her own worth fits into this larger picture of value. We thus have an answer to Statman’s question, raised when challenging the self-assessment accounts of Richards and Flanagan, of “[w]hose perspective” it is from which the humble person gains perspective on herself (Statman, 1992, 427): the perspective on self that is humility is the perspective of one who recognizes and accepts her autonomous agency, and recognizes moral reasons – those reasons not grounded in one’s desires – as pre-eminent. In turning away from the comparative-competitive model of humility, we thus avoid many of the unfortunate associations the state has acquired through the ages: loss of agency, self-degradation, weakness, falseness, inauthenticity. And reintegration of a shared conception of human limit will not throw us back into the same problems. Indeed, as our story unfolds, we shall see that humility needs insistently to be associated with values just the opposite of those implied by the states with which it has been historically associated: strong affirmation of equal human dignity and a certain type

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of self-respect, based not in meritorious or virtuous acts but in a common finite dignity of all persons. A proper conception of humility will, nonetheless, demand the assertion of a common failure of humans to achieve moral standards perfectly. Despite these precautions, we cannot make humility impervious to distortion in just the ways that we’ve seen in this and the preceding chapter. Rehabilitation of the virtue demands, then, a recognition of this built-in tendency toward its own distortion, grounded in the very aspect of human nature of which humility asks us to be cognizant, viz., our tendency to value the self improperly. We need to recognize the delicacy of the task of affirming a virtue related so inevitably with unavoidable human weaknesses. Some might find it curious to appeal to Kantian themes to make sense of humility. Kant’s ideas are often linked to an excessive emphasis on autonomy of person, which leads to an unattractive image of the self-sufficient, hermetically sealed autonomous agent who needs no one but himself; and the thought that this same thinker could provide the tools for understanding the virtue of humility may strike some as curious and unlikely. Such an image of Kantian autonomy is, perhaps, part of what has led many contemporary virtue theorists to focus their attentions on Aristotle instead as their historical guide. But although Aristotle’s general conception of virtue as a character trait has already proven helpful to us, his catalogue of the specific virtues seems less likely to provide any clear assistance in making sense of the virtue concerned with human limit called humility. Kant, however, is an eighteenth-century thinker who did not lose an appreciation for a humility grounded in human dignity, finitude, and corruption. I thus turn to him for historical assistance in rehabilitating the virtue of humility. His is an approach to virtue which grants a more central space for humility than other contemporary, and mostly Aristotelian, theories are able to. It is in a fuller appreciation and development of central Kantian ethical themes that a satisfying rehabilitation of humility will be forthcoming. hu m b l e j u d g me n ts In chapter 4, we saw that the dependent and corrupt agent brings to the table a pressing set of questions about her self-worth. And we have also already indicated briefly, in chapter 3, that it is in the taking up of the obligatory end of self-perfection that an agent gains that most proper perspective on herself and her self-valuing which is humility. This appeal to the obligatory end of self-perfection – itself derived from the maxim of the moral disposition – thus provides the context within which the agent can approach questions of

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self-value more properly. When the agent thinks not just of moral principles, but more specifically of what their value means for proper valuing of herself, she recognizes that she must aim at self-perfection not as a direct goal to be achieved, but as a guiding ideal, in full awareness of the limits and corruption of her moral agency. She is thus faced with the task of escaping her tendency to value herself improperly and to engage instead in a nonegoistic evaluation of herself and her agency. And it is focusing on the values of the maxim of the moral disposition that allows her to do this: when the moral disposition is internalized as a virtuous state of character, with particular attention to how its value structure informs a proper valuing of the self, it becomes an attitude which gives the agent perspective on herself through understanding her relationship to moral principles and, through them, her relationship to other agents. The attitude which results, and with which she takes up this obligatory end of self-perfection, is best described as the meta-attitude of humility.10 Let’s begin by reminding ourselves of the judgments implicit in the moral disposition which will constitute the perspective from which an agent engages in proper assessment of herself: (1) Moral reasons are the source of pre-eminent and untrumpable value. (2) Moral reasons are authoritative for me; I am a being capable of acting on moral reasons, and thereby a source of absolute worth. (3) I am a dependent being with needs and desires who seeks happiness, and who legitimately grounds reasons for action on this basis. (4) I have a tendency illicitly to place the pursuit of happiness/self-love over my moral principles. (5) All persons share the same capacity, dependence, and corrupt tendencies which I attribute to myself. (6) Despite these tendencies, I recognize the pre-eminent value of moral principles (that is, I recognize that moral reasons take precedence over those reasons for action grounded in my search for happiness), and am committed to making them the primary value in my character and actions. In order completely to appreciate the character trait of humility, we will need to amplify these judgments with reflection upon the feelings related to and informed by them. Nonetheless, it is in the acquisition of a 10

It is true too that, although there is much more to the content of the duty of self-perfection than the attainment of the meta-attitude of humility with which one takes up the end, achievement of this meta-attitude is also part of the content of this duty of self-perfection achieved, and not just the meta-attitude with which one approaches other aspects of self-perfection as, for example, the development of one’s talents.

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meta-attitude toward self guided by these judgments that the moral interest of humility is acquired; they thus provide us an apt starting point for making sense of the state of humility. How can we best make sense of the valuing of self guided by the judgments of the moral disposition? Obviously, a belief in the value of moral principles themselves (Judgment no. 1) is the crucial grounding judgment for any resulting attitude toward self. A person who has proper perspective on herself will need to affirm the authority such principles have for her; and this is not possible without a recognition of their value. For the purposes, however, of grounding a meta-attitude toward self, Judgment no. 1 is not so much the main object of concern as it is a background, though no less guiding, concern:11 the humble person does not engage in the pursuit of a proper perspective on herself unaided; rather, the judgment that moral principles are the object of highest value becomes the point of view with which she enters into that self-evaluation. Relying on their guidance, instead of on that comparative-competitive self-assessment that her bare pursuit of self-love would encourage, the agent reflects on what the fact of being an agent of moral principles means for understanding herself and her own value. The belief in the pre-eminent value of moral principles, a belief which also grounds an attitude of respect for those principles, is thus intrinsic to, and a necessary grounding for, that perspective which is humility.12 Judgments about the self which emerge from this perspective (Judgments nos. 2–4, and, in a more indirect sense, Judgment no. 5) are simple enough: 11

12

It is, of course, also in the recognition that these principles are the pre-eminent source of value that they are identified as a worthy object of respect. The grounding of an attitude of respect for moral principles is, however, the interest accomplished when moral principles are the individuating object of concern, and Judgment no. 1 is the primary judgment associated with the attitude. The attitude of respect for moral principles will also rely upon the entire set of judgments implicit in the moral disposition to make sense of its central concern; but it focuses on the import of these judgments for the purposes of taking an attitude toward moral principles, while the attitude of humility with which we are here concerned focuses on an internalization of these same judgments for the purposes of valuing and taking the proper attitude toward self. It turns out, also, as was suggested briefly in chapter 3, that, just as respect for moral principles is a condition of humility, acquisition of the meta-attitude of humility is a condition for the possibility of acquiring an attitude of respect for moral principles. These claims are not in conflict, but only a confirmation of the strong unity of virtues point made earlier: from different perspectives, and out of concern for different issues, humility is a condition for respect and respect is a condition for humility. It is the maxim of the moral disposition, in its entirety, that guides all these more empirical attitudes, and there is, therefore, a necessary relation amongst all the attitudes stemming from the moral disposition. As such, an agent does not have any of the “big three” virtues without also having the others, at least to some extent. So, just as I can’t be respectful of moral principles without being humble – that is, without simultaneously having an attitude directed toward the self which recognizes the self as both a capable agent and as a corrupt and limited one – I can’t be humble without being respectful of moral principles (and so on, with respect for persons as well).

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they identify oneself, and all persons, as dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified agents of moral principles. The import of this perspective can be appreciated best by focusing on two guiding elements of it. First, although an agent with this perspective recognizes and affirms the dependent nature of her agency, she does not do so unambiguously. Because moral principles are valued more highly than anything, including the pursuit of happiness and self-love, any merely egoistic and self-serving attitude toward her dependent nature – and certainly toward the unfettered pursuit of happiness – is rejected. An attitude toward self guided by the moral disposition thus involves a recognition of one’s dependent nature, but rejects any simple and unconditional affirmation of the pursuit of self-love. This is affirmed in Judgments nos. 3–4 which recognize the dependency of one’s agency and the legitimacy of one’s pursuit of happiness, but in which the corrupt tendency to make the pursuit of self-love primary is also recognized as illicit. This insight, which makes the pursuit of self-love conditional upon its agreement with moral principles, is at the heart of the agent’s recognition both of the value of those principles and of her own limited and corrupt nature. Secondly, to recognize and affirm oneself as a dependent and corrupt agent assumes also that one recognizes oneself as an agent, and this is, as Judgment no. 2 suggests, a ground for dignity. This agent is able to gain the perspective that she does on the limits and corruption of her agency in part because she recognizes those principles which provide her with this perspective as her very own. She recognizes herself, that is, as a capable agent of moral principles, and as an agent capable of making this very evaluation of her limits. An agent evaluating herself from the perspective of the pre-eminent value of moral principles thus not only admits her dignity and self-worth; she emphatically affirms it. The perspective on self in light of moral principles thus is not a self-flagellating recognition of one’s dependence and corruption, for an affirmation of one’s capacities as an agent of morality, and the absolute worth implied by this capacity, are also aspects of the agent’s perspective on herself. Conditional affirmation of one’s dependent nature and admission of one’s corrupt nature thus avoid degenerating into a belief in one’s worthlessness. By considering herself in light of the moral principles to which she is held, and thereby recognizing the precise nature of her agency – its worth, limits, and failings – the agent gains perspective on herself and thereby comes to terms with her pressing questions of self-valuing. Humility is, then, this perspective an agent takes on herself in light of certain beliefs she has about the

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nature and value of moral principles and her own capacities as an agent of them.13 This is a different sort of perspective on one’s limits than one gained by comparing oneself unfavorably against other persons. On the comparativecompetitive model, one gains perspective by comparing one’s own accomplishments and virtues to those of other persons. Any resulting belief in one’s limits is thereby also a belief in one’s inferiority: I determine that I am limited through reference to another person as a standard, and find myself lacking in comparison to that person. I thus gain “perspective”: I know better than to go around asserting how good I am at x when I know another person to be better at it than me. But in the perspective gained through the moral disposition, the agent’s awareness of her limits does not degenerate into a belief in her inferiority. Though she must admit, because she recognizes her tendency to overassert her claims of self-love, that she falls short of the purity and perfection of moral principles, this does not result in a belief that she is worse or lesser than other persons, since such comparative judgments were never the intent of her self-evaluation. A proper perspective on self guided by the moral disposition not only rejects the comparative-competitive way of relating to other persons in this way; it is also in using this lens which comparison of self with moral principles provides that an agent acquires new tools for reconceptualizing her relationship to persons generally. Her self-comparison with moral principles teaches her not only her own status as a finite and corrupt moral agent, but also that persons generally share the dependence, corruption, capacity and dignity which she attributes to herself (Judgment no. 5). The maxim of the moral disposition thus encourages an agent to relate herself to other agents through the mediation of moral principles; and this means relating to them with the awareness that all persons share the same dignity and are subject to the same dependence and corruption as oneself.14 By recognizing this, the agent has a new basis upon which to ground her relationship to other persons: instead of viewing her interactions with 13 14

The relationship here, only asserted and not yet argued, between an awareness of one’s limits and an awareness of one’s worth will be explored in more detail in chapter 6. Statman recognizes the import of affirming the equal worth of persons as part of his account of modesty; but, importantly, he does not consider the equality of human moral limits. This is what insures that his resulting account of modesty is an attitude most appropriate for the “extraordinary” person, one who does not have any such limits. Ben-Ze’ev is the only person I have found among recent commentators who has a clear appreciation for the importance of affirming equality of both worth and limits in the human agent. But our reliance on the picture of dependent and corrupt human nature from chapter 1 brings more clarity to the limits appealed to, whereas Ben-Ze’ev relies only on brief appeal to the inevitability of our death (Ben-Ze’ev, 1993, 237) and “basic human limitation” (241) to understand human limit and his resulting account of modesty.

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persons solely through the lens of self-love and thus engaging in comparative-competitive judgment of them and herself, she can instead, through the lens of moral principles, appreciate all persons as sharing an equal basic moral status, both in capacity and limit. The quality of her belief in the “equality” of all persons is thus made more precise and subtle than any simple affirmation of the equal rights of persons. Her recognition of the equal status of all persons is, rather, importantly tied to her assessment of her own limits through the fact that the limits she recognizes in herself are also limits shared by all finite rational agents. It should be remembered, though, that what finally gathers these various judgments into a single unified perspective on self is the value judgment which constitutes the overall intent of the guiding maxim of the moral disposition, that is, as stated in Judgment no. 6, a commitment to placing respect for moral principles over the pursuit of happiness and self-love. This same maxim, when internalized from the perspective of the main object of Judgment no. 1 (moral principles) or Judgment no. 5 (persons generally), would issue in attitudes of respect for moral principles and persons, respectively. But when concern for self as a moral agent is the central concern of the internalization (and Judgments nos. 2–5 are thus the prioritized judgments), and the judgments of the moral disposition are internalized so as to establish a perspective on self, the value of moral principles becomes the lens through which one observes the self. The resulting attitude is the proper attitude toward self in light of a recognition of the pre-eminent value of moral principles, that is, humility. We have, then, an alternative way of appreciating that perspective on self which constitutes humility. The finite agent turns to the maxim of the moral disposition to guide her in responding to those pressing questions of self-value raised by her dependent and corrupt status. The result is a meta-attitude toward self as guided by the moral disposition: a nonegoistic valuing of and appreciation for oneself as a finite agent of moral principles, one which recognizes both the capacities and limits of one’s agency, but also recognizes those capacities and limits as being no better and no worse than that of all other finite agents. Any attitude toward self which results from the internalization of the moral disposition needs therefore to be focused simultaneously on oneself as a genuine, worthy, and obligated agent of moral principles (Judgment no. 2), with the legitimate end of happiness as conditioned by morality (Judgment no. 3); but also on oneself as a dependent and corrupt agent of them (Judgments nos. 3–4). But this perspective on self is guided by a belief in the pre-eminent value of those moral principles to which one is held (Judgment no. 1), by a recognition

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of oneself as a member of the larger group of finite agents (Judgment no. 5), and ultimately by one’s life-guiding concern to place the value of moral principles above the pursuit of self-love (Judgment no. 6). If an agent wants truly to respect the pre-eminent value of moral principles, then she must also have this internalization of the moral disposition as specified by a concern for proper valuing of the self in light of her commitment to the pre-eminent value of moral principles. She must, that is, have a metaattitude of humility which serves as the perspective or point of view from which she exercises her agency.15 h u m bl e f e e l i n g s We are not yet, however, finished with our account of humility, for to have an interest, as we recall from chapter 3, is not simply to affirm a set of judgments; it is, beyond that, to have a pervasive attitude or character trait in which affective states are in agreement with judgments, beliefs, and values which constitute the central concern of the interest. Just as in chapter 3, where we saw that the agent with an interest in caring for her children had a variety of emotional attitudes in relation to them (pride when they are flourishing, pain when they are suffering, fear and anger when they are in danger), the moral agent concerned to bring the value of moral principles to bear on her self-evaluation will cultivate an entire set of feelings in relation to that interest, feelings which are interpreted and understood through appeal to the judgments we have already identified. The Kantian notion of interest thus gives us the framework for introducing this more complete account of the meta-attitude of humility, an account, that is, of the judgments and the judgment-informed characteristic feelings which the humble agent expresses, all of which combine to form that meta-attitude with which one approaches the exercise of one’s agency. It is to the project of identifying these feelings which characterize the attitude of humility that I now turn. What feelings would our agent be willing to endorse then? Certain feelings are, of course, to be rejected out of hand: to abhor one’s corruption 15

It is difficult to know what the best word for this attitude toward self is, since it combines traditional notions of both self-respect and humility. As I noted in chapter 3, Kant himself goes back and forth on the question of what to call the state, sometimes calling it “proper self-esteem,” and other times speaking of two related states of humility and self-respect. It may well be that we have no proper word for the attitude overall, in part because of the unfortunate historical associations of the word “humility.” The word “humility” has been much more traditionally associated with an awareness of limits, and it has not been emphasized, historically or culturally, that such an awareness is dependent also upon an awareness of one’s dignity. I have chosen, however, to use the term humility because none of the other options (especially “proper self-esteem”) captures the import of recognizing one’s limits as part of the attitude.

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and dependence, losing oneself in feelings of contempt and desperate selfrejection; to be indifferent both to one’s worth and one’s corruption; or, at the opposite extreme, to revel in a fanatical admiration for and satisfaction with the powers of one’s agency. The person wanting to make an awareness of her agency productive for her pursuit of a moral life obviously could not endorse any of these feelings, for a character which integrated them meaningfully would fail to support the intent of the maxim the agent is seeking to internalize. Instead, she must identify, cultivate, and maintain those feelings which are morally appropriate responses to and expressions of her commitment to placing moral principles above her pursuit of happiness, thus affirming on an affective level the judgments about the situation of finite agency she has already affirmed in the maxim of the moral disposition. For this reason, there are other feelings which, though one might be tempted to place them at the affective center of a state of humility, are not in fact at its core: love and sympathy, all wrapped in a forgiving and patient demeanor, for example. These feelings which take other persons as their object will become important in later chapters when we assess the results of acquiring that attitude toward self called humility; but those feelings at the heart of humility, tied to those beliefs and values which centrally define the state, will take not others but the self as their object. It is, then, to Kant’s “moral feeling of respect” – a feeling that turns out, in fact, to be a set of feelings – that we turn to articulate those selfregarding feelings most centrally associated with the meta-attitude of humility. Indeed, many of Kant’s insights about moral consciousness come out most clearly and emphatically not when he speaks of the judgments of the moral disposition, but more often in discussion of these explicitly “moral” feelings. These feelings may initially seem unfamiliar to a truly moral, and humble, life; and Kant’s discussion of them can, at times, be confusing. But, by appeal to the judgments and overall intent of the moral disposition, we can bring a familiarity, and an overall coherence, to these various feelings, showing them to be so many possible affective expressions of the situation of finite agency which, when taken as a whole with a concern for self as the central object, constitute the affective dimension of that moral interest and meta-attitude called humility. Confusing feelings It is possible to uncover in Kant’s discussions of the moral feeling of respect as least, depending upon how one counts it, two, three, or even

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four distinctive affective qualities: pain, constraint, or humiliation of self; awe or respect toward moral principles; respect or admiration for persons; and exultation or respect toward self.16 That Kant speaks of these various feelings under the apparently singular title of “the moral feeling of respect” makes his discussion of them rather confusing. It is not unreasonable for Kant to suggest that a person’s reaction to her moral condition is complex, nor that feelings of, say, humiliation and awe could be importantly related. What is confusing, though, is his suggestion that these feelings, despite the apparent sharp distinction in their affective qualities, are in fact one feeling. Consider, for example, the following: As the effect of consciousness of the moral law . . . this feeling of a rational subject affected by inclinations is indeed called humiliation (intellectual contempt); but in relation to its positive ground, the law, it is at the same time called respect for the law . . . [T]his feeling can now also be called a feeling of respect for the moral law, while on both grounds together it can be called a moral feeling. (5:75/65, first emphasis added)

Kant seems to be saying here that the same feeling can alternatively be understood as humiliation, with oneself as the object; and as respect, with the moral law as the object. It is hard to imagine, though, what it would mean to say that feelings with different objects (that is, the self in the case of humiliation; and moral principles in the case of respect) and with different affective qualities (that is, a feeling of humiliation versus a feeling of awe or respect) are the same feeling. In what sense could such feelings be “one”at all, and why would one want them to be so? Even if we grant that these feelings are in fact two different, but importantly related, feelings, problems 16

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant claims that the moral feeling of respect is constituted, in part, by a feeling of “constraint” or “humiliation” (5:74/64). This constraint is a product of the agent’s awareness of her limits in relation to moral principles; and this awareness “has an effect on feeling and produces the feeling of displeasure” (5:78/67). Along with this feeling of constraint, there is, however, also a feeling which he describes as respect proper. This feeling arises not “originally” as it were, but through reflection on that which has been the source of the first feeling of humiliation for the agent, that is, moral principles themselves: “If something represented as a determining ground of our will humiliates us in our self-consciousness, it awakens respect for itself . . . Therefore the moral law is even subjectively a ground of respect” (5:74/64, emphasis added). At times, he describes this attitude toward the moral law as “awe” or even, in the Groundwork, as something akin to inclination (4:401n/14n). At other times, though, he emphasizes that it is the self toward which one feels approbation or even awe. Our experience of the law “contains something elevating, and the subjective effect on feeling . . . can thus be called self-approbation . . . in as much as [the agent] . . . now becomes conscious of an altogether different interest . . . which is purely practical and free . . . because of which it has a quite special name, that of respect” (5:80–81/69). The quality of this feeling is described alternatively as “elevating,” as “exultation and the highest self-esteem” (6:436/187), or sometimes simply as a feeling “of a special kind” (6:403/162). Finally, he rarely speaks of a distinctive affective dimension as part of respect toward persons, though he does say that “[r]espect is always directed only to persons, never to things” (5:76/66).

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remain. Why, for example, should I feel respect or awe toward something that has just humiliated me? Wouldn’t I more likely feel anger – or perhaps embarrassment and frustration – as a secondary feeling? The claim that there is only one moral feeling here becomes even more difficult to sustain when Kant multiplies the possible objects of the latter feeling of respect. Although he insists at one point that “the object of respect is the law alone” (4:401n/69n, emphasis removed), there are nonetheless times that he suggests that this same feeling of respect is actually most appropriately directed toward persons: oneself,17 specific others, or persons generally.18 And whereas with other persons, respect takes on an affective quality more akin to admiration or aesthetic appreciation,19 when directed at oneself, it is more a feeling of exultation or approbation, presumably related to the fact that oneself could become the object of respect. Kant does not always speak of these feelings with other objects and affects as perfectly identical with the moral feeling of respect. At times, he actually suggests that respect for persons doesn’t have an affective dimension at all, but is simply a “maxim of limiting our self-esteem by the dignity of humanity” (6:449/199). But it is clear from his discussions of these feelings, however they are construed, that these affective phenomena are important – and importantly related – aspects of one’s moral consciousness. How, then, to dispel the confusions and explain their ultimate relationship?20 17

18 19

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The moral feeling of respect “contains something elevating, and the subjective effect on feeling . . . can thus be called self-approbation . . . in as much as [the agent] . . . now becomes conscious of an altogether different interest . . . which is purely practical and free . . . because of which it has a quite special name, that of respect” (5:80–81/69). “Respect is always directed only to persons, never to things” (5:76/66). “Something that comes nearer to this feeling [for other persons] is admiration . . . Respect is a tribute that we cannot refuse to pay to merit, whether we want to or not; we may indeed withhold it outwardly but we still cannot help feeling it inwardly” (5:76–77/66). I do not mean to suggest that recent literature has ignored these problems about Kant’s discussion of moral feeling. One standard account can be found in Beck, 1960, 209–236. More recent reflections on moral feeling include: Allison, 1990, 120–128; Broadie and Pybus, 1982; Guyer, 2000, 299–303; Reath, 1989; and Sherman, 1997. The most frequent concern when questions about moral feeling are raised, though, is that of Kant’s doctrine of moral worth and motivation to moral action, and whether feeling plays any role in them. Reath thus speaks of how feelings – even the feeling of respect – do not act as mechanical or psychic forces on the agent, but are, rather, taken up in one’s chosen principle of action. Allison (1990) affirms this general picture with his assertion of the Incorporation Thesis, and goes on to describe the phenomenological experience of respect in more detail. As part of this discussion, he does note that the moral feeling of respect is “a feeling of a peculiar sort, with both a negative and positive aspect” (Allison, 1990, 123, emphasis added). He admits, then, an oddness in thinking of constraint and self-approbation as constituting a unitary phenomenon (124–125), and even considers Dieter Henrich’s concern (Henrich, 1963) that “Kant [is] incapable of accounting for respect as a unitary phenomenon of the ethical consciousness” (Allison, 1990, 127). Allison’s resolution of these tensions – that both aspects of respect (constraint and elevation) are mediated by the activity of the faculty of reason and thus cannot be reduced, as Henrich asserts, to

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That Kant speaks only on the level of feeling, and not on the level of an attitude or interest into which such feelings are incorporated, is part of what makes understanding his account difficult. A better framework for appreciating Kant’s insistence on their unity is to understand these feelings as distinct, but as importantly related because integrated into moral attitudes or interests as guided by the judgments implicit in the maxim of the moral disposition. Taken as a whole, they thus represent affectively the moral consciousness of one who has internalized this maxim completely. The structure of interest, moral disposition, and virtuous disposition from chapter 3 allows us, then, to retain Kant’s concern for unity amongst these feelings without making implausible claims about their identity. These feelings are unified not by questionable claims of identity, but rather in that they are so many affective dimensions of a singular moral consciousness (or, in the language of chapter 3, a singular “virtuous disposition”), expressed in moral interests (humility, of course, being one of these moral interests), and cultivated from the perspective of the singular maxim of the moral disposition.21 His appeal to the singularity of moral feeling indicates that, despite the lack of a fully developed account of character traits to guide him, Kant realized these affective experiences could make sense as moral feelings only as aspects of a single moral consciousness or virtuous disposition. And indeed, these feelings can’t make sense singly. To feel humiliation while lacking a respectful awareness of what humiliates (that is, authoritative moral principles), or while lacking the self-approbation which these principles also ground would not be a moral feeling at all; it would be simple self-abasement. Similarly, to feel an unrestrained self-approbation without an awareness of its proper ground, and with no awareness of the need to constrain the corruption of that agency which is simultaneously the ground of one’s worth, would not be a moral feeling; it would be moral fanaticism, or simple arrogance. Finally, to feel admiration for moral principles without feeling both approbation for and constraint of self would not be respect

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two distinct acts undertaken by two distinct faculties (Allison, 1990, 127–128) – is right as far as it goes; but Allison does not resolve this tension on the more phenomenological level; that is, he does not (as I go on to do here) tie these various feelings to a single orienting character trait to explain their distinction yet unity in a single moral consciousness. Inclusion of these moral feelings within the structure of an interest guided by one’s most basic moral maxim also assures the autonomous cultivation of these feelings. There are legitimate roles for feeling in the moral life of an autonomous but finite being, even if these feelings serve only to mark that the agent has in fact accepted the value structure of the moral disposition.

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for moral principles at all; it would be a merely aesthetic appreciation, and thus a rejection of them as action-guiding principles. Although it is indeed possible to experience these feelings and make these judgments individually, it is only by taking them as a whole, interpreting and cultivating them in relation to each other and, ultimately, in relation to the overall stated value that guides the moral disposition, that we can make sense of their proper moral qualities.22 Kant’s concern to maintain a unity among these various affective expressions is thus vindicated, because it is only in relation to each other that they can be understood and experienced as moral, that is, as affirming one’s moral commitments expressed in the maxim of the moral disposition. The feelings of awe, respect, humiliation/constraint, and exultation/approbation, in order to become important parts of the agent’s moral life, need not simply to be experienced, but to be understood, endorsed, and cultivated as affective aspects of those interests guided by the moral disposition: respect for moral principles, respect for persons, and humility toward self. These feelings could, of course, be interpreted from the perspective of any of these three main interests; and to appreciate the singular moral consciousness or virtuous disposition completely, we would need to consider all of them.23 But our present concern is to make sense of these feelings with respect to the individuating object of the self, and thus as so many affective expressions of one’s proper attitude toward and perspective upon self. What we will find in so doing is a full description of the affective dimensions of a meta-attitude of humility. 22

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Implicit here also is the possibility that an agent could experience these same feelings, but place different meanings or judgments upon them. Just as one might have a variety of emotional reactions to the state of one’s agency, different agents could experience the same “moral feelings,” but make a variety of judgments about their meaning: one can regret the feelings’ existence, indeed, even seek to destroy them; one can be ambivalent toward them, at times reveling in the positive aspect, at others, being despondent or hopeless about the feelings of constraint. One might even seek to identify the feeling as something other than it is: indigestion perhaps, or an unfortunate side-effect of too much caffeine in the morning. Each of these sorts of judgments would result in different possible attitudes incorporating moral feelings in one way or another. Surely, such attributions of meaning would be incorrect, or even acts of self-deception, but if an agent doesn’t want to be reminded of the authority of the moral law, she will surely have sufficient motive to attribute different meanings to the feelings at hand, and such false attributions, with the resulting non-moral attitudes based on them, must be accepted as possibilities. It is important to reiterate, given the dependent and corrupt nature of human agents accepted in chapter 1, that we can’t really speak of fully and perfectly integrating the values of the moral disposition in one’s character. Although some agents will acquire rather settled virtuous dispositions, inherent in the value structure guiding her moral attitude is the understanding that there is always the possibility of choosing (even if just in one situation) not to do so. We need then to reject any Stoic, or even Aristotelian, idea of a fully settled disposition that could be said genuinely to hold without the possibility of its loss.

