Published in 2001 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group Copyright © 2001 by David G. Sussman All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The idea of humanity: anthropology and anthroponomy in Kant's ethics / David G. Sussman. p. cm. - (Studies in ethics) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8153-3984-4 1. Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804-Contributions in ethics. 2. Ethics, Modern-18th century. 3. Philosophical anthropology. I. Title. II. Studies in ethics (New York, N.Y.) B2799.E8 .S92 2001 170'.92-dc21 2001019468
Printed on acid-free, 250-year-life paper. Manufactured in the United States of America
Abbreviations
A
Anthropology front a Pragmatic Point of View
CB
"Conjectural Beginning of Human History"
CF
The Conflict of the Faculties
CPR
Critique of Pure Reason
CPrR
Critique of Practical Reason
E
Education
ET
"The End of All Things"
G
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
LP MM
Lectures on the Philosophical Doctrine of Religion
R
Religion within the Boundaries of mere Reason
TP
"On the common saying: That may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice."
WE
"An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?"
WOT
"What does it Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?"
The Metaphysics of Morals
Preface
I began this thesis as an attempt to understand the place of Kant's Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone in his practical philosophy as a whole. The Religion is one of I(ant's last major works (1793), and was clearly of great importance to him. To have all four of its sections published together, Kant had to tread carefully around the Prussian censors who had become much less tolerant with the ascension of Frederick William II. In this Kant was not entirely successful-the second book of the Religion drew a royal rebuke that prompted I(ant's famous promise (perhaps violated) to no longer write on religious topics. Apparently, there was something Kant very much needed to say about religious faith and its relation to the nl0rality of pure reason, a need he took to be satisfied by the 1793 work. Despite its importance to I(ant, the Religion has received surprisingly little attention from recent commentators. Such neglect is particularly surprising given that the Religion contains some of Kant's most sustained discussions of the nature of evil, self-deception, atonement, and moral reconstruction. For those concerned with I(ant's moral philosophy, one would expect the Religion to be a central text. However, the Religion seems designed to frustrate and alienate anyone already sympathetic to the moral and moralpsychological vision of I(ant's Groundwork and Critique of Practical Reason. The moral conception that emerges from those works seems to present the human agent as divided between the rational,
xii
Preface
"intelligible" side of her nature, and her merely sensible or "empirical" aspect. Morality consists of those laws we can give ourselves insofar as we are rational intelligences, and is thus expressive of our autonomy and freedom as rational creatures. Evil, in contrast, locates us in the causally-determined order of nature, an order that has no place for free action or indeed any real sense of agency. No appeal to God is either needed or able to ground basic moral principles; any ITl0raiity worthy of the name must flow from our own self-legislative capacities as rational agents. On this view any appeal to authority, no matter how perfect, would reduce us to the "heteronomy" incompatible with true freedom. Many have found in this vision a celebration of a kind of existentialist hero: profoundly free and detached from any merely given desire, authority, or tradition, committed above all to her own freedom and to the free choice of her commitments. The I(antian agent appears as a kind of radical self-creator, facing no external limitations on the kinds of laws she may legislate for herself consistent with her own reason. This picture has both attracted and repelled, but it sits uneasily with what emerges in the Religion. In this latter work, !(ant develops his account of "the radical evil in human nature," a source of corruption necessary to all hun1ans, which we are in principle unable to overcome individually. To triumph over this limitation, we must be members of something that Kant recognizes as a church, and we must actively have faith in the grace of God, as the only route through we can be morally redeemed. Kant had seemed to free morality from the encumbrances of religion: here, however, he brings back some of the most morally problematic tenets of Christian theology: original sin and God's saving grace. The free and autonomous agent now confronts some kind of necessary constraints on who and what she may morally make of herself- constraints for which she is nevertheless to bear ultimate responsibility. !(ant presents these constraints as inherent limitations of human reason. Our problem is not just that various non-rational aspects of our psyche present obstacles that reason n1ay stumble over. Rather, there seems to be a kind of ineliminable corruption of that reason itself in us, a state of fallenness, that the individual cannot address without the community, and which the community cannot address without faith in God. Without such "rational faith," human beings cannot be coherent, autonomous agents. I(ant here does not abandon his fundamental position that
Preface
xiii
morality is an aspect of a deep sort of freedom and autonomy. Rather, the Religion presents us with the paradox that autonomy might require attitudes and commitments seemingly characteristic of supposedly clear forms of heteronomy. The Religion is thus hardly receptive to those who might look to it for resources to address shortcomings in Kant's moral philosophy. The nature of culpable wrongdoing has always sat uneasily in I
xiv
Preface
does not leave room for some of Kant's stranger and richer reflections on sin, repentance, and faith: reflections that are as essential to Kant's moral vision as is his political philosophy. I(ant was, in many respects, a sensible liberal; but this should obscure the fact that he was also, in his way, a crazy Protestant. This thesis attempts to do justice to the insights arising from the latter perspective, with the hope that they remain compatible with those of the former. I am indebted to my advisors for their constant support and helpful criticism. Michael Forster was especially patient with such an apparently reclusive student, usually at great distance fron1 his home institution. Allen Wood did me the great, if difficult philosophical service of calling into question much of what I took for granted in my readings of I(ant. My debts to Chris Korsgaard are incalculable; suffice it to say that she, more than anyone else, showed me why it is important to do moral philosophy, and what it is to do moral philosophy well. My thanks also to Tim Scanlon, Dick Moran, Fred Neuhauser, Kate Abramson, Rahul Kun1ar, Angie Smith, the members of Harvard's Moral and Political Workshop and especially I(irstin Wilcox, sine qua non.
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction Any high praise for the ideal of hUlnanity in its moral perfection can lose nothing in practical reality frortt exa1nples to the contrary, drawn from what human beings now are, have become, or will presumably become in the future; and anthropology, which issues from merely empirical cognition, can do no damage to anthropon01ny, which is laid down by a reason giving law unconditionally. (MM 6:406)
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant suggests that we consider the critical philosophy as an account of the possibility of human selfunderstanding. 1 In the preface to the first edition, !(ant tells us that the Critique comes as a response to: a call to reason to undertake anew the most difficult of all its tasks, namely, that of self-knowledge, and to institute a tribunal which will assure to reason its lawful claims, and disll1iss all groundless pretensions, not by despotic decrees, but in accordance with its own eternal and unalterable laws. (Axi-Axii).
Later in the Canon, I(ant explains that the three basic aspects of such rational self-knowledge are comprehended by three fundamental questions: "What can I know, What ought I to do, What may I hope?" (A80S/B833). Kant devotes the Critiques of Pure and Practical Reason to the first two questions; the third Critique, along with Kant's writings on religion, history, and politics, is addressed to the third. In each Critique, !(ant attempts to establish the proper scope and limits of a particular power of reasoning or judgment by a kind of reflexive self-examination of that power by itself. Each critique thus represents a way a particular power of thought comes to a kind of self-knowledge, recognizing its own 1. Here I follow Allen Wood, Kant's Moral !!!!~~~o!!-,,-J~
2
The Idea of Humanity
rights and linlits as flowing from its own basic principles. 2 Toward the end of his life, however, Kant added a new question to the list from the Canon. In the introduction to the Jasche Logic of 1800, Kant claims that philosophy in the "cosmopolitan sense" consists in the above three questions, plus a forth: "What is a human being?" (L pp.28-9), which I(ant takes to be the proper subject of anthropology. For Kant, such anthropology is not just another field for critical investigation, but rather the critical philosophy itself, conceived as a whole: "At bottom all this could be reckoned to be anthropology, because the first three questions are related to the last." (L p.29). Seen in this light, the critical philosophy is more than just an account of reason coming to knowledge of itself. This philosophy is also an account of the sort of self-knowledge that beconles possible for human beings through the exercise of reason upon their own sense of themselves, as finite rational beings. However, I(ant's answer to the second question, "What ought I to do?" seems particularly removed from any distinctively human sort of self-knowledge. In the first Critique, Kant examines the possibility and nature of empirical cognition, relative to the pure forms of characteristically hunlan intuition, space and time. In the third Critique, Kant examines aesthetic and teleological judgments, drawing on characteristic features and needs of the human understanding and imagination. Beauty and natural teleology, like science, mathematics and geometry, are all relativized to the human subject: their claims cannot be extended to thinking subjects generally. In his moral philosophy, however, Kant sets out to answer the question of "What ought I to do?" by analysis of rational agency per se, independent of any considerations that might distinguish human beings from any other sort of rational agent. From the beginning of the Groundwork, Kant insists that a proper ill0ral philosophy must exclude any distinctly human aspects of feeling or motivation from the foundations of morality, declaring that [A]mong practical cognitions, not only do moral laws, along with their principles, differ essentially from all the rest, in which there is something empirical, but all moral philosophy is based entirely on its pure part; and when it is applied to the human being it does not borrow the least thing fron1 acquaintance with 2. see Onora O'Neill, "The Public Use of Reason" in Constructions of ,Reason, 38.
Introduction
3
him (from anthropology) but gives to hilTI, as a rational being, laws a priori ... (G 4: 389)
Not only does morality have no need of any empirical considerations to establish its rights, but any such reference would only diminish or compromise that authority: [I]t is clear that all moral concepts have their seat and origin completely a priori in reason, and indeed in the most common reason just as in reason that is speculative in the highest degree; that they cannot be abstracted from any empirical and therefore merely contingent cognitions; that just in this purity of their origin lies their dignity ... that in adding anything empirical to them one subtracts just that much from their genuine influence and from the unlimited worth of actions ... (G 4: 411)
Kant sets himself the task of deriving the authority and basic principles of morality from an analysis of rational agency in general, abstracting away from any specifically human qualities altogether. Human nature is here excluded in both its psychological and teleological senses. Against Hume, Kant denies any fundamental role to the common sentiments, feelings, and non-rational affective and motivational forces of the human mind. Against Aristotle, !(ant excludes any substantive notions of human well-being or perfection, along with any prior conceptions of true hun1an needs or characteristic human virtues. !(ant distinguishes himself fron1 both sorts of naturalism by arguing that morality is essentially a matter of freedom, autonomy, and rationality in action. For !(ant, any morality worthy of the name would have to possess a kind of necessary authority over our actions, which must be able, at least in principle, to lTIotivate any agent capable of recognizing its dictates at all. Insofar as the motivating power of morality depends on some special feature of the constitution of the human subject, its authority would be restricted to whoever possessed those features. Morality still might have an authority over those subjects, but it would still be a fundamentally contingent sort of authority; "escapable" at least insofar as those particular features are. 3 By tying morality to the idea of rational 3. I(ant has been taken to task for thinking that if morality is relativized to some condition of the subject, it thereby becomes escapable or optional, something one might release oneself from by the right kind of act of will. As Philippa Foot and Harry Frankfurt have noted, much of what we hap-
4
The Idea of HUlnanity
agency in general, !(ant hopes to secure it a motivational basis adequate to the scope of its supposed au~hority, a scope that is to exceed even that of mathematics. For !(ant, the authority and motivating power of morality are to be found in what it is to be a creature that can act from reasons at all. The distinctively human being, with all her contingent psychological and conative peculiarities, seems to come into play for !(ant as only a particular substitution instance of this general type. The distinctively human appears as a kind of philosophical afterthought: relevant to the application of morality, perhaps, but not to its fundamental hold on us. This claim may seem surprising in light of Kant's insistence on the intrinsic "dignity" of humanity that is above all price, and his fundamental injunction that we always treat such humanity never merely as a means buts always also as an "end-in-itself." At first glance, it SeelTIS that appreciating the special status of such humanity is what I(ant's moral philosophy is all a bout. Yet in the Groundwork, this celebration of humanity seems to be nothing more than a rhetorical flourish, effectively concealing the rarefied nature of Kant's real moral concern. The problen1 is not merely that I(ant ultimately seems to equate such humanity with the constitutive capacities of finite rational agency in general. 4 I(ant goes on to suggests that, in philosophical strictness, we could translate all such reference to finite pen to care about can seem as binding, and as independent of our choices, as anything moral. see Philippa Foot, "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives," and Harry Frankfurt, "The Importance of What We Care About." Yet this sort of escapability cannot be Kant's real target here: he is primarily concerned with showing that lTIorality cannot be based on our desire for happiness, yet he recognizes such a desire to be "subjectively necessary" for all human beings. The problem is not that humans necessarily desire happiness, but that necessity is somehow not of the right kind to support the aspirations of morality. "Escapability" cannot be the real issue for I(ant, but rather the particular form of bindingness appropriate to morality for which inescapability may only be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition. 4. Although this has is particular problems: in particular, how we are to understand those "humans" that do not, and perhaps may never, manifest those capacities. Some might see this as a virtue of Kant's, in avoiding some sort of objectionable "speciesism." Whether or not this is a virtue or vice of a view, it should be noted how it is achieved: by eliminating any fundamental moral or metaphysical role for the concept of "human being" altogether, and reducing the idea down to some more basic elements. See Cora Diamond, "Eating Meat and Eating People," 319-334.
Introduction
5
persons out of these formulations altogether. We would lose nothing if we let "humanity" drop out, and reinterpreted our duties in terms of the law immanent in pure reason, where the human being comes to represent only a particular case to which such a law might be applied: Any respect for a person is properly only respect for the law (of integrity and so forth) of which he gives us an example ....All socalled moral interest consists simply in respect for the law. (G 4:402n., Kant's emphasis).
At least at first blush, there seems to be remarkably little distinctively human even in Kant's celebrated Formula of Humanity. The conception of hun1an nature that emerges fron1 Kant's moral philosophy is notoriously dualistic, centered as it is on a fundamental distinction between what I(ant calls our "intelligible" and our "en1pirical" characters. Our intelligible character concerns what applies to us simply as rational agents, as free, spontaneous, moral subjects, capable of deliberation and choice. In our empirical character is placed all that is contingent about human psychology: all our particular inclinations, needs, and affects. I(ant makes this division in part so as to find a place for freedom of the will, despite the causal determinism that he believes must characterize the natural order. The empirical self is the self that is n1ired in and dependent on this order, the self possessed of causally-determined impulses, feelings, and needs. This self, and its behavior, can be explained, at least in principle, in the same way that any other cause in the world might be-I(ant even suggests at one point that such behavior might be predicted just as a lunar eclipse can be. The intelligible self, in contrast, is the self that reflects and reasons: the self that is spontaneous and free. The intelligible self bears a fundamentally different and privileged relation to its acts than that of mere causal antecedent. The intelligible self, unlike the empirical, is somehow an absolute cause of its acts: a kind of first cause, of which no others of the same type might be adduced. For I(ant, obligation and responsibility attach to the self insofar as it is intelligible; desire and sensuous satisfaction attach to it insofar as it is empirical. For I(ant, the basis of morality is to be found not simply in the fact that we have two such distinct aspects to the self, but in the relation that is supposed to hold between them. !(ant defends the
6
The Idea of Humanity
nl0ral law as the immanent principle of our intelligible existence, in the sense that one could not coherently clainl such an existence for oneself without recognizing the authority of that law. The moral law is thus the constitutive principle of our intelligible self, defining just what such a self is and how it would operate. I(ant claims that a purely intelligible creature such as God could only act morally. For such a holy will, the distinction between normative and descriptive would have to evaporate: every "ought" of reason would have to be immediately realized in an "is" of the will. Our empirical self, in contrast, depends on or supervenes on the causal principles that are constitutive of nature as a whole. 5 In a purely empirical creature (e.g., an animal), the normative could not find any purchase at all; there would be for such a creature only naturallaws that determine its behavior in essentially the same manner that natural laws determine the movements of inanimate objects. For Kant, human beings have both an empirical and intelligible side to their nature, and it is because of this duality that morality presents itself to us as a command, as a kind of claim originating from one side of our nature addressed to or binding the other side. Kant appeals to this two-fold relation of the self in order to show how morality can be understood as hunlan autonomy, as the most basic form of practical self-legislation. Insofar as the moral law is the immanent principle of our intelligible character, it is supposed to be nothing alien or external to us, but the deepest expression of our true self. That law is however addressed to a distinct aspect of the self, to our empirical behavior subject as it is to all our psychological and motivational limitations. As such, the law can also be represented as a prescriptive claim, as a principle upon which we must act, but upon which we might fail to act. For I(ant there is duty only insofar as there is the possibility of transgression, and transgression is possible only insofar as there are as5. In the Anthropology, Kant denies that there could be psychological laws; at least, psychological laws along the lines of the basic causal laws (at whatever level they may be) that secure the synthetic unity of nature in time. Kant's objection seems to depend on a notion that any such law could be expressed in purely mathematical terms, and that mental states, differentiated temporally but not spatially, could not be pressed into this form. Even if this were so, it would not liberate the elnpirical self froITI the laws of nature. Psychological explanations would still logically be in the same class as strict causal explanations; only the concepts involved would not allow of any determinate nomological formulation. The empirical self may not be clearly determined, but is not any more free because of this.
Introduction
7
pects of ourselves and our motivational psychology that are distinct from what is determined by the mere idea of rational agency itself. The law that would correctly describe and make sense of our behavior as perfectly rational beings is thereby supposed to become the imperative we should obey, as the sensuously-affected, imperfectly rational creatures that we in fact are. The great puzzle of Kant's ethics is how we are to understand this last inference, how we are to move from an account of what would motivate a purely rational agent to some claim about how such ineluctably empirically-conditioned subjects as ourselves should behave. David Wiggins asks: But how, we may wonder, can the way in which a purely noumenal being would behave give rational reasons to one in our not purely noumenal state of being, and intimate to him or her the idea of a requirement that is qua normative and qua moral requirement, perfectly alien to a noumenal being?6
Wiggins here asks how are we to go from what would be the de~ scriptive law of a purely intelligible being to a prescriptive law for a being that is not, 'and can never be, a pure intelligence. I(ant does, after all, think that we are as essentially empirical as we are intelligible. If so, what reason do we have not to take the empirically-determined impulses and affects of our nature to give the marching orders to the purely rational part of ourselves? Even if we grant that Kant's distinction of the intelligible and the empirical is coherent, why should we not take Hume's route, and naturalize practical rationality, rather than make an antecedent standard of rationality the ultinlate standard for assessing the practical significance of our desires, feelings, and natural needs? So far, it seems that we have arrived at something that has the structure of a I(antian antinomy. We can conceive of the intelligible as having precedence over the empirical, or the enlpirical as having precedence over the intelligible, and each position may well be a ble to reinterpret the rest of our moral psychology in its own terms, so as to vindicate its position against the other ex post facto. What we might expect I(ant to do, but which he does not, is to resolve this conflict by denying the premise shared by each side. The antinomy could be settled by revealing and denying the assump6. David Wiggins, "Categorical Requirements: Kant and Hume on the Idea of Duty," 322.
8
The Idea of Humanity
tion that there must be a determinate order of precedence between the two sides of our being, such that one or the other is only to legislate and the other only to obeyJ A pure intelligence (a god) would only act morally, perhaps. A purely empirical creature would only behave according to causal law. If we are neither of these things, but rather essentially "amphibian" creatures, why not seek a normative standard appropriate to that sort of thing, rather than draw on the standard appropriate for only one of its parts? What is right or good for the whole does not generally correspond to what would be good or right for any of its parts, considered as an independent thing (not even its best or most important parts). Kant does not draw the conclusion that it appears he should: that just as human morality cannot be derived from the causal laws that determine the behavior of an animal, neither can morality be derived from the purely formal law that determines the will of a holy being. So far, it seems that !(ant should draw the nlore Aristotelian conclusion that we should seek the morality appropriate to the rational animal we are, rather than from the commands that a purely rational being might direct toward an animal who happens to be in its keeping. There are no very obvious I(antian replies to this worry. It will not do to respond that since the intelligible self is the purely rational self, to ask why we should take its law as our imperative is tantamount to asking why we should be committed to acting only as someone who acts rationally does. This last question is a form of asking why we should be committed to acting from good reasons at all, and as such it does approach unintelligibility (what could be the force of the "why?" absent a commitment to acting on reasons at all?) Nevertheless, at this stage of the argument such a reply would beg the question. Having made the distinction between our intelligible and empirical character, we are not yet entitled to equate the purely rational with the perfectly rational, at least insofar as "perfect" is to mean "ideally" or "completely" rational. Until the authority of the pure perspective has been established on some further grounds, there is no basis for claiming that this conception of rationality is the standard of rationality. Here we should heed Onora O'Neill's caution not to confuse a philo7. This worry finds expression in frequent criticism that I(antian morality presupposes a radically self-alienated subject, who stands in a relation of domination, slavery, or even torture toward herself, a charge made by Hegel, Nietzsche and Bernard Williams.
Introduction
9
sophical abstraction with a philosophical idealization. 8 The purely intelligible will certainly is an abstraction, the thought of what remains of practical rationality when we evacuate it of any of the particular content that might be supplied by any contingent features of human existence. To equate this abstraction with ideal or perfect rationality is already to assume the priority of the intelligible perspective; and as such it cannot be advanced as an independent argument for that very conclusion. Similarly, we cannot infer that because the moral law describes God's will, it should serve as the model for our will as well. In inlitating God, we might well be infringing upon prerogatives that belong to Him alone. More important, we have not yet been shown why we should take such a pure being as a holy being, as our ultimate moral authority. We cannot equate purity with holiness until we have settled on what the right standards for moral assessment are; but these fundamental standards are precisely what is at stake in the question at hand. 9 We might be tempted to take this abstract conception of practical reason as its proper ideal if we think, as Kant sometimes does, that the only sources of practical irrationality are to be found in our empirical character. It seems uncontroversial that a great deal of such irrationality does so depend. The possibility of weakness of will seems to have something to do with our susceptibility to nonrational appetite and inclination. Likewise, we seem similarly susceptible to all sorts of bias, confusion and self-deception under the pressure of our various desires and limited capacities of perception, imagination and self-scrutiny. If so, then it might well seem that if we just purified our capacity for rational reflection of the grounds of all these sorts of errors, then whatever would remain would constitute the true standard of practical rationality.10 Even if we grant the thesis that practical irrationality becomes possible for us only through our enlpirical nature, it does not fol8. O'Neill, Constructions of Reason, 208-210. 9. Cf. G 490 "Even the Holy One of the gospel must first be compared with our ideal of Illoral perfection before he is recognized as such... .Imitation has no place at all in moral matters." 1O. In the third Critique, Kant does seem to argue this way with regard to the validity of judgements of taste. In the Analytic of the Beautiful, !(ant argues that if we can rule out any interest that might be involved in our liking of the beautiful object, we can claim intersubjective validity for our response, simply because we have ruled out all the grounds of possible differences in human aesthetic response.
10
The Idea of Humanity
low that a pure intelligence would have to be perfectly rational. It might well be the case that both rational error and rational insight depend crucially on some aspect of our empirical nature, perhaps on the very same aspect. Our psychology might playas much a role in enabling essential aspects of rationality as it does in undermining them. If so, then the abstraction that brings us to the intelligible might well throw out the baby of rationality with the bathwater of error. ll The decisions of a pure intelligence might then be free from any particular errors, but still fall far short of constituting the ideal of practical reasoning. We cannot yet rule out the possibility that this ideal might involve certain kinds of substantive understandings or insights that go beyond what can be attained simply by avoiding characteristic kinds of error. The intelligible will might avoid culpable or blameworthy mistakes, but there may be more to virtue than managing to avoid such reproaches. Simply articulating the distinction between our intelligible and empirical characters does not suffice to establish the authority of morality over our choices and our acts. To be fair, I(ant never suggests that it does: the precedence of the intelligible over the empirical involves a synthetic a priori claim, to be established by reference to some "third thing" distinct from the concepts involved. (G 4:447) Kant's ethics turn on whether he can make out the relation of intelligible to empirical character in us in a way that show we must identify with the former in a way sufficient to establish the authority of morality. Unfortunately, Kant is particularly obscure about just what this relation is, and how it can serve as the basis of a practical law. Kant tells us that our intelligible character serves as the "ground" or "archetype" of the empirical. He also tells us that our empirical character "expresses" the intelligible or serves as its "ectype" or "schema" (A553/B581), and that it is something about these relations that establishes the unconditional authority of morality for llS.12 Many, however, have been unable to see what ground there can be for this identification which does not itself already assume a substantively Kantian picture of moral value. Unless we can show that our "intelligible vo11. Cf. Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality, 45-6: "While, if we should attempt to think away (without any warrant) the particular attributes of the species, in order to form our genus [rational being] we should perhaps remove the exact condition whereby the remaining attributes, hypostatised as a genus, are made possible." 12. See also Allen Wood, "Kant's Compatibalism," 86.
Introduction
11
cation" is something that engages us deeply as the individuals we are, Kantian morality will seem hopelessly self-alienated. For many, the real problelTI with Kantian moral philosophy is its apparent subordination of everything we might value or want as individuals to a philosophical abstraction, making morality ultimately independent of anything we could really care about. I(ant's moral thought, if not inhumane, would still be fundamentally inhuman. 13 The relation between our intelligible and empirical character receives its most sustained treatment in I(ant's religious writings, where he considers the special shape that the moral demands of reason take in the context of characteristically human needs and limitations. "What ought I to do" shades into "What may I hope," and the '1' of the latter question, unlike the former, seems robustly human. However, while I(ant does substantially revise his understanding of the relation between intelligible and empirical character in his religious writings, he seems only to transform the obscure into the downright unintelligible. In Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant presents our intelligible character as not necessarily good, but as constituted by a fundamental choice of what principle to take as authoritative over oneself. As intelligences, we can establish either a good or evil "disposition." In either case, our choice will be free, independent of any empirical or sensuous compulsion. Instead, our empirical character is now represented as just the expression, in time, of this fundamental act of moral self-constitution. Our sensible nature is not the cause of our wrongdoing: rather, our sin is an expression of our freedom, a perverse misuse of our freedom that we nevertheless freely elect. Our empirical character is only the expression in nature of this fundamental intelligible choice, and it is this choice alone that is truly free, and for which we are really responsible. While our empirical character is part of the natural world and hence is bound up with the causal laws of that world, it is also the expression of a completely free, noumenal choice that we make, a choice about just how much morality matters to us. As such, it seems that our choice of disposition does not only constitute our moral character, but the laws of nature as well, at least insofar as those laws impinge on our empirical behavior. Kant seems to think that in determining ourselves 13. See e.g. Bernard Williams, "Persons, Character and Morality" and Ethics and the Lintits of Philosophy, ch.9; Susan Wolf, "Moral Saints," Phillipa Foot, "Morality as a System ~_li~~i~e~i~~~l_I!llj)~~a!iy~s--'~
_
12
The Idea of Humanity
morally we determine the fundamental causal structure of the world. This picture invites Bernard Williams' charge that Kant succumbs to "a fantasy which represents, not the moral ideal, but the deification of man." 14 It is not clear how the Religion~s account of the relation between our intelligible and empirical character supports Kant's claims both that the moral law is the law of the intelligible world, and that we should identify with this side of our character in a way that establishes the authority of morality. At first blush, it seems that nl0rality now only describes one way that an intelligence may choose: it may also choose evil, making the maxim of self-love its own highest law. Insofar as evil becomes a coherent option for our intelligible character to assunle, it seems that there are at least two laws from which we may choose. Since this choice is a choice of our fundan1ental reasons for action, it cannot be made for any lTIOre basic reasons; there could be no higher principles to guide our decision between morality and self-love. As such, our fundamental commitment to morality seems to be reduced to the result of a fundanlentally arbitrary choice, the sort of thing many have seen and attacked in the writings of Sartre. 15 Even if coherent, such a choice would seem to leave the choice of goodness over evil (or the reverse) to be nothing more than a kind of grand whim which, if we are to maintain moral earnestness, we must actively conceal from ourselves as the basis of our moral cOffirnitments. Even if I(ant's latter picture of the will can still make sense of morality, many have claimed that that it is just flatly incoherent. 14. Bernard Williams, "Morality and the Emotions," 226. Aside from its metaphysical extravagance, this picture also has difficulty in accounting for how responsibility for various empirical acts can be distributed among different agents. Insofar as everyone's empirical character is manifested in the same world, the same set of causal laws must embrace it all. Such laws cannot be expressions simply of my choice of disposition but, since they govern everyone else's empirical character as well, they must be equally expressions of their choice of disposition as well. If so, then it would seem that we, in our choices of moral disposition, collectively determine the laws of human behavior in general. How then can I be more responsible for the doings of my body than of anyone else's, since we are all equally involved in establishing the laws the detennine the what goes on empirically. On this picture, it seems that the natural world stands as something like the body of the totality of rational minds, but we still cannot see how particular minds can be assigned a privileged relation to any particular empirical bodies. 15. See, e.g. Charles Taylor, "Responsibility for Self."
Introduction
13
Ordinary notions of choosing, deciding, acting, etc. are ineluctably bound up with time and temporal progression. The idea of a noumenal choice, made outside of time, for all time, by a contentless noumenal agent seems completely unintelligible; timeless choosing would be so different from ordinary choosing that we could not even recognize an analogy between them. Moreover, Kant's view seems to have devastating consequences for the possibility of ordinary self-knowledge. The self that we encounter in time, the self of our ordinary hopes, fears, loves, and wants becomes not merely an appearance, but an illusory one at that. We are never really choosing, changing our minds, setting out on a new course-these matters are (have been, will be) timelessly determined, as one unified phenomenon, by sonle contentless self that is nevertheless supposed to be our truest self. Kant seems to rob us, as ordinary agents, of the freedom he so tantalizingly offered, by locating such freedom exclusively in this tinleless point of agency, in a noumenon that we can never know, nor even make an educated guess about, but which is nevertheless our true self. Humanity has been expelled from the world, alienated to some weknow-nat-what, which we can only hope has made/makes/will make the right decision. Schopenhauer saw this picture of the will as the one great insight of Kant's practical philosophy, but few have followed hinl in that estimation. 16 Even such a synlpathetic interpreter as Allen Wood concludes that Kant must not pretend to deny that his theory requires staggering revisions in our commonsense conception of our agency, even in those features of his theory very dear to !(ant himself....this
16. Schopenhauer calls this understanding of the relation between intelligible and empirical character "the most important and n10st admirable, indeed, in my opinion the most profound of all I(ant's teachings ... " (Essay on Freedom of the Will, p. 83), and "one of the most beautiful and profound ideas brought forth by that great mind, or indeed by men at any time. " (Essay on Freedom, p.96). Schopenhauer celebrates precisely what most commentators have found most implausible in I(ant's account: that it n1akes our empirical character "fixed, unchangeable," and that all choosing, deciding, striving in time are a kind of illusion; we are always already elect or damned by our own will. For Schopenhauer, !(ant does us the great service of showing us that the will, in any sense that we know it, is merely a "weather vane" turning in response to various motivational forces. Were Schopenhauer being ironic here, we could read him as offering the ultimate reductio of Kant's moral thought.
14
The Idea of Humanity
shortcoming n1akes it difficult to credit the advertisement frequently given for Kantian morality, that it is a moral philosophy faithfully representing the moral life as the ordinary agent experience and lives it. As with many advertisements, this one calls our attention only to the more palatable and wholesome ingredients in the product, and carefully avoids listing the artificial ingredients with ugly names which, though necessary to keep the product from spoiling, may render it much less appealing. 17
Others have been less charitable. Responding to Wood, Jonathan Bennet dismisses the whole theory as "worthless," "dead" 18 and Bernard Williams writes It is this thought, that moral worth must be separated from any natural advantage ... [which] leads to the conclusion that the source of moral action must be located outside the empirically conditioned self. The second fact to be remembered, at the same time, is that I(ant's work is in this respect a shattering failure, and the transcendental psychology to which it leads is, where not unintelligible, certainly false. No human characteristic which is relevant to degrees of moral esteelll can escape being an empirical characteristic, subject to empirical conditions, psychological history and individual variation ... 19
In this thesis, I will examine the role of human nature and of the very idea of human nature in Kant's practical philosophy, in Kant's understanding of the relation between the intelligible and empirical aspects of our character. My first set of questions concerns the supposed priority of the intelligible over the empirical in us. In what sense do we have an intelligible character that "grounds" the empirical, and can such a grounding relation be made out so as to establish the authority of the moral law in a way which is not question-begging? My second set of questions concerns how consideration of our empirical character informs Kant's understanding our intelligible vocation. Is human nature just a particular instance of the intelligible, and does it only have moralpsychological significance as the source of the characteristic impediments to morality with human beings must navigate around? Does Kant's position require that, morally speaking, we must be 17. Wood, "Kant's Compatibalism," 99. 18. Jonathan Bennet, "Kant's Theory of Freedom," 102, 107. 19. Bernard Williams, "Morality and the En10tions," 228.
Introduction
15
radically opaque to ourselves, with no route from the empirical character we see to knowledge of the moral self we hope to be? These questions draw us to I
In chapters 1 and 2, I consider I(ant's arguments for the authority of the moral law in the Groundwork and the second Critique, respectively. I argue that in the Groundwork, I
16
The Idea of Humanity
gible nature, the only arguments for making this identification themselves already tacitly assume a distinctively moral interest. I argue that in attempting to escape this circle, Kant only manages to relocate it. The circle is in fact ineliminable, and Kant seeks in vain for any higher, non-moralized conception of the self to adj udicate the question whether we should see ourselves as primarily intelligible or empirical creatures. In chapter 2, I argue that Kant comes to recognize that the circle cannot be escaped, and adopts a radically new strategy for defending the authority of the moral law. Rather than seek more basic concerns to adjudicate a choice between the intelligible and empirical aspects of ourselves, Kant instead attempts to show that the very notion of such a choice is incoherent. Insofar as we can conceive of our empirical self at all, we already understand the empirical as being distinct from and subordinate to our intelligible side. Moral philosophy succeeds not by deriving moral concern from anything prior to it, but by showing how far down that concern goes; by revealing as illusory the thought that we have any sense of ourselves, or of our interests, that does not depend upon or refer to morality in some way. This I take to be the import of I(ant's notorious "Fact of Reason": that everything that could be recognized as a practical reason is conceptually consequent to a recognition of oneself as bound by moral law, even though those reasons may not be nloral reasons themselves. I argue that I(ant arrives at the position that there can be no coherent human psychology that is conceptually independent of our intelligible identity as responsible, morally-bound subjects. Insofar as we can attribute wants, desires, inclinations, etc. to ourselves at all, we must already be conceiving of the self in a tacitly moralized fashion. This relation of conceptual precedence establishes the authority of morality, because it shows that any value we might oppose to morality must already contain a kind of internal reference and subordination to moral concerns. Our intelligible character grounds the empirical in the sense that the concepts constitutive of empirical self-knowledge (the knowledge of what one wants, needs, or does) are themselves parasitic on a distinctly nloral view of the self, considered as essentially a locus of obligation and responsibility. Having argued that the intelligible makes the empirical possible, I then turn to the question how Kant comes to see our intelligible character, in light of the sort of empirical psychology it makes possible. Chapters 1 and 2 concern how the intelligible is always
Introduction
17
implicated in the empirical; chapters 3-6 consider how the empirical informs our understanding of the intelligible. In chapter 3, I will consider Kant's attempts in the second Critique to derive a kind of "rational faith" out of morality by consideration of just these human needs and limits. This transition to the "religion of reason" has often been criticized as the weakest part of Kant's practical philosophy, if not an outright betrayal of its central insights. 21 I will argue instead that the emergence of rational faith marks the beginning of an important and profound change in I
18
The Idea of Humanity
Passion creates the possibility of a kind of practical illusion, an illusion we might culpably exploit in the sorts of self-deception at play in many kind of moral weakness. In chapter 5, I consider "the radical evil in human nature," in which I(ant locates the possibility not just of a morally weak will, but a perversely wicked one. I argue that we should understand such radical evil neither in terms of our susceptibility to inclination' nor as a kind of inexplicable given that is part and parcel of human freedom. Instead, I argue that radical evil should be understood in terms of the way that human beings must develop into their intelligible character out of the purely empirical. Chapter 2 established that our intelligible aspect has conceptual priority over the empirical-we cannot ascribe the latter to ourselves without already recognizing the norms of the former. However, as temporal creatures we can only develop into a sense of our intelligible vocation out of various empirical stages, through the progressive transformation of our affective lives. The radical evil in human nature is a consequence of the fact that our empirical development in time does not correspond to the proper conceptual order immanent in the idea of a person, but must go through a process of self-overcoming that can never fully attain its objective. In chapter 6, I consider the account of moral reconstruction that Kant offers in the Religion. I first consider I(ant's enign1atic account of the nature of repentance and his appeal to God's grace. In grace, I(ant's doctrine of rational faith comes to full flower. Grace, I argue, is the proper counterpart of radical evil. Just as radical evil concerned a way in which our empirical character takes precedence over and distorts our intelligible character, grace suggests a manner in which the intelligible can transfigure the empirical. Humans possess radical evil as a result of the fact that as creatures who must grow into their autonomy, we always start out from some condition in which the passions dominate; a condition which, if viewed narrowly, could only be deemed evil. From this perspective, we never at any given point in time have a determinate will, but can only be a mass of conflicting passions. I argue that insofar as we can attribute a will to ourselves at all, we must look beyond our present constitution, to a kind of future development of ourselves both individually and as a species. We can only claim a will provisionally, with a kind of trust in the future trajectory of our own development and the development of humanity as a whole. It is this trust in the destiny of humanity that I(ant represents as receptivity to grace. This trust is the fundanlental form of
Introduction
19
rational faith, which ultimately grounds the postulates of practical reason, and makes it possible for us to see ourselves as having rational wills in the first place. The moral law thus turns out to presuppose a kind of faith, but a faith that in no way compromises its status as the unconditional and underived Fact of Reason. In conclusion, I offer a few ways in which this account of human character might help inform the application of the Categorical Imperative to particular cases. In particular, I suggest that we may be able to rehabilitate a sense of "teleological contradiction" that might provide a substantive account of just what is at stake in contradictions in the will, and in such self-regarding duties as the prohibition against suicide. By uncovering the teleological conception of human nature the rests under the very foundation of Kant's ethics, we can perhaps understand why he insists that we attribute to ourselves the characteristic needs and natural purposes that he appeals to in defending these rich but problematic duties.
CHAPTER TWO
Morality and its Circle
1. Introduction In this chapter, I will examine I(ant's two main arguments for the unconditional authority of the moral law. Kant's first such argument of his critical period is to be found in the third section of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the second in the Analytic of his subsequent Critique of Practical Reason. One of the enduring puzzles of I(ant's moral philosophy is whether these two accounts are meant to be two parts of one continuous argument, or are at least consistent with one another, or whether the second represents an abandonment or even a repudiation of the first. In the Groundwork, Kant seems to try to derive his n10ral law from some conceptually prior sense of freedom that we must attribute to ourselves insofar as we are practically rational. In the second Critique, however, I(ant reverses this order of justification; rather than try to derive the moral law from our freedom, he takes that law itself to be an underived "Fact of Reason," which then serves as the basis of a deduction of human freedom. The relationship between these two strategies is hardly clear. While Kant tells us in the preface of the second Critique that this work is for the most part independent of the Groundwork (CPrR 5:8), he does not explain whether this represents a rejection of his earlier argument, or only an attempt to make what is essentially the same argument in a new and independent way. In this chapter, I will argue that the second Critique does in-
22
The Idea of Humanity
deed represent a substantial reversal of posItIon advancing in Groundwork III, a reversal motivated by internal tensions that develop within the earlier account. In Groundwork III, I(ant attempts to provide a non-circular argument for the authority of morality, trying to derive the moral law from some non-moralized conception of our freedom. While Kant recognizes in GIll that this argument courts circularity, he seems to think that appeal to the apparatus of transcendental idealism can dispel these worries, by calling attention to our membership in an "intelligible world" which we can claim through the spontaneity of our reason. In this chapter, I will first argue that, despite Kant's initial confidence, this expanded argument still only succeeds insofar as it is construed in an ultimately circular way. The apparatus of transcendental idealism may allow !(ant to relocate the circle, but will not enable him to remove it. I believe that Kant becomes aware of this problem, ultimately realizing that there can be no non-circular justification of morality. I argue that such a realization prompts the strategy of the second Critique, in which such circularity is openly recognized and embraced. This strategy has struck many as patently question-begging. As such, it seems inferior to GIll, for despite its flaws, GIll at least attempted to provide a non-tendentious argument for the law, rather than just dogmatically asserting it as a given. In the second half of this chapter, I will consider some prominent interpretations of the Fact of Reason. These interpretations present the Fact as a substantial advance over GIll, providing real philosophical support for the moral law despite remaining within the circle. I will argue that such arguments ultimately fail both as readings of I(ant and as attempts to defend the authority of the moral law. They will fail in the latter respect not because they leave the circle in place (though they do), but because they also fail to show us why this sort of circle isn't really vicious. Such readings fail to either escape the circle or show us why such circularity provides us no real grounds for moral skepticism. Consideration of these interpretations is meant to clear the ground for my next chapter, in which I will advance a different construal of what is at work in the Fact of Reason. In that chapter, I will argue that Kant did, in fact, take the second option with regard to the moral law. The Fact of Reason represents not a relapse into pre-critical dogmatism, but rather is part of an attempt to show that the moral law has all the justification that could be coherently demanded of it, once we realize just what sort of justi-
Morality and its Circle
23
fications can be relevant to the question of its authority. Unlike the earlier interpretations, this argument will cope with the circle by showing that insofar as it is indeed present, it is in no way vicious.
GROUNDWORK III 2. The Preparatory Argument I(ant begins the third section of the Groundwork by completing an analysis of concepts that he had begun in the preceding section. In Groundwork II, I(ant had established that moral obligation, autonomy, and the moral law as he understands it are all materially equivalent. For I(ant, such equivalence means that a creature could have moral obligations iff it is autonomous, and that it could be autonomous iff it is bound by the moral law, a law which supposedly must take the form of the Categorical Imperative in any imperfectly rational creature. In the opening paragraphs of GIll, Kant seeks to complete this analysis by including first freedom then practical rationality within this web of materially equivalent concepts. If successful, this analysis ""Till show that freedom, autonomy, recognition of the moral law and the ability to act on the basis of reasons are all different aspects of the same basic capacity or self-conception, and that to ascribe one such power to oneself logically entails the ascription of the others (i.e., that they come all together or not at all). Kant begins GIll by establishing what Henry Allison has dubbed his "reciprocity thesis": the claim that "a free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same" (G 4:447). To establish this equivalence, I(ant starts to unpack the concept of a free will. He argues that as free, such a will would at least have to be "independent of any detern1ination by alien causes"(G 4:446), the sort of determination that he considers "heteronomy." For Kant, such heteronomy would characterize any power whose effective manifestation is wholly necessitated by powers or events distinct from it; such as the motions of a billiard ball in response to some outside impact, or an explosion resulting from the sudden introduction of a spark. Although I(ant does not make the claim explicit, he also seems to count as forms of heteronomy cases where the laws that govern the exercise of a causal power are grounded in something distinct fron1 that power itself. Thus, while the activity of a wound watch, a turnspit, or a living organism may be completely self-produced (unlike the motions of billiard balls), such
24
The Idea of Humanity
activity would still count as heteronomous because the laws that govern such activity are not grounded in these objects or activities themselves, but are rather based in whatever grounds the laws of nature in general, (in whatever sense of grounding that might properly here apply).l As free in this merely "negative" sense, then, a free will would have to act in a way determined neither by antecedent events nor according to laws that are grounded in something distinct from itself and its activity. Although Kant sees the will as a kind of causality (i.e., as standing in some ground-to-consequence relation to events in the world under some description), such negative freedom entails that a free will cannot be understood as just a kind of natural cause. For I(ant, the operation of all natural causes is necessitated by previous events, and the laws of such connections are based not in these causes themselves, but rather in the" intelligible world" which somehow serves as the ground of things as they appear (G 4:453). As at least negatively free, a free will could not be understood in terms of the causal laws by which nature in general is constituted and comprehended as a natural order. 2 Yet since free will is to count as some kind of cause, Kant claims that there must be some law governing its activity, a law 1. For I(ant, there may only be one instance of a truly self-contained causal system: the universe as a whole. Whether we should say that the universe is itself autonolnous or heteronomous depends on how we understand the metaphysical commitlnents of transcendental idealism-in particular, the relationship between things-as-they-appear and things-inthemselves. If we take things-in-themselves to be ontologically distinct from and somehow the source of appearances, then even the universe as a whole is heteronomous, with the laws of its operations being wholly dependent on some order completely distinct from it. If, following Allison, we see the distinctions between nOUlnena and phenomena as epistemological, then we may be able to count the universe as autonomous; its causal laws would be based in nothing beyond itself (as there is nothing beyond it), although we may have to have ideas distinct fron1 the concepts of natural causation in play in order to be able to make sense of such concepts in the fist place. The universe, as a system of natural causes, might then be ontologically autonomous, but epistemologically heteronon10us. 2. The possibility that the universe as a whole ll1ight itself count as autonomous, and hence as free, does not effect this argument. While the argument only rules out the possibility that a free will can be seen as a particular causal power in nature, there seems little temptation in identi-
Morality and its Circle
25
which provides for some sort of necessary connection which is characteristic of such willing. Without some such law, all freedom would amount to would be random or arbitrary spontaneity, which would be free only in the sense that it could not be made sense of at all in terms of any more general considerations. Freedom without law is simply the freedom characteristic of the unintelligi ble, and this is hardly any kind of freedom to which we could be committed. Thus as a kind of cause to which we can appeal in order to make an event intelligible, a free will must have some law or principle governing its activity. Since such a will is free, however, we cannot appeal to causal laws; in fact, we cannot appeal to any law grounded in something distinct from the will or the activity of willing itself. !(ant concludes "What else, then, can freedom of the will be but autonolny, i.e., the property the will has of being a law to itself? [der Wille ist in allen Handlungen sich selbst ein Gesetz... ]"(G 4:447). Whatever law or necessity could govern a free will, it would have to be a law given by or inherent in the very nature of being a willing subject, rather than in something distinct from or conceptually prior to that nature and its defining activity. The only necessity for a free will would thus have to be a kind of imnlanent necessity, drawn from considerations that are part and parcel of what a will essentially is or does. A free will would have to be an active power that is conceptually interdefined with the law of its operation. Any power so defined could also be understood in abstraction from the laws of nature-such a power would possess a way of making sense of itself logically distinct from our ways of making sense of natural events. A free will would necessarily be autonomous, and an autonomous will would necessarily be free, at least in the negative sense defined above (i.e., that there is a way to make sense of its activity as law-governed in abstraction from the causal order of nature). But given the analysis of GIl, such autonomy already presupposes the authority of the fying a free will with nature as a whole, particularly since for purposes of ethics we are concerned with free wills that are numerically distinct from yet capable of interaction with other such wills. To accept this suggestion would leave agents as "ITIoral monads," each a whole universe to herself, and with all interaction entirely illusory. Note, however, that if the concept under consideration is not that of a free will, but of an infinite (or perfect, or omnipotent) free will, then there is no clear reason not to identify it with the universe itself. As an analysis of the nature of God, a kind of Spinozism would still be a viable option at this stage.
26
The Idea of Humanity
moral law. Kant thus concludes that "a free will and a will subject to moral laws are one and the same" (G 4:447). Although he takes himself to hav·e established the reciprocity thesis, I(ant still recognizes that his task is not yet completed. Although Kant takes himself to have shown freedom, autononlY, morality, and the moral law all to be materially equivalent, he has yet to show us that we should see anyone of these concepts as really applying to us. The analysis shows that if we buy into one of these ways of seeing ourselves, we must buy into thenl all, but Kant has not established that we are committed to seeing any of this as real for ourselves. Indeed, Kant nlight seem to have offered a strong reductio in the service of moral skepticism, showing that moral authority presupposes some sense of activity and freedonl radically distinct from anything to be found in the natural world. In order to head off this possibility, I(ant needs to show that the freedom in question is nothing so strange and unfamiliar, but something that we implicitly attribute of ourselves all the time, and that we could not even imagine what life would look like without such assumptions. To bring us to such a recognition, Kant introduces practical rationality into his web of interdefined concepts, to show us that the freedom is question is already assunled in the thought acting for the sake of some reason or other. This consideration is meant not just to draw out another strand of the web, but also to show that we are "always already" caught up within it. Practical rationality comes in both as something we must attribute to ourselves, and as a capacity that entitles and perhaps even commits us to seeing ourselves as having free wills. In the Groundwork, I(ant forswears any attempt to establish our freedom theoretically, by appeal to our knowledge of nature and the conceptual conditions of such knowledge. While the Critique of Pure Reason established that the idea of free action is logically coherent, it also established that nature must be viewed as under the "conditions of time"-i.e., each state of the universe necessarily following from the previous according to causal law. According to this conception of nature, free action is excluded in principle from what we could meet with in natural explanations. For according to the first Critique, the constitutive principles of this domain of judgment make it such that free action cannot appear as part of a proper explanation; to refer to free action in such contexts would only be to expose the failure or inadequacy of that account as a naturalistic explanation. For purposes of such explanation, freedom is not a real predicate, but rather the name for the privation
Morality and its Circle
27
of the intelligibility characteristic of successful theoretical explanation in general. Instead of trying to draw freedom out of our understanding of nature, I(ant argues that such freedom serves as a necessary presupposition of our practical perspective on deliberation and action, a perspective that we must adopt insofar as we can reflect on what we do at all. To be a self-conscious agent, one must be able to consider the merits of different courses of action-to judge reasons and, in some sense, act upon such judgments. Outside of this perspective one could only, at best, immediately respond to particular impulses, operating with that lack of reflective distance and self-scrutiny characteristic of the minds of animals (presunlably). This unreflective position hardly seems a live option for a will that is already self-conscious; the immediacy of an animal mind is not a stance one could inhabit simply by choice. Practical rationality has a dialectical advantage over the other concepts of the web in that it seems to be one capacity that even the moral skeptic must attribute to herself. For unlike morality, autonomy, and freedom, such rationality is already presupposed by the logical possibility of skeptical challenges to morality. 3 To challenge the moral law is to advance reasons against accepting and acting from it, or at least to demand reasons to accept it. Thus the coherence of practical doubt presupposes the coherence of the idea of reasons for action, taken as considerations from which one could and should act. Insofar as the skeptic wishes to advance a challenge to morality or demand a justification for it, she must at least recognize herself as practically rational, for otherwise her position undermines its own intelligibility. Thus insofar as practical questions are on the table at all, we nlust see ourselves as practically rational: to be able to assess reasons and justifications for action that can and should have some bearing on what we do. I(ant argues that implicit in this perspective is a kind of freedom, and hence that in seeing ourselves as practically rational, we are already seeing ourselves as free. I
The Idea of Humanity
28
peting options, we are in a kind of free space of thought, a space that can be navigated only through an autonomous exercise of reason: Now we cannot possibly think of a reason that consciously lets itself be directed from outside as regards its judgments; for in that case the subject would ascribe the determination of his faculty of judgn1ent not to his reason, but to an impulse. Reason must regard itself as the author of its principles independent of foreign influences. Therefore as practical reason or as the will of a rational being must reason regard itself as free. (G 4:448).
I
Freedom of the Individual.
Morality and its Circle
29
canon against self-slaughter, etc. Practical reason is thus autonomous, in that when we confront its characteristic questions, it defines what will count as answering those questions. The criteria for an adequate answer or justification here cannot be exhaustively reduced to any concepts derived from elsewhere, particularly not the naturalistic concepts of the understanding. What this means is not that, when we deliberate about action, we look away from or deceive ourselves about the fact that nature (including ourselves as natural objects) is causally deternlined. That we must act "under the idea of freedom" does not mean that freedom is an ineradicable subjective illusion that irresistibly presses on us when we make a choice. Rather, the point is that the question "What is best to do here?" itself introduces a logic in which the truth or falsity of determinism beconles irrelevant. The claim here is not psychological, but rather about the internal logic of practical reasoning; of what constitutes a question and what counts as an adequate answer. While one can certainly appeal to the previous occurrence of an event to justify a choice, this appeal can only succeed insofar as that event can be subsumed under some practical reason (i.e., be shown to be good in sonle way), and such reasons cannot be derived from or reduced to the concepts used to describe the event as a natural occurrence. As John McDowell notes, direct appeal to such causal influence cannot itself supply a justification. Rather, appeal to a causal force can only in itself serve as an explanation or "exculpation" of why someone in fact chose and acted as she did. Causal explanations are always available to make sense of action which lacks full rational justification, but they cannot in principle supply (or remove) such justifications, for they are not in the right "logical space" to either support or challenge a choice. Causal accounts may function in a theory of error, but they can play no role in defining what counts as error in the first place. Rather, the criteria for error will be supplied by the autonomous or self-defining sphere of practical reason itself. 5 Practical reasoning presupposes a context of freedom, because the logic of its justifications is fundamentally distinct from that of 5. See John McDowell, Mind and World, as well as Daniel Dennett, "Mechanisnl and Responsibility." Dennett claims that the only explanations that will be available for rational failings will be causal in nature, from either his "physical" or "design" stance. This claims seems to me too strong-some sorts of failures, particularly moral failures, will admit
30
The Idea of Humanity
the connections of events in nature, and is not bound by the temporal ordering of the latter. While Kant makes this point here with regard to practical reasoning, it applies equally well to theoretical reasoning. The freedom in question is that provided by the logic of justification in general, in the difference between the necessary connection by which reasons justify a belief or an act, and the necessary connection by which one event produces another. Kant highlights the freedom of practical reasoning here only because it is the authority of a practical law that is in question, a law that purports to be the highest criterion of justification for action. Were principles of theoretical reasoning at issue, one could equally make the point about "theorizing" under the idea of freedom. Thus for Kant, insofar as we confront questions about what to do, we must act "under the idea of freedom" in that we act from potentially self-conscious judgments about the situations we face, rather than just react to stimuli. Kant believes that such freedom suffices for the purposes of his argument, for "the same laws that would bind a being who was really free are valid equally for a being who cannot act otherwise than under the idea of its own freedom."(G 4:448n). For the moral law to be valid means that in acting, we must recognize its authority as the highest principle of justification, of constituting what is and is not a good enough reason to act. Thus if we must deliberate under the idea of freedom, which is an idea that supposedly implies the moral law, then the moral law will be immanent in the very logic of rational choice. If we must act under the idea of freedom, we must also act under the idea of morality. Whether or not we are free in any further "transcendental" sense, this connection will give the Illoral law all the authority it could need, for its authority was never supposed to go beyond the perspective of deliberation and choice (indeed, what could such an extension mean?). To say we must act under the idea of morality just means that we must take morality to bind us, which just means that it really does (in the same sense that if it is of explanations that only make sense in terms of reasons-in terms of why one might have seen a competing option as worthwhile, of why it was (rationally) tempting. All I claim here is that causal explanations may playa large role in a theory of error, and agree with Dennett that the sense that causal explanation is incompatible with responsible, rational choice stems from the false inference from the claim that causal explanation are often invoked to explain failures of reason, to the clain1 that when a causal explanation is in the offing, reason must have failed.
Morality and its Circle
31
logically necessary for us to believe something is true, we can just say that it's true).
3. The Circle At this point, I(ant seems to have established that one is practically rational iff one is (practically) free, and that such freedom entails our autonomy and hence the validity of the moral law (at least, from a practical perspective, which is the only perspective that could matter when morality is what's at stake). This analysis would seem to complete a "deduction" of morality, for one could hardly deny that one is practically rational in the first place without giving up the possibility of advancing any coherent challenges to morality at all. However, Kant does not see his argument as complete at this point. Rather, he makes the surprising confession that: It must be freely admitted that a kind of circle comes to light here fron1 which, as it seems, there is no way to escape. We take ourselves as free in the order of efficient causes in order to think ourselves under moral laws in the order of ends; and we afterwards think ourselves as subject to these laws because we have ascribed to ourselves freedom of the wilL .. (G 4:450).
I(ant's dissatisfaction here has puzzled many, since it is not clear that he has, in fact, committed hin1self to the first half of the circle. While Kant has argued that we must recognize the moral law because of the freedom inherent in the practical perspective, he has not obviously argued that the only reason we presuppose such freedom within that perspective is because of some antecedent moral commitments. According to this "preparatory argument6 ," acting under the idea of freedom is just part and parcel of practical reasoning in general, whether with respect to morality or more particular forms of interest. Although I(ant is hardly clear about how the circle closes, he seems to think that it is a problem which emerges when we turn out attention to the finitude of the human will. Although I(ant defines the will as reason in its practical use, he recognizes that human wills are not purely or perfectly rational. Rather, our practical reason operates in the context of our sensibility, in response to affects and desires which contain some contingent, non-rational 6. This name come from Henry Allison in Kant's Theory of Freedom.
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elements. Because of the role that these non- or extra-rational aspects of desire play in our motivations, we can have concerns and interests other than those that are purely necessary and universal. We can have particular commitments and projects that are not instances of moral obligation. While this is in itself nothing to be lamented (even from a purely moral point of view, since such concerns provide the initial material for rational reflection to shape), the possibility of non-moral interest opens up a new level of complexity which has not been addressed by Kant's argument so far. Kant seems to think that his analysis falls short of showing why, for creatures like ourselves who necessarily have non-moral interests, the moral law must have absolute authority over such interests: [F]or, if someone asked us why the universal validity of our tnaxim as a law must be the limiting condition of our actions, and on what we base the worth we assign to this way of actinga worth so great that there can be no higher interest anywhereand asked us how it happens that a human being believes that only through this does he feel his personal worth, in comparison with which that of an agreeable or disagreeable condition is to be held as nothing, we could give him no satisfactory answer. (G 4:449-450)
I(ant seems to think that his analysis is successful in showing that the moral law is a principle inherent in the form or basic logic of practical reasoning itself. Reasoning in general proceeds with regard to some kind of universalizability, with an aspiration to articulate its justifications in terms that reveal their significance to any other rational judge. 7 However, this sense of universalizability may be weaker than is comn10nly thought. When I act for a reason, I take some feature of my circumstances (and perhaps of myself as well) to justify my action. As a form of justification, this 7. At the end of "What is Orientation in Thinking?" !(ant offers a principle that sounds very much like the CI as a general principle of rational, autonomous thought in general, regardless of area of application: "To make use of one's own reason means no more than to ask oneself, whenever one is supposed to assume sonlething, whether one could find it feasible to make the ground or the rule on which one assumes it into a universal principle for the use of reason." }(ant calls this "merely the maxim of reason's self-preservation." (8: 146)
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reason n1ust bring the circumstances and act under some kind of more general description, the description that is supposed to be relevant to the reason holding in this case. However, to say that circumstances being C (some description) gives agents who are A good (or good enough) reason to F does not commit one to the claims that all As who find themselves in Cs are justified in F-ing. l"'here may be defeating conditions that come into play in other cases of As in Cs, such that F-ing is no longer justified. It would be a mistake, however, to go back a revise our original formulation of the n1axim upon which we acted-the say that really, we take ourselves to be justified not just because we are A and the circumstances C, but also because the defeating conditions don't hold, that their failing to hold is part of the relevant circumstances that should have been specified as part of C. Part of what's wrong with this maneuver is that the list of defeating conditions may be indefinitely great, something that in principle could not be specified for every decision. Consider the parallel with cognition: a judgment may be justified by appeal to some evidence, even though there are normally innumerable defeating conditions that would vitiate the value of such evidence. This does not mean that part of what one must adduce in order to justified in the claim is the evidence and the fact that all such defeating conditions do not hold-if this is the requirement, we are lead into Cartesian skepticism almost immediately. Rather, it is enough that one can adduce the evidence and it be the case that the defeating conditions don't hold-not that we must also be justified in thinking that they do not hold. Similarly, if my reasons really do justify my actions, it is enough that what would defeat them does not hold in the case in question-and this can be so even if I do not know, or have only a very incomplete understanding of just what would so defeat them. When I act, I take myself to have some reason that justifies my doing so (or least that shows that my act is not unjustified in any objectionable sense-whims may be such a case). However, I am not logically committed to thinking that in every other case that falls under the descriptions I take to be relevant, a similar act would also be justified-defeating conditions may come into play of which I now have no understanding. 8 However, the failure of 8. We may be committed to the claim that in any situation which is exactly like the one in question, exactly the same sort of act would be justified. If we further hold that norn1ative properties supervene on natural
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this sort of strong universality does not mean that judgments about such reasons are confined to the unique situation at hand. For even if at present unknown and unexpected defeating conditions can come into play in other situations (no matter how fine-tuned my description of what's relevant), still my claim that C justifies F in S entails that, in all such situations, the fact of C has some bearing on the status of F-C may be defeated by some new condition, but it is something that needs to be defeated. It cannot be just treated as irrelevant, but rather the maxim requires that some special story will have to be told about why C can't justify F here. My maxim commits me not so much to answers about what is to be done in similar situations, but to the kinds of questions which have to be dealt with in those situations. 9 What this all shows is that a rational agent must take universalizability (in the strong sense) as at least a relevant criterion for assessing her reasons for action. This is just a matter of knowing what reason-giving in general is, of recognizing the "form" of a ones, then we could say that any situation which was exactly like the one in question with regard to it natural properties would justify exactly the same sort of act, where again the relevant sort of sameness is to be spelled out naturalistically. However, it seems that the only such situations in which this nlay hold is ones in which the situations in question are numerically identical. If so, then the only claim we are cominitted to is if my F-ing in situation S is justified, then Iny F-ing in situation S is justified. In any event, it seems that what's important about claims of justification is that they make an act intelligible by abstracting away from some of its particulars, and relating it to a broader class of situations which can differ from it in noticeable ways. [My thanks to Aaron James for help on this point.] 9. This picture holds regardless of how we take reasons to defeat one another. Even if we think that in some cases, one kind of considerations completely "silences" another (as opposed to outranking or outweighing the other), it is still the case that the silenced consideration had some bearing on the issue, in that it was something that needed to be silenced here. Part of understanding the proper reason here is understanding just what sorts of things it silences, what count as temptations to violate it (as opposed to n1ere irrelevancies). My maxim commits ITIe to a reason that even if silenced in some other context, was something properly addressed, something which I take to provide intelligible (if ultimately) illusory grounds for doubt that must be addressed. Even if Iny maxim does not commit me to a general pro tanto reason, it does commit Ine to a general prima facie one.
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reason in abstraction from any particular "matter." An agent, insofar as she is rational, is implicitly committed to taking her reasons to hold universally, barring any special story to exclude a particular case. However, this commitment still falls short of according complete authority to such universalizability, to treating it not just as a particularly important criterion for judging reasons, but the highest, unchallengable one. What I(ant may have realized when he arrives at the circle is that the preparatory argument can only show that practically rational agent cannot be wholly indifferent to questions regarding the universalizability of their clain1s, for this norm is implicit in the whole activity of reasoning itself. Throughout his works, Kant never accepts the possibility of an agent who sees no merit at all in moral concerns 10 : in Religion Within the Li1nits of Reason Alone, I(ant will argue that even a completely wicked agent must, to some degree, recognize the moral "maxim." For I(ant, a will that attaches no significance to moral concerns is not a coherent moralpsychological possibility: wickedness consists only in systematically subordinating moral to non-moral concerns, rather than according moral considerations no respect whatsoever. l1 I(ant's worry, I suspect, is that although he has shown that practical reasoning goes on under the idea of freedom, and hence with some regard to the idea of morality (i.e., recognizing universalizability as being relevant to assessing putative reasons to act), such ideas may nevertheless be no more than regulative principles for a finite will, providing real but defeasible criteria for assessing 10. There may be one exception to this-the condition of "moral death" that I(ant mentions briefly in the Tugendlehre. The morally dead are incapable of moral feeling and, presumably, of respect for law itself. However, it is not clear that the morally dead can even be properly classed as agents with wills at all; moral death may just be a form of practical death in general. Unfortunately, Kant does not say enough about this topic to tnake clear what he has in mind here. 11. Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, 6:36: The human being (even the worst) does not repudiate the moral law, whatever his maxims, in rebellious attitude (be revoking obedience to it) .... Hence 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 (not in the material of the maxim) but in their subordination (in the form of the maxim): which of the two he makes the condition of the other. (I(ant's emphasis).
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putative justifications or explanations. In the first Critique, an "Idea" or "rational concept" provided an ideal of complete rational explanation, in which the "un'conditioned" was linked to the conditioned in a way displaying a certain systematic integrity. Kant argues that in order to rationally investigate and comprehend nature, a finite creature must be able to conceive of this sort of systematic explanation. Such ideals serve as indispensa ble heuristics for developing new concepts and choosing between competing explanations (or explanatory frameworks) with the same predictive power. In natural science, such ideas tell us to prefer simpler explanations over the more complex, those whose concepts move from the more abstract to the more particular in a smooth continuum over those with large gaps, and, in general, those explanations that show nature to have the intelligiblity characteristic of an artifact over those that do not. Theoretical reasoning proceeds under the idea of freedom, and that idea brings with it the idea of nature as a teleologically organized whole, an idea that serves as a regulative principle. I(ant's worry in GIll seems to be that the moral law might similarly only achieve the status of a regulative principle. In science, regulative principles establish reasons to which the scientist cannot be indifferent, but which are not necessarily authoritative in every instance. One is rationally compelled to choose the simpler over the more complex explanation, all other things being equal, but this "all other things equal" clause need not always or even typically hold. The more complex or discontinuous explanation may be preferable if it affords greater predicative power, or includes a greater scope of phenomena. The regulative idea establishes reasons that theory-construction must respect, but it does not establish these reasons as authoritative, as reasons that cannot be defeated by any other considerations. Everything Kant has argued with regard to universalizability could be argued, mutatis mutandis, for a teleological conception of nature. I(ant's treatment of practical reason so far has not introduced any considerations that would not have analogues in the case the theoretical reason-the accounts should be completely symmetrical. Yet while we can intelligibly engage in theory-building only if take the characteristics of purposiveness as desiderata in such theories, this hardly means that no scientific claim can be accepted unless it can be integrated with such a purposive story. Purposiveness comprises'important theoretical concerns, but does not rise to the level of a categorical imperative.
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Kant's worry, then, may be that the conceptual analysis that culminates in the preparatory argument only establishes the necessary relevance of moral considerations, but not their unconditional authority over any other sort of reason. If this is indeed Kant's concern, it emerges here just where we should expect it to; when Kant turns his attention to the finitude or imperfection of human reason. For it is only in the context of such finitude that questions of authority, as distinct from mere relevance, can arise. Consider a perfectly rational agent. Such an agent would lack even the possibility of nlistake or transgression and hence must lack all motivational capacities other than those inherent in pure practical reason itself. The only interest that such a creature could recognize or act on would be the moral law. This condition is what Kant calls "holiness," and is supposedly characteristic of the will of God, which is notl.affected by any sort of sensibility or receptivity, and is hence immune from error or sin. This sort of will can only recognize reasons that are immanent in the form of practical rationality itselfwhich, if Kant's analysis is correct, are moral reasons, the concern for universalizability. Since these reasons are the only ones possible, no challenge to their authority coming from some other kind of interest could arise; moral reasons need not make any claim to authority, for they would necessarily stand unopposed in every deliberative situation. In the holy will, there can be no distinction between pro tanto and conclusive reasons, between what's relevant and what's decisive, and, more generally, between the regulative and the constitutive. This point can also be put in terms of the distinction between formal and material aspects of practical reasons. For Kant, formal criteria are those principles by which we pick out or assign something to a basic conceptual category, principles that can also provide some grounds for evaluation. Material considerations, in contrast, are those that are not involved in making such an assignment-while relevant, their relevance is contingent; the conceptual category would still be available even if these concerns were no longer recognized. In the case of practical reasoning, universalizability is one such formal concern. One could not even recognize a claim as a instance of such reason-giving if it was not meant to bring actions, circumstances, and agents under descriptions such that in any case where such descriptions were instanced, there would be at least a prima facie reason for acting. Material aspects of practical reasons will be just those that are not drawn from a basic understanding of what reason-giving in general is, including
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the value and disvalue we see in physical pleasure and pain, along with the objects of our particular projects and attachments. These concerns are material in that we can logically construct a world in which these things do not provide practical reasons (although other things do), even if we cannot, or can only barely, imagine what it would be like to inhabit such a world. In contrast, we could not recognize a claim that was not meant to be relevant to similar cases as an instance of reason-giving at all. Here we have not a failure of imagination, but an inability to apply the most basic aspects of the logic of justification. To use Kant's terms, we 11light say that the distinction between formal and material criteria corresponds to the limits of logical and real possibility, respectively, distinguishing between what we could consistently model in thought and what we could imagine actually inhabiting. The criteria by which one both recognizes and evaluates the form of a reason would be all that a holy will would consider; no material considerations could obtrude. !(ant seems to think that material considerations only become available to us through sensibility, which God lacks. Put another way, material considerations nlark the limits of our practical imagination; God, as infinite, has no such limits-He can equally inhabit a world in which pleasure is desirable as one in which it is not. Since all such material options are equally available to Him, He can be committed to none in particular. Only formal considerations could come into play, there would be no added question about whether, and to what extent, such considerations outrank 111aterial ones. The preparatory argument, as an exercise in conceptual analysis, draws only formal conclusions. That argument thus provides a kind of deduction for the moral law, but a deduction that can only be addressed to holy wills, in which the principles inherent in the very fortn of reasoning, for want of the possibility of challenge, can claim authority by default. However, this deduction is incomplete when addressed to finite creatures like ourselves who necessarily have non-moral interests, interests that make up the "necessary end" that Kant calls "happiness," and which he sharply distinguishes from moral concerns. Because of these potentially competing interests, it will not suffice to show that the very form of reasoning gives us concern for the universalizability of our maxims. For imperfect wills, getting a principle on the table is not enough to establish that that principle always carries the day. Rather, in order to establish the authority of the moral law for finite wills, we must also show why this concern has "lexical prior-
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ity" over all other concerns, why it isn't just one interest among others, as defeasible in principle as the regulative maxims of theory-building. This problem did not arise when we considered only a pure will because in that case, the interests of pure reason were the only ones that could come into play. In the case of a pure will, no question about the authority of moral reasons with respect to others could arise. However, this question of the relative priority of different kinds of reason becomes pressing when we turn to a finite or discursive will, which necessarily has heterogeneous interests which open up the possibility of a real conflict between distinct kinds of reasons to act. It is important to note here that while I(ant takes himself to have shown that the moral law is a principle immanent in the very form of practical reasoning, he does not assume that formal considerations necessarily take precedence over material ones. 12 Kant does not assume that formal considerations are indefeasible, that they represent a conceptual framework that, by virtue of that fact, cannot be challenged by any contingent object-level judgments. While Kant does think that, in the practical case, the formal considerations do turn out to have complete authority over the material ones (i.e., those of "self-love"), he takes this conclusion to be a synthetic claim requiring more argument than mere conceptual analysis can provide. Such authority is not an immediate inference from the status of moral principles as formal considerations. Surprisingly, Kant seems to anticipate in his practical philosophy much of the thrust of Quine's famous attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction. Despite the conceptual connections between practical rationality, freedom, autonomy and the moral law, I(ant recognizes that morality's deduction will not be complete until he has established the distinctly synthetic a priori proposition that "an absolutely good will is that whose maxinl can always contain itself regarded 12. This inference is often attributed to !(ant, and tends to draw a great deal of fire from his critics. Few deny that I(ant's conception of morality captures something of relevance to practical deliberation; the attacks, typically, clainl either what I(ant has articulated is not the principle or most significant part of lTIorality, or that such moral concerns serve as one interest among others, even if especially important. See, e.g. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. The tendency to take this inference as imnlediate has, I believe, made it difficult for many recent Kantians to engage this sort of criticism as fully as !(ant makes possible.
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as universallaw"(G 4:447). This, I take it, is just another way of framing the problem of authority, which would be solved by showing that morality is not just one good among others, but a highest concern that serves as a defeating condition for any other sort of value or justification that could be relevant to our choosing. Kant did analytically derive such authority from the concept of an absolutely good will in GI, but did so only by relying on added premises drawn from "ordinary moral consciousness." These assumptions served to rule out the possibility that the goodness of the good will could be defined in terms of the value of its effects or intended effects (where such effects were not themselves already described in morally-laden terms). In GI, I(ant had to draw on the belief that the happiness of the wicked is at least worthless, a claim that cannot be imlTIediately extracted from the mere idea of a good will, but rather requires a certain moralized view of such a will, already partly framed in terms of the notion of moral desert. The circle closes in GIll just when Kant makes a first attempt to establish the authority of the moral law by just such an appeal to our sense of self-worth, the connection implicit in the argument of GI. A morally well-constituted agent sees her moral standing as determining her "worthiness of being happy," where this worthiness is a necessary condition of the value of such happiness. This understanding of desert is just a clearer expression of the intuition upon which GI relied, that the happiness of the wicked cannot have worth. Yet as Kant observes, this conception of self-worth, and its relation to happiness, is itself conceptually consequent upon the moral law. Only a creature that already recognizes the authority of morality can conceive of itself this way, and hence appeal to such a self-conception cannot, without circularity, serve as further grounds for the authority of morality in the first place. While Kant was free to draw on such a morally-laden self-conception in GI to articulate the moral law and lend it an initial plausibility, he now realizes that he cannot appeal to such considerations to defend the authority of that law without lapsing into circularity.
4. The Two Standpoints and the Intelligible World In response to the emergence of the circle, Kant invokes the apparatus of transcendental idealism, which is apparently supposed to exorcise the problem. The crucial idea, Kant clailTIs, is the distinction between the intelligible and sensible worlds, between the two "standpoints" of freedom and nature. Kant tells us that even in the "commonest understanding," there is an i~EU~i!_C!!§!tp_c!LQJ1_be~ _
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tween "representations which are given to us from somewhere else and in which we are passive" and "those which we produce simply from ourselves and in which we show our activity."(G 4:451). For Kant, this distinction corresponds to the distinction between appearances and things-in-themselves, between the sensible and intelligible worlds. 13 As creatures that reason, that can think and reflect self-consciously, we are entitled to see ourselves not just as deterlnined elements of the sensible world, but as also members of an intelligible world. For as the preparatory argument showed, such reasoning evinces a freedom that cannot be located in the world of sense. Rather, in grasping the justificatory relations between reasons and particular beliefs or aims, rational thought displaya spontaneity which "distinguishes [human beings] from all other things." (G 4:452). Unfortunately, it is hardly clear what work can be done by this reference to the "two standpoints" of the intelligible and sensible worlds that was not already acconlplished by the preparatory argument. The distinction between these worlds does allow us to coherently conceive of a kind of freedon1 that is consistent with the deterministic order of the natural world. In this respect, appeal to the two standpoints retraces the work of the Third Antinomy in showing the logical compatibility of the idea of freedom, as an idea inextricably intertwined with rational thought, with a deterministic understanding of nature. However, if this is all that appeal to the two standpoints does, then it does not seem to add anything new to Kant's claims about "acting under the idea of freedom." Indeed, right before he announces that we have escaped the circle by appeal to this distinction, Kant draws this conclusion from it, which seems to just restate the preparatory argument: 13. Throughout this chapter, I treat the noumena/phenomena distinction as equivalent to the intelligible/sensible distinction. Strictly speaking, this is not quite right; noumena, I take it, represents a kind of epistemological limit concept-defined negatively in contrast to a positive conception of what we can have knowledge of, the phenomena, or things-as-they-appear. In contrast, the intelligible is the positive conception of these same entities, understood not just as the point where knowledge must end, but rather as reasons, as justifications or values presupposed by a kind of rational endeavor. Noumena are these considerations seen from the perspective of the understanding; intelligibles, from the standpoint of reason. However, this distinction is not relevant to the argument here, and is explicitly signaled when it conles into,play.
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As a rational being, and thus as a being belonging to the intelligible world, the human being can never think of the causality of his own will otherwise than under the idea of freedom; for, independence from the determining causes of the world of sense (which reason must always ascribe to itself) is freedom. With the idea of freedom the concept of autonomy is no inseparably combined, and with the concept of autonomy the universal principle of lTIorality, which in idea is the ground of all actions of rational beings, just as the law of nature is the ground of all appearances. (G 4:452-453).
Reference to the two standpoints and to the intelligible world thus seems to be just an elaboration of the points already made in the preparatory argument, now expressed through the apparatus of transcendental idealism. As such, the circle might seem to be a red herring-a false problem that only allows I(ant to recast the preparatory argument in the terminology of his system, but which does not add anything new to the argument itself (save perhaps the obscuring of some of that argument's difficulties). Insofar as the circle is a problem about the possibility of freedom, it is solved by appeal to the two standpoints; but then, that had already been solved by the exhibiting the connection between reason and the idea of freedom. Insofar as the circle represents a real problem, about the authority of the moral law and not just its necessary relevance, appeal to the two standpoints does not seem to make any substantial advance on it. So read, consideration of the two standpoints can only be either redundant or otiose. However, I(ant's introduction of the two standpoints may do more than take an argument he has already made and recast it in the more technical terms of his system. In "Morality as Freedom,"14 Christine I(orsgaard suggests a way that Kant's use of the apparatus of transcendental idealism may shed light on the authority (rather than just the relevance) of the moral law. I(orsgaard notes that Kant does not invoke the intelligible/sensible distinction simply to defend the conceivability of freedom, but also to appeal to the priority that the intelligible world has over the sensible in his system. As I(ant says: the intelligible world contains the ground of the world of sense and therefore also the ground of its laws; consequently, the intelligible world is (and must be thought of as) directly legislative 14. Christine M. I
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for Iny will (which belongs wholly to the intelligible world). (G 4:453).
I(orsgaard argues that consideration of the foundational role of the intelligible world may serve to break the circle, and establish the ultimate authority of morality over any other kind of concern. IS At this point in his argument I(ant takes himself to have established that insofar as we are rational, we must be able to conceive of ourselves as members of an intelligible world, as purely free creatures who will in accordance with the moral law. He has also established that as sensibly-affected creatures, we can also conceive of ourselves as responding to the promptings of our nature-where reason is subordinated or perhaps ultimately defined in terms of something sensibly given (i.e., where all reasoning is merely instrumental to our naturally given ends, or is itself "naturalized" as in Hume and Quine). Given these two ways of understanding ourselves, the problem of authority is the problem of how to orient ourselves in deliberation-the question of which aspect of our nature to see as central or essential and which aspect to see as merely conditioned or derivative. I(orsgaard argues that to recognize the authority of the moral law is to identify primarily with one's intelligible aspect, which, as intelligible, counts as part of the grounds of the sensible world. If so, then our interest in morality, in identifying with our intelligible aspect, is our commitment to seeing ourselves, in practical deliberation and action, as part of the basis of the phenomenal world, the world in which we must act and which determines the nature of our sensibility. As Korsgaard concludes: .. .if by choosing the maxim of self-love you allow the laws of nature to determine your actions, then you are in effect surrendering your place among "the grounds of the sensible world and its
15. I(orsgaard frames this issue not in terms of the ultimate authority of the moral law, but rather in its motivational power. However, since that question is not simply how moral concern can motivate us, but rather why it is a motivation that has priority over all others, I take it to come to be pretty much the same thing as the question of authority. Questions of authority and motivation would come apart if we were understanding motivation only as a psychological power. However, since I(orsgaard here considers motivation exclusively from a practical or normative point of view, a necessarily overriding motive should just be the same thing as an authoritative concern or interest.
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laws." The existence of your will in the noumenal world Inakes no difference to the character of the phenoil1enal world. For your will is determined by the laws of nature, and those in turn can be accounted for by other forces in the noull1enal world. Although you are free, you could just as well not have been. Your freedom makes no difference. (Creating the Kingdom of Ends, 168-9).
For Korsgaard, identification with our intelligible aspect is the "choice of activity over passivity," the choice to see oneself as being a source, and not just merely an element, of the way things really are. I believe this interpretation both accurately represents !(ant and directly addresses the problem of the circle. However, this appeal cannot solve that problem, but only serves to relocate the initial circularity. For to dissolve the circle, !(ant needs to show how we have an interest in seeing ourselves as moral subjects that does not itself already presuppose moral commitments. However, to the extent that being among the grounds of the sensible world constitutes such an interest, it also tacitly assumes the morally-laden selfconception that it was meant to ground. Our interest in the sort of activity to which Korsgaard appeals is, ultimately, itself an interest available only to a subject that recognizes her moral standing as the most essential aspect of herself. This further circularity emerges when we try to make sense of just what relevant sort of "grounding" between the intelligible and the sensible could be here, and hence of just what kind of grounding role we are aspiring to play in our identification with our intelligible aspect. In its most general form, I(ant takes the relation of ground to consequence is one of the basic logical forms of judgment, the hypothetical. Hypothetical judgments assert some kind of necessary connection between distinct things or considerations' a connection that is supposed to do some kind of justificatory or explanatory work (CPR A73/B98, Logic, §25). In the first Critique, !(ant establishes one determinate sense of this connection: the connection of cause and effect in time under natural law. Although I(orsgaard does not make the clainl directly, she often presents the relation of intelligible to sensible in ways that suggest it is a causal or productive one. She says that the intelligible "is what we conceive as lying behind the phenomenal world and giving that world its character."(CKE p.168, my emphasis). In being unable to know the noumenal, we are ignorant of its "mecha\nisms, or of how these various agencies generate the world of apiPearances."(CKE p.168, my emphasis). It is hard not to read these \
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metaphors in a productive sense, even if this is not what I(orsgaard intends. She claims that to choose self-love is to be fundamentally "passive," giving up on the attempt to "make a difference in the world." Given this context, the reading that suggests itself is that, by choosing self-love, we make our causal efficacy in the world a sham, relegating ourselves to nothing more than "a mere conduit for natural forces"(CKE, p.168). As has often been noted, however, the relation of cause and effect does not seem to be appropriate to the relation between the intelligible world and the sensible world in general. Causation, as a category, can only apply to appearances,16 to intuitions given in space and time. As such, this relation is bound by the "conditions of time," the causal determinism that excludes any role for freedom whatsoever. Given the epistemological and metaphysical commitments of transcendental idealism, the relation of intelligible to sensible cannot be causal; and even if it could be, it would hardly be what we could turn to in order to establish the authority of morality, an authority that can only be addressed to free agents as free agents. The question then, is what kind of difference would make a difference, insofar as the authority of morality is concerned? If we do not understand the ground-to-consequence relation causally here, what other way is there to render it? I(ant seems to suggest an alternative when he discusses the special power by which we may claim membership in the intelligible world: Now, a human being really finds in himself a capacity by which he distinguishes himself from all other things, even from himself insofar as he is affected by objects, and that is reason. This, as pure self-activity, is raised even above the understanding by this . . . [that] reason, on the contrary, show in what we call "ideas" a spontaneity so pure that it thereby goes far beyond anything that sensibility can ever afford it, and proves its highest occupation in distinguishing the world of sense and the world of understanding from each other and thereby marking out limits for the understanding itself. (G 4:452).
16. Or at least we can only make sense of it when it is taken under the "epistemic conditions" constitutive of appearances. Since in action we wish not only to make a difference in the world, but make some sort of difference we can make sense of, the truth of Allison's account would not effect the basic point.
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The Idea of Humanity
The intelligible world is one we have access to as creatures endowed with reason, and reason provides a relation of ground to consequence quite different from that of the understanding. This relation is not a causal one, but one of justification: a reason grounds a belief or intention in a way quite distinct from how a cause grounds its effect, but this is still a relation of necessity, mediated by general principles or laws. When I(ant refers to reason's "ideas" here, he is referring to reason's ideals of explanatory or justificatory completeness-such as the teleological ideal that served as a regulative principle for theoretical reasoning. For !(ant, these ideals of justificatory con1pleteness cannot be drawn from nature-they are to be derived neither from what is given in intuition, or in the concepts of the understanding. Rather, these ideas are aspects of reason alone, as the power not of applying concepts to intuitions, but rather as the faculty of justification, which appraises only fully formed judgments with determinate propositional content. The intelligibility of the intelligible world, then, may simply by that of reasoned justification in general. The necessary connection here is not that between cause and effect, but between a reason and the belief or intention that it justifies; the necessity in question is ineluctably normative, not causal. The intelligible world would then be something like the realm of reasons, the sensible, the realm of acts or beliefs that they can justify or indict. Unlike the causal relation, that left no room for freedom, this relation would of necessity presuppose freedom, as the preparatory argument demonstrated. If this construal is correct, then to count oneself, as a rational being, as an intelligible is to see rational nature as itself a fundamental reason or justification for action. To identify with the intelligible is, in other words, to see rational nature (what·\I(ant calls "humanity") as an end-in-itself, as something of irreducible and underived value, to which we could appeal in order to satisfy the principle of sufficient reason when it is brought to bear in practical matters. But if this is I(ant's argument in GIll (as I think it is), then the circle has just reinscribed itself at another level of reflection. If we see our humanity as in itself a fundamental and sufficient reason for action (however this is to be cashed out), then we do indeed have good reason to recognize the authority of morali~y. But this concern is just itself a commitment to the inherent dignity of rational agents; a belief that rational agents are themselves fundamental pivots of justification, or, in !(antian terms,
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ends-in-themselves. But such a commitment to viewing humanity (i.e., rational nature) as an end-in-itself expresses just another formulation of the Categorical Imperative, which, as an imperative, is itself an assertion of morality's authority. If so, then we have not succeeded in finding a way into moral authority from some conception of 'ourselves that is not already morally inflected; rather, we have only justified one way of asserting morality's authority by tacitly assuming the commitments expressed in another. I(ant would then have succeeded in deducing the authority of the Formula of Universal Law only by smuggling in those moral commitments already expressed in the Formula of Humanity. And I(ant never suggests that we have some independent route to that formula, which would make the Formula of Humanity conceptually prior to the Formula of Universal Law. What this argument has done is to show that the Formula of Universal Law binds us only insofar as we are committed to seeing rational agents as ends-in-themselves. In its turn, the Fornlula of Universal Law can also be seen as defining (at least in part) what it means to so regard other rational agents: i.e., to see them as fellow judges to whom putative justifications for action must be addressed, who provide alternate points of view from which these justifications can be challenged, indicted, or vetoed. GIll does not escape the circle, but rather shows these two moral conceptions to be ineluctably inter-defined: the Formula of Universal Law finds its justification in the Formula of Humanity, and the Formula of Humanity only acquires a definite sense through the Formula of Universal Law. While this connection serves to enrich our understanding and appreciation of all the relevant normative concepts involved, it fails to remove the circularity which constituted the problem for which !(ant invoked our intelligible vocation in the first place. What GIll has done is to show that, when we try to justify one version of the moral law, we can do so only by appealing to a tacit acceptance of another version of that law. We can establish the authority of the moral law as a principle of universal law-giving only if we already presuppose a conception of rational nature as itself of a special sort of non-derivative value; i.e., only if we already recognize ourselves as beings possessed of a distinctively I(antian sort of dignity. When we interrogate the Formula of Universal Law, the Formula of Humanity emerges, and when we try to give sense to the Formula of Humanity, we come to articulate the Formula of Universal Law. To these two .expressions of the CI we may also add
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The Idea of Humanity
the third, the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends. I(ant tells us that the I(ingdom of Ends represents the ideal (or telos) formed by the previous formulas of the CI considered together. Such a Kingdom of Ends constitutes a realm of rational beings who all recognize each other as ends-in-themselves (as defined by the FH, which supplies the relevant "matter" here), bound by the principle of autonomy (articulated by the FUL, which defines the relevant "form") (G 4:436). Indeed, toward the end of GIll Kant claims that we can represent our commitn1ent to the authority of the moral law by appeal to this ideal: [T]he idea of a pure world of understanding as a whole of all intelligences, to which we ourselves belong as rational beings (though on the other side we are also members of the world of sense), remains always a useful and permitted idea for the sake of a rational belief ... useful and permitted for producing in us a lively interest in the moral law by means of the noble ideal of a universal kingdon1 of ends in themselves (rational beings) to which we can belong as members only when we carefully conduct ourselves in accordance with maXilTIS of freedom as if they were laws of nature. (G 4:462-3)
What we have here, then, are three persons of a kind of conceptual trinity; three inter-defined, but distinct, aspects of one integrated moral self-conception. The supposed equivalence of these formulae is not to be found at the level of content: what is said or claimed in one need not logically entail all and only what is claimed in the others. Rather, this equivalence is to be found at the level of self-conception: each of these norms requires commitment to the others if it is to have both authority and a determinate meaning for the subject who recognizes it. I ? When anyone of these aspects is called into the foreground, the others recede, and provide its meaning and justification. Each part serves to justify and 17. The sort of equivalence I have in mind here is something like that between that of material, formal, and final causes for Aristotle, particularly in the case of a living thing. To see the creature in terms of the right matter (i.e., organic matter, flesh), one must also have open the idea of is characteristic or normal functioning (respiration, digestion, growth, self-maintenance, and reproduction) and the idea of the healthy state of that thing, what it is to be functioning well. These constitute the three axes by which son1ething can be understood as a form of life; and while
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define the others, but nothing can justify the whole as such, nor can these norms be translated or reduced to other sorts of concepts altogether. We are now in a position to answer the question posed earlier to Korsgaard's account, viz., the question of just what kind of difference would make the difference upon which morality's authority hinges. As it turns out, the difference that can make that difference here is a distinctly moral one. Our problem is not that if we didn't identify with our intelligible aspect, we would be unable to see ourselves as n1aking a causal difference in the world, as being effective powers that can change what's going on. Rather, what is at stake is that unless we see ourselves first as intelligences, our humanity cannot make a difference as to what is or is not justified in the world, to what has or lacks value. If we are not first intelligences, then what we are could in no way justify any aspect of the world; our being would add (or subtract) nothing to the normative landscape. Such a conception of humanity is certainly something that most uncorrupted people would readily grant. Yet despite such widespread acknowledgement, this understanding still presupposes an ineluctably moral commitment, the assumption that the world stands in need of some kind of justification, and that something about its relation to self-conscious choosing subjects, i.e., to us, is what could ultimately provide that justification. On the account offered in the Groundwork, it turns out that to recognize the authority of morality, we must already be committed to seeing humanity not just as part of what's in the world, but also as something that could furnish the world, or some aspects of it, a point or a meaning, as something which is an end-in-itself through which value can come to inhabit the world. 18 If so, then I(ant has not succeeded in escaping his circle, but has only managed to give it an added dimension and greater depth by connecting the initial each is not propositionally equivalent or synonymous to the others, there is a sort of conceptual equivalence between them, such that one could not understand one without being able to understand the others. In I(antian terms, the equivalence is at the level of the transcendental, not the empirical (in structure of the judging consciousness, not in the content of things judged). 18. Cf. Religion 6:60: "That which alone can make a world the object of divine decree and the end of creation is Humanity (rational being in general as pertaining to the world) in its full moral perfection." (l(ant's emphasis).
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concerns about autononlY and universalizability to seemingly orthogonal ones about human dignity and rationally governed communities. The argument reveals greater depth and articulateness to our moral concerns, but none of this shows that moral authority can be established without in some way presupposing it under another guise.
THE FACT OF REASON
5. The Ratio Cognescendi of Freedom In his subsequent Critique of Practical Reason, !(ant seems to realize that the strategy of GIll can only relocate, rather than ren10ve, the circle of G 450. In the second Critique, Kant does not attempt to establish the authority of morality by appeal to some conceptually prior sense of ourselves as free or truly active beings, by exploiting some antecedent sense of ourselves as first and foremost "intelligences." Rather, !(ant executes what has been called his "great reversal". Kant now no longer hopes to offer us a way into the circle, but instead simply seems to en1brace it, explicitly rejecting any attempt to base the moral law's authority on any prior or more general commitment to freedom in thought or action. I(ant now claims in the second Critique that the authority of that law is itself the ground, and the only ground there could be, for seeing ourselves as free in the first place. Rather than provide a deduction for the moral law from some conceptually prior sense of our freedom, !(ant now invokes the authority of that law itself as the basis of a deduction of human freedom in general. !(ant emphasizes that while he still takes freedom to be both a necessary and sufficient condition for the authority of the moral law, such authority is nevertheless taken to be prior to the idea of such freedom for purposes of philosophical justification and understanding. !(ant claims that it is only by first recognizing ourselves as bound by the moral law that we can grasp what freedom and autonomy can be for us, in the sense that is relevant to morality. In a fan10us footnote to the preface, !(ant tells us that: ... whereas freedom is indeed the ratio essendi of the moral law, the moral law is the ratio cognoscendi of freedom. For, had not the moral law already been distinctly though in our reason, we should never consider ourselves justified in assuming such a thing as freedom even though it is not self-contradictory). But
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were there no freedolTI, the moral law \vould not be encountered at all in ourselves. (CPrR 5:5n, J(ant's emphasis).
With this change of tack, Kant is relieved of the onus of articulating a sense of freedom that is rich enough to support the authority of morality, but which is not already freighted with our moral commitments, and which is more basic and indisputable than those commitments themselves. Yet while I(ant casts off this philosophical burden, his new approach only seems to relocate the problem of morality's claim to authority. If the moral law's authority is now conceptually prior to our freedom, in what way could a further justification of that authority be provided? I(ant's answer is as perplexing as it is initially disappointing: . . . the objective reality of the moral law cannot be proved through any deduction, by any efforts of theoretical reason, speculative or empirically supported, so that, even if one were willing to renounce its apodictic certainty, it could not be confirmed by experience and thus proved a posteriori. Nevertheless, it is firmly esta blished of itself [und steht dennoch fur sich selbst fest]. (CPrR 5:47)
Instead of providing a deduction for the moral law, I(ant here suggests that in the practical case, the demand for such a deduction is inappropriate. For I(ant, the unconditional authority that the moral law has over all other interests is somehow directly given; yet even as a given, it has "apodictic certainty," being as firmly secured as any demonstrable truth. Rather than provide a justification for the law, !(ant seems to think that it is a fact that, when properly understood, shows itself to be in need of no further support or justification. Not surprisingly, this "Fact of Reason" has been derided as being either blatantly question-begging, or as betraying I(ant's lapse back into the kind of rational intuitionisn1 which he had supposedly rejected (and despite I(ant's frequent claims that no sort of intuition, intellectual or otherwise, could be the basis of this Fact).19 Schopenhauer ridiculed what he saw as the transformation 19. Kant tells us that while "the consciousness of this fundamental law may be called a fact of reason", "one cannot ferret it out from antecedent data of reason, such as the consciousness of freedom (for this is not antecedently given) .. ."(CPrR 5:31). The fact is "based on no pure or em-
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of practical reason into "a delphic temple in the human soul," and Hegel concluded that for Kant, the "revelation given to reason" remains "the final undigested lump left within the stomach. "20 In the rest of this chapter, I will first consider some common interpretations of how this Fact of Reason might be grounded. These interpretations all try to assimilate this alleged fact to sonle more familiar move in I(ant's system. Consciousness of the moral law is frequently likened to an object of intuition, or a category of a distinct kind of practical understanding, or as specifying an 0 bjeet of rational faith, akin to the postulates of practical reason. I will argue that while there is some truth in each of these COlnparisons, none is by itself adequate to make sense of morality's authority for Kant. To the extent that any of these interpretations work, they do so only by once again reinscribing the circle in another place. Such reinscription is not necessarily a fault; since I(ant seenlS to embrace the circle in the second Critique, we perhaps should not expect any argument to dissolve it. However, we are still entitled at least to an argument that shows us why such circularity is not vicious, an argument that at least dispels the sense that unless we overcome such circularity, morality lacks some sort of justification that it very much needs. The above interpretations do not remove the circle, nor do they exorcise the thought that such circularity vitiates morality's clainls on us. In the next chapter, I will argue that I(ant does have, in the Fact of Reason, an argument of the second sort, aimed at neutralizing the motivations for skepticism rather than directly proving the authority of the moral law. This may not provide the moral law all the justification we could want, but it does serves to give the law it all the justification that it could need.
6. The Fact's Content The first step in assessing the place of the Fact of Reason in I(ant's moral philosophy should be a clear exposition of its content. Unpirical intuition," and to derive it from the freedom of the will "an intellectual intuition would be needed, and here we cannot assume it." (CPr R 5:31). While morality involves a recognition of oneself as a melnber of "an intelligible order of things", we make this recognition "not by virtue of a particular intuition but because of certain dynamic laws." (CPrR 5:42,). 20. Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality, G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, vol.3, 461, both as quoted in Henry Allison, Kant's Theory of Freedom 230.
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fortunately, the Fact's content is alnl0st as obscure as its justification. I(ant gives a variety of descriptions of this content, which, as Lewis White Beck notes, usually have both an "objective" and "subjective" variant. When presented "objectively," the content of the fact is expressed as some authority over us or some capacity within us. When presented "subjectively," the content of the fact becomes our consciousness or awareness of such authorities or capacities. In his Commentary, Beck gives as the objective content of the fact "the moral law" (CPrR 5:47) and "autonomy in the principle of morality"(CPrR 5:42). On the subjective side Beck cites "consciousness of the nl0ral laws" (CPrR 5:31, 46) and "consciousness of freedonl of the will"(CPrR 5:42, 46). The ambiguity between this sort of awareness and what it is supposed to be an awareness of only grows when we look to Kant's subsequent works, where the fact sometimes becomes freedom itself (Critique of Judgment, §91), the law of freedom (Metaphysics of Morals, Rechtslehre §6, Intro. to the Tugendlehre, xxiii) and the Categorical Imperative (Opus Postulnum, xxi, 21). (See Beck, Commentary, p.166n). I(ant even seems unsure at points whether the term 'fact' is appropriate, occasionally referring to this proposition only as "a fact as it were" (gleichsam als ein Faktum ). ( CPrR 5:47, 55) while never explaining the reasons for this qualification. The shifting content of the Fact should not be cause for concern. I(ant considers the moral law, autonomy, the practicality of pure reason and positive freedom to all be materially equivalent, as esta blished in the conceptual analysis of GIl & III). If so, then nothing save clarity is imperiled by I(ant's substituting these terms for one another depending on which aspect of morality he wishes to emphasize (at least insofar as these are extensional contexts). I(ant also has license to move back and forth between the subjective and objective variants if we read "consciousness of" not as synonymous with "belief in" but as nl0re akin to "knowledge of," such that such a state is, by definition, veridical. If so, then we are entitled to infer the authority of the law from our consciousness of it just as we could infer the truth of p from our knowledge that p, (which is, admittedly, a pretty degenerate sort of inference). Moreover, the implication also runs the opposite way, at least if we are considering sound judging subjects. The only way that the moral law could be authoritative over our choices is by being at least implicitly recognized and acted on by the agents to whom it applies. If so, then we can infer our consciousness of the law's authority from the fact of that authority, in the sense that the law must be
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accessible to the human perspective, and will set the standard for what counts as sound judgment from that perspective. This is not the case for the laws of nature, which function perfectly well without our recognizing or having any access to them, nor does our ignorance of such laws necessarily indict our ability to make judgments about nature. Norms of reasoning, unlike causal laws, must be open to the consciousness of a well-constituted thinker. 21 Thus we can infer our consciousness of the law from the fact of its authority (insofar as we are properly constituted judging subjects), just as we could infer its authority from our consciousness of it. So long as we are agents who are thinking rationally, the law and our awareness turn out to be mutually implicated. If so, then Kant may be entitled not only to move between the moral law, autonomy, and the practicality of pure reason, but also between all such things and our consciousness of them. These are all materially equivalent, and hence all equally available to Kant as expressions of his Fact. For purposes of clarity and consistency, I will take the Fact of Reason to be our consciousness of the authority of moral law, our consciousness that we stand under some kind of unconditional obligations (still leaving their content open). Admittedly, !(ant only presents the fact as consciousness of the authority of the moral law, rather than of just the authority of some moral law or other. However, for !(ant the former fornlulation should turn out to be equivalent to the latter. Given the analysis of GIl, one stands under some nl0ral law in particular iff one stands under the moral law, which expresses the form of moral authority in general. Thus, to recognize that we stand under some moral laws at all (even if we are unsure of their content) conlmits us to recognizing that we at least stand under the formal aspect of any such law-i.e., the general principle of law-governedness, which is what the moral law 21. This is not to deny that such norms, either practical or theoretical, be authoritative even for subjects who are unable to recognize them. All that follows from what has been claimed here is that such cases are necessarily exceptional, that we have to tell a special story about such subjects and their incapacities, while no such special story need be told about normal subjects who can recognize and act from such principles. The clailTI here is only that laws would have to be available to human consciousness in general, and this does not inlply that they need be available to everything we could count as human. See Michael Thompson, "The Representation of Life."
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supposedly expresses. In order to establish the Fact of Reason, what Kant needs to show is only that we must see ourselves as always already under some kind of unconditional obligation, even if we do not know what. He must show that we must at least recognize that we stand under some (synthetic) law, even if we cannot decide on its content. Once this premise is established, everything else about the moral law, autonomy, freedom, and the practicality of pure reason follows from the preceding analyses given in the Groundwork. 7. A Fact of Rational Intuition? For many, the appearance of the Fact of Reason represents a lamentable relapse of Kant into a kind of rational intuitionism. I(arl Ameriks argues that I(ant thought that a deduction was needed for the moral law only so long as he was confident that he had such a deduction ready to hand. 22 Ameriks contends that having realized that the strategy suggested in Groundwork III fails to escape its circle, Kant simply makes morality a special exception to the justificatory requirements of the critical philosophy, and "acknowledged that his practical philosophy was "dogmatic" and that only his theoretical philosophy was to be called critical." On this view, the fact that we stand under obligation (or are free, autonomous, etc.) is just a kind of deliverance of pure reason as a kind of perceptive faculty, which gives us the fact in a way that can be neither questioned, justified, or further articulated. If this is the basis of the Fact, I(ant would seem to be making an ad hoc exception to the claim that our understanding is purely discursive, and instead allowing us a glimpse into the transcendent by way of reason. Thus I(ant's ethics, like Aristotle's, would seem late in the day to turn away from the merely hunlan and instead seize upon what we might share with the mind of God as the ultimate basis of our moral comnlitments. However, in the second Critique Kant frequently claims that no sort of intuition, intellectual or otherwise, could be the basis of the Fact. He tells us that while "consciousness of this fundamental law may be called a fact of reason," "one cannot reason it out from antecedent data of reason, for example, the consciousness of freedom (for this is not antecedently given to us) ... "( CPrR 5:31). The fact is "based on no pure or empirical intuition," and to derive it from the freedom of the will "an intellectual intuition would 22. Karl Ameriks, "I
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be required, which certainly cannot be assumed here." (CPrR 5:31). While morality involves a recognition of oneself as a menlber of "an intelligible order of things," we make this recognition "not, indeed, by a special intuition of itself but according to certain dynamic laws" (CPrR 5:42). Moreover, if the Fact of Reason were secured through some kind of rational intuition, there seems to be no basis for I(ant's claim that it would have to be "the sole fact of pure practical reason" (CPrR 5:31, my emphasis). If reason serves to give us some kind of direct access to the transcendent, even if only in practical matters, then there seems to be in principle no limit to the number of distinct "facts" it could hand down, any more than there is any limit in principle to the number of facts that can be based in sensible intuition, or any in principle limit to the number of colors that can be distinguished by the eye. Yet I(ant offers no explicit argument for the Fact's uniqueness. Instead, !(ant seems to think that a proper understanding of the Fact's content and status is enough to show that it is necessarily sui generis. Kant would also have difficulty accounting for the "apodictic certainty" of the Fact were it simply the object of a kind of immediate rational intuition. One of I(ant's general criticisms of transcendental realism is that it cannot account for the necessity characteristic of synthetic a priori judgments. If a judgment is based upon some sort of quasi-perceptual intuition with things-inthemselves, then it seenlS equally possible that we could have had a different such intuition. All I(ant's problems about extracting necessity from the content of experience just reemerge in this special sort of rational experience. If the fact of reason is sonlething we immediately "see" in this way, it seems as if we could just as well have not seen it, or seen something else in its stead. Just as the appeal to intuition could not explain why the Fact is the only one that is actual, so too is it unable to establish that the Fact is the only one possible. If we are to take Kant's claims for the uniqueness and necessity of the Fact seriously, it must be something more than the object of some kind of direct Platonic insight. 8. A Deduction for Morality? Another tempting line of interpretation is to argue that the Fact of Reason is ultimately backed up by a kind of transcendental deduction analogous to that provided the Categories in the first Critique .23 This interpretation holds that rather than try to derive the 23. For an interesting variant, see Allison, Kant's Theory of Freedom.
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moral law from the bare requisites of rational agency, !(ant now holds the moral law to be the necessary precondition of some kind of distinctly moral experience which we see ourselves as having. On this view, the phenomenology of practical life includes something like the experience of being obligated, the feeling of standing under some kind of unconditional law or laws. Such experience supposedly manifests itself as respect, as a feeling of compulsion or necessitation that goes beyond whatever could be based in our particular feelings and desires. Given that we have such a feeling of being absolutely obligated, Kant supposedly shows that this sense of compulsion is possible only if the moral law is authoritative, since !(ant has shown that such authority is presupposed by the possibility of any real moral obligations at all. This line of argument is indeed suggested by the thought experiment !(ant offers right before he first introduces the Fact of Reason. After arguing that the moral law provides the basis of a deduction of freedom, rather than the reverse, !(ant tells us that "experience also confirms this order of concepts in us." (CPr R 5 :30). Kant first asks us to consider a man who" asserts of his lustful inclination that, when the desired object and the opportunity are present, it is quite irresistible to him ... "(CPrR 5:30). !(ant asks how this claim would fare should the man be faced with the prospect of immediate hanging for sating this lust. Kant's suggestion seems to be that once this threat is introduced, the lustful nlan would recognize or experience a consideration that exceeds what is contained in all his occurrent desires. The man would experience a kind of prudential compulsion which could not be reduced to any kind of felt desire, since the latter has already been fully determined by his supposedly irresistible lust. Thus the authority of prudential norms of practical reason seenlS to emerge from the experience of a sort of compulsion which can persist regardless of the combined force of our occurrent desires, an experience that this thought experiment is meant to cast into relief. 24 After considering these prudential norms, !(ant then asks us to consider a man who is threatened with death unless he bears false 24. Unfortunately, Kant phrases the example so as to invite a wide variety of Humean rejoinders. One might expect the sight of a gallows, with all its associations, to substantially alter what one feels; i.e., to kill the appetite in a way that does not involve any kind of rational principle. Perhaps he is unsure of what he would do in this case because he is unsure how he would feel when both the gibbet and the object of his desire were both in view. The example would perhaps be stronger if we supposed that
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witness. Could such a nlan find the motivational resources within himself to refuse to participate in judicial murder, even though it would mean the sacrifice of all his 'sensuously (or empirically) based desires? (That all such desires and attitudes speak against the morally required action does not become clear until the second tilne I(ant presents the example, in the Methodology at the end of the second Critique.) Kant answers: He would perhaps not venture to assert whether he would do it or not, but he must admit without hesitation that it would be possible for him. He judges therefore, that he can do something because he is aware that he ought to do it and cognizes freedom within him which, without the moral law, would have remained unknown to him. (CPrR 5:30).
I(ant's suggestion seems to be that such a man would experience a sort of pull or compulsion that would remain even when prudence, tending to all his particular interests and desires, speaks univocally in favor of perjury. Though !(ant does not spell out just what moral psychological considerations are at play here, it seenlS that this experiment is meant to retrace and build upon the last one. The relevance of our future interests was revealed by a sort of compulsion that can endure independently of and against all occurrent desire. Similarly, I(ant seems to suggest that a higher sort of compulsion can likewise persist against not only all occurrent desire, but against all interests and commitments insofar as they have only a sensuous foundation. I(ant's point seems to be that the persistent feeling that the question about what to do here is not settled even once desire and prudence have spoken is only possible if there is more to our motivational resources than what can be contained in feeling and prudence. Rather, such an enduring sense of compulsion is possible only if pure reason is practical, and hence only if the moral law has final authority over our wills. Thus to the extent that we recognize such an experience of compulsion that goes beyond what can be either immediately or mediately based in feeling, we must recognize the moral law insofar as it can be the man simply knew of the punishment that would follow, perhaps far in the future and in a way he could not imagine. If the question, about what to do still remains open for him, based on a consideration that can evoke no strong feeling then he must admit that his motives go beyond his immediate feelings, and which involves an element of cognition.
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shown to be the transcendental condition of the possibility of such experience. Unfortunately, this fairly straightforward strategy runs counter to Kant's frequent denials that there could be this sort of deduction for the authority of the moral law. Although Kant is usually eager to draw analogies between his theoretical and practical philosophy, he here emphasizes that: With the deduction, that is, the justification of its objective and universal validity ... one cannot hope to get on so well as was the case with the principles of the pure theoretical understanding. For, these referred to objects of possible experience, namely appearances, and it could be proved that these appearances could be cognized as objects of experience only by being brought under the categories in accordance with these laws and consequently that all possible experience must conform to these laws. But I cannot take such a course in the deduction of the moral law. For, the moral law is not concerned with cognition of the constitution of objects that may be given to reason from elsewhere ... (CPrR 5:46)
The point here is not that the only sort of experience we can have is experience of objects of nature, such that any putatively "moral experience" must be explained away in purely naturalistic terms. Kant can admit of a kind of nl0ral experience, of which the moral law serves as a kind of necessary precondition. The problem with this sort of argument is not that it is unsound, but that it would not fail to make any progress against the circle or the worries it engenders. The difficulty is that there can be no non-tendentious way to characterize the phenomenology of moral experience. If we take it as it seems, then we really do recognize obligations, experience respect for law, and act from duty-all of which implies the validity of the moral law. However, one might well say that we do not actually have such experience or recognition, but merely think we do-that it is all a pervasive illusion to be explained away naturalistically. But what's in question in the first place is whether there really are obligations that correspond to our sense of them, of whether we really experience respect or n1erely think we do. If there is a question about the authority of morality in the first place, this strategy merely begs it, by characterizing our experience in ways that we are only entitled to once we assume that authority. This argument for that authority of
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(Kantian) morality will only touch those who do not question whether we really have any lTIoral obligations at all. My point here is not just that this argument can't answer the skeptic without begging the question: it may well be that the skeptic's question isn't one that we need to answer to retain confidence in morality, and hence does not constitute a real challenge. But if so, then an account at this level should at least show why this question doesn't need to be answered, why all the justification that morality needs is provided within the sphere of morality. The skeptical question should either be answered or stripped of its motivations: the above strategy would do neither. Unable to either answer or exorcise the skeptic's doubt, this strategy would simply fail to engage the question of the authority of morality at all. 9. Morality's Credentials For conlmentators such as Lewis White Beck and John Rawls, the real justificatory work in the second Critique is done by what !(ant calls the "credential" of the moral law. 25 According to such readings, the moral law receives a "coherentist" justification. The moral law's credential is to be found in the way that the distinct conceptual sphere it opens up supplements that of the understanding, in the way that a distinctly moralized conception of freedom completes I(ant's architechtonic of reason as a whole. As !(ant observes: For, the moral law proves its reality, so as even to satisfy the Critique of speculative reason, by adding a positive determination to a causality thought only negatively, the possibility of which was incomprehensible to speculative reason, which was nevertheless forced to assume it.... (CPrR 5:48)
On this view, Kant seeks to exploit the clainl that the authority of the moral law itself serves as the only possible ground for conceiving of and comprehending a free cause, and that this uniquely positive conception of freedom addresses an ineliminable need of theoretical reason. Kant emphasizes that the moral law applies to us regardless of any independent facts about our nl0tivational states, such as our inclinations or desires. But if the moral law can command us to act even in the absence of any antecedent 25. Beck, Commentary, John Rawls, "Themes in Kant's Moral Philosophy" 81-113.
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desire, then it must be at least possible for us to act without any such desires. The unconditional scope of the moral law entails that we are creatures who can act not only from inclination or desire, but simply from the recognition that an act is obligatory.26 By showing that we can act not merely from desire but also from the bare judgment that an act is required, the moral law supplies a positive definition of freedom. In the Third Antinomy, Kant argued that the causal determinism of the natural world is not incompatible with the possibility of freedom, so long as freedom is attributed to something other than occurrences in nature. The Third Antinomy admitted the possibility of freedom, but could only characterize such freedom negatively, as the absence of causal determination. But with the moral law, freedom can be understood as something more than just the absence of such determination: rather, freedom becomes substantively characterized as autonomous action. By establishing this positive sense of freedom, the moral law fills a conceptual space gestured at but left empty by the first Critique. Kant claims that the moral law acquires a kind of philosophical "credential" by thus giving substance to the freedom that theoretical reason had to admit, but of which it could say nothing further. The moral law serves as the ratio cognescendi of such freedom by making available the conceptual resources to recognize and act from such freedom, simultaneously making us free and making us able to attribute such freedom to ourselves. On this reading, the moral law is justified because of the role 26. !(ant does say that to act from recognition of a law involves acting from a particular sort of feeling, which he calls respect. The role of respect as a motive may seem to call into doubt whether Kant really thinks we can act fron1 just the bare recognition of the law itself, for that recognition only seems to lead to action through a certain kind of motivating feeling. However, I(ant stresses that respect is a uniquely "cognitive feeling." He seems to consider it to be the affect that is characteristic of recognition of the authority of a law, rather than as a separate state that recognition of the law might causally produce and which then moves us to action. As finite, sensible creatures, anything that lTIotivates us must have some manifestation in our affects; respect is simply the feeling characteristic of being immediately moved by a judgment of rightness or wrongness. If so, then respect is not a distinct sort of psychological state that is identifiable without reference to such directly motivating judgments, and hence cannot serve as a condition on whether such judgments can be so motivating in the first place.
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that it, and only it, can play in the system of reason as a whole. In the preface, Kant emphasizes that this defense of the moral law's authority should not be taken as just a sort of ad hoc patching of the deficiencies of the first Critique. Rather, while we can only defend the moral realm once we have made a critical investigation of the theoretical, each is an equally essential expression of reason: Accordingly, considerations of this kind, including those that are once more directed to the concept of freedol11, though in the practical use of pure reason, should not be regarded as interpolations which nlight serve only to fill up gaps in the critical system of speculative reason (for this is complete for its purpose), or as like the props and buttresses that are usually added afterwards to a hastily constructed building, but as true members that make the connection of the system plain, so that concepts which could there be represented only problematically can now be seen in their real presentation. (CPrR 5:7)
The freedom suggested, but not positively defined in theoretical reasoning serves as the credential for the moral law's authority, but the realm the moral law defines is necessary for rational thought to be possible at all. I(ant is not very clear, however, about just what work this positive conception of freedom that morality provides can actually do for theory, why such a conception is needed as a real load-bearing part of reason's structure. Although morality provides a positive conception of a free cause, and thereby of a conlplete explanation of an event, these ideas cannot ever be invoked in any particular theoretical accounts. If theoretical reason's problem was that it could not see how it could complete its task, then these ideas seenl to be little help: for while they offer images of completion, they are such that theoretical reason could never, in principle, avail itself of them. If the problem was the impossibility of attaining perfect knowledge, these expanded conceptual resources leave it untouched. However, Kant's point might not be that theory needs a positive conception of freedom in order to complete its task; rather, it may be that theory needs that conception simply to get started in the first place. The pivotal concern may be how to understand the regulative ideas of reason. For there to be something that counts as progress in theoretical reasoning, there mlist be good reasons for choosing between different theoretical framew9ik~_wJti~h_r~Y~aL_-
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different sorts of causal regularity in the phenomenal world. For Kant, our criteria for choosing between such frameworks must be drawn from an understanding of intentional action; one framework of explanation will be superior to others with equal predictive power insofar as it is simpler, more elegant, conceptually continuous, etc. All other things equal, the superior frameworks will be the ones that display in nature the intelligibility characteristic of an artifact: the sort of intelligibility that I(ant will call "purposiveness" [Zweckmassigkeit] in the third Critique. Without such criteria, there will always be an indefinitely great number of ways of making sense of the phenomenal world, all with equal standing vis a vis each other. Given this sort of underdetermination of theory by phenomenal evidence, nothing could count as real progress in scientific understanding, since any explanation will have an indefinite number of rivals whose claims are equally well-founded. If so, then what theoretical reason finds in practical concepts is not a way to actually complete its knowledge, but rather those ideals needed to adjudicate between theories in the first place, and hence at least a well-defined criterion for what counts as real progress in scientific understanding. The credential of the moral law is not so much that it allows us to complete or even envision the completion of theory's task; rather, it is that the law allows us to conceive of what would count as progress in this direction in the first place. This understanding of the credential would make the authority of the moral law sound very much like a postulate of reason. 27 Later in the second Critique, Kant will introduce three postulates of pure practical reason-immortality, human freedom, and the existence of a theistic God. I(ant argues that although we cannot prove or disprove these clainls theoretically, the end that morality necessarily sets for us could not be achieved without such conditions obtaining. Practical reason thus recognizes a reason for accepting (or at least acting as if we accept) these postulates as true, and theoretical reason can speak neither for nor against such faith, which goes beyond its jurisdiction. Thus while theoretical in form, these postulates are only relevant for purposes of practical reflection and deliberation -they are, in effect, regulative principles of 27. Cf. G 4:462: "Furthermore, the idea of a pure intelligible world regarded as a whole of all intelligences to which we ourselves belong as rational beings (even though we are from another standpoint also members of the world of sense) remains always a useful and permissible idea for the purpose of a rational belief, although all knowledge ends at its boundary."
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practical reasoning. What the Credential suggests is that the moral law, and the freedom that is inseparable from it, are similarly "postulated" relative to the ends of theoretical reason. The practical postulates emerge from consideration of the ultimate end of practical reason (the attainment of the Highest Good)-they assert the actuality (or at least the possibility) of background conditions needed for this end to be coherently available to a rational will. The Credential argument suggests that the practical realm is itself first "postulated" relative to the theoretical aspiration to a complete explanation of nature. Just as practical reason sets itself the Highest Good as an ultimate end, theoretical reason seeks knowledge of the "unconditioned" in nature, knowledge that would grasp how this unconditioned ultimately explains all conditioned phenomena in an organized, systematic way (i.e., nature comprehended as a "totality"). The Highest Good requires practical reason to go beyond its own resources, and lay claim to the unused and unwanted speculative concepts of God and immortality. Only in light of these ideas can we see our moral endeavor as making or failing to make any headway toward a definite (if infinitely far-off) objective. Similarly, the theoretical ideal of perfect knowledge requires theoretical reason to go beyond its resources, availing itself of a logically coherent sense of free action in order to make sense of what should count as progress in theoretical investigations. Free action was only a logical possibility from the perspective of theoretical reason; it could only be defined negatively, as some sort of law-governed activity that was not governed in the same way that natural events are. The moral law, in contrast, gives a positive definition to such freedom, as acting according to a selfgiven norm, as the autonomy characteristic of acting from what one judges to be a good reason. According to Beck and Rawls, theoretical reasoning requires this latter conception, a conception that it cannot craft out of its own resources. On this view, moral authority becomes inseparable from the possibility of objective knowledge: for while this view keeps theoretical and practical reasoning distinct (as !(ant insists), it claims that one could not be a creature who is capable of knowledge of the world without also being a creature that recognizes itself under the law of pure practical reason. As one might expect of the "Copernican revolution," the connection is not to be found at the level of the content of our judgments, but in the nature of the self that is capable of so judging. Despite the obvious importance of the moral law's theoretical
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credential, I believe it is a mistake to take this argument, as Beck does, as in itself the real "deduction" of the moral law's authority.28 The problem is first that this argument seems to place the justification of the moral law in the wrong place, in the needs of theoretical reason. The Credential argument suggests that morality's justification depends on the problems generated in the Dialectic of the first Critique, but Kant claims that the moral law cannot be proved "by any efforts of theoretical reason, speculative or empirically supported"(CPrR 5:48). I(ant's frequent claims to the effect that the Fact of Reason is "itself has no need of justifying grounds"(CPrR 5:47) and is "firmly established of itself" (CPrR 5:47) suggest that the Fact is somehow self-justifying, and does not need to rely on support from any other perspective, even if it does in fact receive such support. Kant repeatedly claims that the moral law needs no justification at all, and one could hardly show that by advancing a particular justification of this type. To establish the moral law by appeal to the valuable work it could do in other parts of the critical philosophy is perhaps to give it an indirect justification by appeal to completeness, one of I(ant's favorite desiderata of philosophical system-building. Even if we found this concern compelling enough to ground our commitment to morality, the credential would still count as a kind of philosophical justification. It \vould not in any way show the lTIorallaw to be self-justifying in the dramatic way Kant suggests. Indeed, in his "Elucidation of the Analytic," I(ant suggests that only once we have seen how the moral law is self-justifying will we be able to make appeal to the service it renders theoretical reason: It was necessary first to establish and justify the purity of its origin even in the judgment of common reason before science would take it in hand in order to make use of it, so to speak, as a fact that recedes all subtle reasoning about its possibility.. and all the consequences that may be drawn from it. (CPrR 5:91, I(ant's italics, my underlining)29
More important, the credential argument goes through only by assuming part of what it was meant to justify: the authority, and not just relevance, of the moral law. As such, this argument just reproduces, at yet another level, the circle of Groundwork III. 28. For a similar account, see John Rawls, "Themes in Kant's Moral Philosophy,", 104-108. 29. For sitnilar criticisms see Allison, Kant's Theory of Freedo1n, 238.
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What the above argument establishes is that progress in theoretical reasoning is only conceivable given an understanding of intentional action and hence of some sort of practical reasoning. The regulative ideals only make sense in light of concerns that we become acquainted with through our efforts to act in the world, concerns such as simplicity, elegance, hierarchical organization, etc. What the credential argunlent shows is that a creature which is not conscious of itself as acting for purposes could not understand purposiveness in general, and hence could not give any coherent direction to its theoretical investigations. To be complete, theoretical reason thus presupposes some understanding of what it is to act for a purpose, and hence, to reason practically. But as Groundwork III established, one is able to reason practically only if one can at least think of a complete or perfect practical justification-the sort of justification that would ultimately involve appeal to a moral law. Thus, in order to grasp the needed ideal of theoretical explanation, we must also be able the grasp the ideal implicit in practical justification, which involves the idea of law. So far, the credential has just brought us to the same point we reached in Groundwork III: To be a thinker, we must be able to conceive of ourselves as intelligences, as creatures bound by the moral law. But the problem that pressed there, as here, is why we must not only be able to think the law, but recognize it as binding, given the possibility of competing concerns. The problem may be put this way: in order avail oneself of the regulative principles of theoretical reasoning, one must be able to conceive of a complete or perfect justification of an action. Such a perfect justification would be one in which an act was chosen both for the sake of the agent's happiness (i.e., as the object of their non-moral reasons), and for the sake of morality, because it was the sort of thing that one must choose in such a situation. In I(antian terms, the most fully justified act is the one that is endorsed by both the moral maxim and the maxim of self-love; where both unconditioned and conditioned reasons coincide. This ideal constitutes what Kant calls "the object of pure practical reason," the Highest Good in which the claims of morality and self-love, virtue and happiness, are simultaneously and necessarily satisfied. What the credential shows is that in order to comprehend the regulative ideals, a creature must be able to conceive of this practical ideal-it must be able to think of justification sub specie bonum. Since the regulative ideals are basically principles of teleological reasoning (as becomes clear in the third Critique), it should
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not be surprising that they can only be available to a creature that understands how appeal to some te/os can serve as a principle of justification or explanation. However, we need more than this idea to establish the authority of the moral law. The authority of the moral law requires not just that we can take an interest in the Highest Good as the highest justification for action. Rather, it requires that we recognize that when the two components of this idea, morality and self-love, come apart, the first takes precedence over the second. However, the Highest Good is equally available to the wicked will, which makes self-love authoritative over morality. The ideal of the Highest Good, like the will of God, does not recognize the possibility of conflict between morality and self-love: and as such does not provide the ground for the authority of the one over the other. 3D As with the preparatory argument of GIll, appeal to the credential establishes the inescapable relevance of the moral maxim, but it does not establish its authority, it does not elevate this maxim to the status of law. For the teleological perspective that theory requires is equally open to the wicked will, an alternative which is always open to us as creatures capable of nonmoral interests. If the above is correct, then the credential has just brought us back to the preparatory argument. We must recognize both moral and non-moral practical reasons, but no order of priority has been established between them. To establish the authority of morality, we would once again have to draw on something like a view of ourselves as creatures with dignity, as intelligences or proper members of a I(ingdom of Ends. In other words, we will only escape the impasse by once again drawing on specifically moral con1mitments 30. For Kant, the Highest Good involves not just the coincidence of moral and non-moral reasons, but also that the former are recognized as the ground of the latter. This conception of the ideal builds in the idea of moral authority. However, n1Y point here is we cannot derive this added feature of the Highest Good from what we need to understand teleological explanation in general, which is the need that the theoretical credential draws on. Teleology requires that we can think and act for the sake of the good, but until \ve bring in distinctly moral demands, this ideal does not establish any determinate order between morality and self-love. In the second Critique, Kant can adduce the stronger conception of the Highest Good because he has already assumed the authority of the moral law; however, to use that moralized conception of the ideal to establish such authority at this point would only, once again, close the circle.
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and self-conceptions, a move that will once again close the circle. While the moral law does have a theo~etical credential, so too does the maxim of self-love: the interests of theory served by teleological thought are equally supported by the good and wicked wills; both can understand purposiveness well enough to investigate nature. While there is a coherentist credential at work here, it applies indifferently to either understanding of practical reason. If so, then the credential argument, while certainly relevant (as was the preparatory argument before it), cannot stand alone. To bring us to recognition of the law, rather than just thought of the good in general, we need something more. 31 As with the earlier deduction-strategy, the problem here is not just that the circle re-emerges, but that nothing in this argument shows us why such a circle is not vicious. The credential serves to add another dimension to this circularity, bringing in certain theoretical considerations that were not at stake in the Groundwork. 32 But these added resources have done nothing to dispel the notion that Kant can only preach to the choir. If Kant cannot bring us out of the circle, he should show us why there is nothing wrong with remaining there, why such circularity does not serve as a breeding 31. The objection that I(ant's argument provides a credential that is indifferent between the good and evil wills, and hence reduces moral cOlTImitment to a kind of groundless "radical choice," is taken up at length by Hegel in The Philosophy of Right, in the "The Good and the Conscience" section of the Morality chapter. Hegel argues that unless supplemented with the conceptual resources to be found in Ethical Life, this view leads to an ultimately incoherent subjectivism about morality. 32. The credential lTIay only be addressed to only a very specific class of concerns for the fundamental defense of the moral law altogethe1-. The credential may only be directed to those doubts about morality that 111ight arise from the metaphysics of nature presented in the Critique of Pure Reason. As such, the credential might only serve to "place" morality with respect to natural science, by showing how appeal to 1110ral laws and human autonoll1Y is not only consistent with the way we have to reason about nature, but actually serves in some ways to support it. Appeal to this credential may be needed to quiet worries that reference to freedom and its laws is "metaphysically extravagant," or in conflict with a naturalistic approach to the world. Nevertheless, the credential does not seem to be in service of Kant's central claim: that although the moral law can be based in nothing conceptually prior to it, nevertheless "all disputations concerning its validity are in vain."
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ground for moral skepticism. In the next chapter, I will argue that the "Fact of Reason" does involve just this sort of argument to show that the circularity in question does not undermine the authority of morality. For part of what the Fact will show is that there is no coherent standpoint within the practical froln which the authority of morality can be called into question, nor could any truly external standpoint be relevant to such questions of authority. I hope to show that, for !(ant, moral authority is itself a conceptual precondition of any coherent kind of self-love, such that any challenges based in self-love ultin1ately undermine their own intelligibility. While the needs of theory were indifferent between the good and wicked \vills, the internal logic of practice will not be. Rather, the moral law will turn our to have authority over our wills precisely because it alone can provide the right sort of circular justification of its own authority, which is something that no other conceivable contender for this title will be able do for itself.
CHAPTER THREE
Comprehending Incomprehensibility The lintit of language is shown by its being in1possible to describe the fact which corresponds to (is the translation of) a sentence, without si111ply repeating the sentence. (This has to do with the Kantian solution' of the problen1 of philosophy.) -Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p.10e.
1. Introduction In this chapter, I argue that Kant has an account of the moral law's status as a Fact of Reason which is neither viciously circular nor dogmatic, and which would nevertheless fall short of constituting the sort of deduction which I(ant explicitly denies us. What I(ant has in mind, I believe, is a transcendental version of what Christine I(orsgaard has called a "reflective endorsement" strategy of justification. 1 According to I(orsgaard, such endorsement strategies in general aim to establish the authority of some sort of principle or commitment by showing that such a commitment would be approved of from any perspective from which it n1ight plausibly be called into question. As Korsgaard states both the challenge to such norms and the possible response to these challenges: Human beings are subject to practical claims from various sources-our own interests, the interests of others, morality itself. The normative question is answered by showing that the points of view from which these different interests arise are congruent, that meeting the claims made from one point of view will not necessarily mean violating those that arise from another. (The Sources of Normativity, p.61).
1. Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, 49-89.
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This sort of argument is attractive in that it would allow us to recognize both that moral interests are important for their own sake, and also that the authority of morality has something to do with the non-moral goods of hunlan life. Such strategies offer an understanding of the basis of morality that is neither wholly derivative of some sort of non-moral concern (i.e., that lnakes nlorality just a matter of enlightened self-interest), nor as completely detached from or indifferent to such concerns. Strategies of reflective endorsement can been seen at work in the moral philosophy of both Aristotle and Hume. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle hopes to show that the virtuous life is both the most pleasant and the most honorable not because the basic justification of virtue is that it conduces to pleasure or honor, but rather only to rob skeptical challenges prompted by such concerns of their motivation. For Aristotle, virtue would approve of itself, and every perspective from which we might think to challenge a commitment to virtue would also turn out to approve of it as well. Assuming then that we already have some concern for virtue to start with (i.e., that we are "well brought up"), this sort of argument would show us that we have no further reason to abandon it. Virtue would then have all the justification it needs, if not all the justification we can imagine: i.e., some further justification that could convince the sincere skeptic, or those poorly brought up (if !Jlese could be kept distinct). I(orsgaard attributes a reflective endorsement strategy to the 11luch different naturalism of Hume. Although Hume bases his account of moral judgments in certain pre-reflective affective capacities, these attitudes and dispositions turn out to both reflexively approve of themselves, and to be approved of froln the point of view of self-interest, the only potential challenger that Hume seems to recognize. Hunle argues that given the nature of human psychology, the vicious person must miss out on a whole range of pleasures, of a sense of fellowship and self-satisfaction, that moral commitment nlakes possible. Instead, the knave, insofar as her psychological constitution is at least roughly similar to that of normal human being, must suffer certain kinds of painful internal tension whenever she reflects on herself and her character-thoughts which, given any degree of social interaction, could hardly be avoided. Even if the knave does not recognize any distinctly moral interests, she nevertheless must accept that the vicious life must be a highly unappealing one, even on her own terms. For Hume, moral commitment is endorsed both by its own standards and for the sake of non-moral self-interest, and this is all that is needed to
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satisfactorily defend our commitment to it. While this coincidence of endorsement is not logically necessary for H ume, it is nevertheless required by the basic psychological make-up of anything recognizably human. 2 The strategy I will attribute to I(ant differs significantly from those of Aristotle and Hume, however. The latter recognize distinct sorts of non-moral concern (pleasure, honor, "self-interest"), but then argue that all such concerns turn out to speak in favor of morality, as does morality itself. In contrast, I will argue that I(ant is trying to run the argument at a deeper level, and this is why I have styled this strategy as "transcendental." Kant is not trying to justify morality by showing that it is in fact endorsed when seen from all distinct competing perspectives. Rather, I will argue that Kant attempts to show that there really are no such completely distinct perspectives; or better, that insofar as such perspectives are to any degree distinct and coherent, they are conceptually available to us only once we accept the authority of the moral law. If so, then when we challenge morality's authority from any such perspective, we are actually challenging a necessary condition of the conceptual availability of that perspective itself and hence of the very motivation behind the challenge. Such challenges would then only be coherent insofar as they were unsuccessful: their claims being intelligible only insofar as they were false. Such an argument, if successful, could dismiss on a priori grounds what Hume and perhaps Aristotle could only rule out on an a posteriori basis-the threat of a sustained attack on morality from the perspective of something else vitally important to us. 3 Such a strategy would be akin to that of reflective endorsement, since it justifies morality in part by showing that no successful challenges to it can be mounted "from the outside." It would do this not by showing that all outside positions in fact endorse morality, but rather by showing that there could be no perspectives available to us that are thoroughly distinct from and 2. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, 51-60. 3. The real contrast that I am here committed to here is that between Kant and HUIne; Aristotle sits uneasily across this divide. For it is not clear that Aristotle's argument is really that different from what I am attributing to I(ant: while not a priori in the I(antian sense, the coincidence of pleasure, honor, and virtue for Aristotle is not a merely contingent, psychological fact (in the modern sense of these terms). Part of the difficulty here stems froln the anachronism of reading modern a priori/a posteriori, necessary/contingent distinctions back unto Aristotle.
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conceptually independent of the authority of morality. Rather than show that all outside perspectives endorse morality, this argument \vould show that there really is no true "outside" from which to view or indict it at all. The point is not that morality turns out, mirabile dictu, to receive the right degree of endorsement from other quarters so as to leave our commitments intact. The conclusion will be instead that that the basis of such commitlnents cannot even be coherently challenged, and hence doesn't need any such positive endorsement for its authority in the first place. And assuming that morality reflexively approves of itself,4 this means that, if we already care about morality, then we have no compelling reasons against it, and only reasons in its favor. Morality might not then have a complete foundational justification (i.e., a justification that would rule out the skepticism on the grounds of something like logical inconsistency), but morality would turn out to have all the justification it needs in order to properly sustain our comn1itment to it. In this chapter, I argue that the form such an argument takes in I
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there can be no other challenges to worry about. The conceptual resources through which we articulate and deliberate about nonmoral interests have their first home in a moral context, framed by the ideas of law and obligation, and in an idea of the self as ultimately accountable to some law or authority. I hope to show that for I(ant, when morality goes, so too does any substantial sense of self-love or concern for our happiness that we might originally have sought to oppose to it. While the moral law will not be justified by direct appeals to our happiness or well-being (which would constitute the sort of "eudaimonianism" that I(ant scorns), the interests of self-love do not constitute a conceptually stable position from which the moral law could be coherently challenged. The moral law "is firmly established of itself" because, ultimately, there is no standpoint from which it could be consistently called into question. 5 2. The Constitutive Role of Pure Practical Reason To understand how morality's authority can be given as a "Fact of Reason," we need first to recognize the different approach to philosophical critique that emerges in the Critique of Practical Reason. Unless we first note this change of tack, we run the risk of seeing the second Critique as just a sloppier, less philosophically respectable work than its predecessor. While the second Critique is much shorter than the Critique of Pure Reason, and only partially resembles that work in structure (e.g., its lacks anything that corresponds to the Transcendental Aesthetic), this only partial resenlblance should not be understood as a half-hearted attempt by I(ant to maintain his notorious architectonic. Rather, the most important differences here stem from Kant's taking a different sort of consideration as the object of critique. The two Critiques differ so much because as Kant comes to consider practical issues, his conception of what a critique can be, and of the nature and resources of transcendental argument in general, is changing and developing I(ant begins the second Critique by drawing a sharp disanalogy between its trajectory and that of the Critique of Pure Reason. In the second Critique's Introduction, Kant tells us to expect that the relations of logical precedence in the practical domain will be ordered in the opposite way from those of the theoretical: 5. cf. Wittgenstein: "When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it." Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.5.
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For, in the present Critique we shall begin with principles and proceed to concepts, and only then, where possible, from them to the senses, whereas in the case of speculative reason we had to begin with the senses and end with principles ....the principles of empirically unconditioned causality must come first, and only afterward can the attempt be made to establish our concepts of the determining ground of such a will, of their application to objects and finally to the subject and its sensibility. (CPrR 5:16).
In the first Critique, pride of place was given to the pure forms of intuition, space and time, and then to the basic structuring concepts of cognition, the Categories. The pure intuitions have a kind of logical precedence over the pure theoretical concepts, in that the Categories only have a well-defined sense when rendered in terms of spatio-temporal relations (i.e., when properly "schematized"). The Categories can only have determinate content when adapted to the sense in which objects can be "given" and determinately related to each other in terms of space and time. And while the understanding is in this way dependent on or subordinate to pure intuition, reason, in turn, is conceptually dependent on both pure intuition and the understanding. Reason concerns not the application of concepts to intuitions, by which intensional thought becomes possible, but rather assesses the logical relations between already fully formed judgments with determinate propositional content. Synthesis of the manifold of intuition under a concept makes contentful thought possible; reason serves only to integrate and systematize such judgments within one perspective. For cognition, pure reason is left with a merely regulative function, adding nothing distinctive to the possible contents of theoretical judgment. Reason plays no role in the constitution or "determination" of objects, i.e., in defining what it is for something to be an intensional object. Reason is not constitutive of the world of natural objects (as are the other cognitive faculties), but only guides and adjudicates between different accounts of that world. It is concerned not with the possibility of contentful thought, but rather with the integration of such thought into coherent theory. Kant tells us in the second Critique's introduction that, for practice, the Ideas of reason will not end up playing a merely regulative role at the end of the cognitive day. Rather, for practical judgment these Ideas will become constitutive, determining (or "defining"-bestimmen) what we are talking about when we consider action. In practical contexts, reason's aspirations will not
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serve as just heuristics guiding our judgments into a well-formed theory, but rather as the very foundation of the meaning of this sort of judgment altogether. Kant's point here seems to be that in the practical case, we do not begin with the presupposition that sensible intuition gives us direct access to objects of judgment, thereby providing the basis for the content of our concepts, and then moving up to its organizing concepts and systematizing principles (as in the first Critique). Rather, with the practical domain we nlust begin with what is for cognition the last stage of thought, with the notion of a complete, purposively systemized explanatory whole as articulated by reason. In this domain, the idea of a complete, rationally integrated system of judgments serves as the constitutive principle which apparently Inakes it possible for such judgments to have any content at all, rather than being just a regulative principle that reason brings to a realm not of its own making: [The moral law] adds, nalnely, the concept of a reason deterlnining the will immediately (by the condition of a universal lawful form of its maxims), and thus is able for the first time to give objective though only practical reality to reason, which always became extravagant when it wanted to proceed speculatively with its ideas, and changes its transcendent use into an immanent use (in which reason is by Inean of ideas itself an efficient cause in the field of experience. (CPrR 5:48 Kant's emphasis).
Kant here is clearly claiming far more for the practical use of reason than he ever did for its theoretical use. In the beginning of the second Critique, I(ant explains why the present work is entitled The Critique of Practical Reason and not the "critique of pure practical reason," although "the parallelism between it and the speculative [Critique] seems to require the first [title]"(CPrR 5:3). I(ant tells us that all that is to be critiqued in the Critique of Practical Reason is the empirically-conditioned aspect of practical reason, i.e., that aspect of practical reason in which some feature of sensibility plays a crucial role in establishing the criteria for deliberation. The pure practical use of reason, in contrast to the pure theoretical, could neither be given nor stand in need of a critique; for in its apparently constitutive role, no proper questions about its legitimacy and proper scope can be raised. In the practical domain, the relevance of sensibility appears to be conditioned by the Ideas (i.e., pure justificatory or explanatory ideals) of reason, rather than
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the reverse, as was the case in the preceding Critique. While in the first Critique, the aspirations of pure t)'leoretical reason were humbled in favor of its merely empirically-conditioned employment, Kant tells us to expect the reverse when we consider practice: If it is proved that there is pure [practical] reason, its use is alone immanent; the empirically conditioned use, which lays clailTI to absolute rule, is on the contrary transcendent and expresses itself in demands and commands that go quite beyond its sphere-precisely the opposite relation from what could be said of pure reason in its speculative use ... (CPrR 5:16)
Kant explains that unlike the pure theoretical use of reason, a pure practical use, if such an idea is really coherent, could not stand in need of a critique, because pure practical uses of reason could not, in principle, transgress the boundaries of son1e other cognitive faculty as pure reason necessarily did in its speculative use. Kant makes this constitutive use of pure practical reason sound much more like the operations of an intuitive understanding than like reason's theoretical use. For !(ant, human understanding is essentially discursive, depending on sensible intuition, as a moment of receptivity, to provide the objective content of its concepts. The discursive mind is a mind that thinks about something that is not its own mental activity, but rather judges something logically distinct from such activity, towards which it must have a kind of direct receptive access. 6 In contrast, an intuitive understanding would immediately (in a logical, not a temporal sense) generate the objects of its judgments through the very activity of judgment itself. For the intuitive intellect, there could be no distinction between believing and knowing, between seeming and being. In the first Critique, the intuitive intellect seemed to serve as a kind of limit concept, delineating a sort of understanding which, while logically possible, (since we can construct it without contradiction from concepts which are familiar to us fron1 their ordinary use) marked the point where the basic conceptual distinctions needed for anything that we could recognize as a coherent self start to dis6. Of course, a discursive mind can think about its own activities as psychological states. However, insofar as these mental activities are understood psychologically, as standing in a causal rather than rational relations, they are being conceived in a way distinct fronl the judging activity itself. The active discursive mind can reflect on its own mental activities, but not in a way that preserves their s~~t~~!!_t!~!Y_~c:ti",~.