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The Kantian virtue of humility Feelings of humility

It is a fairly straightforward process to connect the feelings just discussed with those judgments of the maxim of the moral disposition which would inform their interpretation and cultivation as aspects of a meta-attitude toward the self. Awe is connected with Judgment no. 1, which affirms the authority of moral principles. And when moral principles are the central object of concern, this feeling is cultivated as the affective center of a characteristic affective/rational awareness of the supreme authority of those principles, that is, as an attitude of respect for moral principles. The feeling of respect for persons is connected with Judgment no. 5, a judgment which affirms the dignified and limited agency of all persons. And when the main object of concern is one of how persons in general should be valued in light of the pre-eminent value of moral principles, this feeling is cultivated as the affective center of a characteristic affective/rational awareness of the need to treat persons at all times with respect, that is, as an attitude of respect for persons. But when the object of concern is one of how the self should be valued in light of the pre-eminent value of moral principles, these feelings which take moral principles and other persons as their object are placed in the background. Although they provide important context, we need to be concerned centrally with those feelings which take the self as their object; and there are not one but two such feelings: the feeling of self-exultation connected with Judgment no. 2, a judgment which identifies oneself as a source of these principles; and the feeling of humiliation or constraint connected with Judgments nos. 3–4, judgments which recognize one’s agency as dependent and corrupt. Acquisition of the proper affective/rational awareness of oneself relative to the maxim of the moral disposition thus demands a simultaneous cultivation of these feelings of self-exultation and constraint or humiliation, both of which take the self as the object, and the experience of which are reminders, respectively, of one’s absolute and unmitigated worth as an agent and of one’s limits as an agent and the related need for constraint of the pretensions of self-love. Instead of feeling abhorrent toward her corruption, and disdainful of her purported worth as an agent, an agent balances proper awarenesses of both her worth and limits into an overall affective expression of humility to guide the exercise of her agency. It is important to remember, though, that judgments about moral principles and persons generally were importantly integrated into the judgments grounding an attitude of humility, and we should expect the affective

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dimensions of the attitude to mirror this fact. Just as Judgment no. 1 was understood as a background judgment for an attitude of humility, the feeling of awe connected with it is the background affective state with which an agent approaches evaluation of her self, and indeed, serves as a reminder to her of the perspective from which she must evaluate herself. And just as Judgment no. 5 provided the agent perspective on the nature of her limits and capacities, the feeling of respect for persons acts not only as a genuine expression of admiration for others, but also as a reminder to the agent of the need to temper her self-exultation, preventing it from becoming a basis upon which to consider herself better than others; and also to temper her humiliation, preventing it from becoming a basis upon which to consider herself lesser than others. Finally, affirmation of the goodness of all these feelings depends, further, not just upon the specific judgment with which each is associated, but also upon Judgment no. 6, in which the agent asserts the goodness of the overall intent of the maxim of the moral disposition. By affirming the goodness of placing moral concerns above her pursuit of self-love, an agent also confirms the overall goodness of regularly experiencing each of these feelings, as contextually appropriate. Feelings of self-exultation are recognized as good, then, not simply because they feel good; and feelings of constraint are recognized as good not simply because it is socially beneficial to constrain oneself in certain situations. Rather, both of these feelings (as well as the background feelings already discussed) are identified as good, and therefore as worthy of continual cultivation, because a regular, and characteristic, experience of them (when interpreted in accordance with the judgments of the moral disposition) makes the agent more regularly aware of her moral condition and thus further encourages a disposition toward moral action for the right reasons (that is, out of a true affirmation of the authority of moral principles). So, when the agent experiences, say, humiliation, she doesn’t understand it simply as a constraint of self. Through appeal to the other judgments implicit in the moral disposition, she understands it as a warranted constraint of self and thus makes the judgment that it is “good” for her sometimes to feel humiliation (as the situation and her response to it demands), because she is in fact the kind of being who needs at times to have her pretensions to the primacy of self-love challenged. The feeling of humiliation is thus not a mere insult at the hands of moral standards, but a genuine and important reminder of her moral status as a corrupt but capable agent. Once we accept this context for the feelings, the problems noted previously about their meaning and relation evaporate: humiliation toward self

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and awe toward moral principles are not so much the same feeling as they are different affective expressions of a single complex attitude toward the self in the face of the value of moral principles. The feelings are different because they focus on different objects of concern within the context of one’s proper attitude toward self; they are related, though, because they both express aspects of a singular moral meta-attitude toward self. When focusing on the value and authority of the principles to which one’s own agency is held (Judgment no. 1), one feels a sense of awe or admiration for them; when focusing on the fact that, despite one’s recognition of the value of these principles, one is – and always could be – tempted to undermine them, making one’s own pretensions to self-love primary (Judgments nos. 3–4), then one feels humiliation, or constraint. When one focuses on the fact that, despite all this, one is a genuine, capable, and obligated moral agent, and is thus a source of absolute worth (Judgment no. 2), one feels exultation or elevation of the self. All of these feelings, and related judgments, are simply aspects of one’s singular meta-attitude toward oneself as a moral agent. Even that curious question of why an agent would feel respect for something that has humiliated her makes much more sense within the context of this set of judgments: moral principles, an awareness of whose authority humiliates her, are also recognized as her own principles; and an awareness of this latter point makes reflection upon them simultaneously an opportunity for exultation. One might object at this point, for there seem to be significant tensions between this account of feelings and the picture of the humble person that began to emerge in earlier chapters: the humble person usually appears to be self-effacing (or even selfless), so why would she spend so much time evaluating and thinking about herself, and even experiencing feelings of self-exultation? The humble person is also commonly thought to be calm and at peace with herself, so why should we expect her to experience such intense feelings of self-constraint? First, it is not as if the humble person intends to cultivate an unstable state which hovers precariously between exultation and humiliation, assuring a continual state of emotional exhaustion. Rather, the judgments the humble person makes relative to these feelings and their objects are pointed toward the calming, and not the heightening, of undue claims of self-love, and thus of feelings of constraint. These feelings are thus so many tools for the agent’s moral development, accessible as time and circumstance demand, but are happily in the background as conflicts between morality and selflove diminish. As Kant says, “humiliation takes place only relatively to the purity of the law” in the agent (5:79/67). The agent thus feels constraint only

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“so far as inclinations are his [primary] determining grounds [of action]” (5:78/67), that is, only to the extent that she has something to constrain. Given our picture of human nature, no one will ever be entirely free of the temptation toward undue demands of self-love;24 but the agent who has evaluated herself in light of these values is already on the road to reducing the undue influence of self-love, and thus the experience of intense constraint of it. We must also remember that we are not currently focusing on the humble person’s behaviors, or daily occurrent judgments and feelings. Rather, we are articulating that bedrock set of beliefs and values which guide her in such behaviors. The humble person does not, then, spend much time thinking about the fact of her corruption, or reveling in her self-worth. But when she goes about the exercise of her agency in the world, her choices are guided by the values here suggested and by that meta-attitude which is their internalization. Humility is, not unlike those attitudes of inferiority and superiority rejected in chapter 4, a meta-attitude, that point of view from which one approaches every exercise of agency. But, unlike those meta-attitudes of inferiority and superiority, the meta-attitude of humility is a more apt, more accurate, and thus a more stable response to the pressing questions of self-valuing. The agent addresses the genuine, nonrelative and non-comparative question of her worth as a person not with the misshapen tool of comparative-competitive judgments, but with those tools most appropriate to the questions at hand, that is, the moral principles which she recognizes as proper to her. As such, the urgency of the questions of self-worth recede, because they have been adequately answered. The judgments and feelings which constitute her meta-attitude are not being made constantly but rather, for the successfully humble person, are completed and receded into the background. She has reflected on the situation of her dependent and corrupt but capable agency, has accepted it, and is now, generally, done with such reflections. This perspective on self and the feelings tied up with it are thus not something that the agent regularly talks about, presents to others, or dwells on. Rather, because the answer she has given to her pressing questions of self-worth is an apt and satisfying one, and because she is therefore at peace with the assessment of herself thus accomplished, the judgments and feelings which constitute her meta-attitude toward self instead become that unspoken perspective from which she exercises her agency. 24

See 5:84/71.

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But by being in the background, these judgments and feelings are also available as individual situations demand: when she is tempted to ignore her commitments, or to get angry at people’s foibles, or to gloat over an accomplishment in a hurtful way, she can remind herself, both cognitively and affectively, of her most central values and beliefs. So, if she appears selfless and calm to others, that may just be because she has calmed the excessive claims of self-love, and is able to look out into the world without its static interrupting her perceptions. But such a state is an achievement, not an assumption of her character. We can, thus, make sense of the apparent disconnection between the selffocused nature of these judgments at the basis of humility and the familiar selfless appearance of the humble person. When an agent has successfully internalized these judgments relative to the self into a stable meta-attitude, it can be said that she has quieted her concerns about self-value. This does not mean that she does not value herself, but that she has learned to value herself properly. Importantly then, when this meta-attitude reigns, judgments about the self are present in any action or choice, but more implicitly than explicitly. They are that perspective from which she approaches the exercise of her agency, and thus are not (necessarily) the direct object of concern of that agency. Although she, like any other finite being, has needed to devote time to questions of self-value, she is not thereby self-centered. Rather, she has addressed the needs of the self in a manner most appropriate to her, and can focus her moral attention elsewhere. Furthermore, that moral attention will be less subject to being interfered with from the static of unsettled questions of self-love. She can open herself to her moral world more successfully precisely because she has dealt with the judgments about the self encapsulated in the judgments grounding humility. f i n a l t h o u gh ts It will help at this point to summarize the state we have identified, pulling together various aspects of it suggested thus far. Most centrally, Kantian humility is an interest, attitude, or character trait. I use these terms interchangeably, understanding them to refer to that development of character discussed in chapter 3: the internalization of value judgments into one’s character through repeated actions and value judgments, such that the judgments are expressed not only rationally but also through a regular pattern of affective expression. When such judgments are thus internalized, we can understand the agent to possess an interest, attitude, or character trait based on those judgments.

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Humility is, more specifically, that interest concerned with judgments valuing the self as agent in light of the untrumpable value of moral principles. This particular interest is an internalization of the maxim of the moral disposition relative to the self which affirms that satisfaction of concerns of self-love are made conditional upon the satisfaction of moral demands, and is affirmed affectively in the various aspects of the moral feeling of respect. It thus constitutes, at once, not simply a disposition to act in ways consonant with the internalized values of the maxim of the moral disposition, but also a character trait or way of being, again consonant with those values. Humility is, however, more than just any interest or attitude among others, one that would be appropriate only in certain specific situations. Rather, because it is a response to those central and pervasive questions about self-value discussed in chapter 4, it too – like the attitudes of inferiority and superiority discussed in chapter 4 – is a meta-attitude, one which informs every exercise of agency. As such, it is also appropriate to call humility a “perspective” or “point of view,” as it is an attitude which constitutes the approach one brings generally to the exercise of one’s agency and that lens through which one observes one’s moral world. Because the humble person has quieted the pressing concerns of self-love through the set of judgments described above, she can approach the world less from that anxious, unstable, untutored perspective of one searching for an answer to her deep questions about self-worth, and more from that settled perspective of one who has answered and calmed those questions in the most satisfactory way possible for finite beings. Finally, we must admit that humility is only one of three important interests that constitute that overall moral consciousness which Kant calls the virtuous disposition. A complete virtuous disposition would be one in which the maxim of the moral disposition is internalized in relation to all three of its significant moral objects: the self, persons generally, and the moral law. The virtuous disposition would thus consist in a character which has developed not only humility, but also respect for persons and respect for the moral law. Logical and psychological questions about the unity of these virtues, raised in chapters 2 and 3, do remain here, but could be answered satisfactorily only by a thorough study of these three virtues in combination. This, then, is the rehabilitation of humility. Mine is an account which makes a variety of assumptions about human nature; but with those assumptions, we can provide a philosophically respectable account of humility without resorting to intolerable associations of the state with inferiority and worthlessness, nor to egregiously counter-intuitive ideas which associate the

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state with superiority. Central to this rehabilitation are two points: first, that humility must be accomplished apart from any comparative-competitive judgments or behavior; and secondly, that a morally productive awareness of one’s limits must be simultaneous with an awareness of one’s value. With these commitments in hand, we avoid two beliefs historically, and problematically, associated with humility: a belief in the inferiority of the humble person, and, more generally, a belief in the worthlessness of human nature. The resulting account does, nonetheless, retain a number of intuitively familiar qualities of the humble person, since a robust commitment to a belief in the limits and corruption of all persons remains central to it. So, to have an awareness of one’s limits as an agent which promises constraint of oneself and one’s actions; but to have it in a way which does not undermine one’s abiding respect for one’s own person, or for other persons who are all in similar situations, taking one’s ultimate cue from an awareness of the untrumpable authority of moral principles: this is the ultimate collection of judgments and feelings which constitute a metaattitude of humility. The humble person understands her limits in a way that not only does not undermine, but is grounded in an abiding selfrespect; and affirms a simultaneous respect for others as dignified finite agents, without succumbing to the temptation to believe herself inferior (or superior) to them. As this book continues, we will seek to explore the import of this perspective on self gained, appreciating how the maintenance of it has an influence on one’s life more generally, and issues in a character and perspective on the world more intuitively identifiable as “humble.” A previous question is raised, however, by this just completed account of humility. A central aspect of the rehabilitation of humility has been the affirmation of an agent’s worth simultaneous with a recognition of her limits. The attitude of humility which emerges from internalization of the maxim of the moral disposition thus seems a rather complex attitude, one which combines aspects not only of humility as traditionally considered (that is, an awareness of the limits of self ) but also of traditional notions of self-respect (an awareness of self-worth). This association has not been so much argued, though, as it has been accepted in virtue of the structure of the maxim of the moral disposition. To what extent, though, should we accept this association? Are traditional notions of self-respect and humility more adequately understood as a single virtuous attitude, as necessarily related, or as entirely distinct, but in some persons, importantly related attitudes? This is a question that needs further consideration, elaboration, and resolution; and chapter 6 turns to this task.

c h a pt e r 6

Humility and self-respect

Humility is an attitude which, though it incorporates all judgments and affects implicit in the moral disposition, is most centrally defined by those judgments and affects related to the self as agent. This definition of humility suggests, then, a close connection between our definition of humility (a recognition of one’s limits as an agent) and what Stephen Darwall has called “recognition self-respect” (a recognition of one’s worth as an agent which leads the agent to constrain her treatment of herself in light of that basic worth).1 On our definition of humility, based in the maxim of the moral disposition, these two apparently distinct states cannot in fact be understood in isolation from each other, but only as flip sides of the same coin, that is, as different aspects of an overall proper valuing of the self as agent under the auspices of a recognition of the pre-eminent value of moral principles. It seems unusual, though, to suggest that self-respect and humility are only aspects of a single attitude, and this is a claim that needs to be further considered, refined, and defended. 1

Darwall, 1995, in Dillon, 1995. According to Darwall, “moral recognition respect” demands that the subject recognizing the value of the object of respect (the “law,” or moral principles) also recognize her own actions as being limited or restricted by that object. To “respect” something in this morally relevant way just is to constrain one’s own actions in light of relevant characteristics of the object of respect: One rather narrower notion of recognition respect conceives of it as essentially a moral attitude. That is, some fact or feature is an appropriate object of respect if inappropriate consideration or weighing of that fact or feature would result in behavior that is morally wrong. To respect something is thus to regard it as requiring restrictions on the moral acceptability of actions connected with it. And crucially, it is to regard such a restriction as not incidental, but as arising because of the feature of the object itself. One is not free, from a moral point of view, to act as one pleases in matters which concern something which is an appropriate object of moral recognition respect. To have such respect for the law, say, is to be disposed to regard the fact that something is the law as restricting the class of actions that would be morally permissible. (Darwall, 1995, 185) When the object of value in question here is recognized as the self, we find the basis for “recognition self-respect,” which is “a call to recognize the rights and responsibilities of being a person” (Darwall, 1995, 193), and which similarly constrains one’s behavior, now in light of the value of one’s person. Darwall distinguishes this recognition self-respect from another, “appraisal self-respect” which is based on the evaluation of one’s accomplishments and excellences (194).

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We have already spoken generally of how Kantian virtue involves a strong unity of virtues claim, and have seen more recently, in our definition of humility, that a belief in the equal dignity and shared limits of all persons, and a resulting attitude of respect for persons generally, are necessary conditions of humility. The relationship between humility and recognition self-respect seems even tighter than these connections, though. Respect for persons derives from the same principle of the moral disposition as humility does, and is an attitude that must be, at least in part, achieved in order for humility to exist. But, beyond all this, and unlike respect for persons, recognition self-respect shares with humility the same individuating object: the self as agent. Not only, then, does recognition self-respect issue from the same general principle as humility; it also becomes a more specified attitude through attention to the same object of value. As such, it makes sense to attribute an even closer unity or connection to these states than that which has already been suggested to obtain among the main three virtues. There are, however, at least two different ways that we could understand this relationship of humility and self-respect, one stronger and the other weaker. On the weaker claim, humility and self-respect can be defined independently of each other: humility is a proper awareness of one’s limits as an agent, and self-respect is a proper awareness of one’s worth as an agent. But there is a relationship of necessary mutual dependence between these two states: an agent can actually acquire a proper awareness of her limits only by also having acquired a proper perspective on her value qua agent, and vice-versa. The stronger claim is to assert a relationship of identity between these states. Despite any conceptual distinction that could still be drawn between a proper awareness of one’s worth and a proper awareness of one’s limits as an agent, it could also be said that, in the end, one simply has a single attitude toward oneself qua agent, one which incorporates a proper balancing of appreciation of worth and awareness of limits of that same agency. Such a strong position would take seriously Howard Curzer’s suggestion that it would be “odd” to have two distinct self-regarding virtues when such attitudes would share the same object of the self.2 2

Curzer, 1991. In discussing Aquinas on humility and pride, Curzer suggests that “[i]t seems odd to define two different virtues, both consisting in an accurate sense of one’s level of excellence” (Curzer, 1991, 149n36). Curzer would rather appeal to an account like Taylor’s (1985a) in which there is “one such virtue which resists both upward and downward pressures” (emphasis added). Taylor herself suggests “[t]he person who has proper pride will value himself as he ought . . . It is then a kind of pride which is not to be contrasted with humility but which on the contrary coincides with humility the (Christian) virtue” (Taylor, 1985a, 51), Taylor’s pride is, however, different from the combination

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I am somewhat moved by this stronger claim. Although I would assert, contra Curzer, that there can indeed be more than one virtue of selfassessment (especially once we grant an important distinction between evaluating oneself qua agent and evaluating one’s accomplishments and excellences),3 it seems odder to think that there would be a variety of virtues related to one’s self-assessment as an agent. For the purposes of this chapter, however, we need only argue the weaker, though admittedly still odd, claim that a relationship of mutual dependence exists between the acquisition of recognition self-respect and humility. Let us begin by considering the concerns of a potential objector. We can, perhaps, accept without argument that a fully virtuous person would have both recognition self-respect and humility; the question at this point is whether these two attitudes are necessarily related. But it seems particularly difficult to accept intuitively that these states are mutually necessary, for we frequently experience people who seem to have only one state or the other: some, while treating themselves with respect, fail to understand their limits; and others recognize their failings as common to the human condition, but see no worth in themselves. Even if it is accepted that humility and selfrespect would both be present in a fully moral character, our objector thus asserts that these states are in fact distinct, and don’t require each other. Would it not make more sense to distinguish humility as an awareness of the limits of one’s agency, from self-respect as an awareness of the dignity and capacities of oneself as agent, and admit that, although some fully virtuous agents have both, others have only one or the other, or neither? That these aspects of the attitude of humility have been unpacked from that single maxim of the moral disposition, and that they both attend to the same individuating object of the self as agent give us clues as to why we should reject our objector’s approach and accept at least a relationship of necessary mutual dependence between these two distinct states: it is only when these beliefs are integrated as aspects of a complex attitude toward the self as agent that they constitute aspects of a virtuous self-regarding attitude. Taking such beliefs singly, without aspects of the other self-regarding state, would not result in a truly virtuous attitude toward oneself as agent at all.

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of recognition self-respect and humility toward which I am arguing, most centrally because her understanding of this properly balanced single self-regarding virtue is more concerned with issues related to appraisal and not recognition self-respect. Humility as I define it here thus appears not to be a part of Taylor’s definition of proper pride. Taylor’s proper pride could, though, find a more adequate and secure basis in the combination of humility and recognition self-respect for which I argue here, since such a pride would avoid the excesses of superiority which others fall into when trying to link humility only with an appraisal self-respect. This is just Darwall’s distinction between recognition and appraisal self-respect.

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This is simply to say, in the language of previous chapters, that a truly moral self-regarding attitude needs to be an internalization of the perspective of the maxim of the moral disposition which places the value of moral principles above the pursuit of self-love, and not merely one or another aspect of that maxim. Although defending this relationship of mutual dependence between humility and self-respect will have an important effect on how we understand both states, it is an especially crucial component of the rehabilitation of humility. We must assert at least a necessary connection between humility and self-respect in order fully and unambiguously to distinguish humility from the self-abnegation and inferiority with which it has historically been associated. What might seem intuitively, then, not to be proper to the state of humility is in fact exactly what we need to rehabilitate it. The most virtuous self-regarding attitude overall is not simply an awareness of limitation (which I will now, for the sake of this argument, call “humility1 ”). But neither is it simply an awareness of one’s worth qua agent (that is, recognition self-respect). Rather, it is an intertwining of the two: self-respect and humility are best understood at least as mutually necessary to each other in order for either to be virtuous. I will begin with the claim that recognition self-respect is a condition of virtuous humility1 , and then turn to the converse claim. re co g n i ti o n res pe c t f o r s e l f i s a con d i ti on o f h u mi l it y 1 It will be helpful to begin by considering the extent to which current discussions of humility have considered the import of recognition self-respect – that is, an awareness of one’s own worth that leads one to constrain actions toward oneself appropriately – in the definition of humility. While none argue for a necessary relationship between humility and recognition selfrespect, there are numerous ways in which self-respect, variously construed, does and does not become important in these accounts. Driver seems unconcerned about self-respect, since for her, modesty involves a straightforward underestimation of one’s worth.4 One might suggest, however, that her account reveals a lack of concern only for what Darwall has called appraisal self-respect, that is, a failure to value one’s 4

“The modest person is someone who is disposed to underestimate self-worth to some limited extent, in spite of the available evidence [to the contrary]” (Driver, 2000, 21). “For a person to be modest, she must be ignorant with regard to her self-worth. She must think herself less deserving, or less worthy, than she actually is” (Driver, 2000, 19).

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accomplishments and excellences properly.5 For Driver, the modest agent could then in fact have some level of recognition self-respect since she insists that any underestimation of self can’t be so great as to collapse into selfhatred.6 Driver’s account does not, however, dwell sufficiently on this lowest common denominator of self-worth and, indeed, gives inadequate account of what prevents underestimation from collapsing into self-abnegation.7 Richards, while claiming that his account of humility is “neutral among different and rival theories of human worth” (Richards, 1988, 256), also suggests that humility is just the “flip side” of human dignity (Richards, 1988, 254), though he too does not dwell on their inter-relation. Statman, Hare, Morgan, and Ben-Ze’ev all tie humility not explicitly to recognition self-respect, but instead to the importantly related claim that all persons (presumably including oneself ) share an equal moral status, whether only of moral capacity or also of limit. Statman, for example, asserts that the “cognitive” aspect of humility is the “(true) belief in the ultimate equality of human beings as ‘ends in themselves’ [and] . . . as having the same moral rights” (Statman, 1992, 434). Similar claims of the equal moral worth of persons are made by Ben-Ze’ev,8 Hare,9 and Morgan.10 Ben-Ze’ev and Morgan balance this focus on equal worth by emphasizing also the equal limits that persons share.11 Interestingly, though, those who fail to assert a shared human limit next to their claims of equal moral worth tend to focus not so much upon the 5 6

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“The appropriate grounds for appraisal self-respect are those excellences of persons which we delimit as constituting character” (Darwall, 1995, 194). “The degree of underestimation must be limited in order to differentiate modesty from a vice such as self-deprecation” (Driver, 2000, 18). The modest person must “be mistaken, but not dramatically off the mark” (Driver, 2000, 19). For further discussion of this concern, see my review of Driver in Grenberg, 2003. “The agent evaluates his or her fundamental human worth as similar to that of other people” (Ben-Ze’ev, 1993, 235). “[T]he psychopathic or contract killer’s fitness to be a full member of the moral community of persons-as-ends may be purely potential, whereas most people’s everyday conduct can be judged as showing some higher but variable degree of progress towards ideal moral agency. But in either case, both the casual murderer and morally typical agent might share in some indefeasible identity as persons who are therefore to be treated in such ways as recognize their common, fixed attribute of potentiality for fully moral agency. To deny this principle of universal equality on the basis of dramatic discrepancies in realized moral merit would be a category mistake” (Hare, 1996b, 240). “Any meaningful account of humility,” he says “requires a supplemental principle of human equality” (Morgan, 2001, 315). Ben-Ze’ev speaks of the “basic human limitation in comparison with the purity of the moral law which is holy and perfect” (Ben-Ze’ev, 1993, 241). Morgan speaks more specifically of how, despite their basic equality, “[h]uman beings not only tend to overrate their collective value in comparison to other existing things, but also regularly rank themselves individually as superior in value to their fellow human beings” (Morgan, 2001, 315). Snow (1995), interestingly, defines humility solely in accordance with shared human limits, not shared human worth: “To be humbled . . . is to be made aware of the limitations of the human condition” (208).

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relationship of humility to recognition self-respect, but rather to Darwall’s appraisal self-respect, an awareness of one’s excellences, achievements, even one’s superiority. Richards, for example, speaks of humility as being at least compatible with someone who knows their worth and accomplishments (Richards, 1988, 256). Schueler claims even more strongly that modesty must “involve . . . having (and realizing that one has) genuine accomplishments” (Schueler, 1997, 483–484). Statman is, however, as we have seen, the one to push this point to its extreme, claiming that the perspective required for modesty is that of the “extraordinary” person (Statman, 1992, 427), resulting in the claim that to be modest is “to avoid arrogance and boastfulness in spite of one’s (justified) high self-assessment” (Statman, 1992, 434). All of this focus on high self-assessment in the modest and/or humble person is, then, in Darwall’s terms, not so much a concern for how recognition self-respect informs humility, but for how appraisal self-respect – and especially a very high level of it – connects with humility or modesty. Such a connection raises questions and problems that a connection of humility with recognition self-respect would not. For example, whereas, on our own account, recognition self-respect and humility share the same object of the self qua agent, this is not so for appraisal self-respect and humility. The object of appraisal self-respect, because it focuses on idiosyncratic accomplishments or failures of a particular agent, cannot take as its object human agency as such. Instead, it is an evaluation of the individual qua individual, resulting in a self-respect idiosyncratic to the agent. In the terms of chapter 1, such appraisal is more tied to the concerns of self-love – and potentially though not necessarily to comparative-competitive analysis and judgments – than to one’s moral interests. A further problem with reliance on appraisal self-respect in grounding humility is that appraisal self-respect is more alterable, since it is dependent on the agent’s actual – and more potentially varying – accomplishments and excellences. The overall effect of this association of appraisal self-respect with humility is that concern for the self is over-emphasized, resulting most often in the counter-intuitive “superiority” readings of the humble person. Statman, for example, speaks of modesty being most appropriate to the “extraordinary” (Statman, 1992, 427); and Hare identifies humility with an “accurate assessment of one’s own relative moral superiority” (Hare, 1996b, 240). So, although these commentators assert the equal value of persons, this is not the most relevant thing for their humble/modest person to be aware of in herself. The role of recognition self-respect, and the awareness that one’s own value is equal to that of other persons, is instead undermined by overemphasis on appraisal self-respect and the import of the humble/modest

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person being sufficiently and properly aware of her extra-ordinary abilities and superiority. Nancy Snow considers the question of the relationship of appraisal selfrespect and humility in a somewhat different light. She defines humility solely in accordance with shared human limits, not shared human worth: “To be humbled . . . is to be made aware of the limitations of the human condition” (Snow, 1995, 208). And because her definition of humility is grounded only in such shared limitations, she goes on to consider at some length the extent to which a tendency to act from humility might actually undermine self-respect (the latter of which she seems to take in a more appraisal – even developmental and psychological – rather than recognition sense). Although she suggests that “an undervaluing of yourself ” would be incompatible with humility (Snow, 1995, 210), and that humility can even “build . . . self-respect” (215) in some cases, she also suggests that humility, properly conceived, can be detrimental to appraisal self-respect. Although one whose “positive traits are already firm [and] well-developed” has the resources to “prevent humility from degenerating into self-deprecation or self-contempt” (Snow, 1995, 213), persons who do not have such positive traits or resources to counter-balance their humility will in fact be injured by the latter trait. For these weak, often oppressed, persons, “development [of positive traits like self-respect] will be obstructed by . . . the possible reinforcement through actions of a conception of self as limited” (213). Humility, again properly construed, can for Snow even be a tool of “oppression,” since “moral exhortations, including calls to humility, can be used by oppressors to inculcate false consciousness, disesteem, and lack of selfrespect and ambition in members of the oppressed group” (213). I am somewhat in sympathy with Snow’s developmental and social point, which highlights problems with defining humility similar to those I noted in chapter 4. It is curious, though, that Snow does not suggest that true humility would demand the proper balancing of awareness of limit and positive self-evaluation and self-respect; and that these weaker or oppressed persons in fact have not achieved proper humility at all. But this is not what she says. It is humility on her account that is destructive of self-respect for these persons. But in fact, humility is not doing the damage here. It is more these persons’ failed attempts to accept their limits properly than a true case of humility that does damage to the agent’s self-respect. What we need in order to have the hope that humility does not become a tool of oppression, and that pursuit of it does not end in the grief of self-hatred, is to show the necessary connection of any true humility, not with self-esteem or appraisal self-respect, but with recognition self-respect.

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The Kantian virtue of humility Recognition respect for self is a condition of a virtuous humility1

Recognition respect for self is a condition of a virtuous humility1 ; unless I have recognition respect for myself, I can’t: (a) evaluate my limits accurately or (b) utilize that appropriate awareness of limit in the service of respecting moral principles. Let us turn, then, to a more satisfactory account of why recognition respect for self is a necessary condition of a virtuous humility1 . There are at least two conditions of humility1 that are relevant for our purposes. First, an awareness of one’s limits, to be virtuous, must be an attitude which supports, and does not detract from, one’s moral goals. But this supportive awareness of one’s agency cannot sacrifice accuracy in the name of efficiency. Believing oneself to be omnipotent when one is not (even if this were to give one confidence toward the accomplishment of purportedly moral ends) cannot be virtuous. In order to be virtuous, one’s assessment of one’s agency must thus, secondly, be an accurate one. This accuracy condition might not, however, be immediately obvious, especially given recent discussions of “virtues of ignorance.” Accepting it does, furthermore, make problems for a virtuous awareness of specifically dependent and corrupt agency, it seems that an awareness of one’s agency that fulfilled the second accuracy condition could not fulfill the first supportive-of-agency condition. How could a recognition of oneself as a dependent and corrupt agent do anything to encourage the exercise of one’s moral agency? Might it not be better to drop the accuracy condition, since ignorance of one’s limits, or even an outright misconception of one’s powers, helps one to be braver, and ultimately more successful morally, than clear knowledge of one’s condition would?12 Why not believe false things of oneself if such false beliefs promote the effectiveness of moral action? A certain sort of consequentialist could perhaps accept self-ignorance, misconception, or self-deception in the name of effective action, because for such theorists, desirable consequences of acts define the morality of those acts.13 But for a Kantian, it is not only the consequences of action, 12

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This position would be a twist on Driver’s “virtues of ignorance” claim. Driver accepts ignorance of one’s value to ground modesty; here we consider instead ignorance of one’s limits to ground capable agency. Our rejection of this option will also have a similar twist to my rejection of her ignorance claim for modesty: we needn’t move to the problematic claim that people are stupid and/or selfdeceived in order to achieve an egalitarian vision of virtue (that is, a vision of virtue accessible to more than just the “intellectuals” among us). Though even a consequentialist more concerned than Driver to add up the effects that arrogant personalities would have on the overall happiness of a society might reject such ignorance as well. Despite Driver’s rejection of the Aristotelian model of virtue as too elitist because of its knowledge

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but properly motivated effective action that is the moral concern; and it turns out that it would be impossible for an agent to act on the right motives if she were entirely ignorant about the limits of her agency. Why is this? Essentially, an agent ignorant of her limits could not recognize that she must restrain undue self-love, nor could she choose to place moral principles above self-love, because she would not recognize that she is a dependent being who tends to do the opposite. Neither could this mistaken or self-deceived agent fulfill more specific duties properly: she couldn’t recognize her need to be sympathetic and generous toward other persons in the right way because she couldn’t recognize her own dependent status. Any would-be acts of sympathy or generosity would thus be little more than opportunities to affirm her superiority to other persons who did recognize and admit their limits. Her tendency toward corruption would thus run rampant, since unchecked. In order to recognize duties as duties, and thus to be properly motivated, an agent needs to have an accurate understanding of the limits of her agency which make moral reasons imperatives for her. We cannot, then, admit an ignorance reading of humility. On our picture of agency and humility, there is a certain minimal self-knowledge requirement: an agent must at least recognize herself as belonging to the class of dependent and corrupt rational agents. No act done from ignorance, misconception, or self-deception about the limits of one’s agency could be fully moral. This does not, however, mean that Kantian virtue involves an intellectualist elitism about which Driver expresses concern.14 Indeed, given Kant’s own well-known conviction about the limits of self-knowledge in matters of moral motives, we should be quite hesitant to insist that respect for moral principles demands a particularly robust knowledge of oneself. The necessary knowledge of self asserted here is thus quite limited, and the quality of it is not elitist in the way Driver fears: it does not even require of the agent that she be able to articulate, philosophically or otherwise, the content of her knowledge. Indeed, the most central moral demand of self-knowledge which humility places upon the finite agent is limited to knowing certain general beliefs about oneself that are also true of human beings in general: an agent must recognize herself as a capable but limited agent of moral

14

conditions, an Aristotelian might be the only one of the main three moral theories that could accept a limited virtue of ignorance: Aristotle’s tolerance of a limited “natural,” as opposed to full, virtue would leave room for the naturally virtuous person being ignorant of her state. See, for example, Driver’s criticisms of what she takes to be the excessive intellectualist demands of virtue in Elizabeth Hursthouse’s account of it (Driver, 2000, 41).

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principles, and as a dependent agent who unavoidably seeks happiness, and who has tendencies to place a concern for self above the value of moral principles. She thereby recognizes that dependence and corruption apply to herself, and impact globally upon her every action. Such knowledge of self and of obligation is, furthermore, retrievable from the “common experience of morality” and is expressed more in the nature of one’s “do-ings” than of one’s “know-ings,”15 a sort of knowledge more readily accessible to the “ordinary intelligence” than to the philosophical one (4:404/72). One thus does not need a deep philosophical understanding of morality in order to be humble.16 We must, then, accept the accuracy, or non-ignorance, condition of selfappraisal. But once we accept the non-ignorance condition, how can we resolve it with the efficacy condition of virtuous self-appraisal, that is, the demand that any attitude toward self be not only consistent with, but also supportive of moral ends? How could an agent’s awareness of her limits actually promote a disposition to act morally and enhance the exercise of her agency? Would not an agent’s awareness of her limits qua agent make her more hesitant to act morally? Are we not dooming this agent to a more knowledgeable but less effective, and more despairing, agency? We can begin a response here by remembering that, in virtue of the Kantian commitment that moral action is action from the motive of duty, exercise of agency with an adequate awareness of one’s agent limits is more morally effective than such exercise without such awareness. To act dutifully is to act with an awareness of one’s tendency to transgress moral principles. Lacking an appropriate recognition of these limits, an agent’s exercise of her agency would thus be in danger of spinning out of control into a moral fanaticism, failing to be action from duty. It is only when the exercise of one’s agency is informed by one’s own limits in such exercise that a finite agent can take on her moral obligations as duties instead of falling into a moral fanaticism. This point shall be taken up further in the following section which considers why humility is a necessary condition for proper recognition self-respect; and later, in chapter 9, when we appreciate that various other virtues are enhanced, or indeed made possible at all, when undertaken from a humble perspective, that is, from a perspective in which one appreciates the nature of one’s agent limits. The problem we face now, though, is that 15 16

“[W]isdom . . . in itself consists more in doing and not doing than in knowing” (4:405/73). I will consider all of this in more detail in chapter 8. As we shall see there, an agent may also be required to reflect on the nature of her precise motives for action, but she is not required to know even these with certainty.