_
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solve. An intuitive understanding would have to be a pure (i.e., not sensibly-conditioned) understanding, whose judgments create their own objects, independent of any forms of intuition or receptivity and hence of any objective spatio-temporal conditions. Kant attributes an intuitive understanding to God, and his account of it' is at best murky, at worst, perhaps incoherent. Nevertheless, !(ant discusses pure practical reason in a way that makes it start to sound very much like an intuitive understanding, as a power of thought that somehow creates the realm it judges through the very act of conceiving of it: 7 ... the practical a priori concepts in relation to the supreme principle of freedom at once becolne cognitions and do not have to wait for intuitions in order to receive Ineaning; and this happens for the noteworthy reason that they themselves produce the reality of that to which they refer (the disposition of the will) [Willensgesinnung}, which is not the business of theoretical concepts.(CPrR 5:66, my emphasis)
Unlike its predecessor, the second Critique concerns a use of reason that apparently is giving itself its own objects, and hence is limited only by conditions immanent to the activity of reasoning itself. Practice does not concern a realm that already has a well-defined sense before pure reason comes on the scene; it does not concern an independent realm of desire and volition that reason then takes charge of and disciplines into shape. Rather, !(ant seems to think that we cannot even make sense of practical concerns such as desire, volition, or action (essential aspects, I take it, of the Willengesinnung) except insofar as they already make reference to the justificatory ideals of pure reason (i.e., bear a relation to "the supreme principle of freedom," the moral law).
3. The Categories of Freedom Why would !(ant present pure reason to be constitutive of the entire practical realm in this way, suggesting that the principles of such reason are necessary conditions not just of particular moral obligations, but also of any understanding of action qua action at all? While Kant does not offer an explicit argument for this conclusion, we can reconstruct one from the section entitled "The 7. Hegel seems to see practical reason as cast into this sort of role: Faith and Knowledge, 81.
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Concept of an Object of Pure Practical Reason," which comes almost immediately after his denial that there could be a "deduction" of the Fact of Reason. Kant turns his attention not to the systematic relations between practical and theoretical reason, but rather to the "transcendental logic" of practical judgment itself. It is within this distinctive sort of conceptual gramnlar that underived authority of the moral law is to be found. In this section, Kant here introduces the practical analogues of the Categories of the Understanding, what he calls "The Categories of Freedom," going so far as to offer a table of these categories which has exactly the same structure as the corresponding table in the first Critique. In this section, !(ant is trying to show that the moral law is conceptually prior to these categories of freedom, that these categories are conceptually available to us only presupposing recognition of some unconditionally binding practical law. For !(ant, practical deliberation must employ these various categories of freedom, and this section attempts to show that such categories have recognition of the authority of the moral law as a transcendental ground. More specifically, the Categories of Freedom are meant to provide the basic conceptual structure that determines what !(ant calls "the object of practical reason." The object of the understanding is nature; i.e., when we think about the world, the content of our concepts is referred to a non-lnental realm given in a spatio-temporal order. This order is expressed through the basic logical forms of judgment interpreted (or "schenlatized") in spatio-temporal terms. Only once these concepts are in play will we be able to selfconsciously ascribe any particular perceptions or nlental states to ourselves at all. In contrast to the objects of the understanding, Kant defines an object of practical reason as "the representation of an object [i.e., state of affairs] as an effect possible through freedom," i.e., a purpose or end.(CPrR 5:57). If the parallel to the pure cognitive concepts holds, then the Categories of Freedom are meant to provide the basic kinds of concepts and logical relations by which we may make sense of our behavior as self-consciously purposive. These concepts would establish the ternlS through which intentional action is constituted as such, just as the cognitive categories define what can count as an object of experience, of something that is empirically knowable. !(ant goes on in this section to tell us that:
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The only objects of a practical reason are therefore those of the good and the evil. For by the first is understood a necessary object of the faculty of desire, by the second, of the faculty of aversion, both, however, in accordance with a principle of reason. (CPrR 5: 58, I(ant's emphasis).
Kant does not here define the good as just the unconditionally or morally good, despite its opposition to "the evil" (das Bose), which does indeed sound moralized. Rather, the concepts of the good and the evil apply to whatever there are pro tanto practical reasons for or against, whether that good is conditional or not. Happiness, as the object of the rational principle of self-love, must count as a sub-category of the good, and unhappiness as a sub-category of the evil, of that which we have some real (if defeasible) reason to avoid. While the morally good and the morally evil may be privileged instances of these categories, I(ant's claim applies to the good in both its conditioned and unconditioned senses, encompassing both moral and non-moral value. If so, then the Categories of Freedom map out the various ways in which something can be judged worth doing or avoiding-specifying the basic conceptual forms that such distinctly practical considerations can take. But being able to specify what is worthwhile in one's action is part of what is to identify one's own purposes and aims; and the possibility of such self-ascription is at least a very plausible criterion for what is distinctive about intentional action (as opposed, e.g., to the merely voluntary).8 If so, then the Categories of Freedom do not only layout the distinct logical forms that practical reasons can take: in so doing, they would also provide the basic ways in which any behavior can be interpreted as intentional at all. Like the Categories of the Understanding, the Categories of Freedom correspond to the twelve logical forms of judgment, now rendered in a way appropriate to questions of deliberation and choice rather than the constitution of a knowable spatio-temporal order. Just as the cognitive categories mapped out the basic logical space by which something could count as a knowable object in the world, the Categories of Freedom map out the basic logical space in terms of which ends and purposes can be judgable "objects" in the field of action. I(ant claims that the idea of an unconditionally binding practical law must have conceptual priority over any of these ideas of 8. See, e.g., G.E.M. Anscombe, Intention.
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the good. He asserts that: If the concept of the good is not to be derived from an antecedent practical law but, instead, is to serve as its basis, it can be only the concept of something whose existence promises pleasure and thus detennines the causality of the subject, that is the faculty of desire, to produce it ....The property of the subject, with reference to which alone this experience can be had, is the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, as a receptivity belonging to inner sense, and thus the concept of that which is immediately good would be directed only to that with which the feeling of gratification is imlnediately connected, and the concept of the simply evil would have to be referred only to that which immediately excites pain. (CPrR 5:58, Kant's italics, my underlining)
This passage may seem to fit in with common interpretations of this section, in which I(ant's central point is supposed to be that only when we act out of obligation do we act in a way distinct from natural causation. Supposedly, when the thought of moral obligation is not in play, our actions can be nothing more than an egoistic quest for our own pleasure. So read, I(ant's claims can be dismissed as resting on an untenable assumption that all nonmoral motivation must be egoistic and hedonistic. 9 This reading assumes that in passages like the one a bove, Kant is advancing a claim about the content of our motives. Supposedly, Kant is claiming that, as things stand for us now, we are either motivated by respect for law, or we are motivated by a desire for our own pleasure; and that the importance of the former motive may be exaggerated by being presented as the only alternative to the latter. However, throughout this section I(ant is careful to frame his discussion in terms of the concept, rather than the content or substantive conception (to use Rawls' familiar distinction,lO) of the good. This phrasing suggests that I(ant's distinction is not between two different kinds of Illotives within one subject, but rather between two different ways of conceptualizing a subject's potential motives altogether. On this reading, Kant is not committed to the extremely implausible view that as things stand with us now, all action must ei9. This assulnption would also be inconsistent with Inany of I(ant's own treatments of non-moral motivation in other works: see Andrews Reath, "Hedonism, Heteronomy, and Kant's Principle of Happiness." IO.john Rawls, A Theory ofJustice, 7-11.
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ther be done out of a sense of duty, with regard for moral law, or for the sake of one's own pleasure, conforming to the dictates of some natural law. Rather, Kant is presenting two different ways that an acting subject, and its conative capacities, can be understood as a whole. If so, then Kant's claim is that, unless situated in a conceptual context ultimately framed by ideas of law and obligation, the centrallneaning of 'Good' could be nothing more than that which immediately seems pleasing, that for which we have some motivational disposition to seek. ll In this section, Kant explicitly distinguishes Good and Evil, (das Cute, das Bose) the objects of the will mediated through sonle sort of reasoned judgment, from Weal and Woe (das Wohl, das Weh) which constitute "not a concept of reason but an enlpirical concept of an object of sensation" (CPrR 62, p.65). Although Kant will elsewhere use Wohl to denote the object of rational self-love, as a synonym for happiness,12 here it seems to be restricted to whatever object could be conceived in terms of unrationalized feeling alone. If so, then it is not ordinary individuals who are faced by competing interests of the Good and of their Weal. Insofar as we are self-conscious subjects, we always encounter our desires under some idea of the Good, in terms of some notion of what is worthwhile in their objects. We no more encounter raw inclinations than we experience unsynthesized intuitions or raw "sense-data." 13 The choice between das Cute and das Wohl would not then be confronted by mature rational agents. Rather, it may be a choice faced only by those ela borating philosophical accounts of action, in which (rationalized) Good and Evil fornls the central conceptual opposition, or (naturalized) Weal and Woe do. Thus the choice here is not between keeping a promise and having lunch, but rather 11. Here I am reading Kant's remarks about that which "promises" pleasure to refer not to the nleans to pleasure, but rather to activities or conditions that are pleasurable in themselves, and which are promising by virtue of this fact. In this sense, rest after work "promises" pleasure, but it is not a means to that pleasure, since the pleasure is not a state that is distinct from the rest itself. While Kant goes on to clainl that talk of 'good' or 'bad' would then have to devolve upon the means to these states, I take this to be a further inference froin this distinct claim, rather than just the restatement of a point made previously. 12. Religion 6:46n 13. There may be an exception to this in the case of what are usually called whims. I believe that Kant can accommodate this possibility, which I consider with regard to I(ant's treatment of self-love in general.
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between the moral psychology of someone like Kant or Aristotle on the one hand, and Hume on the other. It is the choice between seeing practical reasons as irreducible, or of trying to derive them from a purely naturalistic motivational psychology which takes the susceptibility to pleasure and pain, and the related natural dispositions to behavior, as its most basic notions. In Kant's eyes, this latter naturalistic route is a hopelessly impoverished option, for the sort of hedonism that results could only have explanatory, not norn1ative, significance. When desires for pleasure or pain serve as prin1itives, we may be able to predict and explain human behavior (as we might be able explain the behavior of animals) but we will not be able to justify it by appeal to these notions. For Kant, the perspective rooted in ideas of weal and woe lacks sufficient conceptual structure to even judge pleasure itself good or pain bad: [T]his is opposed even to the use of language, which distinguishes the agreeable from the good and the disagreeable from the evil and requires that good and evil always be appraised by reason and hence through concepts, which can be universally communicated, not through mere feeling, which is restricted to individual subjects and their receptivity ... (CPrR 5:58, I
It seems that all pleasure could mean in the impoverished context of naturalism is some sort of subjective state, a kind of feeling, that motivates or drives the subject toward a particular act (or omission). What I(ant seems to have in mind here by the agreeable is something like the affective basis of an inclination, which could not be articulated or communicated in any more specific terms; at least, not in a way that would be relevant to questions of deliberation and justification. 14 Kant observes that in such a conceptually impoverished context, questions of justification, of understanding something as good or not, could at best only be addressed to the means we take to satisfy our desires. For even when desires are taken as inarticulate givens, at least the instrumental appropriateness of such n1eans might be rationally assessed:
14. For a discussion very much along these lines, see Charles Taylor, "Responsibility for Self" 111-126.
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... a philosopher who believed that he had to put a feeling of pleasure at the basis of his practical appraisal would have to call good that which is a 1neans to the agreeable, and evil that which is a cause of disagreeableness and of pain; for, appraisal of the relation of means to ends certainly belongs to reason ... the practical maxims that would follow from the above concept of the good merely as a means would never contain as the object of the will anything good in itself, but always only good for something; the good would always be the merely useful, and that for which it is useful would always have to lie outside the will, in feeling.( CPrR 5:59, J(ant's emphasis).
The good here lies outside the will in the sense that our ultimate ends could not be expressed in terms of practical reasons at all, but only in terms of psychological causes and causal dispositions. I(ant has defined the will as practical reason: n1ere impulses and dispositions must count as being external to it. If such dispositions are what set the object of the will, then concepts of good and evil could have no more than an instrun1ental sense, as the efficient and the inefficient. Our ends themselves could not be judged as good or bad at all, but only effectively or ineffectively pursued. I(ant could perhaps draw a stronger conclusion here than he does, for it seems that even this instrumentalist position will be unstable. If our basic desires can be conceptually articulated only as psychological causes, we may not be able to specify their objects with the right sort of generality and conceptual structure that they would need in order to be the basis of chains of instrumental reasoning. Reference to my drives may show that I desire to win the game I am playing, but not whether I do so with an eye to winning the spoils, or having a good game, or humiliating n1Y opponent. Until I can bring my desires under some such description, which conveys a sense of not just what I desire but also what is desirable about it, I may not be able to say what would count as really achieving or best approximating that desire when faced with competing options for action. That I desire to win does not, in itself, show whether it would be instrumentally rational for me to cheat when I find myself losing, or whether a well-fought defeat is preferable to a shameful victory. If so, then the concept of the useful or efficient will not have a determinate sense except in a context where distinct concepts of the good and bad are already in play. Instrumental rationality is, in this sense, parasitic on substantive practical rationality; while it is a distinct sort of rational-
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ity, it could not be the only or most basic kind. On the view I am advancing, Kant is trying to show that only with the recognition of the nloral law do we gain access to the sphere of concepts by which we can understand our own behavior in a non-naturalistic way, to see ourselves as acting for some good rather than just responding to sonle drive. The idea of law is being called on to radically transfigure the possibilities of what self-love and happiness can be for liS. This transformation is difficult to see in Kant, because he does not at first clearly distinguish the two different sense of happiness or self-love at work in his argument, one of which pertains only to natural explanation and the other which bears on matters of deliberation and choice. If the two senses are not distinguished, the point of the conceptual transformation gets lost, and we end up seeing Kant as saying some very strange things about non-moral motivation. However, Kant does seem to mark both the distinction and the transformation in "Of the Drives of Pure Practical Reason," where he tells us that: All the inclinations together (which can be brought into a tolerable system and the satisfaction of which is then called one's own happiness) constitute regard for oneself(solipsismus ). This is either the self-regard of love for oneself, a predominant benevolence toward oneself (Philautia), or that of satisfaction l-uith oneself (Arrogantia). The former is called, in particular, self-love [Eigenliebe]; the latter, self-conceit [Eigendiinkel] Pure practical reason merely infringes upon self-love, inasmuch as it only restricts it, as natural and active in us even prior to the moral law, to the condition of agreement with this law, and then it is called rational self-love. But it strikes down s~lf-conceit altogether, since all claims to esteem for oneself that precede accord with the moral law are null and quite unwarranted because certainly of a disposition in accord with this law is the first condition of any worth of a person ... and any presumption prior to this is false and opposed to the law. (CPrR 5:73, I(ant's emphasis).
For !(ant, inclinations are not inherently rationalized; rather, they seem to comprise stable behavioral dispositions in general. In the Anthropology, !(ant defines inclination as "habitual sensuous appetite" (A 251), and he seems to think that appeal to it is to be used only in explaining behavior, not justifying action. Taken together, our inclinations determine the "physical" sense of happiness, to be content or at rest. (A 276) We are to make sense of
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animal behavior (and our behavior as animals) as always tending from a state of pain or agitation toward one of contentnlent or rest. IS Natural self-love, by which we might interpret the behavior of animals, is the only kind of self-love which is "prior" to the moral law (a self-love that sounds very much like Rousseau's amour-de-soi ). By contrasting such self-love with "rational selflove," Kant distinguishes natural selfishness from the sort of selflove that supports principles of instrumental and prudential reasoning, the self-love that can have rational content. Kant here suggests that practical self-love, the sort of concern which is of the right logical type to oppose to morality, becomes available only subsequent to the moral law, as do the new interests constitutive of self-esteem and concern for the recognition of others (as sonlething very much like amour-propre). I(ant's claim seems to be that until we conceive of ourselves as bound by an unconditional law, the only sort of happiness availa ble is the "highest physical good" of the a bsence of pain-this is the "selfishness" which is not yet even rational. I6 4. The Priority of Law So far, Kant seems to have denied only the possibility of a purely naturalistic understanding of agency and practical reasoning. Like 15. This follows from I(ant's understanding of appetite in theAnthropology, where pain alone is a positive motivator, and pleasure only its absence or diminution. I(ant here is offering an interesting contrast to Hobbes: for Hobbes, we are systems of matter in motion whose behavior can be understood as aimed at maintaining such motion. For I(ant, in contrast, we are perturbed systems that are always moving to come to rest. For Hobbes, life is inertia; for I(ant, a kind of winding-down. 16. Cf. Religion 6:46n. This Inight explain why the Groundwork is careful to avoid a hedonistic construal of inclination, while the second Critique seems to go out of its way to provide one. The Groundwork involves an analysis of our moral consciousness as it is-under the scope of the moral law, and with all the possibilities for happiness and self-love that that law makes possible. In contrast, the second Critique opens with a analysis that does not assume the validity of any of our moral commitments-rather, it begins only with some basic moral psychological principles and definitions, as a supposedly non-tendentious starting point. If so, then we should not expect the specter of hedonism to be fully exorcised until after the moral law is announced as a "fact of pure reason" toward the end of this section. And indeed, once this has occurred, Kant's discussion of the nature of self-love changes dramatically.
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the categories of the understanding, the concepts of good and evil cannot be derived from a morally neutral motivational psychology, for these concepts are already presupposed in being able to characterize that psychology in the relevant way in the first place (i.e., to interpret desire and volition in such a way as to make the idea of intentional action, rather than just ordinary causation, available to us). All this establishes is that intentional action can only be understood in terms of some normative concepts, and that such normativity is irreducible. However, Kant has not yet defended his stronger suggestion: the suggestion that of all normative concepts, the ideas of law and obligation are privileged as the ones through which we grasp all of the others. While SOlne sort of normative concept may have to serve as a primitive, Kant has yet to show that ideas of law and obligation, rather than something more like a substantive understanding of the human good, or of human excellence, are unique in being able to well play that role. Kant has treated the ideas of Good and Evil as categories of practical judgment and action, while the moral law is supposedly conceptually prior to them all. If so, then we might try to understand that law in analogy with what, in the first Critique, is supposed to be conceptually prior to the Categories of the Understanding: the synthetic unity of apperception. In the second Critique, Kant in fact alludes to apperceptive unity in explaining the transcendental status of the Inorallaw. These allusions suggest that recognition of moral authority is necessary for one to have a sufficiently unified self-conscious practical perspective so as to be able to employ any ideas of good and evil at all, just as apperceptive unity was presupposed by the ability to employ any empirical concepts. 5. Practical Apperception In the first Critique, Kant offers as the highest principle of transcendental philosophy the synthetic unity of apperception, the "I think" "which must be able to accompany all my representations" (B 132). Kant's understanding of the unity of apperception, and its role in the Transcendental Deduction, are notoriously obscure, and are beyond the limits of the present work to give even the beginnings of an adequate account of them. Instead, I will offer a thumbnail sketch of the role of the synthetic unity of apperception in grounding the Categories, which I hope will shed some light on Kant's cryptic allusions to it in the second Critique. In the first Critique, I(ant is committed to the claim that con-
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sciousness requires self-consciousness; i.e., that contentful or intensional thought requires the possibility of judgments about the relations between the contents of those thoughts. 17 For there to be thoughts about something, those thoughts must be able to be graspable in one perspective (hence the "I think") in which some sort of necessary yet synthetic order or relations can be attributed to them (what sort of order is unclear, whether causal, or rational, or something else). The synthetic unity of apperception just is this demand that all thoughts, insofar as they can have content, be judgable together this way; that there is a necessary order anl0ngst their contents that goes beyond what can be found in the contents of anyone, or in the aggregate of any such contents. Kant's idea here seems to be that an isolated thought (or percept, or intuition) cannot have intensional content all by itself; it may be a kind of mental event, but unless it can be determinately judged in the context of other related thoughts, it cannot be about anything, it cannot refer. !(ant seems to accept something like Ineaning holism here; for him, content cannot be established by any isolated relation between a thought and its supposed referent, such as a causal relation, or a relation of resemblance. Rather, its content can be established only through its place in a determinate order of such thoughts as a whole. The Categories of the Understanding are derived from the minimal conceptual structure that all such thoughts must have in order to be so judged and ordered; they are derived from the basic "logical forms of judgment" rendered in ways suitable to the primitive forms of sensible intuition, space and time. Without the Categories, thoughts would lack the minimal conceptual structure that would allow them to be located and judged together as a determinate whole. Such thoughts could not be the object of self-conscious 17. This should not be read as suggesting that animals cannot be conscious. While I(ant claims that consciousness requires self-consciousness, this is mean as a claim about orders of concepts, not psychological claims about particular thinkers. Kant's point is that in order for the concepts by which we make sense of consciousness in general to be coherent, there must be a logical level by which those states can be judged and ordered. Intensional concepts presuppose the possibility of reflection, but that does not mean that such reflectiveness must be attributed to whatever consciousness can be attributed to. The consciousness of animals requires not that animals be self-conscious, but only that there is a "logical space" in which such consciousness could be coherently reflected upon, whether or not animals (or anything else for that matter) every actually does so.
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reflection and, since each thought would have no determinate relations to anything distinct from itself, would not have a meaning either. Without the synthetic unity of apperception, both mind and world could be nothing more than unconnected HUlnean "perceptions," (although it is not clear what such perceptions could amount to in such a conceptually impoverished context). The synthetic unity of apperception is logically prior to the Categories in that it constitutes the basic demand that thought must fulfill in order to have content, and it is from this demand that the Categories emerge as the possible ways of satisfying it. When Kant argues that sensible intuitions must be synthesized under concepts, he is not describing a datable psychological process by which the mind's perceptual capacities are brought to bear on sensory inputs. Rather, !(ant is describing the sort of minimal conceptual content that must always already be attributed to a thought insofar as it can be taken to be a thought about anything. While synthesis involves a kind of active relation to the contents of our thoughts, it is not itself an act in time. We should not think of contentful thought as the product of raw intuitions put together with pure concepts in "cookie-cutter" fashion. Rather, contentful thought is a kind of given, and the idea of a pure concept or a pure intuition a further abstraction from it. To say that the manifold of intuition must be synthesized under a concept is to say that, insofar as we have intuitions that refer to anything at all, they must already be laden with enough conceptual structure as to stand in determinate logical relations to other such intuitions. Kant's account of role that the unity of apperception plays as the "highest principle of the critical philosophy" is notoriously obscure. However, this much seems clear: that in order to have COI1tentful mental states, those states must be ascribed (or at least be ascribable) to a single locus of judgment, which recognizes some sort of necessary order or unity in the contents of those states. After producing the "Table of the Categories of Freedom," Kant likens our consciousness of the moral law to this synthetic unity of apperception. Observing that the principles delineated in the table have no theoretical significance, Kant claims: The determinations of a practical reason can take place only with reference to the latter [appearances] and therefore, indeed, confornlably with the categories of the understanding, but not with a view to a theoretical use of the understanding, in order to bring a priori the manifold of (sensible) intuition under one consciousness, but only.in order to subject a priori the 11lanifold of
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desires to the unity of consciousness of a practical reason commanding in the moral law, or of a pure wilL (CPrR 5:65)
For !(ant, these "deternlinations" of practical reason specify all the different ways that concerns relevant to practical judgment can be conceived; they set up all the different forms that considerations of good and evil can take, in ways that pertain to questions of happiness as much as to morality. As with the Categories of the Understanding, these rules appear to be understood in terms of the necessary requirements of the synthesis of a manifold: here, what Kant calls a manifold of desire. In both cases, this synthesis is defined in terms of a demand for a certain unity of consciousness, a unity that makes self-conscious judgment possible. If the parallel to cognition that is suggested by this passage holds, then the synthesis of the manifold of desire should refer to the minimal conceptual content that our desire must be seen as always already having, insofar as they are relevant to matters of choice and justification-i.e., insofar as these are desires not just that we respond to, but that for the sake of which we could act. In his initial discussion of the "object of pure practical reason," !(ant held that for desires to be relevant not just to the explanation of action, but to its justification, they must already be conceptualized or rationalized to some degree. His allusion above to apperceptive unity suggests that the form of conceptualization, as in the cognitive case, is to be found in what is required for such desires or intuitions to be grasped and evaluated from a certain kind of unified, self-conscious perspective. However in the practical case, this perspective takes on a very peculiar form: it is the perspective not just of self-consciousness in general, but the perspective of a subject that sees itself as obligated, as bound by law. Kant seems committed to the claim that desires can have practically relevant content (i.e., count as understandings of what is good or bad) only insofar as they are consistent with "the unity of consciousness of practical reason commanding in the moral law." Why must the self-consciousness in question be one that sees itself as bound by law, rather than as, e.g., aspiring to the good? While Kant does not here clearly explain why the required unity must take this form, he goes farther in this direction in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone. In the Religion, Kant tells us that: The idea of the moral law alone, together with the respect that is inseparable from it, cannot be properly called a predisposition to
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personality; it is personality itself (the idea of humanity considered wholly intellectually). (R 6:28)
Kant has elsewhere defined a person as "a subject whose actions can be imputed to him" (MM 6:223), as a human being "taken as a rational and at the same time an accountable being."(R 6:28)). The idea of being bound by law seems to bring with it basic ideas of accountability and responsibility which in turn may serve to make the conceptual space of good and bad available to US. I8 It is tempting at this point to conclude that the idea of accountability to law is prior to conceptions of good and bad because only with the idea of law can we think of errors of judgment, and that this possibility of mistake is required for concepts of the good and the bad to get off the ground in the first place. After all, any kind of judgment requires some notion of rational responsibility, in this very general sense. Justification is only coherent in response to (or anticipation of) some challenge, some question that might be raised about the grounds of a judgment. If error is in principle impossible, then there could never be any such challenges, and hence nothing for any putative justification to be directed to or tested against. If one cannot judge wrongly, one cannot judge correctly either. Unfortunately, this move is lTIuch too quick. For although thought of oneself as bound by law makes possible the idea of error or mistake, so too does the thought that there is some good for us. Just as one can transgress a law, one can also act against one's own good, in ways that provide for rational criticism and correction. While all judgment must admit the possibility of mistake, this possibility is equally available to a self conceived essentially as the subject of duty and as an aspirant to its good. What distinguishes the conceptual space framed by the idea of law from that framed by the idea of the good is that juridical ideas of culpability and desert are what first bring the distinction between justification and motivation to light, by uniquely placing these concepts into explicit opposition. To be capable of any kind 18. Or in Kant's terminology, the conceptual space of good and evil. I prefer the term 'bad' to 'evil' here because it better captures the idea of an object of the will that there is SOBle real, if defeasible reason to avoid, in keeping with Kant's initial explanation of the distinction. 'Evil,' in contrast, sounds too moralized; it would suggest that Kant is here talking about only what we have an unconditionally binding reason to avoid, Irather than the nlore general notion of that which we have some pro tanto Ireason to avoid. ----------- - - - - - - - - - - -
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of practical reasoning, one needs to understand the difference between merely being moved or disposed to do something, and having a reason to so act. If the above suggestion is correct, then the juridical concepts must have priority over all other ones, precisely because it is through such concepts and the related practices that we first grasp the logical difference between having a justification and merely experiencing a motivation or desire. To see how these juridical concepts make this distinction available to us, we should note that along with possibility of mistake, the space of law also includes the possibility of punishable offense, and with this, a view of oneself as at least potentially guilty. For I(ant, the idea of guilt is uniquely and necessarily associated with the idea of law, a point he emphasizes in Theory and Practice: For precepts as to how one can make oneself happy or at least avoid what is disadvantageous are not con1mands. They do not bind anyone absolutely; having been warned, one nlay choose what he thinks good, if he is prepared to suffer the consequences. He has no ca use to regard as punishments such troubles as might issue from his failure to follow the advice he was given; for punishments happen only to a will that is free but contrary to the law; nature and inclination, however, cannot give laws to freedom. It is quite different with the idea of duty, someone's transgression of which, even without his considering the disadvantages to himself resulting from it, works immediately upon his mind and makes him reprehensible and punishable in his own eyes. (8:288, p.289).19
The ideas of law and of the good both make possible the thought of mere errors; but law alone provides opportunities for crime and sin. The important thing about the latter notions is that they are intertwined with the idea of (retributive) punishnlent, where transgression calls forth not merely correction and regret, but deserved suffering and guilt. This notion of punishment, as the infliction of deserved suffering, is a distinctly juridical idea, part of the conceptual sphere of positive law, duty, authority, and guilt. In contrast to ideas of law and crime (or sin), concepts of good and bad bear no necessary connection to the possibility of deserved suffering, to a view of oneself as at least potentially guilty. To act against one's own good is certainly a mistake, but some19. Cf. Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals II, §§ 14-16
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thing must be more than a n1istake to call for punishment. If one luckily escapes the normal consequences of a mistake, there is no sense that something has been left undone, than a balance still needs to be paid. Even the idea of something like an objective human good does not bear this conceptual connection to the idea of deserved suffering. When we act against the human good, we may be bringing ourselves into an objectively bad condition; we may not merely err, but in some deep way harm or corrupt ourselves, even if we cannot see or appreciate this fact. Nevertheless, there is no necessary conceptual connection between the idea of such harms and the potential appropriateness of further, distinct suffering. Rather, vice is its own punishment, and does not require any conceptually distinct suffering be added to it (any more than virtue needs to be supplemented with any conceptually distinct sort of pleasure). One can quite coherently talk about ideals of flourishing and perfection even in contexts where the ideas of punishment and desert are clearly inapplicable tout court. Some things really are good for animals and very young children to do; we can understanding then1 as acting for or against their own good, even though they can never deserve to suffer for their acts, nor conceive of themselves as so deserving. In contrast, ideas of law and obligation only attach to subjects to whom punishment can be appropriately addressed, and who can thus recognize themselves as at least potentially guilty. For Kant, I believe, the idea of an unconditional law or an absolute authority inaugurates a kind of self-consciousness which is essentially juridical in character, an idea of the self modeled along the lines of the accountable legal subject. In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant defines a person as "a subject whose actions can be imputed to him" (MM 6:223), where he explains: Imputation (imputatio) in the moral sense is the judgment by which someone is regarded as the author (casua libera ) of an action, which is then called a deed (factum) and stands under laws. If the judgment also carries with it the rightful consequences of this deed, it is an imputation having rightful force (imputatio iudiciaria s. valida ); otherwise it is merely an imputation appraising the deed (imputatio diiudicatoria). The (natural or moral) person that is authorized to impute with rightful force is called a judge or a court (iudex s. forum). (MM 6:227). 20
20. On the first page of the Groundwork, Kant tells us that "The sight of a being who is not graced by any touch of a pure and good will but who yet enjoys an uninterrupted prosperity can never delight a rational and impartial spectator." (G 4:394).
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As has been noted by conlmentators from Friedrich Nietzsche to Annette Baier, I(ant's understanding of morality always seems to bear "a certain odor of blood and torture".21 Even when not explicitly considered, ideas of guilt and retributive suffering often seenl to inform I(ant's thinking. When Kant talks of the scoundrel's attitude toward hinlself, it is not just one of seeing his happiness as worthless; rather, he "despises" or "has contempt" for himself, an attitude that seems to be more one of self-inflicted torment that just the recognition of a lack of worth. 22 Similarly, in the Religion Kant argues that there can be no proper atonement without suffering, that a moral debt must be paid with pain before the penitent can enter into a morally sound condition (R 6:72). Divine justice must be rendered "satisfaction" in the form of some self-inflicted punishment, what I(ant calls "the death of the old man" or "'the crucifying of the flesh'''(R 6:74). Indeed, I(ant frequently offers the apportioning of suffering to transgression as the criterion of "divine justice," in which punishment becomes a kind of "categorical imperative." I(ant says in a 1792 letter that: "In a world of nloral principles governed by God, punishments would be categorically necessary (insofar as transgressions occur)"23, and in "On the miscarriage of all philosophical trial in theodicy" that: [P]unishment in the exercise of justice is founded in the legislating wisdom not at all as n1ere means but as an end: trespass is associated with ills not that some other good may result from it, but because this connection is good in itself, i.e. morally and necessarily good. (8:258n).
What these passages suggests is that I(ant sees the self as de21. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals II See also Baier, "Moralism and Cruelty: Reflections on Hume and I(ant." 22. Kant's account of legal punishment certainly has a strong retributivist element: "The principle of punishment is a categorical imperative, and woe to him who crawls through the windings of eudaelTIonism in order to discover something that releases the criminal from punishment or even reduces its amount by the advantages it promises ... " (MM 332). 23. Immanuel I(ant, Philosophical Correspondence, 199. While I(ant's legal theory may qualify retributive punishment with various considerations of deterrence, this qualification seems to stem not from what must be the case for the criminal to truly deserve punishment, but from additional considerations that concern who is entitled to administer such deserved punishment.
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fined largely in terms of desert. This idea of desert is inseparable from the notion of suffering that, as just punishment, can be good in itself and, through guilt, can be so recognized by the transgressor. While considerations of desert, guilt, and punishment distinguish the self conceived in terms of law from the self which seeks its good, they hardly seem to do so to the advantage of the former. Once the essential conceptual connection between the Kantian subject and the possibility of guilt becomes clear, we may be tempted to dismiss the I(antian conception of moral subjectivity as hopelessly divided against itself, as based upon an ultimately nihilistic urge toward self-domination and self-denial: criticisms most famously articulated by Hegel and Nietzsche. 24 Yet despite the unpleasantness of this picture, I(ant is right to give priority to the idea of law over the idea of the good, precisely because it is law that brings the ideas of punishment, guilt, and desert into play. What the idea of guilt may make available is a completely new way of conceiving of the self's relation to its own pleasures and pains, and, with this conception, a new relation to its own desires as well. For Kant, pleasure and pain are prinlitives; they are assigned to a basic power of the mind distinct from both practical reason and cognition. However, before moral considerations come on the scene, the only way to make sense of these feelings is to interpret them in terms of the categories of naturalistic explanation, in terms of behavioral or causal dispositions. Pleasure and pain are thus made sense of by relating them to desire, where a desire is just a psychological state with motivating power, something like an urge or a drive. From this perspective, pleasure is interpreted as the subjective quality characteristic of any state that one is moved to preserve; pain that of any state one is moved to change (A 230232). For Kant, then, a naturalistic explanation of behavior has to be broadly hedonistic. Given his understandings of pleasure, pain, and desire in this regard, it could make no sense to say that an animal acted in order to suffer, or in order to avoid pleasure. In this context, pain is simply the affective quality of any condition which one is driven to escape, and pleasure the quality of that which we are moved to sustain. If so, then when we try to give a causal account of behavior, anything we nl0ve toward will count as that which is at least relatively pleasing. A deliberate move from the
124. Centrally, in Hegel's Philosophy of Right and Nietzsche's Genealogy lor Morals,
though these criticisms emerge in many other works of these ,authors as well.
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pleasant to the painful is not possible, given the way these ideas have been defined by reference to the idea of a motivating desire. What the ideas of guilt and deserved punishment may serve to do is open up a new way of understanding pleasure and pain, which allows us to construe these originally neutral primitives in a way that coheres not with the explanatory objectives of theoretical cognition, but with the justificatory perspective of practical reason. With the idea of punishment comes the idea that one can deserve to suffer for one's transgressions. When I direct such a judgment to myself, I experience guilt, the recognition that I should accept or perhaps even inflict some pain upon myself or at least abjure some pleasure. But once punishment takes this reflexive form as guilt, the conceptual possibility opens up that pain can be good in itself, and pleasure bad. Pain can now be choiceworthy, and not nlerely for the sake of avoiding greater pain or securing pleasure. Rather, insofar as pain can be brought under the description of deserved punishment, it can have non-instrumental value for the agent, and this value nevertheless depends on our still recognizing this feeling as painful, as a state we are nl0ved to escape. We not only judge this painful condition choiceworthy; we choose it in part precisely because it is painful, because we have some immediate disposition or desire to escape it. Otherwise, such suffering could hardly function as the kind of expiation that we take to be properly demanded of ourselves. What we need in order to distinguish the rational order of justification from the natural order of causal explanation is recognition of the way that the motivational power of a desire and the justificatory merit of a reason can come apart. We need to see that what one is moved to do and what one has good reason to do can be very different things. This basic conceptual distinction, I take it, finds its first, most primitive expression in the sphere of punishment and guilt (see On Education, §83). To experience guilt is to recognize that we have a good reason to suffer, and this recognition depends on our also seeing that we have a motivating desire not to suffer in this way. Yet while we must acknowledge this desire, we also must see that in this context, it does not count against the reason we have to suffer, but is rather presupposed by that reason itself. So despite its motivating power, which remains undiminished, this desire plays no reason-giving role at all. Since our reason to suffer depends precisely on the fact that we have a desire not to do so, we cannot ignore or conceal that in this case, reasons and desires have conlpletely come apart. The experience of guilt re-
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volves around their explicit opposition. Once we grasp that we can have an unequivocal reason to choose something because we desire to avoid it, we can also grasp the weaker cases where we have a reason do to something despite our desire to avoid it, or despite our lack of an antecedent desire to seek it. The distinction between a reason and a desire is anchored in this most extreme case: and once it is so anchored, we can make sense of more mixed cases, in which the distinction is not so apparent. By recognizing itself as at least potentially guilty, a creature gains access to the idea of normativity in general: making available not just the idea of obligation, but of any notions of the good and bad as well. The ideas of guilt and punishment, i.e., of deserved suffering, must be more central than the idea of reward-i.e., deserved enjoynlent. The problem with merited reward is that it does not clearly distinguish between what we deserve and what we desire. We may indeed seek some pleasure because we feel we particularly deserve it (I will probably treat myself to a banana split when I finish this chapter). However, one nlight well seek out such pleasures even without the thought of desert (I do not need to finish a chapter in order to have reason to have a banana split). One does not need to deserve dessert. Even from a naturalistic perspective, there is nothing very mysterious about doing a kindness for oneself, and so the force of the notion of desert, and the sense that pleasure and pain have entered into a new conceptual order quite different from the motivational one, is not made particularly clear through these practices. In cases of reward, desert and desire will largely coincide, and hence cannot bring home to us the distinction between what is justified and what is merely wanted. One could not educate someone into practical self-consciousness simply with rewards; punishment, at least as a possibility, will have to be on the tahie as well. What we need in order to distinguish the practical from the natural orders is recognition of the way that the psychological force of pleasure and pain and their justificatory value can come apart. We need to be able to conceive of choiceworthy pain, and of pleasure that it would be wrong to seek or experience. These conceptual possibilities, I take it, find their first expression in the sphere of punishment (see On Education, §83). I(ant may seem to lay the emphasis on choiceworthy pain (rather than inappropriate pleasure), but this may only be because he sees pain to he more important than pleasure in the naturalistic explanation of behavior. In the Anthropology, I(ant tells us, in what seems to be a context of natural explanation, that pain is the true motive to action, the
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"spur" from which a creature moves-pleasure is only the cessation of such an impulse, the removal or diminution of this impetuS. 25 Here, pain is the central concept for understanding natural motivation and desire, and pleasure a derivative. If so, then coming to distinguish the practical and natural orders may require that we first and foremost uproot this central concept, by bringing pain into the sphere of what can have value in itself. In any event, an emphasis on deserved pain may be sonlething inessential to I(ant's account, and perhaps could be dispensed with if we reject Kant's already problematic idea that pain takes center stage in the naturalistic explanation of behavior. What is important is that we come to see ourselves as creatures that can potentially deserve to suffer and deserve to forgo enjoyment; neither, however, need take priority over the other. 26 The sphere of law and punishment serves to introduce a new conceptual structure into our desires which would allow us to see them not just as psychological drives, but as objects of practical evaluation. Of course, not all cases in which we might welcome suffering need be understood in terms of guilt-the pain of grief, for example, is in some sense choiceworthy without having to count as a form of punishtnent or penance. 27 However, I believe 25. Anthropology, 231-233: "What directly (by the senses) prompts llle to leave IllY state (go out of it) is disagreeable to nle-it pains me. What directly prompts Ille to maintain this state (to remain in it) is agreeable to me.... Pain is the spur of activity, and it is in activity, above all that we feel our life; without pain, inertia would set in." 26. The need to see pleasure (and pain) coming apart from justification seems to be at play in I(ant's claim that morality (and with it, autonoillY) would be impossible if we could actually have knowledge that happiness would be apportioned to virtue by the hand of God. If we knew that virtue would always bring happiness, and vice suffering, we might very well never come to understand the distinction between the two. We would never fully enter the conceptual sphere of guilt and desert, because these notions only come into play when we see that our condition can diverge from what our condition ought to be. If, from infancy, we grew up with the knowledge that such divergence could only be temporary and apparent, we would never be able to clearly distinguish the naturalistic and practical understandings of ourselves. Only once we see that virtue and happiness are conceptually distinct, will it be safe for us to entertain the practical postulate that they will be ultimately conjoined through God's justice. (In a sense, the remedy provided by such religious ideas is lethal to those who are not already in need of it). 27. lowe this putative counter-example to Chris I
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that for Kant, this possibility is conceptually derivative of the more central case, that of guilt. A creature that could not count itself guilty could not, strictly speaking, be grief-stricken either. Guilt here is central, because in it alone pain becomes something that is in itself choiceworthy just because it is what we are moved to avoid. In grief, it is not suffering itself that is of value (or enjoyment which is of "disvalue"); rather, such suffering is only a necessary concomitant of what is truly important, our love and concern for the deceased, the sort of relationship we took ourselves to have with them and how we thought of ourselves in light of that relationship. If we fail to suffer (or worse, actually experience enjoynlent), we are concerned not because it is the suffering itself that is valuable here, but rather because of what this response suggests about the true nature of our relationship with the deceased, about which we may have been self-deceived. Suffering is here welcomed because of what it indicates about ourselves, not because it is sonlething we desire to avoid. To acquiesce in such suffering does involve the frustration of some desires, but this suffering is not welcomed for the very reason that it involves such frustration. If I do not feel pain at the death of Iny supposedly beloved grandfather, it will not help for me to deliberately burn my hand or read suitably lachrymose poems. But if I have gotten away with a great crime, it makes perfect sense to so punish myself, because it is my suffering itself, and not what such suffering might reveal, that is important to me. In the case of guilt, pain is not merely accepted or welcomed as a necessary concolnitant of what we value. Instead, such suffering is positively desired for its own sake, as suffering, as a condition we desire to escape. Guilt, unlike grief, nlakes the conceptual distinction between what there is reason to do and what we are moved to do in the sharpest and most-\complete way. We need this most extreme opposition to wrench us out of a purely naturalistic perspective, and bring us to a radically new way of seeing ourselves. It may be here objected that all this account shows is that these juridical ideas and practices provide one way that a finite creature can conle to practical reason, a way perhaps characteristic of modern subjectivity, but that nothing shows that this is the only or best way for this to happen. There may be many such vehicles of development, and it would be hopelessly ethnocentric to inscribe particular aspects of our own into the very idea of practical reason itself. On this objection, the moral law would seem to share many problems traditionally associated with I
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might show why such concepts would be deeply entrenched in our thinking (either about ourselves or about the world), nothing would establish the necessary uniqueness or completeness of the structure of concepts that Kant presents. Yet while this difficulty may persist in the case of cognition, there may be more available for Kant to say about the practical case. What seems distinctive about guilt is the notion that one can see some suffering as choiceworthy precisely because, in another sense, one does not want to so suffer. It is difficult to imagine any other framework of concepts and related practices that could make this same connection without counting as another variant of the juridical sphere. Guilt appears to be unique then, in opposing desire and reason in one concept, in the sharpest and most unn1istakable way. It has been objected 28 that such concepts might be only be needed for "the slowest learner," that only the most recalcitrant subject would need this sort of confrontation in order to enter into the realm of reasons. In a sense this is correct, but we must also recognize that human beings, both as individuals and as a species, are precisely such slow learners. A human being begins with no ideas, reason, or self-conceptions in place, but is rather a wholly heteronomous creature possessed of incomplete instinct and affect. At this point, our capacities for practical reason are wholly latent; the transformative work must all be done by practices that work on the body and the affects. A learner that was any slower would not be capable of coming to practical reason at all. The juridical concepts might not be necessary for creatures who can1e into being with some sort of innate ideas (such as perhaps angels for Kant), but for anything remotely like us, something very much like guilt and desert would have to serve as the leading strings to practical reason and practical self-consciousness. What the conceptual sphere of law does is to make it possible for us to conceive of the will as something very different from just a nexus of competing motivational forces. Instead, the will is now cast into the role of a judge of reasons, where the relation between competing reasons is not to be construed in terms of relative strength (as with desires), but in terms of their relative authority or merit: i.e., in terms which, like guilt, are drawn from the sphere of positive law. 29 We might say that legal institutions comprise the 28. By Tim Scanlon. 29. I suspect something of this sort is what is going on in the transition between the Consciousness and Self-Consciousness chapters of Hegel's Phenolneno[ogy, where the crucial move brings us from "Force and the Understanding" into the dialectic of desire.
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basic practices through which the very ideas of justification and authority become available to us in the first place. Once the idea of authority has come into play, we can now see some of our concerns as outranking or even silencing others, rather than as just overpowering or outweighing them. As such, we can develop a vocabulary for articulating these authority relations with the same degrees of generality and richness that were available to our causal interpretations of desire. With such a vocabulary, we can consider our concerns not just as brute preferences but as what Charles Taylor calls "strong evaluations," in which we can employ all sorts of contrastive terms to explain just what is good about what we want. Desire can now become "rationalized"-understood not just as a causal disposition, but as an attitude dependent on our judgment about what is worthwhile to do. Insofar as desire is tied to rational judgment in this way, we should be able to identify what really is desirable about what we want. But once this sort of general description of what we desire is available, we can engage in determinate instrumental reasoning about what would most effectively promote it. The idea of the juridical self has allowed desire to be understood in terms of (non-natural) goods, and ideas of such goods, in turn, allow us access to the basic concepts and norms of instrumental rationality. If the above account is correct, then the very concepts and vocabulary by which we can articulate any conception of happiness (or any other sort of non-moral concern) is only available to us insofar as we have already conceived of ourselves as under moral law. Recognition of the law opens up the whole practical realm to us, including any sort of rationalized desire. Happiness need not be construed as just a point at which all our desires converge, the condition in which all our drives abate. Rather, happiness can involve some specific conception of what it is worthwhile to pursue, of what there is some reason to seek. This sort of happiness is parasitic on the idea of a practical reason. But if the above account is correct, the very idea of a practical reason will itself only be available to a creature that has formed a sense of itself as standing under law, as obligated. 6. Transcendental Endorsement All the pieces are now in place to show that the moral law necessarily has all the endorsen1ent it could need, in that there is no distinct perspective from which it could intelligibly called into question. In order to establish this claim, we must first show that
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morality, as I(ant conceives of it, reflexively approves of itself: if morality fails by its own lights, there is no further need to consider whether or not it is susceptible to any other sort of challenge. Such reflexive endorsement has, however, already been demonstrated by the ineliminable circularity that emerged in Groundwork III. What that circle showed was that each aspect of I(antian morality served to justify or give sense to the others, such that this moral conception formed a self-defining and self-justifying "",hole. This I take to be the mark of reflexive approval, which would not emerge if there where some internal contradiction or incoherence within the scheme as a whole. Given such reflexivity, what needs to be shown is that there are no perspectives logically distinct enough from morality so as provide a standpoint of potential challenge. In other words, we need to show that the ultimately circular justifications of Groundwork I I I are in no way vicious or question-begging, because there really is no further coherent question to be begged once these circular justifications have been mapped out. With the above account in hand, we can now supply such an argument. For I(ant, the only perspective from which we might mount challenges to the authority of the moral law was the perspective of self-love. For Kant, selflove is defined in opposition to morality; it comprises all interests that do not admit of universal validity, all partial or local concerns based on something particular about the subject, something not to be found in the mere form of rational agency itself. The generic name for the objects of self-love is happiness, and its content can be as varied as human physiology, psychology and culture can allow. As we saw in both the Groundwork and the initial interpretations of the Credential argument, a rational agent must be able to conceive of both moral and non-moral concerns, but this requirement of practical rationality did not itself determine which sort of concern should have ultimate authority over the other. The authority of morality then might well be indicted from the perspective of happiness, of some particular ends or values that are not implicitly universal in scope. If the above reconstruction is correct, then morality cannot be coherently challenged by appeal to our happiness (regardless of what we might take such happiness to involve). These challenges fail not because morality necessarily conduces to our (non-moralized) senses of happiness. Rather, the point is that, when it comes to questions of practical justification, the deck is always already stacked in favor of morality. We can articulate conceptions of hap-
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piness only in a conceptual space bounded by a horizon of law and obligation; and this means that the burden of proof will always fall on self-love as to why it should have priority over morality. Since the recognition of unconditional obligation is what makes any practical reasons available to us in the first place, the authority of morality must be the default assumption of the practical perspective. As such a default, morality does not need any positive justification. Instead, it possesses something of the right of the first occupant. Non-moral concerns will bear the burden of justification, if they are to usurp the authority of the moral law. Since the conceptual stage has already been set by morality, no such challenges will be available (assuming that the moral perspective is not itself self-contradictory or internally incoherent). If we ever were, per impossibile, to take up a practical perspective that was truly neutral between morality and self-love, then there would indeed be no grounds for choosing between them; we would then be left with the sort of incoherent "radical choice" found in caricatures of Sartre. 30 However, I take Kant's point to be that we could never occupy such supposedly neutral territory. The practical realm only opens up to us through the idea of obligation; concerns of happiness always come on the scene too late, bearing a special burden of proof that, since the context is always already moralized, they cannot meet. We come to practical reasons in general through the idea of morality, and our non-moral values and concerns must come on the scene already subordinated to its authority. The skeptic that challenges morality from the perspective of self-love does not advance a logically incoherent claim. Her selfrefutation is not on the level of inconsistency. Instead, whenever the skeptic tries to give substance to her claim, to advance a particular conception of happiness, she necessarily draws on conceptual materials that already bear the stamp of morality, which are "always already" subordinated to moral concerns. Given the way that we nlust come to learn practical concepts, we can never have available truly unmoralized materials (e.g., interests, values, practical reasons, identities) from which to construct a sustainable challenge. The skeptic's clainl always defeats itself because ideas of happiness, whatever they in fact are, necessarily come on the scene too late; by the time we are in a position to articulate theIn, the moral chips are already down. 30. For such a caricature, and an incisive attack on the idea of radical choice, see Charles Taylor, "Responsibility_!~~_~~J._:
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At this point it may be objected that all the above account shows is sOlnething about how we happen to learn practical concepts, which does not in itself justify any normative practical claims. We might well come to conceive of sexuality in a religious context in which notions of purity and perversion are central, but that does not mean that we cannot challenge and throw off this whole way of thinking. In any event, isn't this all too psychological, too empirical, to serve as a I(antian argument for the authority of morality? This sort of objection confuses the psychological and the transcendental. If I'm right, then in the second Critique, I(ant anticipates an insight of Nietzsche, Hegel, and Wittgenstein: that the practices and institutions through which we must learn certain concepts in part determines the content and logical relations between those concepts: that the manner of acquisition largely establishes the basic logical "valence" of these concepts relative to each other. There is not a sharp distinction between the practices and activities through which certain concepts become available to us, and what those concept mean, what the internal logic of their use dictates. If practical concepts can only become available through certain quasi-juridical practices, then those practices leave their mark on the concepts themselves, and this is what stacks the deck in favor of morality. I(ant is not here saying that these juridical notions are just the way that practical concepts happen to open up to us, as a particularity about our biology or cultural history. Rather, this account is supposed to be perfectly general: showing the only way that practical concepts could open up to creatures that start off as animals, as unreflective heteronomous bundles susceptible to pleasure and pain. If so, then these conclusions should apply to any finite, sensible creature that can come to practical reason only through such a transformation of primitive appetitive capacities. 31 The only rational agent beyond the scope of this argument is God, who supposedly has no becoming in time, and is not sensibly effected. But as the last chapter showed, the preparatory argument of the Grounding alone was enough to bring God under the moral law. That analysis of concepts is enough to show that God, as a pure rational being, is bound by the moral law without having to establish any further synthetic claims, claims that 31. If this claim fails, then we may have to countenance different kinds of practical authority, relativized to the different ways that we do, in fact, learn these concepts. This move seems to be at work in the historicism of Hegel and the genealogy of Nietzsche, where what was seen as transcendentally unifonn now becomes up for grabs historically.
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bear only on the authority of that law for imperfect wills. The problem of moral authority was a problem that emerged only in the context of sensibility and finitude; since that problem does not apply to God, we have no need of its solution either. What then of the objection that this argument might equally well justify various disturbing notions of sex or gender for those who came to learn them through certain bad religious practices and institutions?32 First, we should note that the above argument assumes that the schen1e of concepts in question survives reflexive application; that it approves of itself according to its own terms. It may well be that the distressing self-conceptions in question cannot do that-this is a question that would have to be examined on a case-by-case basis. But even if these perspectives could bear such reflexive scrutiny, they n1ight well be indicted for n10ral reasons. The above conceptions are, after all, practical conceptions-and according to the above argument, such conceptions are only available in a context of justification that is always already moralized in a I(antian way. For Kant, all schelnes of articulating the good and the bad must n1eet with their own approval and that of morality; morality is unique in that in its case, these two requirements amount to the same thing. For morality alone, reflexive approval is enough, because all other perspectives from which endorsement could come are always already subordinated to it. This condition will not be met by other practical conceptions, such as religious ones, which must n1ake their entrance on a stage already set by morality, and hence must be at least consistent with its demands. 7. The Credential Revisited Where does this argument leave I(ant's "official" argument for the Fact of Reason, the claim that the moral law has a credential in being able give a positive definition to freedom, an idea theoretical reason had to admit but which it could only understand negatively? I take this cognitive credential to be completely consistent 32. I do not mean to suggest that religious self-conceptions and practices are in general more likely than any others to produce these sorts of problem. I do not here want to invoke the stereotyped" Fundamentalist" that often appears in liberal discussions of these matters, as if this term determined anything very specific (but which, for want of defenders in philosophy seminars, often goes unchallenged). If religion is to be highlighted here, it is only because resistance to the kind of argument I am offering often stems from the thought that it could be used, horribile dictu, to make some kinds of religious commitment philosophically respect~~~
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with the modified reflective endorsement strategy described above. What the above argument has supposedly shown is that 1) morality approves of itself, and 2) that there could be no other perspective within the practical from which any sustained challenge to it could be launched. However, Kant does recognize a perspective distinct from the practical altogether, the perspective of theoretical reason. If the above argument is to go through, we might still need to show that we do not need to worry about challenges directed fron1 that uniquely distinct perspective. Appeal to the credential is meant to dispense with this last potential source of resistance. Kant has already accomplished what is minimally needed to insulate the moral law from theoretical challenge by showing that n10rality defines notions of freedom and action that are logically distinct from those with which theoretical reason concerns itself. These notions are defined in terms of accountability and justification, and hence do not compete with scientific notions geared toward the explanation of phenomena. For I(ant, practical clain1s and theoretical claims are of different logical types, and as such the judgments of one cannot immediately contradict (or support) the judgments of the other (there is this much truth in diagnoses of the so-called "naturalistic fallacy"). Hence while the theoretical perspective is distinct from the practical perspective, and not implicitly subordinated to it (as was self-love), it nevertheless fails to provide grounds for challenges to the moral law. While the theoretical perspective is truly logically distinct from the practical, nothing that could be articulated solely in its terms could count as a practical challenge in the first place. The logical autonomy of the practical reasoning is all Kant needs to protect the moral law from theoretical challenges. However, there is one more possibility that I(ant wants to rule out. Even though theoretical reasoning is logically distinct froIn practical reasoning, we might still think it possible to abandon the latter in favor of exclusive concentration on the former. Perhaps we could be merely theoretical reasoners, contemplating the world but without any practical concerns altogether. It's not clear that this possibility would pose a real problem for I(ant's account. Even if there could be pure thinkers, there seems to be no reason why we, already laden with practical concerns, should ever seriously choose to become one. However, Kant thinks that even the possibility of such a pure knower is incoherent. As the credential argument showed, determinate theoretical reasoning requires an appreciation of purposiveness, and that one cannot
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understand purposiveness without knowing what it is to act for a purpose. The conceptual capacities of theoretical reasoning will be available only to a creature that is already open to the sphere of practical thought, even though theoretical reasons are not practical ones. The credential shows that while theoretical judgment is logically distinct from practical judgment, one cannot think in one way if one cannot think in the other. Recall the central claim of the credential argument: For, the moral law proves its reality, so as even to satisfy the Critique of speculative reason, by adding a positive determination to a causality thought only negatively, the possibility of which was incomprehensible to speculative reason, which was nevertheless forced to aSSUlne it. (CPrR 5:48).
Kant here does not say that the positive definition given causality is what proves the reality of the moral law simpliciter. Rather, he here claims that this definition only serves to justify commitment to that law in a way that can be addressed to perspective of first Critique, by showing how the various spheres of reason reinforce each other while remaining distinct. In this way, we can both say, as !(ant seems to, that the moral law is justified by the service it does theory, and that it is fully self-j ustifying. Since there is more than one perspective of justification at work here, these claims can be completely compatible with each other. 8. Facts and Deductions This reading manages to show, I believe, why the n10rallaw must be given as a "Fact" that "precedes all disputations about its validity." In order to argue about practical matters at all, one must have access to the relevant sphere of concepts of both the self and its objects; and these concepts will only be available to something that has already formed an idea of itself under the ideas of obligation and accountability. To understand morality's justification, one must have been "well brought up," because only such a minimally decent upbringing will make one capable of grasping the relevant interdefined concepts at all. Such an upbringing is not needed for morality's claims to have authority over the agent, but only for the agent to be able to comprehend such authority.33 The moral law 33. In this way, I(ant may indeed recognize something like "external" reasons; though it seems better said that here, the distinction between inter-
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must first come on the scene as a given, a Faktum, because only once we have taken it as an assumption, and conceived of ourselves in its terms, will we be able to appreciate the new world it makes possible, the world of reasoned action. Once we have seen the world through the moral law, we will be able to see how it has all the justification it could ever need, since it sets the terms for what counts as justification in the practical realm. Nevertheless, we cannot directly derive the moral law from something more basic; if we did not first think of ourselves in terms of its authority, we could never be brought to understand it as an inference from something else. There could be no route from outside the moral perspective into it-fortunately, the question of justification can only arise for those already within that perspective: a question which, from the inside, we can go on to see as necessarily unmotivated. Without recognition of the law, one cannot entertain skeptical worries; and with it, one does not need to. 34 9. A Disquieting Note In a footnote to his Religion, Kant makes a seemingly very unkantian claim, apparently divorcing morality from practical rationality. He tells us that: The most rational being of this world might still need certain incentives, coming to him from the objects of inclination, to determine his power of choice. He might apply the most rational reflection to these objects-about what concerns their greatest nal and external reasons is breaking down, and that !(ant cannot be fruitfully classed as either an internalist or an externalist about morality. The decay of this contemporary meta-ethical distinction, which seems to generate far more heat than light, is something to be welcomed. 34. As presented in the Analytic, these two kinds of reasoning seem to emerge together: "But we can call something bad, however, which everyone at the same time must pronounce good, sometimes mediately but sometimes even immediately. Someone who submits to a surgical operation feels it no doubt as an ill, but by reason he and everyone else pronounce it good. But if someone who likes to vex peace-loving people finally gets a sound thrashing for one of his provocations this is certainly an ill, but everyone would approve of it take it as good in itself even if nothing further resulted from it; indeed, even the one who received it must in his reason recognize that justice was done to him, because he sees the proportion between well-being and acting well, which reason unavoidably holds before him, here put into practice exactly."(CPrR 5: 61 my emphasis).
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sum as well as the means of attaInIng the goal determined through them-without thereby even suspecting the possibility of such a thing as the absolutely impe~ative moral law which announces to be itself an incentive, and, indeed, the highest incentive. Were this law not given to us from within, no amount of subtle reasoning on our part would produce it or win our power of choice over to it. Yet this law is the only law that makes us conscious of the independence of our power of choice from determination by all other incentives (of our freedom) and thereby also of the accountability of all our actions. (R 6:27n)
At first glance, !(ant seems to be sharply distinguishing morality from practical rationality, admitting the possibility of a "most rational being" that nevertheless could not be brought to recognize its own implicit commitment to the moral law by sound philosophical argument. Morality thus appears to be something that is transcendentally optional: something that mayor may not have authority over a practically rational subject. However, the above reading shows how these claims about the "most rational mortal being" can be consistent with the thought that the moral law necessarily has authority over all rational beings. Kant's point in this passage is only that we will not be able to get at the authority of morality by examining the contents or the forms of non-moral practical reasoning. Morality will not be justified because it promotes any conception of happiness, nor is it to be subtilized out of the principles of instrumental or prudential reasoning, by reflection about the greatest sum [of the objects of inclinations] as well as the means of attaining the goal determined through thenl. For !(ant, these kinds of practical reasoning are logically distinct from moral reasoning; we will not be able to construct the latter out of the former by direct argument or inference. However, there is still a necessary relation between morality and non-moral practical reasoning which gives the former authority over the latter. While we cannot establish nlorality as an inference from any non-moral concerns or principles (by any "ratiocination"), nevertheless such concerns and principles could not be available to us unless we were already implicitly committed to the moral law. For only recognition of the law makes us capable of conceiving of action as something more than just natural causation (it "makes us c
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essary connection between morality and happiness is not to be found in the objects or principles of non-moral reasoning, but rather in what the judging subject must be already be like, in order to be open to such non-moral concepts in the first place. If our attention is directed only toward the objects and principles of nonmoral thought, we will never recognize the basis of morality, which is to be found in the nature of the judging subject herself. We can now see why I(ant denies that the moral law either needs or can be given a deduction. For I(ant, the term "deduction" has distinct legal connotations: a deduction establishes the proper holding of a right or title within an established legal system. 35 In the first Critique, the transcendental deduction of the Categories demonstrates that \ve have a right to attribute these concepts to all possible experience, even though they cannot be derived from the content of any such experience in particular. A deduction demonstrates an entitlement relative to some more basic norlnative consideration: in the first Critique, such considerations are found in the synthetic unity of apperception and in the ideality of space and time, neither of which itself receives a deduction. Rather, these considerations serve to establish the basic principles in terms of which a deduction could determinately proceed. The moral law does not receive a deduction, because there are no more basic normative considerations in terms of which its clainls might be challenged or vindicated. The law, and the sense of the self that comes with it, are what set the basic terms by which practical concepts are to be constructed and assessed in general. The authority of the law is a Faktum, which does not mean a particular piece of information, a datum, but rather denotes a deed or an action, (from facere, to do). More specifically, Faktum can refer to a mode or style of construction in both geometry and architecture, Kant's preferred sources of metaphor. The Fact of Reason expresses reason's transcendental "act" of self-construction or transfornlation, by which its regulative ideals are given a constitutive employment, producing a new logical order of judgment which takes reasons themselves as its objects, and setting up the very justificatory standards by which this very constitution could itself be judged. In theory, reason considers a realm of objects that do not stand 35. For an interesting historical discussion, see Dieter Henrich, "I
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in rational relations to each other; in practice, the objects of judgment are themselves particular reasons or values or conceptions of the good. Theoretical reasoning aims not just at how we are justified in thinking about the world, but at how the world is. A scientific claim could be fully justified, and still wrong. In practical reasoning, there is no such distinction, no further sense of 'reality' that goes beyond what we have best reason to do. The loss of this distinction has made moral properties seem "queer" to some, as showing that they are somehow unreal. But for !(ant, reality is a pure category, equally available to the practical and the theoretical perspectives. We can say that in morality, like cognition, !(ant is an empirical realist, once we realize that reality can have dimensions that go beyond that which is available to the understanding alone.
10. Comprehending the Incomprehensible One of I(ant's most puzzling remarks is the claim, at the end of the Groundwork, that "we do not indeed comprehend the practical unconditioned necessity of the moral imperative, but we nevertheless comprehend its incomprehensibility [wir begreifen aber doch seine Unbegreiflichkeit ]" (G 4:463, emphasis original). I(ant is hardly clear in this work just what it means to so conceive or comprehend son1ething's incomprehensibility. The above account suggests a way to make sense of this claim. As I have argued, the authority of the moral law is in a sense incomprehensible, in that it cannot be reduced to or explained in any terms that are conceptually prior to or independent of it. If you really needed a justification for n10ral commitment, you could not be in a position to understand one. The authority of the moral law is like jazz in this respect, that "if you have to ask, you'll never know." We can nevertheless grasp this inconceivability in the sense that, with a proper understanding of the transcendental status of the moral law, we can see that we do not need any such further explanations or justifications in order to continue thinking and judging pretty much as we already do. We might be wrong about particular moral judgments and concepts, but we cannot be radically wrong about the whole enterprise itself. The grounds of the moral law's authority (i.e., the practicality of pure reason) are inconceivable in that there are no more basic concerns with which to explain or justify it. To comprehend this incomprehensibility is to see that this supposed "limitation" is not the same as ordinary incoherence or unintelligibility, the sorts of incomprehensibility that vitiate a way of thinking. Comprehensible incomprehensibility is just the mark of
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having reached the level of conceptual primitives in general; its emergence reveals that we have reached a point where we neither can receive nor need any more answers, because we have struck the level at which the questions themselves come to have sense. Once we have come to this point "nothing is left but defense, that is, to repel the objections of those who pretend to have seen deeper into the essence of things"(G 4:459). The authority of morality can stand as a fact, as something seemingly known by intuition, because it frames the entire context by which all the variegated conceptions of the good become available to us. As Wittgenstein concludes his remarks on ethics in the Tractatus: "There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. (TLP 6.522, Wittgenstein's enlphasis). Wittgenstein perhaps overstates himself here, for there are indeed all sorts of words with which we can articulate morality's authority over us, words such as dignity, autonomy, and freedom. The important point, however, is that such words as there are could not add any new support to this authority. They could not make headway against sustained skeptical doubt, if such doubt ever were available to us, per impossibile. If one did not already recognize morality's authority, one would not be in a position to understand or appreciate these other concerns into which it might be translated either. While our reasons for recognizing the moral law can be put into words, such wording can only provide alternative ways of saying the same thing, of simply repeating the clainl in question. If morality did not always already manifest itself throughout the entire practical perspective, nothing that could be said or argued could serve to establish it.
CHAPTER FOUR
A Promise of Happiness What would it feel like not to have heard of Christ? Should we feel left alone in the dark? Do we escape such a feeling simply in the way a child escapes it when he knows there is S01neone in the r001n with hint? -Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p.13e
1. Introduction One of the most puzzling moves in I(ant's practical philosophy is the transition from his moral theory to the account of "rational faith" which he attempts to ground in that theory. From morality, I(ant wants to derive some attitude of belief or hope in the basic claims of traditional theism and speculative metaphysics: that a judging God exists, that we are free, and that we are immortal (the three "postulates of pure practical reason"). The relation of this faith to morality was clearly a central concern of Kant's; he devotes considerable attention to this topic in each of his great Critiques, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone as well as in shorter essays throughout his critical period. Famously, I(ant claims that in the Critique of Pure Reason, he "found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith" (Bxxx), suggesting that the entire critical philosophy culminates in, and is perhaps justified by, the religious understanding that ultimately emerges from it. Unfortunately, while there is no dearth of discussion in I(ant's corpus of the basis of rational faith, these discussions do not, at least at first glance, present one coherent picture. Although Kant does always treat faith as somehow derivative of morality, past this point there is little apparent consistency in the story he tells. Faith is sometimes presented as a logical corollary of the moral law's au-
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thority; sonletimes as an attitude which we need in order to properly or steadfastly care about that authority; and sometimes as just a practical heuristic, a kind of picture to help' us focus and extend our moral reasoning. Faith swings from being a set of commitnlents upon which the very authority of the moral law stands or falls, to being a merely morally salutary fafon de parler. Yet although I(ant recasts the transition from morality to moral faith in all these distinct and apparently incompatible ways, he remains constant in the attempt to show that some sort of familiar religious commitment is justified, and perhaps even demanded by the morality of pure practical reason. Such morality, supposedly logically prior to and authoritative over any religious commitments, is nevertheless to be both the foundation and "touchstone" of religion, the basis of the criteria by which we are to evaluate and interpret particular religious traditions and revelations. I(ant's account of rational faith does not seem to follow a single, direct path; and this may be because of the many obstacles that I(ant's moral philosophy and nl0ral psychology inevitably puts in its way. Any attempt to connect faith to morality's authority or its capacity to motivate us seems to steer a collision course with central commitments of Kant's mature practical philosophy. Central to that philosophy is the claim that the moral law's authority stands as an underived and unconditional "Fact of Reason," and that, in recognizing this fact, pure reason is capable of immediately motivating us, without having to presuppose any conceptually distinct sorts of desires or interests in us. These claims are fundamental pivots of I(ant's practical philosophy; they define his conception of autonomy and with that, freedom, ideas that are absolutely essential to his understanding of morality. But if the moral law is self-sufficient both with regard to its authority and its capacity to motivate us, it is not clear what necessary work can be left for faith or its objects to do. It SeelTIS that for I(ant, faith should be not only otiose, but positively pernicious, tempting us to misunderstanding morality as primarily a way of avoiding divine punishment (and currying divine favor), rather than as an essential commitment and expression of rational agency itself. There is a temptation to say of faith what I(ant said of "eudaimonistic" moral theories: that in trying to make the medicine of morality really strong, its mixes in heterogeneous elements that ruin it completely. Many have concluded that Kant's account of faith is fundamentally confused, and that his commitment to it stems from personal rather than philosophical concerns, concerns that I(ant
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could not extricate himself from even as the critical philosophy grew and matured.! In this chapter I will examine I(ant's arguments for rational faith, which I concede are both varied and confused. However, I will argue that this confusion is not the result of merely extraphilosophical concerns, or of philosophical concerns that are necessarily incompatible with the critical moral philosophy. Rather, I will argue that in his struggles with the idea of faith, Kant is trying to express an important and rich insight within the confines of a philosophical vocabulary inadequate to the task. With regard to intensional states, Kant's vocabulary privileges cognitive and conative attitudes, being focussed on either belief and knowledge, or intention and value. However, I(ant's insight about faith is not really primarily addressed to either theoretical or practical judgment, and is invariably distorted when forced into the idioms of such judgments. For faith will turn out to be not essentially a matter of the understanding or of the will, but instead a matter of the imagination (which is, nevertheless, implicated in both theoretical and practical matters). Such faith is best understood not as a kind of belief or knowledge-claim, or as some motivating interest or practical heuristic. Rather, such faith is fundamentally a matter of trust: and such trust will turn out to be a very different attitude from either belief or intention, although bearing important (and potentially confusing) resemblances to both. I(ant does indeed sometimes describe faith as some sort of trust, and I will argue that trust provides the best way of explaining what I(ant is after in the various twists and turns of his account of Illoral faith, and why he was right not to abandon the idea despite its apparent tension with central commitments of his practical philosophy.