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the same awareness which is necessary for morally motivated action seems also to threaten to undermine the exercise of agency entirely. It would seem that awareness of significant agent limits could just as easily be taken as a warrant for despairing inactivity as it could for morally motivated action. How then to make sense of how the humble agent takes up this awareness of limit in a morally productive way? It is certainly true that certain situation-specific awarenesses of limit would warrant inactivity under specific circumstances. I might, for example, recognize that, given current technological limits, I am incapable of being immediately physically with someone on the other side of the world who truly needed my sympathy and support; and this awareness would prevent me from trying to act to be with that person if such companionship were necessary within, say, five minutes. What, then, is different about a proper awareness of one’s limits qua agent that would encourage rather than detract from moral agency? Essentially, action out of full awareness of one’s moral status is more morally effective than action out of ignorance of one’s agency as long as an awareness of the limits of one’s agency is balanced with a proper appreciation for the worth of that same agency. It is only when an awareness of one’s agent limits is balanced by an appreciation for one’s agent worth that one’s attitude toward self can be a mind-set consonant with and supportive of truly morally motivated action. Indeed, this more general awareness of oneself as an agent is necessary in order even accurately to recognize the relevant limits at all. The following argument is thus a combined epistemological and practical argument, that is, it takes the form that an agent cannot know herself as limited, nor act properly on that awareness of limit, without having certain qualities (that is, beliefs, attitudes, and values) of recognition self-respect. First, I could not even begin to know what my limits as an agent were unless I were simultaneously accurately aware of myself as an able agent, for, indeed, it is qua agent that I encounter and assess my limitations. It is important to emphasize here that the awareness of limit we are seeking is not simply an awareness of incapacity or inability, as if I were to recognize myself as a paramecium or other form of life which lacks agency in the relevant sense. I need to understand myself as a dependent and corrupt agent; and it is only in the pursuit of the ends of agency that I encounter these precise limits before which humility1 is warranted. If I did not recognize myself as an agent, and especially as a capable and obligated agent, I could not recognize myself as a dependent agent who seeks happiness; nor, of course, could I recognize myself as a corrupt agent who tends to choose the ends of self-love above other ends of that agency. Without an awareness of the fact

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of my capable agency, I could not begin to appreciate the precise nature of those limits. Of course, this in itself does not show that a respect for, or valuing of, the fact of one’s own agency is necessary for proper assessment of one’s limits; it shows only that admission of the fact of such agency is needed.17 But valuing of agency is also necessary: in order for an awareness of limit to be pointed toward dutiful moral action instead of toward paralysis, and thus for an agent to have perspective upon and resulting confidence in her admittedly dependent and corrupt agency (and that is, after all, just what the humble person is: an agent whose accurate awareness of her agent limits is turned toward enhancing the virtuous exercise of her agency), that awareness of limit must be combined not only with a bare factual recognition of one’s capacity as an agent, but also with a recognition of the absolute value of her capacity. The reason for this is that the awareness of one’s absolute value acts as a crucial psychological balancing factor, making it impossible for one’s agent limits to be understood as crippling ones. The humble agent recognizes, despite her limits, her ability to act for reasons, and the value of being this sort of being: that in virtue of this capacity, she is a member of the moral community, and that this community, this “kingdom of ends,” cannot exist without her participation. This valuing of her agency places her simultaneous awareness of the limits of her agency in proper perspective, and prevents her from taking the latter as a warrant for despairing inactivity. It should be emphasized, further, that an awareness of worth can play such a balancing role so successfully precisely because, unlike any assertion of 17

Asserting this distinction raises questions about how awarenesses of the fact and of the value of one’s finite agency are related in one’s consciousness. These are, essentially, questions about the nature of practical rationality and theory of action, and about the relationship of fact and value, justification and motivation to action. It could, for example, be argued that one could not admit these facts of one’s agency without simultaneously admitting their value; for, to believe that one is a capable and obligated agent, but not believe that such agency is a thing of ultimate value would be to misunderstand the nature of that agency which one claimed to understand. As such, to have an accurate recognition of oneself as an agent is, on this account, to have certain beliefs and values traditionally associated with the recognition self-respect of which we have already spoken. It is the awareness of oneself as a being capable of acting for reasons, an awareness which, properly understood, involves an awareness of one’s worth as an agent. But one might also argue that these facts of one’s agency can be recognized without admitting or recognizing their value, and that a full awareness of the value of one’s agency requires something external to the judgment that such agency is what it is. This might be argued by saying that a true recognition of the value of the capacity involves certain affective components of one’s character that don’t automatically follow from the judgment of the fact of one’s capacity. For the purposes of this current argument, I set these questions aside. I am more concerned with the question of how both these aspects of recognition self-respect need to be assumed for a proper self-regarding attitude, and not with how they are related to each other.

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appraisal self-respect, it is an affirmation of the absolute, unmitigated, and unmitigatible worth of such agency. Even in the face of challenges in one’s exercise of it, and in the face of wildly varying actual accomplishments and excellences of one’s agency, one’s capacity for agency holds a worth that cannot be assailed. The awareness of one’s limited agency that would help constitute and enhance one’s exercise of moral agency needs, then, to be a balanced awareness issuing in a limited moral confidence appropriate to one’s condition as a dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified agent.18 To take one’s agent limits as a call to action instead of as a good reason not to act, there has to be the belief that the identified limits do not undermine one’s capacity to act. And this can be believed only if one recognizes the value of one’s genuine capacity as an agent, and recognizes further that this value is absolute and unmitigatible; that is, that it remains even when the exercise of that agency is flawed. A true and accurate awareness of one’s limits qua agent does not warrant inactivity because it cannot be equated with a crippling belief in one’s utter incapacity.19 18

19

Kant himself reflects on the import of maintaining this balanced confidence in one’s agency when he speaks of the import of not letting one’s hope for moral progress turn into self-deception about one’s purity: “[W]hoever possesses as pure a disposition as is required will feel of himself that he can never fall so low as to regain a liking for evil. There is, however, something awkward about such feelings . . . : one is never more easily deceived than in what promotes a good opinion of oneself. Moreover, it seems never advisable to be encouraged to such a state of confidence but much more beneficial (for morality) to ‘work out one’s salvation with fear and trembling’ . . . Yet without any confidence in the disposition once acquired, perseverance in it would hardly be possible. We can, however, find this confidence, without delivering ourselves to the sweetness of the anxiety of enthusiasm, by comparing our life conduct so far pursued with the resolution we once embraced” (6:68/86). Although Kant is speaking here of a balance to be achieved in recognition of one’s moral accomplishments and not of the nature of agency itself, the parallel with the latter can I think be drawn. Judith Andre has suggested to me an argument somewhat similar to this in that it relies on recognition self-respect to support humility. She asserts that being able to evaluate and know one’s limits demands a trust in oneself: making an accurate, honest assessment of anything – and especially of oneself – demands making the assessment from an epistemologically reliable standpoint. But developing such a reliable point of view when assessing one’s own limits is particularly tricky. This is, in part, because for human agents an awareness of one’s limits is, as Kant himself emphasizes, a painful awareness, and one therefore susceptible to confusion if not to the self-deception to which corrupt beings would surely be susceptible. Even apart from the agent’s own temptations to subvert this process, the agent is not, when seeking to make an assessment of herself, operating in the realm of absolutely certain knowledge; there is no synthetic a priori certainty to be gained. To gain what assurance one can about the accuracy of one’s self-evaluation would demand, therefore, a certain trust in the practical capacities of the evaluator. But someone who lacked a respect for herself precisely qua capable and obligated agent is not someone whose practical capacities could be trusted. After all, why should one trust the assessment of a person for whose practical capacities one has no respect? If I really had no respect for my capacities of practical assessment – or if those capacities I did have really did not warrant respect – I would not be the kind of agent who could trust that an accurate self-assessment of her limits had been made. In order, then, to make an accurate assessment of one’s limits, a humble

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So, without an awareness of her worth, an awareness which affirms both the capacities of one’s agency and the fact that it matters for the good of oneself and one’s world that one has and utilizes these capacities, this agent’s awareness of her limits would have the potential to be paralyzing. When balanced with this awareness of worth, though, a recognition of one’s limits can instead play an important tempering role in choice and action, helping to remind the agent of her needs, excesses, and weaknesses that would encourage undue valuing of self. It is only when her limits are placed in perspective both with her capacities and her duties that this agent’s selfregarding attitude becomes one that would encourage her toward moral action instead of despair. We have seen then that an awareness of the fact and value of one’s capacity for agency are conditions for proper assessment of and perspective on one’s agent limits, a perspective which assures that such awareness is turned toward exercising one’s agency from the motive of duty instead of toward despairing inactivity. An awareness of the fact and value of one’s capacity for agency is, however, most traditionally associated with recognition selfrespect. Recognition self-respect is, then, a necessary epistemological and practical pre-requisite for humility1 because it is a pre-requisite for evaluating oneself as humility1 requires, and for being able to utilize that awareness of one’s limits which constitutes humility1 in the service of respecting moral principles as humility requires. The complexity of Kant’s maxim of the moral disposition, one which, when internalized, issues in a complex attitude of valuing of the self qua agent, is thus vindicated. Lingering concerns It is important to be clear about what is and isn’t being asserted in the preceding argument.20 We have through this argument asserted one necessary condition for humility: if we are going to say of a person that she is humble, then the condition of recognition self-respect needs to be in place; otherwise, whatever awareness of limit she has, it is not that virtuous, accurate, and morally efficacious awareness of limit which we would call humility.

20

agent must have at least a nascent sense of recognition self-respect to assure an epistemologically reliable standpoint from which to assess herself accurately. This argument implies, however, the need not only for recognition self-respect, but also appraisal self-respect; for, in order to acquire a trust in one’s capacities for practical assessment, it is necessary not only to recognize one’s worth qua agent, but also to recognize more specific excellences in oneself, for example, an excellence in assessing one’s ability to judge the abilities of persons generally. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer at Cambridge University Press whose questions about the argument of this chapter led to these further reflections.

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Questions about recognition self-respect as a condition of humility do, however, remain. The above argument asserts that if anyone in the world actually has the virtuous state of humility, they also have those conditions necessary for that state, that is, they have recognition self-respect as a supporting buttress to their awareness of limit. We might still be uncertain at this point, though, about whether and under what conditions such a state is either possible at all or, if shown to be possible, whether such a state is achievable by human agents, and whether we can determine it to have been achieved in any particular individual. The last question (of whether it has ever been achieved in an individual case) can be set aside. Like action from the motive of duty, it might be that no one has ever achieved this balance of self-respect and awareness of limits, and in any event, if they have, our ability to acquire knowledge of that fact, either in our own case or in that of others, is fallible at best. We cannot say with certainty whether anyone has in fact attained this state. Indeed, it may be that any agent who has sought to come to terms with the intractable limits of her agency has fallen into despair about her situation, and has thus failed to act morally. The previous questions about whether this state is in principle possible, and whether it is in principle achievable by human agents are, however, more compelling. Is it even possible for dependent and corrupt human agents to maintain an appreciation for their worth in the face of an uncompromising recognition of their intractable limits as moral agents? Might not despair be a more likely, even if a less appropriate or justifiable, human response? What would human agents need in order not to fall into despair in the face of their agent limits? One is tempted to turn to Kant’s discussion of the Highest Good at this point. It is there that Kant reflects on what human agents have need and reason to hope for as responsible moral agents, and specifically that they can hope for happiness proportionate to their virtue. It is important to realize, though, that such concerns (and the need for hope that Kant believes can be assured only by the postulates of God and immortality) are in fact questions on the moral continuum posterior to our present one of what is necessary for a human agent to utilize her awareness of her agent limits in the service of the virtuous exercise of her agency. It is in fact assumed in Kant’s discussion of the Highest Good that human agents are obligated, are aware of their obligations, and, most importantly, are capable of the “proper incentives” to fulfilling their obligations previous to, and apart from, the appeal to hope he admits is necessary for the assurance of happiness. As Kant reminds us,

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progress toward [holiness of morals] is already possible and necessary in this life, whereas [beatitude], under the name of happiness, cannot be attained at all in this world (so far as our own capacity is concerned) and is therefore made solely an object of hope . . . [T]he Christian principle of morals itself . . . does not make cognition of God and his will the basis of these laws but only of the attainment of the highest good subject to the condition of observing these laws . . . [I]t places even the proper incentive to observing them not in the results wished for but in the representation of duty alone, faithful observance of which alone constitutes worthiness to acquire the latter. (5:129/107, emphasis removed)

That is to say, Kant asserts that it is entirely possible for humans to make progress toward “holiness” – including, one can assume, the virtuous exercise of one’s agency – without appeal to God and immortality to buttress the hope we have for happiness proportionate to our virtue. It is the “representation of duty alone” (which, as we recall, includes a clear understanding of our tendency to transgress moral principles) to which we need to appeal to assure ourselves that we are capable agents and to thus acquire that “proper incentive” to the observance of the moral law, even in the face of admitted agent limits. And, indeed, without such an internally motivated incentive and confidence, our actions could not be truly autonomous actions (this is just the point Kant emphasizes early in his discussion of the Highest Good, asserting that the moral law is the ground for making the highest good an object of practical reason, and not vice-versa).21 Furthermore, without recognizing our own capacity for acting in accordance with the moral law and thus the possibility of making continual progress in our virtue toward holiness, there is no justification at all for the hope of that immortality and existence of God which would assure our happiness. Without virtue, there could be no warrant for raising the question of and hope for happiness proportionate to virtue. As such, Kant asserts: all the moral perfection that a human being can attain is still only virtue, that is, a disposition conformed with law from respect for law, and thus consciousness of a continuing propensity to transgression or at least impurity, that is, an admixture of many spurious (not moral) motives to observe the law, hence a self-esteem combined with humility. (5:128/107)

Virtue, this disposition of “self-esteem combined with humility,”is not, then, a result of our hope for God’s existence, but a condition for that very 21

See especially 5:109/91–92. The point is made even more strongly later in this section: “[E]verything remains disinterested and grounded only on duty, and there is no need to base it on incentives of fear and hope, which if they became principles would destroy the whole moral worth of actions” (5:129/108).

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hope. For it is in acquisition of this attitude of virtue, which Kant equates with self-esteem and humility, and which he believes is the most natural result of our “consciousness of a continuing propensity to transgression,” that we can begin to ask the questions about happiness which lead us to hope in “endless duration” or immortality and the existence of a being, God, who could assure such duration. We may need hope in immortality and God in order to make sense of happiness, but the pursuit of holiness through virtue does not require appeal to such hope. As such, when Kant affirms that, on the basis of one’s own energies, capacity and will, “nothing remains for a creature but endless progress,” he follows immediately with the claim that “though for that very reason [that is, because the creature is capable of making endless progress] he is justified in hoping for his endless duration” (5:128/107, emphasis added). Hope follows upon our capacity to affirm our agency, and is not a necessary condition of it. Why is it that Kant believes an appeal to God and immortality is necessary for the assurance of our happiness but not for the assurance of the possibility of the virtuous exercise of our agency? Essentially, because the former involves appeal to objective conditions in the world, and not just to our own will. It assumes, in fact, that everything in the world can go “according to [one’s] wish and will” (5:124/104). To hope for happiness thus involves much more than having faith in my capacities qua agent. It involves also the world being congenial to my agency. As Kant puts it: “Happiness . . . rests . . . on the harmony of nature with [an agent’s] whole end as well as with the essential determining ground of his will” (5:124/104). The postulates, he says further, “concern only the physical or metaphysical conditions – in a word, those which lie in the nature of things” (5:143/119). So, it is one thing to ask ourselves whether we are capable agents, that is, whether we are capable of acting in accordance with the moral demands placed on us; it is entirely another to ask whether the world will conform with our will. Whereas the former is a question of internal psychology (that is, we are capable agents; the question is whether we can affirm ourselves as such in the face of our equally actual agent limits), and of how one faces one’s own limits, the latter we simply cannot know, or hope for, without appeal to a God who sets straight the accounts of the universe. The hope of the highest good is more a hope about objective conditions in the world than it is a hope about our internal capacities, or about our subjective state and motivational structure. Is all of this right? Does it make sense to think that a person with recognized agent limits can, as it were, “pull herself up by her own bootstraps” and affirm the value and possibility of her agency even in the face of her

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agent limits? Is there no need for hope in a power beyond one’s own agency in order to assure the subjective possibility of affirming our agent capacities in the face of our real agent limits? This is a question of human psychology, and subject perhaps to the vagaries thereof: what does a human agent need to be convinced of her capacities? But there is a metaphysical question that lingers at the bottom of these psychological questions: are the limits we admit of human agency in fact sufficient genuinely to warrant despair, or are they not? Stated conversely, are human capacities in fact adequate to overcome the limits of dependence and corruption that have been identified? Do the facts of dependency and corruption undermine agency, or is human agency something capable of overcoming these limits? We need, then, to distinguish between these metaphysical and psychological questions. In the end, the Kantian needs to remain committed on the metaphysical level to the idea that the truth of the matter – that is, the true balance of capacity and limit – does not make the exercise of agency impossible. Kantians might even need to admit further, given the above reflections on the role and purpose of the Highest Good, that this exercise of agency is possible even apart from any theological commitments on the part of the agent. On the psychological level, things are somewhat more complex. It would be folly not to admit that it is at least possible for some agents to believe their limits to be a warrant for despair. We are all too “capable” of collapsing under the weight of our self-realizations. For that matter, we are all too capable of laughing in the face of our agent limits and not taking them seriously enough. But to admit these possibilities is only to affirm that the acquisition of humility – that is, the acquisition of an attitude toward one’s limits which is productive for moral purposes – is just that: an acquisition, an accomplishment that is the result of some internal psychological effort to affirm one’s true agent limits in a way that does not reject what is also true, namely, one’s genuine capacities qua agent. The question that remains, then, is the further psychological one of what is necessary in any particular agent in order to acquire this state in which an accurate awareness of limit and capacity are pointed toward the virtuous exercise of one’s agency. And, here, I believe the Kantian answers could be multiple. A religious answer, one in which an agent makes a non-heteronomous appeal to reliance on God, might, for example, not be entirely out of bounds. God could be that being who affirms a belief in one’s strength in the face of any difficulty, and the difficulty in facing one’s agent limits would be no different. This would not be to say that

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one lacked the strength oneself to overcome one’s limits, but only that in any difficult task, this person relies on faith and hope in God to face her task and affirm the possibility of her strength. But there could be non-religious sources of motivation as well. Faith in oneself “against the odds” and despite apparently overwhelming obstacles is an attitude which has often proven those obstacles not to be quite as overwhelming as they initially seemed. Even faith in the “ought implies can” principle could, for some, be a sufficient spur to affirm one’s agency in this way. Might one not still object at this point, asserting, regardless of Kant’s views on the issue, that such tempering of one’s awareness of limit by an awareness of capacity and worth is indeed possible, but is possible only through divine intervention? If we truly accept these limits of human nature, is the only true antidote to them something beyond human nature?22 This is an objection which returns these reflections on moral psychology to the metaphysical level, and one which, in the end, perhaps cannot be answered. Surely, we see non-religious people, people who do not consciously affirm a belief in God, who at least appear to act humbly and confidently in the face of their limits. But the question of whether, despite the agent’s first-person atheistic perspective, some divine force is in fact secretly operative in these cases is beyond human ken. What we are left with, in the end, is an understanding of what humility would be were it to exist, an affirmation of recognition self-respect as a necessary (though perhaps not sufficient) condition of this humility, and then also a set of questions about what psychological and cosmological conditions would be both necessary and sufficient in order for such a state to exist. Although these questions remain, we can, nonetheless, leave this discussion with a deeper appreciation for humility, and for the intimate connection between it and recognition self-respect: the humble person is one who has achieved a balance of appreciation of worth and limit, and thereby avoids despair. Humility, that is, an awareness of one’s limits, would not be a virtuous state unless it maintained just this balance. The humble person takes her awareness of limit as an impetus to action instead of as a warrant for despairing inaction, and such perspective on limit is possible only in conjunction with that recognition of absolute and unmitigated 22

A Kantian defense of the idea that there is a “moral gap” in human agency that can be filled only by God is found in Hare 1996a. A certain sort of interpretation of Pauline humility might also border on, or might even heartily accept, this idea that, without God, humans qua humans are indeed utterly crippled as moral agents. Such an interpretation of Paul is, I believe, flawed in that it fails to consider adequately the fact that, for Paul, humans, qua humans, are made in God’s image. As such, even one who failed to accept a faith in God would receive the gift of agency from God.

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worth understood as recognition self-respect. Humility and recognition self-respect, in order to be virtuous states, thus cannot be understood simply as two distinct and unrelated states; rather, recognition self-respect is a necessary condition for any humility that would be a genuine virtue. As such, the latter could not exist without the former. hu m i li t y 1 is a co n d i ti o n o f pro pe r s e lf - re s pe c t Let us turn now to argue the converse of what has already been stated, viz., that humility1 is a condition of recognition self-respect. It has already been suggested, as part of the argument of Part I, that a corrupt agent needs an awareness of her dependence and corruption in order to assure proper respect for moral principles. We argue now for a furthering of that point: a dependent and corrupt agent needs an awareness of herself as such in order to assure an accurate recognition respect for herself which supports her commitment to moral principles. To recall Darwall’s definition of it, recognition self-respect is a dispositional willingness to constrain one’s actions toward oneself, and to defend oneself against would-be disrespectful actions toward oneself from others, out of a proper recognition of the value of one’s person.23 Darwall distinguishes this from “appraisal self-respect,” or that self-respect whose appropriate grounds are “those excellences of persons which we delimit as constituting character” (Darwall, 1995, 194). I limit my claim about humility acting as a necessary condition of self-respect to the more specific point that humility is a necessary condition of recognition self-respect. To what extent, then, have Darwall and other contemporary commentators 23

Lack of recognition self-respect would thus be characterized by “[s]ubmitting to indignities, playing the fool, not caring about whether one is taken seriously and being content to be treated as the plaything of others” (Darwall, 1995, 193). One who has recognition self-respect thus does not permit such actions. Both Darwall and Thomas Hill use the language of recognizing one’s “rights” to make this point, Hill focusing in particular on what it means to treat oneself in a way that avoids servility (“Servility and Self-Respect,” in Hill, 1991). Darwall’s and Hill’s accounts of self-respect form the centerpieces of a great body of literature, going back to John Rawls’ Theory of Justice, which focuses on Kantian respect in general, and on the related notions of self-respect, rights, dignity, and servility (Rawls, 1971). Since then, there have been a number of more recent reflections on both respect and self-respect. A helpful anthology of them can be found in Dillon, 1995. Taylor (1985a) focuses not so much on self-respect as on “proper pride.” One might, with hindsight, suggest that this entire body of literature represents the birth of a distinctively and genuinely Kantian approach to virtue, grounded in respect for morality, self, and persons generally. It is not my intention here to rehearse the various distinctions to be found in these accounts of respect and self-respect. There are various ways of conceiving of these states which I find generally compatible with each other and with the argument to come. I will, however, take Darwall’s definition of recognition self-respect – and especially its focus on respect being defined by appropriate constraint of action in light of the value in the respected object – as a guiding one.

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on self-respect considered the importance of an agent’s self-awareness of the inherent limits of her agency for acquisition of that self-respect? Although there is a great body of literature on self-respect, there is, in fact, little discussion of the limits of that agency which is recognized in these accounts as having absolute worth. There have been some efforts to consider self-regarding attitudes other than self-respect, including ones that might limit the claims of self-respect. Most importantly, there is a whole line of discussion of shame that goes back to John Rawls’ consideration of the concept.24 Although this is an important attitude to be considered, and is clearly one which can limit excesses in assertion of one’s worth, shame (and the related attitude of guilt) is an attitude concerned more with specific failures of individual agents than with shared intractable limits of agency as such.25 Because it focuses on lack of excellences in action and character, concerns more associated with appraisal than with recognition self-respect, shame thus does not act as a balance upon one’s positive assessment of oneself qua agent. There is, of course, among most commentators on self-respect, an implicit awareness that the constraint of actions toward self is based in moral precepts and not in simple claims of self-love. This would, for example, in Darwall be explained in part by the distinction between recognition and appraisal self-respect, and in part by his distinction between categorical and prudential concerns that inform one’s attitude of respect. But any appeal to the reasons we might focus on moral and not simply personal grounds of self-respect – that is, because humans tend to be self-centered – is at best implicit. Diana Myers,26 for example, mentions in passing that self-respecting persons “take their own desires to be worthy of consideration, but they give these desires only their proper weight in deliberation” (Meyers [in Dillon, 1995], 221–222), but does not dwell on what particular internal challenges the self-respecting person had to overcome in order to value her desires properly. In a way that seems to anticipate these failures to discuss inherent limits in human agency as such, Elizabeth Telfer27 expresses a concern that 24

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See Rawls, reprinted as “Self-Respect, Excellences, and Shame,” in Dillon, 1995, 125–132; Taylor 1985a; and John Deigh, “Shame and Self-Esteem: A Critique,” originally published in Ethics 93 (1983), and reprinted in Dillon, 1995, 133–156. As Rawls himself puts it, moral shame involves an agent valuing certain excellences of character, but finding “actions and traits that manifest or betray the absence of these attributes in his person.” Shame is thus the “awareness or recollection of these defects” (Rawls [in Dillon, 1995], 129). Diana Meyers, “Self-Respect and Autonomy,” in Dillon, 1995, 218–248. Elizabeth Telfer, “Self-Respect,” originally published in the Philosophical Quarterly 18 (1968), and reprinted in Dillon, 1995, 107–116.

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self-respect could not be an entirely adequate moral self-regarding attitude, since it “seems too egoistic to be an appropriate basis for other-regarding conduct” (Telfer [in Dillon, 1995], 116). Telfer also briefly mentions humility in her discussion of self-respect, arguing that the two states are not incompatible. While self-respect, on her account, is an awareness that one has some minimum basis of value, humility is “the recognition that there is infinite room for improvement and that the minimum standard which is connected with self-respect is no great achievement” (ibid.). Although this moves us closer to an important connection between the two states, Telfer’s account does not argue explicitly for the necessary connection between them. Although he rarely speaks of the inter-relationship of self-respect and humility, Hill seems, more than other commentators, to be guided by an assumption of the import of their co-existence since he comments most extensively, in a variety of disparate reflections, on various limits of human agency. He has, for example, an interesting discussion of humility, which assumes an ability to recognize the value of something other than oneself, in the very specific context of understanding one’s relationship to nature.28 And his reflections on terrorism lead him to emphasize the import of recognizing limits in our moral judgment.29 Although an assumption of the import of the awareness of human limit is found in these accounts, none of Hill’s reflections provide an explicit argument for the necessary connection of recognition of one’s value as an agent with recognition of one’s limits specifically as an agent. Telfer was right, then, to be concerned. There is, on the face of it, something potentially egoistic about placing a self-regarding virtue which emphasized only one’s worth at the center of one’s system of virtue without simultaneously affirming the limits of that worthy agency. Even without appeal to the specific picture of human nature we have accepted here, one will surely want to accept that humans are limited in some way, and that this fact should somehow inform moral deliberation. One might even note, more critically, that morality needs to be other-directed at least as much as self-directed, perhaps more. But to consider self-respect the last word on self-regarding virtue doesn’t seem to account for these concerns and, indeed, threatens to turn morality into an unbridled admiration of self. These concerns are only heightened once we accept the picture of humanity that we have, one in which undue focus on self is all too likely a prospect in the first place. To emphasize the moral necessity of self-respect 28

Hill, 1983, 211–224.

29

Hill, 2000.

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for a kind of being who already has a tendency to place self-love above morality is a dangerous thing indeed. Those who defend the idea of self-respect as a central self-regarding virtue would certainly emphasize the centrality of, in Darwall’s terms, recognition respect for one’s absolute worth as a person (or as a rational agent), rather than (again, in Darwall’s terms) appraisal respect for one’s accomplishments. They would emphasize further that such respect is due to all persons, not just to oneself, and that it is grounded in moral concerns, not claims of selflove. But, given the understanding of human nature accepted in chapter 1, even this sort of self-respect is open to the charge at least of being an incomplete self-regarding attitude: self-respect may be one important selfregarding virtue, but Kantians have focused on the worth of agency to the exclusion of concern for other Kantian qualities of that same agency, and this seems wrong. Without a broader conception of virtuous awareness of self, we not only fail to capitalize upon the resources which Kant offers to virtue ethics; we, furthermore, threaten to distort beyond recognition those resources we have taken up in a way that makes Kantian approaches to virtue susceptible to communitarian critiques of egoistic self-centeredness.30 But current accounts of self-respect are not mistaken as such; and we needn’t entirely abandon a moral concern for self, turning instead to a simple other-focused morality, in order to temper the self-centeredness of self-respect as the central self-regarding virtue. We need simply to make explicit, in ways that current accounts do not, what is implicit in any Kantian account of agency and thus in any virtuous state of recognition self-respect: that a proper valuing of the self as agent must include not only an appreciation of one’s worth, but also an appreciation for the dependence and corruption of one’s own rational agency. In fact, most accounts of Kantian versions of self-respect can be made compatible with this less egoistic account of self-regard. But they have not stated it explicitly, and without an explicit articulation of this perspective, contemporary Kantian accounts of virtues related to the self are imbalanced. Granting then that some sort of tempering of the claims of worth is in order, it is nonetheless important to be careful about what sort of awareness of limit would constitute such tempering; for, indeed, certain methods of 30

A more radical critique of Kantian focus on self would be argued by communitarian thinkers like Alasdair MacIntyre or, more historically, certain readings of David Hume. According to them, morality is not really focused on the self at all, and is instead a thoroughly other-focused and social phenomenon. I am not moving toward so radical a critique as this. Rather, I am staying within the realm of the moral need for self-regard, but providing a more balanced account of it. It may be that such a balance to Kantian concern for self-respect could be a basis from which to address communitarian concerns that Kantian virtue is too self-centered.

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it would in fact undermine an appreciation of the absolute worth of one’s agency. One does not want, for example, to claim that a belief in one’s utter turpitude is necessary in order to limit self-respect, as if the worth that grounded a limited self-respect were actually something that had to be borrowed and was not truly one’s own. An awareness of limit that placed oneself below other human agents, and which thus inspired comparativecompetitive judgments, would also, of course, be inappropriate. Nor can the limit introduced be one that undermines a claim to the absolute worth of the agent. A proper awareness of the limits of agency would not relativize the worth of that agency overall; rather, in order to map onto the account of agency which has already been accepted, the awareness of worth to be recognized and maintained has to be of an absolute (as opposed to relative) worth, while the finite agent’s ability to employ this absolutely worthy capacity must be recognized, in some sense, as limited. It is not the worth of the agent that is limited, but the capacity of the agent to live up to her worthy capacity. Finally, the recognition of limit introduced needs to be one which does not weaken or undermine the agent’s capacity to act out of respect for moral principles; indeed, as was argued in the previous section, it must enhance that capacity. The limits to be recognized that would allow for a successful tempering of one’s awareness of worth are, of course, those of dependent and corrupt agency. An agent must recognize that the fact of her worth qua agent is tied up inextricably with the fact of her dependence; and also with the fact that the challenge of pursuing self-love in the face of the loss of the dream of perfect happiness gives her a tendency to misunderstand, under- and over-estimate and assert her rights and worth overall. To value one’s worth qua agent properly, an agent needs also to recognize her dependence and corruption qua agent. Otherwise, she has so strong a tendency to misunderstand the nature of her absolute worth, and the quality of the constraints on treatment of self required, that her proper appreciation for herself is undermined. The forthcoming argument is thus guided by the same epistemic and practical concerns which guided our previous argument: an appreciation of one’s own worth needs to be tempered by a simultaneous awareness of the limits of one’s agency in order, first, for a virtuous self-respect to be an accurate estimation of one’s worth;31 and, secondly, for a virtuous self-respect to be an attitude intrinsically supportive of the 31

The argument for the need for accuracy in one’s self-assessment remains the same as that discussed in the previous section: a self-regarding attitude needs to be accurate because a less than accurate understanding of oneself undermines the agent’s efforts to act in a morally motivated way.

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requirement to respect moral principles. Let us consider the details of this argument. Awareness of dependence and corruption informs self-respect Humility1 is a condition of recognition respect for self: unless I have humility1 , which assures an accurate awareness of both my dependence and corruption, I cannot: (a) evaluate my worth accurately (epistemic condition) or (b) utilize that appropriate awareness of worth in the service of respecting moral principles (practical condition). How is it, then, that the recognition of oneself as a dependent and corrupt agent provides a necessary tempering of the agent’s perspective on her worth as an agent? It was argued in the previous section that recognition self-respect is a condition for the successful use of one’s practical capacities. It is thus true not only that dependent rational agents warrant self-respect; they also need it. That recognition self-respect is a pre-requisite for the exercise of her rational agency is itself an indication of the specifically limited agency that an agent is seeking to respect. The need for recognition respect is an affirmation that the agent is the kind of being who has needs in the first place, that is, that she is a dependent rational being; and, more specifically in this case, that she, unlike some divine and perfect being, is the sort of agent who needs self-affirmation in order to exercise her capacities. Furthermore, if an agent seeking to value her worth as an agent failed to recognize this fact of her dependent status, she would also fail to be properly aware of her corruption. An agent may recognize the worth of her agency; but lacking any awareness of her needs, she would also lack an awareness of her tendency to overassert her needs and desires, and her admission of the worth of her agency thus becomes little more than self-aggrandizement, an unconscious assertion of the claims of self-love as primary. Failure to be aware of dependence inspires unbridled corruption, since the needs of self-love, unacknowledged, result in the unconscious assertion of the needs of self-love as primary. The result is that her corruption expresses itself unchecked and without the explicit awareness of the agent so acting. We are back in the realm of self-deception. This agent’s constraint of treatment of herself would thus not be guided by an accurate assessment of her own value, and this because she failed to have an accurate assessment of her own needs. She has instead only an admiration for her worth as an agent, combined with an unfettered pursuit of self-love. For such an agent, there are as many ways to fail in proper recognition self-respect as there are ways for an unchecked self-love to go

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wrong, as was suggested in chapter 1. She would inevitably treat herself either too permissively or too servilely, depending upon whether her unconscious struggles with self-love tended toward excess or deficiency; but in all cases, the defense of her self-worth would be infected by her undue self-love, and thus be too self-absorbed. She might, for example, be offended – that is, take it as an affront to her self-respect – when another person offered assistance, sympathy, or acted generously. I am reminded here in particular of our chapter 1 discussion of Snegirev, from the Brothers Karamazov, who so angrily refused Alyosha’s offer of money. Although Alyosha was somewhat misguided in his effort to express generosity, Snegirev was himself struggling to accept the fact of human dependence, questioning whether he could at once retain human dignity and admit human need. Snegirev is eventually able to find that balance, but one who did not, and who claimed only absolute dignity without an admission of human dependency, would angrily refuse help in the way that Snegirev did. This agent would thus tend not only to improper constraint of actions toward herself, but also improper constraint of actions and choices directed toward other persons, leading ultimately to a refusal of any recognition of the inter-dependency of persons generally. She would also tend to treat other rational beings as less needful and more self-sufficient than in fact they are. At best, this agent would treat persons who did accept their dependency as sadly self-deceived about the true nature of their agency.32 This agent’s valuing of self would thus also not be supportive of an attitude of respect for moral principles. Not recognizing her dependence and corruption, this agent could also not understand her duties as duties. Indeed, this agent’s attitude toward moral principles would be more of a moral fanaticism of sorts. Awareness of her absolute worth as an agent would be transformed into an absolute and unmitigated confidence in her capacity to exercise her agency, and such a belief is not warranted by her state. Her awareness of herself as an agent of moral principles would lead her to be so impressed with her moral status that she would believe herself equal to the principles of which she is an agent, and more accomplished than those who did admit their corruption. Or she might, again, just think that being a moral agent without corruption was true for all agents, and again consider those who affirmed their corruption to be sadly deceived. In any event, her valuing of herself as an agent thus, once again, subverts 32

The need to restrain self-conceit is just as live a concern for that agent who takes self-annihilation as her road to corruption. Such an agent would, though, be better described as one in need of restraining her self-absorption. This is just to re-emphasize the point that dejection or despair is just as much an undue fascination with self as conceit is, and is thus in need of similar constraint.

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her respect for moral principles; and with that flip in her value structure, she would lose her ability to see her duties as duties. To be self-respecting, an agent needs to reject the self-aggrandizement that would come with this unchecked appreciation for self-worth, and this means not an unfettered, and self-deceived, appreciation for self, but, rather, an appreciation for one’s worth informed by an awareness of the needful and corrupt status of one’s agency. So, although recognition selfrespect and humility1 are conceptually distinct, it would be impossible for a human agent to acquire the former without the latter. This is just the converse of the point made in the previous section, viz., that an awareness of limit uninformed, and thus not balanced, by an awareness of one’s worth, would be paralyzing. To have an unchecked admiration for one’s worth as an agent would not be paralyzing, but it would also not be the perspective on self from which to engage in moral activity. It surely would not be that balanced perspective on self necessary for doing one’s duty from duty. It would be self-satisfaction, not self-respect. To have a capacity which has absolute worth is not to say that one has an absolute and unfettered capacity, and to mistake it for the latter is to ring the death knell of one’s commitment to morality. One might object at this point, saying that defenders of recognition selfrespect avoid all these problematic results by noting that constraint of one’s actions comes from valuing of the self as agent, or from one’s moral rights, and not from one’s assertion of the rights of self-love. This is, of course, correct. My intent here, though, is to show that limiting self-respect in this way has a hidden premise: that there are other ways one is tempted to value oneself that are illicit. Recognition self-respect, for dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified agents, needs to affirm not only what such selfrespect is, but also what it is not: an agent needs to assert not only that she has rights, or worth, but also, in affirming those rights and her worth, that she is a dependent agent who tends to over- or under-emphasize her worth overall. Recognition self-respect and humility1 may be conceptually distinct, but a dependent and corrupt agent cannot acquire the former without the latter. This is a point that is, however, only implicit in previous accounts, and to that extent, these accounts are incomplete: if agency, in addition to being capable and dignified, is also corrupt and dependent, then self-respect is so limited a response to agency as to be incomplete, and ultimately inaccurate. Once the human condition of dependent and corrupt rational agency is appropriately emphasized, self-respect is contextualized within the realm of human dependance and corruption, and becomes only one important aspect of this agent’s assessment of herself qua agent.

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The awareness of both the needs and corruption at the basis of one’s self-respect thus provides the agent a better, more virtuous, point of view from which to appreciate her worth. A virtuous respect for oneself does not consist simply in recognizing oneself as a capable agent; it is, more fully, to recognize oneself, as Kant himself suggests, as a member of the community of “rational beings with needs” (6:453/202), and as an agent susceptible to overasserting her claims of self-love, that is, making “claims to esteem for oneself that precede accord with the moral law” (5:73/63). This is not to say that one’s worth as an agent is not absolute. It is, however, to admit the context within which this sort of absolutely worthy agent operates, and that the quality of the recognition of one’s worth is informed thereby. The worthy agency for which one has respect is a dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified rational agency. And the ultimate virtuous self-regarding attitude is, to repeat Kant’s description of it, “self-esteem combined with humility” (5:128/107). co n clu si o n We have, throughout our discussion of humility, emphasized problems in claiming it as a virtue. When it is insisted that one must find oneself unworthy or insignificant in order to be virtuous, virtue reduces only to a medieval state of self-mortification – to a belief that one is a “wound” or “sore” upon the earth. The history of humility – which all too happily encourages such a state of human unworthiness – has ignored the import of self-respect to both its peril and ultimate marginalization. Insisting, as my account of humility has, on making recognition self-respect, as well as an awareness of the equal dignity and shared limits of all agents, necessary conditions of the state, rehabilitates humility into a virtuous attitude which insistently rejects self-abnegating excesses and temptations toward comparative-competitive analysis of oneself. Whether we take these beliefs and values to be intertwined as a single self-regarding attitude, or as mutually necessary conditions of each other, is less crucial than to admit that one is not present without the other. The resulting overall character is one not unlike that guided by the judgments implicit in the maxim of the moral disposition discussed in chapter 5. These traditionally distinguished states are, when understood and guided by the maxim of the moral disposition, placed in a relationship of mutual dependence. Humility1 and self-respect are thus just flip sides of the same perspective on self in the face of the authority of moral principles. And they thereby move that much more toward becoming a single, though

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complex, virtuous attitude toward oneself as agent. Although humility is itself a proper awareness of one’s limits as an agent, such an awareness can come about only in that agent who also has a proper awareness of her worth as an agent. And although self-respect is itself a proper awareness of one’s worth as an agent, such an awareness can come about only in that agent who also has a proper awareness of her limits as an agent. Understanding these attitudes of humility and self-respect as guided by the maxim of the moral disposition allows us, then, to consider them as mutually dependent aspects of a perspective on one’s own finite agency overall, both its capacities and its limits, all guided by the singular concern to place moral principles above self-love. Humility is an attitude which achieves a comprehensive and balanced appreciation for dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified human agency, and is possible only because of this comprehensiveness.33 Far from lacking self-respect, then, or having no necessary relation to it, a humble agent thus epitomizes it; and far from losing or challenging her humility through the development of her self-respect, an agent increases it. Were an agent to claim she was humble but then – consciously or unconsciously – lack self-respect, she would be wrong in her self-assessment. Similarly, were an agent to claim self-respect, but then lack a proper awareness of her limits, she would also be wrong. These attitudes, while focusing on different aspects of finite agency, are mutually dependent upon each other for being what they are. Taken as a whole, they constitute that attitude toward oneself as agent which is demanded by an agent who seeks to make a commitment to moral principles central to her character. Finding oneself unworthy in relation to other persons is thus not the proper basis for humility. Kant himself repeatedly emphasizes that what is “struck down” or “constrained” in one’s awareness of moral limit is not one’s worth relative to other persons, nor one’s worth as an agent of morality. What is struck down is any pretension an individual agent would have to purity of character that placed her above the rest of the moral community. It is self-conceit that is humiliated, not the moral agent herself (5:73/63). To 33

Questions remain about whether there is a word that best describes the overall self-regarding attitude of the person accepting the moral disposition. Is this person best described as “humble” or as “selfrespecting”? One might be tempted to call this attitude “proper self-respect” as Kant does in the Lectures on Ethics, and to a certain extent I agree. But I am somewhat more willing to associate an appropriate awareness of one’s worth with humility than I am to consider an at times painful awareness of one’s limits with self-respect. I am thus more inclined to describe the character of an agent who has engaged in this overall evaluation of herself qua agent as humble, since the language of self-respect fails to connote the import of recognizing one’s limits in addition to one’s worth. The moniker of “humility” emphasizes more perspicuously what is necessary for proper self-respect to be “proper.” But perhaps, in the end, we don’t really have the right word to describe the self-regarding attitude that results from an internalization of the moral disposition.

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be humble is thus not to lower oneself in relation to other persons, nor to believe oneself, and all persons, to be utterly worthless; but, rather, to refuse that state of moral arrogance which rejects the fact of one’s dependence and corruption and thus also rejects moral principles as duties. A dependent and corrupt moral agent aware of her state knows that she will inevitably, at some point in her life, fall short of the standards for action and character that these principles represent, and that she has claimed as her own. She is thus humbled by her obligations, and is therefore able to maintain a proper and healthy respect for the moral standards to which she is held, and for herself and other persons as agents of those principles in the process.

c h a pt er 7

The humble person

With a basic picture of the meta-attitude of humility in hand, let us turn to the more concrete picture of the humble person that emerges from these reflections. I begin with a set of reflections on the moral psychology of the humble person. Such a person will make a belief in the equality of persons a guiding value in her choice of actions; indeed, this equalizing perspective on persons is central to assuring her own proper attitude toward herself. The humble person will, furthermore, utilize her appreciation of the value of moral principles as a point of view from which to gain perspective on the fact of her own dependent nature and her pursuit of happiness. Finally, the shift in valuing assured by the acquisition of humility – a shift from viewing persons in a comparative-competitive fashion to a disposition toward viewing them through the lenses of equality – does not entirely remove the possibility that the humble person will engage in some limited sort of self–other comparison. The humble person has, rather, acquired that perspective from which morally productive self–other comparison is possible, not as a means for internalizing beliefs about inferiority or superiority at the basis of her character, but rather as an opportunity to rely upon moral exemplars as a guide in her moral development. I will thus end this chapter with a limited defense, contra Wood, of the possibility of a Kantian appeal to moral exemplars as an important part of the finite rational agent’s moral development. Let us turn to a consideration of these points. po in ts o f mo ra l ps yc h olog y An appreciation for the equality of persons First, we have seen that the humble person appreciates that persons generally share the dependence, corruption, capacity, and dignity which she attributes to herself. This equalizing perspective on persons alters the attitude that she takes toward them, placing an appreciation for equality above 193

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(most) other considerations. This agent recognizes her excellences, but recognizes also that, all other things being equal, the equal moral status of all persons (their equal dignity and shared limits) has moral priority over any assertion she might make of her excellences. Any claims of superiority – or inferiority – in relation to others would likewise be rare indeed, even when true. And all of this is the case not because she questions whether she is really excellent, or superior, or inferior, but because the truth of those claims is contextualized by a larger value: an affirmation of the equal dignity and shared limits of all persons. She thus not only values other persons equally to herself; she is also more interested in being sympathetic to the weaknesses and foibles of others than to emphasize her own accomplishments, because she knows her own weaknesses and foibles as well, and does not let the fact of her accomplishments blind her to this fact. When an agent is impatient with her own failures, weaknesses, and imperfections, she tends to be less patient also with others’; but when she recognizes and accepts her own failures as an inevitable part of an ongoing, fallible, and never-ending human effort to curb the excesses and deficiencies of self-love in the face of the loss of the dream of perfect happiness, then she can also be more patient with and forgiving of the foibles of others. It is for just these reasons that we found Cordelia from King Lear to be such an apt image to open our discussion of humility a couple of chapters ago. It is Cordelia’s humble recognition of her equal status with her father that prevents her from pandering to him at the opening of the play, and that prevents her from taking up his offer that she kill him in Act iv. Her humility is, furthermore, the ground of her sympathy, of her ability to be so unshakeably loving toward her father, even through the worst of circumstances. Our description of the humble person thus affirms claims like the following in which Norvin Richards speaks of the sympathetic and forgiving attitude of the humble person: “[T]he humble [person] will . . . think not ‘That so-and-so,’ but ‘I might have done the same’; only [the humble person] will think: ‘He’s only human – none of us are perfect” (Richards, 1988, 257). It is on the basis of claims like these that Richards was accused of having implicitly attributed low worth to all humans. But we now have a better explanation of this behavioral tendency to be sympathetic with the foibles of others, because we have an account of human nature which, without admitting an intolerably low conception of human nature, is still sufficient to underwrite the behavioral claim. It is not an assumption of the worthlessness of persons that grounds this claim, nor a recognition of another’s inferiority similar to one’s own, but rather an assumption of their

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shared difficulty in managing pressing questions of self-love, as balanced by an assumption of their equal dignity. But if the humble agent knows how to be sympathetic with the foibles of others, she also knows where to draw the line between foible and serious offense. Her awareness of the nature and guidance of moral principles helps her to recognize when moral failures are serious and injurious ones, and thus allows her to respond appropriately. This does not mean that she would necessarily be entirely unforgiving in certain situations (as, for example, in the situation of The Sunflower, in which a single Jewish individual is asked forgiveness for all the atrocities of the genocide from a single former Nazi),1 but, given the appropriate circumstances, she is more than capable of expressing moral indignation, even outrage. Cordelia is, again, a good model here. In her humility, she could not claim to love only her father, or to love him beyond the capacities of human loving. This does not lead her to express outrage toward her father, but it does lead her to publically question her sisters’ avowals of love for their father, and also to publically and confidently admit her own limits. Her sympathies for her father’s situation do not prevent her from speaking the truth as necessary. That humility includes, intrinsic to itself, these claims about oneself in relation to other persons, shows, furthermore, that regard for self does not devolve into that obsession with self about which Morgan expressed concern. Someone whose attitude toward self affirms the equal dignity and shared limits of all persons could not use the need to reflect on herself as a moral being as an opportunity for self-absorption. It is, instead, an opportunity to free herself from that self-absorption encouraged by the unfettered pursuit of self-love. And, as we shall see in later chapters, when one’s attitude toward self is tempered by an appreciation of the equal moral standing of all persons, this truly humble person, in virtue of having succeeded in reflecting on her self properly, is also more successful in turning out toward persons and objects of moral concern in the world.2 1 2

Wiesenthal, 1976. The question of when, how, and why to forgive is itself a difficult one. Murphy and Hampton (1988) is one place to look for insightful reflections on this question. Indeed, as shall be hinted at in chapter 9, the potential for all of us to “go astray” which is recognized in the equality thesis, and which tempers one’s attitude toward self, also influences the sort of respectful attitude that a humble person takes toward others. Respecting persons, on this picture, cannot mean simply standing back from them, allowing them to stand or fall on their own. Rather, because she recognizes their dependent and corrupt nature, a humble person will respect others in a way which tends toward a more sympathetic, generous, and forgiving attitude toward them. She will, to a point, accept certain faults of others with a “there but for the grace of something go I” attitude; and will not accept respect for persons as simply a “you tend your garden, I’ll tend mine” attitude. This turn toward persons and objects of moral concern will not, however, warrant or even tolerate self-denial, refusal of needs of self, or belief that attention to the needs of others always comes before attending to one’s own needs.

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It should not be ignored, though, that this equalizing perspective on other persons also feeds back into the humble person’s self-assessment: without a belief that the capacities and limits that she recognizes in herself were present also in other persons, she wouldn’t have that accurate perspective on self which is humility. But why is this so? If a recognition of the equal dignity and shared limits of all persons is not made part and parcel of one’s self-evaluation, an agent subject to the excesses and deficiencies of self-love would tend, when she turned to considering her relation to other persons, to believe herself either much better (qua agent) or much worse (qua corrupt agent) than other persons, and thus value herself more or less than other people accordingly. But this would undermine the agent’s proper perspective on herself, because it ignores the fact that all finite agents are similarly situated to oneself and slides into the comparative–competitive model of relating self to others. By not having the proper understanding of the status of persons generally, the humble person would be incapable of valuing herself properly, and would tend to relate herself to other persons in a way that would, in one way or another, undermine her warranted belief in her own dignity. Essentially, then, the recognition of the equality in capacity and limit of all persons, for beings already subject to excess and deficiency in self-love, acts as a tempering of the recognition of one’s own limits and corruption, and, conversely, of one’s own worth, accomplishments, and excellences. On the one hand, it allows the agent to say that the limits and failings she knows of herself qua agent are no worse than those of other agents. On the other, it also prevents her from misconstruing her worth as warranting a claim of superiority over others. At least a belief in the equal dignity and shared limits of all persons is necessary for taking proper perspective on self; and perhaps even an attitude which internalizes this belief as a disposition to act in accordance with the belief. A belief that other persons are essentially equal to onself is thus a necessary condition for one’s proper attitude toward self.3 Conditional affirmation of the pursuit of happiness Obviously, then, this agent’s reflections on dependence and corruption do not lead her to the problematic belief that she, and all persons, are so corrupt as to be utterly worthless, or even of very low value (that religious view of 3

There remains, of course, a conceptual distinction to be drawn between the attitude of respect for persons and that of humility: the main object of an attitude of respect for persons is, obviously, persons generally qua moral agents, whereas the object of humility is more specific, that is, it is the self qua moral agent.

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human nature rejected by Richards, Statman, Schueler, and others). Our agent surely recognizes herself as having a tendency toward corruption as defined in chapter 1. But instead of leading to devaluing and hatred of the self, this recognition and acceptance of one’s limits and corrupt tendencies are made simultaneously with an affirmation of one’s value. We have already made this point through affirmation of oneself as a capable and dignified agent. We can, however, appreciate this affirmation of value further and more concretely by understanding that the humble agent affirms her value also by taking a proper perspective on her pursuit of happiness. This is a reaffirmation of the point made in chapter 1 that the Kantian virtuous person cannot abide by Stoic indifference, because she cannot accept a conception of happiness which excludes concern for the state of the world external to her rational agency. This refusal of indifference and resulting affirmation of the value of happiness as a goal proper to the agent is only affirmed, not lessened, by our agent’s acceptance of the pre-eminent value of moral principles. Accepting moral reasons for action as the primary and life-guiding ones does not mean abandoning one’s search for happiness, nor abandoning the valuing of things outside one’s control which are its objects. Rather, proper valuing of moral principles allows an agent to take a certain perspective on her dependence and corruption from the point of view of her autonomous agency, that is, from the point of view of her capacity to act for reasons not based on the fact of one’s dependence. By valuing her autonomous agency as the source of legitimate, non-desirebased reasons for action, the agent has a point of view from which to set proper limits upon her pursuit of happiness, containing her corruption without devaluing her dependence. There is a sense in which the resulting conditional valuing of the pursuit of happiness demands of the agent that she set aside her pursuit of happiness. The principles of autonomous agency are, unlike principles in the pursuit of happiness, grounded independently of the needs, desires, or aversions of any particular agent, and this means that the pursuits of happiness and virtue appeal to different truths of finite rational agents: happiness appeals to the fact of human dependence, and virtue (or the pursuit of moral ends) to the fact of the human capacity to act for reasons not founded in the fact of dependence. To this extent, then, moral principles are independent of the agent’s pursuit of happiness, and the latter must sometimes be rejected out of commitment to the former as pre-eminent. Taking a perspective on self guided by the maxim of the moral disposition thus assures a certain limited ability to stand above the fact of human dependence, because such an agent acknowledges that there are reasons for action which are distinct

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from, and more primary than, any reasons for action grounded in such dependence. This does not, however, mean that this agent rejects or abhors the fact of her dependence. Morality is not based on the fact of dependence, but its principles may well guide an agent in how to value and care for her dependent self. They may, for example, lead to the reasoned recognition that it is a duty to attend to one’s own needs and desires, and to assist others in their pursuit of happiness. The valuing of human dependence can be made compatible, to a certain extent, with the pursuit of morality. But neither does this agent allow the fact of her dependence singularly to define who she is. By recognizing that reasons for action based on one’s desires and needs are not the only reasons for action, the agent limits her pursuit of self-love by the constraint of moral principles, and thereby appropriately limits the influence that the fact of one’s dependence has on one’s character and actions. Moral considerations must always trump considerations of self-love, but this is not a rejection of the fact of human dependency. The concerns of self-love are not despised, but contextualized. Internalization of the moral disposition thus affirms that rational self-love of which we spoke in chapter 1, and does not collapse into claims of human worthlessness that would warrant self-hatred. We can thus begin to get a hint of various behavioral expectations we might have of an agent who has placed the fact of her dependence in proper perspective. When one accepts that some reasons for action are not based in one’s needs and desires, one is less apt to be ruled by the latter, or to view one’s desires simply as brute and unquestionable needs.4 This capacity has several consequences. First, because such an agent is more able to gain a certain distance from, and thus a long-term perspective on, herself as a desiring agent, she is better able to guide her pursuit of happiness. Such an agent learns to think of what she needs and wants in a more balanced way than one who has only the perspective of self-love and no other basis on which to manage the loss of the dream of perfect happiness. She is more able to consider the needs of her future self as well as those of her present self, seeing the desires of the present self as just that, thus reflecting upon and determining the truest needs, and most important long-term desires, of the future self more perspicuously.5 What seemed something she couldn’t 4

5

Allison does not speak of humility as such, but this ability not to view one’s desires as brute, unquestionable needs is precisely what, on Allison’s account, the self-deceiving person is incapable of doing. According to him, self-deception is “the means by which an agent transforms . . . openness [to temptation] into a brute, given fact, a part of one’s nature, which one laments . . . but for which one does not hold oneself responsible” (Allison, 1996). I am grateful to Henry West for questions and conversation that helped me to clarify this point.

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live without is revealed not to be as crucial to her existence as she feared. And although she gratefully welcomes those persons, objects, and states of affairs which allow her to flourish, she also has the capacity – to an extent – to manage their absence. Similarly, she needn’t let her desires for specific persons, objects, or states of affair get out of hand, that is, to become more valuable to her than is warranted. She is able to maintain her claiming of needs and wants within proper limits. If she loses something she very much wanted, she has other resources upon which to rely. And if she loses something she very much needed for a flourishing life, she grieves, but with the confidence that she has not been completely ruined. Acceptance of the pre-eminent value of moral principles provides a point of view from which it is possible to withstand or endure certain incursions upon one’s dependency, and to give direction to one’s uncertain and fallible pursuit of happiness. Furthermore, this perspective on her needs makes this agent more able to appreciate the value of things other than herself and the objects of her desire. Recognizing that desire is not the only ground of value helps her to realize that her own desires are not the only ground of value. She is thus better able to appreciate the value of the objects of the needs, hopes, and dreams of other persons, as well as of the legitimate claims these agents make. Her own legitimate claims are thus contextualized in a broader perspective of value.6 This is not to say that this agent becomes selfless, for she has not entirely set aside her own needs and desires; but, given the comparativecompetitive world in which most people operate, someone behaving in this way might appear to others to be quite selfless. th e qu e s ti o n o f mo r a l e xe m p l a r s We should, finally, return to the question of self–other comparison that was raised in chapter 4. We saw there that it is impossible to rely upon such comparisons to ground a state of humility because the pressing questions of self-worth faced by a finite being will not allow her to make such judgments without falling into intolerable meta-attitudes of inferiority or superiority. The question now becomes whether, having calmed the questions of self-value in another, more successful way, a humble person finds the need and, if so, the ability to engage in self–other comparison on moral grounds 6

This point is similar to the perspective to which Hill, 1991, appeals when he speaks of how the humble person has learned to care about things outside her own interests. For him, “[l]earning humility requires learning to feel that something matters besides what will affect oneself and one’s circle of associates” (Hill, 1991, 113).

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productively. Is the humble person at all disposed toward making self–other comparisons? The most obvious remaining candidate for morally productive self–other comparison is an appeal to a moral exemplar; that is, finding some person – real, divine, or imaginary – whom one takes to be an ideal of moral character in some respect, and comparing oneself unfavorably against this person in the hopes of taking him or her as a guide and/or spur for one’s own moral development. Although this is not the place to engage in a thorough investigation into the question of whether Kantian moral theory can make room for moral exemplars, raising some questions and indicating some directions in which Kantian moral theorists might move in this regard will be instructive. There are, of course, good reasons to be cautious about moving toward moral affirmation of self–other comparisons, even in this more limited context of moral exemplars. Even the humble person, one who has quieted the pressing demands of self-love, has not extinguished the possibility of their occasional – or full – re-emergence. There is, furthermore, reason to be cautious about the extent to which one takes any person, real or ideal, as a moral exemplar, for moral development needs, in the end, to be a relentlessly first-person pursuit. One could become morally complacent, imagining that one’s exemplar can really do the moral work of one’s own moral development. Or one might turn one’s moral project more into a merely aesthetic one, focusing on appreciation of the ideal instead of attending to one’s own character. There are, furthermore, dangers of overidealization, thus falling inadvertently back into the games of inferiority and superiority, but now with a “saint” on one’s back. This could encourage one to become a sycophantic follower instead of a genuine moral agent, or to follow someone who isn’t really admirable, all in the name of a misguided mistrust of one’s own capacities. Having a clear appreciation for these and other problems that are related to self–other comparison of any sort, Allen Wood has suggested that, on Kantian grounds, the best explanation of what is going on when an agent recognizes someone who is more successful morally than she in some respect is that she is really judging herself against the moral law as it presents itself in that person. We do not thus really engage in self–other comparison even here, but always and only in comparison of oneself against moral principles. Wood suggests that this position “is confirmed most decisively by just those passages in which Kant discusses the humility induced by respect for the moral merits of others” (Wood, 1999, 136). Relying on a passage from the Critique of Practical Reason in which Kant speaks of perceiving

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the uprightness of character in a “humble plain man” and bowing one’s mind before it (5:76–77, quoted at Wood, 1999, 136), Wood suggests the following: Kant is in effect proposing that we reinterpret the moral judgments we make comparing ourselves with others. Such judgments really involve a comparison of ourselves only with the moral law, not with others at all. When I consider the moral merits of the humble plain man, what really happens is first, that I become aware of the hollowness of my own pretensions to greater self-worth based on social superiority, and second, that I experience humility when I compare my conduct with the moral law.(Wood, 1999, 136)

Comparison of ourselves to others on moral grounds is thus, for Wood, best understood as a comparison of oneself against the moral principles which the worthy person exemplifies. Even when we do seem to be comparing ourselves morally with other persons, what is really doing the comparative work is not the person as a standard, but instead the principles that person represents. The comparative-competitive model of self-worth is quite simply “the sole and exclusive ground of all moral evil” (Wood, 1999, 135), for “human dignity, properly understood, rules out the very idea of any comparison or competition regarding self-worth” (Wood, 1999, 138, emphases added and removed). We are thus prevented from admitting any genuine comparison of oneself against a person, even in the sense of comparison to a moral exemplar; it is always and only moral principles which act as the appropriate comparative standard. I do not disagree with Wood’s interpretation of this particular passage. One can indeed be humbled by having one’s pretensions to superiority made clear to oneself in just this way, and it is most proper to understand this sort of comparison of oneself more against moral standards than directly against another person. This person seems, in fact, not necessarily a humble person in my sense (that is, one who has calmed the pretensions of self-love), but one who needs to be humbled. Such restrictions on the sort of self– other comparison such an agent should pursue morally are precisely what I was suggesting we needed to look for, instead of other recent accounts discussed in chapter 4 which over-emphasize reliance upon direct self– other comparison. Comparing herself only against moral standards, even if as expressed in the form of a person, prevents an agent who finds herself lacking from placing herself in an unduly low position relative to the person who more adequately exemplifies such principles. It also prevents her from worrying about whether the person we hold up as a moral exemplar really in fact has those principles we attribute to them: we could be wrong in our

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estimation of her, though still right in whatever it is that our perception of her inspires in us.7 Despite these advantages, there is something missing in Kantian moral theory if this is the end of the story. Although we want to avoid the excesses of self–other comparison that Wood and I have rejected, it would seem that with the calming of pressing questions of self-love that humility promises, we should also be able to find promise of a different, more productive sort of self–other comparison, one not involving a humbling of my pretensions of superiority on the one hand, and not leading to sycophantic admiration on the other. For one who is already humble to some extent (and thus not so much in need of humbling), it should be possible genuinely to take another person as a moral guide or exemplar in the development of one’s character without falling into the problems of undue emphasis on inferiority and superiority about which we were concerned earlier. Because the most egregious expressions of undue self-love have been quieted in the character of the humble person, she is in the position to turn to self–other comparison in a more morally productive way. Indeed, given the picture of Kant’s moral theory thus far presented, it begins to make more sense that Kantians would want room for some such appeal: to the extent that character is important, it becomes important also to have recourse not simply to principles, but also to individual persons and the ways they have internalized these principles in their characters as moral guides. And it is not true that Kant himself entirely eschews appeal to moral exemplars in this sense. The passage upon which Wood relies to make his assertions, from the Critique of Practical Reason, is indeed an example of self–other comparison that reduces to self-law comparison. But elsewhere, Kant himself speaks of comparison of oneself to persons of high moral standing in a way that does not seem reducible to comparison of oneself with principles. In the Critique of Pure Reason, for example, he speaks of the figure of the Stoic sage as a regulative ideal personified: Virtue, and with it human wisdom in its entire purity, are ideas. But the sage (of the Stoics) is an ideal, that is, a human being who exists merely in thoughts, but who is fully congruent with the idea of wisdom. Thus just as the idea gives the rule, so the ideal in such a case serves as the original image for the thoroughgoing determination of the copy; and we have in us no other standard for our actions than 7

As Wood puts the point, “the whole point of Kant’s interpretation of respect for another’s merit is that every comparison between people drops out, and the only real comparison is between my own conduct and the moral law. The merits I suppose to be present in the humble man would be enough to occasion the comparison Kant intends, even if the humble man were (unbeknownst to me) actually a scoundrel as measured by his inner standards” (Wood, 1999, 137).