2. The Hope of the Canon In the Canon of the first Critique, I(ant presents an initial sketch of the form that he expects the transition from morality to moral faith to take. Even though I(ant has not yet developed (or at least presented) the moral theory from which faith emerges, the basic structure of that transition is already in place-a structure that 1. William James refers to Kant's account of faith as a "particularly uncouth part of his philosophy" (The Varieties of Religious Experience, 59), and Heine falTIously jokes that Kant fabricates his philosophy of religion in order to comfort his old servant Lampe: Religion and Philosophy in
Germany, 119.
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!(ant will recast in various ways in latter works, but which he never entirely abandons. As in the subsequent Critiques, Kant claims in the Canon that a proper recognition of morality directs us toward a state of affairs not only in which have all become morally perfect, but one in which happiness stands in "exact proportion" to our moral "worthiness to be happy." I(ant calls this morally perfect state of affairs the "Highest Good," he also here refers to it as a "moral" or "intelligible" world. (A 808/B 836, 809/837). Kant goes on to argue that immortality and the existence of a judging God are necessary conditions for the existence or attainment of such a world, and as such we have some morally grounded attitude of "belief" of "faith" that these conditions do hold. In the Canon, Kant claims that moral faith is the response to the third of the three fundamental questions that reason takes an interest in, and which defines the project of the critical philosophy. In addition to "What can I know?" and "What ought I to do?," I(ant claims that we must also consider the question of "What may I hope?" I(ant calls the first question theoretical, the second practical, and the third, he says, both theoretical and practical. Taken together, these queries constitute the question "What is a human being,"(Logic, p.29), and the answer to this question the real object of philosophy, at least philosophy in the "cosmopolitan" sense. For Kant, hope is something more than an attitude we take toward states of affairs that judge good in some way, but which we know neither to be certain nor ilnpossible. Rather, hope concerns only non-moral sorts of goodness, what !(ant equates here with happiness.(80S-6/833-4). Even though !(ant has not yet laid out the moral law, he nevertheless thinks that morality must bear an internal relation to our happiness, a relation that can be gleaned from the barest concept of morality itself. As I have argued, for !(ant the idea of morality is inseparable from the idea of desert: This is the answer to the first of the two question of pure reason that concern its practical interest:-Do that through luhich though becon1est worthy to be happy. The second question is:If I so behave as not to be unworthy of happiness, may I hope thereby to obtain happiness? In answering this question we have to consider whether the principles of pure reason, which prescribe the law a priori, likewise connect this hope necessarily with it. (809/837).
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For I(ant, to see oneself as bound by morality, and to see the world in terms of morally significant features (i.e., to regard the "sensible world" as an "intelligible world"2) is to see oneself as a subject that can deserve happiness or suffering in virtue of its actions. The connection between obligation and desert is not some kind of mediate inference. Instead, these notions are different aspects of the sanle complex concept, such that the very form of the question "what ought I to do" immediately corresponds to a form of its answer, in terms of the worthiness to be happy.3 In the Canon, Kant seems to think unless we take to world to be a place where everyone ultimately gets their just deserts, morality, whatever its proper content, will not be able to motivate us at all. I(ant here claims that without the prospect of reward or punishment, morality could not take the form of an imperative, let alone a categorical one: Hence also everyone regards the moral laws as c0111mands; and this the moral laws could not be if they did not connect a priori suitable consequences with their rules, and thus carry with them promises and threats. But this they could not do, if they did not reside in a necessary being ... (811-12,/839-840).
Kant here tells us that "reason finds itself constrained to assunle" the conditions of such promises and threats, for "otherwise it would have to regard the moral laws as empty figments of the brain."(ibid). This last remark suggests that the moral laws would be completely vitiated without the prospect of reward and punishment, losing all relevance to any kind of judgment whatsoever. However, I(ant soon makes it clear that what would be lost without promises and threats is not any relevance of morality whatsoever, but rather its imperatival and law-like character, the character by which it can immediately motivate us. Without promises and threats, morality still may provide the rationally appropriate standpoint to evaluate and affectively respond to human action. 2. Cf. 808/836: "The idea of a moral [=intelligible] world has, therefore, objective reality, not as referring to an object of an intelligible intuition ... but as referring to the sensible world viewed, however, as being an object of pure reason in its practical employment ... " 3. Cf. "Theory and Practice": "1 explained morals provisionally as the introduction to a science that teaches, not how we are to become happy, but how we are to become worthy of happiness."(8:278, p.281).
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This standpoint would, however, be a purely spectatorial one, with no bearing (at least no necessary bea~ing) on how we should deliberate about our own actions. }(ant here concludes: Thus without a God and without a world invisible to us now but hoped for, the glorious ideas of morality are indeed objects of approval and adn1iration, but not springs of purpose and action. (ibid)4
Kant's overall position in the Canon suggests two readings, neither of which is compatible with his subsequent views about moral motivation and moral authority. On the first reading, }(ant is still operating with a basically Humean conception of the nature of motivation. On such a picture, reason, and more specifically judgments of right or wrong, can never motivate us directly. Rather, motivation would require not just reasoned judgment, but some conceptually distinct conative state, the sort of state Hume calls a "passion." If this is the understanding of motivation in play, then }(ant may appeal to promises and threats in order to supply the passions that are needed not to justify the moral law, but to move us to act from any law so justified. The objects of faith would serve so as to close a motivational gap between seeing moral action as appealing in the abstract, and desiring to act n10rally ourselves in every particular case. The prospect of reward and punishment would not provide the basis of the law's authority, but only the conditions under which we could come to care about that authority, given our 1110tivational limitations. !(ant would thus avoid the "eudaimonism" of giving morality an essentially instrumental justification, while nevertheless making faith an indispensable corollary of anything that could effectively serve '\ as a practical law for creatures like us. Of course, this view would be starkly incompatible with a fundamental idea of }(ant's mature moral philosophy and n10ral psychology-that pure reason can be practical, that judglnents about what we have best reason to do can directly motivate rational beings, without presupposing any distinct, antecedent state of desire, concern or interest. For creatures who are free, autonomous, morally obligated, there is no necessary gap between 4. Cf. Hume's Treatise 586: "Sentiments must touch the heart, to make them controul our passions: But they need not extend beyond our imagination, to n1ake them influence our taste."
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judging that some act would be good (or obligatory), and being motivated so to act. 5 Even when we restrict our attention to the Canon alone, this Humean picture of our moral psychology comes into tension with J(ant's claim that this discussion, as any discussion of the practical, can only be directed toward creatures with an arbitriuln liberum, "a will which can be determined independently of sensuous impulses, and therefore through motives which are represented only by reason ... (802/830). Whatever the content of morality turns out to be, even in the Canon J(ant takes it to be crucially bound up with having a free will, and that is a will that should need neither promises nor threats to get it to do what it recognizes it ought to. However, in the Canon, J(ant does not seemed to have fully made up his mind about just what rational self-determination involves. Kant suggests that while reason does motivate us (and hence distinguishes us fron1 instinct-driven animals), reason can do so only indirectly, by provoking new and opposing inclinations, and that it is only these latter states that directly motivate us: For the human will is not detennined by that alone which stimulates, that is, immediately affects the senses; we have the power to overcome the impressions on our faculty of sensuous desires, by calling up representations of what, in a more indirect manner, is useful or injurious. (802/830).
Kant here seems to think that even though reason cannot directly move us, it can directly guide our imaginings, and this sort of imaginative or reflective spontaneity will motivate us, as a kind of causal consequence. The difference between an arbitrum brutum and liberu1n here appears not to be a difference between creatures that act from inclination and those that act from reason, but between the sources of the inclinations from which one can act. The animal will acts from inclinations evoked by immediate objects of perception: the free will, from inclinations evoked by a picture of our own long-term interest, a picture that only reason can present. If so, then all that faith may be is just this sort of ration5. This is not to say that such a gap cannot open up, but only that such openings are necessarily special cases: we need a special story to lnake sense of why someone was not motivated to do what she deemed best, we would need no such story to make sense of why she was in. These sorts of special cases will be dealt with at length in the next chapter.
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ally informed reflection that is meant to spur us to act, by presenting the appropriate picture of our most fully enlightened selfinterest. !(ant would here be committed to some kind of externalism about morality:, in which the reasons that justify morality cannot themselves serve as reasons to act morally. Although morality would be rationally justified independently of inclination, reason would still need to call up images that evoke the right sorts of inclination, presenting us with the prospect of reward or punishment in order to provide the requisite incentives (or at least the motivational counter-weights to cOlnpeting inclination) to bring us to act as we nevertheless know we should. One might suppose that faith, in orienting us towards merely possible objects of hope (and perhaps dread), performs similar motivational work for morality, supplying the conative resources we see that we need, but cannot find within ourselves. Such a strategy does sometimes appear in the arguments of the rationalists of the Eighteenth Century. Butler carefully distinguishes our moral interest from self-love, and insists the former to have imnlediate and complete authority over the latter. Nevertheless, he claims that religion does morality a service by showing that virtue is always consistent with self-love, for though virtue or moral rectitude does indeed consist in affection to and pursuit of what is right and good as such; yet, that when we sit down in a cool hour, we can neither justify to ourselves this or any other pursuit, till we are convinced that it will be for our happiness, or at least not contrary to it. (Sennon 11 §20, 538-9 in Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant).
Similarly, in The Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, Samuel Clarke argues that although morality is based in the "eternal and unalterable relations, respects, or proportions of things" (299), independent of any divine sanction, nevertheless if we suppose no future state of rewards, it will follow that God has endowed men with such faculties as put them under a necessity of approving and choosing virtue ... and yet has not given theln wherewith to support themselves in the suitable and constant practice of it. (Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant, 308).
Clarke here treats our motives as if they were instruments we use to perform an act,. rather than an aspect of making a decision
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itself. In acting what we immediately do is to produce some motivational state in ourselves, which then causes the action. Our real action is completely inner, a direction of attention or imagination toward some idea or belief-our motives and our movements are just casual consequences, differing only by proximity from any other causal consequences in the world. Our bodies would then be just parts of the world of which we have the most control and securest possession, not an aspect of what acts, but only of what is acted through. 6 Even if the above picture of moral motivation is coherent, it would leave us with a very strange picture of the nature of moral action (indeed, of rational action in general). This picture resembles not so much the way we think of rational action, but rather with our familiar attempts to cope with our own practical irrationality. For example, I realize very clearly that I have overwhelmingly good reason to finish this dissertation as soon as possible. However, this judgment may fail to motivate me-I may often find myself at some points unable to care, being strongly moved to do just about anything other than write. One response to this might just be to consider again, and with greater attention, my reasons for finishing. However, I might instead imagine further possible (although unlikely) consequences of further procrastination. I might imagine the ridicule of my peers, the end of my career, the breakup of my marriage, a future of poverty, shame, and misery. I might also imagine a life of uninterrupted bliss consequent upon the completion of this project. Now I don't think of these outcomes as particularly likely, and hence they don't provide nle with reasons that go much beyond my more realistic interest in promptly finishing up. However, reflection on these admittedly ren10te possibilities may serve to motivate file in ways that a proper evaluation of my reasons might fail to, making it so that even if I do not act rationally, I nevertheless come to act as if I were fully rational in this regard. In this case, I deploy one kind of irrationality (my unrealistic or exaggerated hopes or fears) in order to 6. This picture of agency has its epistemological counterpart in the view that we do not immediately perceive "outer" objects, but only mental representations of them. The ultimate consequence of this view is we cannot know anything about how the world really is; in the practical case, that we cannot make sense of how "we" act in the world at all. If we begin with a standpoint that is wholly "inner", we will never be able to get outside. Epistemologically, this results in the loss of the world: practically, in the loss of ourselves.
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neutralize another, my weakness of will. Insofar as I really have a reason to finish this dissertation, I have at least an instrumental reason to adopt these irrational attitudes in response to my own rational failings. What would be strange about this is that the above picture is not one of normal rational action, but rather of they way two sorts of practical irrationality can be brought to bear against each other, producing a simulacrum of rational choice. In the above example, I counter the irrationality of my weakness of will with a kind of self-deception, in which I exaggerate a certain possibility in order to cause changes in my affective state. This sort of psychological manipulation might be appropriate with regard to someone else, particularly a child or someone rationally conlpromised. The above account would convert what holds of a special case-of the stance we might take toward a not fully rational individual, or toward ourselves in unusual circumstances, into a characteristic of the most central or normal case, that of a rational agent's approach to her own actions in general. Such self-manipulation would then be implicated not only in such exceptional cases of confronting our phobias or compulsions, but in every context in which moral concerns come into play. Self-nlanipulation would become as endemic to human life as is morality. Paradoxically, such coordinated irrationality would have found a home in what is supposed to be the clearest and most central instance of practical reasoning itself. Such a picture would not only give us little to recommend moral faith, but would also call into question any conception of morality that demanded such faith. To be fair to both Clarke and Butler, in their defenses of the special role of religion they seenl to be considering not the basic nature of rational agency, but rather the pervasive imperfections of human agents. If human beings necessarily suffered from a ineradicable and substantial degree of practical irrationality, then we might well be justified in adopting self-manipulative measures so as to at least keep us from violating the law, recognizing that we could never hope to act from the proper moral motive. Such a picture would be in keeping with Luther's insistence that we have been given the law primarily to show us our inability to live up to its demands, to reveal the corruption of our nature that makes it impossible for us ever to do the right thing from the right reason alone, and which can be remedied only by God's grace. This strategy is available to Clarke, because he takes moral truths to be aspects of an immutable order of things independent of our nature;
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for him, our abilities and limitations have no bearing on the content or authority of morality. !(ant, however, understands the authority of morality to rest in human autonomy; in our capacity to act out of our judgment of what is right, regardless of what other interests come into play. For !(ant, like Butler, morality is our law because it is an inlmanent principle of our nature; neither can properly appeal to the necessary corruption of that nature to nlake room for religion. 7 If we were so corrupt, then the law would not be the law of our nature, but only of a kind of being that we perhaps had mistaken ourselves for, a being that was truly autonomous. Our infirmity would vitiate the law's authority. 3. Punishment and Authority I(ant may have another picture in mind in claiming that morality need promises and threats if it is to motivate, a picture owning more to Hobbes than to Hunle. I(ant's thought may be that in order for reason to directly motivate, it must take the fornl of an imperative, of something in the logical form of a conlnland. One might then think that one cannot conceive of a comnland without some notion of the appropriate sort of commander. An absolute and unconditional moral command might then require a commander of absolute and unconditional authority-something very close to the idea of God. 8 Without such a conlmander, reason nlay give us a standard for approval; it might even give us counsel about what would be good to do or avoid. But to have a true imperative, which gives us not only recommendations but obligation, we may have need for something like an authoritative sovereign: "if we consider from the point of view of moral unity, as a necessary law of the world, what the cause must be that can alone give to this law its appropriate effect, and so for us obligatory force, we conclude there must be one sole supreme will, which comprehends all these laws in itself."(815/843, see also 810/838). Kant's supreme will here is reminiscent of both Rousseau's General Will and Hobbes' sovereign. The resemblance to Hobbes is particularly significant, in that on his understanding of political authority, the sovereign has legitimate authority only if he also has the power to punish (and perhaps also to reward). This is so even 7. for Butler, see sermon III, §5 (Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to
Kant, (p.535-6). 8. I
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though for Hobbes, like Kant, we are not ourselves to obey the sovereign out of fear of punishment or out of hope of reward, but rather only out of recognition of his authority. Nevertheless for Hobbes, the sovereign cannot have any such authority without the power to enforce it, without the power (and presumably, the will) to offer promises and threats to those who do not recognize or obey that authority. For Hobbes, there are rational principles or "laws of nature" that would apply even in the absence of any enforcement mechanism, in his notorious "state of nature." However, Hobbes thinks that these principles cannot take the form of imperatives in such a state; rather than establishing obligations, they would only tell us what obligation we would have, were we no longer in a state of nature, and point out how undesirable that state of nature is. 9 Absent an enforcement mechanism, these laws of nature remain merely rational standards of approval and admiration, having no direct bearing on action at all. As such, these laws seem to stand in very much the same relation to the sovereign that Kant claims holds between the moral law and God-a con1parison that seen1S irresistible in light of Kant's later discussion in the Religion of God as the sovereign of the "Ethical Commonwealth" which frees us fron1 the "Ethical State of Nature." A Hobbesian interpretation of the Canon would bring with it two problematic inferences: first, that we cannot have or conceive of an imperative with an imperator, and second, that any such authority to command presupposes not just the right, but the power to punish (and reward). Hobbes' own arguments rely on a very different moral psychology than does I
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mental differences, we cannot straightaway assume that I(ant is entitled to help himself to whatever conclusions were properly available to Hobbes. Yet Kant offers us no explicit arguments on his own terms that would support such moves. While Kant's conclusions seem in line with a Hobbesian understanding of authority, Kant has given us no way, and no reason to think that there is a way, of adapting that understanding to a specifically Kantian context. More important, even though the Hobbesian strategy does seem to fit with much of what I(ant says here, it would nevertheless get the order of explanatory priority wrong. Kant argues that the moral law is binding; and for it to be so, we must have some hope that virtue will be ultimately crowned with happiness. If order for us to be assured of getting what we deserve, we must assume God and imlTIortality. For Kant, the postulate of God's existence is inferred as a precondition of the HG; the Hobbesian argument would have us infer the possibility of the HG as a precondition of God's authority. For Hobbes, the laws of nature do not constitute obligations absent the sovereign; but for I(ant, morality is fully obligatory even before we consider it in terms of a God's decree: "we shall not look upon actions as obligatory because they are commands of God, but shall regard them as divine commands because we have an inward obligation to them."(818/847). One might argue that it is the direct authority of the law itself, rather than that of a purported lawgiver, that presupposes the prospect of reward or punishment. Yet once the idea of God's authority ceases to do any independent work, the parallel with Hobbes breaks down entirely, and the only explanation left for this presupposition is the Humean picture already rejected. Thus insofar as the Canon suggests a path from morality to faith, it appears to be a dead end. 4. The Second Critique and the Reductio ad Absurdum
Practicum In the Dialectic of second Critique, !(ant presents what is usually taken to be his nlature account of moral faith, freed from the confusions about moral motivation that emerged in the Canon. In the Critique of Practical Reason, I(ant is explicitly committed to the idea that pure reason can be immediately practical, and that it is in recognizing and being motivated by the moral law, as two aspects of a unitary phenomenon, that such practicality is realized. !(ant no longer suggests that while the nl0ral law may be valid, some
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extra consideration needs to be adduced for us to care about itthere is now no necessary motivational gap between judgment and action that faith might serve to close. Without such a gap between the validity of the law and its motivational force, Kant now argues that without the objects of rational faith, the moral law would fail to motivate because the law itself would be invalid. In the second Critique, !(ant seems to think that the moral law entails, as a matter of deontic logic, the practical postulates or at least a particular attitude on our part toward them. Kant presents the postulates as part of the resolution of a supposed antinomy that arises as practical reason moves past its highest, constitutive principle (the moral law), and considers how to integrate all of its criteria of judgment into one complete system. In the Dialectic, !(ant tells us that the idea of the HG emerges as practical reason turns to the question of the "totality" of its judgments. For Kant, a totality represents a complete and structured system of judgments, in which the conditioned and that which ultimately justifies or explains it, the unconditioned, are given together in a way which makes the fullest possible sense (relative to the particular sort of 'sense' in question). Such totalities are representations of some kind of perfection or perfect comprehension. Such totalities are expressed by "Ideas," by those "rational concepts" that are implicit in a particular kind of reasoning, even though such ideas can never find a fully appropriate instantiation in any object of intuition. In the Dialectic of the first Critique, the drive for totality lead away from the constitutive principles of the Understanding to the various explanatory heuristics of theoretical reason, to the "regulative principles" that were to guide our science toward the necessarily unattainable ideal of a complete theory of nature. Such principles called on us to approach nature as if it were an intelligently designed artifact; not because nature really is such (or could ever be known to be so), but only because this approach alone provides the appropriate additional standard of intelligibility we need to guide our investigations of nature and our evaluations of competing scientific theories. In the first Critique, we began with the conditioned (with the objects of nature as constituted by the Understanding), and sought the unconditioned, the highest criteria for explanation that went beyond what could ever be given by the senses. In the case of practical judgment, however, reason for the first and only time supplies its own objects, giving its theoretically regulative principles a constitutive use in the concepts of agency and
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action. In the practical context, the unconditioned is now what is given (as the moral law), and the task of grasping the relevant totality that of integrating this original "Fact" with the appropriate kind of conditioned judgments. In the practical case, the conditioned is happiness, which is meant to include all non-moral criteria of practical reasoning. Just what happiness means for Kant is a fairly vexed issue; he sometimes speaks of it as the condition of "everything going according to one's wish and will," sometimes as the rationally systematized aggregation of the objects of our desires, and sometimes as the condition of being content with one's condition throughout life, the state of tranquility that comes with recognizing that all of one's natural needs are fulfilled. This latter picture of happiness as such natural contentment is what finds most frequent expression in the second Critique, presenting an ideal not of something maximized, but rather the recognition of having attained a kind of natural self-sufficiency.lo These distinctions do not matter lTIuch for my discussion, however; what is important for Kant here is that happiness is a concern that attaches to us as beings dependent on the sensible aspect of our existence, and that this is a concern which is completely distinct from our moral interests (CPrR 5:111). I(ant argues that in the recognition of the moral law, pure practical reason presents us with the idea of the HG, the totality which is supposedly the "complete" object of the will. In the idea of the totality, reason seeks to integrate in some hierarchical structure all of its criteria of practical judgment. Even though n10rality and happiness are to ren1ain distinct concerns, reason seeks to systematize them by articulating some sort of necessary connection or ordering that holds between these interests. In I(ant's logic, any such necessary connection between two distinct concepts constitutes a kind of cause: Two determinations necessarily combined in one concept must be connected as ground and consequent, and so connected that this unity is considered either as analytic (logical connection) or as synthetic (real connection), the former in accordance with the law of identity, the latter in accordance with the law of causality.(CPrR 5:111)
10. Kant is here careful to distinguish happiness, the contentment that comes with the recognition of such self-sufficiency, from what he calls 'enjoyment' [Vergnugen ]which refers to some state of strong, positive feeling.
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Since virtue and happiness are "extremely heterogeneous" concepts, their necessary connection c.an only be one of cause and effect, and it is this claim that generates the "antinomy of practical reason." The thesis of this antinomy is that virtue is the "efficient cause" of happiness, the antithesis that "the desire for happiness lllUSt be the motive to maxims of virtue" (perhaps the appropriate gloss of "happiness causes virtue"). This latter alternative, that we become virtuous through seeking to be happy, is not a live option for Kant, having already been ruled out by his extensive attacks on heteronomous accounts of the will (and with them, "eudaimonistic" understandings of morality). With the antithesis ruled out, we are left with only the thesis, that virtue is the cause of happiness. If so, then practical reason can only articulate a coherent totality only if some sense can be made of such a causal connection between the worth of our person and the worth of our condition. Not surprisingly, there is a strong case to be made against this thesis as well. The most immediate argument against the claim that virtue causes happiness is simply the evidence of our own eyes, that people do not always, or typically, get what they morally deserve. To suggest that they do, and hence take a person's prosperity as evidence of their virtue, would lead to such bizarre conclusions as to make this position unrecognizable as a moral view. Moreover, even if, as far as we knew, people turned out to be happy in exact proportion to their moral merit, a deeper problem would remain, a problem that stems from the character of natural causation itself. The thesis asserts that virtue is the cause of happiness. However, given I(ant's understanding of nature, virtue cannot be the efficient cause of anything. Virtue is a state of character of an agent considered as a free being, as a creature morally bound and morally accountable. Yet as I(ant argued in the third Antinomy, freedom, and anything bound up with it, can have no place in an account of the efficient causes of nature. Virtue, as a condition of a free agent's will, is of the wrong logical type to appear as a term of natural law, which must be framed in descriptions appropriate to the "conditions of time"-i.e., causal determinism. Given this logical restriction on the nature of efficient causation, it seems to be a priori true that virtue cannot be the cause of happiness. As much as the antithesis was ruled out by I(ant's understanding of morality, the thesis seems to be ruled out by I(ant's understanding of nature. To rescue the thesis, I(ant concludes that there must be more to causality than the efficient causation of nature established in the
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Second Analogy. Kant notes that as free creatures, creatures who can be virtuous, we necessarily have a noumenal or intelligible aspect distinct from or sensible existence, and we can sustain the thesis if we can talk of a kind of causation appropriate to this realm that does not stand under the conditions of time. This requisite connection can hold if there is more to our lives than the span we see,l1 and if there is an "intelligible author of nature" who can both judge our virtue and mete our happiness accordingly. (CPrR 5:115, p.232). God here is a necessary condition of the possibility of any sort of causation that could hold between a moral and nonmoral state. Since the cause in question, virtue, is a matter of nlorality, the basis of its causality could only be in something free, rational, and reflective-that is, some sort of mind. For virtue is not sonle causal disposition, but rather something that only exists as a state within the practical context of justification, challenge and responsibility. Only insofar as God is conceived of within this context, as some kind of mind, will he be the right sort of thing to "interact" with virtue at all. Yet while the nature of the cause demands that God be a mind, the effect requires that He be a causal power-indeed, a causal power par excellence. The effect in question, happiness, is at least partially natural-happiness is a state that is inextricably bound up with our sensible condition (even if not reducible to it). If so, the basis of the required effect must be able to produce whatever natural conditions would be needed to give us what we deserve. Since such a power must be compatible with the laws of nature, God can only be the ground of such laws altogether, the basis that gives them whatever character and shape they ultimately have. And since God is to perfect the system of practical reason, nlaking possible its ideal, He cannot be limited either morally or in terms of natural power; He must thus be holy, omniscient, and omnipotent. Insofar as reason can aspire to its practical ideal, we must assume a moral ground of nature, a job description that could only be fulfilled by a theistic God. It is not clear how far Kant's argument here really works as an antinonly. Unlike the antinomies of the first and third Critiques, one side of the argument, the antithesis, is just false, with nothing true about it that we might want to retain. More important, an11. All this consideration gets us is an afterlife, not immortality. To show that our afterlife n1ust be unlimited, !(ant will have to bring in further considerations, which are not yet in play in the initial presentation of the antinomy.
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tinomies rely on at least the appearance that two rationally demonstrable positions are inconsistent. However, "virtue causes happiness" and "happiness causes virtue" do not even appear contradictory-indeed, they are not even contraries. Both could be true, although we might not then be able to regard them as completely distinct concepts. 12 And if we insist that these concepts remain so distinct, still the thesis and antithesis could both be false. The joint falsity of the thesis and antithesis would only entail the falsity of the background assumption that there is a coherent totality of practical reasons. If so, then the antinomy could be resolved along the lines of the mathematical antinomies of the first Critique. I(ant resolved the mathematical antinomies by showing that both thesis and antithesis assumed an incoherent idea of a totality-specifically, that of the '~lorld given as a whole, as a kind of independently completed series of conditions. Once we recognize and reject this assumption, the thesis and antithesis are revealed as being merely contrary, and as both false. In the mathematical antinomies, theoretical reason conceived of a totality that dialectic revealed to be fundamentally confused. I(ant has given us no clear reason not to take a similar route in the practical case. The practical antinomy should be resolved as were the mathematical ones, where instead of postulating supersensible entities, we reject the assumption that made them necessary, the assumption that all rational interests must form an independently given totality. Even if we accept the assumption that virtue and happiness stand together in such a totality, the practical antinomy seen1S to be based only in an equivocation about causation. In setting up the antinomy, I(ant relies on the claim that a necessary connection between two distinct concepts constitutes a causal relation. He then construes this relation in terms of efficient causation, the causation characteristic of the world as described by natural science. Only insofar as the connection is posed in terms of such causation does the problem emerge that we must invoke God to solve. However, insofar as a necessary connection between two distinct concepts constitutes a cause in I(ant's logic, it does so only in the n10st general and abstract sense. In a logical sense, a cause is just any antecedent of a ground-to-consequent relation, in which appeal to the ground can explain or justify whatever consequent in question. Efficient 12. Kant recognizes a situation of this type in the case of living things, where it is simultaneously true that the whole is the cause of the parts and the parts are the cause of the whole.
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causation, the causation characteristic of the natural world, is one instance of this relation, by which we explain or predict some natural state of affairs by reference to some preceding state. Here, the logical form of cause has been "schematized" in a way appropriate to such spatio-temporal states, but this does not make the original unschematized form unavailable for other interpretations in other contexts. On I(ant's own terms, we should be able to say that virtue "causes" or is the ground of happiness in the sense that it is only our virtue that can justify our being happy, and only our vice that can call it into question. The necessary connection here would not be one of efficient causation, but of a distinctly practical kind, of desert or justification. Indeed, this consequence is what we should expect from an antinomy framed solely in terms of practical considerations: that the 'ought' of "the virtuous ought to be happy" should itself be a characteristically moral one, rather than the sort of ought of "water at 212 0 F ought to boil." But if we recognize desert to count logically as the required kind of cause, we can maintain the thesis in the face of natural determinism, without having to postulate anything supernatural. In this way, we would resolve the antinomy in much the way the Kant resolves the dynalnic antinomies of the first Critique, by showing that the thesis and antithesis are not really talking about the same thing at all. 5. The Highest Good as an End of Reason Fortunately, I(ant's central concern in the Dialectic can be expressed without the somewhat strained artifice of antinomic conflict, by further exploring the idea of desert that would serve to resolve that antinomy. Desert may make the antinomy proper go away, but the real problem finds a new home within this concept itself. I have argued that for I(ant, we gain practical self-consciousness through recognition of the moral law, that the idea of such a law introduces and defines an essentially juridical sense of self, a kind of subjectivity which emerges along with ideas of guilt and desert. Throughout his works, I(ant refers to moral rectitude as the "worthiness to be happy"-suggesting just the sort of ground-to-consequent relation that should satisfy the antinomy. Yet if one of the central notions woven into the recognition of morality is desert, then it should not be surprising that one cannot come to moral consciousness without being able to conceive of and value a state of affairs in which everyone gets just what they deserve. To be a moral agent is to see the world at least partially in terms of desert, and this kind of regard entails that we have a cer-
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tain kind of concern for the way things turn out for human beings generally: For, to need happiness, to be also worthy of it, and yet not to participate in it cannot be consistent with the perfect volition of a rational being that would at the same time have all power, even if we think of such a being only for the sake of experiment. Now, inasmuch as virtue and happiness together constitute possession of the highest good in a person, and happiness distributed in exact proportion to morality (as the worth of a person and his worthiness to be happy) constitutes the highest good of a possible world, the latter means the whole, the complete good . . . (CPrR 5:110-111, Kant's emphasis)
Even apart from the "totality of practical reason," the Highest Good (HG) emerges as that state of affairs that would completely satisfy this nl0rally-informed sort of concern. Kant emphasizes that this highest good obtains not just when happiness and virtue happen to coincide, but when this coincidence is in sonle sense necessary. To think in terms of desert is not just to want virtue and happiness to coincide, but to want the virtuous to be happy just because they are so, and for the wicked not just to suffer, but to do so because of their sin alone (bad luck cannot properly punish---only a legitimate judge can do that). We can take the HG to be a world in which everybody gets just what they deserve, (and in which everyone deserves the best), a state that the moral law "commands us to pronl0te". (CPrR 5: 114) A practically rational agent, in grasping the moral law, must recognize the HG as the most choiceworthy and self-sufficient state of affairs, lacking nothing that is truly valuable. As such, it is a state that it is rationally incumbent upon us to bring about. !(ant argues that if the law commands us to do something, the object of that command must at least be practically possible, for if we ought to do something, we must be able to (CPrR 5:30). Were such a necessary object of the will in1possible, the moral law itself would not bind: "the impossibility of the first [the HG] must also prove the falsity of the second [the ML]." By modus tallens we can infer that since the ML necessarily binds, the HG must be possible. Even without the systematic reflections that generated the antinomy, we find ourselves morally committed to making the world such that virtue serves as the efficient (and not just logical) cause of happiness.
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!(ant argues that the HG is possible only presupposing three other conditions: that God exists, that we are free, and that we are immortal. God is required in that the highest good, where everyone gets what they deserve just because they deserve it, would require a judge who can both infallibly (and with perfect authority) assess what people deserve, and possesses the power to order nature so that they receive it. As !(ant had established in the Analytic, freedolTI is already an immediate consequence of the moral law, but it can also be represented as a practical postulate in that only beings who are free could be said to deserve anything at all, hence a world of perfect desert presupposes the freedom of some of its members for the requisite concepts to even apply. The requirement of immortality is a bit trickier-what immediately seems to follow is that there must be more to our lives than the span from birth to death. Infinite duration emerges when we see that the HG requires not just that everyone get what they deserve, but also that everyone corne to deserve the best, that we all becon1e so virtuous as to merit ideal happiness. Kant argues that such perfection of virtue could not be completed in any finite amount of time, but could only be achieved as a ten1porally infinite progression toward holiness, grasped as a whole by the mind of God. We need God to give us the happiness we deserve, and we need immortality in order to become deserving of the happiness he gives us. !(ant gives the rational faith so derived a unique and puzzling epistemic status, distinct fron1 both knowledge and opinion. As a species of rationally-grounded belief, such faith is indeed held on the basis of grounds that are "subjectively sufficient." Unlike knowledge, however, such grounds, although a priori necessary, are not "objectively sufficient" in the way that elTIpirical evidence is-they are not grounds for asserting the truth of the proposition in question, in abstraction from the attitude of the subject expressing it ("1 must not even say 'It is morally certain that there is a God, etc.', but '1 am morally certain, etc. (CPR 829/857)). Yet in contrast to opinion, neither is faith held on "objectively insufficient" grounds. For I(ant, opinions are held on the basis of some reasons which, while epistemically insufficient, are nevertheless epistemically relevant. At least in principle, an opinion could always "gradually be supplemented by the same kind of grounds and finally become a knowing"!3 (WOT 8:141, see also CPR 820/848-831/859, C] , §91). An opinion is an at least somewhat 13. I(ant's example is his own opinion that life exists on other planets.
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educated guess, of the same basic logical type as a well-grounded knowledge-clainl. Although rational faith is neither a successful nor an incomplete claim to knowledge, neither is it a kind of error or illusion: "this holding true (if only the person is morally good) is not inferior in degree to knowing, even though it is completely different fronl it in kind."(WOT 8:141-142). Although faith is a kind of belief (Glaube meaning both), such belief is of a completely different kind our knowledge of "matters of fact," be they scientific or moral. 14 I(ant tells us we must have a rationally grounded faith in God, freedom, and immortality, because these are necessary conditions of the possibility of the object that reason necessarily sets for us. Kant argues here as if we had a strict duty fully to effect the HG, that to fail to fully complete this duty would be same as violating it. However, nothing I(ant has said shows that the HG should be anything more as an ideal for our striving-something that we must recognize a duty to "promote" (as I(ant says), but no perfect duty to effect fully. is Such a conclusion has a precedent in the first Critique, where the totalities at issue in the mathematical antinomies are rehabilitated as regulative principles that guide our investigation of nature. What was incoherent when taken as a given is redeemed as an aspiration that we can progressively approximate, but can never fulfill. If we take the HG to be a regulative ideal for practice, then Kant's appeal to the threat of an "absurdum practicum" either collapses or at least makes rational faith a very anemic kind of commitment. While it may be true that if I have a duty to bring about some state, that state must be possible, it is not the case that such a state must also be possible if it is to serve only as an ideal for my striving. At best, such striving requires only that the object of such an ideal be logically possible, that it presents an aspiration sufficiently coherent that one can be properly said to be getting closer 14. Kant defines matters of fact (scibilia) to include not just scientific knowledge, but also our grasp of the moral law, the sole moral matter of fact. (Cj, 467-475). 15. Kant both asserts and denies that the HG is merely such an ideal, and the C] claims that there really is no distinction, practically speaking, whether we consider it to be a end to be effected or merely approximated. But even if this distinction makes no practical difference, it certainly seems to make a very substantial one to just what sort of practical postulates can be derived from it, with regard to the nature and limits of not of rational action, but of rational faith.
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or further away from it. However, Kant has said nothing to suggest that the very idea of a world where everyone gets what they deserve would be incoherent if God and immortality did not exist. In general, logical possibility does not entail any real possibilities, only other logical possibilities.1 6 It Inay be the case that the idea of the HG is coherent only insofar as are the ideas of God and immortality, but none us brings us closer to a faith that is supposed to be incompatible with "dogmatic unbelief."(C] 472-473). Moreover, it does not even seem that we need to even clearly conceive of God or an afterlife in order to have well-defined criteria for whether or not I alTI advancing toward the HG. If my duty is to promote the HG, then even without God and immortality, I can do so whenever I morally improve myself or relnove impediments to the improvement of others, or when I advance the happiness of those who truly deserve it. Kant has given us no reason to suppose that, without presupposing God and immortality, we would be unable to recognize anything as constituting relative success or failure in these efforts. !(ant certainly recognizes the coherence of a necessarily unattainable ideal when he considers theoretical reasoning. Theoretical reason sets a cognitive ideal before us, that of a complete theory of nature in which all phenomena are explained under a hierarchy of causal laws that show nature to have the purposive unity of an artifact. It is a "subjective need" of theoretical reason to approach nature this way, even though I(ant acknowledges that it is impossible, in principle, to actually attain such a perfect theory. Nevertheless, !(ant does not suppose that we need any sort of "theoretical faith" in whatever conditions would make such ideal science available, nor do our cognitive ideals lose application once we realize that their object can only be approximated. In the second Critique, Kant frequently reminds us that the "subjective" needs of practical reason cannot license any theoretical claims16. This conclusion J take to be a central move in J
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unable to add in any way to our cognition, they have relevance only practically speaking, insofar as we approach the world as an arena of action rather than as an object of knowledge. Yet reason's subjective theoretical needs did not license theoretical claims either, but only a sort of reflective standpoint. Why should practical needs do any more? It is true that in the theoretical case, we are rationally licensed to approach nature "as if" if were an artifact, and we perhaps are similarly licensed to act as if we were to come before a holy judge. Kant does suggest this sort of heuristic reading of faith in both "The End of All Things" and "Theory and Practice." However, in the Religion, I(ant makes it clear that he has something more substantial in n1ind than this fairly innocuous reading of the postulates: Agreement with the mere idea of a moral lawgiver for all human beings is indeed identical with the Inoral concept of duty in general, and to this extent the proposition commanding the agreeInent would be analytic. But the acceptance of the existence of this lawgiver means more than the mere possibility of an object. (R,6:6n)
Kant here emphasizes that the postulates (freedom perhaps excepted) involve synthetic advances from the moral law. They n1ake claims that involve real existence and hence cannot be just ways of expressing in a more figurative or edifying manner what has already been established in the moral theory. Even if we grant that the moral law commands us fully to realize the HG, it is not clear that such a duty would entail the practical postulates. I(ant argues that if the attainment of the HG is a duty, it must be possible, and from there that any conditions necessary for its attainment are actual. Even if we take this claim to concern real, rather than merely logical possibility, the only warranted inference that, if the HG is possible, its necessary conditions must themselves be possible. Were one of these necessary conditions seen to be impossible, the HG itself would have to be abandoned, but the negation of impossibility is possibility, not actuality. If so, then the practical postulates that emerge are almost trivially weak: moral consciousness would only demand that we recognize that it is possible that there could be a judging God, human freedom, and an endless afterlife, not that we need have any positive confidence that this is so. Strictly speaking, such an argument would not even show that
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we have to believe the objects of rational faith to be possible, even is this weak sense. It is true that I would land in a kind of deontic inconsistency if I continued to hold an end once I recognized a necessary condition for its attainment to be impossible. I cannot coherently have an end and believe its attainment, on some condition necessary to its attainment, not to be possible. If the H G is indeed a morally necessary end for us, then \ve must not believe that objects of the postulates are impossible. However, not believing something to be impossible is not the same as believing that thing to be possible. The former condition holds even when I have not made up my mind about the matter at all, perhaps even suspending judgment about this sort of thing altogether. Rational faith would then not even require that we positively believe that God etc. are possible, but only that we do not definitely deny such possibility-an attitude that is consistent with a high degree of doubt, ignorance, or simple suspension of judgment about such matters. If all rational faith comes to is the belief (or absence of disbelief) in the possibility of God &c., the absurdum practicum argunlent would not demonstrate anything that had not already been independently established in Critique of Pure Reason. Given I(ant's epistemology, we can show that the postulates cannot be denied, simply by considering the fact that the postulates make logically coherent claims about supersensible objects. As such, we can no more claim knowledge (or even have opinions) of the postulates' falsity than we can of their truth, with or without appeal to the moral law. Even if we accept that God, freedom and immortality are necessary conditions of the H G in the sense that it is morally commanded, the deontic reading of this absurdum practicum adds little more than an element of hopefulness to the cautious agnosticism of the first Critique. I7 It is true that the emergence of this sort of very pallid faith, while falling short of what I(ant seems to want, would not be philosophically nugatory. Such a result would still be significant in that it would display a point of convergence between I(ant's practical and theoretical philosophy. While the faith that emerges would not itself be terribly substantial, that fact that independent arguments based in I(ant's moral and theoretical philosophy reach the same conclusion is a point in favor of the overall coherence and self-supporting structure of the critical philosophy. However, this 17. A similar point is made by Allen Wood, in "Rational theology, moral faith, and religion" in The Cambridge Companion to Kant.
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result would not so much be an advance in terms of our faith in God and His Kingdom, as it would be in our confidence in I(ant and his system. This minimal faith might also serve to make a small advance over I(ant's epistemological argument for agnosticism, by closing off one final fall-back position for the atheist. In the first Critique, Kant had established that one cannot properly deny that God exists, insofar as such a denial claims knowledge of the nonexistence of such supersensible entities. The atheist may grant this point, and retreat to the position not that the postulates can be known to be false, but rather that they can be shown to be meaningless. This retreat would not depend on any strongly verificationist account of meaning, but only the thought that in order for a claim to be meaningful, we need to have some sense of what would count for or against such a claim, of what other sorts of considerations make logical contact with it. From the perspective of the first Critique, however, it seems that God is conceived of only negatively-God is not a possible object of sensible intuition, not under the conditions of time and space, not something that natural science could give evidence for or against. We might conclude from this that God is an empty or meaningless idea, cobbled together out of purely logical moments (unity, reality, necessity, etc.), stripped of any context through which those moments can have meaningful content. This more cautious atheism, that denies not the existence but rather the meaningfulness of the objects of faith, seems at first glance not only to be consistent with Kant's epistemology, but may actually be entailed by it (considered in isolation). The minimal rational faith that results from the above absurdum practicum argument may serve to establish that claim about God and immortality are, although in principle unknowable, still meaningful. For, by reinterpreting these concepts in a moral light, we would gain some sense of what would count for or against them, some sense of what other sorts of judgments or claims might depend on them. While no theoretical evidence could be given either for or against the existence of God, the moral argument supplies at least a negative criterion for such judgments. As holy judge, nothing immoral can ever be of God-a point Kant thinks that Abraham would have done well to remember. I8 Also, the moral argument would also show that other meaningful judgments do lllake logical contact with these religious claims, that something is 18. See the first essay of The Conflict of the Faculties, 7:63, pp. 283-284.
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at stake in their truth or falsity. The atheist's charge of meaninglessness depended not only on the fact that religious claims cannot be substantiated or challenged by scientific evidence, but also that fact that no scientific propositions could turn on the truth or falsity of such claims. This fact will not rob religious claims of meaning, however, if some other sort of independently meaningful claims can be shown to turn on the possibility of God's existence: this is at least part of what Kant is trying to do by connecting religious ideas up to moral ones. While none of this would show that we must do anything more than refuse to deny the existence of God, it would show that there is at least a substantial idea here to be countenanced or denied. This would be a philosophically significant conclusion, but it would still not make of faith anything more than a kind of optimistic agnosticism. If rational faith is to be something more substantial that this sort of agnosticism (indeed, if it is to involve any substantive sort of belief at all), then the absurdum practicum argument comes into tension with J
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moral law sets the HG as merely an ideal to be approximated, we must still take it to be possible to make some meaningful progress toward it. But if we do not assume tha"t at base, nature has a moral cause, we have no reason to think that anything that we do can really make a difference in this regard. Over the course of time, the causal laws of a morally indifferent universe will give our acts all sorts of unintended consequences, effectively swamping out or neutralizing any real contribution we might take ourselves to be making. Unless we take the laws of nature to themselves have a moral cause, and the universe to have a moral trajectory, we can never be confident that we are really doing what we take ourselves to be doing, that any of our apparent achievements any not undone or perverted by the vagaries of chance. Unless we can trust that our acts will by-and-Iarge have the consequences we intend them to, we can have no confidence that our efforts will, in the long run, be making the contribution we must take them to be. For anything to count as moral progress (and hence for the HG to serve as a regulative principle), we must assume that nature, in its grounds, is fundanlentally receptive to our moral strivings. 20 I(orsgaard's argument here is directed first toward the postulate of God's existence; the argument for immortality is less direct. Korsgaard argues, as I(ant does, that we are commanded to holiness, and that such holiness can only be achieved by a finite creature effecting an infinite progress in virtue, as seen sub specie aeternitatis. The problem here, as with the HG in general, is that the holiness only seenlS to be commanded as an ideal for our striving, not a condition which we have a perfect duty to realize. In the case of God, I(orsgaard has argued that even meaningful progress to the HG is recognizable only given the assumption of a moral author of nature. However, no corresponding argument has" been given for why even progress toward holiness would not be possible without an endless afterlife. While the course of human happiness may be essentially so contingent as to be effectively out of our hands, the course of human virtue seems much more under our control, at least as regards everyone's own direct contribution to it. The vagaries of chance can give my acts all sorts of unintended effects, but can they nlake my sincere avowals lies, or my beneficent 20. Strictly speaking, such an argument would not commit us to an omnipotent, omniscient, holy God, but only a moral cause that "is powerful, wise, and good enough such that our moral strivings can be reasonably taken to make a difference. If so, then Kant's account of religion would be even more ecumenical than it usually appears.
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acts selfish? Kant frequently remarks that virtue is the one good we can give ourselves, immune (or at least largely so) from the contingencies that afflict every other sort of project. In order to establish the postulate of immortality, Korsgaard must either defend the claim that morality requires us to achieve, and not merely strive after holiness, or show that absent immortality, nothing could count as real progress toward or away from such moral perfection. 21 Korsgaard's reconstruction of I(ant's argument for rational faith in God pays the price of making that argument fairly unconvincing. For although we can never know with certainty all the consequences of our acts, this does not mean that we can never make an educated guess about what will promote someone's merited happiness or relieve some undeserved suffering. We would indeed have to have faith in something like God if the world were so chaotic and unpredictable that we could have no degree of confidence in any of the consequences of our efforts, if all possible longterm consequences were equally likely. But the world does not seem to be like that, and the epistemology of the first and third Critiques suggests that we could never see it as such. The world seems to display a comprehensible degree of order, and as Mill notes, the differences that most of our acts make do not go very far beyond what we can anticipate; ordinarily, the causal ripples tend to rapidly dampen out. While such dampening may not occur in such world-historical decisions such a whether to break away from the Church, or to start a war, these are necessarily exceptional cases, unlike our everyday beneficent actions. Given the degree of order and inertia that we can see in the world, the ideal of the HG still has definite application (particularly when we come to coordinating our moral strivings or designing our institutions), and that seems to be enough to make that ideal secure. While God may be needed for us to have completely certainty that what looks like progress really is such, we do not need such certainty to be minimally confident that we are pretty much doing what we take ourselves to be doing. God might serve to give us knowledge of what we were really doing, but all the HG needs to be a coherent ideal is the possibility of some fairly educated guesses. 22 21. One possible response might be that no improvement in virtue would even count as the required progress unless it were part of an infinite progression to holiness. Ordinary virtue, no matter what its magnitude, nlight not count as the same sort of thing as holiness at all-the two only converging logically at the limit of an infinite progression. 22. Silnilarly, the fact that nature will always escape our attempts to un-
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7. The Absurdum Practicum as Psychological Tension Kant's absurdum practicum argulnent fails as an exercise in deontic logic. Even if Kant's inferences were deontically valid, the only conclusions that emerge would still fall far short of the more substantial and interesting religious attitudes that I(ant wants to ground. Perhaps in response to these shortcon1ings, I(ant returns in later works to the basic strategy mapped out in the Canon, the strategy of deriving faith not from preconditions of the moral law's authority, but from particular features of human motivation. For although Kant now recognizes that pure reason can be practical in us, he still tries to show that faith is needed for our understanding of morality's demands to be fully effective in us. Faith is not an entailment of practical reason simpliciter, but rather a "subjective need" of the distinctively human sort of practical reason, reason as it is realized in a human will with all its cognitive and conative limitations. The trick then for Kant will be to show why such a will necessarily needs faith, without impugning either the underived and unconditional authority of the moral law itself, or the practicality of pure reason for creatures like us. Faith needs to slip in between the law's authority and our own autonomy-a daunting task, particularly since I(ant considers such authority and autonomy to be two sides of the same philosophical coin. (G 4:447) In many of his later works, I(ant suggests faith is needed not to make the moral law valid or capable of motivating us, but to make such concern strong and reliable. Faith is needed not in order for us to be moved by the law in the first place, but in order for us to overcome the temptations to transgress that creatures like ourselves are necessarily vulnerable to. In the third Critique, I(ant asks us to consider the case of Spinoza (Cj 452-3, p.341). I(ant presents Spinoza as a man that both "actively reveres the moral law" and is convinced that neither God nor immortality exists. Spinoza needs no promises or threats to do what he ought: "he is unselfish and wants only to bring about the good to which that sacred law directs all his forces." Nevertheless, such resolve runs into obstacles when this man considers the lives of other virtuous people, and that "no n1atter how worthy of happiness they may be, nature, which pays no attention to that, will still subject them to all the evils of deprivation, disease, and untimely death... " In the face of derstand it does not suggest that the regulative principles of cognition would have to be abandoned if not supplemented with a similar sort of faith.
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the moral arbitrariness of nature: [T]his well-meaning person would indeed have to give up as impossible the purpose that the moral laws obligated him to have before his eyes, and that in compliance with them he did have before his eyes. Alternatively, suppose ... he wants to continue to adhere to the call of his inner moral vocation, and that he does not want his respect for the moral law, by which this law directly inspires him to obey it, to be weakened, as would result from the nullity of the one ideal final purpose that is adequate to this respect's high demand (such weakening of his respect would inevitably impair his moral attitude): In that case he must . . . assume the existence of a moral author of the world (C], 452-3).
I(ant no longer seems to think that without faith in the postulates, practical reason would fall into some sort of contradiction with itself, such that the moral law would be imperiled. Kant says here only that our respect for the moral law would be weakened by a belief that the HG could not be attained, not that the law would be invalid, not that it would become incapable of commanding any respect at all. I(ant's language here is entirely causal: he speaks of weakening and impairing, rather than of contradicting or invalidating. The moral law is secure; what is in danger is our ability, given our psychological limitations, to consistently give that law its full respect when facing the vagaries of chance. Insofar as we are "always already" committed to morality, we must recognize an interest in maintaining whatever attitudes serve to keep our vision clear: "this idea is not (practically considered) an empty one; for it meets our natural need, which would otherwise be a hindrance to moral resolve .. ."(R 6:5). In the Religion, I(ant presents a similar picture of faith affecting our inclinations in a way to make them a support, rather than an obstacle to moral rectitude. In a long footnote to the preface, !(ant stresses that the authority of the moral law is complete, not dependent on the possibility of any end that it might set before us. Not only is the authority of the law independent of the possibility of the HG, but so too is the kind of motivation appropriate to that law, respect: All human beings could sufficiently partake of this incentive too if they just adhered (as they should) to the rule of pure reason in the law: What need have they to know of the outcome of their
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doings and nondoings that the world's course will bring about? It suffices for them that they do their duty, even if everything were to end with life in this world, and in this life too happiness and desert perhaps never converge.(R 6:7n)
The HG is no longer a direct entailment of the ML, but rather an instance where "practical reason reaches beyond the law," and adapts that law to "one of the inescapable limitations of human beings and of their practical faculty of reason." For Kant, this limitation is that human reason requires not just a principle upon which to act, but an end, understood here as "the object of inclination, that is, of an immediate desire to possess a thing. . . . " The HG is not an end immediately dictated by the moral law, but rather an end we set ourselves, insofar as our sensibility is informed and sensitive to moral concerns. The law serves as a necessary and self-sufficient object of respect, but it does not provide the right sort of object to engage the extra-rational aspects of our feelings: Now, in this end human beings seek something that they can love, even though it is being proposed to them through reason alone. Hence the law that only inspires respect in them, though it does not recognize this sought-after something as [its own] need, nonetheless extends itself on its behalf to include the moral ultimate end of reason ... (R 6:7n.)
Unless made an object of love as well as respect, the law will only motivate us as an external constraint or burden, making us receptive to all the blandishments of inclination to transgress. While the law will still be an expression of our own freedom and autonomy, we will not tend to recognize the law as such, and will be receptive not only to temptation, but also those insidious kinds of self-deception that mask the true status of these temptations. In The End of All Things, I(ant tells us that: Respect is without a doubt what is primary.... But if it is a matter not merely of the representation of duty but also of following duty; if one asks about the subjective ground of actions from which, if one may presuppose it, the first thing we may expect is what a person will do - and not a matter merely of the objective ground of what he ought to do - then love, as a free assumption of the will of another into one's maxims, is an
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indispensable complement to the imperfection of human nature (of having to be necessitated to that which reason prescribes through the law). For what one does not do with liking he does in such a niggardly fashion-also probably with sophistical evasions from the command of duty-that the latter as an incentive, without the contribution of the forrrler, is not very much to be counted on. (ET 8:338, p.230).
This passage makes clear that whatever incentive faith is supposed to provide, it is not to take the place of pure practical reason. As in the Religion, Kant emphasizes that the nl0tives bound up with faith cannot operate independent or in place of respect, which for I(ant simply is recognition of the moral law insofar as it functions immediately as a motive. By supplying an object that inspires love, faith makes our duty seem no longer onerous, but something that we can serve with a whole heart, since inclination no longer opposes reason, finding its satisfaction in an object set by reason, the HG. On this picture, faith is rational insofar as it is morally salutary, as a way of removing the temptations that are conditions for nlany kinds of weakness of will and self-deception. Its "subjective necessity" is essentially instrumental; given human psychology, constancy and firmness of a moral disposition are almost impossible without enlisting the support of our inclinations through such love. Yet while this picture appears in several places, it is hardly clear whether such a defense of faith would be consistent with Kant's general understanding of moral corruption. By supplementing respect with such an object of love, I(ant seems to be asking us to engage in systematic impurity, the morally perilous attitude of seeking and supplementing morally decisive reasons with nonmoral ones. Far from strengthening our moral commitments, I(ant sees such impurity as inviting the sort of self-deception that leads not merely to moral inconstancy, but rather to a complete perversion of the entire moral disposition itself. If so, then Kant would be asking us to hazard a fall into wickedness for the sake of increased virtue. Yet even on Kant's terms this cannot be a reasonable risk to run: not only because wickedness is a far worse and incorrigible condition than vice, but because a morally good disposition is a necessary condition of the very possibility of virtue in the first place. One reply to this charge might be that not all forms of impurity are equal, and that Kant might regard the impurity of faith as
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a kind of prophylactic against the really dangerous kinds. For while faith does supply duty with an object we can love, such love is not itself an entirely non-moral motive. Rather, the ultimate object of love is itself always moralized; the HG is not so much a world in which I can expect a reward for my virtue as a world in which everyone gets what they deserve, presided over by a just and infallible judge. Insofar as this world is loved as an intelligible world, as the world of justice satisfied (and not merely the big payoff), our inclinations have become moralized. Such love is not merely directed toward a morally valuable state of affairs, rather, it is impossible even to specify the object of such love without drawing on central moral ideas and commitments. While this moralized kind of love would not be a pure moral motive (i.e., respect), it might nevertheless be a sort of impure moral n10tive, closer in essential form to respect than any desire for material benefit or any other sort of clearly non-moral interest against which morality might have to contend. Since such love contains an ineliminable moral aspect, it n1ight be less conducive to systematic self-deception than more prosaic kinds of impurity. Unlike the desire for reward or fear of punishment, such love, while supplementing respect, would by its very nature assume and remind us of the key moral concept of desert whenever it its active in US. 23 SO far, all this shows is that faith might involve a mild, perhaps even harmless sort of impurity. However, such impurity can be seen as positively valuable if it is the case that human beings are unable to avoid impurity altogether, and that if one must suffer from this fault, the impurity of faith is the best kind. This sort of inherently moralized impurity might well make us much less susceptible to the really dangerous kinds, in that once the inclinations are mobilized in the service of this sort of love, they may be unavailable or resistant to other kinds of temptation. Unfortunately, the above picture is still too facile. One problem is that we still need some argument to show why only the HG can serve as the right sort of object of this kind of moral love. After all, the moral law sets several ends for us, and it seems as though these ends can serve as the objects of a morally salutary love as readily as the HG. Broadly, the moral law commands us to value the happiness of others, and our own self-iluprovemento The for23. By 'reward' and 'punishment' here I mean only some added benefit or hann that results from our acts or character, nothing in any more robustly moralized sense.
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mer duty would readily engage some of our strongest inclinations of sympathy, love, etc., and the latter can just as readily become the focus of our pride, of our self-love. Even without consideration of the HG, our love of others and our love of ourselves can be brought into the service of morality, and such inclinations, once co-opted, would provide very strong bulwarks again any further kinds of temptation. In addition to these immediate moral ends, Kant also argues that morality commits us to particular political projects, such as the construction of republican forms of government and international law (vide "Perpetual Peace"). Such objects, as much as HG, are appropriate objects of a kind of morally salutary love, particularly since we can see much more clearly how we can advance it in our ordinary activities. If what we need here is an object that can reliably mobilize our inclinations, it would seem that these more down-to-earth political projects would be more suitable than a religious ideal that takes us beyond what could be given in sensation, to some of the most rarefied limits of our imagination. If faith is to be defended as a necessary condition of human virtue, Kant needs to show that the HG, as an object of love, performs a function that no other moral or political end could. 8. Quieting Indignation The unique virtue of the HG as a moral end becomes apparent only when we consider that the HG is more than a world in which our moral interest in the happiness of others, and our self-improvement (at least our moral self-improvenlent) would be most fully satisfied. In addition to the objects of our imperfect duties, I(ant adds to the HG an elenlent of necessity. The HG is a world not only in which the virtuous are happy, but one in which the virtuous are happy precisely because they deserve to be so, and, were one to be wicked, one would suffer appropriately. The HG is not just the world of perfect happiness and virtue, but one where desert, the moral form of causation, also serves as a law of natural causation. The HG is distinctive in that not only is it a rationally recommended state of affairs, but it is one that would completely satisfy our desire that people should get what they morally deserve. It is such satisfaction, I want to suggest, which sets the HG apart from other objects of moral love. In offering the HG as the uniquely appropriate object of moral love, Kant's concern may be that the most morally perilous inclinations are one that are themselves already moralized, and hence
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can turn the strength of morality against itself. In particular, Kant may be worried about the feelings of indignation or outrage that morally decent persons should experience in seeing the virtuous suffer, or the wicked prosper. Unlike simple temptations to yield to a particular inclination in a particular circumstance, such "reactive attitudes" seem to strike at the heart of the law's authority. Such outrage, unlike avarice or lust, presents itself not as simply an impulse or desire, but as a kind of challenge, as a response to the failure of some kind or authority. We are familiar with this sort of indignation from other ordinary contexts in which we speak of law and its authority, where it is normally true that widespread outrages can call the authority of a the law, and of its legislator, into serious question. If a legal system, even if legitimate in origin and structure, routinely punished the clearly innocent, or failed to punish (or to punish in the correct degree) the obviously guilty, such a system might well begin to sacrifice any claim it has to our authority (the riots in the wake of the Rodney I(ing verdict may offer a particularly vivid instance of this connection). This problem is not confined to legal systems, but any kind of rule-governed game or practice in which something like adjudication goes on. The authority of an umpire would come into doubt if his calls seemed to have only an accidental relation to what players seem to deserve. No ordinary authority could long claim legitimacy if it were as haphazard a relation between what people get and what they deserve as we find in the case of moraIity. Of course for I(ant, the moral law is importantly different from any other sort of law' or rule. The moral law is supposedly unconditionally binding, and the authority of morality for Kant in no way depends on it promoting any conceptually distinct sort of interest. Other sorts of laws and rules do not have this kind of thoroughgoing independence. Systems of positive law, for example, at least in part owe their authority to the role they perform in providing for public order, security, and the predictable settlement of conflicts among citizens. If such law were not needed in order to make social cooperation and coordination possible, no legal institution could command our obedience. This connection holds even though the legitimacy of any particular statute may not depend on whether that particular law effectively promotes any of the ends that a legal system as a whole is meant to serve. A particular law may well remain legitimate even if it is applied in a seemingly haphazard or arbitrary way, but only so long as such arbitrariness does not characterize the entire legal system in which
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it is embedded. 24 Similarly, a surprising and perplexing call by a referee is nevertheless binding, but only insofar as it is a relatively exceptional case. If a game were such that we could not by-andlarge anticipate what actions would bring what responses, regardless of the particular umpire, we might well conclude that the rules themselves were need of radical revision, or that we should just stop playing this game altogether. Just as legal systems are to some degree answerable to extra-legal concerns, games typically can be criticized by appeal to concerns that are not derived from its own rules. In general, we have good reason to give up on a game if its rules cannot be applied with enough consistency and predictability as to make the play challenging and enjoyable. Morality is unique in that there are no extra-moral standards with which to evaluate it as a whole, no broader set of interests to which it is answerable. Since I(antian morality is not subservient to any other concern, the apparent arbitrariness of what we get relative to what we deserve cannot have the significance it might well have in otherwise similar contexts. As an unconditional, apodictically given "fact," the moral law's authority is not properly impugned by even a systematic failure of people ever to get what they morally deserve. While it is in no way wrong to be morally outraged at the suffering of the virtuous or the prosperity of the wicked, such outrage cannot have the same significance for the moral law as it quite properly does for other kinds of law. The per24. Admittedly, !(ant hilTIself rejects any supposed right of revolution, regardless of how bad a political system became. However, Kant does not reject that a legal system is in principle accountable to some extra-legal concern for its authority. In particular, I(ant holds that political authority is subservient to morality; he rejects any putative right of revolution only because it turns out that any system of law is morally superior to a the lawless condition that would immediately result from revolution, a condition that is morally barred to us. This conclusion depends on particular features of the way Kant bases political authority on morality, not on any rejection of the claim that the authority of positive law is derivative and conditional. In any event, Kant does not seem to consider whether revolution would be permissible in conditions not simply where the law has become oppressive, but is administered so arbitrarily that it cannot perform its basic function of protecting property, making our condition not significantly different from a state of nature at all. I(ant may ignore this case because in this instance, there is no real legal system to overthrow, and hence no revolution could be possible. Rather, only the moral imperative to leave the state of nature would apply, even if the resulting actions look very much like what we would ordinarily call a revolution.
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versity of the world does not present any real argument against the nl0rallaw's legitimacy; rather, the pr9blem is that we might very easily come to think that it does, given than our moral concepts and reasoning otherwise bear strong resemblance to other sorts of laws and rules in which such a challenge would be legitimate. It is easy enough to think that all the inferences available in non-moral contexts must also be available when we consider morality; and this illicit transfer might be the sort of "sophistical evasion" that !(ant warns us about in "The End of All Things" (8:338, p.32 above). While the arbitrariness of fate cannot constitute a real challenge to morality, the illusion that it does (which I will call "cynicism") may be almost unavoidable for any rational being that comes to grasp morality in the way that we do. For on the view I have attributed to !(ant, we do not learn moral concepts in isolation, but through a complex web of other concepts and practices tied up with playing games, being disciplined at home and in school, and learning how positive law works. The similarity between morality and these other kind of rule-governed activity is very much a kind of "family resemblance" stemming from a kind of common genealogy in which all these sort of thinking emerge together, becoming distinct only through a gradual process of differentiation. Given this conceptual kinship, it should come as no surprise that a morally healthy person would nevertheless harbor a strong tendency to miss or underestimate the differences between these latter kinds of judgment and morality, since they all involve similar and necessarily related kind of thinking. Human beings may be vulnerable to cynicism because of the necessary role that imagination and feeling play in the way we learn and reason with practical concepts. When we learn ideas of law, authority, obligation, etc., we form a particular imaginative sensibility, one that is as much involved in following the rules of a game or the commands of a teacher as moral deliberation. We come to understand some of our feelings in light of some kinds of judgment associated with them. Regret, indignation, resentment and guilt are all parts of the emotional life of a creature that can grasp the concept of obligation, and grasping that concept in turn involves using this vocabulary to describe one own mental life. Since this emotional sensibility emerges with the mos,t primitive ideas of law and obligation, it may not be particularly fine-grained, and may tend to lag behind the further refinements that critical reasoning introduces into the sphere of practical concepts. If so,
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then even once we come to a clear understanding of the moral law and the ways in which it differs from other familiar sorts of rules, we may still not be able to fully incorporate our recognition of these differences into our imaginative and affective responses. Our affects may well have a kind of inertia with regard to the reasoned revision of our practical understanding. Because of such inertia, our reactive attitudes could fail to register the unique features of morality: e.g., the idea of a law without any distinct legislator, of obligation without punishment or reward, of desert without ant particular judge to mete it out. The clumsiness of our imagination becomes a problem because although reason is distinct from feeling, reason must have some relation to feeling in creatures like us, if we are to be motivated by it. !(ant argues that when we act out of a recognition of moral obligation, we act from the "incentive" of respect, the central "moral feeling" which is both rational and affective. 25 Insofar as we are at all responsive to such "moral feeling"26 not only reason but these wider and less well articulated imaginative associations must be coming into playas well: Consider a human being at those moments when his mind is attuned to moral feeling: If, surrounded by a beautiful nature, he find himself calmly and serenely enjoying his existence, he will feel within him a need to be grateful for this to someone. Or suppose that, at another time [but] in the same frame of mind, he finds himself under the pressure of many duties that he is willing to perform and can perform only though voluntary sacrifice; he will feel within him a need that in performing them he will also have carried out something commanded, and have obeyed some sovereign. Again, suppose that perhaps he has unthinkingly violated his duty, yet without having made himself answerable to [other] people: still, within him he will sternly reprimand himself in worlds that sound as if they were spoken by a judge to whom he had to account for his action. (Cj 445). Although the moral law is not literally a divine law, Kant here suggests that we can comprehend it only if we think of it on the model of such a law. Although n10ral accountability is independ25. See G, 4:401: "But even though respect is a feeling ... respect is something that is regarded as an object of neither inclination or fear, although it has at the same time something analogous to both." 26. And to lose all responsiveness is, for I(ant, to be "morally dead" (MM 6:400).
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ent of any actual process of judgment and punishment, we nevertheless can only understand it in that light. These juridical allusions are not merely psychological associations that tend to accompany our moral understanding: rather, these ideas are necessary aspects of that very understanding itself, in creatures like us: "There would be no point in artful attempts to find incentives behind these feelings, for they are linked directly to the purest moral attitude: gratitude, obedience, and humiliation (submission to deserved punishment) are special attunements of the mind to duty."(CJ 446). When we understand the law in the right way (the way that involves not just philosophical assent but active concern), we need to have in play this broader picture of divine command and adjudication. Yet although this picture is part of a sound moral understanding, like most pictures and analogies, it will also distort that very same understanding at the points at which the analogy no longer holds. 27 Cynicism may be the result of just such a distortion, emerging when the indignation that would be properly directed against a real governor of the world is directed to the law that we cannot but think of on the n10del of His command. Insofar as human beings need to understand morality on analogy with divine law, they will be susceptible to this confusion despite all the times it has been clearly pointed out to us as such a confusion. 28 On this reading, cynicism reserrLbles a kind of transcendental illusion, in that it is a failing intertwined with the possibility of rational thought, which continues to tempt us even when it has been revealed to be an illusion. 29 If Kant is anticipating this sort of con27. I'm not entirely happy with calling these idea analogies-what I(ant seems to be approaching here is something more like Wittgenstein's idea of the "secondary sense" of a concept. However, I(ant here is probably obscure enough by himself. 28. Cf. Wood, Kant's Moral Religion, 212n: "From a I(antian point of view, the representation of duties as positive commands of God rather than as commands of our own autonomous reason tllay even have fostered such a rebellion." 29. In earlier works, Kant himself seems to have fallen prey to this temptation. When discussing God's authority in "On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy," I(ant tells us that "J usrice indeed presupposes the benevolence of the legislator (for if his will were not directed to the well-being of his subjects, neither could he bind them under duty to obey him) ... "{8:258n.). Kant here assumes that he is working with a univocal concept of a legislator that applies equally to the political and moral realms, supposing that what holds for a legislator of positive law must hold equally well for a legislator of (unconditional) tllorallaw.