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the conduct of this divine human being, with which we can compare ourselves, judging ourselves and thereby improving ourselves, even though we can never reach the standard. (a569=b597/552)

Later, in Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Kant rejects the ideal of the sage as an image which fails to appreciate fully the corruption of human nature (see especially 6:57/77n), but appeals instead to the figure of Christ in a similar, regulative ideal fashion. Christ is described as “the prototype of moral disposition in its entire purity” (6:61/80); and Kant goes on to consider the problems to be found in taking such a divine being as “an example to be emulated ” by humans and indeed as “proof that so pure and exalted a moral goodness can be practised and attained by us” (6:64/83). Questions about which image is the right image notwithstanding, Kant asserts further that we need such images because finite human agents need a concrete moral standard of self-judgment: [t]hese ideals, even though one may never concede them objective reality (existence), are nevertheless not to be regarded as mere figments of the brain; rather, they provide an indispensable standard for reason, which needs the concept of that which is entirely complete in its kind, in order to assess and measure the degree and the defects of what is incomplete. (a569–70=b597–598/552)

Kant’s point here can be taken, in part, to be that the role these ideals would play is to provide a standard by which to judge not just one’s principles or actions, but beyond that, what is also apropos to an “entirely complete” pursuit of morality, one’s character. We need not only an understanding of the general principles which define the structure of a moral life; we need also an image of what a person who has perfectly internalized these principles, and especially the maxim of the moral disposition, would look like, so that we can appreciate not just what the principles are that guide us, but further, so that we can appreciate the complete internalization of those principles in a person, recognize our own shortcomings relative to this, and thus move more completely toward becoming that sort of person. It is clear, though, from his initial acceptance and then ultimate rejection of the Stoic sage as a moral exemplar, that Kant himself struggles with the question of what sort of person one should rely upon as a moral exemplar, and how this reliance should be effected. The problem seems to be that, on the one hand, finite beings need to be able to appeal to a concrete ideal, “by which I understand the idea not merely in concreto but in individuo, that is, as an individual thing which is determinable, or even determined, through the idea alone” (a568=b596/551). On the other, no concrete, individual thing in this world can live up to the idea which serves as its rule. It would

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have to be, as Kant himself suggests, something akin to a Platonic form, “the most perfect thing of each species of possible beings and the original ground of all its copies in appearance” (a568=b596/551). Appreciation of this latter point often leads Kant to argue vociferously against the use of examples in moral development. Kant is well known for rejecting the use of examples in moral education more generally, in part because creatures of the imagination, or even actually existing persons, will invariably fall short of or fail to represent properly the moral point at hand. Similar concerns are raised even as he presents these moral ideals for contemplation. He states, for example, that “to try to realize the ideal in an example, that is, in appearance, such as that of the sage in a novel, is not feasible, and even has about it something nonsensical” (a570=b598/552). The way in which Kant ultimately avoids the problematic reliance on merely human imagination as the source of his moral ideal, while still being true to his belief that humans need a concrete, individual moral exemplar, is to rely solely on divine exemplars. Both the sage and Christ are “divine” beings, albeit in different senses, and Kant takes this quality of them to be protection against the limits of merely imaginative examples (though it is clear that his own errors in reliance on the sage were not avoided by this method). He finds these divine exemplars to “contain a certain completeness that no possible empirical cognition ever achieves, and with them reason has a systematic unity only in the sense that the empirically possible unity seeks to approach it without ever completely reaching it” (a567–568=b595–596/551). Merely empirical appeals to actual persons would be inadequate to the pursuit of this “completeness” of person; but with appeal to divine personages which exceed any merely empirical presentation, we have, he says, a complete concrete and individual notion of a person as a regulative ideal that does not fall into the problems and limitations of any would-be exemplars drawn from fiction or empirical reality. It is not merely the principle of the moral disposition, or the duty of selfperfection which is held as the guiding rudder by which to steer oneself; it is a person, a concrete, individual, albeit divine, person that one holds before oneself as a moral guide. It is clear, then, that Kant considers the question of proper moral comparison of oneself against a moral exemplar more than Wood’s position suggests. If Kant believed that it were only an ultimate comparison of oneself against moral principles upon which one should rely, he would not dwell at such length on these specific images of moral personhood. These appeals to specific, albeit divine, persons as moral exemplars are, however, interesting and unusual. Most are not used to thinking of Kant as being

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concerned with character at all, and this leads most to assume also that we have no need for moral exemplars, that is, for exemplary presentations of moral character. At most, Kant is thought to give approbation to only the most schematic sorts of examples. A concrete individual playing the role of a moral exemplar would seem to be just another example upon which we should not rely. But it is clear from these passages that Kant himself is concerned with, and struggles with, the question of how to find an ideal moral guide in the form not only of principles, but also of a concrete and individual person.8 But numerous questions are raised by the preceding summary of Kant’s position on moral exemplars. Kant’s own reflections on moral exemplars are, though not exactly schematic, nonetheless quite restrained: we cannot rely on fictional images, we cannot even rely on actual human beings, only divine, or quasi-divine human beings. But what exactly are Kant’s reasons for the constraints he places upon appeal to exemplars? How can we understand more specifically the reliance finite rational agents can place upon these concrete individual persons? What exactly do we hope to gain from them that we can’t gain from comparison of oneself against moral principles? And is he successful in getting what he needs in a moral exemplar solely from the divine exemplars he introduces? Could we, in the end, in fact find more room for actual or fictional non-divine human moral exemplars than Kant himself allows? Given Kant’s own commitment to character that I have been articulating in the preceding chapters, I am generally positive about the possibility of answering these questions, and especially the last question, in the affirmative. The more that Kantian ethics can be shown to be concerned not just with action, but with the quality of character underlying the action, the more room should be found for reliance on moral exemplars as guiding regulative ideals for one’s character.9 The role of exemplars in Kant’s moral 8

9

I am thus perplexed when, in her discussion of Kant’s use of examples, O’Neill suggests that Kant’s examples, including the figure of Christ in the Religion, are “highly schematic,” and that “no addition of detail could make them fully determinate,” for with such detail, “they would lose their pedagogic usefulness. Good illustrations need to be clear and simplified, even caricatures, if they are to get their point across” (“The Power of Example,” in O’Neill, 1989, 168). This is perplexing, because Kant’s point in the passages I’ve considered seems to be that examples need to be as individual and concrete as possible, not merely schematic. Whether or not Kant’s own examples meet this standard he sets for himself is another question. It is, perhaps, not surprising, given the emphasis we have seen her place on action over character in earlier discussions, that O’Neill’s discussion of examples is focused more on their usefulness for “decision and action,” and not for character development: “The primary use of hypothetical and ostensive examples is then educational. By considering examples we become better able to judge cases requiring decision and action” (O’Neill, 1989, 168).

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theory is, however, more an outgrowth of this study of Kantian humility, not a central aspect of it. This is thus not the place for a thorough defense of such ideas. Kant’s suspicions about examples are well known and have recently been well defended, and any thorough defense of moral exemplars would need to consider Kant’s own position and more recent defenses of it more broadly. But some initial reflections are necessary, especially given my earlier rejection of self–other comparison in the grounding of humility. The following reflections will thus be tentative and preliminary in nature. They sketch out a possible outline of how to approach the questions noted above, but without completing that story. Kant asserts that we need a concrete individual vision of the perfect internalization of the moral law as a standard for self-judgment. The first question that arises is, then, one of why this is the case. Why can’t we just accept principles themselves as sufficiently action- and character-guiding? We have, after all, already seen that principles are indeed character-guiding: the maxim of the moral disposition is a principle around which one forms one’s moral character, and some acquisition of humility is possible even apart from appeal to a moral exemplar. Why should Kant now claim that we need a person and not just a principle? It is tempting to assume, along the lines of some contemporary particularists, that the reason for this is that principles cease at some point to be sufficient guides, both for moral character and moral action. The point here would be that although one can understand those principles meant to guide one’s life, the process of internalization of these principles into one’s character can become quite situation-specific, and at a certain point of specificity, the principles would cease to be action- or character-guiding. Maxims of action (telling us, for example, that we must make the pursuit of self-love conditional on satisfaction of moral demands) would be thought too general to be adequate to the more specific demands of both individual actions and character development. This is not the best way to understand why Kantians need to appeal to moral exemplars, and not just principles, as a regulative ideal. It is not so much that principles stop being sufficient guides for our lives, and that we need guidance beyond and distinct from principles in persons. Quite to the contrary, for Kantians, there is a principle to guide us even in the most precise and specific aspects of our actions and character. And there is, in fact, nothing about a moral character that couldn’t be traced back to an internalization of the principles we’ve been discussing, or some permutation of them. Principles are indeed adequate to our character development in that sense.

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Rather than thinking about the relationship of principles to character on a continuum of generality and specificity where the applicability of general principles at some point on that continuum falls short, we should instead consider this relationship more on the model of the relationship of concepts and intuition. Principles, as Kant reminds us, provide the “rule” for our character in much the way that the pure concept of causality provides the rule for causal experience. To understand causal experience is not, however, simply to understand the pure concept of causality; it is, rather, also to understand this rule in concreto, that is, in specific examples of it. Similarly, to understand one’s character is not simply to understand the rule that explains it. It is, rather, to understand that rule schematized in intuition, that is, internalized in one’s person.10 As such, although the ideal person can be explained through reference to the moral principles which guide his or her character, that character cannot be reduced to those principles. This is because the person is the principle made concrete and individual in much the way that pure concepts of the understanding are actualized by being schematized in experience. Mere concepts are empty and mere intuitions are blind. Similarly, mere principles are empty and the mere materials of character – emotions, attitudes, values – are blind. But the material of one’s person informed by moral principles assures a principle-guided moral person. There is, however, an important difference between that schematization which assures regular experience, and the analogy of schematization in the construction of a moral character: the first happens unavoidably, but the second is a process guided by one’s own agency, and is thus subject to the limits thereof. If all this is true, then Kant’s point about our need for moral exemplars is a somewhat different one than that made by particularists who suggest that rules fall short of guiding one’s character. Moral principles do not fall short of guiding one’s character, even in its most specific formulations; indeed, the “rule” these principles provide pervades one’s person. But although moral principles are sufficient to guide the development of one’s character in this pervasive sense, finite rational agents bring a particular lack or need to the process of their internalization: finite rational agents are not able to appreciate the full and perfect process of the internalization of these principles. This is not to say that one’s character goes beyond the principles, nor that principles are inadequate for the development of character, but rather that we are inadequate to the complete internalization of these principles. 10

Kant himself uses this analogy to schematism when he discusses his appeal to moral exemplars. See especially 6:64–65n/83n.

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Although any moral character can be traced back to those principles which informed it, and can indeed be understood as a schematization of those principles, finite human agents cannot appreciate all at once the many and varied aspects of the perfect internalization or schematization of the principle empirically, nor indeed fully attain this perfect internalization. There are, then, three distinct points to be made about human limit here. First, and most simply, we cannot attain perfect internalization of the maxim of the moral disposition ourselves. Secondly, we are not even able to deduce a priori from the principles themselves that complete and perfect whole which would constitute a character that is the result of these principles perfectly internalized, that is, schematized. There is no such person, and we are not capable of deducing that person’s character perfectly from first principles. Thirdly, and this is at least one reason we fail in such deduction, we simply cannot appreciate every aspect of this internalization process. There is such variety to aspects of one’s character and to aspects of the sorts of situations in which one might find oneself, that a finite being, though she might be able to deduce certain aspects of a perfect internalization, cannot be expected to recognize or understand all of them a priori. She cannot appreciate the perfect person not only because that person cannot exist, but also because the process of deduction from first principles would be an infinite empirical task that is beyond her finite mind, agency, and judgment. These principles are, then, sufficient to allow me to become this concrete moral individual; but although finite rational agents can derive from principles some basic guides to character, experience is too large to allow me to deduce my entire moral character from the terms of these principles. Finite rational agents seeking to internalize moral principles into their characters need, then, not just a regulative ideal in the sense of a guiding principle; they need also a regulative ideal in the sense of a guiding person. Kant emphasizes, as we have seen, that this person presents for the finite agent an image of perfection, a standard of character by which to judge one’s own shortcomings in the internalization of the maxim of the moral disposition in one’s character. But if this concrete, individual standard provides an image of perfection, we can also say that it provides an image of possibilities. That is, this sort of image can point a finite moral agent toward moral possibilities in the development of one’s character previously unconsidered: oh, that is how one could deal with anger! Or: this is the way I could maintain a rational self-love while still being a devoted wife, or mother! These possibilities can ultimately be traced back to principles, but finite minds need images before

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them to entertain these myriad possibilities in an empirical world as fully and concretely as they can. Finite beings need to turn to such concrete images in order to appreciate the range of possibilities for development of character open to them. A mere principle to pursue self-perfection is not going to be sufficient to reveal the myriad ways and depths through which an individual person could – and should – pursue it. We are faced, then, with the problem Kant himself goes on to consider: a concrete individual person who is the perfect internalization of these moral principles, and who has realized the range of moral possibilities in one’s character, does not exist. It – rather, he or she – cannot be found in this world. Kant himself turns ultimately to the divine ideal of Christ for this concrete image. A secular account of Kantian morality would, of course, have no such recourse, and so it would seem to be the end of the line for that secularism. Where could finite agents find such images if they cannot appeal to actual or fictional images, and have no divine images? Further questions arise, however, even for the more strictly religious approach. Fictional examples and actual persons were found incomplete, for differing reasons. But even Kant’s own first “divine” standard, that of the Stoic sage, was found lacking, perhaps because it was more of a fictionalized account than a divine revelation. If we were able, though, to access a more satisfying divine person, would this divine person really act as an adequate standard for the development of a human character? Indeed, is appeal to this divine image both necessary to the process and adequate for the needs of finite beings for a moral exemplar as described above? How can a divine unlimited being be a perfect model for limited, dependent, and corrupt beings in the internalization of the maxim of the moral disposition? Even if it could, do we have a divine image that is individual and concrete enough to provide the guidance that is sought? Can we find so concrete an image of that divine person that it can play the role of guiding one’s character in the concrete and specific ways suggested above? Would one, perhaps, have to depend strongly on revelation to be able to say that one had this perfect concrete image of Christ, or Buddha, or Mohammed before one’s eye clearly? It is not my intent to resolve these questions fully here, as they raise concerns in both moral theory and philosophy of religion which are beyond the scope of this study. But again, an outline of an approach can be considered. If we need to admit that this perfect person, this moral exemplar, does not exist, but that such an exemplar is nonetheless a moral need, it seems we are left with at least two options: either we need to admit that Kantian moral theory requires a theistic perspective, or we need to find a

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way to appeal to actually existing, non-divine, concrete individual persons as moral exemplars in some limited sense. Neither of these routes is without its problems and challenges. The theistic route faces the questions in philosophy of religion raised above. And the secular route must face Kant’s own strenuous rejection of the use of such examples head-on. I will, for the present, limit myself to considering how one might approach the latter route. In the face of lack of a divine image, one might turn to particular aspects of actually existing persons which seem to fill in the blanks of what this ideal person would look like. No individual person is perfect, but we may find important glimpses of the possibility of this whole in certain aspects of these persons. I would say, then, that I “see” this ideal person within this actual person before me. This is a middle position: I’m not comparing myself against an abstract principle, and I’m not even comparing myself simply and directly against this actual person. Rather, I compare myself against what this person represents and makes concrete in the ideal image of moral personhood which I strive continually to make sense of through such glimpses. I am comparing myself against some image of that ideal person as seen or represented in this actual person here. Even theistic interpreters of moral exemplars might be forced to a position like this if it needs to be admitted that the images of one’s divine person are insufficiently concrete or individual for the moral purposes outlined above. This is perhaps what is at the heart of traditional disagreements between Catholics and Protestants about the value of reflections on the lives of the saints in moral development: while Protestants tend to find such guides unnecessary, even idolatrous, Catholics find them to be moral necessities, providing more precise and situation-specific reflections on a moral life than what Christ’s life alone provides. Even with these potential modifications, this remains a somewhat restrained version of how one can take persons as moral exemplars, and questions about such an approach remain. Some may find it unsatisfying: when we compare ourselves against a non-existent ideal of a perfectly virtuous person, even in the person of an actual person, are we doing anything more than comparing ourselves against a principle? Are we even accomplishing that? There are, as we have already seen, good reasons to avoid too robust a reliance upon moral exemplars in one’s moral development. There are too many dangers of over-idealization, and of comparison of oneself to an ideal, to remove all constraints placed on the idealization process. So some restraint in reliance on such comparisons is indeed in order. But such

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constraint is precisely what would be accomplished by appealing to specific aspects of actual persons as representative of a non-existent ideal person. One needn’t admit – or get seduced into believing – that an actual person with whom one interacts is perfect in order to take her in some very specific and meaningful way as a moral exemplar. This actual person can have her flaws (and, as in Wood’s position, these can even be admitted by the person who holds this person as a moral exemplar), but this need not prevent us from admiring the moral possibilities which aspects of her person present to us. One needn’t become a sycophantic lackey in order to take someone truly as a moral exemplar, and the hope of this may be enough to defend what might seem an overly restrained appeal to moral exemplars. If this outline of possibilities for taking actual non-divine persons as moral exemplars can be defended, our arguments in chapter 4, and in this current chapter, that the humble person finds very little reason for self– other comparison of any sort, especially the moral sort, need to be refined. One exception to this rule could be affirmed: having already begun to clear the static of self love through a partial internalization of the maxim of the moral disposition resulting in a certain level of humility, a moral agent could continue her process of internalization by comparing herself against another person directly insofar as aspects of that person are taken to represent glimpses into aspects of perfect moral personhood. This would be a more concrete version of the regulative ideal which the moral agent uses as a rudder to chart her moral progress. Instead of thinking merely about some vague image of someone who has perfectly achieved a unity of the virtues, she could think about some specific person who has, or who at least seems closer to having done so (it would need to be the latter, since we accept that no one can perfectly achieve this). Large questions remain about this picture, not the least of them being the question of how it is that a humble person would be most adept at taking up moral exemplars in her moral development, but we can at least see an outline of such a picture emerging. I should re-emphasize that in all of this I am not trying to assert that moral principles are incapable of being action- or character-guiding at all. There are many cases of action in which a principle is all we need. Principles of action can even be character-guiding in a broad sense: I know, for example, that I need to pursue self-perfection as a regulative ideal, and I even understand certain basic ideas about what sort of person I need to become in the pursuit of this ideal. Indeed, the most basic accomplishments of a humble person in quieting the pressing questions of self-love are accomplished through the guidance of a principle.

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We have seen already though, in chapter 3, that there are times when maxims of action can be successfully action-guiding only when the agent reflects sufficiently on the state of her character. We can now further that point and suggest that when the moral agent is concerned not only with questions of action, but also with whether, how, and to what extent her principles have been internalized into her character, simple guidance by those principles will not ultimately reveal the full possibilities of them. Finite beings need persons to act as exemplars for how to realize the possibilities of these principles internal to one’s character. So, contrary to Wood’s position, there may be some limited room in a Kantian account of things for self–other comparison on moral grounds. Of course, given my strenuous rejection of most types of self–other comparison in chapter 4, my own affirmation of the moral value of this sort of moral comparison is itself somewhat attenuated. But it is important not to go to the other extreme and assert that it is never valuable for a moral agent to compare herself against other persons. To do so would be to ignore the needs of a finite agent in pursuit of a moral character. What is crucial is to not allow such comparisons to thrust this agent back into those intolerable games of inferiority and superiority we rejected. But the picture of the humble agent we have just drawn allows us to understand how such consequences of self–other comparisons could be avoided. The humble person has quieted the most pressing questions of self-love that constitute the driving force behind any self–other comparison that leads to internalized meta-attitudes of inferiority or superiority. With these concerns addressed in a more adequate way, the humble person is on safer ground when she turns to self–other comparison with the moral goal of improving her own internalization of her principles. co n clu s io n We have, then, a preliminary picture of the person who lives life with a meta-attitude of humility. A humble person is someone who, having quelled the pressing questions of self-worth which every dependent and corrupt agent faces, makes equality of persons a central guiding value in her character and actions. She thus avoids excessive reliance on comparative judgments for the affirmation of one’s superiority or inferiority; and is instead able to take a balanced perspective on her interactions with and reliance upon other persons in her pursuit of both happiness and morality. We will want, however, to dwell more on how the humble person takes on the challenges of becoming a moral being. Part IV is devoted to this task,

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concentrating particularly on how one humbly takes up those two most general duties of virtue, duties to self and duties to others. Chapter 8 focuses on how the humble person takes up the duty to know oneself; and chapter 9 turns, finally, to how the humble person approaches the duty of beneficence. Let us turn, then, to this final set of reflections on the humble person.

part iv

The virtues of Kantian humility

c h a p t er 8

The humble pursuit of self-knowledge

The purpose of this last part of the book is to dwell in more depth on what will still remain a preliminary picture of the person who lives life with a meta-attitude of humility. What would it really mean for one’s life and actions, to accept humility as the point of view, or perspective, from which to exercise one’s agency? To consider these questions from a Kantian perspective, we need to look with more care at the specific duties of a moral agent, and consider humility as the perspective from which they are pursued. Following Kant, and recalling the two main obligatory ends introduced in chapter 3, I shall thus pursue this preliminary picture of the humble person by distinguishing a variety of ways that living from a humble perspective influences the two major groups of duties, viz., duties to self (that is, the obligatory end to perfection of the self ) and duties to others (that is, the obligatory end to promote others’ happiness). What will emerge in the end is a more concrete picture of the humble person, a picture of how she treats herself, other persons, and moral obligations more generally speaking. Because Kant asserts, and I follow, that duties to self are in some way yet to be fully articulated previous to duties to others, I will first consider humility’s relation to the obligatory end of perfection of self; and will turn, in chapter 9, to a consideration of how humility is relevant to the fulfillment of the obligatory end relative to others. The purpose of this current chapter is thus to provide a more precise rendering of the claim that humility is that attitude with which an agent takes up her obligatory end of self-perfection, a task which will allow us also to reflect in more depth on the behavior of the humble person. Both of these tasks will be accomplished by focusing on one duty among the many which comprise the general obligatory end of selfperfection: the duty of self-knowledge. What we shall discover is that this duty is fulfilled adequately only from a humble perspective, and that doing so prevents a tempting, but dangerous, obsession with self that the need to know oneself offers. Rather than falling victim to these temptations, the 217

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humble agent takes a confident attitude of epistemic humility toward her pursuit of self-knowledge and is able, thereby, to prevent fulfillment of that duty from getting out of hand and improperly taking over her moral life. p refato ry rem a rk s o n s el f - k n ow l ed g e We have already touched on some issues which relate to the question of the duty of self-knowledge. In chapter 3, we concluded our discussion of virtue by arguing, versus O’Neill, that some minimal reflection on idiosyncratic aspects of one’s character was necessary in order to assure that a dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified agent fulfilled her imperfect duties. In chapter 6, we dealt with the question of whether accurate knowledge of oneself, once achieved, could be cause for despair. Also in chapter 6, as part of our argument for the necessary mutual dependence of humility and self-respect, we reiterated the point that a dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified agent must know herself as such in order to recognize duties as duties, and thus to act from duty. The question left outstanding in all these discussions is the question of at what level it is possible to acquire that knowledge of self necessary for practical purposes, and relatedly, how best to put it to use practically. These questions are made all the more acute by O’Neill’s (1996a) assertions about the inadequacy of any such knowledge for practical purposes. O’Neill considers whether what she describes as an introspective-ascriptive process – one in which an agent reflects back-and-forth between her interior state and her completed actions to get a better sense, over time, of what her actual maxims are – could be sufficient for fulfilling the duty of self-knowledge. According to her, though, such an effort is doomed to failure. Although she admits that such a process “is enough to give us some grip on the thought that maxims are inward, and even to make sense of Kant’s claim that progress towards self-knowledge, although never fully attainable, is a duty,” this process is ultimately “quite inadequate for practical purposes” (O’Neill, 1996a, 94). It is inadequate because, as O’Neill notes, while “maxims are defined by Kant as practical principles, whose primary relevance is for agents who seek to work out what to do,” such decision-making agents who must rely on the introspective-ascriptive process, and for whom “action . . . lies ahead,” are left only with the “desperate strategy of finding out what our maxim is by waiting to find out what we do” (O’Neill, 1996a, 94). An agent cannot determine in advance of action what maxim it is that she has. A further part of her point, I take it, is that when one is faced with a question of what action to take or not take in a particular situation, the

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question of self-knowledge – that is, the question of what maxim one in fact has – is both irrelevant to, and worse, an obstacle to the practical purpose at hand. In trying to find out what maxim one has, the introspectiveattributive process, because it requires information that only actual acts can supply, can only either throw the agent back on a merely introspective process (since there is no action on which to rely) which has proven unreliable (since maxims are not simply introspectible); or say to this agent: “Well, act, and it’s only then that we’ll find out what maxim you acted on.” She finds such a situation intolerable, and thus takes these limits on knowing oneself as a good reason for relegating questions about self-knowledge into the “theoretical” realm, and focusing instead on questions of how to act that do “not depend upon the introspective or ascriptive identification of maxims already present in an agent” (O’Neill, 1996a, 94). How to act becomes the central moral question, and the question of who one is – what maxims I genuinely have as my own – becomes a pursuit of only theoretical interest. Such a reading of course sets aside the duty of self-knowledge as irrelevant to practical purposes. O’Neill thus rejects Kant’s claim that self-knowledge is not only a duty, but the “First Command of all Duties to Oneself ” (6:441/191). This is, however, a strong claim of Kant’s, one that should not be abandoned too quickly, and so further reflection is in order. I have already shown, in chapter 3, why such self-knowledge is necessary, even for the practical purposes that O’Neill emphasizes. We are now faced with the question of how to avoid the desperation that O’Neill claims would inevitably visit upon any agent trying to use an introspective-ascriptive strategy for knowing herself. Is O’Neill right that such agents are doomed to failure and despair? We can begin a response by returning to the situation O’Neill describes. O’Neill speaks of an agent who, in trying to make a decision, only has the option of acting to find out what maxim she acted on. This is, in fact, a very good description of certain sorts of choices finite agents are faced with: am I helping you because I care about you, or because I want someone to be impressed with my magnanimity? Am I engaging in the work that a committed relationship demands because I am really committed to my spouse, or only because I am using him or her as a protection from loneliness until a better offer comes around? We hope that we are acting from certain maxims and not from others, but confidence about such questions, accepting the introspective-ascriptive model, is something that can only develop slowly, over time, as patterns of action emerge. Indeed, even after acting, one’s knowledge is never certain. This may in fact mean that certain choices feel to a finite agent like jumping into an abyss without a clear sense

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of why she is doing what she’s doing. But this is just the human condition: we are finite beings, with limited access to knowledge of self, but who are faced, nonetheless, with the need to act. To this extent, O’Neill and I are of the same mind. Referring to the ultimate unknowability of our maxims and the always open possibility of various maxim-ascriptions to the same action, O’Neill notes: “This, I suspect, is how things really are; in life, as in novels, the hermeneutics of action often leaves us unsure which principles may be ascribed to others or to ourselves” (O’Neill, 1996a, 96). But it is when such uncertainty leads her to relegate questions about whether I (or others) actually have a particular maxim to the merely theoretical realm that we part ways. Why, though, does O’Neill take the admitted difficulty of human self-knowledge as a reason for removing it from its status as a duty? Although she does not state this explicitly, O’Neill’s concern seems to be that if self-knowledge really were a practical duty, an agent in such a situation would be justified in turning toward a despairing inactivity. If knowledge of one’s maxims is required for action, and an agent lacks such knowledge, she is justified in not acting. Lacking certain knowledge of her maxim in advance of her action would be sufficient reason to despair in one’s capacities as an agent. As such, O’Neill seeks to minimize the practical need for knowledge of self. We have seen, though, that some pursuit of knowledge of self is sometimes necessary for the purposes of moral action. The question, then, becomes not one of how to escape the moral demand of self-reflection, but of how to manage this demand within the confines of finite rational agency. Ironically, part of our response here will be not unlike O’Neill’s own retreat into maxims as action-guiding: “just act !” is one thing we can say to this decision-making agent. Failure of perfect knowledge about the status of one’s maxims, and admission that one’s action might fall under a variety of possible descriptions, are not reasons to refrain from acting on maxims. But such encouragement toward action does not simultaneously justify an abandonment of practical questions of self-knowledge. It is, rather, an admonition that the pursuit of the duty of self-knowledge is an ongoing and never-completed process. The agent needs to take with her into action the continuing question of who she is, why she has done what she’s done – in Kantian language, what maxims she claims as her own – for this fallible knowledge will prove crucial to her in her ongoing pursuit of virtuous action. Over time, her confidence in who she is and why she acts as she does can grow, or be challenged, through reflection on her patterns of action.

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We are, then, accepting the introspective-attributive process, and its practical possibilities, more fully than O’Neill. This process is never perfect, but it also needn’t be a recipe for despair. As this chapter progresses, we shall see that what is crucial for avoiding such despair is to engage in the process with a clear appreciation for those limits of finite agency and limits in selfknowledge which inform it. One must recognize, on the one hand, one’s capacity for self-deception and misplaced self-love and, on the other, the impossibility of perfect self-knowledge; yet, within these confines, one must also recognize oneself as a dignified and capable rational agent, and that part of one’s capacity is a capacity for self-reflection. That is, one must be able to engage in the pursuit of self-knowledge humbly. The tension between a duty of self-knowledge and the impossibility of perfect self-knowledge is thus not a perverse contradiction, leaving us in desperate straits, but rather an opportunity for humility. One’s humble perspective will set the limits to one’s pursuit properly, not demanding perfect certainty, and also providing the basis of a general confident attitude in the face of limit generally. It is from a humble perspective that a finite rational agent can engage in that pursuit of self-knowledge necessary for virtue without falling into despair. It is, furthermore, curious that O’Neill herself is not more open to the humility option, for she recognizes the limits of human virtue emphatically when she notes that virtue, for Kant, is an ongoing and never completed process.1 But although O’Neill has a genuine appreciation for this point in general terms, her argument against the practical value of the introspectiveattributive process seems to assume that in order to achieve that level of self-knowledge necessary for the fulfillment of that duty, and for action more generally, one would need to achieve that knowledge perfectly, that is, with absolute certainty. But it is not clear why such a condition would obtain. Kant does not, in his own discussion of the duty of self-knowledge, lay down such a condition. Indeed, he emphasizes there, and in many other places, that this duty is part of the ongoing pursuit of virtue, an ongoing process which is not intended to end in its perfect attainment. The duty of self-knowledge is thus not unique in that it cannot promise perfect attainment; rather, like any other aspect of one’s pursuit of self-perfection, it is a regulative ideal to be pursued, though never perfectly achieved. Perhaps O’Neill’s concern is that less-than-perfect knowledge of one’s maxims will turn out to be useless, and indeed counter-productive, for 1

See, for example, her discussion of the virtue of courage in which she quotes one of Kant’s most emphatic assertions of the point: “‘Virtue is always in progress and yet always beginning from the beginning. It is always in progress because, considered objectively, it is an ideal that is unattainable, while yet our duty is constantly to approximate it’” (6:409, quoted in O’Neill, 1996a, 96).

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practical purposes. And it will, of course, be necessary to show that less than perfect knowledge can be practically efficacious. This point will be taken up later in this chapter, after a more precise understanding of the levels of knowledge possible for a finite agent are considered. For the present though, we can find confidence in the fact that there are many realms of human action in which we must act on less than certain knowledge, and yet can still have the hope that our limited and fallible knowledge can be practically efficacious: making decisions about what medical procedures to utilize in the treatment of a disease is one good example. The lack of certainty in self-knowledge is no different: that it is sometimes a difficult thing to act without perfect knowledge of one’s maxims makes it no less a duty. We should not take the difficulty of knowing oneself as a reason to avoid a duty of self-knowledge. I turn first, then, to a description of the levels of self-knowledge possible for a finite rational agent; afterward, I apply these sorts of self-knowledge to a particular case of action, showing that even limited self-knowledge can be practically efficacious. sub s ta n ti a l a n d d e r i vat i ve s e l f -k n ow l e dg e We need, then, to spend more time appreciating Kant’s own structure for making sense of the humble pursuit of self-knowledge. Once we appreciate in more detail the epistemic levels at which self-knowledge is possible, we can return to the question of how acquisition of such knowledge can be practically efficacious. We have said that there are two general levels of self-knowledge required for moral action: we need, on the one hand, to recognize ourselves as dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified rational agents; on the other, we need some access to idiosyncratic aspects of ourselves that impinge upon specific decisions we need to make. Let us dwell on these two requirements of self-reflection to appreciate more completely what sort of knowledge they involve, and, more crucially, how each is possible. Doing so will clarify the important relationship of humility to both sorts of pursuit of self-knowledge. Kant himself provides a structure for making sense of these two main elements of obligatory self-knowledge. Despite the intractable limits of selfknowledge that he emphasizes,2 and especially despite his famous assertion 2

“Consciousness is, indeed, that which alone makes all representations to be thoughts, and in it, therefore, as the transcendental subject, all our perceptions must be found; but beyond this logical meaning of the ‘I’, we have no knowledge of the subject in itself, which as substratum underlies this ‘I’, as it does all thoughts” (a350/334).

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that an agent can never be certain of her motives or disposition,3 Kant also insists that knowing oneself is not only a duty, it is “the First Command of all Duties to Oneself ” (6:441/191): This command is “know (scrutinize, fathom) yourself,” not in terms of your natural perfection (your fitness or unfitness for all sorts of discretionary or even commanded ends) but rather in terms of your moral perfection in relation to your duty. That is, know your heart – whether it is good or evil, whether the source of your actions is pure or impure, and what can be imputed to you as belonging originally to the substance of a human being or as derived (acquired or developed) and belonging to your moral condition. (6:441/191)

Kant does not expect his reader to find this duty an easy one. Indeed, he is well aware of the supreme difficulty of following this command. He notes in the paragraph following the above-quoted section that the search for self-knowledge is an attempt “to penetrate into the depths (the abyss) of one’s heart which are quite difficult to fathom,” but also that such a “descent into the hell of self-cognition” is the only route to “human wisdom” and, indeed, “godliness” (6:441/191). The difficulties involved seem not only to be epistemological ones (that is, that any knowledge of oneself is “quite difficult” to understand), but also psychological difficulties of moral selfawareness (that is, that the search for self-knowledge is an entrance into a “hell” or an “abyss”). The implication here is that were one to look clearly at oneself, the sight would not be a pretty one, but rather one from which we would like to avert our eyes, or perhaps feast them helplessly. Such concerns are precisely what have led some contemporary commentators to reject a duty of self-knowledge within the context of liberalism, since the psychological difficulties of taking it on as a duty seem to promise only an obsessive self-centeredness that bodes ill for virtue.4 Nonetheless, 3

4

Kant’s most famous statement of the inscrutability of one’s motives is found in the Groundwork: “[I]t is absolutely impossible for experience to establish with complete certainty a single case in which the maxim of an action . . . has rested solely on moral grounds and on the thought of one’s duty. It is indeed at times the case that after the keenest self-examination we find nothing that without the moral motive of duty could have been strong enough to move us to this or that good action . . . , but we cannot infer from this with certainty that it is not some secret impulse of self-love which has actually, under the mere show of the Idea of duty, been the cause genuinely determining our will . . . [W]e can never, even by the most strenuous self-examination, get to the bottom of our secret impulsions” (4:407/74–75). Inscrutability of one’s disposition is asserted in the Religion: “Assurance of [one’s moral disposition] cannot of course be attained by the human being naturally, neither via immediate consciousness nor via the evidence of the life he has hitherto led, for the depths of his own heart (the subjective first ground of his maxims) are to him inscrutable” (6:51/71). See also 6:63/81–82, and 6:71/87–88. See MacIntyre, 1981; and Williams, 1985. In fact, MacIntyre himself does not adopt the extreme position of abandoning practical concern for self-knowledge entirely. Although he is critical of what he sees as the individualist excesses of liberal individualism, he suggests, in After Virtue, that abandoning these excesses needn’t involve an abandonment of the self or self-knowledge.

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Kant asserts that a willingness to look ourselves directly in the eye will be rewarded, since such painful self-assessment is a necessary step on the way to human “wisdom.” Seeking to know one’s own heart is a necessary part of fulfilling a duty to oneself and of the securing of one’s virtue. For Kant, virtue entails a knowledge of oneself. Admitting all the difficulties which such a claim involves, Kant’s own introduction of the obligatory end of self-knowledge does provide us with a structure for at least beginning to understand it. When Kant speaks of the “source” of action, he seems to be referring to knowledge of one’s motives to action and the underlying character or disposition which guides these motives. But he complicates this claim when he distinguishes between what can be attributed to oneself “substantially” or “derivatively.” These two categories of self-knowledge – substantial and derivative – will guide us in understanding both the precise nature of this knowledge and the import of humility in their acquisition. First, in advising humans to know what belongs “originally to the substance of a human being,” Kant is advising a knowledge of oneself qua species, that self-knowledge we spoke of in Part III, an awareness of oneself as a dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified agent. What level of knowledge can be asserted, though, of this substantial self-knowledge? In the Paralogisms of the First Critique, Kant saw knowledge of the self as being no more – or less – accessible than knowledge of anything else in the natural world, and thus a task for empirical psychology.5 But Kant does leave room, even there, for conceiving of self-knowledge on a model different from third-person empirical psychology: although one cannot have objective knowledge of oneself, that is, knowledge of oneself as an object of knowledge, without engaging in empirical psychology, one can have a subjective awareness of oneself as acting subject without transgressing the limits of self-knowledge.6 It is just this “determining subject” to which Kant appeals when he establishes the theoretical claim 5

6

Whereas idealists such as Descartes believed that one’s internal thought process could lead to a privileged access to certainty about one’s status as a thinking substance, Kant insists that empirical access to ourselves is no more reliable than any other empirical sense datum we encounter in the world: “[I]dealism . . . teaches that the reality of outer objects does not allow of strict proof. On the other hand, the reality of the object of our inner sense (the reality of myself and my state) is, they argue, immediately evident through consciousness. The former may be merely an illusion; the latter is, on their view, undeniably something real. What they have failed, however, to recognise is that both are in the same position; in neither case can their reality as representations be questioned, and in both cases they belong only to appearance” (a38=b55/80). “In all judgments I am the determining subject of that relation which constitutes the judgment. That the ‘I’, the ‘I’ that thinks, can be regarded always as subject, and as something which does not belong to thought as a mere predicate, must be granted. It is an apodeictic and indeed identical proposition; but it does not mean that I, as object, am for myself a self-subsistent being or substance. The latter

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of the transcendental unity of apperception (TUA). We can know, as a condition for the possibility of thought, that the “I” which thinks is a unity, but we can know nothing else of this entity. The knowledge of the self to be derived from the simple act of thought is thus severely limited. But when Kant speaks in the Metaphysics of Morals of the need to know oneself substantially, he is no longer seeking to make theoretical claims about the self; rather, he is looking to the self as the subject of practical judgments and, ultimately, actions: Kant asks an agent to “know your heart – whether it is good or evil, whether the source of your actions is pure” (6:441/191), to know herself precisely as the subject of a practical act, not merely as subject of a theoretical judgment, and surely not as static object of knowledge. We can, then, assert a practical parallel to the subject recognized as a condition for the possibility of all theoretical judgments. Such knowledge of oneself merely as subject, when applied to the practical realm, turns out, however, to be more valuable than one might expect: to recognize herself as the subject of her actions is, after all, simply to say that she recognizes herself as the author of her acts; and implicit in this recognition of authorship is a recognition of all those qualities which constitute an obligated agent:7 her obligation and her capacity to fulfill it, the potentially conflicting ends of happiness and duty, and of the human tendency to place the former above the latter. To recognize herself substantially is thus to understand herself as a practical subject in general, the practical equivalent of understanding the TUA. It is important to emphasize the import of the practical context of this claim; for, theoretical knowledge of oneself as substance is precisely what Kant has claimed, in the Paralogisms of the First Critique, is impossible. Our present concern is, though, not simply with the third-person theoretical question of what human nature is, or with whether we have souls; rather, our concern is that an agent be aware, from a practical perspective, that she herself is an example of this nature and to understand what it means to live this nature from a first-person perspective. The point, after all, is to “know your heart.” In knowing one’s heart “substantially,” though, one is seeking to know those things about oneself that are also true of all examples

7

statement goes very far beyond the former, and demands for its proof data which are not to be met with in thought, and perhaps (in so far as I have regard to the thinking self merely as such) are more than I shall ever find in it” (b407/369). For Kant’s discussion of understanding the “authorship” of laws and actions, see 6:227/19.

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of one’s kind. It is a first-person subjective appreciation of objective facts about humanity applied to oneself.8 This account of substantial knowledge of self should seem familiar: it is simply an epistemologically more precise rendering of that knowledge of self we saw, in Part III, to be required for acquisition of an attitude of humility, showing that such an assertion of substantial self-knowledge can make sense within Kant’s First Critique constraints on self-knowledge. The import of humility for acquisition of this sort of self-knowledge is, furthermore, obvious: substantial knowledge of self is part of the set of judgments which are constitutive of a humble attitude itself. A would-be humble agent needs to have knowledge of herself as a member of the set of dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified agents in order to know her duties as duties and so to act from the motive of duty. d e r i vat i ve s e l f - k n ow l ed g e Whereas substantial practical knowledge of oneself focuses on these things true of all human agents, the derivative self-knowledge of which Kant speaks would be knowledge of facts particular to the individual in question, including knowledge of motives, character traits, and overall disposition: why did I act that way? Am I a generally sympathetic person? Stingy or openhanded? Quick to anger or unduly self-effacing? What is most important to me? What attitudes, desires, and beliefs guide the overall structure of my character and actions? Most importantly, have I really placed the pursuit of moral ends above my pursuit of self-love? But the assertion of a duty of derivative self-knowledge leaves us with a dilemma: as we have seen, Kant asserts at once the impossibility and the obligation of knowing one’s motives. How can we make sense of a duty of derivative self-knowledge if it is already accepted that what appear to be its most crucial aspects – knowledge of one’s disposition and of one’s motives – are impossible? One relatively straightforward response to this dilemma is to lower the level of self-knowledge required for derivative self-knowledge. Instead of having a quasi-transcendental certainty of one’s motives akin to the recognition of the TUA, knowledge of motives is simply an empirical, fallible, and ongoing process: an agent considers her beliefs about herself, then 8

It is interesting that Kant uses just this Cartesian language of substance when explaining this practical self-knowledge. What is denied to the theoretical self-knowledge seeker – knowledge of the precise “substance” of oneself – is, perhaps, granted in a more limited epistemological sense to the practical self-knowledge seeker.

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considers her actions and patterns of action to determine the extent to which they are consistent with her own self-conception. Over time, she develops a fairly reliable self-conception, and learns to adjust it accordingly, especially when she finds that actions don’t affirm the good opinion she has of her character and/or motives. This is not unlike what O’Neill has called the introspective-attributive process (O’Neill, 1996a, 94). As O’Neill also notes, however, communitarians would object at this point, arguing that making a demand for such continual self-reflection, and indeed making this duty previous to one’s duties to others, does not result in a stable and reliable self-conception, nor in a moral person, but only makes morality a frantic navel-gazing exercise. If we admit that selfknowledge is such an unreliable and continual process, an agent genuinely concerned with her duty to know herself would become not stably and reliably moral, but fearful and self-absorbed, turning her moral attention away from the persons and concerns around her. It is to avoid criticisms like these that O’Neill, as we saw in chapter 3, reduced the self-knowledge requirement even further, making it a question of only theoretical and not practical significance. Indeed, [e]ven if we were wholly opaque to ourselves and to others, and lacked even the limited and fallible capacities for introspection Kant credits us with, we could still use practical principles to guide action. When we do so we have to identify a principle – for example a principle of virtue – and to ask what might be done if we are to strive to make that principle inform our lives and our action. (p. 95, emphasis added)

We have already rejected O’Neill’s claim, for it turns out that certain imperfect duties of virtue would be impossible to fulfill without some limited self-reflection. We are now, however, in the position to understand how this requirement of self-knowledge can be accomplished without falling victim to communitarian criticisms of self-centeredness. How can we avoid the excesses of an obsessive self-centeredness in the pursuit of self-knowledge? When the question is stated in that way, the answer to it becomes more obvious: humility. It is by approaching the duty of derivative self-knowledge with an attitude of humility that we avoid all sorts of excessive self-centeredness, from moral fanaticism about, to desperate abandonment of, the pursuit of self-knowledge. This role for humility is just the parallel on a more empirical level of that balance of confidence and restraint necessary in the proper valuing of self that we saw in chapter 6. Acquisition of a stable attitude which integrates substantial knowledge of self, that is, an attitude of humility, both fulfills one’s duty of

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substantial self-knowledge, and establishes one’s general moral attitude in a way that makes one more able to fulfill the duty of derivative self-knowledge without collapsing into desperate, or arrogant, self-centeredness. The final claim of this section is thus as follows: a confident pursuit of knowledge of one’s motives and disposition is possible only from a humble perspective, that is, by a person who has internalized substantial knowledge of self into her character in accordance with our Part III account. Without this perspective, an agent would approach motive assessment with some sort of self-centeredness, either with bravado and certainty, or, on the opposite end, with nit-picking and obsessive attention to detail. In either case, the agent collapses in a paralyzing, and still self-centered, despair, about the hope of success. Excessive focus on self is surely, then, a possibility in these failed attempts to fulfill this duty. A humble agent, though, approaches analyses of motives and disposition with substantial knowledge of self already acquired, and these beliefs about her agency ground, guide – and limit – her pursuit of derivative self-knowledge. Let’s look with more care at how the duty of derivative self-knowledge is fulfilled from a humble perspective. how to fa i l i n th e d u t y o f s e l f -k n ow l e dg e The challenges of taking on the task of derivative self-knowledge should not be underestimated. When one is set to a difficult, but not inherently impossible, task (e.g., climbing Mount Everest), certain specific challenges present themselves: an agent may recognize the difficulty of the task before her, and also the temptation to be cowed psychologically by questions of the adequacy of her knowledge, creativity, stamina, or patience; but a successful agent can be egged on by the very possibility of her success. Some epistemic problems exhibit these same sorts of challenges: finding a solution to an unsolved problem of mathematics, or finding a cure for a heretofore incurable disease are examples of epistemic challenges which, although difficult, are not in principle impossible. Our current problem, though – to know one’s motives and dispositions – presents a different set of challenges. The person seeking to climb Mount Everest, or to solve a recalcitrant mathematical problem can hope for the possibility of outright success – reaching the summit, or providing the solution – and this hope can act as a motivational spur. But the person seeking derivative self-knowledge has no such motivational carrot of the possibility of complete success. Indeed, she must begin with the realization that she will not achieve her goal perfectly, that is, that she will never absolutely achieve that knowledge for which she is searching: absolute certainty is not

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possible. The situation is made even more challenging when she realizes that she also has, nonetheless, a practical imperative to do what she can to monitor her motives and dispositions. Despite the impossibility of perfect success, an agent must engage in the pursuit of self-knowledge. But the very imperative puts further pressure on the situation: this is not an optional, but an obligatory pursuit. A practical parallel of this duty of self-knowledge (that is, a case in which perfect accomplishment of the goal is impossible, but in which one nonetheless has a practical imperative to engage in the task) would thus not be of the intrepid Everest climber, or that brave researcher looking for a cure for cancer. It is perhaps somewhat closer to that of a cancer patient and doctor trying to decide on the best course of treatment for her, given the limited knowledge and options available to them before a cure is available, though even here, outright success remains a possibility. The closest parallel I can imagine is of being committed to responsible stewardship of the environment:9 trying to protect the environment and treat it responsibly, knowing not only that you do not and cannot have full knowledge of all the intricate inter-connections which constitute it, but also that, even were such full knowledge attainable, success is literally beyond you. Success would be “beyond” the agent first because any progress at all would depend upon all – or at least a great majority – of persons in the world making a commitment to certain practices. But even if this improbable condition were met, one could still never be sure whether there were complexities of the environment beyond the reach of the human community’s responsible stewardship. One cannot simply accomplish this task and be done with it, and certainty in the success of one’s efforts is never assured; yet engaging in the task is obligatory. There are important parallels, then, between the pursuit of selfknowledge and other required, but essentially unachievable, tasks. I raise these comparisons to clarify the precise nature of the challenges of taking up the task of derivative self-knowledge, and to emphasize that these challenges should not be underestimated. But neither should they be ignored. 9

Other cases parallel to the pursuit of derivative self-knowledge include: when Thomas Hill speaks of the import of an attitude of humility in relation to the environment (see Hill, 1991); when students of medical ethics recommend humility as the most appropriate attitude to bring to difficult clinical situations (see, for example, Parens, 1995); and when Martha Nussbaum advocates humility among moral philosophers because traditional methods of philosophical inquiry are found to be limited and must be supplemented by appeal to literature. All these examples of humility are important ways in which a humble person would approach particular pursuits, but are also parasitical upon our original definition of moral humility in the ways which humility in the pursuit of self-knowledge will be shown to be here.

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How, then, should one approach a task that is impossible as a straightforward potentially attainable goal but is nonetheless a practical imperative without collapsing into self-absorption or despair? Let’s look first at ways that, though tempting for various reasons, are not the ways to undertake this task. Given the pressures of the situation, and especially the obligatory nature of one’s task, the temptation is to force some sort of certainty about one’s state that is not in fact forthcoming, to succumb, that is, to self-deception. One might, for example, be tempted to think that some internal moral sense could provide the certainty about one’s state that reason could not. But to take an attitude of certainty toward the state of one’s motives and character, supported only by hazy feelings or even intellectual intuitions, would be both too mystical, and too self-deceived, a solution. As Kant reminds us, “one is never more easily deceived than in what promotes a good opinion of oneself ” (6:68/85), and one’s hazy feelings and intuitions would surely tend in that direction. To think that she could know her motives and dispositions with certainty is to deny the dependent and corrupt status of her agency, and resort instead to a moral fanaticism.10 One might be tempted instead to engage in the pursuit of derivative selfknowledge with a bit more “fear and trembling,” as Kant himself considers in the Religion.11 But although this would curb moral fanaticism of one sort – that moral arrogance just suggested – it would only encourage and aggravate another excessive and misguided attitude attendant upon the pursuit of derivative self-knowledge: obsessive concern for irrelevant detail in one’s moral life. Like the pursuit of happiness,12 the pursuit of knowledge about one’s motives and disposition is recalcitrant to reason’s insistent attempts to determine them unequivocally. An agent motivated only by fear and trembling, yet determined to come to objective, and absolutely certain, conclusions about her motives and disposition, while lacking sufficient evidence to make such claims, would frantically focus upon those mental contents to which she did have some access and try to force from them 10 11 12

For some of Kant’s reflections on moral fanaticism, see: 6:63/81–82; 6:68/85–86; 6:71/88. See 6:68/85–86. He suggests a similar concern in his discussion of the search not strictly for derivative self-knowledge, but for happiness through reason: “[T]he more a cultivated reason concerns itself with the aim of enjoying life and happiness, the farther does man get away from true contentment. This is why there arises in many, and that too in those who have made most trial of this use of reason, if they are only candid enough to admit it, a certain degree of misology – that is, hatred of reason . . . [T]hey discover that they have in fact only brought more trouble on their heads than they have gained in the way of happiness. On this account they come to envy rather than to despise the more common run of men, who are closer to the guidance of mere natural instinct, and who do not allow their reason to have much influence on their conduct” (4:395–396/63).

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some certainty as to her true desires, motives, or character. Kant clearly sees the problems with such a state of mind: [T]hat human being can be called fantastically virtuous who allows nothing to be morally indifferent . . . and strews all his steps with duties, as with mantraps; it is not indifferent to him whether I eat meat or fish, drink beer or wine, supposing that both agree with me. Fantastic virtue is a concern with petty details which, were it admitted into the doctrine of virtue, would turn the government of virtue into tyranny. (6:409/167)

When one can’t know the answers about derivative self-knowledge with certainty, but seeks nonetheless to pursue it with the hope of certainty, the only option is to fill the knowledge gap with what purported evidence is within one’s grasp: the result is either a fanatic obsession with or “tyranny” over the irrelevant details of one’s moral life, or losing oneself in a mystical self-assurance. Of course, these exercises in self-deception lead not only to frustration but also, as Kant has suggested in the case of happiness, to a hatred and skepticism of reason’s usefulness in practical pursuits.13 They lead to that thinly veiled flip side of one’s moral fanaticism, that is, to a despair about the applicability of rational agency in the realm of self-knowledge. When the need for absolutely certain self-knowledge is combined not with a self-deceived claim of certainty in its attainment, but with a nagging fear that one hasn’t, despite Herculean efforts, managed to attain it, the ultimate result is neither moral fanaticism nor moral tyranny, but an abiding despair in one’s self and one’s agency. It might have been tempting at the outset to think that one fails in a duty of self-knowledge when one fails to know oneself. But given what has been said here, failures of this duty are of a rather different sort: the danger into which a human agent easily falls is to believe that they can – or must – know themselves with absolute certainty, or – what follows from a pursuit of certainty in the realm of derivative self-knowledge – that unmitigated despair is warranted. Neither is. The person who acquires a hatred of reason because of her inability to use it to establish her happiness, or who becomes tyrannical in attending to her duties, or who falls into a downward spiral of constant and counter-productive rumination and despair about her moral state – all these persons have failed to accept the fact that self-knowledge does not allow of an unshakable epistemic certainty. They all have, in one way or another, lost themselves in an impossible task, and are failing in their duties the more they seek, in their misguided ways, to fulfill them. 13

See 4:395–396/63.

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It is with just such difficulties in mind that communitarian thinkers, and Kantian commentators like O’Neill, have rejected the duty of derivative self-knowledge, assuming that the only possible outcome of such a duty is an obsessive self-absorption or utter despair. And to this extent they are right: certain attempts to fulfill a duty of this sort are guaranteed to collapse into a despairing self-absorption. Ironically, though, O’Neill’s own argument for why we should avoid practical concern for whether we have a maxim or not fits somewhat inadvertently into the picture of the misguided agents I’ve been describing here. O’Neill assumes that, in order for self-knowledge to be practically efficacious, the agent would need to be successful to a rather high degree in identifying the maxim she is acting on. She even envisions a process in which one seeks – unsuccessfully – to exclude all other possible descriptions of one’s act, arriving at the maxim which is definitely one’s own. So, of course, this pursuit fails. The mistake was to set the bar too high. If certainty about our moral state is a requirement of the duty of self-knowledge, or is necessary to assure the practical efficacy of one’s duty of self-knowledge, then we have every reason either to concede the point to the communitarians, or alternatively, to despair. For such an approach leads only to the fanaticism/despair cycle that we have considered above. Yet, as we have just seen, even Kant himself is keenly aware of this problem. There are also Kantian resources available to avoid it. h u mb l e co n f i d e n ce , o r e pi s t e m i c h u m i li t y The error of the morally arrogant, tyrannical, and ultimately despairing person is that she treated her pursuit of derivative self-knowledge more like climbing Mount Everest or solving a math problem than like responsible stewardship of the environment: she either straightforwardly or secretly believed that certainty was possible when it wasn’t. This agent has failed to place the proper limits upon her pursuit of self-knowledge; she has failed, that is, to engage in it as a pursuit that can never be fully and completely achieved, and instead is on a relentless search for certainty. Such stubborn pursuit of certainty is a symptom, though, of a deeper need, for this agent genuinely lacked what she needed to pursue derivative self-knowledge productively: confidence. She sought confidence, and a motivational spur, from the hope of complete success; and the fact that such hope was nothing more than a self-deceived fantasy is what makes it come crashing down in despair. This agent wasn’t wrong to look for confidence in her pursuits, for surely it is not unreasonable to hope for confidence to persevere in an unending

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task.14 The agents of which we spoke above did not, however, have the resources to establish the sort of confidence more appropriate to their task. Their motivation was, in fact, heteronomous, more concerned with the hope of success than with being moral per se.15 But a humble agent has other resources. It is through what she already knows about herself and has integrated into her attitude of humility that she is able to recognize that fanatical and anxious tyranny or, what amounts to the same, despair about one’s moral condition, is unwarranted, and finds instead a more morally productive ground of confidence in a clear awareness of her own limits and capacities attendant upon her pursuit of derivative self-knowledge. The old seat of confidence, now abandoned, was a self-deceived hope for absolute success which acted as a genuine, but fickle, motivational spur (genuine because it was truly motivational, and fickle because it required the agent to falsify the nature of the task and her abilities). The balance of confidence and restraint that characterizes the humble person’s proper valuing of herself qua agent provides, however, a new, more morally productive and less self-deceived seat of confidence from which to take up the duty of derivative self-knowledge. She is, through her humility, more able to let go of the need for certainty to which the former cling, because she has a ground for confidence different, and less heteronomous, than the hope of certainty. First, her settled recognition and acceptance of her own dependence and corruption allows a humble person to recognize also the deep possibility of self-deception in many arenas, and especially in the analysis of her motives. Only a non-corrupt agent could hope to have absolute certainty about her motives and disposition without fear of self-deception, since such a being would not need to admit this ever-present possibility of distorting one’s motives and values in the interests of self-love, and her motives could be assessed with more certainty. The humble agent thus recognizes moral fanaticism and tyranny, and the purported absolute certainty that ground 14

15

Indeed, according to Kant, she must, for “without any confidence in the disposition once acquired, perseverance in it would hardly be possible” (6:68/86). Kant also uses the language of “tranquillity” (6:409/167), “satisfaction” (4:117/124), “self-contentment” (4:117/124), “moral happiness” (6:67/85), and even “apathy” (6:408/166–167) to describe the state of confidence the agent both requires and can acquire. Kant’s own discussion of the moral fanatic helps to clarify the heteronomous nature of such a person’s motivation: “By exhortation to actions as noble, sublime, and magnanimous, the mind is disposed to nothing but blatant moral fanaticism and exaggerated self conceit . . . [B]y this kind of exhortation [such agents] come to think that those actions are expected of them not because of duty but only because of their own bare merit . . . [T]hey produce in this way a shallow, high-flown, fantastic way of thinking, flattering themselves with a spontaneous goodness of heart, needing neither spur nor bridle nor even command, and thereby forgetting their obligation, which they ought to think of rather than their merit” (4:84–85/88–89).

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them, as exercises in self-deception and as unwarranted. She firmly rejects the fantasy of certainty about her state, and accepts the pursuit of the duty of self-knowledge within proper epistemic limits. That is, she recognizes the nature of the task: to hope for some kind of a priori knowledge in this realm would be misguided, since one set of objects of this knowledge – one’s desires and motives – is not that kind of stable object that would allow of such objective and unchanging knowledge; and the other – one’s most general and underlying disposition – is inscrutable. The only possible evidence of an agent’s underlying disposition is limited, indirect, inconclusive, and defeasible. Such evidence is, of course, insufficient to come to the certain conclusion that one in fact has a primary disposition to placing the moral law above excessive claims of self-love, much less that such a disposition is stable and unassailable.16 The pursuit of derivative self-knowledge is thus accepted as a painstakingly empirical one of evaluating one’s reactions to situations over time and making judgments about the patterns that emerge in one’s character. Looking to inconclusive and defeasible evidence in one’s character and conduct is the only way to be responsible and vigilant about one’s moral status, since the moral disposition is inscrutable more directly. Like any inductive process, this process is subject to fallibility and adjustment as more information becomes available. Indeed, since, even for the humble person, such analysis is susceptible to corruption by self-love and selfdeception, it is even less reliable than standard empirical and inductive enquiries. Yet, the impossibility of knowing with certainty that about which she has a practical imperative to be vigilant is not, for the humble agent, a warrant for despair. Having already refused more generally to accept the fact of her dependence and corruption as a reason for despair, she now also rejects despair in the analysis of her motives. That she cannot know that she acts morally is not to say that she is incapable of acting morally, only that she cannot rest in an innocent certainty about her moral status. But despair would be warranted only in this more acute case, that is, in that situation where moral action was absolutely impossible. And a humble agent already 16

“Certainty with respect to [the existence and stability of one’s moral disposition] is neither possible to the human being, nor, so far as we can see, morally beneficial. For (be it well noted) we cannot base this confidence upon an immediate consciousness of the immutability of our disposition, since we cannot see through to the latter but must at best infer it from the consequence that it has on the conduct of our life. And since our inference is drawn from perceptions that are only appearances of a good or bad disposition, our inference never reveals with any certainty especially the strength of the disposition, least of all when, in the face of impending death, we think that we have improved ours” (6:71/88).

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knows this not to be the case, since she knows herself also as a capable and dignified agent. She will, thus, refuse despair and the anxious fanaticism or tyranny that accompany it. It is, then, through her humility that she avoids psychological excesses in her pursuit of derivative self-knowledge. Rejecting both dogmatic certainty and despair, the humble person brings a confident attitude to her pursuit: she reflects upon the patterns of her actions and her reasons for them, and develops a sense of whether they converge upon her commitment to moral principles which makes self-love a conditional pursuit. To the extent that her reflections suggest such a convergence, she increases that confidence in her moral status with which this analysis began.17 When such convergence is challenged, she does not however fall into despair, for she was prepared all along for the possibility of self-deception, even in her own case. So, instead of clinging to a fanatical certainty about her motives and disposition, or collapsing in a fit of self-absorbed despair, a humble agent confidently engages in the limited, fallible, and continually revisable pursuit of knowledge about herself. Humble confidence is the attitude most appropriate to the stable and morally productive pursuit of derivative self-knowledge. This confidence is humble because it is grounded not in the hope of eventual unmitigated success, but in that more basic confidence that comes with her settled state of humility: a confidence in her absolute worth, restrained by a proper awareness of her dependence and corruption. This source for her confidence is, furthermore, one which prevents the heteronomous excesses of fanaticism and tyranny. These latter attitudes demanded of the agent taking them up that she misconstrue her relationship to moral principles, imagining herself to be in a relationship to them other than duty. It was a secret hope of success, of being equal to such principles, that provided the motivational energy for their tasks. But such motivations are heteronomous; they cannot be understood as doing one’s duty for the sake of duty. Rather, these agents are doing their duty for the sake of triumph or success. The humble agent’s confidence is, however, only an extension of her interest in doing her duty from duty. It is precisely her understanding of her proper relationship to moral principles which motivates her to pursue derivative self-knowledge in the way that she does. Her confidence is grounded not in anything extraneous to her duty, but rather in a proper understanding of it. 17

Kant also suggests that an agent’s confidence can be increased through this back-and-forth comparison of her actions with her stated commitments: “We can, however, find this confidence, without delivering ourselves to the sweetness or the anxiety of enthusiasm, by comparing our life conduct so far pursued with the resolution we once embraced” (6:68/86).