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ceptual confusion, we can see why only the HG, in its most robustly theological version, can provide the "right sort of object of love to prevent it. On this reading, our problem is that, given the way that finite creatures like ourselves come to grasp our own rationality and autonomy, we are necessarily subject to an illusion that may lead us to renounce the authority of the moral law. Susceptibility to this illusion is endemic to human reason; it persists even when we realize its falsity, and can be warded off only by a degree of vigilance that, given human frailty and capacity for selfdeception, is all but impossible. Yet rational faith may be able to do what reason alone could not, by not merely revealing the illusion, but dispelling the temptation it presents. Cynicism presupposes that all there is to human life is the span we see from birth to death. If this span in the entirety of our lives, then either our own moral evaluations are systematically and radically false (a supposition that will engender its own skeptical problems), or people very seldom get anything like what they morally deserve. And even if there is more to life than what we see, if there is not more to nature than what we know, we can only expect any afterlife to be just as morally haphazard as our mundane existence. However, the significance of our life on earth appears very different if we assume it to be just a part of a larger story with a very different trajectory from the one we can extrapolate. If we take ourselves to have an afterlife in which we all will come before a perfect judge, to receive precisely what we deserve because we deserve it, then the perversity of our present life will no longer inspire cynicism, any more than do the crimes of civil society when we have faith that the law will eventually deal with them. With faith that the moral arbitrariness of nature is only a local phenomenon, we would cease to be receptive to the kind of outrage that clouds a clear understanding of the nature of morality and its authority over us. This account has the advantage that it explains why rational faith must take a fully theological version of HG as its object, rather than in any of less problematic political projects that I(ant also takes to be mandated by morality. The political surrogates of the HG are inadequate not simply because no human institution could n1ete out our just deserts as fully and infallibly as God. Rather, such projects are altogether of the wrong type to forestall cynicism. For I(ant, giving people what they deserve is not the proper object of any political institution in the first place. In his
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political philosophy, Kant does not consider the primary purpose of punishment to be the distribution of suffering to those who deserve it. While transgressors may truly deserve to suffer for their crimes, no political institution in entitled to mete it out. Rather, the justification of legal punishment depends on its role as a deterrent to criminal behavior; desert only serves to set a limit as to who may be punished, and to what extent. We cannot be justly punished for more than we deserve, but we are not punished simply because we deserve that penalty. Political institutions can claim authority only insofar as their laws serve to protect external freedom; the apportioning of prosperity to merit is for !(ant the exclusive province of "divine justice," upon which no temporal institution can encroach. Insofar as cynicism is motivated precisely by a concern for such apportionment, it cannot be allayed by our hopes for the growth of republican institutions or for a world federation, unless we are also to hope that those institutions exceed their moral authorization. Such a faith in politics would necessarily be a morally corrupt attitude, akin perhaps to a kind of idolatry. On the view that I am advancing, rational faith in its entirety serves as what !(ant call a "pareregon" to morality. !(ant tells us that he will discuss grace, miracles, and mysteries, and that these subjects "are, as it were, parerga to religion within the boundaries of pure reason; they do not belong with in yet border on it." (R 6:52, p.96). !(ant explains that [1]f in the inscrutable field of the supernatural there is something more than [reason] can bring to its understanding, which may however be necessary to make up for its moral impotence, reason even counts on this something being made available to its good will even if uncognized, with a faith which (vvith respect to the possibility of this something) we might call reflective, since the dogmatic faith which announces itself to be a knowledge appears to reason dishonest or impudent: for to remove difficulties that obstruct what stands firm on its own (practically), when these difficulties touch upon transcendent questions, is only a secondary occupation (parergon). (R 6:52, n1Y emphasis).
The parerga of religion are reinterpretations of transcendent ideas (such as grace) that would breed false worries about what "stands firm on its own": in this case, the religion of pure reason. In these parerga, Kant does not simply call on us to reject the possibility or purported significance of grace or miracles. Instead,
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Kant reinterprets these perennially tempting concepts (one might think he interprets them away) so as to absorb the appeal they have for us, without allowing them to take a fornl that would breed confusions about religion and its real basis. What is left of these ideas serves as the proper object of "reflective faith," which, like "rational faith," Kant opposes to that dogmatic belief that claims knowledge of the transcendent. On the reading I have offered, rational and reflective faith name the same thing. Just as the transcendent ideas of grace and miracles are refashioned so as to keep them from obscuring our understanding of the religion of reason, that religion itself emerges as a reinterpretation of ideas that would otherwise tend to distort our understanding of morality. True religion does not need an account of grace or miracles for its significance: it "stands firm on its own," dealing with grace and miracles only to deprive us of the resources for confusion and selfdeception. In like fashion, morality does not need religion, either for its authority or motivating power; it is only we who need faith, to clearly appreciate morality's true status. 9. Faith's Credential In the above picture, moral faith has COille to play much the same role with regard to practical reasoning that such reasoning itself played with regard to theoretical reasoning. Both practical reason and rational faith emerge at the boundary of a certain kind of judgment, at the point where such judgment sets itself questions which cannot be answered in its own terms. 3D "Dialectic" begins at the limits of a certain kind of conceptual logic, where we are tempted to see as pressing philosophical problems questions that neither can nor need to be given any answer at all. This sort of conceptual confusion, endemic to all kinds of reasoning, is what I(ant calls "transcendental illusion." If unrecognized, these illusions will generate the pseudo-dilemmas of the antinomies. Unless we see that these problems are not, despite their appearance, well-posed, we may conclude that the kind of reasoning in question is deeply incoherent, and with this misstep fall into skepticism. In the first Critique, we fell into transcendental illusion by trying to satisfy reason's needs in the realm of empirical cognition, a realm not fully suited to it. The mathematical antinomies emerged 30. In a 1792 letter to Fichte, I(ant urges on him the distinction between "dogmatic faith" and "a purely moral assumption that freely bases itself on moral grounds (the imperfection of reason in its inability to satisfy its own demands}." Kant's Philosophical Correspondence, 187.
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when we mistook rational criteria for the development and evaluation of theories about the world as criteria for what could be in the world itself. The reasonable claim that we should, cateris paribus, always prefer theories that presented a more complete picture of nature lead to the mistaken thought that this is so because nature must itself be fully complete in abstraction from our ways of thinking about it: that nature is given either with our without a first cause, either with our without bounds in space and time. To expose the illusion, I(ant argued that the very idea of the world given as a complete series does not make sense, so that neither seemingly contradictory position is true, and the very question itself shown to be confused. 31 Characteristic of transcendental illusion is that while critical arguments are enough to reveal their falsity, such arguments cannot remove the temptation they present (any more than measuring the lines of the Muller-Lyer illusion will make the lines appear equal). Such temptations are endemic to even a critically-informed reason because they are motivated by essential aspirations of reason itself. Reason necessarily strives for completeness in its theories about nature, an aspiration that generates the temptation to take nature itself as complete. As I have argued in my last chapter, we do not remove this temptation by simply revealing its falsity (although this does allow us to recognize it as a temptation) but by also directing this need toward a distinct kind of judgment, the practical. We remove the illusion not only by denying an assumption that reason makes, but by showing reason that what it really wants is something different from this assumption altogether. In moral judgment, reason's aspirations for completeness and finality cease to be mere heuristics, and instead becon1e essential elements of understanding the particular logic of practical judgments. Reason gets what it wants, but not where it initially sought it. What 31. J
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I(ant is describing here is a familiar sort of philosophical therapy, where we not only show the incoherence of a position, but provide some account of why that position might have seemed coherent, and an explanation of the motivation behind the confusion. We dispel the illusions of first Critique by distinguishing the logic of theoretical reasoning from the very different logic of practical reasoning, thus preventing the sort of conceptual cross-contamination that gets us into trouble. The moral law gained a theoretical credential in that, by making a distinct logic of practical reasoning available, it kept reason from confusing itself as to what it really wants. However, the moral/practical realm has managed in its turn to generate a sort of dialectical temptation of its own. This ten1ptation does not come from reason directly (any more than the theoretical illusions do), but rather from our in1agination, insofar as it is informed by practical reason. 32 While this temptation is not an immediate expression of reason's needs, it is nevertheless necessarily bound up with the nature of human reason. For given the discursive nature of our understanding, and the role of sensibility in our motivational psychology, our practical reason must be inextricably intertwined with appropriate forms of imagination and feeling, the sorts of powers that make judgment of particulars possible. If we are to be sensitive to morally important features of a situation, we may very well need not just the right principles, but also a morally informed sensibility susceptible to such reactive attitudes as indignation, resentment and outrage. Such morally appropriate outrage at the capriciousness of fate can give rise to powerful pseudo-doubts about the authority of morality, which continue to exert their pull on us even once their falsity is revealed. In the theoretical case, the picture that confuses us is one drawn from the normal employment of reason itself. In many derivative types of practical reasoning (e.g., the political), it is indeed true that a pervasive failure of people to get what they deserve may delegitimate the relevant sort of law or authority; and this understanding is incorporated into our ordinary reactive attitudes. While such an inference does not attach to the special case 32. In the theoretical case, reason alone did not generate the illusion, in that such reasoning is itself entirely coherent. Rather, we get into trouble because, for us, theoretical reason involves certain imaginative capacities, and it is these capacities that allow logically distinct sorts of ideas (here, practical ones) to insinuate themselves into our theoretical reasoning. A rational mind that did rely on imagination (i.e., an intuitive intellect) would not be vulnerable to such confusions.
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of morality itself, these reactive attitudes may fail to mark morality's special status, ten1pting us to assimilate the moral law to more prosaic instances of practical legislation. Our rationally-informed imagination has led us to see a move that makes sense within the context of the game as one that is available with regard to the game as a whole. This confusion of what makes sense within a logical game with what can be directed toward the game as a whole is also characteristic of the dialectic of theoretical reason. We can quite sensibly ask after the cause of any particular empirical object or event, or after its bounds in space and time are. Any object in the world is such that if it is not bounded, then it is infinite, if it is not the result of an infinite chain of causes, then it must have a first cause (i.e., be the result of a finite chain). We get into trouble when we think of the "world as a whole" as if it were just another object in the world, treating the inferences appropriate to any of its parts as claims that could also have global application. Under the influence of an imagination that is accustomed only to such local contexts, we try to grasp "the world as a whole" as sOlnething on all fours with any of its parts, as being just a really big part occupying the same logical space as its components. 33 In both the theoretical and practical cases, the temptation to transcendental illusion is dispelled only by distinguishing the kind of judgment in question from another kind that is motivating the confusion. When we see that ideas of completeness, of the self, of a first or necessary cause playa constitutive role for practical judgment, we show reason what it really wants, and where it should seek satisfaction. In the practical case, we remove the lure of cynical reasoning not just be demonstrating its inappropriateness, but by directing the motivation behind these concerns toward its proper object-here, the objects of faith. While the 1110ral law entails neither the truth nor the falsity of the postulates, it does supply a "credential" for faith in much the same way as theoretical 33. A related confusion is at work in the Paralogisms. In the Paralogisms, we do not try to give global application to local empirical judgments. Rather, we import a completely non-enlpirical concept (that of the soul, which has only a practical sense), and treat it as if it were an ordinary empirical object, either composite or simple, perishable or eternal, of some sort of "material". As with the mathematical Antinomies, "the soul,", like "the world as a whole" has no real sense in an empirical context: "the world as a whole" has no sense at all, and the sense of "the soul" is only relevant to practical judgments concerning agency and accountability.
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reason supplied a credential for morality. When we distinguish theory from practice, or practice from faith, we remove the confusions endemic to each realm.
10. The Attitude of Faith The parallel between the theoretical and practical dialectic suggests that faith should emerge as a new kind of judgment, distinct from both theoretical and practical reasoning. Just as practical reason itself has a theoretical credential only insofar as it constitutes a logically unique species of judgment, we should expect the faith that emerges from the practical dialectic to constitute yet another logically distinct attitude, something that is neither a kind of believing or willing. Unfortunately, Kant is hardly clear as to just what the logical status of the postulates, or our attitude toward them, is supposed to be. At points, Kant seems to consider the postulates to be just a special kind of theoretical proposition (at least "theoretical in form"), distinctive in that they necessarily cannot be supported by any of the sorts of evidence relevant to the truth of such propositions. This picture invites the objection that faith is little more than a kind of wishful thinking which, even though morally salutary, is nevertheless epistemically fraudulent. After all, even if we necessarily lack the grounds to either confirm or refute such a claim, this lack does not entitle us to make up our minds by appeal to other concerns that are, as a class, irrelevant to theoretical claims. The rules of a gan1e do not change when we run out of available moves. The necessary absence of relevant evidence cannot itself change the logical status of a claim, since just what that claim means depends crucially on just what sorts of reasons can count for or against it. If we were to become free at SOlne point to argue for a theoretical clain1 on purely practical grounds, the very claim in question would have changed content, ceasing to be a theoretical (or speculative) claim at all. In sharp contrast to the above picture, Kant son1etin1es presents the postulates not as queer theoretical or speculative judgments, but rather as a fairly ordinary sort of practical judgment, meant only to guide our practice.(see "The Ends of All Things," "Theory and Practice"). This picture may be meant to capture the shift in propositional content described above; where, in justifying speculative claim on practical grounds, the claims themselves become practical, as standards to direct and focus our moral reflection. On this picture, to have faith means only that we are c0111mitted to acting "as if" we were to meet a final judgment, and
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as if the moral trajectory we establish in this life were to determine that of our afterlife. Just as if we we~e theoretically convinced of the postulates, we would attach no significance to the fact that we seem to be able to "get away" with our wrongdoings, and that the wicked often do not come to regret their sins. Thinking in terms of a final judgment would then highlight just what is or is not n10rally significant, a valuable service in particularly trying on confusing contexts. In such contexts, our reflection can be extended by the thought that any concern or worry that would be refuted by the supposition of a final judgment is one that is must be irrelevant for moral purposes; that any doubts that we would cease to have under God's dominion must be, morally speaking, pseudo-doubts. We would not need God in order for such doubts to be hollow, but we may well need the thought of God to be properly reminded of their hollowness when the moral law seems too abstract and distant. 34 This picture would avoid relegating faith to any objectionable sort of wishful thinking, but it would nevertheless rob faith of the distinctive significance that I(ant attributes to it. Kant claims that although faith is compatible with all sorts of theoretical doubts about God and immortality, both faith and moral commitment are nevertheless inconsistent with a definite conviction that neither exist: "A dogmatic unbelief in a person is inconlpatible with is having a moral maxim prevail in his way of thinking"(C] 472). However, if the postulates were no more than mere heuristics for our reflection, it seems that they should be as available to the dogmatic atheist as much as to the skeptic or the true believer. I can certainly exploit the idea of a final judgment as a kind of thought-experiment while still denying the actual prospect of such a judgment; I can know what would be the case if God were to exist even if I am convinced He does not. Yet while Kant is particularly ecumenical in his defense of faith, he does want to deny it to the convinced unbeliever. If so, then just as a interpretation of faith as a kind of speculative belief seems to claim too much, the view of faith as just a practical guide comes to claim too little. 34. We lllight then explain why !(ant often talks of God and immortality as real objects, rather than just heuristics, by reference to his claim that in the practical, there is no difference between the regulative and the constitutive: "when we are concerned with the practical sphere, su'ch a regulative principle (of prudence or wisdom)-namely, to act in conformity with something, as a purpose, that we can conceive of as possible only in a certain manner-is also constitutive, i.e., determinative practically.'1~jl~L
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11. Trusting God There nlay be something more for faith to be, which !(ant is perhaps trying to articulate in an inadequate vocabulary centered on notions of believing and intending. Given the role that it is meant to play, moral faith resembles not so much a kind of belief or intention, but rather an attitude of trust. 35 Trust seems to have a logic that corresponds to the sense that Kant attributes to faith, distinct from but related to both theoretical and practical judgments. I(ant does sometilnes refer to faith as a kind of trust or confidence (Vertrauen ). In the third Critique Kant tells us that: To have faith (simply so called) is to have confidence (ein Vertrauen ) that we shall reach an aim that we have a duty to further, without our having insight into whether achieving it is possible (nor, consequently, into whether the conditions are possible under which alone we can conceive of achieving that aim). (C]472)
Kant goes on to elaborate that "Faith is a confidence (ein Vertrauen) in the promise of the moral law; but the moral law does not contain this promise: it is I who put it there, and on a morally sufficient basis." (C] 471n). Confidence in such an unmade promise, I want to argue, is an example of a very basic and distinct sort of trust, the trust that will fit precisely into the space Kant made for faith. 36 Trust here needs to be distinguished from expectation. To expect something is to have a belief about some future event, usually with enough certainty that we would be willing to act on that belief (I(ant remarks that the strength of such "pragmatic belief" is well measured by what we are willing to gamble on its truth (CPR 824-5/852-3)). While we do sometimes talk of 'trust' in this sense, the sort of trust I have in mind here is something much more like anticipation. By such anticipation I do not mean simply those expectations that are coupled with some pre-emptive action or intention directed toward what we expect to happen. Rather, I have in mind the sort of anticipation we might experience when we hear 35. Cf. Wood, Kant's Moral Religion, 161: "For I(ant, moral faith in God is, in its most profound signification, the moral man's trust in God." 36. Cf. also a 1775 letter to J.C. Lavater, where !(ant explains "By 'moral faith' I mean that unconditional trust in divine aid, in achieving all the good that, even with our most sincere efforts, lies beyond our power." Kant's Philosophical Correspondence, 81.
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a familiar piece of music. With a piece of music we know well, we will typically hear each passage in anticipation of the one that we know will follow it. Such anticipation goes beyond knowing (or imagining) what the next passage will be-it is more than a belief about what is to come. When we anticipate, we do not only know what to expect in a few moments; rather, the way we hear the passage that is being played right now is informed by that very expectation. To hear a passage as a building of tension, as a fragile interlude, or even as sad or mournful depends as much as what we expect to hear as what we have already listened to. 37 Trust is like such anticipation in that one interprets what is going on right now in terms of a particular projected trajectory. For example, I may trust my spouse to be faithful. Such trust is something other than merely having beliefs about how my spouse will or would act: I might very well believe that other people's spouses will also be faithful, but it would be odd to say that I trust them to be so. My attitude is also not a matter of having a belief about the future that is particularly welcome: no matter how much I both believe and desire that other people's spouses be faithful, I still do not approach the territory of trust. Trust also seems to be distinct from hope: after repeated betrayals I may still hope fervently that my spouse will be faithful, even though all trust has been destroyed. Trust resembles anticipation, and differs from hope or expectation, in that it involves interpreting the present in terms of some projected (and perhaps favored) future, some projected trajectory that we take for granted. When I trust in my spouse's fidelity, this assumption guides the way I Inake sense of her actions now, how I ascribe motives and intentions to her. Typically, the evidence displayed by someone's behavior will be equally consistent with a great variety of stories we could tell about that person. To come to any kind of judgment, we must project or anticipate the rest of the story, and understand what we encounter now in light of such a trajectory.38 We do not typically trust on the basis of good evidence, and yet such trust is nevertheless vulnerable to evidentiary challenges. 37. Allen Wood has suggested that this is particularly true of art forms \vith a distinctive narrative structure, such as opera. This seems exactly right to me, but as I know ahnost nothing about opera, I have to take the example on faith. 38. It is the mark of mistrustful people to ascribe the worst possible mo-
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I trust my wife, but I do not do so because she has a good track record in the fidelity department. I might s'ay that I trust her because I know she loves me, but whether she loves me itself depends, anlong other things, on whether she will (by-and-large) remain faithful to me in the ordinary run of situations. Again, I may trust her because I think she intends to be faithful, or because she has fully repented her past infidelities. However, such intentions or such repentance are not themselves states are conceptually independent of certain anticipated sorts of behavior. To see her avowals as expressions of intention or repentance, I must already be seeing them as the beginning of a certain kind of story that is headed in a certain general direction. While talk of intention, IllOtive, resolve, etc. can in a certain sense explain our acts, these idioms are not really conceptually prior to the sorts of behavior they are meant to explain, and hence do not function the way causal explanations do. In ascribing particular motives and intentions to my spouse, I do not so much justify my trust as reveal it. If asked why I so trust my wife, I may quite properly reply "because I love her", "because she's my wife", or simply "I just do." It would be a mistake to see these replies as giving reasons that are meant to support a prediction about the future. I do not think that my love, by itself, has the power to make anything l1lore or less likely; I don't believe that I can change the future just by offering or withdrawing my affections. Similarly, "because she's my wife" hardly offers a reason to believe; I don't think that the institution of marriage has all that great affect on anyone's behavior, or that there is something about me that should make nlY marriage a special case. I don't believe that someone else, who does not particularly trust my spouse, is failing to notice some ineffable fact that I have been lucky enough to perceive. Rather, these replies, like the simple "I just do," are not answers to the question, but rather a kind of refusal of it. The question asks for my reasons for making a prediction about my wife's future behavior; the replies are not meant to satisfy this request, but are instead ways of showing that I was never making such a prediction in the first place, that the question is here out of place. These replies show that my attitude here is one of trust, not expectation, and as such I do not bear the tives to others, to interpret their actions in the most unfavorable light that is still plausible given the evidence. I take it that once we move from the penumbra of plausibility, we have gone from being mistrustful to being clinically paranoid.
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ordinary logical burden of having or providing reasons. 39 The replies settle the question by making my attitude intelligible: not by justifying that attitude, but by revealing its context to be one in which a demand for justification is altogether out of place. In one of his last works, Norman Malcolm observes that: Within many concepts there is a space for reasons. One may say: 'Why do I trust that man? Because in the past he has served me well.' But if we say of a small child 'She clung to her father trustingly', we do not expect the child to give a reason for trusting her father: and indeed there is no sense in supposing that she has a reason. So sometimes a person has a reason for trust, and sometimes not.
In the clinging child, we see a familiar and very fundamental sort of trust, which stands in need of no positive justification. Such an attitude (which adults as well as children might possess) rests on no evidence, nor does it rest on any assurances or guarantees that have been offered to the child (in any event, such guarantees themselves would depend on such trust, and so cannot serve as its basis). Yet despite its rational backing, the child's trust is not necessarily misplaced, or wrongheaded, or merely a kind of hopeful expectation. The trusting child is not merely optimistic. Would we greatly misrepresent her attitude by describing it in that way I(ant describes faith, as something like confidence in an unmade promise?40 Trust is easy to mistake for as being a more cognitive attitude than it is. While trust does not rest on evidence, nevertheless evidence can call the appropriateness such trust into question. While trust is not the same as having a certain belief about the future, we nevertheless cannot trust in what we have concluded will not happen. I cannot trust my wife to meet me at the airport if I learn that a blizzard has closed all the roads. I cannot trust her to be faithful, if I overhear her arranging an assignation. Like willing, we can only trust in what we take to be possible, even though neither willing nor trusting is a species of belief. 39. Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View?, 82. 40. In "Trust and Anti-Trust", Annette Baier concludes "Trusting is rational, then, in the absence of any reason to suspect in the trusted strong and operative motives which conflict with the demands of trustworthiness as the truster sees them. (121). Her discussion here (106-110) of the similarities of "infantile trust" and trust in God (106-110) is also relevant here.
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Trust resenlbles faith in that it only partially engages the logic of belief. Trust is not a sort of prediction, and does not need to be backed-up with the sorts of reasons relevant to prediction at all. Like faith, it is neither Wissen nor Meinung; it is not a well-justified knowledge claim, nor is it an opinion, held for reasons that at least bear on the truth of the claim in question. Like opinion, trust has no objectively sufficient grounds; like knowledge, it has all the justification it needs. Trust and faith are also similar in that while neither seenlS to be a kind of knowledge-claim, they can nevertheless come into conflict with such claims; both are incompatible with the conviction that what we anticipate is not, in fact, true (or possible). Insofar as I am sane, I cannot trust in what I have concluded will not happen, just as for I(ant, I cannot coherently have faith if I am a committed atheist. ] ust as both faith and trust partially engage theoretical judgnlent, they both also only partially engage practical judgment. Like faith, trust has a practical aspect, even though that aspect does not reduce it to a nlere practical guide or heuristic. If I trust in my spouse to be home for dinner, this attitude necessarily informs nlY actions. There are certain things I will do-start dinner cooking at the regular time, set the table, open a bottle of wine. There are also certain things I don't do-I don't start pacing, I don't start calling around to find out where she might be. The connection between trusting and acting here is conceptual, not causal. If I acted in all these inappropriate ways then (absent some special story) I could not be said to have trusted in my spouse in the first place, not just that my trust was fleeting or had very peculiar effects in this instance. Because of this conceptual connection between trust and certain kinds of action, we might be tempted to reduce such trust to a practical heuristic, since acting with the appropriate sort of trust is nornlally indistinguishable from acting "as if" such-and-so is to be the case. However, trusting that something will occur and acting "as if" it will can come apart, in that one can trust in something without doing anything at all. I trust my wife will renlember my birthday, but this does not require any positive action on my part (though it still may require that I do not leave little hints or reminders about). Conversely, one can act "as if" something will occur, without trusting that it will. The doctor may act "as if" his patient will recover, without trusting in this outcome-indeed, he can so act even with the firm conviction that the patient will soon die. Like faith, trust bears a conceptual connection to particular
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kinds of activity (as well as certain kind of attentiveness and concern), but nevertheless cannot be reduced to any practical principle or imperative. Just as trust was open to challenge on theoretical grounds, it can also be challenged from practical reasons. There may be good ground not to trust the repentance of an abusive parent; the problem here may not be we have positively believe that the abuse will resume: this matter may be as much up in the air as anything is. Rather, the problem is that such trust brings with it characteristic behaviors (allowing the parent unsupervised visits, not looking for signs that the abuse has resumed, etc.) which may be morally objectionable. Such trust may endanger the child to the point that it would be morally wrong to adopt it, and this objection does not depend on any confident prediction that the abuse will resume. Thus while trust does not involve a practical judgment about what is right or good, it is nevertheless vulnerable to such judgments, just as it is vulnerable to predictions about the future, although it is itself not such a prediction. This vulnerability provides another temptation to misunderstand trusting attitudes as exclusively practical ones. Given their logical resemblance, it seems reasonable to consider rational faith as a species of trust; specifically, trust in an ultimately moral structure of the world, trust in a judging God. Rather than being a kind of strangely-grounded prediction, such an attitude would commit us to interpreting what we experience now in terms of such an anticipated moral narrative, a narrative in which we all ultimately get what we deserve. While such an attitude could be undermined by a theoretical proof that the expected denouement will not occur, the first Critique has happily established that no such proofs are possible. As a form of trust, such faith will also require that we act in certain ways; if any of those ways were morally objectionable, we would again have good reason to abandon such faith. However, the behavior consistent with trust in a holy, judging God is simply the behavior demanded by the moral law itself-Kant emphasizes that religion can give us no new duties (such a duties to God), but only contain what has independent moral grounds.(MM 6:444). Rational faith, unlike other more prosaic sorts of trust, is unique in that it is necessarily immune to both theoretical and practical challenge, by the very nature of its objects. In general, we may trust in that for which there are not reasons, theoretical or practical, not to trust, and this condition necessarily holds in the case of moral faith. In addition, faith
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receives a kind of credential from morality; for by serving as the lens through which we see the vicissitudes of human history, it quiets our indignation and outrage, and keeps us from losing touch with our own moral common sense. Such faith is thus rationally required only in the sense that there can be no reasons against it, and there is an indirect reason for it. This credential is enough to carry the day once we recognize that we need no special reason to trust in the first place. 41
12. The Ubiquity of Faith When considered as a species of the kind of trust described above, moral faith may appear to become a very peculiar attitude, in some ways like belief, in some ways like intention, but ultimately conforming to the logic of neither. We n1ight then conclude that such faith, and trust in general, are really incoherent attitudes, attitudes which seemed intelligible to us only because of their various points of resemblance with other, more respectable kinds of thinking. Such a conclusion would be, I think, a mistake. Despite the apparent strangeness of the philosophical analysis, such trust is really one of the most basic and indispensable attitudes of human life; considered in context, nothing could be more familiar and ordinary. We can appreciate this fact by turning our attention from the role that such trust plays with regard to morality (i.e., its relation to pure practical reason), and consider how far it is involved with any understanding of action or agency in general (i.e., its relation to empirical practical reason). The kind of trust described above is not confined to religious contexts, or such rich but complex relationships as marriage or friendship (although these contexts highlight such trust in a particularly vivid way). Rather, something like this sort of trust is essential for us to be able to both recognize and make sense of ourselves as agents in the first place. As I(orsgaard argued, a kind of practical faith is needed simply to be able to recognize oneself as an agent, and to see the world as an arena for choice and effective action. However, the faith involved here is nothing religiously or even morally loaded, but only 41. This is how faith differs from speculative belief; for even though there can be no reasons for or against a speculative belief (and such belief might even be morally salutary), we nevertheless need a particular sort of reason for such beliefs; there is an internal burden of justification here that cannot be nlet. Since trust does not require justification (but only the absence of challenge), a moral credential can do work here that it could not do in the speculative case.
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our ordinary faith in induction, which is so pervasive that we only come to recognize it as a substantive kind of faith only in philosophical contexts. Insofar as we deliberate about what to do, we trust that the future will be pretty much like the past. As Hume saw, when we treat this attitude as a kind of belief about the future, we are unable to provide it any sort of non-tendentious justification. Our faith in induction seems to be something very different from just a very general prediction about the world, predictions which themselves typically rely on some sort of inductive reasoning. The idea that the future will be like the past is itself so closely bound up with our notions of en1pirical evidence that talk of justifying or refuting induction altogether can find little purchase. We can neither believe nor doubt that the future will be like the past, at least not in anything like the sense we can believe or doubt that it will rain tomorrow or that the stock market will go up. Despite their resemblance, this commitment (like our commitment in the existence of an external world, or of other minds) is more primitive than any such particular belief, a kind of trust or confidence that neither needs nor admits of empirical justification. There is no theoretical justification for our faith that the future will be pretty much like the past; rather, all we seem to have is another sort of practical credential. 42 If we were to actually stop trusting that the future would be pretty much like the past, we would find ourselves in the nightmare scenario that I(orsgaard envisions, where we can Inake no educated guess about what we are really doing, and thereby becon1e unable to recognize ourselves as agents at all. The problern here is not just that, given the radical unpredictability of the world, we would never know what course of action to atten1pt, and hence would have no idea of how to go 42. This point is consistent with the Second Analogy. In that Analogy, Kant argues only that nature stands under the conditions of time, that each state of the universe supervenes or is fully determined by each antecedent state. This does not entail that the future will be like the past (although it is of course consistent with this supposition). As !(ant recognizes in the Critique ofJudgment, the world could be such that, although under the conditions of time, the entirety of its history would could as a single instance of an infinitely complex phenomenon; with no repetitions, resemblances, or recognizable regularities. Our faith in induction is instead based on taking nature to be at bottom purposive for our understanding; a kind of theoretical trust that has sonlething to with the possibility of judgments of taste. I think this must have something to do with why beauty is the symbol of the morally good.
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about achieving our ends. The difficulty is not that we would be confused to the point of paralysis. Rather, the problem is that, unless we presuppose a certain kind of regularity in nature (for which we could have no independent evidence), we could not even attribute intentions to ourselves in the first place (or any related states, such as resolve, attempt, purpose, virtue, etc.) Unless we take for granted that the future will be largely like the past, the whole range of these intentional idioms would not be available to us in the first place. We would not just be indecisive: rather, neither decisiveness nor indecisiveness could be attributed to us at all. The basic thought here is that, for at least this kind of intentional state, whether I can correctly be said to be in that state now depends on what is true about me in the future. Such attributions involve seeing my present state in light of some future trajectory, where the descriptions I apply to myself now (and to my past) presuppose that my story turns out in a certain general kind of way. Consider intending to do something, a notion central to the idea of agency and to practical idioms generally. Can one truly be said to have intended to do x, if one fails to do so given opportunity and power, and one cannot give any intelligible reasons for changing one's mind?43 It has been plausibly argued that there is simply no fact of the matter about whether or not I intend to do something any given time independent of facts about what circumstances and responses will be in the offing in later times. 44 When I intend to do something, I at least take it to be the case that I am making some event more likely to occur than not, having ruled out not every possible defeating condition, but those taken to be the normal sorts of threats to anticipate. Could I intend to go to Chicago if I had no idea of how to get there, or no sense of what problems to anticipate and which I could ignore? In a world where everything 43. See G.E.M. Anscombe, Intention The point here is not that doing x is the normal effect of the intention to do it, so that absent this effect (and any story about why this case isn't normal), we should conclude that its cause was not present either. Action is not just a characteristic symptom of intention. If it were, then the above situation would only show that it is probable that the cause is absent-there might nevertheless be unanticipated causal interferences in this case. With intention, however, it seems that, if these conditions hold, the question of whether we so intended is settled). In Wittgenstein's parlance, action is among the criteria, rather than just a symptom, of intention. 44. see Anscombe, Intention and Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations.
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seenled equally likely (or unlikely) to get me to Chicago, and all those ways equally vulnerable to any kind of obstruction, how would intending to go to Chicago ditfer from simply wishing or hoping to be there, or simply thinking that that would be a good thing to have happen? Were it not the case that people typically did what they intended, and could trust themselves to do so as long as certain types of considerations didn't emerge, we would not have the concept of intention, or of action, at all. What is being rejected here is the idea that the will is related to action in the way that a natural cause is related to its effects, that willing is a kind of internal act which then causes our behavior. 4s There is no conceptual connection between a natural ca use and its effects; one could well know what oxygen, hydrogen, and sparks were without foreseeing the resultant release of energy or production of water. But one could not attribute an intention to oneself to F without trusting oneself to F (barring some ordinary x, y, &z... ). With regard to our intentional states, the facts about our present are always to some degree hostage to facts about our future, just as these facts about our future themselves depend on facts about our present. To say that what 1 am doing now is falling in love, or gaining an understanding, or repenting my sins depends not just on whatever feelings or thoughts or dispositions I have now, but on some facts about how 1 will act and feel at some points down the road. There will always be SOlne possible future development that would make the earlier claim ("I am falling in love," "I understand your point") false. The point here is not just an epistemic one; independent of the ways the future unfolds, there really isn't a deterIninate truth of this matter at all; what we can say now is always only a provisional claim, which takes for granted some anticipated trajectory of events. While there may be such a ·\thing as love a first sight, it depends on there being love (or dejection, or shock) at some further viewings. 46 45. This is not to deny, as Kant says, that "the will is a kind of causality." All that has been clainled is that the will is not the same type of cause as we find in natural science, a position to which I(ant clearly 46. If enlpirical self-knowledge depends on some anticipation of the future, we can see why rational faith includes trust not just in an afterlife, but in immortality. We must take our afterlife to be infinite because of the nature of the judgment we expect to face. For the judgment- we imagine here is not just of individual acts, but of a person's whole character, in every respect that bears on the question of desert. Given the above picture of the correct attribution of intentional states, if such judgm~~~~~~~
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If we must always interpret our present in terms of some theoretically ungrounded sense of the future, then our most basic sorts of self-knowledge necessarily involve a kind of trust. Looking inward is always also a kind of looking forward. As Kant says, we must understand our character as "an absolute unity" (R 6:70n) character were to be made at any particular point in time, it would be to some degree indeterminate-there would not be at that point a definite fact of the matter about what I do and do not deserve. On this picture, human character is metaphysically a work in progress: at any given point in time, there are a variety of paths that my character could take, and which of those future stories turns out to be true bears on how my past is correctly interpreted. Judging the worth of a person after only a finite amount of time is like evaluating a symphony in the middle of its perfonnance; what we have not yet experienced bears on how we can correctly'<describe what we have already heard (and vice-versa). All claims about the parts of the symphony are merely provisional, a sort of educated guessing; what is really true of it can only be found in consideration of the whole. When I(ant talks of human character as a "single phenomenon," he may have this sort of interpretive status in mind; that as with the symphony, that what can be truthfully said of anyone part of one's character depends on the whole it forms with all the other parts, both those of the past and of the future. Any judglnent on the state of my character would be only provisional, resting on the assumption that my future will take this or that likely path. If temporal institutions were to mete out our just deserts, their judgments could not avoid an element of arbitrariness in its interpretive choice of what future developlnent to project from the span it considers, a projection it ll1ust nlake if it is to make sense of that span in the first place. A temporal judge would be forced to give us the benefit or the harm of some doubts, and in neither case would she be assigning us precisely what we deserve. We can avoid this arbitrarily aspect of judgment if instead of placing faith in political institutions, we direct our hopes toward both God and immortality. If we are immortal, then our characters become fully determinate, without the story of our lives being arbitrarily cut off in the middle of some passage. Immortality would allow us to fully become what we are, so that there really is a determinate answer to the question of what we deserve. But if this is the object to be judged, we would need a judge who can grasp an infinite development as a totality, as a unified whole with a definite moral status. This is precisely the role I(ant assigns to God, whose thinking is outside of time, and who knows wholes immediately (and parts only derivatively). A political institution can only judge a work at some point in its progress; and to assign definite rewards or punishments on that basis would be fundamentally unfair, reintroducing some of the very arbitrariness of fate that faith was meant to mitigate. Such judg-
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where the truth of each part in time depends on all the other parts, both backwards and forwards. 47 Unlike natural causes, in the case of character we can only understand the parts through the idea of the whole. To employ intensional idioms, we must take certain kinds of regularities for granted; and without faith in any sort of regularity at all (i.e., skepticism about induction) we would not be able to recognize ourselves as any sort of agent at all. Trusting that the future will be like the past is another sort of practically rational faith, based not on pure practical reason, but merely on the requisites of empirical practical reason in general. If moral faith is to be rejected simply because of its initially strange logical status, then we must reject such inductive faith as well, and with it anything that could be recognized as a human life. 48 In the Critique ofJudgment !(ant tells us that faith is to be understood "as habitus, not as actus" (CJ 472), as an attitude rather than an act. Here, Kant may simply be reminding us that he is considering faith as a way of thinking rather than as any particular set of religious performances or ritual. However, the contrast may also run deeper: the sorts of acts from which !(ant wishes to distinguish ments would lose their provisional nature if our characters were allowed the infinite span to fully take shape, a shape that could only be grasped by a mind out of time. If so, then if we are thinking of our lives as the subject of a complete and absolutely fair evaluation by a perfect judge, we must also think of them as being without any limit in time. 47. One consequence of this view is that, when considered on this level, our future does not supervene on our past (or on the past of the universe), because the truth of the past is not itself fully determinate in independence of that future. This would make our character something that, as I(ant says, stands outside "the conditions of time," being in a way noumenal, without having to make it supernatural. If so, then social science (particular psychology) would necessarily be different from the natural science; given the nature of the states it deals with, there could be no laws of psychology, (at least no laws in the sense that there are laws of physics). I(ant does explicitly reject that there could be psychological laws, though for rather obscure reasons. I(ant thinks that we can have laws only when the phenomena in question can be modeled mathen1atically, and that such modeling requires that these phenomena have a spatial aspect. Kant might be in the same territory here. He does seem to have a conception of social. science like this in mind in his discussion of history in "On an old question... " 48. In a sense, each aspect of practical reason rides on a kind of trust in nature; the purer or less conditioned the reasoning, the more robust the trust.
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faith may include not just outward performances, but also such "acts" as making up one's mind, coming to· a decision, or making a judgment. Kant would then be distinguishing faith from any sort of conclusion from a line of reasoning, any sort of belief that we have arrived at by some sort of inference. I(ant tells us that faith, as a habitus, is a "Furwahrhalten," a "holding as true." What Kant seems to have in mind by such Fiirwahrhalten is not so much a positive judgment, but something more along the lines of taking something for granted. Such a habitus would comprise not our ordinary beliefs, but such basic assumptions that the future will be like the past, or that the (external) world exists, or that there are other minds. These ideas are "assumptions" not in the sense of being problematic premises from which our reasoning proceeds, as with an assumption in the mathematical or logical proof. Rather, such assumptions are what goes without saying in our thought, the background understandings that are not the basis of an inference, but rather revealed by the inferences that we readily draw. If we consider faith to be the kind of confidence or trust suggested above, then the practical postulates are similarly "assumptions" of reason, standing to moral reasoning as induction, and the existence of the "external" world stand to instrumental reasoning. As this kind of assumption, the postulates would not be hopeful guesses or useful suppositions, but the objects of an attitude of confidence that is distorted when represented as a matter of explicit belief. In this discussion, I(ant explicitly distinguishes faith from any kind of belief, even a belief a bout what is or is not possible with regard to the HG: To have faith (simply so called) is to have confidence that we shall reach an ailTI that we have a duty to further, without our having insight into whether achieving it is possible (nor, consequently, into whether the conditions are possible under which alone we can conceive of achieving that aim). (Cj 472, and above, p.49; my emphasis).
If I am correct, such confidence is manifest not so much in the content of what we believe, but in how we believe-in the sorts of doubts we do and do not take seriously, and in the ways we describe ourselves and our problems at any given moment. Moral faith would be that broader attitude through which we cease to be receptive to those "doubts" about morality that we never needed to entertain in the first place.
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13. The Perils of Faith If the above reconstruction of the grounds of rational faith is correct, one might object that faith has become a palliative that, while alleviating symptoms, nevertheless aggravates the underlying disease. (cf. Nietzsche's "orgies of faith" of Genealogy III) As I have argued, faith has a rational credential because it releases us from a kind of corruption of conscience which is, paradoxically, motivated by moral (or at least moralized) concerns then1selves. Our problem was that a morally aware agent will, on moral grounds, experience a kind of indignation at the perversity of fate, and will be tempted to n1istake such indignation as revealing good grounds for rejecting morality's authority. An endemic weakness of human reason is this susceptibility to confuse such pseudo-doubts with real ones (which they would in fact be in other contexts). Faith counters this tendency, not by reminding us of the falsity of such seeming doubt (which is instead the work of criticism), but by quieting the indignation, by taking for granted that the world is ultimately fair in structure. At this point, one might well object that even though faith might remove the immediate danger to morality posed by cynicism, it does so only by making a fatal concession to that very cynicism at the outset. For while faith would show us that the course of the world should not inspire our indignation, it still seems to grant the cynic's fundamental premise: that if the world really were perverse in this way, morality would be an illusion. If so, then faith not only fails to expose this pseudo-doubt for what it is, but actually accepts the challenge as a relevant, if fortunately ungrounded, worry. The essential corruption of conscience, the idea that morality is conditioned in this way, would then slip by unnoticed. Such a situation might actually be worse than the outright cynicism that faith was meant to forestall. Without moral faith, when the idea that morality might be conditioned this way takes hold of us our whole moral world changes; and the magnitude of this change might well make us confront the notion that brought it about, the notion that morality is conditioned by our happiness. But with faith, this notion insinuates itself into our conscience without any immediate changes; for although morality has now become conditioned, its condition is taken to hold, and we continue to recognize the same sort of duties, engage in the same sort of moral reasoning. The corruption would be all the more insidious because it is painless, requiring no immediate changes in how we act. There rou1d be no experience here of disillusionment or disaffection,
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and hence no moral crisis that might allow us to come to our moral senses. Faith would then serve as a kind of Trojan horse for cynicism, presenting as a support for morality a way of thinking that is ultimately its greatest threat. Cynicism is a confusion that results from a certain picture we have to use in understanding the moral law, in which we see that law in terms of the command of a divine sovereign of the world. The above objection assumes that in faith, we simply accept this picture, and make the mistake of trying to maneuver within it. In response to the perversity of the world, we would only be trusting that there n1ay be much more to the world, and to our lives, than what we see; and if so, then perhaps God administers the world correctly after all. But if the real problem was with this picture of divine governance in this first place, so the objection goes, this response is only a stop-gap measure, which ultimately damages our understanding by inscribing this picture even more deeply. Instead, what we really should be seeking is not something that attempts to answer cynicism on its own terms, but rather something that will either dispel the picture that motivates it or, if this is impossible, something that will continually remind us of its lin1itations and distortions. For so long as we play the cynic's game, we n1ust ultimately lose. If rational faith really were just a kind of optimistic agnosticism, it would indeed be open to the above objections. However, on my account, faith is not primarily a matter of recognizing a certain possible way the world might be. Rather, faith does just what the objector would want it to do-dispel or dislodge a confusing philosophical picture. Part of our problem was that we could not just abandon the idea of morality as God's comn1and-this picture, even with its pitfalls, was needed for our most basic grasp of the law itself. I have argued that instead of simply rejecting this picture, faith gives us a different way of looking at the image that removes its distorting effects, while retaining its virtues. For in faith we do not believe or hope or expect that the world has an ultimately moral shape; rather, we simply trust that it does. Insofar as trust is a different attitude from belief, it does not stand on all fours with cynicisn1-it is not just another move within the worrisome picture. Rather, in trust we become oriented to a different sense in which we can imagine morality as a divine command; for trust is not so much the attitude we have to a sovereign, as to a parent. Insofar as a government has authority over us, we give it allegiance: such allegiance may well depend on its effectively serv-
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ing certain interests, and may be withdrawn when the government cannot effectively enforce its own laws. Political allegiance is given for reasons, and may be withdrawn for reasons. 49 Often, though, we do not trust in someone, particularly a parent, for any reasons, nor do we need any. Since such trust does not depend on any particular reasons, it is not vitiated when those reasons fail to hold. Of course, as I have argued, there are reasons to challenge trust, even trust in a parent. But these reasons typically reg uire something more than just frequent failures to be effective in some way. Rather, to stop trusting a parent (in a way that would involve no longer recognizing their authority) we need not just ineptitude, but something more like betrayal. Poor administration is not what undermines such trust, but rather some more fundamental failure in the parent's attitude-malice, disregard, perhaps just the withdrawal of love. When we see our relationship to God primarily as one of trust, rather than allegiance, the perversity of the world is no longer even a prima facie reason for repudiating His authority. Rather, the dangerous sort of indignation would emerge only if we came to see that God had become completely indifferent or actively malicious toward us. 50 Sadly, people have often experienced the world in such a way that it could only appear as God-forsaken; in a gulag or concentration camp, this sort of trusting faith may be almost impossible. In such extreme circumstances, cynicism may take its most extreme form, as despair. Rational faith has nothing to offer here, I suspect. However, such horrors are exceptional cases; what produces despair is not the ordinary moral arbitrariness of nature, but rather special, man-made conditions that we can address with our own activity. Insofar as the natural order by itself can inspire sophistical doubts about morality, the attitude of faith is all that is needed for us to clearly see what is always right before our eyes. The further conditions that evoke despair are ones that we must address with our own activity, with something like a faith not in God, but in the moral nature of humanity itself. 51 49. This does not mean that any individual can do so, or for any reason they like. However, the point still stands even if allegiance can only be given or withdrawn by the body politic as a whole, and for only very serious and pervasive failures of enforcement. 50. Cf. "Justice indeed presupposes the benevolence of the legislator (for if his will were not directed to the well-being of his subjects, neither could he bind them under duty to obey thein)" GMT 8:258n. 51. Kant addresses this moral faith in ourselves in "On an old question asked again . . . "
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With rational faith, we are neither answering the cynic in his own terms, nor are we completely rejecting the picture that inspires his cynicism. Rather, we are coming to a different way of looking at the same picture, a way that emphasizes different features than before. Although we still think of the law on the model of God's command, and of ourselves as answerable to God's judgnlent, these ideas no longer have an exclusively political resonance. As such, the morally haphazard course of the world should no longer evoke the indignation that nlay cloud what should be clearest to us, the authority of the moral law. Such faith cannot prevent all confusions of this type, but it does relieve us of the only sort of confusion that we necessarily face, that presented by the morally arbitrary order of nature itself. 14. Showing and Saying A consequence of this account is that moral faith is not properly the object of a profession. Insofar as it is lTIorally sound, faith involves a sense of what we take for granted when we morally interpret the world, where we take all undeserved suffering (or prosperity) as exceptional or special cases, despite their ubiquity. Insofar as we take a moral trajectory of the world for granted, we are immune to cynicism; our practical reason need not confuse itself as to what it really needs in order to be coherent. As this kind of implicit confidence in the moral structure of the world, faith is distorted insofar as it becomes the object of explicit belief or assertion. The existence God and immortality are properly background assumptions revealed by what doubts we do and do not take seriously; when these ideas become explicit premises in our reasoning, they aggravate the very problems from which they were meant to free us. When faith becomes a matter of explicit belief, as something to be asserted and argued for, we play into the cynic's hands. For when faith becomes a matter of doctrinal belief, we end up trying to offer an answer to questions that should not be entertained in the first place. Real faith, as a sort of unspoken trust, keeps these questions from pressing on us in the first place, rather than meeting them on their own terms. We show such faith in how we live, in what does and does not come to worry us; we should not normally even recognize it as something to be declared. For !(ant, true moral faith, like trust or confidence in general, is something that must normally go without saying.
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In this chapter, I have neglected one major strand of I(ant's treatment of moral faith. Kant sometimes suggests that reason requires us to have faith in a kind of "moral supplement," to trust that once we have done all that is truly in our power to make ourselves morally good, any renlaining shortfall will be made up by a power external to ourselves. This idea occurs frequently in Kant's writings, and comes to the fore in his discussion of nl0ral reconstruction and grace in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. I have neglected the idea of the moral supplenlent only because it does not seem to play the major role in the second Critique, where the main weight of argument is borne by the Highest Good and what we must believe in order to coherently pursue it. However, when I come to Kant's account of grace in chapter 6, I will argue that the idea of the moral supplement comes to largely displace the Highest Good as the foundation of rational faith. This foundation will be superior to the picture offered in the second Critique, in that faith will emerge not just as a way of avoiding morally-motivated confusions, but as an attitude immediately bound up with our being able to recognize ourselves as moral agents in the first place. Faith then will go "all the way down" morally; it will serve not merely to guard us against illusions, but enable us to recognize our intelligible vocation in the first place. However, before we approach this moral supplement we must consider Kant's view of the moral limitations endemic to the human will. Until we understand the nature of our moral shortcomings, we cannot appreciate what sort of nloral supplementation we need, or why some sort of faith in this supplement can be rationally required of us. It is to these questions of the possibility of human weakness and human evil that I shall now turn.
CHAPTER FIVE
A Propensity to Evil
1. Introduction Kant's moral philosophy begins to shade into his philosophy of religion as he moves from his positive account of rational agency, built around notions of autonomy and moral commitment, to consideration of the kinds of practical irrationality that are endemic to particularly human forms of such agency. Along with lTIuch of his political theory, J
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Human irrationality has more forms, and more sources, than those addressed by the faith of the second Critique. In Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Kant continues his investigation into the sources of human finitude, with particular attention to our varied capacities for moral transgression and moral corruption. Rational faith concerned only one particular threat to our moral commitments, a threat that was especially pressing because it was itself motivated by moral (and quasi-moral) concerns. I(ant soon recognizes, however, that we are susceptible to other kinds of moral corruption; vulnerabilities which, while not being motivated by morality itself, are nevertheless necessarily bound up with the human capacities that make us receptive to morality. These vulnerabilities constitute what I(ant calls our "natural propensity to evil," and include both moral weakness of will, and the enigmatic and ineradicable "radical evil in human nature." In this chapter and the next, I will examine Kant's immensely rich yet obscure account of our propensity to evil. This account seems at first to be an attempt to rehabilitate one of the most paradoxical concepts of Christian theology, original sin, in critical garb that hardly suits it. However, closer examination will show I(ant in this discussion not simply to be recycling Protestant doctrine, but to be dramatically expanding and revising his understanding of agency and rationality, in response to the peculiarities and complexity of human psychology. 2. Can I(ant Make Sense of Immoral Action? Two Responses The nature of evil has long been a problem for interpreters of Kant's moral philosophy, particularly those that take The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals as the central (and sometimes the only) text of that philosophy. The picture many people take with them from the Groundwork is that when we act immorally, we have somehow fallen into the phenomenal world, where our behavior can no longer be understood as a piece of intentional action at all, but rather as just another causally-determined natural event. To act immorally would then be to succumb to the temptations advanced by inclination, in something like what happens when we are overcome by a fit or a seizure. On this picture, it is necessarily the case that when we act immorally, we cease to be autonomous agents altogether; for immoral action must be, by the very fact of its immorality, mere heteronomous behavior, in which we are no more the agent of what we do than billiard balls are of where they roll. On this view, the influence of inclination can reach
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a point where it can somehow "switch off" our noumenal aspect, rendering us if only for a moment just another causally-determined thing in the world. 1 To act immorally is to experience something very much like being overwhelmed by passion; where we are momentarily reduced to the merely animal in us, and act without heed to the freedom and autonomy we normally possess. While Kant does sometimes suggest this picture in the Groundwork, it would leave us with the problem of just how feeling could "switch off" the intelligible side of our identity. After all, the moral law is supposed to be binding upon us because of our ultimate freedom from determination by the world of sense; as essentially intelligible beings, nothing in the realm of the phenomenal should be able to determine our exercise of choice. The only comprehensible influences that are logically admissible at the level of the noumenal would be those of reason, and hence, as fundanlentally intelligible beings, we should be metaphysically insulated enough from inclination to make this sort of lapse impossible. Moreover, this picture of sin as a kind of seizure seems inconlpatible with our normal ways of making judgments about moral responsibility. We normally withhold or at least mitigate blame in cases where the malefactor was truly in the grip of an irresistible passion, when their ability to recognize and act from reasons is compromised or altogether destroyed. Yet the above view would bring all moral transgression under this rubric by the simple fact of its immorality. If our practices of assessing accountability are to be kept consistent, we would then either have to excuse all immoral action, extend blame to ordinary action conlmitted out of blind passion, or introduce an arbitrary distinction somewhere between the two. Unless we are willing to make a major moral distinction without a philosophical basis, our understanding of moral accountability would either have to become "merciless" or evaporate altogether. Against the above picture, Christine Korsgaard and Thomas Hill have argued that although immoral action is necessary inconsistent with our own autonomy, I(ant nevertheless takes a rational agent to retain that autonomy and freedom even when making immoral choices. 2 When such agents act immorally, they remain au1. See, e.g., Henry Sidgwick, "The Kantian Conception of Free Will," and more recently Robert Paul Wolff, The Autonomy of Reason, 221-2. 2. See Christine Korsgaard, "Morality as Freedom," 171-176 (pp.159-
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tonomous throughout, but have somehow chosen to act in ways that cannot count as a coherent expression of that autonomy. The malefactor acts as if she were heteronomous, as if her desires or inclinations had the kind of complete detern1ining force for her that they properly have for heteronomous anitnals. Hill points out that Kant never refers to particular actions or choices as being "heteronomous" or "autonomous." Strictly speaking, heteronomy and autonomy are properties that characterize and differentiate a type of "faculty of desire" [Begehrungsvermogen] as a whole, and can be used derivatively to distinguish moral theories depending on the understanding of this faculty that they employ. On this picture, we as rational creatures are essentially free and autonomous; when we act immorally, we act is a way that would be coherent only if our wills were profoundly different from what they are. On this view, inclination does not and cannot force us to take it too seriously (except perhaps in those rare cases when we really do lose self-control, where we suffer a kind of "temporary insanity" induced by pain, fear, or perhaps rage). In normal cases when we succumb to temptation, we freely choose to over-value inclination under no such duress or compulsion, expressing not so much our biological and psychological limitations, but rather our own self-love. Since inclination has not compelled or caused this in1moral choice, and since reason can only speak against it, there can be no explanation of why someone would act in1morally. As I(orsgaard readily acknowledges, this view accepts evil as necessarily incomprehensible. The wicked agent surrenders her autonomy, to which as a rational creature she must be con1mitted above all else, for the sake of something which has no antecedent (and certainly no overriding) value for her. Because she is free, it always remains possible that she make this perverse choice. However, there can never be a good reason, even from her perspective, for so choosing. An immoral agent acts against what she herself values most, and under no necessary con1pulsion, pathology, or duress. Evil is unintelligible, and part of what's bad about it is that it thereby renders the agent, on some deep level, unintelligible to both herself and others. One problem with this picture is that it threatens to explain away what it was originally meant to elucidate. I(ant frequently reminds us of the "opacity of the human heart," of our ~nability to 187) and Thomas E. Hill, Jr., "The Kantian Conception of Autonomy" in his Dignity and Practical Reason, 81-82.
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know with any substantial degree of certainty the maxims from which we ourselves act. To attribute a particular maxim to oneself or another is always an interpretive act, open to challenge and revision. On the above understanding of evil, to attribute an immoral maXilTI to another (or to oneself) is to make the actions that result from that maxim unintelligible as actions (as opposed to just natural events in the world). But we need not be committed to any very strong principle of charity to see that an interpretation that makes the agent's action so radically unintelligible must be rejected in favor of any alternative interpretation that would avoid this consequence. Even when our acts seem immoral, the better explanation will always be one that, no matter how convoluted, represents the agent as acting on a morally acceptable maxim. Better to reach for less obvious and straightforward ways of describing the agent's intentions than to commitment oneself to a metaphysical perplexity. As long as lTIoral adequacy is taken as a necessary condition of the intelligibility of intentional action, we will be committed to a frighteningly strong version of the claim that no one does wrong willingly. To escape this pressure to reinterpret every prima facie immoral act into something morally acceptable, we would need to show why the unintelligibility that is supposedly characteristic of evil does not make the action unrecognizable as an act. Even if the picture that I(orsgaard and Hill paint is correct (as I think it is for a limited class of transgressions), they need to say more about why this fundamental "unintelligibility" of evil should not count as a shortcoming or inadequacy of I(ant's understanding of intentional action. While explanations lTIay have to come to an end somewhere, we need to see why this explanation can come to an end here, in the brute possibility of our freely acting against our own freedom, without this result calling the entire account into question. It has certainly seemed to many that more needs to be saidif this sense of incompleteness is misguided or misexpressed, we need at least to explain away its apparent compellingness, something that unearths the motivation for this worry and shows it somehow to be off-target. To dispel the notion that there is a real shortcoming with such a "no explanation explanation," we need to do more than refer the possibility of such incomprehensible action to the nature of freedom in general: not because this suggestion is wrong, but because at this point such a reply can only be question-begging. Those who are skeptical about a moral philosophy and psychology based in Kantian conception of freedom will
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typically point to this philosophy's inability to tell much of a story about evil as evidence that something has gone badly wrong: that the idea of freedom is itself incoherent, or intellectualized to the point of having little contact with human life. It will hardly do to tell those who think such freedom incoherent, because it cannot explain the possibility of evil, that this possibility is inherent in the nature of freedom, and hence that no more explanation is either needed or possible. The skeptic 3 will have granted that it is in the nature of such freedom that it has no more explanations to give; her position is that it is then this account of freedom and morality rather than our need for such an explanation, that has to go.
3. Beyond Reason and Inclination The Groundwork-'s straightforward dichotomy between reason and inclination seems inadequate to make sense of evil in any intuitively satisfying way, at least, in any way that retains the logical possibility of culpable wrongdoing without having to accept it as an inexplicable given. To sacrifice this possibility would certainly be a high price for any moral theory to pay, but it might be conceded that, at bottom, the idea of guilt really is incoherent, and that its abandonment would constitute a salutary, if radical, revision of our moral concepts. There are, after all, long-standing arguments that the ideas of guilt and punishment should be cast aside; wrongdoing might then be replotted according to the axes of sickness and treatment, or of ign'orance and enlightenment. 4 Yet while sonle philosophers may be willing to take such a step, this alternative is singularly unavailable to Kant. J have argued that J
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even radically revise Kant's ethics, but to abandon to distinct philosophical direction he represents altogether. Fortunately, in his later works !(ant goes beyond the simple motivational dichotomy of reason and inclination presented in the Groundwork, which seemed to leave no roonl for imputable wrongdoing. In both the Religion and the Anthropology, Kant greatly revises both his understanding of practical reason and of inclination (in a sense, modifying both the transcendental "logic" and "aesthetic" of practical judgment), and these revisions allow I(ant to tell a richer story about evil, without abandoning the fundamental conceptual connection between morality and the intelligibility of action. With the Religion, !(ant no longer simply equates the will with practical reason, but recognizes two logically distinct moments of the will, Wille and Willkur; the former associated with our necessary recognition of the moral law, the latter with the particular maxims upon which we decide to act. In the Religion and the Anthropology, !(ant also ceases to treat all inclinations as of basically the same nature. Just as he recognizes two distinct aspects of active side of our will, he distinguishes between two different kinds of practical receptivity, differentiating inclination into what he calls "affect" (Affekt) and "passion" (Leidenschaft ). Affect will most closely resemble the brute, sometimes overwhelnling urges that the early I(ant associated with inclination. Passion, on the other hand, will represent a kind of intermediary between reason and inclination; such passion will be a kind of rationalized desire, based in feeling, but making the same kind of claim (occupying the same "logical space") as practical reasons in general. The Groundwork's ideas of reason and of inclination can be relegated to the extremes to this spectrum: that earlier ideal of reason reappearing as Wille, and brute natural inclination now being represented as Affekt. With the emergence of Willkur and Leidenschaft, Kant makes roonl for intermediate aspects of the will, distinct from pure rational spontaneity and pure natural receptivity. It is in this space framed by Willkur and Leidenschaft, with Wille and Affekt as their logical limits, that the distinct character of the human will, and its peculiar capacity for evil, take shape.
4. Wille and Willkur In the Religion, I(ant no longer sees the will as simply pure practical reason, as a purely fornlal capacity for rational reflection that confronts and evaluates various inclinations and impulses from our sensible nature. Rather than present our faculty of desire as directly torn between reason and naturally-determined inclination,
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Kant introduces a new aspect of that faculty which he calls Willkur. Willkur, often translated as the "elective will" or "power of choice" is the aspect of the will that actually adopts and applies maxims; it is the will insofar as it recognizes the merit of reasons and norn1ative considerations, and which applies practical principles to particular circumstances. Willkur is not, I believe, a particular kind of mental cause of behavior, in the way that my fear can be a cause of my trembling. If it were, then every exercise of Willkur would have to be brought, along with its grounds and its consequences, under some natural law, and this would leave no room for freedom whatsoever. Willkur is not a (psychological) cause of acting; rather it is a way of acting, acting intentionally. A creature has Willkur to the extent that it can be said to act intentionally, from reasons that it can represent to itself and about which it can make up its own mind. Insofar as one realizes Willkur, one can be said to have a will of one's own, intelligible to but distinct from the wills of others. !(ant distinguishes Willkur, as a kind of executive power, from Wille, the purely legislative aspect of the will. Kant equates Wille with pure practical reason; Wille is the will insofar as it comprises the normative background commitments that serve to make intentional action as such possible. For Kant, the authority of the moral law rests in it being the immanent principle of Wille, this fundamental self-legislating aspect of the will, which has a kind of conceptual priority and authority over any exercise of Willkur. For !(ant, a creature that did not participate in Wille could not partake of Willkur: Wille and Willkur are two aspects of the same basic capacity of rational deliberation and choice. Only a creature that recognizes the logical gramn1ar of reasons in general (has Wille) will be able to entertain or act from its own reasons in particular (realize Willkur). Wille is the practical understanding and con1mitments that constitute us as rational agents as such, that define or make possible a practical self in general. Willkur involves those particular commitments and choices that may not themselves be rationally specified, that constitute our own individual choices. Wille defines us as subjects who can be responsible; Willkur, as subjects who can be responsible for something in particular. Wille and Willkur should not be understood as two different powers of mind working in tandem. Instead, Wille and Willkur represent two aspects of one unified capacity (practical reason), aspects which become conceptually distinguishable only in special cases. If Wille were just an independent so~~~~~i_'~iEl?~~s~_~o_
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Willkur, then it should be possible for something to block or interfere with the "transmission" of such pure legislation to the elective will. That is, it should be possible to fail to act n10rally simply because Wille and Willkur had become cognitively disengaged, without there being any positive temptation or other distortion that conflicts with morality. If Willkur were a kind of causal power altogether distinct fronl Wille, circumstances should be possible in which Willkur would have to perform alone, without the guidance of pure practical reason. On this picture, a kind of radical moral "blindness" should at least be possible. However, I(ant insists that when we transgress, we can only do so for the sake of some nonmoral interest that comes into competition with morality. Kant tells us in the Religion that" if the law fails nevertheless to determine somebody's free power of choice [Willkur] with respect to an action relating to it, an incentive opposed to it must have influence on the power of choice of the human being in question;"(R 6:24), and more precisely (if not more clearly) in the preceding footnote that: If the good =a, the opposite contradicting it is the not-good. Now, this not-good is the consequence either of the lnere lack of a ground of the good, =0, or of a positive ground antagonistic to the good, = -a; in this latter case, the not-good can also be called positive evil. ... Now, if the moral law in us were not an incentive of the power of choice, (the agreement of the power of choice with the law) would be =a, and the not good, =0; the latter, however, would be just the consequence of the lack of a moral incentive, =axO. In us, however, the law is incentive, =a. Hence the lack of the agreement of the power of choice with it (=0) is possible only as the consequence of a real and opposite determination of the power of choice, i.e. of a resistance on its part, = -a ... (R 6:22n.).
We never transgress simply because Willkur stands alone, having become disconnected or blind to the legislation of Wille. We never fail because of "lack of a moral incentive = a x 0," which would at least be possible if Willkur could exist independently of Wille, the way that car engines can exist without batteries. By ruling out the possibility such disconnection, Kant suggests that the relationship between Wille and Willkur is not one of causal connection at all, but something more intimate. Unless other concerns come into play, Wille immediately determines
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Willkiir because, in such cases, the two amount to the same thing. The sense of "determination" in play here may be logical, not causal, and hence the relation between these two aspects of the will cannot be entirely accidental. Such a reading comports well with Kant's insistence that pure reason can directly motivate us, that recognition of the law and the motive of respect are really the same thing, considered from different perspectives ("respect for the law is not the incentive to Illorality; instead it is morality itself subjectively considered as an incentive" (CPrR 5:76)). When not attending to the problem of evil, as in the Groundwork, I(ant even felt free to equate the will with practical reason, making no distinction between its legislative and executive aspects.( G 4:412). Kant was correct to make this equation, but only so long as it remains restricted to cases where everything went as it should, where the problem of evil or practical irrationality did not come up. Kant's mistake in the Groundwork is not to clearly distinguish what can be properly said of the will in its central, normal cases from what can be said of it generally, in any case in which willing can be recognized. 6 What Kant seems to realize in the Religion is that although, for a central case (i.e., a case where we act morally), there is no conceptual distinction between Wille and Willkiir, such a distinction comes into play in the "breakdown cases," in cases of immorality and practical irrationality generally. This picture seems paradoxical only if we interpret I(ant's discussion of the will psychologically, as something like a causal account of how different mechanisms of the mind work together to produce behavior. Considered mechanistically, it would indeed be strange to say that, when things go right, there is only one part in the mechanism, but that when they go wrong there were two all along. It would be bizarre to say that my car gains new or different parts simply by breaking down (though of course it might acquire many new pieces ). Considered as a mechanism, the will should have the same kind and nun1ber of basic parts whether it is functioning well or not, and the difference between the two should depend only on their mode of interaction. 6. "Nonnal" here is understood not as what is statistically most likely, but as the sort or central or typical case through which we understand what the thing in question is: the abnormal is not necessarily unusual, but rather that which is derivative of the Inore central case. Health is normal, illness abnormal, despite the relative frequencies of these conditions in any population.
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The paradox evaporates when we see that Kant is giving a conceptual, not a causal analysis of human will, that whatever this account is, it is not a piece of "transcendental psychology." Divorced from such causal presumptions, the relation between Wille and Willkur resembles the relation that many recent philosophers of action see between intention and behavior. Many such philosophers (e.g., Wittgenstein, Anscombe, Hampshire) argue against seeing an intention as a kind of mental event, which causes or tends to cause the relevant behavior in us. Rather, these philosophers argue that in an ordinary (successful) case of action, there is no real distinction between the intention and the behavior-both are aspects of something more basic, an action. When I raise my arm, there is not first an event in my mind, an intention, which produces a subsequent motion in my arm. Rather, I raise my arm intentionally-there are not two distinct events occurring at different points in time, but one event at one time, which can be made sense of with appeal to my reasons (i.e., as intentional), or casually, as a piece of bodily motion (i.e., as behavior). We come to think of intention and behavior as distinct, sometimes causally linked things, only by considering abnormal cases, when what one intends to do and what one does come apart. When someone fails because of lack of ability or ignorance we can well make a distinction between what that person intended to do and what they did-and we may well be telnpted to think that this distinction holds across the board. However, even though such things can come apart in particular cases, this possibility does not entail that they are never more than accidentally connected. On this picture, there is no inconsistency in Kant claiming in the Groundwork that the will is practical reason, and then in the Religion making a distinction in the will between its legislative aspect (=practical reason) and its executive aspect. The Groundwork focuses on what are for I(ant the central and most important instances of willing; morally required (or at least morally permissible) action. In such cases there is no real distinction to be made between Wille and Willkur. In the Religion, Kant is not considering such typical action, but the special cases of transgression-of weakness of will, self~deception, and wickedness. In these cases, as in the cases of failed intentional action, this distinction now gains a foothold. Once we become familiar with this distinction from these special cases, we can read it back onto the normal cases; it would not be a mistake to interpret ordinary moral action in terms of both Wille and Willkur, any more than it would be a mistake to say that someone intentionally
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sits down in a chair. However, these considerations would not be doing any distinctive work, and appeal to them might misleadingly tempt us to construe the relation of Wille to Willkiir (or intention to action) in causal terms. For !(ant, Willkur is never thoroughly independent of Wille, or of recognition of the constitutive principle of Wille, the moral law. If we only ever acted out of respect for that law, there would be no point in distinguishing these two aspects of the will: in respect, judging the law to be valid and being moved so to act are one and the same. However, the WilielWillkiir distinction finds a logical foothold when we consider the "breakdown cases" of human in1morality, and those aspects of the human will that seem to be essential to the possibility (and intelligibility) of such transgression. For I(ant, the distinctive feature of the human will that opens up the possibility of evil is our own self-love, our concern for our own happiness. While it is not necessary imn10ral to act out of such selflove,7 Kant does think that moral transgression is only possible for a creature that values a (non-moral) conception of happiness. Only such a creature will have the conceptual and motivational resources to make such transgression a real possibility. In the case of God's will, in contrast, every moral "ought" is necessarily an "is." Lacking sensibility, God cannot have any concerns other than those of pure reason; He lacks the resources to entertain anything like a conception of happiness that goes beyond the scope of morality itself. If so, then the WillelWillkur distinction cannot apply (except in a degenerate sense) to the will of God, since the only incentive that God can entertain is that of respect. This distinction applies only to temptable creatures, who can have interests that do not have a moral basis. Unlike God such creatures have an individual identity that goes beyond (and perhaps contradicts) the ideal which is specified by the pure conceptual structure of practical reason itself. It is only in temptable creature like ourselves that a distinction emerges between the normative commitments implicit in the very logic of practical reason, and the concerns upon which a particular agent acts. The former commitn1ents are the content of Wille, of pure practical reason. The latter concerns are the content of \V'illkiir, which is thereby defined as the power to act on a reason (in !(antian terms, it is the power to "incorporate" an incentive into one's maxim" (R 6:24). These two powers never completely 7. see e.g., "Theory and Practice," § 1 (8:278-289).