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It is possible, then, to be confident in one’s pursuit of derivative selfknowledge, and to avoid the heteronomous extremes of fanaticism, tyranny, and despair, only when one has humility as defined in Part III. Humility in one’s valuing of self as agent underwrites the possibility of approaching this more specific activity of self-reflection with a similar attitude. Those hallmarks of humility as previously defined – awareness both of one’s capacities and one’s limits as an agent – are precisely what assist the dependent and corrupt agent in avoiding the Scylla and Charybdis of certainty and despair in the pursuit of derivative self-knowledge: awareness of oneself as a capable agent prevents a lack of specific and incontrovertible self-knowledge from warranting despair; and awareness of one’s dependency and corruption prevents one from succumbing to the fantasy that one’s moral pursuit of self-knowledge will issue in certainty about one’s disposition. Instead, the agent relies on her confidence in her worth as an agent, mitigated by an appreciation of the facts of her dependence and corruption, to guide her in the turbulent and uncertain waters of self-analysis, without endangering her respect for moral principles. A self-respecting humility toward one’s agency in general is what opens the epistemological and psychological space for approaching this sort of imperative in a morally productive manner. fa l li b l e d e ri vati ve s e l f- k n ow l e dg e c a n b e p rac ti c a l ly e f fi c ac i ou s One might still raise the question of why this finite agent has put so much work into her pursuit of self-knowledge: does she really need to know herself to act morally? And even if she does know herself in this limited and fallible way, will this sort of knowledge be sufficient to influence and support her action appropriately? We have already seen, in chapter 3, that there are indeed moral situations in which knowledge of the self is important for moral action: Katerina, from Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov could not act on her imperfect duty of beneficence without coming to terms with her shame. But does the sort of self-knowledge we have described above promise to be efficacious for someone in Katerina’s position? Let’s revisit Katerina’s situation in order to answer this question in the positive. As we saw in chapter 3, Katerina was avoiding the opportunity to visit her former lover, Dmitry, who is in desperate straits in prison, and has asked for her to visit. First she says that it is “impossible” to visit him, and that she “cannot” go because she “won’t be able to stand his looking at me.” Then she suggests that she cannot leave Dmitry’s other brother, Ivan, whom she is helping to convalesce (Dostoevsky, 1958, 917). As we have

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seen, though, Katerina is particularly obligated to visit Dmitry because of the history of their relationship, and because the peace and consolation he needs is something which only a visit from her could provide him. She is eventually able to realize this, and to visit him, fulfilling her imperfect duty of beneficence. But this was possible only because she was able to reflect on her feelings of shame and her interest in self-protection, both of which informed her original stance of inactivity. We should note further that even when Katerina decides to go visit Dmitry, she has not accomplished a perfect knowledge of herself in her reflections on her experience of shame and her desires for self-protection. She goes to Dmitri with many questions about herself still outstanding, questions about who she is or isn’t, and about what maxims she does or doesn’t have: is she a sympathetic person? A mean person? Does she love Dmitry? Does she hate him? Had she been avoiding him out of justified anger? Or out of shame? Is she going to him out of guilt? Sympathy? A hope of affirming her superiority over him? Her decision to go visit him, though, suggests that she has developed a clear, if fallible, picture of herself: she has been someone who let shame and excessive self-interest get in the way of being a sympathetic person; and her choice to visit Dmitry suggests that, in the face of her recognition of her duty, she does not want to be that sort of person. It should be emphasized, of course, that Katerina didn’t pick the possibility of shame out of nowhere. Rather, she looked within herself, at the feelings she experienced in her conversations with Alyosha, and at her pattern of inactivity thus far, and put two and two together. That is, she recognized that, although she could not have perfect knowledge of herself, and that many possibilities remained of how to describe her action, she could nonetheless put her finger on one particularly “live” possibility in the description of her action, that is, the possibility that shame was informing her inactivity. And such identification of a live possibility should seem a familiar human experience. Even when one can’t absolutely exclude all other possible motives of action or inaction, some possibilities emerge in the course of reflection as one of these more (or less) live possibilities, and such defeasible recognition of more or less relevant considerations in one’s deliberative process is not inconsequential. Katerina recognizes the very live possibility that her shame has informed her inactivity, and thus takes that new self-knowledge as further information in changing the way she acts: she now goes to visit Dmitry, recognizing that she doesn’t want to become the kind of person for whom shame is a sufficient reason to avoid beneficent

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action. Katerina recognizes that shame was a particularly live possibility for explaining her choice thus far to avoid visiting Dmitry; it thus made sense for her to act on this new knowledge in the face of her recognized and desired maxim of action (that is, to be beneficent). So, Katerina might be wrong about her self-assessment. Perhaps it wasn’t really shame that informed her inactivity. And perhaps even as she goes to Dmitry, she is going more out of a reformulated sense of self-interest instead of out of true pursuit of beneficence. Regardless of all this, her fallible process of self-reflection was something that helped her to engage in that beneficence possible for her. She will have the opportunity, over time, to investigate her motives more closely, in accordance with a continuing introspective-attributive process to develop more or less confidence in this initial self-assessment. But she could not have acted well here unless she had been willing to engage in such self-assessment to the extent that was possible and morally productive. The epistemic limits of the introspective-attributive process – and especially the possibility that there are other possible maxims which describe one’s activity or inactivity – thus do not warrant making its pursuit a merely theoretical task. Instead, reflection on character – the maxims one has – becomes just as important as seeking to utilize maxims to guide action in the way O’Neill has described. Indeed, in some cases, as in Katerina’s, the former becomes a condition for the possibility of the latter. Katerina, by facing her shame, has entered that “abyss” and “hell” of self-knowledge of which Kant speaks, but has come out on the other side of it. Her conscious recognition and admission of her shame and how it was affecting her choice not to visit Dmitry help her to alter the way in which that shame was influencing her choice. Instead of choosing inactivity, she chooses to visit Dmitry. It is facing her shame that finally prevents that shame from being an unconscious obstacle to her visiting Dmitry. Her new self-knowledge allows her, furthermore, not only to make a commitment to herself about what actions she should engage in but also about what kind of person she wants to be. Katerina’s choice to visit Dmitry indicates that she does not want to be a person for whom shame is a sufficient reason for avoiding the fulfillment of one’s duties. She thus takes her selfknowledge of her shame both as an inspiration to action (not letting shame be an obstacle to action), and as a guide to the development of her character (avoiding becoming the sort of person who lets shame guide her choices). And moral principles played an important role in this pursuit of selfknowledge. Maxims can, in fact, be not only action-guiding (here, once sufficient self-knowledge is achieved), but also character-guiding. The maxim

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of beneficence provides a point of view from which Katerina is able to shape her emotional life and attitudes. It was from the point-of-view of a clear recognition of her duties that she was able to take her new recognition of her shame not as an affirmation of previous inactivity, but rather as a reason for changing her way of acting. Finally, Katerina’s admission of her shame indicates also her incipient, growing humility. Indeed, the development of humility was necessary for her both to gain the self-knowledge that she did and to utilize it in the way that she did toward proper deployment of her maxim of beneficence. One could say that Katerina has, in this episode, made progress simultaneously in the growth of her derivative and substantial self-knowledge. She becomes better at recognizing both the limits of her agency qua finite agency (that is, that she is the sort of being tempted to place concerns of self-love above moral principles) and qua individual (that is, that she, Katerina, has engaged in this perversion of the moral order through giving in to her shame). She is, furthermore, able to recognize these limits for what they are (she has placed self-love above moral concerns when she didn’t visit Dmitry). But she has not taken this new acquisition of knowledge of limits as a reason for despair. Rather, she has taken them in in light of the simultaneous fact of her capable agency: she acts. Whether or not she has acquired all those values implicit in the attitude of humility, she has taken steps toward that understanding. co n c lu s i o n O’Neill has suggested that the introspective-attributive process fails to issue in adequate self-knowledge for practical purposes, and thus is not a requirement for the responsible pursuit of virtue. But the humble agent has the resources to pursue self-knowledge in a way that is practically efficacious, without turning that pursuit of self-knowledge into an exercise in selfabsorption. Furthermore, the failure to engage in some limited self-analysis assures just the self-centeredness that O’Neill wants to avoid. Even the humble agent knows that she is susceptible to asserting undue claims of self-love and is subject to self-deception. Engaging in assessment of her motives with humble confidence is thus not an abandonment to self-centeredness, but an opportunity to reduce it. And when previously unidentified influences of self-love and self-deception are removed, the humble agent can see more clearly than she could have otherwise not only into herself but also (and more importantly as a response to this critique) into the moral world around her.

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The humble agent in pursuit of derivative self-knowledge thus avoids the communitarian criticism of self-absorption. Indeed, given the difficulty, and unrelentingly empirical nature, of pursuing self-knowledge, it makes sense that the humble agent would be motivated to seek out a variety of means for achieving it, including looking toward the world around her to understand what the reactions she receives from others teach her about her own thoughts, judgments, and actions. Her attitude of humility thus makes her more open to inter-action with other persons than she might have been otherwise: other persons are an invaluable resource in the search for self-knowledge, both through direct communication and through more indirect observation of how others react to oneself. Kant emphasizes, for example, that friends should share their views on each other’s character.18 And Katerina relies on some very human interactions with Alyosha to come to her own self-realization.19 All of this is not to say, however, that an individual agent is not ultimately responsible for her own self-assessment: in the end, no one but she has a duty to make judgments about her disposition. Fulfillment of the duty of self-knowledge – including the admission that one is an obligated agent – though it might rely on interaction with others, is an unavoidably firstperson awareness and acceptance. Neither does this mean, however, that the humble agent engages in social inter-course only for the purposes of knowing herself better. We shall see in the following chapter this final piece of our defense of the limited priority of self- over other-regarding duties: an attitude of humility makes an agent more able to perceive and respond to the situations of other persons around her, and thus to fulfill her duties toward others more effectively. The Kantian agent is not doomed, then, to moral solipsism. She still relies on others in making judgments; she would still be failing in her duty if she didn’t take advantage of information obtainable through others; she still has duties to assist others in their own quest for virtue; and she still fails in her duties if she becomes so caught up in herself that she ignores the perspectives and needs of other persons, or of the world around her. Saying that self-knowledge is a duty, and perhaps even the first of one’s duties, does not trap the Kantian agent in a solipsistic moral world. It is only those who attempt such a task without a proper humility which recognizes the impossibility of absolute certainty who are susceptible to such a critique. 18 19

“From a moral point of view it is, of course, a duty for one of the friends to point out the other’s faults to him; this is in the other’s best interests and is therefore a duty of love” (6:470/215). Alyosha, Dmitry’s brother, encourages Katerina, and challenges her process of self-reflection by urging that “it is both possible and necessary [that you visit him]!” (Dostoevsky, 1958, 917).

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We thus have further appreciation for the behavior of the humble agent: the pursuit of self-knowledge by a humble agent is characterized more by an openness and a quiet confidence that one is doing what one can to pursue moral self-knowledge than by a self-absorbed state of fanaticism or despair about one’s inability to know oneself. Such confidence encourages the agent in her pursuit, and makes her less self-critical, more open, and less sensitive to the criticisms and suggestions of others, and more open to revisions of her self-assessment and the readjustment of values and desires that will inevitably be necessary for such beings. Such an agent is even more able to address other concerns in her moral world, and especially those activities in which one needs to pursue a goal that is inherently unattainable (as, for example, sustaining the environment, making difficult medical decisions, and perhaps even pursuing moral philosophy). These situations demand an attitude similar to the one a moral agent accepts in her dutiful pursuit of self-knowledge, one in which, having cleared the static that unattended demands of self-love would introduce to these pursuits, an agent is able to engage in her task without frustration, despair, or false confidence, but instead with a humble confidence. Such behaviors are, in fact, so correlatable with humility in its root sense that the state that grounds them deserves the name of humility also, though perhaps of a more epistemic than strictly moral sort. This humble confidence is, then, best described as an epistemic humility. It is a version of that confidence that an agent engaged in a more epistemically concrete task – like climbing Mount Everest or solving a math problem – could have of her success. A confidence based in the certainty of success would, in the pursuit of derivative self-knowledge or related pursuits, result only in fanaticism, and eventually despair. Quiet humble confidence, though, reflects the tranquillity and peace of mind that such an agent can, nonetheless, have when her conduct and character suggest that she is living, to the best of her ability, according to the values that she professes. Epistemic humility is the most proper attitude with which to approach the pursuit of derivative self-knowledge.

c h a pt e r 9

The humble pursuit of respect for persons

Humility has been found to be the correlative interest for one’s pursuit of duties related to self; but Kant’s, and our own, suspicion that recognition of duties to self is somehow previous to and a condition of recognition and proper fulfillment of duties to others raises the question of how this attitude of humility, itself tied to the obligatory end of self-perfection, could be important also for recognition and fulfillment of one’s obligatory end toward others. A general answer to this question can be stipulated: if recognizing the value and needs of other persons, and the resulting obligation these place on oneself, depends upon recognizing their situation to be similar to one’s own (and not simply as being better or worse, more or less valuable than oneself ); then knowing one’s own value and moral status in the way that has been suggested the humble person knows it is indeed previous to adequate recognition of one’s obligation to others. Accepting oneself as a dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified agent is a condition for being able to recognize this identical state in other persons. Without such recognition, I could not characterize the situation of others as such, nor be able to respond in appropriate ways to it. Humility – that is, the integration of this substantial self-knowledge into a pervasive life-guiding meta-attitude as discussed in Part III – is thus a condition for recognizing one’s obligatory end relative to other persons reliably and consistently. The arguments of chapters 3 and 8 suggest a second line along which to understand not so much the recognition but the fulfillment of duties to self as a condition of both the recognition and fulfillment of duties to others. It was argued there that some reflection on the status of one’s motives and character is both necessary and possible in order to fulfill imperfect duties like one’s obligatory end of increasing others’ happiness: the influence of self-love, if unchecked, is so pervasive as to assure that opportunities genuinely to assist others will be regularly unrecognized or avoided in its name. In the language of chapter 8, it is not only the acquisition of 242

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substantial self-knowledge, but also the humble pursuit of derivative selfknowledge that is necessary to reduce the undue influence of self-love sufficiently to see clearly into the life and needs of other persons. Such clarity of sight is a necessary pre-requisite for genuine beneficence, and is just what Katerina needed in order to recognize Dmitry’s needs and choose to respond to them. But a further condition of beneficence can be articulated: according to Kant, the would-be benefactor needs not simply to try to do something nice for another person, but more specifically, must engage in beneficence in accordance with the other person’s conception of happiness, as opposed to a would-be act of beneficence perceived only through the eyes of selflove, and thus in accordance only with the benefacting agent’s conception of happiness.1 A role for humility in paving the way for beneficence is thus suggested: to see others and their needs clearly, one must see through not only one’s general tendency to undue self-love, but also through the precise ways in which one’s own tendency to place self above others is expressed. It is the humble person who has cleared the static of self-love sufficiently to see more clearly what would constitute happiness for another person. So, although we have made some initial sense of the relationship of humility and beneficence, it will benefit us to dwell in more depth on the relationship of humility and duties toward others, and on the former as a condition for the latter. I will turn, once again, to the interaction between Alyosha and Snegirev in the Brothers Karamazov, first introduced in chapter 1, to defend the priority of humility for the recognition and fulfillment of duties toward others. h u mb l e b en e f ic e n c e To summarize: Alyosha has been sent on an errand of beneficence to Snegirev by Katerina, one which involves him also seeking forgiveness. Alyosha’s initial efforts fail, though, when Snegirev takes the offer of two hundred rubles as an insult. This scene intertwines concerns of forgiveness as well as beneficence and gratitude; I will, however, focus centrally on beneficence, and on gratitude and forgiveness only to the extent that they inform our understanding of beneficence. Alyosha wants truly to seek forgiveness from Snegirev on behalf of his brother, and Katerina’s request is that he seek to do so through beneficence. 1

“I cannot do good to anyone in accordance with my concepts of happiness . . . thinking to benefit him by forcing a gift upon him; rather, I can benefit him only in accordance with his concepts of happiness” (6:454/203).

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But this errand can be achieved only if the beneficence is accepted with gratitude from the would-be recipient of it. If Snegirev cannot accept Alyosha’s gift, it is a failure not simply in receiving (on Snegirev’s part) but also in giving (on Alyosha’s part). And it is this attempt to give the gift in a way that its recipient can accept it (that is, in a way that can help Snegirev’s attempt to overcome his reasonable fears about challenges to his dignity) that is not achieved. Dostoevsky’s example is complex, but it is this complexity that allows us to get to the heart of what true beneficence requires. Dmitry’s previous offense, combined with Dmitry’s, Alyosha’s, and Katerina’s social and economic position relative to Snegirev, have established a set of power relations amongst these actors: Snegirev is cast as the spurned and the inferior, while Dmitry, along with Katerina and Alyosha, are the superiors. The irony, and difficulty, of the situation is that it is those who have been identified as the superiors who must here seek forgiveness. Things are made only more complex when the mode of making an apology is identified as one of benefaction by the superior toward the inferior. Since ancient Greece, it has been recognized that the giving of gifts is, regardless of the intention of the giver, also an opportunity for the giver to be believed superior to the recipient. Alyosha’s task is further complicated by the fact that he is already accepted by society and circumstance to be in a position of superiority relative to Snegirev. The likelihood of his attempt at benefaction resulting in an implicit affirmation of Snegirev’s inferiority is thus increased. Alyosha’s task is not a simple one: he is seeking forgiveness from someone thought to be inferior to him, and he is seeking it by a means that threatens to make that inferior person believe himself even more inferior in relation to himself. And this is precisely the reason that Alyosha’s errand of mercy fails on the first try: despite his efforts to the contrary, Alyosha’s efforts at beneficence are taken by Snegirev as an affirmation of the latter’s inferiority. Alyosha himself reflects on this in conversation with his friend, Lise: [W]hat offended him most was that he had accepted me too quickly as his friend . . . I think that’s why he felt so humiliated when he thought of it, and it was at that moment that I made my mistake: I suddenly blurted out that if this two hundred rubles wasn’t enough to enable him to move to another town, he’d be given more, and that, in fact, I had some money of my own and he could have as much of it as he needed. That was what suddenly offended him: who was I to push myself forward like that and offer him help? You know, Lise, it’s horribly painful for a man down on his luck when every person he meets looks at him as if he were his benefactor . . . Besides, I’d feel exactly the same way too. (Dostoevsky, 1958, 258)

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What Alyosha has learned, upon reflection, is that the true benefactor is not made by one who seeks to give more and more. Rather, a true benefactor understands the true needs of the person he is seeking to help; in Kant’s words, he understands the benefactee’s own “concept of happiness” (6:454/203). But this is just what Alyosha failed to appreciate until afterwards. One of Snegirev’s crucial needs, itself both a universal need of humanity and a condition of Snegirev’s happiness, was to receive help without the loss of his dignity. His value as a person equal with all others was too much for Snegirev to give up, even in comparison with the two hundred rubles he so desperately needed, and the undeniable needs of his dying son. But Alyosha had not reflected adequately upon that fact previous to his interaction with Snegirev. By looking more carefully at Alyosha’s new understanding of the situation, we will, however, be able to appreciate that what Alyosha needed in order to approach Snegirev’s needs more sensitively, and what indeed he has been in the process of acquiring over the course of the novel, was humility. Kant’s own reflections on this sort of situation will help move us toward an appreciation of the point: Someone who is rich . . . should hardly even regard beneficence as a meritorious duty on his part, even though he also puts others under obligation by it. The satisfaction he derives from his beneficence . . . is a way of reveling in moral feelings. He must also carefully avoid any appearance of intending to bind the other by it; for if he showed that he wanted to put the other under an obligation (which always humbles the other in his own eyes), it would not be a true benefit that he rendered him. (6:453/202)

To be a true benefactor, one must be the sort of person who is able to help others without intentionally or unintentionally wielding his gift as a weapon of superiority. The benefactor must avoid the impression of further obligating the benefactee, and thus avoid taking excessive self-satisfaction in his deed. How, though, does one accomplish this? Most generally, the humble pursuit of certain duties to self is a pre-requisite for genuine beneficence. In order for Alyosha to be a true benefactor, he needs to know and value himself in a very specific way, and must have this knowledge and these values implicit in the attitude with which he approaches his attempts at beneficence. What beliefs and values about himself were necessary, then, for there to be more hope of success in Alyosha’s task? We can begin by affirming certain general propositions that Alyosha would need to accept in order for his benefaction toward Snegirev to avoid implicit or explicit assertions of his superiority. He would, of course, need to believe in the equal moral

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standing of all persons, and especially to believe that doing something for another person did nothing to undermine this basic equal status. Though one might stop at this point, and simply say that Alyosha needs to believe that all persons share equal capacities and limits, and though this would be true in part, it would not get to the heart of the matter. Alyosha needs not only to accept a general proposition about human nature; he needs also to believe that he is no better than anyone else. His understanding of the equal moral standing of all persons needs to be a first-person awareness he holds emphatically about himself, and not just generally but as applied to specific situations that arise in his own life. This means that he needs, further, to believe that Snegirev’s struggles with retention of dignity in the face of beneficence are no worse than what anyone else, including himself, would suffer in his circumstances. And this is just what Alyosha, in retrospect, realizes. He makes the point himself in response to Lise’s concern that their discussion of Snegirev’s psyche indicated a certain contempt toward him: “No, Lise, there’s no contempt for him,” Alyosha said firmly . . . “What sort of contempt could there be when we’re all just like him, for we are – we are not his betters. And even if we were his betters, in his position we would have acted just as he did.” (Dostoevsky, 1958, 260)

Alyosha needed not only to believe that all persons share an equal moral status; he needed, more concretely, to see himself in Snegirev’s position, and this involves recognizing that he has the same sorts of needs and limitations as Snegirev. “We would have acted just as he did,” is the way Alyosha puts it. In our own language, Alyosha is saying that Snegirev is the same sort of dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified agent that Alyosha is, and that we all are. In the same situation, Alyosha would have faced the same challenges to his dignity that Snegirev did. It is seeing himself as similar to Snegirev in this crucial way that prevents Alyosha from any temptation of judging Snegirev’s actions in a way that would emphasize Snegirev’s unfortunate inability to get over his embarrassment and shame instead of emphasizing the common human struggle in which he was engaged. There was a legitimate tension between need and self-respect at issue in Snegirev’s situation, and this would have been no less true for Alyosha than for Snegirev in the same circumstances. Alyosha’s reflections on his interaction with Snegirev thus reveal his incipient humility. This is not, of course, to say that Snegirev acted perfectly. Indeed, his own actions reveal an intense struggle with the question of whether he can simultaneously accept his status as a needy yet dignified being. And it

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is precisely the fact that both Alyosha and Snegirev are engaged in these struggles that helps to explain the difficult nature of their initial meeting: in their respective efforts to love themselves well, they failed to meet each other well, either through beneficence or gratitude. There is a further point to be made: Alyosha needs to believe in the equal moral status of all humans not just as one potentially defeasible truth among others, but in the face of opportunities to believe and assert exactly the opposite – that is, that people are in fact importantly unequal. Alyosha might easily have done just this. Instead of utilizing this experience as an opportunity for self-learning, he might instead have protected himself from embarrassment. He was after all in a position of superiority relative to Snegirev: he was a holy man, a man of the Church. He could, then, simply have taken advantage of the perceived superiority he could rely on and assert – none would have challenged it – that it was very sad that Snegirev hadn’t accepted his money, that Alyosha had done everything possible in order to offer it to him honestly, and that it was just Snegirev’s embarrassment and his inability to accept his difficult position that kept him from accepting the gift. All of this could easily have been Alyosha’s response, but it was not. Instead of protecting his position of superiority and making judgments about Snegirev from such heights, Alyosha instead reminded himself about his own belief in the equal moral standing of persons and thereby confirmed the high value with which he held this belief, relative to other beliefs and desires about himself and persons generally. Basically, he showed that his belief in the equal moral standing of persons was more important than his interest in protecting his sense of superiority, or in protecting himself from criticism. That he could do this indicates that other element of his self-assessment that was crucial for seeing clearly into Snegirev’s situation. It is not just that Alyosha learned to recognize both himself and Snegirev as dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified beings. Beyond that, he engaged in an act of derivative self-knowledge which revealed to him his own particular way of expressing that basic tendency to privilege the self over others. Although Dostoevsky doesn’t emphasize this point as clearly, Alyosha, in order to come to terms with his failure at benefaction, needs also to recognize the childlike, unreflective fascination with which he approaches the task of helping people, for it is such fascination, or in Kant’s terms, such “selfsatisfaction” (6:453/202) which initially prevents Alyosha from reflecting specifically enough on Snegirev’s conception of happiness. By taking such unreflective “satisfaction” in his beneficence, Alyosha was unconsciously

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“reveling in moral feelings” (ibid.) when he increased the amount of money he offered to Snegirev; and, although he does not consciously intend it, his way of being beneficent to Snegirev is one which gives the “appearance” (ibid.) of intending to bind him. Snegirev was already in an awkward situation vis a` vis the Karamazovs, and the excessive offer of money seemed to him only to promise a perpetual state of servitude to them. The selfsatisfaction he got from the hope of giving even more money to Snegirev is what prevented him from meeting Snegirev where he could. Alyosha thus needed to engage in an act of derivative self-knowledge in order to become a more truly beneficent person. Just as Katerina needed to come to terms with her shame in order to be beneficent toward Dmitry, Alyosha needed to recognize the precise way in which his general tendency to place concerns of self above other concerns played itself out in his particular motives and attitudes. He needed to acquire defeasible derivative self-knowledge about the precise way in which he tends to place self-love above other concerns, and this is accessible, as we have seen, only from the perspective of epistemic humility. Such humility is thus another condition of his being able to reapproach Snegirev with a true attitude of beneficence. Such reflection on himself is made more challenging in that it was not pragmatically necessary. There was nothing forcing Alyosha to come to terms with himself; indeed, others would have looked at his actions, if they had seen them, as exemplary. The only thing weighing on Alyosha was his own beliefs about human nature and himself. Some might look at his self-reflection as an attempt to hold himself to a higher standard than others hold themselves to; but in fact, Alyosha was only holding firmly and consistently to a set of beliefs and values that many would claim, but perhaps fewer would consistently act on. Alyosha subordinates his previously unconscious pretensions to self-love to his belief in the equal moral standing of all persons, and it is through this that he is able to see how his intended act of beneficence failed. Once these conditions for beneficence are stated in this way – that Alyosha needed to recognize that he was no better and no worse than Snegirev, that he shared similar needs with Snegirev, and that he needed to be able to place a recognition of equal human dignity above his own pursuit of self-love – it is obvious that Alyosha, in order to be truly beneficent, needed to be humble. He needed to have humbly accepted certain general facts of his own situation, he needed to have recognized the precise ways in which undue self-love expressed itself in his own case, and he needed to have valued and integrated a belief in the dignity and limits of himself and of all persons significantly enough to have just these beliefs

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inform his understanding of the situation at hand. He needed, that is, to approach Snegirev’s needs, and his hope to act beneficently toward him, from a humble perspective. Without these beliefs about himself in relation to Snegirev, and without the valuing of them being pervasive in his character, Alyosha could not have been beneficent. Indeed, what we learn from Alyosha’s case is that these beliefs were not yet pervasive enough in his character: he let an unrestrained and natural sympathy invade his reaction to Snegirev in a way that destroyed the finer awareness of the latter’s true needs for happiness that would have guided his beneficence more surely. If the beliefs had been pervasive, he might have acted differently. That Alyosha is able to integrate these beliefs more pervasively in his character is affirmed later in the novel when, somewhat unexpectedly, it turns out that Alyosha has developed a strong friendship not only with Snegirev, but with his entire family. Most importantly, it is clear that the ease of their relations is now characterized, in part, by Alyosha being able to see clearly into not only Snegirev’s, but also his son Ilyusha’s, conception of happiness. Ilyusha, Snegirev’s sick son, is now being visited regularly by a group of young friends, a fact which “filled [Snegirev] with tremendous joy” (Dostoevsky, 1958, 648). And it is clear that these boys have gotten over their petty jealousies toward Ilyusha through Alyosha’s intervention (646). It is clear, then, that Alyosha has developed an ability to see through his own static of self-love, and thus to see clearly into the lives and needs of other persons without the distortion that self-love would have assured. He recognizes the needs that both Snegirev and Ilyusha have, and he helps to fulfill those needs in a way that brings no attention to himself, thus avoiding any unintended hint of glory or superiority being brought upon himself. In Kant’s words, “he . . . carefully avoid[s] any appearance of intending to bind the other” (6:453/202) by his kindnesses. Snegirev is thus joyful instead of insulted. Unfortunately, Dostoevsky does not describe in any detail the precise way in which Alyosha approached his second attempt at beneficence. But we can infer at this point that, with the development of his humble perspective, he accomplishes that as well in a way that prevents Snegirev from fearing insult and inferiority. Interestingly, Snegirev has apparently done some soul-searching of his own, and has become able to reconcile the fact of his need with the fact of his dignity through an attitude of humility (Dostoevsky, 1958, 648–649). Humility has a different quality for Snegirev than for Alyosha because Snegirev is in a genuinely needy position at this point in his life whereas

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Alyosha is not. His humility is expressed, then, not in his ability to be beneficent without implying an air of superiority, but in his ability to accept gratefully what he truly needs without his confidence in his moral status being shaken. co n c lus i o n An attitude of humility thus prepares one most adequately for developing a truly beneficent character. As a concluding reflection, it is worth noting that what is true for beneficence – that is, actions which respond to the needs of others – is as true for sympathy – that is, the ability to feel appropriately toward someone’s sufferings. Consider this conversation at the local rectory between Dulcie (D) and an unnamed friend (F), from Barbara Pym’s No Fond Return of Love:2 F “The only thing is that I have been unlucky [at the cafeteria] lately.” D “Unlucky?” F “Yes, with the beans – baked beans, you know. They didn’t have any last time I went, and it rather upset me, what happened.” D “Oh?” F “The man in the queue after me asked for baked beans and he got them. He was laughing and joking with the girl who was serving – you know the way they do – I didn’t say anything, but I was quite upset.” D “Yes, I know, that’s what life is like. And it is humiliating. One feels a sense of one’s own inadequacy, somehow, almost unworthiness . . .” (Pym, 1981, 94–95)

Although her world of English villages and rectories is smaller, lacking the Russian grandiosity of Alyosha’s struggles, Dulcie’s attitude is actually a lot like Alyosha’s: she treats her friend’s struggles with self-love and fear of loss of dignity in just the way Alyosha treats Snegirev’s similar struggles. Snegirev has more immediately at stake than Dulcie’s friend, but Dulcie does not take the relatively inconsequential fact of not getting as many baked beans as the next as a thoroughly insignificant fact. Indeed, she takes her friend’s concerns quite seriously, not ridiculing her for dwelling on insignificant details of one’s experience. She suspects, perhaps, that her friend isn’t really concerned about baked beans after all, and is able to see through the beans to what her friend’s real fears are. Her friend, like Snegirev, is frightened of the loss of dignity, and of not being loved enough, either by herself or by others. We all want to be happy, we want to be loved, we want to be 2

Pym, 1981.

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valued as much as we think we deserve to be. The humble Dulcie sees this need-turned-demand in her friend, recognizes her own struggles with the same, and is thus able to be sympathetic with her friend, even when the need is expressed as indirectly and as inconsequentially as it is here. Dulcie has a soft touch in handling the petty vanities of those around her. She is someone who sees the struggle for proper self-love in a world where games of inferiority and superiority – and especially the fear of being “humiliated,” that is, being shown publically that you are less worthy than others – reign. The humble person feels sympathy and patience toward persons for those myriad ways in which self-love can go wrong.

Conclusion

We have come, then, to the end of our reflections on Kantian humility. In closing, I offer a final image upon which to reflect, one which pulls together many of the aspects of the state considered, and returns us to the question of whether humility is something possible for the “common” person seeking to be moral. In so doing, I also exit my philosophical mode of expression, turning to what I admit may be a more exhortatory reflection on the possibilities for humility in our own world. Zosima, Alyosha’s elder in the monastery, was a soldier before he became a monk. Years after his soldiering days, and not long before his death, Zosima recounts a course of life-changing events which led him to leave his military career. He had gotten into a jealous dispute with the new husband of a young woman to whom Zosima himself had been attracted. At a party, he “succeeded in making fun of him bitingly and wittily” (Dostoevsky, 1958, 357) to such an extent that this man challenged Zosima to a duel. The night before the duel, Zosima, under the pressure of the situation he found himself in, gets upset with one of his own servants, and punches him in the face. After a fitful, and short, night’s sleep, Zosima awakes to prepare for the duel, but finds he is feeling “shameful and distasteful” (Dostoevsky, 1958, 358). Upon some reflection, he is struck by the incident with the servant the night before in a new way: I relived the whole scene: there he was in front of me. I swung my fist back and slammed it in his face . . . He was still facing forward; his arms stiffly at his sides, he stood to attention, not even dreaming of lifting his hand to ward off my blows, which only made his head jerk back. And this is what a man can be driven to do – to beat another man! I knew it was a crime, and the realization was like a long, sharp needle piercing my heart . . . I covered my face with my hands, threw myself on my bed, and wept aloud like a child. (Dostoevsky, 1958, 358)

It was in such a mood that Zosima greeted his lieutenant at the door to go to his duel. Before leaving, though, Zosima is moved to ask his servant for forgiveness: 252

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“Afansy,” I said, “last night I hit you twice in the face. Please forgive me,” I said to him. He started as if frightened and stared at me. I saw then that I had to do more, and the next thing, just as I was, in dress uniform with epaulets and all, I threw myself down at his feet, touching the floor with my forehead. “Please forgive me!” I begged him. (Dostoevsky, 1958, 359)

This expression of remorse from his master leaves Afansy in confusion and tears, but thrills Zosima who, as he gets into his lieutenant’s carriage, says “Have you ever seen a conqueror? No? Well, look here – here’s one!” (Dostoevsky, 1958, 359). The lieutenant takes Zosima’s statement as an indication of his excitement and confidence about the impending duel, so he is mortified to discover what Zosima actually does at the duel: The others were already waiting for us when we arrived. They placed my opponent and me twelve paces apart, and it was he who had the first shot. I stood there, feeling very gay and happy, looking straight into his face, never batting an eye. And it was with love that I looked at him – I am certain of it, for I knew now what to do. He fired and the bullet just grazed my cheek, scratching my ear slightly. “Thank God,” I cried to my adversary, “you haven’t killed a man!” Then I turned my back on him and tossed my pistol far away, shouting: “Begone, I have no further need of you!” I turned back and said to my opponent: “Can you please forgive me, sir, stupid young man that I am, for having offended you deliberately and having forced you to take a shot at me?” (Dostoevsky, 1958, 360)

The reaction of those around him to this unexpected apology is at least as interesting as the idea of apologizing in the middle of a duel. His lieutenant, and second in the duel, is most upset: “What do you mean by begging your opponent for forgiveness in the middle of a duel! You’re a disgrace to the regiment! If I had suspected anything like this! . . . You cannot apologize in the course of a duel.” (Dostoevsky, 1958, 360–361)

Zosima responds as follows: I stood there facing them and now I addressed them all seriously: “Gentlemen,” I said, “is it really so surprising these days to meet a man who can admit he has done something stupid and apologize publicly for the wrong he has done? . . . I really should have apologized as soon as I arrived, before the gentleman fixed his shot, so as not to expose him to a mortal sin. But we have things so stupidly twisted in our conventions that it was almost impossible for me to do that: only when I had allowed him to shoot at me from a distance of twelve paces could my word have any weight at all for you, for if I had apologized before that shot, you would have simply dismissed me as a coward and not even listened to me.” (Dostoevsky, 1958, 360–361)

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Although this does little to calm his second, the man with whom Zosima was meant to duel is mollified: “That all sounds quite reasonable and very pious,” my opponent said. “Whatever else, you are certainly a rather original person.” (Dostoevsky, 1958, 361)

This theme of “originality” is picked up by Zosima’s own colleagues in his regiment as they discuss the events later that day. While some are still indignant, claiming that “‘He has disgraced the uniform’” (Dostoevsky, 1958, 361), others, while not understanding his actions entirely, are willing nonetheless to defend him: If he had been afraid of facing more shots, he would have fired at this opponent when his turn came, instead of tossing his loaded pistol away . . . No, there’s obviously something else to it, something quite original. (Dostoevsky, 1958, 361–362)

As time passes, and his friends and colleagues learn that Zosima has decided to leave the army and join the monastery, discussion of his decisions and his motives continues. Some call him “brave”; others are just humored by his company and like to be in it. As Zosima puts it, “they would laugh at me, but love me at the same time” (Dostoevsky, 1958, 362). No one claimed to understand Zosima’s actions, but all seemed at least able to recognize that they were actions done with fierce attention to some principle or other. In fact, Zosima’s principle was one more radical than the commitment to humility we have been considering in this study of humility: he believed himself “answerable for everyone else” and “guilty before everyone,” in fact “guiltier and worse than anybody else in the world” (Dostoevsky, 1958, 359). We have already rejected these extremes of comparison and self-deprecation, and I question whether Dostoevsky is right to attribute such beliefs to Zosima. For in fact, Zosima’s actions are not all that different from what our own humble person might be willing to do. Underlying his belief in his guilt, and despite his claim that he is “guiltier” than all persons, is Zosima’s belief in the radical equality of persons, in both capacity and limit, confirmed that morning when he apologized, prostrate, to his servant. He had, for so long, placed himself above Afansy, so to even begin truly to alter that power relationship and move toward true equality, in this situation he needed to make himself low before his servant. It is only Zosima’s history of socially supported superiority that forces him, and Dostoevsky, to express his commitment to equality in the language of inferiority.