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corne apart-in recognizing the authority of the moral law (as we must), we necessarily are have some concern to act morally. Kant tells us that: The human being (even the worst) does not repudiate the moral law, whatever his maxims, in rebellious attitude (be revoking obedience to it). The law rather imposes itself on hilTI irresistibly...and if no other incentive were at work against it, he would also incorporate it into his supreme nlaxinl as sufficient determination of his power of choice... "(R 6:36)
We cannot set ourselves against the moral law, and we cannot be indifferent to it (at least, not so long as we remain autonomous and responsible agents). As I argued in chapter 2, a kind of general moral skepticism is not ultinlately an intelligible option for a practically rational creature-while this position may be sincerely espoused, it cannot be coherently inhabited. 5. The Propensity to Evil: Fragility and Passion Although I(ant argues that it is impossible to be completely indifferent (let alone antagonistic) to morality, he does think it is possible to intentionally act immorally, without confusion, ignorance, or mental pathology. Fully culpable wrongdoing is indeed possible, and such wrongdoing must realize some aspect of what Kant calls our "natural propensity to evil. "(R 6:29). !(ant claims that this propensity comes in three different grades (Stufen), which he calls, in increasing order of severity, fragility (Grebrechlichkeit, fragilitas), impurity (Unlauterkeit, impuritas, improbitas), and wickedness (Bosartigkeit, vitiositas, pravitas ). Fragility involves actual immoral actions, but not any deeper corruption of our practical consciousness; impurity involves such systemic corruption, but not necessarily any transgressions in particular. Wickedness involves both particular transgressions and such a corrupt consciousnessit is a "perversion" of the human heart that has lost concern for even the pretense of legality in its action. Kant says surprisingly little about the first grade of our evil propensity, fragility. He tells us that such fragility is "the general weakness of the human heart in complying with the adopted maxims." This weakness becomes the basis of wrongdoing when: I incorporate the good (the law) into the maxim of my power of choice; but this good, which is an irresistible incentive objectiv-
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ity or ideally (in thesi ), is subjectively (in hypothesi) the weaker (in comparison with inclination) wh~never the maxim is to be followed. (R 6:29).
This is about all that Kant tells us about fragility. Fragility constitutes a kind of weakness of will, particularly when moral concerns are in play. 8 In fragility, WillkiJy recognizes the authority of morality-it takes moral reasons to provide the highest grounds on which to act. Although the frail recognize morality as providing their most important reasons to act, they nevertheless fail, when confronting particular inclinations, to carry through with their resolve. Against a fully conscious commitment to morality, the frail succumb to temptation, all the while being perfectly aware of what they are doing. Part of the puzzle of such weakness is how inclination could ever "overcome" our rational commitments in the first place. Fragility does not involve those circumstances where, although we see the moral law's authority, we nevertheless take inclination (or self-love) as being what we care most about. The person who thinks that their own happiness is in general more important than morality certainly has moral problems for Kant, but fragility needn't be among them. Fragility is manifest in those cases when we not only take an interest in the moral law, but when we also "incorporate it into our maxim"-becoming fully committed to acting in 8. Although !(ant does recognize such moral weakness of will, he does not consider non-moral weakness-those cases when we succumb to the temptation not to do something immoral, but something we otherwise see as stupid, ill-advised, or all-things-considered unwise. The reason for such neglect may be that !(ant sees the only source the ten1ptation to act ilnmorally to be found in self-love, the ground of all our non-moral int~rests. If so, what could count as a temptation to act against self-love? Morality can certainly give us reason to act against self-love, but such reasons, since they are authoritatively superior to the interests of self-love, can hardly be called temptations. Insofar as we can be tempted to act against our own self-love, in can only be because of competition from some other aspect of self-love, some non-moral interest that has come into conflict with our long-terms interest in our own happiness. Kant may fail to appreciate this possibility, because he often treats self-love as a kind of undifferentiated concern, without internal complexity or nuance. However, there is certainly room for such conflicts of self-love with itself, at least when such self-love is realized as the passions, each of which has its own distinct object, and each of which n1akes legislative claims in competition with the others.
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the ways that morality requires. The problem here is not of why Wille might fail to determine Willkur, but why Willkur, already determined by Wille, might itself fail to determine what we actually do. As I suggested on p. 10 above, in normal cases, Wille, Willkur, and the action we take are not conceptually distinct. When I act from duty, "there is no distinction between my recognizing what my duty is, my intending to act from it, and actually so acting. The intention is in the act, and my recognition of law is in that intention, not something separate that causes it. Fragility concerns one way that this conceptual unity can come apart, the case in which our intention is no longer realized in the action we take. In some cases (say, of blind rage), an inclination may become so extreme that we cease to function as rational or autonomous creatures at all-in such cases, moral reasons fail to determine our acts because no reasons are determining our acts at all. Such failings, individually or at least as a tendency, represent a kind of practical pathology, in which the will dissolves into natural causes. Although I(ant takes us to be vulnerable to such pathologies, he does not take inclination in general to undermine or compromise our capacity to reason in this way. Such pathological impulses represent a special class of inclination, which I(ant dubs "affect": "a feeling of pleasure or displeasure in his present state that does not let [the subject] rise to reflection (to rational consideration of whether he should give himself up to it or refuse it) is an affect. (A 251). Kant distinguishes an affect fronl a passion, which is "not emotional agitation," but rather "an inclination that excludes mastery over oneself."(R 6:30n.).9 In some cases of what looks like weakness of will, inclination suddenly and violently overcomes us, though such cases are not so much weakness of will proper as the temporary loss or suspension of a will altogether. I(ant recognizes that in other cases, weakness can be cool, controlled, and deliberate: 10 9. See also A 251: "Inclination that the subject's reason can subdue only with difficulty or not at all is passion." 10. Consider a characteristically apt example from Austin: "I am very partial to ice cream, and a bombe is served divided into segments corresponding one to one with the persons at High Table: I am tempted to help myself to two segments and do so, thus succumbing to telnptation and even conceivably (but why necessarily?) going against my principles. But do I lose control of myself? Do I raven, do I snatch the morsels from the dish and wolf them down, impervious to the consternation of my colleagues? Not a bit of it. We often succumb to temptation with calm and even with finesse." "A Plea for Excuses," 198n.
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In affect we are taken unawares by feeling, so that the mind's self-control (animus sui compos ) is suspended. So an affect is rash: that is, it rises swiftly to a degree of feeling that makes reflection impossible (it is thoughtless) ....On the other hand, passion...takes its time and reflects, no matter how intense it is, in order to reach its end. An affect works like water breaking though a dam: a passion, like a stream that burrows ever deeper in its bed. (A 252).
Although some kinds of apparent weakness of will may involve the sort of "apoplectic fit" that Kant associates with affect, it is clear that passion, as an inclination that we may fail to subdue despite rational reflection, is another (and more typical) source of such weakness. For I(ant, it is possible for us to be responsible for our weak-willed acts (they are a form of evil, not just disease or derangement), and such responsibility would be hard to attribute to us if all such acts were simply the result of affect, in which rational reflection itself has become, through the influence of nature, impossible for the agent. For Kant, the philosophical problem of weakness of will is not the problen1 of how we could ever be overcome by an affect-this latter is rather a psychological (and perhaps legal) problen1, about the sort of causal forces that can strip an agent of her rationality. Insofar as we do not take agents to be responsible for such acts (and !(ant never suggests that we should), such behavior has neither intelligible grounds (i.e., reasons) nor intelligible consequences (i.e, culpability). The causes and effects of such behavior remain merely a matter of our empirical character, a matter of brain chemistry and of the harms we inflict, understood as something like a natural disaster. The philosophical problem of frailty is rather how such weakness can also be attributed to our intelligible character, as a failing that depends on our sensible nature, but for which we can nevertheless be held accountable. In Kant's terminology, the problem is not simply how we could ever act out of inclination rather than reason, but rather how we could ever succumb to passion. If, by hypothesis, the frail do not take passion up into their maxim, nor cease to act from their maxims altogether, how can they nevertheless succumb to passion, an action which n1ust itself involve a maxim if it is to be something for which they can be held accountable? Although !(ant makes only passing reference to the passions in the Religion (R 6:94, 6:29n.), he does treat of then1 at length in the third book of the Anthropology. In the Anthropology, !(ant sug-
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gests an answer to how we could intentionally act for the sake of a passion, even though our power of choice 'has properly taken up the moral law into its maxim. Here, Kant tells us that passion is not a mere inclination (i.e., an impulse or disposition to behavior), rather, such a passion is itself implicitly rationalized, carrying its own maxim within itself. Although passion is tied to inclination, it is inclination that has been reinterpreted (or perhaps "reconstituted") through rational concepts, which can present itself as a reason for action distinct fron1 n10ral ones: Passion always presupposes a maxim, on the part of the subject, of acting in accordance with an end prescribed to him by the inclination. So it is always connected with his reason, and we can no more attribute passion to mere animals than to pure rational beings.(A 266).
We share inclinations with animals, and reason with God, but the passions are uniquely human, the result of our reconceptualizing our immediate affective life through the lens of reason, through the conceptual apparatus that first becomes available to us through the recognition of moral obligation as a "Fact of Reason." Passions are not forms of self-love in the sense of our rational interest in our own happiness (at least when happiness is understood as the systematic satisfaction of the totality of our inclinations). Rather, passion falls under self-love only under self-love's broader sense as our "propensity to make oneself as having subjective determining grounds of choice into the objective determining grounds of the will in general" (CPrR 5:74,)-i.e., our tendency to take our motives (inclinations, impulses, habits, "dispositions to behave") as valid reasons upon which to act. Passion is not simply our concern for our happiness, at least in its basic form as the fulfillment of the rationally integrated system of our inclinations. Rather, the passions all atten1pt to redefine happiness, to give new content (and a new kind of content), distinct from what reason can glean from the system of our natural needs. In passion, we do not seek to satisfy son1e inclination for the sake of our own contentment or happiness. Instead, with the passions some inclination has come to take on legislative pretensions, arrogating to itself both the content of self-love, and the authority of morality. Passion presents us with a new sense of happiness, distinct from natural contentment, and prescribes it to us with the force of law, distinct from our moral obligations.
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The passions pose as a ground of practical reasons independent not only from morality, but from our concern with self-contentment that !(ant calls rational self-love. A passion such as ambition demands satisfaction for its own sake, and not simply as one inclination that can contribute to our overall goal of satisfaction with the affective condition of our lives: A man's ambition can always be a bent of his inclination that reason approves of. But the ambitious man also wants others to love him, needs to have pleasant social relationships with them... .If he is passionately ambitious, however, he is blind to these ends, though his inclinations still summon him to them, and overlooks the risk he is running that others will come to hate him or avoid him in society, or that his expenditure will reduce him to poverty. This is folly (making a part of his end the whole) which directly contradicts the formal principle of reason itself. (A 266).
Unlike an inclination or an appetite, a passion does not disappear when we attain its object. An inclination depends on some sensible state of need; once the need is satisfied, its motivational (i.e., causal) influence abates. The objects of passion, however, are desired for their own sake; although a passion emerges from inclination, it claims the same independence of our affective state that moral reasons do. For this reason, the passions are insatiable; like our moral obligations, their demands can never fully be discharged; like inclination, such passions are a form of dependence on the natural world and our own sensibility. Because they involve this sort of insatiable dependence, !(ant characterizes the rule of the passions as a kind of slavery, in which our moral awareness nevertheless reminds us of the nature of the true freedom we lack.(A 267). !(ant calls the passions "cancerous sores" of practical reason (ibid.)-they are diseased mutations in which some inclination, properly of value only insofar as its satisfaction contributes to our overall contentment with our sensible condition, passes itself off as a distinct source of reasons analogous to the moral law. Passions inconsistently borrow from the logic of both morality and selflove, nlanaging to appear to be independent sources of practical reasons even though they do not constitute a truly coherent ground of value. As such internally incoherent perversions of the logical of practical reasoning, passions are "without exception, evil" .(A
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267). Because they wear the guise of reason, the passions will typ-
ically cloud and confuse a healthy moral understanding, undermining our capacities to recognize and critically challenge them: It is easy to see that passion do the greatest damage to freedom, because they are consistent with the cahnest reflection, so that they need not be thoughtless, like affects, and consequently stormy and transitory, but tend to get themselves rooted and can co-exist with subtle reasoning. And if an affect is a drunken fit, a passion is a disease that abhors all remedies; so it is far worse than any such transitory lnental agitation, that at least stirs up the resolution to be better. A passion is, rather, an enchantment that, besides, refuses to be corrected. (A 266).
And in the Religion: Yet those valiant men [the Stoics] mistook their enemy; for he is not to be sought in the natural inclinations, which nlerely lack discipline and openly display themselves to everyone's consciousness, but is rather as it were an invisible enemy, one who hides behind reason and hence all the more dangerous. (R 5:57)
In the second Critique, I(ant gives an example how the logic of both morality and self-love become confused so as to give rise to self-conceit. Such self-conceit is either one of the worst passions, or the general form of all such passions in general. I(ant describes self-conceit as a kind of "satisfaction with oneself," involving "claims to esteem for oneself that precede accord with the moral law."(CPrR 5:73). Although Kant's account here is sketchy, he seems to think that self-conceit involves seeing oneself as better than others, in the sense being more deserving of happiness, for completely non-moral reasons. This attitude of superiority combines aspects both of rational self-love and of morality. Like (rational) self-love, this attitude involves a certain privileging of oneself. In rational self-love, I am concerned \iVith my condition, I exercise "a predominant benevolence toward myself." I(ant sees nothing necessarily objectionable in having special concern for yourself which is not just an instance of a concern for persons generally; suitably restricted by morality, there is nothing wrong in being more interested in one's own happiness that than in the happiness of others. While I may, as a rational agent, act from such a special con-
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cern for myself, the rationality of such action does not imply that I can make clailTIs on others to also have special concern for my happiness. The rational self-love that sanctions my pursuing my own projects and concerns over comparable ones of others does not turn on any sense that my projects are objectively more important, that others should sacrifice their own goals so as to aid me in mine. While n1Y own inclinations, projects, attachments, etc. give me reasons to act, for others they only serve to make my acts rationally intelligible. These special conditions do not give those others the same reasons to act for ITIy sake that these conditions give n1e. Self-love gives me reasons to act, it only gives others ground for understanding that action. Rational self-love thus defines a kind of personal privilege, but without making any claims on others to similarly privilege my interests. Self-conceit, however, does makes such claims; like all passions, it is "directed by men to men, not to things" (A 268). Self-conceit emerges when, because of some non-n10ral quality that I quite permissibly value and promote in myself (my wit, my aesthetic sensibilities), I take my ends (and my happiness) to be of more objective worth than that of others. Self-conceit combines the privilege inherent in rational self-love with a distinctly moral concept, that of desert, of the happiness (or suffering) that we can owe one another. Self-conceit begins from the perfectly rational position that my happiness is more important to me than that of others, and degenerates to the idea that such privilege is explained by the fact that my happiness is more in1portant simpliciter, that because of some non-moral particular about myself (at the limit of coherence, simply because I'm me), I deserve more happiness than what morality would allot to me. As such an amalgam of very different kinds of rational principle, self-conceit is deeply incoherent. Insofar as self-love entitles us to be n10re concerned with our own happiness than that of others, it has something to do with the fact that such happiness is, after all, ours, that we stand in a relationship to it that we do not stand in to the happiness of others. Self-conceit would privilege our happiness not only with regard to ourselves, but also for the sake of others, who do not stand in this same relation to it. In morality, happiness does acquire a value that is not tied to the person who possesses it, as the object of the imperfect duty of beneficence. However, once such happiness is elevated to an objective end, it becomes disconnected fron1 any sense of personal privilege. Morality directs us to advance the morally permissible happiness of oth-
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ers, but makes no further distinction between persons. 11 One can have personal privilege, so long as one does not advance clainls on others; and one can advance such claims, so long as one recognizes a common standard of reason that applies to all, allowing no one special authority or standing. Self-conceit inconsistently combines the two concerns, trading on the familiar rationality of each of its parts to disguise the ultinlate incoherence of the whole. 12 As a model of a kind of practical confusion that nevertheless appears coherent to those in its grip, self-conceit may not be just the worst or most typical passion. Rather, given the way !(ant juxtaposes such self-conceit with his announcement of the Fact of Reason in the second Critique, self-conceit nlay count as the "original" passion. As such, self-conceit would be the central or primitive passion that makes all the practical temptations possible for us. Self-conceit would then stand toward the passions, and to practical irrationality in general, in much the way that recognition of moral obligation stands to the possibility of rational action. We would have, in self-conceit, a distinct "Fact of Unreason" to complement the idea of the moral law; an archetype of moral failure corresponding to the image of moral success. Fundamentally, self-conceit trades on an ambiguity in the idea of a reason to act, confusing two different logical roles that such a reason can play. The reasons of self-love are such that, should there be no moral reason to the contrary, we are perfectly entitled 11. Strictly speaking, !(ant does make one such distinction. !(ant claims that we have a duty to advance the morally permissible happiness of everyone, with the exception of our own. The problem here is not that morality does not recognize my own happiness as of objective value (it does, after all, direct others to its furtherance). Rather, the problen1 lies with the concept of duty: a duty is that which we can be tempted to violate, a practical consideration that serves as a potential source of constraint (properly self-constraint) of the will. Since I(ant sometime thinks that the only non-moral interest we have is in our own happiness, there could be no such temptation to violate any putative duty to make ourselves happy. This consideration does not bear on my point here, since I am here considering what morality recognizes to be objectively valuable, not the more specific question of what it presents as a duty. These two considerations typically overlap; in the case of our own happiness, however, they diverge. 12. I suspect that self-conceit, and passion generally, may constitute what Sartre calls "metastable concepts," which hide their incoherence by presenting a different face depending on what question is being asked of them. (Being and Nothingness, 99-100.)
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to act on them. Such reasons serve to make our actions intelligible to others as the acts of a rational agent, but they do not entail that others have thenlselves any reason to either promote my acts, or to act in similar ways themselves. (If my happiness does give others such reasons, those reasons are not directly derived from self-love, but instead involve an moral inference). My fondness for stampcollecting will make intelligible all my hours of researching, acquiring and cataloging stamps, but it does not entail that you should see anything really worthwhile in this pursuit-either for your case, or my own. The reasons characteristic of moral obligation, in contrast, do not merely serve to make action intelligible. Rather, insofar as those reasons attach, they entail corresponding reasons on the part of others. If I take myself to have an obligation to F, I must also take sufficiently similar others in sufficiently similar situations to have an obligation to act in the same sort of way.13 Because they claim such intersubjective authority, nl0ral reasons must conform to a higher standard than those of self-love; a moral reason must have grounds that can be addressed to any subject as an imperative. Reasons of self-love, in contrast, need only supply grounds that can render an action intelligible to others, such as the experience of a particular inclination. In self-conceit (and passion generally), an inclination comes to claim the normative force of something like obligation or at least objective value, while only satisfying the logical demands of intelligi bility. Given this picture of passion, the puzzle of fragility is no longer how, having recognized a moral reason upon which to act (having incorporated the moral maxim into our power of choice), we nevertheless act in response to something that is not a reason, in response to a natural inclination or impulse. When we act for the sake of passion, we do act for a putative reason-the meretricious reason posed by the passion itself. Although our power of choice has recognized the moral maxim as the best reason upon which to act, having the passion nleans that we have, to some degree, also incorporated or recognized some competing non-moral reason as well, a reason with all the legislative pretension of morality, but a content drawn from sensibility. To entertain a passion is 13. i.e., I must take there to be some general description of this situation (and of myself) such that I have the reason I do because I satisfy this description, and hence take it that others who similarly satisfied these reasons would have the same reason to so act.
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itself to have already taken up an inclination into one's power of choice, to have incorporated something drawn from sensibility into one's maxim. Although we may intend to act morally, insofar as we respond to the passions, we may also be truly said to intend to act immorally. Insofar as we have passions, our will is not unified. Willkur has taken up the moral law into its maxim, but the passions are like distinct, independent bits of Willkur, each competing for the opportunity to organize the entire practical identity of the subject around itself. The passions strive to do so even though they do not offer a coherent, or viable alternative to the morally good will. As I(ant suggests, the passions can be represented physiologically as a cancer, and perhaps psychologically as something like schizophrenia. To say that the passions fragment the will is not to say that the will has become the locus of competing causal forces that no longer operate in the same direction, that it is broken the way a mechanism may be broken. My point is rather that, insofar as someone succumbs to their passions, we cannot make sense of their actions as embodying one coherent perspective on the world at all. Say I act from duty, but also sonletimes from ambition, or envy. Each such act is intelligible as an action; each can be interpreted in terms of the reason the agent undertook it, a comprehensible sense of what the agent took to be worthwhile in performing it. Yet the reasons characteristic of morality conflict with those of ambition, and both of these with envy. The weak agent is locally intelligible, in individual acts, but globally incoherent; its acts do not realize a consistent conception of the good, a whole outlook into which another might enter. At the extreme, such an inconstant creature could not even be said to have a will at all, to have anything like comnlitments or interests through which it guides itself. At such a point, the global incoherence comes to infect even particular acts. If a creature does not have a will at all, then none of its behavior can be understood as intentional action in the first place. A sufficiently weak will would not count as a will at all. The problem of frailty is not how inclination can overcome reason, but rather the more traditional one of how, when facing competing reasons for action, we can deliberately act from the one we recognize to be not good enough. While passion presents inclination sub specie bonum, how can we prefer this apparent good to the law we acknowledge to outrank it? (If we take a passion to present a more authoritative reason than morality, then we are no
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longer in the realm of frailty, but of wickedness, which will be treated below). Remarkably, Kant gives no explanation of how a rational creature could act from what it recognizes as an inferior reason. While I(ant certainly admits the possibility, he seems to have no story to tell to explain it. At first glance, it may seem that Kant's moral psychology has broken down; and that while he recognizes the puzzling phenomenon, he does not even pretend to make sense of it for us. As such, frailty would seem to constitute a deep inadequacy of Kant's practical philosophy, which I(ant passes over simply because he does not know what to say. Kant certainly does not have lTIuch more to say on the topic of frailty, but this reticence only reflects the fact, I suspect, that nothing more needs to be said. What I(ant may recognize here is that the question "How can one choose the lesser over the greater good?" does not actually pose a real philosophical problem: that once the problem of fragility has been reduced to this level, a sufficient explanation has already been given, as sufficient as any explanation of a practical matter could be. The thought here is that the possibility of such failing is simply part and parcel of what a practical reason is (and hence part and parcel of autonomy and practical freedom). Practical reasons serve to justify our actions, and to make them intelligible to others as actions. When I act out of the passions of ambition, against my own moral commitments, there is certainly reason enough to make my action intelligible. By reference to my ambition, I show what I take to be good or worthwhile about my action; the action becomes intelligible as a choice guided by some sort of reason, rather than just a natural event. Of course, my act is, all things considered, unjustified, and this is because although I acted on a reason, I did not act on one that I took to be good enough. My act is intelligible as a reasoned action (distinct from a naturally caused event), and also as an unjustified one. Where exactly is the problem? Weakness of will feels like less of a philosophical problem when we recognize that reasons come into conflict in terms of their relative merit or authority, in terms of what they can or cannot defend. Relative merit is defined in terms of justificatory adequacy, not as the grounds of a prediction about what an agent will do. If so, then the possibility that one can act for an apparently inferior reason is just part and parcel of the nature of reasoned a.ction. This sort of failing is logically provided for in the very idea of free agency. In the Religion, I(ant remarks that the question of how pure reason can fail to be practical is just the flip-side of the ques-
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tion of how pure reason can succeed in being practical: It is a very common presupposition of Illoral philosophy that the presence in the human being of moral evil can very easily be explained...by weakness. But then the moral good in him (in his moral predisposition) would have to be even more easily explainable, for to comprehend the one without comprehending the other is quite unthinkable. Now reason's ability to become master over all the inclinations striving against it through the lTIere idea of a law is absolutely inexplicable; hence it is also incomprehensible how the sense could have the ability to becolTIe master over a reason which commands with such authority on its side. (R 6:59n.).
Neither strength nor weakness of will is further explicable, because we have struck the primitives (the nature of a reason to act) that define what counts as real practical question at all, and as a sufficient answer. To know what it is to act from a reason, one must also know what it is like to fail, know what kind of deviations are inherent in this kind of normativity. I(ant concludes the above footnote: "For if the world proceeded in accordance with the precept of the law, we would say that everything occurred according to the order of nature, and nobody would think even of inquiring after the cause [Ursache ]." (ibid). It is in confronting sin, and understanding the logic of moral failings is different from what we look for when we explain, e.g., mechanical malfunctions, that we learn what a reason is, and what it is to act on one. Weakness of will just goes with the logical territory of action; it presents no problem that needs to be solved. In the special case of frailty, the "no explanation-explanation" that Korsgaard and Hill suggested for our propensity to evil as a whole does apply. Instead of providing any further explanation for why such weakness of will is possible, we may only need to unearth the underlying confusion that makes such appear not only to be a philosophical puzzle, but an absolutely insuperable one. 6. The Illusion of a Problem The appearance that a deep problem lurks in weakness of will stems, in part, from a tendency to treat reasons to act as if as if they had a kind of conative "weight," modeling their relative merits in terms of conflicting motivation forces whose vector sum causally determines our actions. On this natural, but misleading
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picture, to recognize a reason as authoritative is to experience it as having the greatest motivational weight; to judge sOlnething best is to have a greater motivational impetus to do that thing than the force we experience to do anything else. On such a broadly Humean picture of practical reasoning, weakness of will is not only a puzzle, but a logical impossibility. The problem of how we could deliberately choose the lesser over the greater good would be cast as the question of how could a lesser force overwhelm a greater one, when no other forces or impediments are coming into play. However, since the criterion of the relative strength of a force is what other forces in can overcome (without further interference), the very idea of an all-things-considered weaker force overconling a stronger one is incoherent. Insofar as one force wins out over another in such a situation, it counts as the stronger. Real weakness of will would then be logically impossible. 14 Someone like Hume can retain the idea of weakness of will by arguing that while it is the case that a reason is a kind of motivational force, judging a reason to be best is not the same as experiencing some such drive most strongly. We might instead construe such judgment to involve seeing that a reason would be nlost strongly motivating, under special (and perhaps counterfactual) conditions of abstraction or knowledge. My judgment that a reason is best nlight then be something like the recognition that, were I occupying a sufficiently general or otherwise idealized point of view, this particular reason would constitute my strongest motivation. However, since I do not actually occupy (or only occupy) this abstracted or idealized position, the reason, though "best," need not actually move me. Instead of true weakness of will, what we would have here is rather the divergence between a certain reflective perspective on myself, and the conditions that actually determine nlY action. Rather than the will being frail, it would seem only that nlY reflective perspective has lost a certain causal connection with what actually moves me to act. The traditional problem with such a broadly Humean view is not how it is possible to act incontinently; i.e., why we might fail to be moved by the considerations that would nlove us if we were better infornled, nlore sylnpathetic, or able to fully enter "the general point of view." Rather, the problem for such accounts is why the motives that stem from these conditions are any more author14. See Christine I
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itative than those that we actually act on, of how what results from this reflective stance can have any normative authority over us. The desires generated by such suitably idealized or abstracted perspective mayor may not move me to action; the question now is why they should, and whether knowing the answer to that question can bring us to act, even in the fact of significant temptation Such a Humean picture dissolves the problem of the will's weakness only by making unintelligible its strength. Kant avoids Hume's problem because he does not take recognizing a reason to be best to be thoroughly distinct from being moved to act in accordance with it. For I(ant, an autonomous creature is one in whom pure reason can be practical, who can act immediately from that recognition that an act would be obligatory, no matter what the competing incentives Phalaris lieet imperet, ut sis fa/sus, et admatat dietet periuria taura. IS Insofar as we are rational agents, we are at least in principle capable of any degree of continence. 16 When the will is strong, there is for I(ant an immediate, non-accidental relation that holds between judging something to be best (or at least obligatory) and being deternlined to act. For Kant, this immediate, non-accidental relation is that of identitywhen I act out of tuy recognition of nlY assessment of what I have best reason to do, my judgment and nlY motivation are not two separate states, but rather two aspects of a single phenomenon. Strength of will is no mystery for I(ant, but rather the basic capacity that defines just what sort of thing the will is in the first place. Given such a Kantian understanding of what happens when we act rationally, we are understandably tempted to infer that, in general, to recognize the merit of a reason is to be moved to act from it; and the greater the merit seen, the greater the motivation. The equation of rational merit and motivational force seems to hold in cases of continence, (the best reason is the strongest motive) and from this we nlay imagine (as I(ant does not) that this identity holds across the board, as a metaphysical consideration 15. "[T]hough Phalaris himself should command you to be false and, having brought up his bull, should dictate perjuries." (R 6:50n., also CPrR 5:159). 16. At least any positive degree of continence. If a creature was absolutely unable to ever overCOlne any temptation, no matter how weak (or how important the commitment), }(ant would not attribute an autonomous will to it at all. Such a condition is an instance of heteronomy, and is inconsistent with the possession of practical reason.
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that characterizes any exercise of the will, be it strong or weak. When we are continent, our best judgment is our strongest motive; we are moved simply because we see what we have most reason to do. However, once judgment has become conceptually identified with motivation in this way, we lose any chance of making sense of weakness of will. For now we have taken it to be a conceptual truth that if we are not ultimately moved to act, then either our acts are not fully intentional (i.e., there is some sort of confusion, ignorance, or pathology in play), or we must never have really judged the violated reason to be the superior one at all. On this view, insofar as we act intentionally at all, we act from our best judgment. Appearances to the contrary will have to be explained away by appeal to some sort of insincerity, self-opacity or rationalization. But if we try to avoid this result by refusing ever to identify judgment and motivation (as Hume does), we no longer seen1 to be able to make sense of what goes on when we do act from reason, simply from the recognition of what is right or good-no sort of causal connection will work as a substitute. If the traditional Kantian cannot make sense of the will's weakness, the Humean cannot make sense of its strength. Whether or not we identify judgment with motivation, we must sacrifice some central feature of intentional action. The way out of this dilemma is, I believe, to reject the con1mon assumption of both positions; that the will is a kind of psychological cause; as a part of the mind that produces the motions of our limbs. When we think of the will as this kind of mental engine, the logic of mechanism presses in on us. On this picture, if judgment is immediately motivation in the normal case (the case when we act from duty), it would have also to be so in the "breakdown case," where we would have to seek some sort some sort of external interference to explain why things when wrong. If judgment can come apart from motivation in any case, this shows that they are not conceptually related, and hence that some third thing (e.g. a desire, or passion) is needed to hook them up. In thinking that the 'the will' names a single causal mechanism or process, we assume that judgment and motivation are, fundamentally, either two things or one thing: that there is a determinate metaphysical fact of this matter, regardless of whether I act successfully or not. We then face the alternatives of identifying or distinguishing judgment and motivation across the board, and each alternative makes much of our practical experience unintelligible. However, the truth of the matter is that there is no determinate an-
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swer to the general question of whether judging and being motivated are essentially two things or one; at least, no answer that holds in all contexts in which we can intelligibly refer to practical judgnlent and motivation at all. Paradoxically, the nature of their "essence" depends on the case at hand, on whether we acted continently or not. With the will, we confront the situation that the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus could not countenance (though he came to accept in the Investigations ): a case where the logical status of a putatively analytic proposition (to judge is to be moved) depends on the truth of a contingent, empirical proposition (whether we have acted continently or not). There is, however, nothing incoherent in such an account of the will; the air of paradox results only from our current tendency to see the will as a single, psychological cause of action, with a determinate set of parts that underlie all intentional action. If instead we abandon the view that 'the will" names one thing in all cases, a discrete kind causal power, we no longer have to decide whether, in all cases, judging and being motivated are necessarily linked, as two aspects of the same concept, or whether they are linked only contingently, through the mediation of some distinct psychological state. Rather, the truth of whether judgment and motivation are conceptually connected can be recognized to depend on the case in question. When we act out of duty (and, generally, from what we take to be the best reason), it is correct to say that judgment and motivation are two sides of the same coin. When things go right, there is no logical space for something to mediate between judgment and volition, no need to adduce any further passion or desire. However, when things go wrong (at least when we act akratically), the judgment and motivation become conceptually distinguishable. When IUy will is strong, a full and complete explanation of my act is to be found, with no hidden qualifications, in the reply "Because I saw that I had best reason to" (and then perhaps with an account of why that reason seemed so good). Yet the adequacy of this explanation does not require that it rule out the possibility that, in spite of the very same judgment, I might have succumbed to passion, and acted for the inferior reason. The central insight here is that the logic of intention does not assume or satisfy the principle of sufficient reason: a complete account of why I acted rationally need not show why I did not act irrationally. To explain our actual willing, we do not need a way to rule out every other sort of possible willing we could have engaged in instead. In general, all that can be said is that, when I act without weakness of
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will, appeal to my best judgment is a thoroughly complete explanation of why I so acted; and when I act incontinently, some further story is required, one that may well invoke various passions, desires, etc. We need no special explanation for why someone did what they thought they had most reason to; a special explanation is only needed when this fails to be the case. The normal and special-case explanations need not have the same structure; the ideas of reason, judgment, and motivation need not be functioning in the same way in both cases. Weakness of will only becomes an intractable problem when we assume that the same formal standards of explanation and intelligibility apply regardless of whether things go right or wrong, as they do when it comes to human physiology or auto mechanics. We are mislead, naturally enough, by the assumption that having a strong or weak will is, logically, just like having a strong or weak back, where there is sonle comnl0n process or shared account that underlies things going right and things going wrong. 7. A New Antinomy Although I(ant never explicitly gives the sort of explanation above for frailty, it comports well with both his insistence that pure reason can be practical, and his denial that we can have any more of an explanation of the possibility of frailty. Moreover, this account has a fundamentally I(antian cast to it, strongly resembling the strategy of the mathematical antinomies. Considering the question of whether reason can directly motivate us, we have first a rationalistic thesis: that the will is essentially practical reason; that judging a reason to be best and being moved to act on it are and the same. The argument for this thesis proceeds by a reductio, by showing that when denied, we can no longer make sense of action for the sake of duty (and indeed, continent action altogether). In apparent contradiction to this thesis stands an enlpiricistic antithesis, that the will is only mediately connected to practical reason, that there is no necessary conceptual connection between seeing the good and willing it. This antithesis also relies on a reductio, which points to the inability of the rationalist picture to make sense of weakness of will. Like the mathematical antinonlies, this conflict is resolved by showing that the subject assumed by both the thesis and the antithesis lacks a single, well-defined referent. The mathematical antinomies were resolved when we saw that the idea of "the world as a whole," in abstraction from any set of questions we might be
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bringing to it, was not coherent. Kant does not deny that there is any such thing as the world, but rather only that there is one primary sense that is operating in both the thesis and antithesis (the world as a totality, the world uberhaupt). In the practical case, the assumption to be rejected is that of the will as a single faculty, of the same metaphysical structure regardless of its manner of expression. With the abandonment of this assumption, we can see that the question of what the will really is, regardless of is strength or weakness, is not really well-posed. We can accept Kant's central claim that pure reason can be immediately practical in us, without having to subscribe to the claim that no rational agent does wrong willingly. 8. Infinite Striving, Infinite Resignation One advantage of this interpretation of frailty is that it explains why !(ant thinks that we can never become perfectly virtuous in any finite amount of time, regardless of the intensity of our effort and the receptivity of our nature and circumstances. !(ant often claims that complete fulfillment of our (imperfect) duty to become morally perfect can only take the form of an "infinite progression" from bad to better, which can be grasped as a whole by the intuitive intellect of God (R 6:70-71n.). Kant usually defines virtue as a kind of "fortitude" or strength of will, the sort of strength to stand against the lure of the passions. At first glance, it seems puzzling that we cannot, in principle, achieve perfect virtue after any finite span of effort, however great. A perfectly virtuous agent would be one who could not succumb to any passion, however intense. Many have thought that this is a state that one could reach through sufficient cultivation of the will's strength, along with a corresponding decrease in our susceptibility to the passions. By fighting on both fronts, strengthening the will while diminishing the forces that it must contend against, we should be able to reach the position of something like the Stoic sage, who has overcome all frailty. This accomplishment might indeed be something that cannot be accomplished in any span as short as a human lifetime, but this limitation does not show that, given world enough and time, a human being still could never attain such strength. The above account of frailty explains why, in principle, we can never attain perfect virtue at any particular point in time. If we see frailty as a psychological limitation of human beings, there seems to be no reason in principle that limitation could not be removed through some (perhaps yet unknown) set of psychological tech-
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niques or treatments. In contrast, the above interpretation construes frailty as a logical or metaphysical property of a finite will. We are frail not simply because of our contingent physiological or psychological make-up. The possibility of such weakness is a necessary feature of what it is to have a will, to be capable of action on the basis of reasons. To act from a reason is, in some sense, to follow a rule; and the idea of following a rule is only available when the idea of making a mistake is also. The sense of any particular kind of norm is bound up with an understanding of what counts as a simple mistake in following that norm, a mistake that does not need any special explanation of its possibility, but rather comes with the logical territory. If I am correct, then the sort of unproblematic "mistake" that is correlated with acting from a practical reason is succumbing to temptation. The possibility of such lapses is just part of the logical landscape in which intentional idioms become available to us (and by which there comes to be an "us" to whom they can be addressed). If so, then the duty to become perfectly virtuous is a duty to, by working on our particular psychological characteristics (our susceptibilities to this or that particular temptation), overcome a basic logical feature of the will, to alter our intelligible character by working on the enlpirical. There is however an infinite distance between the empirical and logical features of the will, in the sense that regardless of how much empirical improvement we effect, the basic logical features will still remain unchanged. No matter how much we curtail our vulnerability to any particular passions, our vulnerability to passion in general, as a metaphysical feature of the will, necessarily remains beyond our reach. The idea of infinite striving is just a way of representing, in enlpirical, temporal terms, what is fundamentally an unbridgeable conceptual gap. In the timeless perspective of God, which grasps the part only through the whole, this distinction between the enlpirical and the logical may break down. Sub specie aeternitatis, there may be no difference between unbounded empirical progress in virtue, and a fundamental transformation of the essence of our wills. If so, then we may represent the goal of our striving, to make our empirical character coincide with our logical character, as the crossing of an infinite distance, as grasped by the mind of God. 9. The Kantian Illusion Even once we extricate ourselves from the idea that the will is a kind of psychological power, weakness of will can still appear to be an insuperable mystery. Weakness of will can present such an il-
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lusion even to the committed Kantian, who does not treat the will as an arena for conflicting motivational forces. Rather than appear as the problem of how the lesser motivational force can overcome the greater, the Kantian form of this puzzle is how a unified will can fall into disunity: how an integrated and coherent Willkur can start to dissolve itself into various competing passions, by its own free act. So put, this question resembles that of how a sane person could choose to become schizophrenic (not how sorneone could see this as a desirable condition, although that's difficult enough, but how, by simply deciding so to do, one could undo the will itself). Fortunately, this Kantian anxiety, like the lTIOre Humean ones above, rests on a mistaken, if understandable, picture of the will. Weakness of will becomes perplexing here only because we assume that the will is fundamentally unified, and that the fragmentation characteristic of weakness is a consequent act (event?) that requires a further explanation. However, there is no need to assume such unity as the default condition of the will, or to attribute this assumption to !(ant. After all, Kant insists that the will can only be understood as an unbounded progression toward (or away from) virtue-its unity (or "character") is to be found only in the totality of this infinite series, considered as a whole. If so, then for !(ant we should not presume a human will to be unified (i.e., passionless) at the outset-instead, disunity is the natural or starting condition of any will like ours. The idea of unity of the will, in which Wille, Willkur, and act are always one, is a condition of being able to understanding oneself in terms of reasons or passions at all-the ideas of such parts are conceptually derivative of the idea of the whole. Nevertheless, we are creatures that can only begin, as a matter of "empirical character," with such fragments; while the idea of unity is implicit is the concepts of the parts, real unity of the will is an achievement that we can only hope to ever better approximate in ourselves. If it is the case that the human will must start out from position of at least partial fragmentation, coalescing out of a cloud of the passions, we would have no need of any special explanation of how such disintegration could come to be possible. There would in this case be no "fall" from unity to disunity to explain, no disintegration but only various degrees of incomplete integration. The Kantian can escape this puzzle about weakness of will if she realizes that although the will is essentially unified, it is not empirically given as such a unity, but only as a progressive struggle to forge such unity our of ourselves, to will, and to be, one thing.
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10. Impurity In the Religion, Kant has little to say about how, as individuals, we should go about combating our frailty. The cultivation of continence is rather the subject of the Doctrine of Virtue, which Kant published after many postponements in 1797. In the Religion, Kant does not seem particularly worried about frailty; although frailty is endemic to the will, it does not betoken any pervasive corruption of moral consciousness. Frailty does not entail that one has rejected (or pretended to reject) morality, or deceived oneself about its ground or its content. No general "sophistical evasions" or confusions need be at work in frailty, and so the failings that result from moral weakness of will may be merely local, concerning this or that passion is this or that circumstance, but not undermining our moral disposition in general. We see a pervasive decay of our understanding of morality in Kant's second grade of the propensity to evil, what he calls impurity. We can be impure even though we never act immorally. Impurity is not an immediate source of transgression (as is frailty), but rather an insidious tendency to misunderstand the normative status of moral reasons in general. Kant tells us that we are in1pure when [A]lthough the maxim is good with respect to its object (the intended compliance with the law) and perhaps even powerful enough in practice, it is not purely moral, i.e., it has not, as it should be [the case], adopted the law alone as its sufficient incentive but, on the contrary, often (and perhaps always) needs still other incentives besides it in order to determine the power of choice for what duty requires; in other words, actions conforming to duty are not done purely from duty. (R 6:30).
Frailty involved one way that the proper unity of Wille,
Willkur, and action could come apart, where a distinction opens up between what we intend (Willkiir), and what we actually do. Impurity involves another way in which this conceptual trinity can unravel, where it is now Wille that has become distinct from Willkur. The impure agent (like any rational agent for I(ant) does recognize that morality gives her good reasons to act, and indeed may often act on those reasons. The impure agent is open to Wille, to the normative commitments that constitute a practical subject, that define a will. However, when facing a situation in which moral concerns conclusively determine what should be done, she
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nevertheless also brings into consideration non-moral interests (perhaps with the hope that such interests will coincide with what morality demands). It may very well turn out to be the case that moral and non-moral reasons do in fact converge on the same actions; I(ant's shopkeeper is correct to see that honest trading is not only morally required, but in his overall non~·moral interest as well. In considering such non-moral reasons, the impure agent need not make any moral mistakes, nor need she be self-deceived. The problem with impure agent's attitude is that she treats the question about what to do as still open when moral considerations should have already closed it. Once we see that it is morally wrong to cheat custonlers, all other considerations should become irrelevant; this is what it means to recognize morality as not just being very important, but unconditionally authoritative. Moral reasons do not just outrank competing concerns; in some cases, such concerns must be completely silenced by morality. For the impure agent Wille does not ilnmediately realize itself in the nlaxim she takes up into her power of choice (Willkur); recognition of the authority of moral demands is not immediately translated into her intention. The impure agent treats moral reasons as if they were just one kind of reason among others, to be compared and weighed against other, non-moral concerns. Even if good fortune or wise social institutions make it the case that the demands of Wille are always satisfied by our intention (because it happens always to serve our happiness to act morally), we are impure so long as the connection between Wille and Willkur is mediated by any nonmoral concern, rather than being a relation of simple identity. There may be nothing wrong with such further reflection in any particular instance; the shopkeeper may well contemplate whether he will tend to do well by doing right, or whether some sacrifice will have to be made. However, while this attitude need not lead to any particular wrongdoing (assuming fortunate enough circumstances), it nevertheless fosters a misunderstanding of morality's status. Even if we still consider morality to be vastly more important than anything else we might consider, this tendency to compare portrays the difference between morality and other concerns as being only quantitative in nature. Morality would be represented as our most weighty concern, but ultimately a concern that could, in principle, be overridden by sufficient nonmoral interests. In impurity, we undermine our own grasp of morality's authority, allowing it to shade into the superficially similar notion of relative importance. Paradoxically, we can lose our
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understanding of practical reasons by being too attentive to practical truths, by seeking to know more than we need. Once we lose our grasp of what is distinctive about the concept of moral authority in this way, we become ripe for a fall into the last and worst grade of evil, the complete perversion of the moral disposition that Kant calls "wickedness." Wickedness, unlike frailty and impurity, does not involve ways in which the original conceptual unity of the will can disintegrate. Rather, wickedness involves the way a fragmented will can be re-integrated into an inverted image of a proper Illoral disposition, an anti-will, that pretends to offer us a model of self-intelligibility distinct from and in conlpetition with the kind of self-understanding we know through morality. 11. Wickedness Kant argues that wickedness does not involve a complete repudiation of "the llloral maxim," let alone any resolve to do evil for its own sake. Wickedness involves not simply what one values, but how one values it. The wicked will recognizes the sanle kinds of practical reasons as the good will; what distinguishes their dispositions is the relative priority each gives to these reasons, how each answers the question what outranks what. !(ant believes that any finite rational agent must recognize two distinct sorts of practical reason; the reasons grounded in moral interest, and those that stem from self-love, in anyone of its related forms. As a rational agent, a creature could not be completely indifferent to moral interest, for such concern is part and parcel of the whole web of concepts through which we constitute ourselves as self-conscious agents, agents who can recognize a distinction between the value of their condition, and the worth of their persons. One could become indifferent to morality only by extricating oneself fronl the web of concepts that makes reflection, and deliberative choice, possible; in a sense, by extricating oneself from one's own humanity. Because it is through moral commitment that we gain or conceive of ourselves as having a will at all, morality takes precedence of any other interest that could be recognized by such a will. As the constitutive principle of rational agency, the moral law acquires transcendental priority and hence authority over self-love. Kant also seems to think that the concern for self-love is an ineliminable rational interest, at least for the finite creatures who are, after all, the only ones capable of such a concern in the first place. Self-love is not only rationally permissible for !(ant, but rationally necessary, something that no finite creature could, or
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should try, to escape (R 6:57). One reason for the rational ineliminability of self-love is that this concern provides the "material" for rational reflection to shape. Kant frequently reminds us that the will always needs an object toward which to direct its efforts, and without self-love no such determinate objects of action could be established. Our perfect duties, such as those against deceit or coercion, are fundamentally negative in character; they specify what we should not do, when confronted with certain kinds of temptations. A will that did not adopt any Inaxim of self-love would never be open to such temptations; deceit and coercion would never appear to be worthwhile options in the first place, because we could not even see a prima facie reason to act in such ways. These perfect duties would not be vitiated, but they would become otiose-for I(ant, they should no longer be represented a duties, but merely as practical truths, as formal claims that would never actually come to bear weight in our own deliberations about what to do. In our imperfect duties to the happiness of others and our own perfection, morality does assign us a positive object. However, this assignment itself already presupposes our self-love, that we already have a distinct concern for our own happiness. The perfection we are to cultivate only has content relative to such self-love. Kant defines practical perfection in general is the "fitness of the will for any sort of end," the ability to achieve whatever end we set for ourselves. A creature without self-love would not be capable of setting itself such an indefinite variety of ends, and hence any such putative ability could never be exercised in any particular way at all. An ability that cannot ever be exercised, however, cannot really count as ability at all, let alone the perfection of agency. Kant does recognize an independent sense of moral perfection, as the perfect virtue that has the strength to overcome any competing passion. Without self-love, however, such passions would be themselves inlpossible, and such a state of moral perfection (" holiness") would already characterize its subject. Morality would again fail to assign us a determinate object, for we cannot make an end of a situation that already holds of us by necessity. Willing is directed toward the merely possible; the actual, like the necessary and the impossible, cannot be its object. Kant does tell us that we have an imperfect duty to advance the morally permissible happiness of others. Unlike self-perfection, this end presents an object that I can work toward even without any concern for my own happiness.( Although this possibility does
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depend on at least somebody having a concern for their own happiness. As has been frequently noted, selfless altruism is no more universalizable than selfish egoism). However, it turns out for !(ant that we cannot derive this duty from the moral law without assuming some sort of self-love on our part. The duty of beneficence supposedly derives from a contradiction that results when we try to will a world of indifference to the welfare of others. For !(ant, this contradiction results from that fact that we often find ourselves in need of help, and in such a world no such help would be forthcoming. Even if Kant's derivation of this duty goes through as intended (and it is hardly clear that it does), this derivation depends on the assumption that we already have some interest in some aspect of our (non-moral) welfare, that we could have need and interests dependent on the assistance of others. If we were indifferent to our own welfare, there hardly seems to be any difficulty in willing a world in which others are similarly indifferent. What others will not give, I do not recognize myself as in need of. If so, then a creature without a concern for its own happiness would have no moral reason to care about the happiness of others. Without self-love, morality would generate no positive interests that could actually come into play in our practical deliberations. Its truths would remain purely on the logical level, reducing the nl0rallaw to "empty formalisnl" that Hegel thought that it was. There may be another reason why moral interest cannot be completely divorced from self-love. As I have argued, morality is an aspect of a fundamentally juridical conception of the self, in which the idea of the willing subject is constituted through such concepts as culpability, punishment and desert. These latter concepts themselves make sense only against a background of selflove. Without presupposing an interest in our own happiness (or at least in the avoidance of suffering), what sense can be made of the idea of deserved punishment, or the view of oneself as potentially guilty? For !(ant, morality can be defined in terms of our "worthiness to be happy": the very idea of such worth evaporates if happiness is not itself taken to be of some real value to the agent. Self-love is no more eliminable than morality because, logically speaking, they emerge together or not at all: each is defined relative and in distinction to the other. We could divorce morality from self-love only at the cost of rending incoherent the entire conceptual scheme through which we come to understand our own agency. The second Critique showed only that self-love had to be logically inferior to morality, not that it could be banished alto-
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gether, even in thought. 17 A finite rational agent must have both moral interests and interests of self-love; she must incorporate both the moral "maxim" and the maxim of self-love into her power of choice. For Kant, the difference between wickedness and goodness depends on the order of priority that agent gives to these two kinds of concerns, the question which interest outranks the other when push comes to shove. This order of precedence detern1ines what Kant calls our moral "disposition" (Gesinnung )-the disposition in which the moral n1axim has authority over self-love is fundamentally good, the one in which self-love takes priority over morality, wicked. A will that has not established a detern1inate order of precedence between these principles does not yet count as a properly formed will at all, and hence cannot be judged as either good or evil (this would apply, for example, to the wills of children). Such wickedness need involve neither frailty or impurity; in transgressing, the wicked will acts from its own settled judgment about what is best, and no longer attends to self-love in order to merely supplement moral concerns-rather, it n1ay not even consider moral issues once self-love has fully determined its object. The wicked will may have its own perverse sort of strength and its own corrupt purity, as a sort of "incongruent counterpart" of a good will. As in the good will, Wille, Willkur and action are all conceptually united: only in this case we have a perverted Wille, a corrupt power of choice, and immoral acts, undertaken in full knowledge of their immorality and without regret. I(ant argues that whether or not our disposition is good or evil depends on a kind noumenal choice on our part, by which we deterlnine what reasons are really the most important to us. I(ant seems to think that unless the constitution of our will can be represented as such a choice, it is not something for which we could be held responsible. But if we cannot be held responsible the whole 17. Kant does think of God's will, as holy, to be without self-love. On the view that I am advancing, this only represents a kind of conceptual limit case that is not, strictly speaking, coherent. Without any kind of receptivity, the mind of God can only be intuitive; it would be outside of time, recognizing no distinction between the possible and the actual, or between the desirable and the real. Although Kant sometime toys with the idea of a holy will, such a will seems only to be a contrast case to highlight the finitude our wills, rather than being a real metaphysical alternative. Insofar as the holy will is defined only negatively (without reference to practical concerns), the mind of God is only a logical, not a real possibility.
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of our disposition, he argues, neither can we be held responsible for any of the particular acts that are simply its outward manifestation. 18 If so, then not only would the wicked fail to be culpable for their sins, but neither would the good be responsible for their virtuous (or even their permissible) actions. The entire notion of responsibility would collapse, and with it the foundation of I(ant's practical philosophy. The talk of such timeless, noumenal choosing has struck many as bizarre, as the final reductio of the phenolnena/noumena distinction. Yet although Kant says little to allay this worry, his main point may only be that, as a choice about the relative merits of reasons, the constitution of our disposition is not to be understood as a psychological event that stands under the conditions of time (i.e., causal determination). In calling our choice of disposition noumenal, Kant may only be reminding us that he is not dealing with some datable, psychological process. As something for which we can be held responsible, we must be able to make sense of this choice in a way that abstracts from (though that needn't deny) the causal order of the world-this choice must not just be something that happens to us, but something that we in some sense do. The real puzzle lies not so much in the idea of noumenal choice, for all choices are, properly speaking, noumenal or intelligible, insofar as the idea of a good reason is in play. Rather, the problem is in how this particular choice of disposition could be represented as intelligible, since it is not simply a choice on the basis of our reasons, but a choice of our most basic reasons themselves. How can we make sense of such a choice that abstracts not only from all causal antecedents, but from any rational commitments as well? Admittedly, if we have already chosen in favor of the moral maxim, then we have a commitment to all sorts of reasons that will speak in favor of this choice. The choice of the moral maxim 18. The grounds for this inference are hardly clear, but I suspect it relies on substitution. I(ant seems to think that our disposition represents the "totality" of our empirical acts; that the disposition is metaphysically identical to all the acts we do and would perform from it, given an infinite (and perhaps infinitely varied) lifetime. Our disposition is the space of possible imputable actions of ours. The thought behind I(ant's inference may be that, if I am potentially responsible for any and all of my acts (even those that my own death prevents), then I would have to be potentially responsible for their totality, since these are really the saIne thing. However, this totality can also constitutes my disposition; so I can have such unbounded potential responsibility only if I can be responsible for my disposition.
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will be able to secure complete post facto reflective endorsement. But of course the same can be said of the choice of the maxim of self-love; either choice is necessarily self-ratifying. The fact that either disposition is self-ratifying may explain why Kant considers wickedness to be something we only overcome by a kind of complete conversion; for it is impossible to compel SOlneone to abandon such evil simply by rational appeal to the interests already contained within that perspective (there is no "sound deliberative route" from the wicked agent's subjective nl0tivational set to morality, at least, none that could be recognized as such by the wicked agent herself). While profound moral transformation is possible for I(ant, such transformation cannot be accomplished by way of argunlent. Just as the good will recognizes its own rational necessity, the wicked will masks its own incoherence from itself. While the wicked will is ultimately unintelligible, it has also lost the very conceptual capacities by which it could come to recognize such unintelligibility in itself. A corrupt reason will apply a corrupt standard to itself, and be perfectly satisfied with its own nature. When I(ant later surprisingly remarks that reason "by nature finds moral labor vexing" (R 6:51) what he may nlean is that once we have accepted our basic standards for practical reasoning, rational reflection will only discern more and more merit in the normative status quo, whatever it may be. Indeed, such postlapsarian reflection may not only fail to be redemptive, but may actually strengthen our commitment to the corrupt perspective, nurturing the development of self-j ustifying religious or nletaphysical schemes (Kant gives the example of "the false ascription to God Himself of the principle of happiness as the chief condition of his commandnlents"(ibid)). I(ant does believe both moral redemption and moral corruption to be possible. However, given the self-justifying character of each disposition, such changes will have to take the form of conversion experiences, and not merely as the detection and remedying of a nlistake(R 6:48). As a choice of what will count as a reason for us, the "deed" by which we establish our disposition would seem to be ineluctably arbitrary, and such radical arbitrariness makes this deed incomprehensible even as a choice or an act. The problenl of how such a choice is possible may not be intractable in the case of a good will; in that happy case, one may give morality priority, just because such authority is implicit in the logic of practical thought itself. When we opt for a good disposition, we may simply recognize that only a good will is coherent; and there is no need for fur-
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ther explanation of why we opt for consistency over unintelligibility. (Although this is a best a very degenerate sense of choosing, where no coherent alternative is recognized at all). The difficult case then is when we adopt a wicked disposition. How could we opt for this ultimately incoherent alternative, and in such a way as would nevertheless preserve our responsibility for so choosing? How is a wicked will possible? Kant clearly rejects the thought that the influence of inclination, in itself, is what could lead us to choose wickedness over goodness. After all, the choice of disposition is meant to determine what kind of practical significance we give to inclination; we cannot without circularity appeal to an overriding interest in inclination to explain why we might come to adopt such an interest in the first place. Moreover, in the Religion Kant expressly exonerates inclination from the charge of being the source of our evil, telling us that: Considered in themselves natural inclinations are good, i.e., not reprehensible, and to want to extirpate them would not only be futile but harmful and blameworthy as well; (R 6:58, Kant's emphasis)
And I(ant approvingly paraphrases Ephesians: "We have to wrestle not against flesh and blood (the natural inclinations) but against principalities and powers-against evil spirits."(R 6:69, cf. Ephesians VI, 12)
In the Religion, Kant recognizes that the inclinations, by providing the content of self-love, have an essential practical role to play in providing the material for rational reflection to shape. It is only through inclination that our wills can become determinate enough to will anything in particular. In extirpating the inclinations, we would be undoing our own agency, degenerating not even to the level of an animal, but something more like a plant, a form of life with no power of desire (Begehrungsvermogen ) at all. The mere fact that we are susceptible to inclination is not what makes it possible for us to adopt a wicked disposition. I(ant also rejects the hypothesis that we might establish an evil disposition because our reason has somehow become "malignant," and perversely taken the violation of the moral law itself as its highest principle (i.e., doing evil for evil's sake). For I(ant, reason
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necessarily wills what is morally good; a reason that sought evil for its own sake would be no more coherent than an understanding that believed only what it took to be unequivocally false. While we can intelligibly say that the good choose their good disposition because they recognize that only such a disposition is itself coherent, we cannot then say that the wicked choose wickedness because they recognize its manifest incoherence. The latter is no account at all, but rather just another way of framing the initial puzzle. A perverted reason turns out to be no more a real candidate to be the root of all evil than is any unfortunate inclination. Kant here recognizes that he has come to the limits of the moral psychological vocabulary that had served him in the Groundwork and the second Critique, concluding: Sensuous nature therefore contains too little to provide a ground of moral evil in the human being, for, to the extent that it eliminates the incentives originating in freedonl, it makes of the human being a purely ani1nal being; a reason exonerated from the moral law, an evil reason at it were (an absolutely evil will) would on the contrary contain too much, because resistance to the law would itself be thereby elevated to incentive...and so the subject would be made a diabolical being. Neither of these two is however applicable to a human being. (R 6:35)
12. Propensity and Predisposition At this point, we might expect Kant to adopt the response suggested by Korsgaard and Hill, and conclude that nothing more can, in principle be said about a fall into evil: that such a lapse is inexplicable, and fact that practical explanation comes to an end here is merely just a feature of the idea of free action itself. As I have argued, such a response does seem correct with regard to I(ant's understanding of frailty. In contrast, however, I(ant does seenl to think that more of an explanation is needed for how a rational creature could come to establish its disposition in one way rather than another. Kant does not permit his explanation of wickedness to an end simply by introducing the idea of a practical disposition, and laying out the options of goodness and wickedness. Instead, Kant goes on to posit certain innate human "propensities" and "predispositions" to order our basic maxims in one way rather than the other, which are to serve as "the subjective grounds of the determination of our disposition." Whatever the propensities and predispositions are, for I(ant
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they can only characterize the nature of humanity in general. For Kant, a predisposition or a propensity is not something that a person mayor may not happen to have, like a predisposition to alcoholism or a propensity to violence. !(ant thinks that as a species we have some sort of fixed moral character, and that there is a kind of specifically human moral nature which explains why we order our fundamental maxims the way we do: Whenever we therefore say, "The human being is by nature good," or, "He is by nature evil," this only means that he holds within himself a first ground (to us inscrutable) for the adoption of good or evil (unlawful) maxims, and that he holds this ground qua human universally-in such a way, therefore, that by his maxims he expresses at the same time the character of his species. (R 6:21).
Such first grounds can be taken to characterize our species as a whole, because I(ant's investigation occurs at a level of abstraction that no longer recognizes the differences between particular human beings. For I(ant, our wills do not differ in terms of Wille: individuality is constituted at the level of Willkur, in the content of our conceptions of happiness and upon just which reasons we decide to act. When we seek the subjective grounds of the determination of our disposition, we are trying to understanding the relative importance we attach to self-love in general: its particular contents do not matter, nor do any particular decisions that only serve to express whatever disposition has been adopted. At this level, all we have to work with are those basic ITIoral psychological features that characterize humanity in general: reason (as Wille and Willkur ), inclination (as affect and passion), and the various ways that these capacities may inform, distort, or emerge from one other. Kant argues that if our propensity to evil is the source of a wicked disposition, and we are to be responsible for such a disposition and the acts that flow from it, then we must be responsible for that propensity as well. Paradoxically, even though we must see our radical evil as always already a part of our nature, antecedent to every particular choice we make, we must also take it to be freely chosen by us as mature agents: Hence, since we cannot derive this disposition, or rather its highest ground, from a first act of the power of choice in time, we call it a characteristic of the power of choice that pertain to it by
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nature (even though the disposition is in fact grounded in freedom). (R 6:25) [5]0 we can call this ground a natural propensity to evil, and since it must nevertheless always come about through one's own fault, we can further even call it a radical innate evil in human nature (not any the less brought upon us by ourselves. (R 6:32, Kant's emphasis).
For Kant, radical evil is somehow both imposed and chosen, something which is both an inescapable aspect of our common human nature and yet also a product of our free choice, for which we can be held accountable. Why does I(ant call our radical evil a propensity rather than a predisposition? In the Religion, Kant tells us that: By the predispositions of a being we understand the constituent parts required for it as well as the fonus of their combination that make for such a being. They are original if they belong with necessity to the possibility of this being, but contingent if the being in question is possible in itself also without them. (R 6:28 J(ant's emphasis).
Predispositions seem to refer to whatever is essential to being a certain kind of thing, either in ternlS of its matter (the "constituent elements") or in terms of its form (their "combinations"). I(ant says that the predispositions to goodness are "original, for they are bound up with the possibility of human nature." In contrast, ... [a propensity] is distinguished from a predisposition in that a propensity can indeed be innate yet may be represented as not being such: it can rather be thought of (if it is good) as acquired, or (if evil) as brought by the human being upon himself. (R 6:29, J(ant's emphasis)
Unlike a predisposition, a propensity can be understood as a contingent feature of human beings, even if it is universally innate and, as Kant says, "woven into human nature"(R 6:30). By calling radical evil a propensity rather than a predisposition, I(ant suggests that whatever such a thing is, it is not to be thought of as an essential attribute of humanity. Even if radical evil universally characterizes humanity, it cannot be one of the defining features of our kind:
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He [the human being] is evil by nature" simply means that being evil applies to him considered in his species; not that this quality may be inferred froln the concept ot' his species ([i.e.] from the concept of a human being in general. .. (R 6:32)
Rather, such a propensity can only be represented as a quality that is, at worst, universally found in human beings, even though it is inessential. We are left with the paradoxical conclusion that while this source of wickedness is a "radical" aspect of our nature, it is to be represented as a merely contingent feature of human beings. For !(ant, the root of all evil is a sin that, in principle, cannot be "original." Although radical evil cannot be represented as essential to human beings, !(ant claims that this propensity is universally to be found in us. Of course, something can be both inessential and universal, and !(ant often discusses the universality of evil in human nature as if this were simply an inductive generalization made on the basis the sorry state of human history. Yet !(ant goes beyond these unremarkable claims to argue that such evil is, in some sense, necessary to human beings, and that if it is present in one human, it must be present in us all. This attitude is starkly expressed when !(ant claims: "He is evil by nature" simply means...according to the cognition we have of the human being through experience, he cannot be judged otherwise, in other words, we may presuppose evil as subjectively necessary in every human being, even the best. (R 6:32).
Kant does suggest here that the necessity of such evil is only a matter of empirical cognition. However, if we may presuppose such evil, even in the most apparently virtuous person, then we cannot be coming to our belief simply through inductive generalizations about the moral character of people we observe. Even if our fundamental maxims could be objects of respectable anthropological research (which !(ant either denies or at least very strongly doubts), no inductive generalization could license a conclusion that would rule out the very possibility of disconfirming evidence, of the occasional "moral saint" who does not bear the mark of radical evil. The sort of necessity Kant claims for our radical evil goes far beyond whatever could be gleaned by armchair anthropology. Although human evil cannot be analytically derived
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from the "concept of the species," it holds of us with a kind of non-empirical necessity. That we bear such radical evil has now taken up the status of a synthetic a priori truth of human nature. Radical evil seems to have become a mess of paradoxes. It is an inextirpable aspect of human nature; yet it is the product of our individual exercises of freedom. Radical evil seems to be a priori necessary to each and every member of the species; yet it is inessential to humanity. It is neither an aspect of reason nor inclination, but is a ground of how we might establish the significance we give to each in our wills. Rather than explain how to make sense of these paradoxes, Kant seems to leave radical evil as much a mystery as the Fall, concluding that "there is no conceivable ground for us, therefore, from which moral evil could first have come in us"(R 6:43). We cannot explain how an essentially free and autononlOUS being could freely give up its freedonl, any more than we can explain how creatures initially perfect and innocent could opt for wickedness. In his account of the radical evil in human nature, I(ant seems to have done philosophy the dubious service of recovering one of the most paradoxical concepts of Christian theology--the doctrine of original sin, in which we take our own capacity of choice as always already corrupted, and corrupted by an already corrupt yet imputable exercise of that power itself. 19
19. Kant does at one point refer to the propensity to evil as a "peccatum originarium" (R 6:31).
CHAPTER SIX
Radical Evil and the Idea of Human Nature To breed an anintal with the right to ntake prontisesis not this the paradoxical task that nature has set itself in the case of ntan? is it not the real problem regarding lnan? -Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals II, §1 (p.S7).
1. Introduction While I(ant seems to leave radical evil in the Religion as much a mystery as the Fall, he nevertheless possesses the resources to give a lTIuch less enigmatic and much more plausible account of the grounds of human wickedness. However, in order to appreciate the dramatic ways in which I(ant's thought expands in response to the problem of evil, we need to approach the topic indirectly. To make sense of our radical evil, we need to look first at its counterpart, our predispositions to goodness. The choice of goodness should be less problematic for I(ant than the choice of evil, since it is the choice of intelligibility over incoherence. Nevertheless, it is in examining the grounds of such a choice of goodness that I(ant finds the conceptual resources that allow him to make sense of radical evil. For although radical evil has a kind of real existence for Kant (and is not just a mere absence or privation of the good), such evil is nevertheless conceptually derivative of the "subjective grounds" that make intelligible our choice of a fundamentally good disposition. 2. Our Predispositions to Good: Animality In the Religion, I(ant argues that we have three "original predispositions to good," which are "the subjective determining grounds" of our free subordination of the maxim of self-love to the moral maxim. Not surprisingly, I(ant recognizes exactly three such distinct predispositions:
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(1) The predisposition to the animality of the hlll11an being, taken as a living being; (2) To the hUl1zanity in him, as a living and at the same time a rational being; (3) To his personality, as a rational and at the saIne time an responsible being. [der Zurechnung fahigen Wesens ] (R 6:26, Kant's emphasis)
Since these predispositions are all "original," they must determine qualities that capture some essential feature of hUIllanity (R 6:28). While !(ant is hardly clear about just what these qualities are supposed to be, he seems to portray each as a kind of teleological self-conception, as a way of making sense of ourselves as a whole in terIllS of some substantive notion of well-being or perfection. If so, then each predisposition would represent a kind of conceptual framework through which a particular kind of self-knowledge becomes available; indeed, through which a distinct kind of self is defined and made possible for us. Each predisposition seems to constitute an ideal of intelligibility for the entire human being, anticipating or reinforcing the cOIllplete self-understanding that becomes available to us through the recognition of moral obligation. Consider the predisposition to animality. For I(ant, animality is not just a matter of feeling and acting from inclination; "animality" is not just another name for our affective or sensible nature. Rather, animality involves a way of seeing such natural impulses and behaviors as part of a rational, purposive whole. For !(ant, the predisposition to animality is not constituted by our inclinations in general, but by those natural appetites that can be understood as serving the good of our biological species, understood not merely as impulse, but as instinct. Characteristic of animality are our drives toward self-preservation and reproduction, as well the social impulses that produce the communities needed for the maintenance of human life ("the social drive") (R 6:26). Through the lens of animality, we see our inclinations in light of some understanding what well-being is for the individual and for the species. Brute inclination, as a kind of psychological push or pull, is now reconceptualized in terms of the health of an organism. At this stage, we distinguish ourselves from inanimate objects (in which there is normally no intrinsic purposiveness at all), and from plants, which while understood in terms of the good of their kind, have no drives that can be interpreted as instincts at all. Like
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plants, animals have some good characteristic of their kind: unlike plants, animals have an outlook on the world, in which aspects of that good are to some degree realized. Kant calls the predisposition to animality a "purely mechanical self-love," since this predisposition comprises inclination insofar as it guides a human being to her (biological) good without any self-conscious rational activity on the part of this subject at all. The term "mechanical" is here sonlewhat misleading; because although such self-love is unreflective, it nevertheless marks a logical distinction between the concepts of a machine and an animal. Although, like a machine or a plant, an anilnal does not represent its good to itself as such, it nevertheless acts from its representations of world, and these representations (i.e., desires) implicitly incorporate a sense of that creature's own welfare. For !(ant, such motivating representations are the essential characteristic of anything that has a "faculty of desire" [Begehrungsvermogen ], a capacity which he takes to be an essential feature of anything that is alive: Life is the faculty of a being to act in accordance with laws of the faculty of desire. The faculty of desire is a being's faculty to be by means of its representation the case of the reality of the objects of these representations. Pleasure is the representation of the agreement of an object or of an action with the subjective conditions of life, (i.e., with the faculty of the causality of a representation with respect to the reality of its object... (CPrR 5:9n., I
Although an animal is aware of its own good not under any concept, still something like an understanding of that good is implicit in the structure of its affects, and finds conscious manifestation in the urgency of the animal's felt needs and the pleasure characteristic of their satisfaction (i.e., the pleasure which is "the representation of the agreement of an object or of an action with the subjective conditions of life" (ibid). Such "merely mechanical" (as opposed to rational, not to living) self-love bears a strong resemblance to Rousseau's amour-de-soi, in which a creature's inclinations unreflectively guide it to what is important for its life or the life of its species. The animal does not represent its good to itself as such, but something like the logic of its good is manifest in the way the creature represents the objects of its desires and instincts. While mechanical self-love can be possessed by a creature without reason, there nevertheless remains something rational
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about this self-love. While such self-love is not rational, it does anticipate reason, for such self-love gives our inclinations a structure that could at least be grasped and affirmed by the rational reflection of another. The predisposition to animality defines the way in which an animal becomes intelligible as an animal, although this is not yet a way in which it becomes intelligible to itself. Such self-intelligibility is reserved for the higher predispositions, those of humanity and personality. Although Kant does not make the point explicitly, it seems that animality is not just a way of interpreting some set of natural capacities that are already well-defined, just waiting for us to notice them. Rather, through the idea of a healthy animal, we gain access to the criteria by which we can identify and individuate certain states as instincts, motives, pleasures or pains (just as it is only with reference to this idea· that talk of organs or tissue can make sense). The animal psyche is not something that is conceptually prior to an understanding of the characteristic purposiveness of animal life, its characteristic goals and states of well-being. Rather, the predisposition to animality locates a creature within that greater web of concepts through which it could be said to feel or desire. These concepts are logically constitutive of what might be called the animal self, a self that is not only the subject of motions (like a machine), but of needs for the sake of which it can act.
3. The Predisposition to Hunlanity !(ant claims the predisposition to humanity, like animality, constitutes a kind of self-love. Rather than being merely mechanical, however, hun1anity is "a self-love which is physical and yet involves comparison (for which reason is required)" (R 6:26). As a form of physical self-love, humanity involves some kind of interest that is related to our inclination, in which reference to pleasure and pain, desire and satisfaction plays a role. To this extent, the predisposition to humanity resembles the predisposition to animality. However, the inclinations involved in humanity are not merely ones for pleasure or satisfaction, or even those natural instincts that incline us toward our health. Instead, the inclinations characteristic of humanity involve our desire for "worth in the opinion of others" (ibid). What Kant seems to have in mind by this self-love that is both physical and rational is Rousseavian amour-propre, the sense of oneself as meriting respect or esteem and the standing demand to have such merit acknowledged by others. Anin1ality presents the creature's good under the idea of health. The subjec-
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tive manifestation of this state is contentment, the state of having all of one's natural needs satisfied. In contrast, the predisposition to humanity construes our good as something like honor or merit, which is subjectively manifested as pride, as the self-satisfaction that COBles through thinking of ourselves as having excelled relative to some socially recognized standard. If animality was characterized by the rule of appetite (and generally, pleasure and pain), the "intelligible character" of humanity is thumos, the rule of pride and shame. 1 In the predisposition to humanity, we understand ourselves not merely as a particular kind of animal, but as a particular kind of person, seeking recognition of our merits in the eyes of at least some others, the people whose opinion matters. We seek to be recognized as an excellent instance of our kind, and are thus committed to cultivate whatever virtues are characteristic of such excellence. This desire need not extend to other persons generally; ideas of moral objectivity and the equal dignity of persons are not yet in play. Rather, driven by what Kant calls the "proto-moral" motivation of honor 2, we acquire a conception of ourselves based in our allegiance to a particular clan, class, caste or vocation. We consider ourselves answerable to others, but only those others who fall under some special description on bear some special relation to us. Like animality, humanity constitutes a new practical subject; a new self corresponding to a new kind of motivation (pride) directed toward a new object, or kind of well-being (honor). In anilnality, we conceived of ourselves in terms of some ideal of health, understanding ourselves not just as causally complex systems, but as animals possessed of instincts, desires, pleasure and pains. In humanity, the ideal involved is not that of health, but of some sort of overall excellence of the kind of person I am, as recognized by others of my type. An animal's happiness is the contentment that comes with health and the satisfaction of its natural needs; the human's happiness is to be found in honor; in satisfying not nature's demands, but those of a particular community. Something 1. My thanks to John Cooper for suggesting this parallel. 2. In the Religion Kant observes "For that a human being should be capable of possessing and adopting as his goal something (honor) which he values more highly still than his life, and of sacrificing all self-interest to it, this surely bespeaks a certain sublimity in his predisposition." (R 6:33n.)
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like reason and self-conscious reflection conle into play at this point; the human agent must have reason insofar as it can recognize and apply such a non-natural standard, and to be able to take up the evaluative perspective of others on himself that determines what, if anything, he has to be proud of. Unlike the animal, the human understands herself through the eyes of others, and is reflective enough to form a distinct conception of her good from such reflection. With such self-consciousness, we become more . than a passive subject of natural needs; by developing and deliberating about own conception of happiness, we also become a subject of wants, of the artificial needs engendered by a social life and an inherently social conception of the self.
4. The Predisposition to Personality I(ant is particularly vague about the last and highest predisposition, the predisposition to personality. He tells us that this predisposition involves a view of ourselves as rational and accountable beings; i.e., as beings that conceive of themselves as beings who stand under some obligation or other, who can be held culpable for their transgressions. If I am right about the Fact of Reason (see chapter 2 above), then the predisposition to personality may simply be that fundamentally juridical sense of ourselves that I(ant takes to be defined by recognition of the authority of the moral law. In the Metaphysics of Morals, I(ant calls this "original intellectual and (since it is the thought of duty) moral predisposition" in us "conscience," which he goes on to define as "Consciousness of an internal court in man (" before which his thoughts accuse or excuse one another")" ( MM 6:438, Kant's emphasis). As I have argued, through this juridical sense of ourselves we become constituted as autonomous subjects, capable of not only of desire or pride, but of respect ("the thought of duty" as Kant calls it at MM 6:438). In the Religion, Kant even defines the predisposition to personality in terms of this uniquely moral motive, as "the susceptibility to respect for the moral law as of itself a sufficient incentive to the power of choice." (R 6:27, I(ant's emphasis). Such susceptibility to respect is just another name for autonomy, for the ability of pure reason to be practical in a subject. And Kant has shown that all these qualities are aspects of freedom, of an understanding of oneself as ultimately bound by the moral law. As the capacity for respect, the predisposition to personality turns out to be just another aspect of the authority of morality:
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The idea of the moral law alone, together with the respect that is inseparable from it, cannot be properly called a predisposition to personality; it is personality itself (the idea of humanity considered wholly intellectually). The subjective ground, however, of our incorporating this incentive into our maxims seems to be an addition to personality, and hence seems to deserve the name of a predisposition on behalf of it. (R 6:28)
Kant's real account of the predisposition to personality is not to be found in the Religion; he has already given it in the Groundwork and the second Critique, in his analysis of human autonomy. The predisposition to personality serves as a "subjective ground" for goodness only in the sense suggested above, in which we directly recognize the moral law's authority over self-love because we see that this is the only coherent way of deliberating over action or of understanding ourselves as agents. The predisposition to personality is not something further above and beyond our autonomy, but autonomy itself, directed not toward any particular action, but toward its own ultimate value and intelligibility. Like animality and humanity, personality inaugurates (and demands) a new possibility for the self. This new self has a logic with is analogous to, but also distinct from, the kinds of selfhood characteristic of animality and humanity. The predisposition to personality initiates us into those concepts that serve not only to define for us a reflective self, but a self that is free and autonomous, which can be responsible for its acts and, correlatively, can be culpable for its transgressions. The aninlal is a desiring subject; the human, an honorable one; the person, a deserving subject. The characteristic motivation of the animal is based in pleasure and pain, as determined by the laws of nature. The distinctive motives of the human acts are pride and shame, dictated by some comnlunity with which the subject identifies. The motive characteristic of a person is respect, dictated only by her own reason itself (or, represented externally, as the commands of God). Each such motive has its own characteristic object: the animal has natural needs, the human artificial wants, and the person, moral obligations. Each predisposition defines a characteristic kind of self-love that corresponds to the awareness of the attainment of its object: the animal has "111echanical" self-love, which finds its highest state in the contentment that comes with satisfying its natural needs (pleasure or at least the absence of pain); the human has "self-con-
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ceit," the pride or "good pleasure in oneself" that comes with acknowledged excellence. !(ant tells us that the person, too, has a characteristic kind of self-love: the "~oral self-love" which incorporates "the inner principle of a contentment only possible for us on condition that our maxims are subordinated to the moral law."{R 6:45n.). Like mechanical self-love, moral self-love is primarily a kind of contentment, of the absence of some negative state. Natural contentn1ent is the lack of pain, or the absence of any unfulfilled felt need. Moral contentment is the lack of guilt, the absence of any awareness of having violated or neglected any of one's obligations. Kant's presentation of our predispositions to good tempts us to see these three predispositions as defining three independent way of existing, such that we might expect to on earth distinct animals, humans and persons. We certainly do encounter animals who participate in neither humanity or personality; might there not also be humans who do not participate in personality, who are reflective and practically rational without being morally accountable or autonomous? Wouldn't morality then be an interest that a rational agent might or might not recognize, something metaphysically optional for it? Surprisingly, !(ant himself seems to suggest such a possible divergence of humanity and personality in a long footnote to his discussion of the predispositions. Instead of claiming that personality and humanity are conceptually connected, I(ant tells us that: We cannot consider this predisposition [personality] as already included in the concept of the preceding one [hulnanity], but lnust necessarily treat it as a special predisposition. For from the fact that a being has reason does not at all follow that, simply by virtue of representing its maxims as suited to universal legislation, this reason has a faculty of determining the power of choice unconditionally. . . . The most rational being of this world [das allervernunftigste Weltwesen ] might still need certain incentives, coming to him from the objects of inclination, to determine his power of choice. He might apply the most rational reflection to these objects-about what concerns theirs greatest sum as well as the means for attaining the goal determined through them-without thereby even s.uspecting the possibility of such a thing as the absolutely imperative moral law.... Were this law not given to us from within, no amount of subtle reasoning on our part would produce it or
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win our power of choice over to it. (R 6:26n.).3
!(ant seems to be suggesting here that practical rationality can be decoupled from morality; that moral consciousness is just one way, among others, of being an agent. But if humans need not be persons, then perhaps we ourselves are only merely human. And even if we do recognize ourselves in J(ant's account of moral personality, it might still be the case that simple (unmoralized) humanity presents us an alternative way of seeing ourselves that we should consider adopting. Perhaps we should extricate ourselves from the hard ideas of law, obligation, desert and guilt, and turn (return?) to a more heroic vision of life, built not on respect and dignity, but on pride and honor. The footnote at 6:26 does suggest that humanity and personality are two independent forms of self-understanding. However, on the very next page !(ant suggests that personality and humanity are not only intiluately linked, but conceptually connected, as two different aspects of the same idea. J(ant claims that personality itself is only "the idea of hunlanity considered wholly intellectually."{R 6:28). And in his subsequent Metaphysics of Morals, !(ant explicitly claims that without personality (as the capacity for respect) the dimension of hunlanity would not be open to us: No hUlnan being is entirely without moral feeling [respect], for were he cOlnpletely lacking in receptivity to it he would be morally dead; and if (to speak in Inedical terms) the moral vital force could no longer excite this feeling, then humanity would dissolve (by chemical laws, as it were) into mere animality and be mixed irretrievably with the Inass of other natural beings. (MM 6:400)
!(ant here affirms that in order to be a self-conscious agent at all, one who can entertain and pursue any conception of the good at all, one must also recognize oneself as having moral obligations, and be capable of acting immediately from such recognition (for this is what respect is). The concepts and sense of self needed to translate our animality into humanity only become available 3. !(ant here finishes "Yet this law is the only law that makes us conscious of the independence of our power of choice from determination by all other incentives (of our freedom)and thereby also of the accountability of all our actions."
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through personality, through a conception of oneself as morally bound. How then can Kant claim in the Religion that the predisposition to personality nevertheless cannot be "included" in the predisposition to humanity? Fortunately, the puzzling footnote at 6:26 can be rendered consistent with I(ant's subsequent identifications of humanity and personality. Kant's claim that personality is not included in humanity may only mean that one cannot derive personality (the sense of oneself as obligated) from the sorts of concerns characteristic of hunlanity, our interests in our own happiness and the esteem of others. Although personality is conceptually prior to humanity, we can no more find personality "within" humanity than we can count mathematical truths among the findings of empirical science. Prudence and perhaps something like rational choice theory in general might count as ideas included within the predisposition to humanity. In contrast personality, although inseparable from humanity, can only be understood on its own terms, not as a special case of our interests in happiness and honor. The point of the footnote at 6:26 may only be to mark a kind of logical distinction in the objects valued by the subject of humanity and the subject of personality. I(ant's point would then be to remind us that happiness (or honor) and morality are fundamentally different kinds of concerns; neither being an instance of or derivation froln the other. When I(ant claims that the most rational being might apply the most rational reflection to these objects-a bout what concerns their greatest sum as well as the means for attaining the goal determined through thetn-without thereby even suspecting the possibility of such a thing as the absolutely imperative morallaw... (R 6:26)
his point may be simply that one cannot derive morality from reflection on the content our conceptions of happiness-neither from reflection on what such happiness involves, or on how to most efficiently attain it. So long as we only consider the characteristic objects of happiness, there will be no way to derive (no "subtle reasoning") that will bring us to the characteristic objects of morality, our duties. The footnote need not deny the connection between moral reasoning and the possibility of practical reasoning in general: rather, it would only constitute another reaffirmation by I(ant of the heterogeneity of happiness and virtue. As I have argued, the conceptual connection between hllman-
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ity and personality is not to be found at the level of their distinctive objects, by focussing on the interests characteristic of each predisposition. Instead, the conceptual connection is to be found at the level of the reflective subject, in the nature of the self that can value and pursue such objects. While the footnote reminds us that happiness and duty are conceptually distinct values, it is nevertheless the case for Kant that only a creature who recognizes itself to be the subject of duties will be able to entertain a conception of happiness. Such a connection may be what's at stake in the claim that personality is the idea of humanity "considered wholly intellectually" -i.e., in abstraction from any of the particular conceptions of happiness or non-moral interests that might distinguish one individual from another. The moral law is here "given us from within" only in the sense that it is only by turning our attention to the kind of self that humanity requires, rather than its objects, that we will see the necessity of morality. When Kant remarks that "the most rational being" might be oblivious to morality, he need not be referring to the most rational being tout court, but only to the most rational being "of this world." The world in question may not be the world in general (if such a notion survives the mathematical antinomies), but rather something like the sensible or phenomenal world, in distinction to the intelligible world (the way a theologian might contrast the sufferings of this world with the blessedness of the world to come). The world in question might be constituted by our own concern for happiness, the eudaimonistic world which we occupy as human, but which we rise above as persons. The point of I(ant's remark about the "most rational being" might then be that, while moral failings are indeed failures of rationality, such irrationality cannot be recognized at the level of the human-we should not try to understand sin as a failure to effectively achieve happiness or gain the esteem of others. Moral failings are rational failings, but not failings of empirical practical reason. Evil is not a mundane shortcoming (such as clumsiness or stupidity), but is instead an intelligible failing, comprehensible only from the perspective of a free being. Such a restriction does not imply that morality is not a kind of rationality, but only reveals the limitations of the rationality characteristic of the predisposition to humanity; the necessary limitations of empirical practical reason, when it is cast as a complete or independent account of practical reasoning in genera1. 4 4. Admittedly, there is a certain ambiguity in the phrase "das allerverniinftigste Weltwesen." di Giovanni translates this as "the most rational being
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The predispositions to goodness do not represent three different kind of creature, but rather three essential aspects of one kind of creature, the human being. Animality, humanity, and personality are not so much three classes of psychological traits, as they are three logical axes that define the "conceptual space" that a human subject occupies. To understand ourselves as human beings requires that we recognize ourselves as obligated, accountable subjects, free in our actions and potentially guilty for our sins. Understanding oneself as a human being also involves the various ideals and qualities that one takes pride in (or is ashamed of)qualities that define a conception of happiness, and need not have any specifically moral content. And finally, a human being must also understand herself as a kind of animal, as a creature with natural needs, susceptible to pleasures and pains that bear an intin1ate connection to how those needs are met. Each such approach is needed for a human being to become intelligible to herself as a human being, and none of these approaches is reducible to any of the others. Although the predispositions to goodness are each irreducible, there is nevertheless a kind of conceptual connection between them. The coherence of each predisposition partially relies on the others being in playas well, such that one could not understand oneself in light of one family of concepts unless it has the others available to it as well. In order to ascribe pleasure and pain to oneself, and form a conception of one's natural needs, one must be capable of that mininlal degree of rational reflection that Kant associates with the predisposition to humanity, where for the first time we do not merely experience our feelings, but represent their objects to ourselves under some description or other. In order not only to be but to understand oneself as an animal, to conceptualize one's own needs, we need the rational capacities characteristic of humanity. But if the argument from ch.2 above is sound, one cannot in turn engage in any sort of empirical practical reasoning at all unless pure reason is also practical-i.e., unless one conceives of this world," leaving open the possibility that the world in question is that of happiness, or of the sensible world in general. The Hudson/Greene translation renders it as "the lTIOst rational being in the world," which is less amenable to the thought that "world" is here being qualified here. Both interpretations seem available froIn the text; the former has the virtue that it remains consistent with much of Kant's core moral doctrine.
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of oneself as bound by law. To be able to recognize our own natural inclinations, we need to be capable of the passion of pride (although pride is not such an inclination): to be capable of the passion of pride, we must also be capable of respect (although respect is not itself a passion). Paradoxically, only a nl0ral creature can nlake sense of its own (or anything else's) animal nature. On this reading, Kant's philosophical psychology inverts the order of explanation that we see in such philosophical naturalists as Hume. In Hume, pleasure and pain serve as psychological primitives; the passions of pride and humility are then constructed out of pleasure and pain taken in association with various ideas. For Hume, the derivation of moral virtue involves yet another step, adding to the passions the resources of sympathy and of the reflective inlagination. Moral obligation (in the form of the "artificial virtues") comes at the very end, resulting from a last step that brings the idea of social convention into play. For Hume, pleasure and pain constitute the will's irreducible foundation: obligation, that will's highest (and most problenlatic) extension. In contrast, !(ant in the Fact of Reason casts the idea of nl0ral obligation as the irreducible primitive. For Kant, the passions only emerge when originally moral concepts become read through our sensibility, such that now particular inclinations can take on legislative pretensions. Even the self-ascription of pleasure and pain requires depends on this rational superstructure; to recognize oneself as having a pain (or having a pleasure) is to take oneself as being in a condition that presents one with a prhna facie reason to escape (or maintain). To be able to identify and individuate pleasures and pains, we need the idea of a reason for action; and this idea itself presupposes the idea of a rational subject, available only through an understanding of moral obligation. Pleasure and pain, seemingly so basic and unproblematic, turn out for !(ant to require a great deal of conceptual stage-setting before they can be recognized as such (just as the most immediate sensory experience presupposes the elaborate conceptual background of the Categories.) Throughout !(ant, the obvious and immediate is made possible by a great deal of complexity that is waiting in the wings. None of this is meant to suggest that animals do not feel pleasure or pain, or that, since they clearly do so, they must have some dim understanding of the moral law. The above considerations apply not simply to the experience of these states, but rather the ability to ascribe them to oneself; to self-consciously interpret and individuate them. This distinction is easy to miss, since it does
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not gain any purchase when we consider humanity or personality. One cannot be capable of respect or pride without being able to represent such states to oneself (since they both involve judging in terms of some rational standard). The notion of a creature that experiences respect or pride, but is not capable of being conscious of these states of itself, is not logically possible. Humanity cannot be separated from personality, because the idea of pride or shame that cannot be recognized as such by their agent is not coherent. In contrast, pleasure and pain are states that are not tied to acts of judgment, and hence can be experienced even by creatures who cannot represent to themselves what they are experiencing. Kant's account of the predisposition is not a map of the logical space of living or desiring things generally, but is only a map of the space of self-conscious existence, where questions of self-intelligibility come into play. The animality of the first predisposition is not simply what we share with other animals. Animality is instead what becomes of that common inheritance, when transfigured by the concepts available to us through the ideas characteristic of humanity and personality. A creature can certainly live without any such sense of itself, but it cannot make sense of itself, even as an animal. Only we can do that; in becoming more than an animal, we become able, for the first time, to grasp what animality in general is about. There is room in Kant for humans who are not persons; for creatures possessed of a social conception of the self, and some sense of pride and shame, but who are not autonomous, and hence not morally responsible for their actions. Children (at least in their initial stages of development) are such "mere" humans, as are some of the mentally ill and cognitively impaired. The possibility of humans who are not full persons is consistent with the strong conceptual connection I have claimed to hold between animality and personality. Children and the mentally impaired are not a separate class of creatures, distinct from or alien to human persons. Rather, the very idea of a child, or of a mental illness, is derivative of the ideas defining personhood. The concept of childhood (or illness) depends on the idea of adult, sane practical rationality. The possibility of such derivative states is perfectly consistent with the idea of personality, just as the illnesses and the imperfect developmental stages of animals are consistent with the idea of an animal as a creature fundamentally oriented toward its own health. Such derivative states are no more a reason to recognize a new kind of human being "than the stunting of some trees in a forest is a reason for making them a special kind of plant."(MM 6:461)
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On this reading, personality has conceptual priority over humanity, and humanity priority over animality. This order of priority holds even though we can recognize creatures that only seem to actively realize humanity, or only actively realize animality (animals, of course, as well as human beings so severely compromised that we cannot even attribute an enlotionallife to them.) Individuals who fall into these two latter classes are not a different kind of creature than we are; rather, they are only special cases of the same general kind (der Mensch), a kind that is fundamentally defined with reference to personality, to those capacities and conditions characteristic of a full-blown moral self-understanding. To defend the unconditional authority of nl0rality, I(ant only needs this claim that the predisposition to personality is logically prior to the predispositions to humanity and aninlality-that we cannot "help ourselves" to the characteristics interests of humanity and animality (esteem, contentment, non-moral "happiness" generally) without recognizing that moral concerns must be on board as well. However, it may also be the case that the predisposition to personality itself presupposes that of hunlanity, and humanity that of animality. The relations of dependence seem to run both ways (though it is not the same kind of dependence at work in both directions). Consider the case of personality. As I have construed it, personality involves a recognition of oneself as bound by obligation, as having duties. However, the idea of obligation may not be intelligible except in relation to the idea of temptation, to non-moral interests that nevertheless may contest its authority. For I(ant, such temptations are to be found at the level of humanity, insofar as it is the natural habitat of the passions, the only inclinations that assume legislative pretensions. Morality would then not only be prior to and distinct fronl something like honor, but also defined in part by opposition to such honor. Duty is not only the sort of thing for which one suffers, but for which one bears ignominy; to know what virtue is is to know that its being unseen or unappreciated does not count against it. Part of knowing what morality is may be knowing how to distinguish it from its nearest relative, honor. Similarly, we may only be able to grasp the distinctive value of honor by reference to its own characteristic temptations to transgress, pleasure and pain. Honor is something for which one suffers, but not for which one sacrifices one's good name (in contrast to morality). Morality is a concern that shapes and subordinates passion; the passions in their turn shape and subordinate our natural inclinations and needs.
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On this picture, the predispositions are not related to each other as three parts of the human psyche, despite the Freudian overtones of Kant's account. Rather, the relation of each higher predisposition to the one beneath it is more that of form to matter. Animality provides the characteristic matter relative to the form of humanity, which in its turn serves as the appropriate matter relative to the form of personality. The form is the conceptual condition of the type of matter in question, but form without matter is merely an empty logical place-holder. Personality sets the stage on which humanity and animality can appear; but if they were not to appear the moral self would have no content. For stage-setting to count as stage-setting, a play must eventually be in the offing. Because such conceptual connections between the predispositions run both ways, no predisposition turns out to be fully independent of any of the others. Each predisposition represents an inseparable aspect of a conceptual whole, each one person of a kind of moralpsychological trinity.
5. The Vices Although only the predisposition to personality has any explicit moral content, !(ant considers each predisposition to be morally salutary when considered by itself (each is, after all, a predisposition to goodness). What is morally healthy about the lower predispositions is not their material (i.e., the kind of object they define for the will-health, honor), but rather the predispositions' logical form. Each predisposition presents or constitutes a particular kind of practical subject, which is defined relative to some normative standard. Although animality and humanity do not present a self with specific moral qualities, they do articulate a general ideal of intelligibility upon which personality itself will be modeled. A healthy animal and an honorable man bear some resen1blance to a virtuous person; in each the creature has lived up to a standard immanent to the kind of thing that it is, each as fulfilled an aspect of its essence. Animality and humanity may be morally salutary because, as forms of self-understanding similar to that of personality, they anticipate the basic logical structure of the moral self. Insofar as these predispositions are incorporated into that self (as I have suggested they must be), they serve to reinforce our understanding of our "intelligible vocation" as morally accountable subjects. The fact that animality and humanity are moral only in form, not content, may explain why I(ant thinks that each of these predispositions can have vices "grafted" onto it. In contrast, the pre-
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disposition to personality, moral in both form and content, is not vulnerable in this way ( it is "a predisposition onto which nothing evil can be grafted" (R 6:28). In the case of animality, I(ant tells us that onto the instincts of self-preservation, reproduction, and sociability can be grafted the vices of the "savagery" or "coarseness" (Rohigkeit) of nature, which at the extreme constitute "the bestial vices of gluttony, lust and wild lawlessness (in relation to other human beings."(R 6:26)). Kant does not think that these vices are merely a matter of overindulging what are otherwise healthy inclinations-such viciousness is not simply a matter of excess. Rather, such vices all involve inclinations taken in "deviation from their natural ends," manifesting a perversion of the teleology characteristic of the natural needs from which they are derived. For Kant, inclination and instinct are such that, once the need to which they correspond is satisfied, they no longer influence the animal. The object of hunger is not the pleasure of eating; rather, its object is the state of being nourished, which will typically be characterized by pleasure (or the disappearance of pain) ( A 230232). The bestial vices are not just excessive forms of our instincts-rather, they involve a distortion of the immanent logic of those instincts altogether. In gluttony, lasciviousness, etc. it seems that what was only incidental to the fulfillment of our natural needs has itself become the object of inclination, ultimately to the detriment of those needs. Natural inclinations and instincts are directed toward specific acts. Pleasure is only the feeling characteristic of their being fulfilled-a necessary by-product, not the actual thing desired. In a beastly vice, however, such pleasure itself becomes the object of inclination; what had been merely a necessary concomitant of the satisfaction of natural need now appears as an independent end in its own right. The bestial vices fully emerge when this new end is not only separated from but comes to be set against the natural end from which it was derived. Out of gluttony we sacrifice our health, and through lust we may perhaps be lead to reproductively disadvantageous activities (it's hard to be more specific-I(ant is here characteristically vague on the subject). Such vices Inanifest a kind of fundamental incoherence, at least when understood as states of an animal. An animal's pleasures are derived from its natural needs, needs which are themselves derivative of a proper understanding of what constitutes health for such a creature. Nevertheless, the beastly vices treat such fundamentally derivative pleasure as something that is independent of and superior to our natural needs, something for which we may consciously
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sacrifice our health. From the perspective of animality, such inclinations make no sense at all. A gluttonous or lascivious animal would, qua animal, have to be seen as diseased or deformed, as something that, at the extreme, fails to be comprehensible as a living thing at all. We can see a similar sort of distortion in the vices that can be grafted unto the predisposition to humanity. I(ant claims that although humanity is essentially a desire for equal esteem, upon it can be grafted the "vices of culture," which in the extreme become the "diabolical vices" of "envy, ingratitude, joy in others' misfortunes [what I
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to maintain our merit, but also our pride, by guarding our distinction relative to others. We seek to impede or suppress the achievements of others, to retain our relative superiority over them. As in the bestial vices, the subjective state which is normally indicative of the attainment of our end is now valued independently of any such attainment. The glutton takes the pleasure characteristic of satisfying hunger as a state to be produced in its own right, although there may be no natural needs corresponding to it. The jealous or envious person finds her pride threatened by the success of others, although such success does not change real status of her merits: Envy (livor ) is a propensity to view the well-being of others with distress, even though it does not detract from one's own. When in breaks forth into action (to diminish their well-being) it is called envy proper; otherwise it is merely jealously (invidentia)
(MM 6:458).
Although the waning of the jealous person's pride does not reflect the waning of her achievements, she responds as if it does. Insofar as she tries to maintain her pride without augmenting her own merit (by frustrating or denigrating others), she has replaced the proper object of pride with the psychological state characteristic of being proud. In such vices, the original substance of honor is replaced as an end with its surface or subjective manifestations, and comes to be treated as a psychological state to be produced in oneself for its own sake. The vices of culture shade into the diabolical vices (in the Metaphysics of Morals, the vices of "hatred for human beings" (MM 6:459-461)) when we not only take our self-esteem to be valuable independently of our own merits, but when we become willing to sacrifice such real merit in order to prevent others from gaining in esteem. The vices of nature became bestial vices when we not only sought gratification independent from our what we need to be healthy, but when we were actually willing to sacrifice our health for such gratification. The vices of culture becolne diabolical when we are willing to sully ourselves, in order to stain others as well. In envy, we are willing to hurt or shame ourselves, if only we can humble someone else more: envy is "the abominable vice of a sullen passion that tortures oneself and aims...at destroying others' good fortune."(MM 6:459). In envy, we are willing to sacrifice of our happiness and esteem in the eyes of others, so long
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as some of those others fall as well. Just as the bestial vices could only be seen as incoherent from the perspective of animality, the diabolical vices make no sense from the standpoint of honor or esteem. A gluttonous animal can only be seen as sick, and an envious man as corrupt, each being perverted in a way that cannot be understood simply a departure from some mean. For Kant, the vices of culture are perversions of the ways of making sense of oneself characteristic of humanity, just as the vices of nature are perversions of the teleology inherent in the idea of animal life of our species. All vices, I(ant suggests, are incoherent distortions of the forms of self-understanding by which a human being becomes intelligible and valuable to herself as a human being: If vice is taken in the sense of a basic principle (a vice proper), then any vice, which would make human nature itself detestable, is inhuman when regarded objectively. (MM 641, I(ant's emphasis.)
When I(ant claims that vices can only be "grafted" onto our predispositions, he suggests that the vices do not grow naturally out of those predispositions, but are rather imported from somewhere else, alien tissue that deforms the stock to which it is joined. Kant does not follow up on the image suggested by this metaphor, but there is at least one clear candidate for the original stock from which each set of vices came. The vices of nature and of culture both seem to be derived from a sort of conceptual contamination with the next higher predisposition. Consider the beastly vices. In this case, pleasure ceases just to be a concomitant of the satisfaction of natural need, and is instead set as an end in its own right. In order to reconceive of pleasure this way, we need to have in play something like the idea of an end, of an object of action that we can reflectively frame for ourselves. The idea of an end that one can represent to oneself is not native to the predisposition to animality; this concept makes its first appearance with the predisposition to humanity, where rational abstraction and comparison become possible. For the vices of nature to becon1e possible, we need something more than the teleology inherent in our natural inclinations-we need to elevate the feelings characteristic of their satisfaction, into distinct ends independent of that teleology. In taking our inclinations as both natural givens, and the source of such ends, we confuse two different sorts of practical logic. Insofar as inclinations are given, then function only as
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drives, not ends; they are givens only relative to questions of animal behavior, not choice. Insofar as questions of practical deliberation are in play, inclination no longer has necessary (or paramount) reason-giving force-it is no longer a brute given, but something whose significance needs to be critically examined and defended. Although each part of the graft that constitutes natural vice is coherent in terms of its own native disposition, the whole is intelligible in ternlS of neither, no more than a botanical graft can be assimilated to either of its component species. Each part belongs to a radically different conceptual habitat; and there is no possible environment in which the amalgam can sustain itself. Such vices lack any distinct intelligible character of their own, reselnbling instead a kind of Frankenstein's monster, patched together from different living bodies, but unable to find any place which it can inhabit successfully. Like the vices of nature, the vices of culture seem to exploit concepts that are properly native to a higher predisposition: in this case, the predisposition to personality. In envy, ingratitude, and malice, we seem to desire the suffering of others for its own sake, even if such suffering brings us no benefit, or actually does us harm. From the perspective of humanity, from the love of honor, this is all quite incomprehensible. Nevertheless, this perverse desire does have a moral analogue in the idea of deserved punishment. When we judge someone morally culpable, we take their suffering (at least to some degree) to be good in itself, regardless of any further effects it has. For I(ant, there is in fact a duty to punish those who deserve it (though just who is entitled to punish is a vexed issue), a duty that may require sacrifices on our own part to carry out. Morality has taught us that it can be reasonable to hurt others, even if nobody, not even ourselves, gains by such suffering. In its natural habitat, this idea is tied to the idea of an impersonal law, and of just authority, the only kind of agent that is entitled to mete out what people deserve. In the diabolical vices, however, we take up the idea of causing harm for harm's sake, but cast aside the rest of juridical context that frames and limits this notion of punishment. The diabolically vicious take it upon themselves to mete out such suffering; suffering which is supposedly deserved not because of any violation of an objective law, but merely because of some personal insult or injury. Injury is here divorced from the notion of a violated right. Instead, such injury is construed as harm or slight perceived by the subject (in particular, the "harm" of making one look bad by comparison). These vices of culture become grafted
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onto humanity when we take the fundamentally moral and juridical idea of deserved suffering, and anneal it to the more subjective and personal concerns characteristic of the drive for recognition. What results are these particularly odious passions, in which we take upon ourselves the prerogative to punish, but without submitting ourselves to the demands and limits of the law. This picture of vice helps to explain why Kant thinks that no vices whatsoever can be grafted onto the predisposition to personality. The vices of nature enlerged in the space between aniInality and humanity; the vices of culture in the space between humanity and personality. The predisposition to personality is unique in that there is no higher predisposition above it. With personality, our sense of ourselves becomes complete and fully coherent; we now have everything we need to become intelligible to ourselves as human beings. With this completion, there is no further conceptual stock from which another graft could be taken, no higher forIn of self-consciousness with which the idea of personality can become confused. Insofar as vices can be attached to personality, they can only be those stemming from a confusion with humanity, and I(ant has already taken account of such failings in his treatment of the vices of culture.
6. Character and Mania in the Anthropology In the Anthropology, I(ant tells a similar story about the predispositions of our nature and their relation to the possibility of vice. Here, I(ant discusses these predispositions as part of an account of the "character" of our species, as those teleological principles which "allow us to know in advance [a living thing's] destiny," and which constitute the basis assigning human beings their "class in the system of animate nature" (A 322). In the Anthropology, I(ant tells us that the predispositions that define our character are the technical, pragmatic, and moral predisposition. The technical predisposition is "a mechanical predisposition joined with consciousness," a disposition for "manipulating things"(ibid). What I(ant seems to have in mind by this technical predisposition is the ability to act, not from instinct, but from any sort of rational guidance, for the sake of any end we can represent to ourselves. The technical predisposition is not the idea we use to make sense of ourselves as animals, but rather those capacities and concepts that begin by which we being to distinguish ourselves from animals; the more general forms of practical reason. The technical predisposition differs from the predisposition to animality in that it constitutes our
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rational ability to act beyond instinct and natural need, rather than being the rationality immanent in our instincts and natural needs themselves. Kant tells us that the praglnatic disposition is "for using other men skillfully for his purposes," the concern for and ability to manipulate the recognition of others. Although Kant includes concerns for esteem and social recognition, this predisposition, like the previous one, is essentially a kind of instrumental reasoning. The pragmatic predisposition is distinguished in that it involves not only knowledge of how to use natural means to one's interest, but how to use the interests of others as such means as well. The technical predisposition requires an understanding of natural causation; the pragmatic disposition, an understanding of the ends and interests of others, of how to enter into another's perspective so as to manipulate it into serving our own ends. In the Religion, both these predispositions will be included in the predisposition to humanity, which comprises our general concern for a happiness that can be recognized by others. The third and highest predisposition in the Anthropology is the moral predisposition, the predisposition for the human being "to treat himself and others according to the principle of freedom under laws." This predisposition is essentially the predisposition to personality: the recognition of oneself as bound by moral law that constitutes us as essentially free, autonomous subjects. Unlike the technical and pragmatic dispositions, there is nothing inherently instrumental about the moral predisposition; this predisposition is not so much a particular way of advancing ends, as a way to frame and deliberate about the worth of such ends themselves. In the Anthropology, I(ant individuates our predispositions in terms of whether, and in what way, they are forms of instrumental practical reasoning. In the Religion, in contrast, Kant no longer sees the instrumental/non-instrumental split as of greatest importance. Instead, he individuates the predispositions in terms of the substantive ideals of the subject's good they determine, and treats instrumental reason as just an adj unct to any sort of practical reasoning at all, be it native to humanity or personality. Along with the predispositions, the Anthropology includes fouf morally deleterious kinds of passions or "manias," that manifest the same kind of conceptual inversion characteristic of the vices of nature and culture. Kant describes a mania for possession, in which money, originally only valuable as a means, becomes valued as an end in itself, to the point of 'renounc[ing] any use of it'
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(A 274). This mania is a kind of perversion of the technical predisposition, where something that is objectively valuable only insofar as it advances our ends or expands our range of choices becomes an end which limits or excludes all others. Similarly, the manias for honor and domination are both desires to have some kind of control over the attitudes and choices of others, a kind of perversion of the pragmatic disposition. The mania for domination arises from an original desire that none gain power over us, and degenerates into a desire to have power over others, for its own sake. This mania defeats the purpose characteristic of the original pragmatic predisposition, for instead of seeking those relations that allow us to influence and cooperate with others, the mania for domination makes such cooperation impossible: "it is imprudent because it arouses their opposition" (A 273). The mania for honor is only interested in a good reputation regardless of one's own real merit "where semblance suffices"(A 272). I(ant calls this mania for honor a kind of pride, which is "a miscarried desire for honor which thwarts its own end." (A 273). I(ant claims that the proud person demands that others "belittle themselves in comparison with him." This desire is self-defeating, presumably because insofar as others are so debased, their respect and esteem nlust cease to have value for the proud person. These manias for honor and donlination correspond to the vices of culture, and represent a similar perversion of our concern for how we stand vis a vis other people. In the Anthropology, Kant discusses a mania that does not have an explicit analogue in the vices described in the Religion, although this mania does appear in the Metaphysics of Morals: "the desire for vengeance."(A 270-271, also MM 6:460-461). The mania of vengeance is parasitic on the moral predisposition: in particular, our understanding of justice, of our strict duties to each other: "malicious as this passion is, maxims of reason are nevertheless entwined with the inclination by virtue of the legitimate appetite for justice, whose analogue it is."(A 270). Vengeance depends on the originally moral idea that someone who has wronged us thereby deserves to be wronged himself: Every deed that violates a human being's right deserves punishment, the function of which is to avenge a crime on the one who committed it (not nlerely to Inake good the harm that was done). (MM 6:460)
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This moral idea becomes perverted when it becomes twisted into a form of self-love; when we think that someone deserves to suffer not because they violated the law (with respect to me), but simply because they harmed me. In vengeance, I take another to deserve to suffer because they have caused me displeasure, rather than because they have violated my right: "it is the sensuous impulse of hatred, hatred not for injustice but for the man who wronged us."(A 271). This passion thus distorts the logic of justice and desert, the very logic upon which it depends. Vengeance not only pretends to set up a kind of desert distinct from the moral, but can actually sets itself against what morality and justice require. The desire for vengeance: transforms the appetite for justice against the offender into the passion for retaliation-a passion that is often vehement to the point of madness, leading a man to expose himself to ruin if only his enemy does not escape it, and (in blood vengeance) making this hatred hereditary even between tribes, because, it is said, the blood of someone inj ured but not yet revenged cries out until the blood that was innocently shed is washed away by blood, even that of an innocent descendent. (A 271).
Although the mania for vengeance is derivative of the moral predisposition, it can press for the most unjust actions, meting out suffering without any regard to anything like the real guilt or innocence of those receiving it. The passion for vengeance, and the resentment that characterizes it, constitutes a diabolical vice. In the Metaphysics of Morals Kant classes vengeance, as a species of "nlalice," along with the diabolical vices of envy and ingratitude under the general heading of "the vices of hatred for human beings" (MM 6:458-461) l..ike envy, such vindictiveness rests upon an incoherently personalized understanding of desert. Since these vices trade on the logic of morality, they are perhaps the most dangerous, the most like to engender further corruption within us. Resentment and envy may be sufficiently close to morality that they may distort and "hijack" our central moral notions. These passions have a kind of seductiveness that the bestial vices do not have; they make the same sort of legislative claims that morality does, and hence can appear to be in direct competition with moral interest. Vengeance, envy, and their ilk are especially dangerous (or "abominable") because, like morality, they serve to determine a kind of Weltanschauung, a
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comprehensive outlook on the world that has not divorced itself from the conception of the self as a potential object of desert and responsibility. While this diabolical Weltanshauung is ultimately incoherent, when we enter into it, we may lose a clear grasp on the relevant concepts that would allow us to recognize that incoherence. The diabolical vices are thus self-masking, progressively eroding the conceptual capacities we would need to see them for the distortions they are. Each vice or mania is a kind of presentiment of wickedness, a model, in miniature, of that overall disposition in which the entire proper order of rational incentives is inverted. In wickedness, the maxim of self-love is given precedence over the moral maxim; in the vices, some subjective state with is logically derivative of an objectively valid interest is taken to be independent and superior to that original interest. The vices all involve what I(ant calls the "illusion" of "mistaking a subjective element in the grounds of action for something objective."(A 274)5. The manias for honor, dominance and possession involve the more specific "delusion" [Wahnes], of taking "the mere opinion of others about the value of things as equivalent to their real value."(A 270). These vices represent corruptions of various sorts of empirically-conditioned practical reason which are nevertheless immoral. 6 In the worst vices of culture, we also see corruptions involving central moral concepts, which become confounded with the sense of self appropriate only to the predisposition of humanity. Vindictiveness, like envy, involves treating one's own suffering as the basis of something like an objective, law-like claim that another should suffer. The vindictive demand what will bring them the satisfaction characteristic of just punishment, while ignoring any question of what if any rights have been violated or who is thereby entitled to punish (and to what extent). In vindictiveness, my own condition, my 5. However, this is also pretty much the definition that I(ant gives for selflove in general in the second Critique (CPr R 5: 74). !(ant does not, in general, consider all fonns of self-love to be illusions, though only a creature that harbors self-love can be susceptible to any sort of illusion of this type. 6. Unlike such mere practical shortcomings as stupidity, unimaginativeness, and clumsiness. These traits account for mistake and errOl; but they do not impugn the basic rational order that identifies such acts as mistakes in the first place. Such prosaic failings do not threaten to distort or destroy the basic principles through human beings become intelligible to themselves as human beings.
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hurt, pretends to provide grounds for a demand for punishment, without any mediation of any general principles of justice or right. I invoke the inherently juridical concept of desert, but without conceiving of myself as a juridical subject, defined as a nexus of rights, obligations, and responsibilities. I make a claim only on the basis of an injury to my happiness or to my pride; not because of a violation of what persons as such owe each other, as a matter of law. The self-love that is properly limited by morality now poses as its ground, treating as a ground of right our otherwise blameless special concern for our own happiness and honor. Such a vice is "diabolical" in that it usurps the proper prerogative of God, while ignoring the moral considerations that are properly the grounds of His authority: But punishment is not an act that the injured party can undertake on his private authority but rather an act of a court distinct from him, which gives effect to the law of a supreme authority over all those subject to it; and when (as we must in ethics) we regard human beings as in a rightful condition but in accordance only with laws of reason (not civil law), then no one is authorized to inflict punishment and to avenge the wrong sustained by them except him who is also the supreme moral lawgiver; and he alone (nalnely God) can say "Vengeance is mine; I will repay."(MM 6:460)
The vices all involve an ultimately incoherent inversion of some set of moral-psychological concepts that is essential to human self-understanding. To this extent these vices are all miniature versions of the wicked disposition, where such a conceptual inversion overtakes our entire way of understanding ourselves. The individual vices need not be more than local confusions; they generate specific sorts of temptations that can compete with the healthy features of our predispositions in particular cases. In wickedness, however, we invert the broader perspective that allows us to recognize these temptations as temptations, and instead see such distortions as objectively valid, taking them as the essential features of each predisposition from which they were derived. We can expect the wicked will to understand its own body bestially, as only a source of sensual gratification, the more the better. The wicked person shall understand its relations to others only in terms of competition for power and esteem, seeking dominance over others' actions and opinions. Vanity will be its ruling passion, and
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equality will be only derivatively valuable, as a faute mieux of avoiding inferiority. And although the wicked shall think in terms of desert (as Kant thinks any rational agent must), the wicked shall typically be envious, resentful and vindictive, holding their own satisfaction with their affective condition or sense of themselves to legislate to others is a quasi-moral (we might say moralistic) way. This distortion of morality will replace real moral interest in their deliberations, and in their sense of themselves. The wicked person will not be heteronomous (like animals), but instead will realize a perverted autonomy, a kind of anti-autonomy. Such a person still manifests an analogue of autonomy, because even for the wicked the self is still ultimately legislative, the ultimate ground of the interests it recognizes. However, unlike the good will, the self that is the ground of reasons for the wicked is only the individual or personal self and its particular empirical condition. In the good (properly autonomous) will, it is not my particular self that is legislative, but rather than the logical structure of agency itself, which is what makes it possible for me to have an individual self, a particular identity. The wicked disposition replaces the intelligible self, which can never be reduced to any of its phenomenal aspects, to that individual, empirical self, in all its particularity. That which is derivative (my individual character) is placed above and against what is original (my intelligible character). The wicked take the predisposition to personality to be about "personality" in its ordinary sense, as that which distinguishes each of us from others and which we may particularly prize in ourselves. This sense of personality displaces its proper logical sense, the idea of oneself as an accountable and potentially culpable subject-an idea that seeks not to distinguish, but to unite, all mature rational agents. If we follow I(ant in seeing religion as a matter of regarding morality as divine command, then the characteristic religion of the wicked would be a kind of idolatry of one's particular self, an ultimately incoherent, and self-destroying, kind of narcissism.
7. The Root of All Evil The above discussion of our predispositions, and their relation to vice, describes the kind of confusions that can come to compete with our moral commitments, and how such confusions exploit essential aspects of human self-understanding. This account does not, however, by itself provide a complete picture of the radical evil in human nature. Such an account needs not only to describe the sorts of corrupting illusions to which we are prone, but also why
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we are liable to such confusions in the first place, and how they can lead us, despite our original moral predisposition, to adopt a wicked disposition. As I have argued, the predisposition to personality is logically prior to the both humanity and animality; as such, any rational agent, by virtue of her rationality, must possess that self-conception that assigns self-love, in all its various fortTIs, its proper place subordinate to morality. The immanent logic of practical self-consciousness itself militates against the misunderstandings characteristic of vice, and the mere fact that we have a sensible nature does not in itself oppose this logic. Why then are we prone to the illusions that characterize vice, and to such a degree that we can lose our moral bearings to the point that we may be willing to give up our intelligible character for one that is ultimately incoherent?7 How can we opt to become opaque to ourselves-? I(ant never offers a very clear answer to this final question about the radical evil in human nature. However, he does give us an occasional hint. In On Education, Kant suggests that we are prone to vice because our humanity ( or "culture") distorts or damages our animality ("nature"), and this such distortions are nevertheless necessary for us to develop out of such animality into our moral personality: Vices, for the most part, arise in this way, that civilization does violence to Nature; and yet our destiny as human beings is to emerge from our natural state as anitnals. Perfect art becomes second nature. (Education, § 103).
In "Conjectural Beginning of Human History," I(ant tells a kind of story of the development of human reason from animality to personality, a story in which we cannot avoid a fall into evil. The free use of reason is something that, for I(ant, necessarily starts out from a kind of confused or distorted state: Before reason awoke, there was a yet neither commandment nor prohibition and hence also no violation of either. But when reason began to set about its business, it came, in all its pristine weakness, into conflict with anitnality, with all its power. In7. As I(ant points out in A 329, evil has no coherent teleology of its own: "evil is really without character (since it involves conflict with itself and does not permit any permanent. principle within itself."
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evitably evils sprang up, and (which is worse) along with the cultivation of reason also vice, such as had been wholly alien to the state of ignorance and innocence. Morally~ the first step fron1 this
latter state was therefore a fall; physically, it was a punish1nent....
The history of nature therefore begins with good, for it is the work of God, while the history of freedom begins with wickedness, for it is the work of man. (CB 115, p.60 in Beck, my emphasis). I(ant nlakes a similar suggestion in his published lectures on philosophical theology, when he considers how a perfect God could have created such morally flawed beings as ourselves. Although our predispositions each define an aspect of human perfection, we are nevertheless creatures who must work for and develop our perfections out of less sophisticated stages. We are creatures that must undergo a series of self-transformations (or "self-overcomings") in order to become what we essentially are: [O]ne must note that among the many creatures, the human being is the only one who has to work for his perfections and for the goodness of his character, producing them from within himself....Thus created, the human being was certainly perfect both in his nature and regarding his predispositions. But regarding their education, he was still uncultivated ....To begin his cultivation, he must step forth out of his uncultivated state and free himself from his instincts. But what then will be his lot? Only false steps and foolishness. Yet who but the hUlnan being is responsible for them? (LP 28:1078).
Kant is perhaps clearest on this score in the Anthropology, where he links our potential for evil to the way that, in a human creature, the teleology of nature and the immanent teleology of rational agency can come apart. I(ant here tells us that: nature within Inan tries to lead him from culture to morality and not (as reason prescribes) from morality and its law, as the starting point, to a culture designed to conform with morality. And this course inevitably perverts his tendency and turns it against its end... (A 328, I(ant's emphasis).
I take Kant's point in these passages to be that while all our predispositions orient us toward goodness when considered individually (i.e., each one by itself), it is the order and manner in
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which those predispositions must develop in us that makes a fall into evil possible. Wickedness is necessarily a possibility for human beings because we do not come into our morally salutary self-conceptions simultaneously, nor do we begin with a complete sense of our personality, and through this moral personality come to understand our humanity and our animality. Instead, we are creatures that begin as something less than animals (an infant's instincts and abilities are too fragmentary and limited for it to sustain itself) but and from this point must move through our predispositions as an ascending series. We do not begin with our predisposition to personality fully realized, but only reach this selfunderstanding through a long struggle through the level of humanity, the level of "culture." The problem then, is not simply that we have a sensible nature in addition to our intelligible vocation, that there are non-rational aspects of our motives and conception of ourselves. Rather, our problems result from the fact that we must develop out intelligible character out of such a merely empirical character, and can effect this development with only the tools we ourselves have crafted. Since we must fashion these conceptual tools ourselves, out of the very material we need them to shape, such tools will never quite be up to the task for which they are needed. Only once we have completed that task will we have the right tools and understanding of how to use them; our predicament is that we would have to already finished our labor on ourselves if we are to be able to begin going about it properly in the first place. Consider the developmental parable that I(ant constructs from the book of Genesis in "Conjectural Beginning of Human History" (an essay which appears to be largely a reply to Rousseau's second Discourse ). The story Kant here tells seems to apply to both the development of individual human beings, and to history of the species as well: the account concerns both our ontogeny and phylogeny. I(ant portrays us as beginning in our natural innocence, as creatures guided only by impulse and inclination, listening only to "that voice of God which is obeyed by all animals." (CB 111). The picture here is of a creature in which only its predisposition to animality is realized; as heteronomous infants our empirical character manifests only this one dimension of our intelligible character (the phylogenetic analogue to this state must belong to the evolutionary prehistory of humankind, to be found most likely in some sort of early hominid). While as infants our basic impulses are indeed directed (however imprecisely) toward some good, we cannot
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yet reflect upon or grasp this good, for we are not yet capable of reason. Our good qua animal is one that can only be attributed to us, rather than being sonlething we can explicitly recognize. This good informs the way we see the world (in the scheme of impulses we experience), but not how we see ourselves; for there is not yet a practical self there to be seen. In "Conjectural Beginning," !(ant claims that we begin to develop our own reason as our animality gives way to our humanity, through the promptings of what !(ant calls our impulse for "community with other men." I(ant does not say much about what this inlpulse comprises, but I suspect it should include all the capacities that make us capable of learning and using language. 8 However this initiation into language comes about, it is accompanied by the natural emergence of a social conception of the self and the capacity for some degree of reflection, and with such reflection reason itself becomes possible. At this point, we can begin to set ourselves non-natural ends (and even burden ourselves with what Kant calls "artificial needs"). This capacity only emerges arduously from animality, and is not initially fully distinguished from our natural life of inclinations and affects. Although we can now set ourselves explicit ends, we still tend to take the content from those ends to be provided by our animality. The pleasure that was before only coincident upon the satisfaction of natural need becomes elevated into something to be desired for its own sake. In the tortuous transition from animality to humanity, we must pass through an intermediary stage of the vices of nature, where a human conception of the self has not yet been fully distinguished from its animal substrate: But reason has this peculiarity that, aided by the imagination, it can create artificial desires which are not only unsupported by natural instinct but actually contrary to it. These desires, in the beginning called concupiscence, gradually generate a whole host of unnecessary and indeed unnatural inclinations called luxuriousness. The original occasion for deserting natural instinct may have been trifling. But this was man's first attempt to become conscious of his reason as a power which can extend itself beyond the limits to which all animals are confined. (CB 111-2) 8. Most likely certain quasi-erotic considerations should also come into play here, along the lines of Rousseau's account of the "southern languages" in his Essay on the Origin of Language. I(ant does not himself delve into this topic.
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Our humanity emerges from this transitory state, and comes into its own, when we draw our ends not from natural promptings, but fronl the esteem and admiration of others. A human community now legislates for us, rather than nature. With the emergence of such notions of merit and beauty, (of that which generally finds approval in the sight of others) comes a concern for honor. In the love of honor humanity both completes and begins to overcome itself, anticipating our initiation into personality: In addition, there caIne a first hint of the developlnent of lnan as a moral creature. This came from the sense of decency [Sittsan1keit ], which is an inclination to inspire other to respect by proper Inanners, i.e., by concealing all that which might arouse low esteem. Here, incidentally, lies the real basis of all true sociability [Geselligkeit ]. (CB 113, my emphasis).
Humanity begins to shade into personality when we do not merely desire the esteem of others, but come to demand it as something owed us as human beings. Esteem is thus becoming transformed into respect. As before, however, this transformation is arduous, and proceeds through a variety of confused intermediary forms, through our inevitable "false steps and foolishness." The vices of nature arose when, as we began to grasp the concept of an end we could set ourselves, we tried to derive the content of that end from our previous self-understanding, from nature. The vices of culture emerge when although we begin to have a notion of something like respect and duty-an idea of that which is owed to persons generally, we still try to derive the content of such demands from culture, from what distinguishes human beings from one another (e.g., talent, beauty, birth or rank.) What were the proper grounds of esteenl are thus annealed to what are essentially moral claims. The vices of culture shade into the vices of the hatred of humankind once we start to make these quasi-moral demands, without having adopted the conception of the self characteristic of morality. Such confusions begin in jealousy and rivalry; and at their extreme can beget the "loathsome family" of envy, resentment, and vindictiveness. In his account of humanity, I(ant seems to be describing human childhood. The child, in emerging from its merely instinctive life, comes to live in the opinions of others (typically, its parents, teachers, and peers). Although we are educating our children to morality, to conceive of themselves as responsible subjects
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bound immediately to the law (and obligated only mediately to others), this teaching first realizes itself in the child's sense of herself in its partial forms. The child does not first manifest a well-defined sense of duty, but rather the motives of pride and shame, the desire to be approved of by some particular others. Children learn to recognize the authority of moral law by first recognizing the authority of particular people they care about, in terms of the power and the approval of their parents and teachers. Not surprisingly, jealousy and rivalry are characteristic of young (and sometime notso-young) siblings, who are children locked in competition for the same sources of approval. As children mature, such passions start to express themselves in terms of moral demands, in confused claims of rights. The child makes what sound like moral demands, without recognizing (or at least without fully recognizing) his own obligations and responsibilities, without having taken up a moral conception of himself. This stage, characterized by envy and resentment, is familiar to us as adolescence, the final transition from the "tutelage" of our own reason to n10ral maturity. Claims of rights (e.g., privacy) typically start to be voiced here, along with demands that one's autonomy be recognized, but without manifesting the fully responsible perspective of a truly autonomous being. Ingratitude and resentment are familiar feature of such adolescence; envy and malice are unfortuna tely often not far behind. We can expect all these developments to have their own analogues in human history. Something like the rule of pride and shame seems to characterize many pre-modern societies, at least as typically interpreted by philosophy. Heroic societies such as Homeric Greece, and, in I(ant's eyes, those of Native Americans/ are characterized by a fierce concern over honor and reputation, particularly with regard to the esteem of one's own class. According to I(ant's taxonomy, such societies manifest the empirical character of a child: value is grounded in the opinion of some particular others with whom we are intimate, rather than some abstract standard independent of any community in particular. We are concerned only with our local gods, and what evokes their admiration or contempt. Although I(ant makes no such claim, we might take humanity (at least in the West) to move into a kind of cultural adolescence with the emergence of universalistic monotheism, and a concep9. see R 6:33, p. 80n.
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tion of morality as divine law. Early manifestations of this change can be found in Judaism, and in later Greek thought of Plato and the Stoics. We might expect I(ant to see such adolescence coming to full flower with the convergence and transformation of both these cultures in Christianity, in which the universalistic strains reach perhaps their highest pitch. While Christianity would thus represent a higher stage of Western culture, as one on the cusp of true moral personality, we should also expect it to beset by our highest vices (Hegel and Nietzsche can both be right). Insofar as Christianity represents a cultural transition form humanity to personality, it should, like ordinary adolescence, provide a breeding ground for the vices characteristic of incomplete or confused moral concepts. We should expect envy, resentment, and vindictiveness to be endenlic to the Christian perspective; certainly a controversial claim but, since Nietzsche, not an utterly implausible one. We fully realize our personality when we demand the respect of others not in virtue of any special qualities that distinguish us from others, but when we make that claim only as persons, and hence conlmit ourselves to respecting other persons equally on this basis. In "Conjectural Beginnings," I(ant tells us that we emerge from the "womb of nature" into the realm of freedom once we have entered into a relation of equality with all rational beings, whatever their rank (3:22), with respect to the claim of being an end in himself, respected as such by everyone, a being which no one might treat as a mere means to ulterior ends.( CB 114).
At this point, we now understand ourselves not just as creatures that can demand respect for their own rights from others, but as fundamentally obligated to those others, as an essential aspect of what it is to be a rights-holder. Historically, this stage corresponds to the emergence in Christendom of ideas of freedom, equality, and human rights, taken as the common inheritance of hUlnan reason. Moral maturity would then come with the Enlightenment, which what Kant defines as "the human being's emergence from his self-incurred ll1inority."(WE 8:35). Our radical evil does turn out to involve features of our sensible nature, but it is not a direct consequence of that we have a sensible nature, that we can experience inclinations that have non-rational affective aspects. The root of our evil lies instead in the fact that our empirical character undergoes a process of tem-
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poral development, in which our predispositions emerge from one another only through our own labor on ourselves: "A special germ toward evil cannot be thought, but rather the first development of our reason toward the good is the origin of evil." (LP 28:1078, I
soon as he begins to exercise his freedom~ and which can therefore be considered innate.[my emphasis] And so we must judge that man, according to his sensible character, is also evil (by nature). It is not self contradictory to do this if we are talking about the character of the species; for we can assume that its natural destiny consists in continual progress toward the better. (A 324, I
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While morality is first in the logical order of concepts, it is last in the order of our conceptual development. This divergence between the natural teleology of our empirical character and the conceptual teleology of our intelligible character provides the opening for vice and wickedness to insinuate itself into our wills. Even though there is something unintelligible about every form of evil, each such form constitutes a "default condition" for our will: "however steadfastly a human being may have persevered...he nevertheless started from evil" (R 6:72). Reason always begins in its characteristically inverted (or perverted) form, and then struggles to achieve the type of coherence that is immanent in it all along. We must always start out from some sort of evil. Morality is a kind of clarity about oneself that we achieve only through a struggle with ourselves and our own confusions. As !(ant says, we must "abuse reason in the very first use of reason" (CB 123). Although "Man was meant to rise by his own labor above the crudeness of his natural dispositions:" [H]e can expect to acquire the skill for this only at a late date and after many abortive attempts. In the meantime, mankind groans under the burden of evils which, in its inexperience, it inflicts on itself."(CB 118n.).
On the picture I have sketched, wickedness first becomes possible as a kind of arrested development. This sort of wickedness involves a failure to completely emerge from some transitory state, in which we remain mired in the vices of nature or the vices of culture. Because such an individual has never achieved the self-understanding characteristic of personality, we may not be able to hold such people fully responsible for their wrongdoings. For !(ant, however, wickedness needn't be just a kind of incomplete development. Kant believes it is possible, even having attained personality, to fall back into evil. We are responsible for such relapses because, in contrast to the case of arrested development, such lapses result from the will of a fully developed and hence accountable person: "As soon as the human being recognizes his obligation to the good and yet does evil, then he is worthy of punishment, because he could have overcome his instincts. (LP 28:1079). Kant does not give a clear account of how we might fall back into wickedness, but it is not difficult to construct one from the materials he has provided. Because of the way we empirically de-
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velop our predispositions, every good human being must be familiar with the various forms of vice. Every morally mature human being, insofar as they have realized their moral personality, must have already moved through and overcome the vices of nature and culture (presun1ably, with a great deal of outside help). If so, then we might well be expect to retain a trace of these overcome stages, a memory of what it is like to see the world through lust, or pride, or envy. While our self-transfornlations may be complete enough to inaugurate a new idea of ourselves (and thus make us responsible persons), these transformations may never be so complete as to remove every last trace of these vices. As a result, we remain open to such vices; having tasted of them once, they remain a permanent sort of temptation. We know what it is like to see the world through pride or envy, and what it is like to so understand ourselves. Having once fallen prey to the illusion of self-intelligibility that wickedness presents, it is all the easier to adopt this false perspective again. We know our way about the world of the wicked. On this picture, vice constitutes a sort of atavism, a throwback to an earlier stage of development which we have overcome, but not entirely forgotten. When I(ant introduces the propensity to evil, one definition he gives of a propensity is as "only the predisposition to desire an enjoyment which, when subject has experienced it, arouses inclination to it."(R 6:29n.). Because our reason can only emerge from various kind of passion, we retain a kind of standing susceptibility to such passion, which awaits the right provocation or temptation. We thus stand toward vice in lTIuch the same way that a recovering alcoholic stands toward liquor, with the difference that for creatures like us, the initial addiction is not only unavoidable, but necessary for health. tO A relapse into wickedness may press upon us when the various forms of vice come together to such an extent that they seem to offer us a new way of understanding our humanity as a whole. In the vices of nature, we invert the conceptual structure of the predisposition to animality; in the vices of culture, we invert the predisposition to humanity. The diabolical vices even suggest a way of inverting our understanding of morality and justice, trading on the centrality of such moral concepts of desert and retribution. Each 10. !(ant continues in the footnote above "Thus all savages have a propensity for intoxicants; for although many of them have no acquaintance at all with intoxication.. .let them try these things but once, and there is aroused in them an almost inextinguishable desire for them. "(R 6:33, p.80n.)
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such inversion succeeds in placing a kind of self-love over the ideal from which it originated; brought together, this array of temptations may present us an integrated, self-reinforcing way of misconceiving humanity altogether. Each vice, by showing us a way to reorient an aspect of our proper self-understanding, may lead us to a kind of "gestalt-shift" of our disposition as a whole (as we might come to see the duck as a rabbit by someone asking us to see the beak as ears, the back of the head as the mouth, etc. Point our enough such specific reinterpretations, and the whole image may reorient itself). This alternative presented by wickedness is not in itself coherent-I(ant tells us that "evil is really without character (since it involves conflict with itself and does not pertuit any permanent principle within itself)" .(A 329), and that "Evil has no special germ; for it is mere negation and consists only in the limitation of the good" (LP 28:1078). Evil represents only a privation of the distinctive kinds of self-intelligibility determined by our predispositions. However, once all the vices are actively in play, we may no longer possess the conceptual resources to recognize the incoherence of evil: we may be unable appreciate that privation as a privation. When none of our predispositions are left intact in our thinking, we nlay no longer have a sense of what a really coherent sort self-understanding would look like. Our reflection would then become conlpromised to the point that wickedness looks like an alternative kind of intelligible character, as a different and perhaps higher way of conceiving of oneself as 'beyond good and evil."l1 This temptation to self-misunderstanding may well be inextirpable. Insofar as we are open to the passions generally, we may have to be open to the overall temptation they present, when allied together, to elevate one's individual sense of self over the principles that make any such sense possible in the first place. We would thus have a standing temptation to deceive or confuse ourselves, a temptation that can only be guarded against by continual critical self-scrutiny. The dialectic of our self-development (in the Hegelian sense) would then make it the case that we always stand in need of practical Dialectic (in the Kantian sense).
11. This may provide the beginnings of a J
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8. The Religion and Emile Kant's account of radical evil represents a profound reassessment of one of his seminal influences, the theory of moral development that Rousseau presents in Emile. 12 In Emile, Rousseau paints a picture of the proper education of a man (Sophie is to receive very different instruction), meant to allow him to con1e into his natural health and his moral reason, avoiding the vices that social life normally engenders. Like I(ant, Rousseau sees the development of rational autonomy as a process by which a human being is brought from understanding himself in terms of one sort necessity (that of our instincts and the laws of nature) into another, the rational necessities of morality. Like I(ant, Rousseau sees the possibilities of vice emerging in the transitory stages between our animality and our moral personality, in the development of the passions in response to the provocations of human culture. For Rousseau, like I(ant, we abandon the simple integrity of nature when we are initiated into the realm of culture. We thereby sacrifice our natural simplicity before we are able to grasp the new integrity characteristic of moral autonomy, and set metaphysically adrift, only able to conceive of ourselves, to live, "in the eyes of others." Where !(ant fundamentally differs from Rousseau is in how we should respond to dangers characteristic of this transition from animality to personality. For Rousseau, the key to a sound moral education is to let our natural predispositions develop at their own pace and in their own way. We should let each predisposition fully realize itself before introducing new concepts and ways of understanding oneself: "Their defects of body and of mind ahnost all come from the same cause: one wants to makes them men before it is time." (p.126). Culture corrupts us because in it we try to anticipate the teleology of our own development. We force new"\ideas onto a mind not yet ready to receive theIn, and the ensuing confusions make a child both unable to return to his natural simplicity, or ever to progress to a ll1ature moral self-conception. Rousseau argues that nature herself will bring us to our autonolny in its own good time, so long as we do not attempt to hurry it along with our supposedly greater understanding:
12. All references are to: Emile, or On Education, New -York: Basic Books, 1979. The importance of this work for !(ant is hard to overstate. Supposedly, !(ant only failed to take his notorious afternoon constitutional when he first received the Gennan translation of Emile.