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This commitment to principle is, then, the real source of his originality. It is not so much that the equality of persons was an unheard of notion (though one must admit that it was less popular in nineteenth-century Russia). But the idea of truly living according to that belief was – and perhaps still is – unthinkable, and unthought. So when Zosima found himself, in such an unavoidably public way, willing to stand up for his principles, despite the shame it would bring upon him according to societal standards, it seemed odd, “original.” In Zosima’s own words: “How can you understand,” I told them, “when the whole world has been running on false ideas for so long, when we accept unmitigated lies as truth and demand lies of others. Now that, for the first time in my life, I have acted sincerely, you all look upon me as if I were one of God’s fools and, although you like me, you still laugh at me.” (Dostoevsky, 1958, 363)

Zosima, because he truly believes in the equality of persons, is willing to consider the distinctions humans invariably make amongst themselves to be meaningless; and to live a life insistently blind to these distinctions is indeed a curious, original one. The originality of this principle, and the difficulty Zosima’s friends and colleagues had in identifying what it was, are signs, then, of the rarity of persons who choose to make an awareness of the shared capacities and limits of all persons a guiding ideal in the face of so many opportunities to accept superiority instead. In our language, Zosima has chosen to affirm the equality of persons over the temptations of selflove. It seems much more human – all too human – to accept accolades, honors, and positions of authority, instead of holding with integrity to one’s stated belief in the equal dignity of persons, even when these marks of alleged superiority are not fully or at all deserved. But Zosima, already in a position where he could hope for such affirmation of his superiority, chooses instead this more original route. All of this brings me back to reflect upon the humble person which has been the point of this study. We have seen how the humble person is often thought to be saintly, and this has had the effect of removing her from the world of common humanity to a super-hero pedestal. But humility as we’ve defined it isn’t beyond the grasp of a normal person, requiring almost superhuman abilities in selflessness. It is simply an “original” response to the very common human condition. The typical organization of human society obscures the truth not only of the equality of persons, but also of their needs and self-centeredness. The humble person is simply one who acknowledges these truths, and lives according to them. Humility is, I suspect, not impossible for any of us. But it is unusual, original, because

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few would, like Zosima, be willing to draw the at times radical conclusions from the premise of valuing the self properly in light of the equal dignity and shared limits of all persons. Most of us are instead willing to “go with the flow”: when the most basic vanities in life go unchallenged, we accept them as typical and expected. It is not very original, then, to accept the human tendency toward undue self-love as a status quo: we look out for ourselves and our own, and think little more of it. Humility, though, however accessible it is to the typical person, is both less common and more original. It is a creative, and courageous, perspective on the all too familiar materials of a human life. However human the humble person is, then, she seems unusual, not quite like us. But this is only because she has taken those most basic beliefs – beliefs to which most of us would claim allegiance – to their logical, and at times, radical, conclusions. Does, then, the humble person need to be counter-cultural, to take on strange beliefs that make him seem more original, and more holy than normal people? Well, to the extent that normal people tend quite easily to accept unquestioningly a pervasive and stringently hierarchical system of relationships among persons as the norm, yes, because the humble person insistently emphasizes – as both Alyosha and Zosima do in their own ways – that persons are equal, not radically inferior or superior to each other. Given the right situations – and Dostoevsky is a master at creating the right ones – this belief can seem bizarre, original, even naively holy and innocent. We seek out and emphasize these sorts of persons ourselves, holding up persons like Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King as persons with an extraordinary – and a happily removed from us – sense of right and wrong. But Mother Teresa, Alyosha, and Zosima are only living by very ordinary principles, though they are living them in a way that insistently refuses the belief that they are any better, or worse, than anyone else, despite significant cultural opportunities to slide into moral complacency about this most central moral value. But when the world around one so insistently affirms distinctions in worth, how could a person truly committed to their principles do anything without appearing strange, bizarre, painfully original to others around them? How could someone have so little self-interest as to give up her life to work with the poor, to make himself vulnerable to violence in the name of racial equality, or to appear uninterested in defending his honor publically? Perhaps, then, in certain situations, the humble person can’t avoid appearing original; but, in fact, the great majority of acts of humility are much quieter than Zosima’s dramatic duel scene, and even than Mother

Conclusion

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Teresa’s work with the poor that receives such world-wide attention and admiration. Alyosha’s private interaction with Snegirev, or Dulcie’s sympathy to her friend about being humiliated in the cafeteria line, are the more common opportunities: most humbly guided acts occur between two individuals, unseen and unremarked on except between those two. I do not mean here to underestimate the value of persons like Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King. I mean only to emphasize that it is not impossible for many more people to act in the way that they do and did; and that the largest reason we do not takes us back to the original claim of human nature we began with in this study: humans are such that we wish to be superior, and fear that we are inferior; and our lives and actions are most often guided clandestinely, but pervasively, by these hopes and fears. The result is that a Mother Teresa, or an Alyosha, seems to us extraordinary, and so perhaps they are. But they are not extraordinary in a way that is truly beyond any of us. They have simply taken their belief in the equal dignity and shared limits of persons, and the resulting rejection of human games of inferiority and superiority, to its logical conclusion. They have taken on certain beliefs and attitudes toward themselves and persons generally that guide their beliefs about and treatment of other persons. We saw earlier that it is impossible for the human agent to be a perfect res integra. The very nature of human agency is such that the pieces of it do not fit into a perfectly integrated whole. But humility, well established, is an important part of the antidote to the internal conflict of the dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified agent. This, then, is a more accurate picture of the most fully virtuous Kantian autonomous agent, one quite different from the magnanimous man, or the Stoic sage. One’s autonomy is best understood as operating within a context of limit, receptivity, affectivity, and corruption. Humility provides a sort of integration for an agent of this sort quite different not only from the Stoic, but also the Aristotelian images that we’ve considered. The struggle with self-love and the limits of one’s capacities can never be expelled, and the finite agent’s two main goals of pursuing morality and happiness can never be perfectly fitted to each other, for claims of self-love related to happiness will always have a tendency to assert their priority over morality. But the humble person acquires a perspective on all this which allows her to become more whole. The height of virtue is thus not Aristotelian self-sufficiency or magnanimity, or even Stoic ataraxia, all would-be perfections of an utterly unconflicted being. It is, rather, humble integrity, a harmony, or health, of this sort of agent. Humility allows an agent to accept the limited and

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conflicted state of her agency, thereby decreasing the conflict within that agency, and ultimately increasing its overall functioning and flourishing. The overall effect is of a peaceful, more harmonious acceptance of one’s condition. Limit and capacity, uncertainty and confidence can co-habit in the complex state of humble virtue. Humility is, then, a central virtue. It is a necessary condition for the virtue, integrity, and flourishing of a specifically human life.

References

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1989. “Kant on the Good Will,” in Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten: Ein kooperativer Kommentar, Otfried H¨offe, ed. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, pp. 45–65. Anderson-Gold, Sharon. 1991. “God and Community: An Inquiry into the Religious Implications of the Highest Good,” in P. Rossi and M. Wreen (eds.) Kant’s Philosophy of Religion Reconsidered. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Aristotle. 1831. Aristotles gesammelte Schriften, hrsg. von der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. 1962. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Martin Ostwald. Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill. Audi, Robert. 1995. “Acting From Virtue,” Mind, 104 (July), 449–471. Baier, Kurt. 1988. “Radical Virtue Ethics,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. xiii, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Beck, L. W. 1960. A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Benedict (St.). 1948. Rule for Monasteries. St. John’s Abbey Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. Ben-Ze’ev, Aaron. 1993. “The Virtue of Modesty,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 30, 235–245. Bernard of Clairvaux. 1973. The Steps of Humility and Pride. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Press. Broadie, Alexander and Pybus, Elizabeth. 1982. “Kant and Weakness of the Will,” Kant-Studien, 73, 406–412. Curzer, Howard J. 1991. “Aristotle’s Much Maligned Megalopsychos,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 69, no. 2 (June), 131–151. Darwall, Stephen. 1995. “Two Kinds of Respect,” in Dignity, Character and SelfRespect, Robin Dillon, ed. London: Routledge. de Pizan, Christine. 1982. The Book of the City of Ladies. Translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards. New York: Persea Books. Dickens, Charles. 1983. David Copperfield. New York: Penguin. Dillon, Robin, ed. 1995. Dignity, Character and Self-Respect. London: Routledge. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. 1958. Brothers Karamazov. Middlesex: Penguin Books. Driver, Julia. 2000. Uneasy Virtue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1989. “The Virtues of Ignorance,” Journal of Philosophy, 86, 373–384. Flanagan, Owen. 1990. “Virtue and Ignorance,” Journal of Philosophy, 87, 420–428. Frasz, Geoffrey. 1993. “Environmental Virtue Ethics: A New Direction for Environmental Ethics,” Environmental Ethics, 15 (Fall), 259–274. Grenberg, Jeanine. 2001. “Feeling, Desire and Interest in Kant’s Theory of Action,” Kant-Studien, 92(2), 153–179. 2003. Review of Julia Driver, Uneasy Virtue, in Journal of Value Inquiry, 37, 271–274. Guyer, Paul. 2000. Kant on Freedom, Law and Happiness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Index

action blind without good character 103 vs. character 64–66 “do-ings” vs. “know-ings” 172 as venue for moral evaluation 58, 59 for the sake of the noble (Aristotle) 56 inclinations as grounds for 30, 159 import of patterns of 220, 227 regulative ideal as standard for virtuous 77 agency capable and dignified 55, 87, 107, 145, 147 capacities of 17, 21, 82, 199, 220 culpability and 47 dependent and corrupt; see also human nature 15–48, 88, 89, 92, 118, 129, 145, 147, 149, 173, 185 dignity of 46, 147, 162, 188, 245 end-setting 18, 19, 45, 87 exercise of 44, 116, 119 failure of 44, 60, 140, 220 finite 20, 38, 51, 54, 78 instability of 108, 115, 116, 118, 121, 127, 130, 158 interest in morality as end of 38, 44, 88 Kantian conception of 17, 19, 75, 185 Kantian virtuous agent 85–96 limits of 6, 16–17, 21, 28, 29–47, 91, 93 perfection of 19, 21 rational 20, 25, 51, 54, 55, 85, 185 rational and affective states integrated in 95, 155 rejecting one’s power of 2 self-legislative 18, 19, 38 valuing of 44, 173, 174–175 akrasia 29 Allison,Henry 26, 30, 31–32, 36–37, 37n, 58n, 59, 80n, 82, 86, 153n, 198n, 259 Ameriks, Karl 23n, 59n, 259 Anderson-Gold, Sharon 31n, 260 Andre, Judith 175n

Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Kant) 259 anxiety; see also grieving and loss in explanation of radical evil 32, 33, 37, 38, 120, 127 of inferiority 34, 120 Aquinas, St. Thomas 16n Aristotle 16n, 20–23, 29, 49, 52, 52n, 55–57, 66, 81, 125, 144, 164n, 260 Aristotelian magnanimity 5, 53, 125–126 Augustine 17, 17n Audi, Robert 57, 57n, 260 autonomy 55, 143, 144, 178 Baier, Kurt 57, 260 Beck, L. W. 153n, 260 Benedict; see St. Benedict beneficence 46, 53, 76, 94 by superior toward inferior 244–251 forgiveness, gratitude and 243, 247 humble 245 other persons’ conception of happiness and 243, 257 and self-love 243, 257 Ben-Ze’ev, Aaron 108n, 109n, 141, 142n, 167, 167n, 260 Bernard of Clairvaux 15n, 108, 123, 123n, 260 Bittner, R¨udiger 85 Book of the City of Ladies (Christine de Pizan) 1, 122 Griselda 1, 122, 123 Marquis 2 Broadie, Alexander 153n, 260 Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky) 45–47, 99, 236–239, 243–250 Afansy 253 Alyosha Karamazov 45–47, 188, 237, 240, 243, 247, 252 Dmitry Karamazov 45, 99, 236, 244 Ilyusha 249 Ivan Karamazov 236

263

264

Index

Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky) (cont.) Katerina 45, 99, 236, 240, 243 Lise 244 Snegirev 46–47, 188, 243 Zosima 252–253, 254, 256 Buddha, the 209 Categorical Imperative 82–83, 102 character (and character traits); see also interest Aristotelian-style (hexis) 7, 57–71, 80, 81, 83, 95 definition of 81, 83 empty without good action 103 grounded in principle 56, 88 instrumental value of 66, 67, 101–103 interest and 82–83, 102, 150 Kantian 7, 58–71, 82 maxim of the moral disposition and 57, 72, 83 moral value of 56 patterns emerging in one’s 234 schematization in the construction of 207 unfounded (non-instrumental) value of 101–103 virtuous 84 Christ 203, 204, 205n, 209 Christianity 5, 123, 178 Clairvaux, Bernard of 2, 123 communitarian critique of Kantian ethics 62, 185, 227, 232 comparison of self; see also comparative–competitive attitude; self–other comparison to quasi-transcendent standard 137–144 to moral principles 141–149 to neutral standard 118 to others; see self–other comparison comparative–competitive attitude; see also self–other comparison 16, 33, 34, 36–38, 73, 118, 137, 186 appraisal self-respect and 168 judgments and 15, 110, 121 consequentialism 170 corruption; see also Corruption Thesis; evil 30, 43, 45, 48, 60, 120 dependence and 30, 187–190 human tendency toward 30 virtue as a reaction to 53, 73, 86 Corruption Thesis 28, 29–47, 49–55, 56, 59, 60, 71, 74, 76, 85, 103, 107, 115, 125, 128 courage 67–68, 74, 90, 92, 93 and fear 91 Critique of Judgment (Kant) 259 Critique of Practical Reason (Kant) 259

Critique of Pure Reason (Kant) 89, 92n, 152n, 200, 202, 224, 225, 226, 259 Curzer, Howard J. 5, 5n, 51, 164, 164n, 260 Darwall, Stephen 163, 163n, 181n, 182, 182n, 183, 185, 260 David Copperfield (Charles Dickens) 3 Agnes 3 Macawber 5 Mr. Wickfield 3 Uriah Heep 3, 135 de Pizan, Christine; see also Book of the City of Ladies 1, 1n, 122, 260 Deigh, John 183n Dependency Thesis 22–28, 29, 38 and happiness 22–26 Descartes 224n, 226n despair 91, 173, 177, 180, 220, 227, 231 Dickens, Charles; see also David Copperfield 3, 3n, 260 Dillon, Robin 163n, 183n, 260 disposition (Gesinnung); see also moral disposition 55, 59, 60, 73 Dostoevsky, Fyodor; see also Brothers Karamazov 45, 45n, 99, 236, 254, 260 Driver, Julia 108n, 110, 166, 166n, 170n, 171–172, 260 duty; see also duties (of virtue); motive of duty as proper motivation for action 171 in relation to internalization of moral principles 70 humble pursuit of 245 self-knowledge as First Command of 219, 223 duties (of virtue); see also duty 84, 87 of beneficence 99–100, 236, 243–249 of gratitude 76, 94, 243 of self-knowledge 70 to others (increasing the happiness of others) 89, 93, 242–251 to self (perfection of self ) 40, 89–96, 144 equality desire for 37, 39 of persons 40, 47, 52, 73, 93, 110, 118, 119, 121, 127, 128–130, 137, 149, 193–196, 245, 254 inequality preferred over 41 Epictetus 19n evil; see also corruption, Corruption Thesis 50, 125–127 choice and 32, 41 and dependence 31 emotional abuse and 47 inclinations and 32, 34, 45, 80

Index individual responsibility for 33, 35, 36, 39 propensity toward 22 radical nature of 29, 30, 39 and self–other comparison 92 social understanding of (Wood) 31, 32, 33, 35 Wood and Allison on 31–36 exemplar; see moral exemplar; regulative ideal feeling; see moral feeling finitude (of human agents) 6, 42 Flanagan, Owen 108n, 110n, 140, 260 God 15n, 77, 107, 107n, 108, 109, 140, 142n, 179, 180, 181n, 182n and the need for hope 177–181 Gregor, Mary 259 Grenberg, Jeanine 81n, 260 good will, see will, good grieving and loss 26, 27, 38, 41, 123 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Kant) 59n, 96, 223n, 259 guilt 183 Guyer, Paul 153n, 259, 260 Hampton, Jean 195n, 262 happiness Aristotelian conception of 20 conditional affirmation of pursuit of 196–199 Kantian conception of 23, 24–26, 27 loss of dream of perfect 26–28, 38–42, 90, 120, 186, 194 necessity of conflict between morality and 37 relation of to dependence 145 Stoic conception of 22, 26 tendency to place over moral principles 145, 147, 149, 151, 172 Harbison, Warren G. 59n, 261 Hare, John 107n, 181n, 182n, 261 Hare, Stephen 5, 5n, 16n, 51, 107, 108n, 110, 112, 122, 138, 167, 167n, 261 Heath, Peter 259 Henrich, Dieter 153n, 261 Henson, Richard G. 59n, 95n, 261 Herman, Barbara 59n, 95n, 261 highest good 22, 177–180 Hill, Thomas 18n, 142n, 181n, 182n, 184, 199n, 229n, 261 Hope 177–181 Horner, David 16n, 108n, 110, 261 human limits 6–7 recognition of, as excellence 6, 54, 185 shared 128, 144, 147, 162, 173 versus flaws 15–16

265

human nature; see also agency, dependent and corrupt Aristotelian understanding of 50–53 claims of, to ground humility 16, 17, 108, 128, 129 empirical assessability of claims of 111–112, 129 Kantian understanding of 21, 41, 49 “low” conceptions of 108, 109, 111, 112, 116, 124, 128, 140, 201 Stoic understanding of 19–21 humble feelings 150–160 humble judgments 144–150, 158 Hume, David 1, 24, 114, 185n, 261 humility appraisal self-respect and 168 as a central virtue 6, 7, 54, 170–176 as meta-attitude 143, 145, 150, 151, 155, 161, 162 as perspective on self 30, 91, 107, 119, 120, 142, 147, 155, 161, 249 as underestimation 110 as based on flaws 16 behavioristic accounts of 5, 15, 17, 110, 111, 140 and beneficence 245 as related to dignity and limits of others 143, 194–196 compatibility of with moral outrage 123 confidence and 232–236 contemporary accounts of 6, 48, 107–114, 124, 128, 130, 141 and courage 74, 93 definition of 1, 92, 129, 130, 131, 135, 145, 149–150, 160–162, 163, 215, 242 and dependence 198 displaced from virtuous life 5 distorted 128, 144, 249 epistemic 23, 29, 176, 223, 228, 232, 248 false 3–4 feelings at the basis of 150–160 forgiveness and 136, 151, 194, 243 generosity and 43, 46 and happiness 196–199 historical accounts of 1–5, 112, 162, 190 human nature and 16, 17, 108, 128, 129 judgments at the basis of 84, 144–150 love grounded in 135, 136, 137 and martyrdom 4 maxim of moral disposition and 95, 149 oppression and 16 “ordinary intelligence” and 172 originality of 254, 256 perfection of self and 89–96

266 humility (cont.) recognition self-respect and 163–182, 185, 187 rehabilitation of 5, 7, 128, 144, 161, 190 respect for others and 242 secular account of 107, 108, 138, 139, 141, 181 self-absorption and 158 self-knowledge and; see also self-knowledge 70 self-respect and 144, 176, 178 sympathy and 47, 151, 194 theological assumptions at basis of 109 transcendent standard for 23, 138, 140 and virtuous disposition 161 Hursthouse, Elizabeth 171n Ignatius of Loyola 17n, 261 immortality 177–179 inclination(s) 24, 25, 30, 36, 85 as determining grounds for action 159 not evil 32 inferiority associations of with humility 1–6, 123 and inaction 123 meta-attitude of 117, 122–124 of others 126 and questioning self-worth 121, 123, 159, 195, 220 reliance on judgments of 119, 121 interest (Interresse); see also character (traits) definition of 81–82 as expression of maxim 96 formation of 84 hierarchy of 86, 88 moral 150, 151 vs. maxim 81 and virtuous disposition 86–103 introspective-ascriptive (attributive) process (O’Neill) 218–221, 227 Irreducibility Thesis (Langton) 23 Julian of Norwich 44, 44n, 261 justice, virtues of (O’Neill) 74 Kantian ethics act-based interpretations of 58–60, 64–66, 103 agent-based interpretations of 49, 85, 103 and Virtue 85 King Lear (William Shakespeare) 134, 194 Cordelia 134–137, 194, 195 Goneril 134 Lear 134

Index Regan 134 kingdom of ends 174 Korsgaard, Christine 17n, 95n, 261 Langton, Rae 20–23, 23n, 26, 261 Lectures on Ethics (Kant) 92n, 191n, 259 Lee, Keekok 261 Louden, Robert 57, 57n, 82, 261 love; see also humility as equalizing 137 as potential moral feeling 151 true 135, 137 Luther, Martin 15n, 108 MacIntyre, Alasdair 185n, 223n, 261 magnanimity; see Aristotle, Aristotelian magnanimity Marcus Aurelius 19n maxim; see also moral disposition; principles acting on a 63 having a 62, 63, 85 inability to act on a 60 inscrutability of 220 interest as expression of 96 internalization of 69, 96 life-guiding 60 of morality over self-love 40 of self-love over morality 40, 42, 50, 59 of the moral disposition; see also moral disposition 75, 144, 149, 151, 155, 165 versus interest 81 meta-attitude definition of 116 of humility 137, 143, 145, 150, 151, 155, 160, 161, 162 of inferiority 119, 120–124, 127, 149, 159 of superiority 52, 125, 127 Metaphysics of Morals (Kant) 40, 75, 82, 84, 92n, 225 modesty 110, 139, 141, 166 Mohammed 209 moral disposition as ground of virtues 93, 94, 95, 149 as organizational principle of character 83 and choice 84 constraining inclination and the 31, 81 defeasible evidence for 234 internalization of the maxim of the 72, 76, 84, 85, 87, 94, 143, 149, 198 judgments implicit in 87–88, 145 Judgment no. 1 146, 149, 156, 157, 158 Judgment no. 2 145, 146, 147, 149, 156, 158 Judgment no. 3 145, 146, 149, 156, 158 Judgment no. 4 145, 146, 149, 156, 158

Index Judgment no. 5 145, 146, 148, 150, 157 Judgment no. 6 145, 150, 157 versus character 83 versus interest 80–85 virtuous disposition and 82–83, 84, 161 moral exemplar; see also regulative ideal as concrete moral ideal 210 as image of moral possibilities 208 as more adequate use of self–other comparison 202, 210–211 dangers of reliance on 200, 201, 204, 206, 207, 210 in the form of divine persons 53, 54, 77, 204, 205, 209–210 in the form of fictional persons 204, 205, 209, 248 in the form of human persons 55, 204, 205, 209, 210 Stoic sage as 202, 203, 204 versus guiding principles 206–208 moral fanaticism 172, 188, 227, 230, 233–236 moral feeling and the will 83 as affective dimension of humility 91, 150–160 as affective dimension of virtuous disposition 82, 87 as related to maxim of moral disposition 81, 154–155 confusion about 151–153 cultivation of character and 85 as singular moral consciousness and 154 of awe 152, 155 of humiliation/constraint 152, 155 of exultation/approbation 152, 155, 158 of respect 87, 91, 151, 152 moral indignation 195 moral motivation; see also motive of duty 95–96 moral psychology 193–199 Morgan, Vance 16n, 108n, 110, 110n, 138, 142n, 167, 167n, 195, 261 Morrison, Toni 27 motivation; see moral motivation motive of duty; see also moral motivation 58–60, 157, 170–171, 172 Munzel, Felicitas 81n, 261 Murdoch, Iris 138, 142n Murphy, Jeffrie 195n, 262 Myers, Diana 183, 183n Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle) 52n Nietzche, Friedrich 142n No Fond Return of Love (Barbara Pym) 250–251 Dulcie 250 Dulcie’s friend 250

267

Nussbaum, Martha 66, 66n, 229n, 262 O’Neill, Onora 57, 57n, 60–70, 85, 91n, 96–102, 205n, 218–222, 238, 239, 262 “ought implies can” principle 89, 181 Parens, Eric 229n particularists, contemporary 206, 207 Paul; see St. Paul perfection of self 217 as regulative ideal 90 Pluhar, Werner S. 259 principles; see also maxims, moral disposition as related to virtue 56, 58, 72, 87 as guides for character 56 as autonomously given 142 comparison of self to 141–149 internalization of; see also moral disposition, internalization of the maxim of 54 pre-eminent value of moral 55, 87, 88, 145, 147, 149, 157, 161, 163 schematization of in character 207 Pybus, Elizabeth 153n Pym, Barbara 250, 250n, 262 Radical Virtue Ethics (Kurt Baier) 57 Rawls, John 181n, 182n, 183, 262 Reath, Andrews 153n, 262 Religion 128, 129, 140, 180, 181, 209 Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Kant) 34, 40, 59, 75, 83, 203, 205n, 259 regulative ideal; see also moral exemplar 77, 78, 89–90, 221 Stoic sage as 202, 203 res integra 19, 21, 29, 45, 76 respect for moral principles 87, 88, 95, 146, 152, 155, 158 for persons 94, 95, 152, 155, 164 for self 152; see also self-respect moral feeling of 151, 152; see also moral feeling Richards, Norvin 15, 15n, 16, 17, 92, 108, 108n, 110, 116, 122, 140, 167–168, 194, 197, 262 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 33 St. Augustine 15n, 108 St. Benedict 2, 2n, 123, 260 St. Cloud State University 71n St. Ignatius Loyola 15n, 17, 108 St. Olaf College Philosophy Department 108 St. Paul 2, 15n, 181n, 182n, 262 saint(s) 4–5, 6, 200, 210 Schneewind, J. B. 259

268

Index

Schueler, G. F. 16n, 108n, 109, 110, 113, 139, 168, 197, 262 self-assessment proper 54, 158–160, 188, 227, 233 as self-absorption 127, 143, 195, 227–228, 231, 247 transcendent standard of 137–144 self-knowledge 218 derivative 224, 226–228, 230, 236–239, 247–248 despair and 70, 177, 227, 231 duty of (obligatory) 69, 70, 217–241 humble pursuit of 221, 222, 228, 232–236 intellectual elitism and 172 limits of 221, 223, 225, 234 obstacles to 62, 223, 228–232, 234 possibility of 232–236 self-deception and 90, 187, 233 substantial 224–226 practical efficaciousness of 222, 236–239 pursuit of as a theoretical task 63–64, 225 self-love appraisal self-respect and 168 as ground of evil/corruption 29, 30, 53, 88, 145, 194, 247 ascendancy of moral principles over 40, 55, 59, 73, 88, 147, 149, 168 beneficence through eyes of 243, 257 rational pursuit of 34, 37, 39, 44, 231 self-conceit and 32, 38, 39, 42, 43, 51 undue 129 self–other comparison; see also comparative–competitive attitude; comparison of self as inadequate basis for humility 92, 109, 110, 159 as merely aesthetic project 200 excessive reliance on 117–120, 121 magnanimous man engaging in 125–126 moral exemplars and 199–212 morally inoffensive 129, 200 resulting in meta-attitudes of inferiority, superiority 117, 123 self-worth and 117, 127 self-respect appraisal 168, 185 as a condition of humility 92, 170–176 as conditioned by humility 180, 182–190 as egoistic 183, 184–185, 189 human corruption and 129, 187–190 human dependence and 187–190, 246 need for 187 recognition 163–182, 185, 187

Seneca 5, 19–20, 262 and indifference 20–21 and perfect agency 19 Shakespeare, William 134, 135, 136, 137, 262 shame 183, 236, 246 Sherman, Nancy 153n, 262 Smith, Michael 18n, 262 Snow, Nancy 108n, 167n, 169, 262 Sorrell, Tom 59n, 262 Statman, David 5, 5n, 51, 108n, 108–109, 110, 112, 122, 139, 142n, 167, 168, 197, 262 Stoic(s) 19–21 and independence from nature 21 indifference 15–21, 25, 28, 42, 48, 197 Kant’s critique of 21 relation of happiness and virtue according to 19, 20 sage as exemplar 202, 203, 204 Sunflower, The 195 superiority; see also Aristotle, Aristotelian magnanimity arrogance and 43, 118, 119, 125–127, 138, 228, 230 association of with humility 124–128, 171 courage and 92 meta-attitude of 117, 124–128 versus excellence 125 sympathy as a non-moral supplement to virtue 86 as a potential moral feeling 151 as a virtue 53, 54, 94–95 as offense 188, 249 Taylor, Gabriele 164n, 183n, 262 Taylor, Richard 262 Telfer, Elizabeth 183, 183n transcendental unity of apperception (TUA) 225, 226 unity (of the virtues) 71–79, 84, 93, 94, 154, 164, 211 as grounded in common principle 71, 73, 84 logical 71–72, 75–79 psychological 72, 75–79 unsocial sociability 32, 37–38 utilitarianism 58 valuing 88 of others 27, 88, 119 of moral principles 39, 43, 84, 87, 147 of self; see also self-respect 43, 50, 57, 89, 91, 107, 118, 119–130, 145, 149, 159, 160, 161, 182, 195, 220 general structure for 86–88, 103

Index virtue; see also virtues; individual virtues as ongoing process 76, 77, 89, 90, 178, 229 as self-esteem and humility 178 and intellectual elitism 171–172 and principles 56, 78 versus holiness 178, 179 versus virtues 80–84, 85 virtue(s); see also individual virtues; unity (of the virtues) 7, 54–55 as ameliorative 49–55 as excellences 49–55, 118, 124, 168 executive (O’Neill) 74 social (O’Neill) 74 three main Kantian 93, 94, 103, 164 vs. Virtue 80–84, 85 virtuous disposition 82–83, 84, 86–103, 154, 161

269

Washington, George 1 Weil, Simone 138 West, Henry 198n Wiesenthal, Simon 195n, 262 will autonomous 55, 73, 178 evil 31 finite 31, 32 good 59, 103 rational 87 social (Wood) 33 Williams, Bernard 262 Wollstonecraft, Mary 1, 262 Wood, Allen 16n, 30, 31–37, 37n, 41, 42, 92, 118n, 193, 200–202, 202n, 204, 211, 212, 259, 262 Woolf, Virginia 1, 262