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Nature's instruction is late and slow; n1en's is almost always premature. In the former case the senses wake' the imagination; in the latter the imagination wakes the senses; it gives them a precocious activity which cannot fail to enervate and weaken individuals first and in the long run the species itself. (215)
For Rousseau, the most important task for moral education is to do no harm, in particular, to keep moral concerns and indeed any ideas of desert or merit away froITl the child as long as possible. The only necessities that the child should encounter are physical ones; the hard limitations of material nature, rather than the laws by which one might hope to justify oneself to others: I have already said that your child ought to get a thing not because he asks for it but because he needs it, and do a thing not out of obedience but only out of necessity. Thus the words obey and com111and will be proscribed from his lexicon, and even more so duty and obligation. But strength, necessity, i1npotence, and constraint should playa great role in it.... Arrange it so that as long as he is struck only by objects of sense, all his ideas stop at sensation; arrange it so that on all sides he perceive around him only the physical world. (89)
It is enough if one take pains to ensure that these notions [of morality] become necessary to him as late as possible and, when their presentation is unavoidable, to limit them to immediate utility... (97) Use force with children, and reason with n1en. Such is the natural order. The wise man does not need laws. (91)
For Rousseau, the educator is only to be a "minister of nature,"(317) whose most important task is to make his pupil a slow learner, allowing the natural seed of virtue to develop with hindrance or cultural contamination. Subjected to only the necessities of nature, the child's n1ind will eventually become practically rational and reflective on its own accord, needing only the slightest prompting from the tutor to take up its moral identity. Uncontaminated by any ideas of obligation or desert, the first practical concepts that emerge from the child's animality will be only those of the useful and the harmful; such a child will know nothing about honor or shame. Without contamination from moral notions that
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make us worry about the gaze of others, Emile cannot develop the diseased amour-propre that Rousseau sees as the seed of all vice. Cast in Kant's terms, Rousseau's position is that the logical order of our predispositions coincides with its developmental order; that our empirical character clearly reflects and manifests our intelligible character. Animality does not merely precede humanity and personality in time; rather, the earlier predispositions each conceptually "include" the later ones; the later perspectives are logical (and natural) outgrowths of the one that preceded it. No outside ideas or pressure need be brought to each predisposition to effect its transformation; the task of the educator is just to let nature do its work, to let the germ of autonomy, complete in posse, fully unfold: Do you wish to put order and regularity in the nascent passions? Extend the period during which they develop in order that they have the time to be arranged as they are born. Then it is not man who orders them; it is nature itself. Your care is only to let it arrange its work. If your pupil were alone, you would have nothing to do. (219)
Rousseau's philosophical anthropology is here deeply optimistic. Not only does Rousseau deny that anything like a propensity to evil is essential to humanity; he also denies that such evil is even a necessary concomitant of human nature. For Rousseau, human vice is thoroughly contingent, becoming possible only through bad educational and social institutions that could be dispensed with entirely. Such reforms would no doubt be quite radical, and shade for Rousseau into the political projects he outlines in On the Social Contract. Nevertheless, for Rousseau there is no bar, in principle, to our extirpating our propensity to evil altogether. Nature has formed us for health, both physical and moral; we need only remove the impediments that come from our thinking ourselves wiser than nature within us. Although Kant seems largely to agree with Rousseau about the grounds of our propensity to evil, he does not share Rousseau's optimism about the possibility of eradicating it. Like Rousseau, !(ant believes that vice, and indeed a complete inversion of our moral disposition, can emerge when the concepts characteristic of the higher predispositions contaminate and deform those of the lower. However, unlike Rousseau !(ant does not believe we can avoid this kind of anticipation or the deleterious passions it produces. !(ant
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does not believe our autonomy is already "pre-formed" within us as natural beings, or that it will be brought to fruition through a natural process of development that does not need to have anything forced onto it fronl its later stages. Autonomy is the work of nature within us for Rousseau: for I(ant, it is an achievement we work upon ourselves, the work of freedom upon itself: All we have left, then, for assigning man his class in the system of animate nature and so characterizing hilTI is this: that he has a character which he himself creates, insofar as he is capable of perfecting himself according to ends that he himself adopts. Because of this, man, as an animal endowed with the capacity for reason (anhnal rationabilis) can make of himself a rational anin1al (anin1al rationale} ...(A 321). The human being must make of have made himself into whatever he is or should become in a moral sense, good or evil. (R 6:44). The sum total of what pragmatic anthropology has to say about man's destiny and the character of his development is this: man is destined by his reason to live in a society with men and in it to cultivate himself, to civilize himself, and to make himself moral by the arts and sciences.... Man must, therefore, be educated to the good. But those who are supposed to educate him are again men who are themselves still involved in the crudity of nature and are supposed to bring about what they thelTIselves are in need of. This explains why man is constantly deviating from his destiny and always returning to it. (A 325 Kant's emphasis.) 13
For !(ant, if we were to allow a human being to develop her predispositions without imposing or anticipating any of the new concepts to come, that person would never emerge from animality at all. If we are to realize our true (moral) nature, we must first do violence to nature within us, entering our higher dispositions only through the vehicle of the vices. This is why for Kant our moral 13. Cf. On Education: "But is man by nature morally good or bad? He is neither, for he is not by nature a moral being. He only becomes a moral being when his reason has developed ideas of duty and law." (E §102.) and the Anthropology: the first characteristic of the human species is man's power, as a rational being, to acquire character as such for his own person as well as for the society in which nature has placed him.(A 329)
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development can only ever be a progression from bad to better states, a perpetual recovery from a perpetual state of fallenness. The distortions that Rousseau takes to be consequences of unnecessary social practices are, for I(ant, absolutely indispensable if we are to transform ourselves into fully rational creatures. The natural simplicity and integrity prized by Rousseau is for Kant static and inert; it is education's first task is not to preserve and prolong this state, but to rudely tear us from it. The difference between the perspectives of Rousseau and !(ant becomes evident in the different attitude each takes toward the love of honor. Rousseau considers this passion (and the consequent fear of shame) to be an unequivocally bad thing; Emile's education will introduce practical reasoning, when the time comes, only in terms of what is useful or harmful, as a natural extension of the physical necessities with which Emile is already familiar. Kant, however, is much more ambivalent about the love of honor. !(ant recognizes that this passion typically makes us subservient to the opinions of others, generating the competition for esteem that is breeding ground of jealousy, envy, and resentment. Nevertheless, I(ant also sees love of honor as a presentiment of morality. He declares that there is, even in its worst nlanifestations, something "sublime" about this passion (R 6:33n.), and even calls love of honor "the constant companion of virtue."(A 257, see also MM 236). Rousseau believes it possible to by-pass this passion altogether, and does not think we would lose anything valuable in so doing. For I(ant, however, it is precisely what makes love of honor such a dangerous passion that gives it unique potential to transform us into moral beings. Since it is through adopting and overcoming the love of honor that we begin to establish a moral disposition, whether we become good or evil largely depends on how we work through this stage. For Kant, this transition cannot be avoided if we are to become autonomous agents; the vice of this passion is inseparable from its essential virtue. Unlike Rousseau, Kant thinks that we must press moral notions onto children before they are able to understand or use them. If we waited for children to be ready for this stage, they never would be. Rousseau tells us that "If I had to depict sorry stupidity, I would depict a pedant teaching the catechism to children. If I wanted to make a child go mad, I would oblige him to explain what he says in saying his catechism." (257). Although Rousseau is speaking here of a specifically religious catechism, his objection seems to apply as well to moral notions, which Rousseau also to
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be as inappropriate to foist onto children as religious ones. Yet despite Rousseau's mockery of such pedants, !(ant claims that such a "catechism of right conduct" is something greatly neglected in the schools (E §97), and even goes on to sketch one for us in the Metaphysics of Morals (MM 6:479-484" see also CPrR 5:154-5; E §76). (Unfortunately, Kant does seem to largely confirm Rousseau's point here.) For Kant, we must thrust moral ideas onto a child (or thrust a child into these ideas) before the moral predisposition has developed, because such an anticipation is the only way that such development can occur at all. Moral instruction must always seem premature, if it to be able to do any good. In the Religion !(ant remarks: I admit that I am not comfortable with this way of speaking, which even clever men are wont to use: "A certain people (intent on establishing civil freedom) is not ripe for freedom"; "The bondmen of the landed proprietor are not yet ripe for freedom"; and so too, "People are in general not yet ripe for freedom of belief." For on this assumption freedom will never come, since we cannot ripen to it if we are not already established in it (we must be free in order to be able to make use of our powers purposively in freedoln). To be sure, the first attempts will be crude...yet we do not ripen to freedom otherwise than through our own attempts... (R 6:188n., my emphasis).
For Kant, the "Fact of Reason" must begin as a deed, as something which is done to us (a Faktum ) before it is something we can recognize as a fact, as a practical truth. As children, we are not fully autonomous, accountable subjects, and cannot truly deserve to suffer for our misdeeds. Nevertheless, in order to make us into accountable subjects, we must be treated as if we already were so. Although children are not juridical subjects, we must hold them accountable to something like law and duty, even if it has to employ the self-contradictory idea of a special duty of children: Even though a child should not be able to see the reason of a duty, it is nevertheless better that certain things should be prescribed to him in this way; for, after all, a child will always be able to see that he has certain duties as a child, while it will be more difficult for him to see that he has certain duties as a
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human being... (E §82)
Similarly, we must punish the child when appropriate, and invoke the juridical language of culpability and desert even though these concepts do not, strictly speaking, apply here: Every transgression of a command in a child is a want of obedience, and this brings punishment with it. Also, should a command be disobeyed through inattention, punishment is still necessary. (E §83) No infringement of school discipline must be allowed to go unpunished, although the punishment nlust always fit the offence."(E §78.)
In these cases, children do not have duties is the full sense of that term, nor can children be judged or punished in the primary sense of such terms (we are after all doing this for the child's own good, not because her wrongdoing really demands it). However, in neither case are we just play-acting. By such initially inappropriate treatment we initiate the child to a set of practices (and a set of concepts) which will ultimately make her into the sort of creature into which they properly apply. By acting as if children were morally responsible, we make them morally responsible. These anticipations of personality can only begin as a kind of metaphysical mismatch between what the child is, and the sort of creature to which these concepts properly apply. Because we must always begin with this kind of incongruity between what we are and how we are treated, such training can only start off by producing crude and distorted approximations of the moral consciousness at which it aims ("false steps and foolishness"). With luck and the right education, the self-understanding engendered by this training will refine itself (through a kind of reflexive self-interrogation) into something ever nlore closely resembling the real thing. Like Rousseau, I(ant recognizes that such forced anticipations of our higher self-conceptions inevitably distort the way we understand ourselves, invariably taking us from the healthy condition provided us by nature into one of initial sickness, as malady that we make for ourselves. 14 However, Kant also 14. Strictly speaking, our natural condition is not all that healthy. The infants' instincts and abilities cannot begin to sustain it; human beings require the development of reason, through culture, in order make up for our lack of adequate instincts. Our animality is not complete without the
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thinks that such a struggle through sickness is necessary for us to gain access to a new kind of health, the moral health that was implicit in the process all along. The human being, unlike other animals, is a creature that can only grow by wounding itself. For Kant, we can realize what is essential to human nature only through a process that is at once both Zucht and Zuchtung-discipline and breeding, simultaneously a shaping of the mind and a technique of the flesh that we work upon ourselves.
The account of radical evil elaborated in this chapter helps, I hope, to make sense of some of I(ant's more puzzling remarks about the subject. By locating the radical evil of human nature in the course of human moral development, we can see how such evil can be both inessential yet universal and subjectively necessary for all human beings. When we talk about the essential qualities of a thing, we consider that thing in its "most complete" state, the state in which its essential characteristics are fully realized. If the thing undergoes some process of development, our understanding of its essential attributes will make reference to its fully developed state, since it is appeal to that state which makes sense of its entire course of development. As an unavoidable part of our mode of development, some quality could turn out to be necessary to each and every individual, yet still be considered inessential, as something that cannot be included in the "concept" of the thing. While it is "subjectively necessary" for each and every human being to have to crawl for a time, this does not mean that humans are quadrupeds (cf. A 322). Although we must go on all fours for a time, this fact cannot be included in the "concept" of our specieswe are essentially bipeds, despite our initial modes of locomotion. IS We can see such a transitory stage as necessary for each and every developments characteristic of humanity and, fundamentally, personality. In this sense we might say it is natural for human beings to be moral, though morality is also the result of our free labors upon ourselves. Our existence may precede our essence, but it is only through that essence that this existence is itself possible. 15. cf. Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, note 3, 84-85 (Hackett): "Since the example of children is taken from an age when natural forces are not yet developed nor the members strengthened, it proves nothing whatever. I might just as well say that dogs are not destined to walk because several weeks after their birth they merely erawI. "
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human, as an inherent part of human becoming, even though it is not essential to what humans become, to what humans really are. To say that radical evil is innate in this sense is only to say that it cannot be understood in terms of the essential qualities of our wills (our predispositions to good), but rather that this vulnerability must be located in those conditions that necessarily precede the emergence of these qualities for creatures like us: This propensity, [to evil] however, means nothing more than this, that if we wish to engage in an explanation of evil with respect to its beginning in time, we must trace the causes of every deliberate transgression in a previous time of our life, all the way back to the time when the use of reason had not yet developed, hence the source of evil back to a propensity (as natural foundation) to evil which is therefore called innate; (R 6:43, p.SS-first emphasis l(ant's, second mine)
If the reading I have offered is correct, then we can see why God is supposed to be free of radical evil without having to having to attribute such evil to the simple fact of such sensibility, which God necessarily lacks. God cannot be vulnerable to any kind of evil, but such immunity is not an immediate consequence of His lack of inclination. Rather, God is holy only because He does not undergo a process of development. God's immunity to evil is only indirectly a result of His lack of sensibility, for such a sensible nature may well be a necessary condition for any process of temporal development, for anything like an empirical character that can come apart from intelligible character. God is without radical evil because He is whole and complete timelessly; lacking a causal history, there is no conceptual space for His intelligible character to diverge from His empirical character, and allow something like passion to insinuate itself. In like manner, the fall of our first parents is incomprehensible for !(ant only because they, in contrast to ourselves, are also supposed to have come into being in their full perfection: [To explain the temporal origin of evil] in the case of the first human being, who is represented with full control of the use of his reason from the beginning, this is neither necessary nor expedient, for otherwise the foundation [of sin] (the evil propensity) would have to be co-created; hence we construe his sin as generated directly from innocence. (R 6:43)
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This sort of explanation is not expedient, because such evil would have to be posited as simply part of Adam's essence, as something that could in no way be interpreted as a result of his own activity. As such, it would lose its quality as evil; it would not longer be something inconsistent with Adam's intelligible nature, but rather an essential aspect of it (Adam would then, however, be sOlnething very different from ourselves-he would cease to count as the first human being). Fortunately, such an explanation is also not necessary for us to undertake, for it would be of no relevance to human morality and moral psychology, since we never begin our lives, like our first parents, in full command of our reason. What would have to be represented as one great Fall for Adam can be understood as just many false steps for mankind.
I have accounted for our vulnerability to moral corruption by reference to a necessary human susceptibility to the passions and to the kinds of self-opacity that such passions can engender. However, this picture is not yet a complete account of evil. So far, this account of radical evil only explains why an essentially good creature like ourselves must nevertheless be vulnerable to such corrosive temptations. The picture does not explain what actually provokes these passions in one individual rather than another. We have yet to treat of the conditions that are needed in order for our potential for vice to become actual, and for such vice to successfully lead us to profound self-misunderstanding that characterizes full-blooded wickedness. For Kant, these questions take us past the purview of pure moral psychology, and into consideration of politics. I(ant holds that the most deleterious passions are those that arise at the level of culture, and can only be addressed through a transformation not only of the individual, but of society. To these positive social preconditions of evil, and the ways in which we might hope to overcome such evil both in our societies and in ourselves, I shall now turn.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Atonement and Autonomy
1. Introduction In the second book of the Religion, I(ant turns from the possibility of human evil to the question of how, given the morallimitations of our nature, we nlight still attempt some kind of moral reconstruction. Book II presents the most extended discussion in Kant's works of repentance, expiation, and grace. Book II is also where the beginnings of a truly I(antian account of forgiveness and mercy starts to emerge from Kant's ethics of obligation and responsibility. Yet despite the importance of forgiveness and redenlption in our own lives, I(ant's discussion of moral reconstruction has received remarkably little attention from modern commentators, perhaps because he strays into territory that contenlporary ethics has largely ceded to religious moralists. This neglect is particularly unfortunate, because it is in his treatment of grace that Kant finally presents his nlost mature and viable account of rational faith. This account, I will argue, is a substantial revision of the appeal to the Highest Good found in the second Critique. Both accounts draw on concerns about the difficulties of moral improvement and the danger of morally-motivated illusions about the nature of morality. In the second Critique, faith in general was drawn from our need to avoid such illusions; questions about moral progress came in only as one possible source of such self-misunderstandings. In the Religion, however, Kant reverses this order of priority. The paradoxes of moral il~l~!~~~~eE~!u!!!
_
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out to be the central threat to the coherence of morality; and moral illusion becomes an issue only once we understand how we might go about trying to escape our own wickedness. In this chapter, I will consider the dilemma that moral reconstruction poses for I(ant on two fronts. The first set of problems concerns how I(ant can even make sense of the idea of repentance given his moral psychology. We stand under an injunction to emerge from wickedness; but insofar as we start from wickedness, we would appear to be constitutionally unable to do anything that would even count as an attempt to become morally better people. I(ant seems to think that before we can even coherently attempt a moral conversion, we must have already accomplished it-a situation that would seem to leave us trapped in that wickedness from which we always start. In order to resolve this paradox, I(ant develops his notion of God's grace, by which we somehow may lay hold of the moral resources that our own wickedness keeps from us. In grace, I(ant most fully develops the idea that the object of rational faith is some sort of "moral supplement" which makes up for a necessary infirmity of our will. In this, I(ant largely revisits his earlier argument for the postulate of immortality, but with the difference that the requisites of moral reconstruction ground not just one tenet of rational faith, but all three of its postulates, including freedom of the will. I(ant's richest and most mature account of rational faith here emerges, where the Highest Good gives way to the more fundamental project of emerging from evil, a project that must be coherent if we are to heed the Fact of Reason at all. In the second half of the chapter, I turn to the sorts of illusion to which we are necessarily prone, insofar as we seek to liberate ourselves from wickedness. For Kant, certain forms of social life provide the occasion for the development of the passions; and this may occur even in morally sound subjects. Such passions impede our attempts to emerge from wickedness, in part because they provide the resources, and the impetus, for us to deceive ourselves about what this n10ral task really involves. For I(ant, we require a certain kind of moral community, ultimately to include all human beings, in order to keep our n10ral understanding from systematically undermining itself. The earlier function of faith in the I-lighest Good returns, but now in the guise of a certain understanding of the kinds of moral institutions we must establish if we to remain honest with ourselves about what duty requires. To become truly receptive to grace, we will need to see ourselves as part of a col-
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lective project of humanity to raise itself, as a species, out of the evil that must characterize it at any given point in time. 2. The Imitation of Christ For Kant, the fundanlental problem of redemption is not limited to how individuals might atone for or expiate their particular sins. The deepest problenl of moral reconstruction afflicts human beings generally, as a consequence of the endemic limitations of humanity itself. Before we can consider how to deal with our individual transgressions, we must first confront the question of how any human being, as a creature who must necessarily start from evil, can nevertheless become a person "well-pleasing to God." For !(ant, we stand under an injunction to become morally perfect, to become "dead unto sin." I(ant here is not demanding that we attain the holiness characteristic of the divine will. Sin would indeed be impossible for God, but only because His will would lack one of its necessary preconditions: a sensible or enlpirical aspect through which it is receptive to a world distinct from its willing. For Kant, the divine will would have to be purely intelligible because God possesses an intuitive intellect, an intellect that does not require any kind of perception to know its world. God would not depend on any natural causal relations or instrunlents to effectively work His will. As ineluctably temporal creatures, however, human beings can only act through their discursive understanding of the causal options that confront them. God wills his ends immediately, but we must act through means that are sometimes distinct from our ends, and which are constituted and bound by the laws of nature. Insofar as we must live, think, and act in time, we must possess some forms of receptivity to a world that is independent of our will. Divine holiness is no more of an option for us than is a complete escape from time and nature. Kant's ideal of moral perfection is to be found not in God, but in the image of Christ. As an ideal of human perfection, Christ does not represent that holiness wherein temptation is not even conceivable. The ideal of humanity is rather "of such moral perfection as is possible to a being pertaining to this world and dependent on needs and inclinations) (R 6:61).1 Kant does not picture Christ as a serene or effortlessly loving figure, as the enig1. Cf. 6:64, p.1 06: "the elevation of such a Holy One above every frailty of human nature would...stand in the way of the practical adoption of the idea of such a being for our imitation."
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matic moral "idiot" that Nietzsche sometimes sees. For l(ant, Christ instead stands as an exemplar of the greatest possible virtue, of the greatest strength that a human being can have over himself and his desires. Kant attributes natural needs and inclinations to Christ, yet "though tempted by the greatest temptation," Christ "take[s] upon himself all sufferings, up to the most ignominious death, for the good of the world and even for his enemies" (R 6:61). These remarks show that l(ant attributes to Christ not merely natural inclination but also passion, for it is only the passions that truly tempt us. For Kant, Christ is not only willing to accept physical pain, but overcomes both the passion for honor (he accepts "the most ignominious death") as well as any resentment or vindictiveness (he acts for the good of "even his enemies"). Given Kant's understanding of the diabolical vices, we may well suppose that such resentment and vindictiveness represent the "greatest temptation" which l(ant has in mind, the temptation that draws most richly on morality, and can ensnare even a morally sensitive person. To overcome this temptation, Christ would have to grasp morality in a way such that he could see these illusions for what they really are, even in the midst of torture and humiliation. For l(ant, Jesus represents perfect human virtue. This virtue is neither that of complete and unwavering self-control or self-repression, nor is it that of a fortunate harmony of moral concern with non-moral interests and inclinations. Rather, the virtue Jesus exemplifies is a kind of dialectical virtue, the strength through which our various competing passions are brought together and remade into one coherent perspective, fused together through moral concern. In Jesus we have the image of human nature transformed such that, even given its limitations, it attains a kind of moral whole-heartedness: "the highest goal of moral perfection of finite creatures-never conlpletely attainable by human beings-is love of the Law."(R 6:145) In the Doctrine of Virtue, I(ant characterizes this whole-heartedness as the condition in which reason "holds the reins of government in its own hands" relative to passion and affect (MM 6:408). He also refers to such perfect virtue as "the state of health in the moral life" in which all "sensible impressions lose their influence on moral feeling only because respect for the law is more powerful than all such feelings together." (MM 6:409). Such whole-heartedness does realize a kind of strength-at least, one could not claim such virtue if her affects and passions were typically able to overcome her sense of morality. Virtue appears as
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strength, at least because it is incompatible with moral weakness of will: "But because this constraint is to be irresistible, strength is required, in a degree we can assess only by the Inagnitude of the obstacles that 111an himself furnishes through his inclinations." (MM 6:406). Yet Kant's language here shows that he considers perfect virtue to involve not only the correct relations of motivational dominance between the parts of our self. Virtue also requires that a kind of unity and authority characterize the self, through which all our interests are integrated into one morally-ruled perspective on value and action. Reason is here not to repress, but to govern; it is to have a kind of authority that not only controls the passions, but is in some way acknowledged and respected by them. In the virtuous person the passions do not simply give way to reason, but spontaneously obey it, recognizing their own proper subordination. For I(ant, such unity and spontaneity manifests itself as love: Now, if we ask, "What is the aesthetic constitution, the temperament so to speak of virtue: is it courageous and hence joyous, or weighed down by fear and dejected?" an answer is hardly necessary. The latter slavish frame of mind can never be found without a hidden hatred of the law, whereas a heart joyous in the compliance with its duty (not just complacency in the recognition of it) is the sign of genuineness in virtuous disposition... (R 6:25n, I(ant's emphasis).
In full virtue, we act fronl rational necessity but not from compulsion (not even from self-compulsion). Instead, we would realize materially what holds of God formally: we would experience no tension between what we judge right and what we want, while in God this distinction cannot even be conceived. Admittedly, at MM 6:409, I(ant claims that our sensible impressions "lose their influence on moral feeling" because respect is "more powerful" than the sum total of these feelings. At first glance, this remark does seem to portray virtue in terms of reason's ability to repress competing concerns, as the kind of self-control characteristic of mere continence. However, I(ant does not even here say that the sensible impressions are overwhelmed or overpowered by respect-rather, they "lose their influence" when they come into conflict with nl0rality. If I(ant were only thinking of reason overpowering inclination, then this reference to a loss of influence would not make sense. A force outweighed by another force still exerts an influence, just as gravity still influences the
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rocket that has achieved escape velocity. What I(ant SeelTIS to have in mind in this passage is not so much a notion of n10tivational overpowering, but of the kind of normative "silencing". In such silencing, whatever normally appears to be good in light of these in1pressions would cease to seem worthwhile when judged morally wrong. When the "sensible impressions" of the perfectly virtuous agent conflict with morality, they should cease to present any temptation to the agent at all. The passions seem to be the "sensible impressions" that Kant has in mind in this passage. I(ant does go on to remark that "The vices, the brood of dispositions opposing the law, are the monsters he has to fight."(MM 6:405.) For Kant, only the passions have a real influence on "moral feeling;" they are the only inclinations that can appear to provide authoritative reasons, even pseudomoral reasons, for action. Affects momentarily disrupt our ability to act from any of our reasons in general: their influence in not particularly directed at "moral feeling." I(ant considers such affects to be only a minor impediment to virtue, "something childish and weak, which can indeed coexist with the best will". (MM 6:408)2 The passions, in contrast, do present themselves as SOlTIething like a moral law for the subject-indeed, the most dangerous passions of envy and vengeance explicitly trade on moral notions of desert and justice. If so, then our "sensible impressions" lose their influence just so far as our passions no longer seem to offer real alternatives to organizing our will around moral concern. For I(ant, the completely virtuous person is not the enkratic, but son1eone who sees through the illusion that the passions normally cast, the illusion that there are values independent of morality that could serve just as well as the highest principle of a free will. By recognizing that such claims to authority must be spurious, the virtuous person should no longer feel deeply torn by these passions when they come into conflict with morality, for she would see that these passions represent no independent value that could be as important as morality. In such a case, we might say that reason "overpowers" the passions, but only in the sense that a clear grasp 2. The full text reads: "Yet this weakness in the use of one's understanding coupled with the strength of one's emotions is only a lack of virtue and, as it were, something childish and weak, which can indeed coexist with the best will. It even has one good thing about it: that this tempest quickly subsides. Accordingly a propensity to this affect (e.g., anger) does not enter into kinship with vice so readily as does a passion." (I(ant's emphasis)
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of a sound argument "overpowers" all beliefs that obviously contradict its conclusion. In both cases, the strength involved is not so much a matter of repressing other forces, as it is one of dispelling some illusion or temptation that formerly possessed us. In both the Religion and the Doctrine of Virtue, a human wellpleasing to God is one that has morally transfornled himself, overconling the various distortions endemic to human reasoning without divorcing hinlself from the human. Christ will not succunlb to any temptation, but he still is able to understand such temptations as tenlptations; ilnaginatively, he can still appreciate their pull, still understand how a human being could succumb to passion. In this, Christ is fit to be not only our judge, but also our comforter and our advocate (R 6:71) For I(ant, Christ exemplifies human agency in its most perfect and intelligible state, and this state, paradoxically, includes an internal understanding of human imperfection, of the characteristic ways in which we fail to make sense as the kind of creature we are. Unlike a holy being, Christ comprehends our incomprehensibility, even though He does not share in it. To Christ, our failures to be intelligible as moral beings are no mystery, no great puzzle to be solved, but rather just the alltoo-human ways we can fail to live up to our own humanity. Christ sees how that which is inessential can nevertheless be part of our nature, being able to appreciate the necessity of that which is only accidentally human. 3
3. For I(ant, recognizing the necessity of the contingent (without denying its contingency) is what is involved in understanding something as purposive, a common feature of understanding something as an end, or of finding beauty in it. If so, we Inay have another Kantian gloss on the claim that in Christ, "God loved the world": if loving something involves something like finding beauty in it, a kind of disinterested appreciation, then it is only in Christ that God becolnes close enough to humanity that find it lovable, rather than just an object of disappointnlent or puzzlenlent. Christ is then God's mercy and his compassion for humankind. As such, Christ himself must be acquainted with the radical evil in human nature. It should come as not surprise, then, that Kant has no use for anything like the doctrine of the Itnmaculate Conception; Christ can serve as our archetype and ideal only insofar as he represents a hunlanity that has confronted and overcome its own inherent limitations. See R 6:80n. "But what is the use of all this theorizing pro and contra, when it suffices for practical purposes to hold the idea itself before us as model, as symbol of humankind raising itself above temptation to evil (and withstanding it victoriously)?
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3. Barriers to Redemption In Book II Kant worries that although the idea of Christ, as the completion of our nature, is immanent in hunlan reason, we may nevertheless be unable to make any real progress toward it. Kant worries that the distance we have to cross from our present moral state, to that of a humanity well=pleasing to God, is infinite; unbridgeable in any finite span of time or through any finite exertion of effort (R 6:67). As in his earlier treatments of the postulate of imrTIortality, this objection is prima facie puzzling. That an ideal may be infinitely far off does not mean that one cannot make meaningful progress toward it. Such progress should be possible so long as that ideal supplies us a definite direction in which to head, and a more-or-Iess determinate sense of what is to count as improvement or decline. Recognizing the magnitude of the project before us may certainly destroy our moral conlplacency, but it needn't throw us immediately into moral despair. !(ant goes on to explain that our problelTI is not so much that we cannot ever complete our moral task, but that nothing we do could really count as making the right sort of progress at all. He tells us that "the difficulty lies here: How can this disposition count for the deed itself, when this deed is every time (not generally, but at each instant) defective?" (R 6:67). !(ant does not clearly explain just what this defect is that must afflict any and every effort we make at moral improvement. Cannot an ordinary person become more virtuous to at least sonle degree? Is it impossible to augment our strength in the face of temptation? People do seem to be capable of some real success in such moral training, just as there seem to be clear instances of moral backsliding and deterioration. For !(ant, however, the real problem is not merely a matter of increasing the motivational strength of morality in our wills. Our problem instead lies with what is needed for us really to have wills at all, with not just the strength of the moral motive, but its ability to unify our conflicting passions into a coherent practical perspective. Progress in moral strength, no matter what its degree, is not in itself progress toward moral whole-heartedness. Although we may increase our moral self-control, such self-control does not begin to approach that "love of the law" in which such strength would never need to be used. The empirical character of the enkrates may resemble that of the virtuous person (they act similarly in similar situations), but her intelligible character is still that of a kind of wickedness, wherein non-moral concerns vie for control with the dictates of morality.
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I(ant reveals what he takes to be the ineliminable defect of our moral efforts in a discussion of the central error of the Stoics. For Kant, the Stoics were correct to ground morality in our reason, our freedom, and our nature (as ultimately three aspects of the same understanding). However, for Kant the Stoics erred in taking the threat to morality to come only from inclination and affect, in a simple lack of self-control. I(ant claims that the Stoic analysis correctly represents the nature of a rational will; their mistake was in attributing such a will, the "prototype" of our moral disposition, to particular human beings as they might find themselves in nature and time: [The Stoics] then drew the lTIoral laws directly from reason, the sole legislator, comlTIanding absolutely through its laws. And so was everything quite correctly apportioned-objectively, as regards the rule, and also subjectively, with respect to the incentive-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 1natter how far back we direct our attention to our 1noral state, we find that this state is no longer [nicht mehr ist] res integra ... "(R 6:68n., my emphasis).
!(ant tells us that the Stoics did not appreciate the fact that human beings must necessarily start out from evil, and instead took for granted that the most arduous work of human self-transformation had already been accomplished. This labor, however, is just the task of becoming a unified will, the work of emerging from the confused life of the passions into a coherent, rationally-governed perspective. In discussing frailty I argued that I(ant can only make sense of weakness of will by recognizing that, insofar as we are prone to such weakness, we do not yet have fully unified "vills. If our Willkur were truly determinate, then it would not be possible for us to succumb to temptation, to act out of passion in a way that was still intentional and hence imputable. Instead, insofar as we remain vulnerable to temptation, Willkur must be dispersed among our various passions, with each such passion laying claim to be Willkur entire, presenting itself as an organizing principle which could define our self. If so, then to talk of our will is not so much to report on our condition as it is to offer a kind of metaphysical promissory note. The idea of our real will, of that maxim that we have truly incorporated or endorsed, is itself an ideal, more
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a necessary aspiration of a human being than the condition that fully characterizes her at any given po.int in time. As such, we suffer from the defect "which is in principle inseparable from the existence of a temporal being, never to be able to become quite fully what he has in mind rim Begriffe]."(R 6:68n).4 The Stoics erred in taking the condition that is central to the concept of human agency-i.e., unified rational volition, to be equally central to its empirical characterization. For I(ant, the Stoics had a sound understanding of our intelligible character, but they made the mistake of taking our empirical selves to be more or less complete approximations of that character, depending on the degree of sensuous contamination they carried. The empirical here differs from the intelligible not so much in terms of kind, but only by degree. In contrast, I(ant's conception of human nature is deeply informed by a Christian sense of fallenness, the thought that humanity's true essence might nevertheless profoundly fail to characterize actual human existence in the world. Attaining our true nature is thus not so much a matter of self-purification, but of self-transformation. One must first effect a radical change of what one is, before any questions of progress or improvement can COlne into play: However, that a human being should become not merely legally good, but morally good (pleasing to God) i.e., virtuous according to the intelligible character (virtus noumenon) and thus in need of no other incentive to recognize a duty except the representation of duty itself-that, so long as the foundation of the maxims of the human being remains impure, cannot be effected through gradual reform but must rather be effected through a revolution in the disposition of the hUlnan being....And so O'a "new man" can come about only through a kind of rebirth, as it were a new creation... and a change of heart." (R 6:47, Kant's italics, my underlining).
Before we can increase our virtue, we must first becolne the right sort of thing to be a bearer of virtue, by forging a real self out of the various passions that are all we ever have to work with. Until I have such a unified rational self, I am not yet the right sort of thing to act out of pure respect at all. My actions, even the best, 4. For a similar account see Christine I(orsgaard, "Self-Constitution in the Ethics of Plato and !(ant," unpublished manuscript.
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will only be the expression of my dominant passions. Such passions, while conceptually connected to moral interest, nevertheless distort and obscure that interest, disingenuously linking it to the satisfaction of some aspect of sensibility. Here then is our problem: we need tq have attained perfect virtue in order to be capable of respect, and hence to be receptive to the Fact of Reason; but only insofar as we recognize the Fact of Reason can we care about or progress toward virtue. True love of the law presupposes respect for the law, but we become capable of respect only through such love. It seems that the recognition of duty and the attainment of perfect virtue must come together, or not at all. This situation need not trouble a creature who is already on the "inside" of virtue (angels, perhaps), but constitutes an insuperable challenge to any creature with the bad moral luck to find herself on the outside. Since we never begin as a right sort of res integra, our efforts to attain virtue must always be profoundly defective at any particular point in time. The only way to understand "my" progress in virtue is as the increase in the strength of my morally-informed passions over the others, as a process by which some passion comes to more effectively dominate and control others: "Virtue here [virtus phaenomenon ] has the abiding maxim of lawful actions, no matter whence one draws the incentives that the power of choice needs for such actions." (R 6:46). Such virtue is only the development of a morally fortunate habit, in which some passion that tends to keep us in line with morality comes to control the rest. Yet no amount of domination is the same as real unity, even when the control is complete and unyielding. Even when one passion is completely dominant over the others, the parts of this "will" remain logically prior to the whole they form. Such a will remains a mere aggregation or "heap", rather than a true association in which the idea of the parts is derivative of the idea of the whole. Even if our morally fortunate passions overpower all the others, morality has not gained true authority over all other concerns. Authority is more than a matter of just carrying the motivational day; for authority to be recognized, there must be spontaneous obedience even when force is not threatened or brought to bear. When Kant calls upon us to extirpate the passions (A 253, 267) he need not be calling on us reduce our non-moral concerns to the simple contentment that comes with the satisfaction of natural inclination. This would be a strange picture indeed; an amalgam of a Stoic conception .of virtue with an Epicurean idea of
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happiness. In demanding that we exorcise our passions, !(ant may only be demanding that we cleanse all our non-moral concerns of the pretension that they could reign as effectively over a will as could morality. We would then possess a will as a res integra, a whole thing. Yet if this is the task before us, we can appreciate I(ant's worry that we could not even begin to fulfill it. To become morally perfect, we must first become proper moral subjects. We would have to become truly unified agents, such that there came to be a determinate fact of the matter about what we really wanted. Yet in this first step to perfection, we would have to perform a metabasis eis alia genus. The plurality of "our" passions would have to become a unity of perspective, conative force would have to be transformed into rational authority, and relations of domination converted into a coherent structure of allegiance. Such a transformation could not be accomplished gradually-as a translation into a different order of things, it would either be done completely or not at all, for there can be no middle ground between these different ways of being. Insofar as our "will" is ruled by passions, even ones with moral content (e.g., honor, moral pride), we are not even in the right ballpark to start moving toward the ideal of Christ. We can no more approach moral perfection than a rolling stone can approach health-we are not yet the right kind of thing to begin the journey. At this point, an increase in virtue could be nothing more than an increase in the power of one passion over another. While such dominance may come to outwardly resemble a good will, these changes make no progress against our real problem-we do not need more strength, but rather to transform such strength into something completely different, respect. Until this is done, nothing "we" do can count as approaching or deviating from the ideal of a humanity well-pleasing to God, because there is not yet a morally determine "we" (or "I") in the first place. When !(ant says that, in imitating Christ, our act is always defective, he means more than that our act can never fully attain its goal, that it is never fully successful. If the above interpretation is correct, then such an act must always be defective as an act, i.e., it is never really an act at all, because there is not yet a determinate agent to whom it could be properly attributed. Our problem is not just that we can never fully succeed in moral improvement, but that nothing we do could even qualify as an attempt. Once we recognize this fact, we cannot even coherently form the intention so to improve ourselves. One can no more intelligibly intend the inconceivable that we can intend the impossible.
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4. The Wicked "Will" On the above reading, until we have adopted a good disposition, we do not really have a will at all, but only a Begehrungvermogn composed of passion that more or less mimics such a will. However, I(ant does talk about the possibility of our adopting a wicked disposition, of having a wicked \vill. If we could not really have any lTIoral disposition prior to the establishment of a good will, why does Kant repeatedly characterize the task before us as that of overcoming the wicked disposition with which we always find ourselves? I(ant appears to think that we always have a determinate Willkiir, even when it has perversely ordered its maxims. My reading can, I think, accommodate Kant's way of presenting our fundamental moral choice here. On my view, our fundamental moral task is to transform ourselves from an aggregation of competing passions into a unified perspective on what there is reason to do, to translate relations of motivational force into ones of rational authority. This picture of an oligarchy of passion, I suggest, is just another way of representing a wicked will. What I(ant calls the wicked will is properly only a simulacrum of a real will. Such a pseudo-will is what results from one passion gaining mastery over the others, and then deceiving itself into thinking that this relation is one of legitimate rational authority. A wicked will cannot really be one is which we recognize the maxim of self-love to have authority over morality. For self-love has no such authority to recognize. An essential asymmetry between the wicked and the good will here emerges. A good will can be said to act out of recognition of the authority of its highest maxim, the moral law-this is a way of saying that someone decided as she did, because she saw that only such a decision was intelligible. No story need be told about why one would opt for a coherent disposition over one that makes no sense; we need only point out that this is the right way to characterize the alternatives. In contrast, we need to tell some further story about why the wicked person chooses the incoherent alternative over the intelligible one. In this case, we could hardly appeal to the agent's seeing the choice for what it is. Getting something right typically does not need much of an explanation at all, unlike the case of getting something radically wrong. Since self-love has no real authority or conceptual precedence over morality, we cannot simply refer to recognition of such supposed authority to account for the wicked will. Instead, we have to explain how self-love could seem to have authority over morality, how it could pass itself off as the more basic or fundamental in-
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terest. On the account I have developed, we come to this position by mistaking relations of dominance for those of authority, by mistaking ruling passions for lucid reasons. Self-love is realized in the various passions; a wicked will emerges when one passion (or set of passions) thoroughly dominates the rest, offering up its objects as the subject's true happiness, and claiming the promotion of this happiness as the will's highest law. This sort of wicked disposition is what characterizes us when we develop out of the psychic anarchy of childhood into something that at least appears like a settled and definite character. Yet even such a disposition is itself only a semblance of a real will, just as an effectively occupied populace might conle to resemble a well-ordered polity. The wicked will, like the anarchic will of a child, is ultimately only ruled by relations of dominance between its passions. 5 The wicked will only differs from the will of the child in that these patterns of dominance are more settled and stable, safeguarded by the self-deception that this rule of force is really a rule of law. On this reading, the wicked will is not really a will at all: as Kant says, "evil is really without character (since it involves conflict with itself and does not permit any permanent principle within itself." (A 329). The wicked person has a will only in the sense that she falsely sees herself as having one; the existence of such a will requires a kind of continuous self-deception, in which it can never examine or interrogate its own interests too closely. A wicked will must avoid self-knowledge at all costs-to persist, it must become progressively less articulate about its own values and concerns, its own wants and ideals. For insofar as such a will knows itself, it must see that there is nothing there to be known at all. To maintain its values, it must progres5. Just what such "dolninance" involves cannot, I think, be much further explained. Passions are themselves fundamentally incoherent hybrids of reason and inclination: they are inclinations that think or present themselves as reasons. As such, their relations to each other pretend to be relations of authority (i.e., the relation characteristic of cOlnpeting reasons), but are ultimately relations of motivational force (the relation characteristic of cOlnpeting inclinations). These dominance relations can be no more intelligible than the passions thelnselves; all we can do is explain why such things might nonetheless be taken to be coherent by those afflicted with them. I suspect that passions (and the relations characteristic of them) are what Sartre call "metastable" concepts: janus-faced concepts that maintain an appearance of coherence by turning a difference face to its examiner depending on the question put to it (Being and Nothingness 99).
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sively impoverish its vocabulary for understanding them; in order for it to want, it has to become progressively less able to say what it wants. The immanent teleology of a wicked will is to undo its own capacities for self-consciousness, to dissolve its own status as a willing thing. In a sense, its growth is at the expense of its life: the wicked will is not so much a different moral species from the good, but rather a kind of moral cancer, that presents the illusion of life and growth in the particular way it goes about destroying itself. 6
5. The Paradox of Atonement As human beings, we face the problem that we must have already completed our moral transformation if we are to even coherently attempt so to change. Given that we must always start off from a 6. Such a will is what I(orsgaard characterizes as a "tyrannical will" in "Self-Constitution in Plato and I(ant." I(orsgaard argues that while such a will has a kind of unity, it is nevertheless a kind of "slavery" of the whole self to one concern within it. I resist this claim because it is not clear that we are entitled to use the language of enslavement when there is no determinate self to be enslaved. As I have it here, the problem with the tyrannical will is not so much such enslavement, but the sort of progressive self-deception needed to maintain the unity it has. Since such a will can never delve very deeply into its own concerns, it cannot develop any real articulateness about what it wants, or shape and expand its interests in principled ways to meet with new situations. Such a will cannot afford to be honest with itself, to try to know itself-and as such, must progressively hollow out its own sense of what it values, to the point that even the ruling passion falls mute. The unity of the tyrannical will is thus selfdefeating-like real tyrannies, it cannot effectively reproduce itself, but has the unity only of a process of self-destruction. The tyrannical will enacts on an individual level the sort of drama that Nietzsche sees in modern morality, which can only lead to a kind of nihilism, through self-extinguishment through the extinguishing of all one's values. (see G
III). This is why I(ant sees the coalition of interests that characterizes impurity to be so dangerous. The impure person aligns their moralized and non-moralized passions such that their behavior resembles that of a truly good will. This coalition, by so closely Inimicking the moral perspective, allow the subject not only to see themselves as unified, but unified under the aegis of morality. While such a person might then have the right idea of what a true will would involve, they would be deceived as to whether this idea properly applies to themselves. This sort of self-deception might explain not only how a wicked will might renlain content with itself, but also how a good will might fall back into the disarray of wickedness.
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state of wickedness, in the life of the passions, it seems that there we must stay. But the passions themselves bear a kind of conceptual connection to morality; the very idea of passion is only intelligible in the context of a creature striving toward moral personality. As creatures of passion, we both must and cannot try to morally and metaphysically transform ourselves. Human subjectivity itself thus seems to be built on a contradiction. If I(ant cannot resolve this tension, it seems that we must conclude that freedom, autonomy, morality, and reason itself are all incoherent, and conclude with Sartre that "man is a useless passion."7 Kant presents our problem in terms of a debt that all human beings bear, insofar as they must start from evil, but which they could never even begin to pay. Kant argues that we could not even attempt to clear this debt, not only because it is infinite, but because there could not be any coin with which it might be paid. Even if we (individually, or as a species) could suffer in proportion to our debt, that suffering could never be the right sort of thing to provide the needed expiation. The problem here is not with the amount or quality of the suffering, but with the moral transformation that the subject undergoes, by accepting such suffering. !(ant here confronts what has been called the "paradox of atonement": that insofar as we (correctly) recognize our own guilt, and accept that we deserve to suffer for our transgressions, we are not longer fully guilty or deserving of such punishment. In realizing that we must change our disposition, we must have already done so, at least to some degree (and !(ant considers such a change to be necessarily an all-or-nothing affair): As an intellectual determination, however, this conversion is not two moral acts separated by a temporal interval but is rather a single act, since the abandonment of evil is possible only through the good disposition, that effects the entrance into goodness, and vice-versa. (R 6:74).
Strangely enough, the very intention to reform would have to be its own completed act: it is not conceivable as any kind of extended striving. Repentance would thus seem to constitute an instance of intellectual intuition, the kind of immediately effective willing that is characteristic of God. For !(ant, true repentance would involve replacing the evil dis7. Sartre, Being and Nothingness 784.
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position, with which we must always start, with a good disposition; transmuting a tyranny of passion into rational self-rule. Such repentance thus represents not only a moral but a metaphysical transformation of the kind of thing that one is, a kind of "rebirth" or "conversion" in which "the subject dies unto sin...in order to live unto justice" (R 6:74). The paradox of atonement is that real repentance seems to require that the self that recognizes its guilt be both morally identical and yet radically distinct from the self that has transgressed. To repent, we must recognize how we deserve to suffer for our sins; but in this awareness, there no longer is any such guilt. Repentance requires that the penitent take his punishment onto himself; yet insofar as such punishment is appropriate, the wrongdoer cannot be in a condition where he can freely submit himself to it. Insofar as the wrongdoer is able so to submit, such punishment can no longer be wholly appropriate. The problem here is that a moral debt can only be paid by the free submission of the guilty party, yet insofar as the wrongdoer freely submits, he is no longer fully guilty. Thus it seems that the very idea of expiation through suffering is incoherent: for the suffering of the wicked counts as valid nl0ral tender only so long as it is never offered in payment. Yet I(ant insists that true repentance, and real moral reconstruction, requires that all moral debts be paid in full. True expiation would thus seem to be impossible, for it would require the penitent to both be and not be the same person as the sinner who incurred punishment. I(ant tells us that since punishlnent (at least, the punishment that expiates) cannot be properly applied before or after our conversion, it could only be located in the process of repentance itself. This suggestion, however, hardly resolves the problem: the difficulty remains as to how to understand the person in the process of conversion such that this suffering can both be deserved and still function as expiation, as not mere suffering but the suffering that redeems. How can the penitent both be and not be who he was? If we conceive of the self as something like a psychological object in the world, along the lines of a set of causal processes or functional states, this question cannot be resolved. !(ant, however, can appeal to the two-fold nature of the self, the fact that there are two different and equally true ways of understanding a human being's identity. To understand how the penitent both is and is not identical to the sinner he was, !(ant appeals to the distinction between our empirical and intelligible character:
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Physically ([i.e.] considered in his empirical character as a sensible being) he still is the same human being liable to punishment...Yet, in his new disposition (as an intelligible being), in the sight of a divine judge for whom the disposition takes the place of the deed, he is morally another being. (R 6:74).
In terms of empirical character, the penitent is the same person as the sinner; the suffering of the former is deserved because of the transgressions of the latter. Intelligibly, however, the penitent is also distinct from his past self: he has acknowledged the wrongness of his acts and has disavowed them, and in virtue of this difference his suffering can serve as true expiation. In this, Kant claims, we have the true meaning of Christ's vicarious atonement for the sins of humanity. Kant rejects the notion of vicarious redemption in any of its ordinary forms, in which the suffering of one person is to redeem someone else wholly distinct from him. Nevertheless, !(ant finds a place for the idea of vicarious sacrifice in the way that the morally new man, possessed of a new intelligible character, can suffer in the place of the old man, the sinner with whom he is legally (i.e., empirically) identified: And this disposition which he has incorporated in all its purity, like unto the purity of the Son of God-or (if we personify this idea) this very Son of God-bears as vicarious substitute the debt of sin for him.... the suffering which the new hunlan being luust endure while dying to the old human being throughout his life is depicted in the representative of hUluan kind as a death suffered once and for all. (R 6:75).
Our two-fold character, as both empirical and intelligible, is represented by Christ's two-fold nature as both human and divine. As human, Christ can experience true suffering; he can render up what can properly be demanded of us. He thus stands identified with humanity as the penitent is to be identified with his past wicked self; Christ's pain is thus the right sort of pain that the debt denlands. As divine, however, Christ's suffering is not just more human suffering (as nlight be experienced by the obstinately wicked). Because of Christ's difference from us, the very inappropriateness of this punishment allows it to serve as expiation for the whole human race, just as it is only the suffering of the penitent, as a reformed person, that serves to redeem the entire life of which it is a part.
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The distinction between intelligible and empirical character is clearly central to Kant's understanding of the possibility of moral redemption: how are we to make sense of it? The philosophical point of this distinction, I suggest, turns on two different ways of interpreting a human life, two different perspectives that we can take on our own agency. Our empirical character involves consideration of a human being as another elelnent in nature, whose future emerges and is determined by its past (i.e., as a creature existing in time). This is not necessarily a claim about causal determinism, but rather of a perspective by which we make sense of a person only by appeal to his past. In this perspective, we can help ourselves only to those explanatory resources present within the story we have seen so far, without anticipating any future developments. On this picture, we must always appear to ourselves as only a mass of passions. These passions may become sufficiently ordered as to appear as a unified subject, but they can never really attain the rank of an essentially different kind of thing, an autonomous will. Read in this backward-looking sort of way, the penitent remains still very much the same person (insofar as there is a "person" here at all) as the sinner, differing only with regard to a possibly temporary modification of its passions and affects. We can also understand a person not according to the temporal order of her development, but according to the conceptual order that makes her what she is. That is, we could also understand a person with reference to the final cause characteristic of humanity, where we comprehend its present condition not it terms of what it was, but in terms of what it should be and perhaps may become. We interpret the individual in terms of a possible future, instead of an actual past. We might similarly understand an infant's babblings as just so many noises produced by its individual physiology, or as initial stages of grasping and using language, the proper destiny of the kind of thing to which it belongs. Our empirical character is what we see when we understand human life forwards, with reference to its concept, rather than treating that life as simply the sum of its logically independent parts. Our intelligible character is what we see when we understand such parts in terms of a prior whole, of an ideal of human completion to which they belong not so much as distinct parts, but as interrelated stages, each conceptually derivative of the idea of the totality. As }(ant says,
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[T]he moral subjective principle of the disposition by which our life is to be judged is (as transcending our senses) not of the kind that its existence can be thought as divisible into temporal segments but rather only as an absolute unity. (R 6:70n.)
We can understand an act of repentance as a kind of cusp at which the backward-looking trajectory of empirical character sharply diverges from the forward-looking trajectory of our intel. ligible self. When we confront the question just what such an act of repentance means, we find there is no fully determinate fact of the matter, at least, no fact constituted solely by what is true at the moment of contrition itself. If we look only to what the penitent has been, his repentance is just another feeling, another passion; it may mark the emergence of a new and more appealing passion, but such repentance would still not n1ark any profound transformation in the basic character of the penitent. If on the other hand we anticipate a future course that leads to moral completion, then the nature of the act of repentance completely changes. Seen from the perspective of this morally complete whole, such contrition would not count as just another passion or desire that we experience, but rather as an initial stage in the life of a truly autonomous creature. What is otherwise true at the mOlnent of contrition does not make one of these descriptions more correct than the other. There is no non-tendentious way of considering the "fact of the matter" which will determine whether today is really the first day of the rest of one's life, or just another day like the ones that preceded it. Insofar as there are neutral facts about this situation, they do not determine which description is correct. Instead, the matter turns on what perspective we are willing and able to take on ourselves; whether we see ourselves as creatures coming out of animality or as agents headed toward true personality.s True repentance becomes possible when we can see ourselves in this 8. Wittgenstein elaborates a similar account with regard to another kind of "conversion" experience-in this case cognitive, rather than moral. Wittgenstein exalnines the mOlnent when, in trying to grasp a rule or technique, we proclaim "now I know how to go on!" Wittgenstein argues that whether or not what one says here is true depends not simply on what is occurring at this moment, but on one's future behavior, on one whether does go on to apply the rule or concept correctly in new cases. If it is true in the future that one does so, then my claim to understanding is true (i.e., will have been true all along). If I fail to apply the rule correctly (under norn1al circumstances), then it will turn out never to have been true at all
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two-fold way, when we see that both stories can and must be simultaneously true of us. For in repentance, as in guilt, we not only grasp the distinction between our intelligible and empirical natures' but we grasp them simultaneously as necessary aspects of our true nature as human beings. With the above understanding of atonement, we can understand why Kant insists that real moral transforn1ation can have no intermediate states, that we must be entirely one thing or another, either entirely evil or entirely good. Moral change does not admit of stages, because such change involves a kind of gestalt-shift on our own lives. To have confidence in one's own transformation, one must have gone from seeing one's life as merely a train of passions, to also seeing it as a timeless totality, as a whole that determines the identity and meaning of each part. The empirical and the intelligible constitute two profoundly different ways of seeing ourselves; as with different gestalt-perspectives, there is no intermediate or middle ground that can be intelligibly occupied. We either enter into a new perspective on ourselves or we do not-there is no such thing as an intermediary or partial perspective that we could occupy along the way. Repentance is paradoxical beca use insofar as it truly expiates, we must bring both these perspectives on ourselves into play at once. To truly atone, we must both own and disown our past, acknowledging both the forward- and backward-looking stories to be true of us, even though these stories point in different directions, and even though they cannot be combined together into one that I knew how to go on at all. If I drop dead immediately after my proclamation, then there is no determinate fact of the matter about whether I knew how to go on or not-there is nothing in what I felt or experienced that is inconsistent with my having been either right or mistaken. In claiming to now know, I do so with a kind of immediate trust both in myself (my future behavior) and in the world (in providing me the requisite opportunities to redeem my claim. When Wittgenstein denies that knowledge is properly a state, I take him to be denying that is a state like being wet, or heavy, or red-that is, a condition that is true of something in virtue of other facts to be found in the present (or the past), a condition that at least weakly supervenes on the past. While n1Y claim that "now I know how to go on" can be both true and appropriately uttered, it is not so much a report of my current psychological state as a kind of pledge, offered in the trust that my future will be able to redeem it. With regard to both theoretical and practical reasoning, changing one's mind (and perhaps having a mind at all) may be inextricably bound with a kind of faith in oneself and the future.
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seamless narrative. In terms of my empirical character, repentance is just the latest moment in the life of the sinner; intelligibly, such contrition is the first stage of a new life, of a new kind of character, to which my past sins were merely prologue. But for this latter view to be correct there must really be a life of improvement in store for the penitent. I am redeemed only insofar as my future course will allow me to look back upon this moment as the one in which everything changed. Only insofar as we complete the journey to perfection will we be able to look back upon this period as one of true conversion. Because such a moral conversion is something that must in a sense be finished before it can be said ever to have begun, we can never know ourselves (at least at any particular point in time) to have really changed. On the basis of what has already happened, there is simply no determinate fact of the matter to be known. The true nature of a moment of repentance is metaphysically hostage to how things eventually turn out for us-it is a fundamental moment of "moral luck," upon which our moral agency itself depends. As I(ant says, our acts of "improvement" will be radically defective considered both individually and as an aggregation; it is only through their complete totality that we could transform our moral nature, and understand these changes as real moral progress. As moral creatures, we need the idea of the whole of our lives in order to grasp properly any of its constituent parts. However, as temporal creatures we are only directly acquainted with these parts. To repent is in part to hope that these parts (and partial understandings) are ultimately included in a totality of our character that will allow us to see them in a profoundly different way. We can only hope and trust that there will be such a "big picture" that turns out to apply to us. All we can do now is to act in ways that are consistent with such hope and trust, in ways that are at least not clearly incompatible with the hoped-for destiny. For creatures like us, who only appear to themselves in time, this redeeming totality can only be represented as an infinite series of moral improvements, just as the dignity of humanity had to be represented as a kind of infinite worth to those who only think in terms of price. For Kant, this series could only be fully known as a distinct whole by a mind that stands outside of time, possessed of intuitive intellect grasps the whole immediately, and the parts through the whole: According to our mode of estimation, [to us] who are unavoidably restricted to temporal conditions in our conceptions of the
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relationship of cause to effect, the deed, as a continuous advance
in infinitu1n from a defective good to something better, always remains defective, so that we are bound to consider the good as it appears in us, i.e. according to the deed, as at each instant inadequate to a holy law. But because of the disposition from which it derives and which transcends the senses, we can think of the infinite progression of the good toward conformity to the la w as being judged by him who scrutinizes the heart (through his pure intellectual intuition) to be a perfected whole with respect to the deed (the life conduct). (R 6:67)
For !(ant, the penitent can trust that he has morally changed himself only insofar as he sees his sufferings as part of an endless process of overcoming or "putting off" his old self. The possibility of authentic repentance depends on the future course of the penitent's life being such that, when viewed as a whole, it reveals the present moment to be the one in which everything changed, to which everything preceding was merely prologue. In this progression toward the totality, we must see the old man (which we always and never are) as constantly dying at our own hands, but never being entirely dead, never ceasing to be with us (R 6:74n). We must see our sufferings as the (always already and never yet) "new man" as penance for the sins of this other which is also ourselves. For !(ant, all moral reconstruction turns out to depend on a kind of faith we have in our own future, and such faith requires that we make of our lives an endless process of both self-crucifixion and resurrection. Christ presents us with the idea of human perfection; and Christ's sacrifice in turn represents the relation in which imperfect humans must stand to themselves if they are to coherently strive for such an ideal. The saving faith in Christ is thus a kind of faith in humankind: at least, a faith in what human beings might make of themselves, insofar as they look at themselves through the prism of morality. If we took as our starting point the perspective of a successfully transformed creature, everything would fall into place. Such a completely good will, recognizing itself as the relevant sort of totality, could look back at its own emergence from evil as a real conversion, a true transformation of its empirical character from a life of passion to a life of reason. There is no problem making sense of such repentance from within the new life; once we recognize ourselves within that life, we can retrospectively interpret our conversion as an authentic moral change, the only sort of change that could usher in the life we now lead. The convert can represent the
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moment of her conversion as the first moment of a new life. Her position is thus similar to the position that we, as adults, can take toward our own learning of language, or our own birth. We can grasp birth as the beginning of our lives, but only once we occupy the life that only such a beginning makes possible. For Kant, however, we never occupy the fortunate position of the successful convert, retrospectively telling the history of his present fortunate condition. Our problen1 is that we never confront such a conversion retrospectively, as an achievement to be savored, but only prospectively, as a task that ren1ains to be done. Our position toward our moral rebirth is not like that of the adult toward his birth, but more like that of the fetus toward human life (or like that of the babbling infant toward its first tongue). We are always "outside" the conversion, yet it is only from within the new life that we can make sense of any such change in the first place. This status does not present a problem to the fetus or infant; by the time they can even consider the profound change they must undergo, they will already (somehow) have accomplished it; the problem can only present itself to them "from the inside," and then it is no longer a problem. Unfortunately, our moral situation is more difficult. Unlike the fetus or the infant, we stand under an obligation to effect, or at least to strive for this sort of radical selftransformation. Even though we stand partially outside of the new life, we must still consciously try to undergo this conversion. This unique obligation generates the paradox of how we can even intelligibly attempt such a conversion, since this very description of the act, and hence the intention to perform it under this description, will only be available insofar as that act can be taken to be completed. How can we attempt to do that which, in order to be begun, must already be done? I(ant resolves the paradoxes of human moral reconstruction by appeal to the grace of God. On this picture, I can sincerely attempt to put off my wicked disposition only insofar as I assume that the real description of what I am doing is relative to the totality of character that I hope to be ushering in. To coherently attempt such reform, I must not only hope but actively trust that there is a perspective on my life, a perspective that I cannot now occupy, that will represent my resolve as the beginning of a new life for me. I must trust that the true story of my current resolve is not just another episode in the war of the passions that has been my life up to now, although that is how it must seem at present. I must trust that the true story is the one told from a perspective on
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the (hoped-for) whole of n1Y life, a perspective in which that life is grasped as "a unitary phenomenon." For Kant, such a perspective could only be taken up by a mind that stands outside of time. Such a mind would grasp the whole of my life immediately, and understand the particular parts of this life through such knowledge of the whole, as stages of a certain kind of moral destiny. For Kant, such a timeless understanding from the whole to its parts is characteristic of an intellectual intuition, available only to the mind of God. Kant tells us that to receive grace is to have our present state understood in terms of the totality of our character, in terms of the person we are not, but might yet become. In grace [W]hat in our earthly life (and perhaps even in all future times and in all worlds) is always only a mere becoming (namely, our being a human being well-pleasing to God) is in1puted to us as if we already possessed it here in full. (R 6:75)
To trust in grace, then, is to try to see ourselves as God might see us; to understand our attempts at moral transformation in terms only properly available to the successful convert. Right now, I am wicked, and all my efforts can only appear to me as a way of rearranging that wickedness, approaching legality perhaps, but never morality. If my current perspective is all that is open to me, I cannot even coherently attempt to become a n10rally better person. Grace offers me the hope that the efforts that seem so pointless to me now will be revealed, in a view of the whole, to be the real beginnings of a fundamental change in myself. With this trust, I can coherently attempt to become a morally good person, with the thought that the correct description of my efforts derives from something I can now neither see nor know. John Silber has argued that grace, and indeed any sort of forgiveness, is incompatible with Kant's main ethical comn1itments. 9 For Kant, Silber notes, to hope for grace is to hope that, once we have completed all we can do toward making ourselves morally good, whatever remaining shortfall will be made up for by God. Silber observes that since we can be obligated to become good only insofar as it is in our power to do so, then once we have truly done everything in our power to improve, there cannot be any shortfall for God to compensate: "But if the individual has done all that he 9. Silber, "The Ethical Significance of I(ant's Religion," cxxxii-cxxxiv.
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can, he does not need grace. And if he has not, even Kant agrees he should not get it. "10 Insofar as we turn out to need God's help, Silber argues, we must not have made a complete effort. God cannot help us in this case, since nothing done by another could change our moral status, or make up for our own moral failings. 10 On Kantian principles, Silber claims, "Forgiveness ... is a moral outrage" and to make room for it I(ant ll1USt perform a "drastic redefinition of freedom or obligation or the introduction of the miracle of forgiveness." 12 On the reading I have offered, we can find a place for grace without distorting Kant's central moral views, while respecting Silber's observation that if we have done all we could to be good, we should have no need for any further moral supplen1entation. As I have argued, grace is not needed to complete our moral labors, to push us that last inch over the moral finish line once all our efforts are exhausted. Grace does not supplement our strivings to become morally better people, but rather makes it possible for us to coherently undertake such a project at all, for anything we do to even count as the right kind of "striving" in the first place. Unless we can understand our efforts in the terms only properly available to God (i.e., from an immediate knowledge of the totality), then nothing we could do could even count as the requisite sort of moral conversion; we could not even coherently aim at something under that description. We need grace not to finish, but to begin, for it to be even logically possible for us to even attempt to do what we must. On this view, we can still recognize that for a rational agent, the unconditioned "ought" of the moral law entails the unrestricted "can" of its ability to obey the law. God's grace is not needed to supplement this ability; rather, our trust in such grace is a condition of our being able to coherently recognize ourselves as rational agents in the first place, as creatures who can intelligibly attempt to radically transform their own fundamental nature. Grace no more "supplements" my moral strivings than the solidity of the ground or the laws of kinematics "supplement" the marathoner's efforts to reach the finish line. I(ant's appeal to grace is fully consistent with his insistence 10. Silber, "The Ethical Significance of I(ant's Religion," cxxxiii. 1I.Cf. R 6:72: "this original debt cannot be erased by someone else. For it is not a transmissible liability but the most personal of all liabilities, namely a debt of sins which only the culprit, and not the innocent, can bear... ) 12. Silber, "The Ethical Significance of Kant's Religion."
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that it is only by our own efforts that we can become morally better people. Grace is needed for my efforts to even count as intentional strivings toward goodness; but it is still the case that only insofar as I really do so strive that there will be any redeeming totality to impute to me at all. What I can be given through grace can never be more than the product of my own effort, attributed to me in a way that makes that effort possible and intelligible in the first place. Grace is not so much a moral gift, but more like an advance on one's salary. The real possibility of moral improvement depends on me alone (on my efforts to strengthen myself against temptation), but its logical possibility depends on God, on there being a way of seeing myself that recognizes what I do to be the right sort of effort in the first place. Kant follows much Christian thought in claiming that while grace cannot be earned or merited, there is no injustice in God bestowing grace on the undeserving. Kant tells us that [T]o this we indeed have no rightful claim (according to the empirical cognition we have of ourselves), so far as we know ourselves (estimate our disposition not directly but only according to our deeds), so that the accuser within us would still be more like to render a verdict of guilty. It is always therefore only a decree of grace when we are relieved of all responsibility for the sake of this good in which we believe, though fully in accord with eternal justice (because based on a satisfaction that for us consists only in the idea of an improved disposition of which, however, God alone has cognition.) (R 6:75-6).
To deserve grace, we would already have to have adopted a good moral disposition: but grace is needed for us to attempt such a change in the first place. Grace is thus conceptually prior to any condition in which one could be said to merit it. We would already have to be in a state of grace in order to deserve it. Yet even though no one can deserve grace, this does not Inean that one can deserve to be denied grace (i.e., that it would be positively unj ust for someone to be granted grace). If a person were to receive grace, but make no real improvement in their conduct, then they would receive nothing at all. In grace, the present is seen through the totality: if the totality itself remains wicked, then the present moment of wickedness is in no way transfigured when seen through this totality. (This is another way of stating the point that while our efforts depend on the grace of God, such grace in turn depends on
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those very efforts.) The conditions that might make the bestowal of grace inappropriate turn out to be precisely those that would make such grace empty. As such, the notions of desert or merit are out of place. We can deserve neither to receive nor not to receive grace; instead, we can only be receptive or unreceptive to it. Such receptivity means living in a way such that we can realistically hope that the totality of our character differs from its present state, such that were we to receive grace, it would reveal a real change of our moral nature. In working to develop my (empirical) virtue, I am acting in the only way consistent with Iny trust in what I take to be my moral destiny. On the view I have attributed to Kant, any divine 'decision to grant or withhold grace would turn out to be self-justifying. Such decisions could never be in error, for whether grace is granted or withheld determines whether the creature in question is an appropriate object of such bestowal at all. If there is no ilnprovement in one's life, then there is no difference between granting and denying grace; in either case the subject remains merely wicked, merely a creature of passion. The only interesting case for this question is when the requisite course of reformation does in fact transpire. In this case, if the subject is granted grace, then it true that he has, all along, been an autonomous, morally good agent, and hence an appropriate object of grace. If the same grace were to be denied this subject, then it would be the case that despite his changes, he is never more than an aggregation of passions, and hence never the right sort of thing to be granted grace in the first place. Insofar as we represent grace as a gift from God, we can only represent God's choices as being arbitrary, for He could never have more reason to bestow grace in one way rather than in any another. Strangely enough, any decision He makes will be the uniquely right one: if we receive grace, we thereby become appropriate recipients of it, and God makes no mistake in granting it to us. If we are denied grace, they we remain creatures unfit to receive it, and God does us no injustice. Paradoxically enough, if God credits us with a changed disposition, there will be something to credit us with; if God does not so credit us, there never will have been any such disposition in the first place to deny us. God mayor may not offer us grace, but he cannot fail to give us what is ours (because the sense of just who "we" are, and hence what is "ours," itself depends on whether this offer is made). God's apportionment of grace is properly represented as being inscrutable, not because He has no reasons to distribute one way rather than another, but
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because He has too many. For what reasons there would be for different apportionments are not themselves be independent of how that apportionment itself is ultimately made. 6. The Postulates Revisited By presenting autonomy as a quality that both "always already" and "never yet" characterizes the human will, !(ant seems to offer the beginnings of a new way of understanding the Postulates of Pure Practical reason. Most of Kant's earlier arguments for the postulates, particularly those of the second Critique, derive the postulates as necessary conditions of the rational pursuit of the Highest Good. In chapter 3, I argued that the postulates articulate a kind of basic trust in the moral structure of nature, a trust needed to keep our moral understanding from undermining itself with "sophistical evasions." What Kant presents in the Religion, however, is another way that moral authority and our autonomy might depend on a kind of fundamental trust, a trust that neither has nor needs rational grounds. On this picture, when we take the moral law to bind us, we are taking ourselves to be fundamentally autonomous creatures, even though such autonomy cannot be manifested empirically at any particular point in time. In thus taking myself to have an autonomous will, I aln not making an inference based on how I know myself enlpirically-if anything, I am making an identification that is in tension (if not conflict) with how I appear to myself as a natural creature. As Hume saw, all I reveal to myself considered as an empirical creature is an aggregate of passions, something which at best is only a semblance of a will. Insofar as I take Inyself to be truly autonomous (i.e., insofar as I take the moral law to be my law) I trust that while I can only encounter degrees of evil in my empirical character, my true character is realized in a totality that I can never quite see. Thus the Fact of Reason itself may depend on our being willing to place faith before (but not against) knowledge; on our freely identifying with the self we can only morally hope to be, rather than the self that we can elnpirically know. The practical postulates can be represented as three aspects of this primitive trust upon which our recognition of morality depends. 13 To have faith in the existence of God may only be to trust 13. My contention here bears some similarity to Allen Wood's claim that grace, just as much as God and immortality, should count as a postulate of pure practical reason. (see Kant's Moral Religion 248). However, in-
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that there really is some such perspective on the totality of my character, a greater perspective to which the truth of my disposition would be revealed. To trust in God is to trust in the coherence of such a perspective that sees me as I really am, and in which I can hope to be morally redeemed. It is to trust that there is more to the truth of human beings than any human being could say or see of herself at any particular time, but which can only be captured in the view of the whole, in which each of us is represented in terms of the species, and each part of our lives in terms of our overall moral trajectory. In the Opus Postumum, Kant does in fact declare that In a world considered as a totality of rational beings, there is also a totality of morally practical Reason, and consequently of an imperative Right and therewith also a God. 14
Immortality of the soul can be taken as the correlate of this idea of God. Both postulates may represent aspects of what it is to understand oneself primarily in terms of a totality of one's character. The active aspect of this self-conception is contained in the concept of God, as the kind of standpoint that one would have to occupy to determine the truth of a human being's character. Immortality, in contrast, represents the passive side of this conception, where we consider the sort of object we must be if we are to be redeemed in the sight of God. With faith in God, we trust in the possibility of actively taking up such a timeless perspective on ourselves. With faith in immortality, we have confidence that there really is/will be such a totality to be seen in my character, that we really constitute that kind of thing that only reveals its true nature to such a timeless perspective. For our character to take this form, we would need not just an afterlife, but an afterlife of infinite duration, precisely so as to perform the sort of unending labor on ourselves that !(ant associates with immortality. As Kant describes our duty to perfect ourselves, it seems that we would have to trust in a kind of personal immortality, in an individual destiny in which each of us nlay translate herself out of stead of claiming grace as a postulate, I am claiming that we take all the postulates to be aspects of our trust in grace. Grace is properly the original object of faith; God, immortality, and even freedom are further articulations of this sort of primitive trust. 14. As quoted in Sharon Anderson-Gold, "God and Community: An Inquiry into the Religious Itllplications of the Highest Good," 129.
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the realm of the passions. However, !(ant is not required to understand immortality in this narrowly personal way. We may also be able to sustain the right kind of trust if we see ourselves as members of a kind that, as a whole, accomplishes this self-transformation in the course of its collective history. What Kant has shown us is that I can claim an intelligible character different from my empirical one only by seeing my present as a stage in a particular kind of moral destiny. From what !(ant says, however, it should not matter whether this is a destiny that I personally fulfill, or one in which I participate through the species with which I identify. If so, then moral selfhood need not presuppose faith in any kind of personal immortality. Such faith could be equally realized in a kind of trust in the capacity of human kind to become a truly rational animal, a kind of open-ended faith in the future of humanity, despite what history has shown us of ourselves. IS Insofar as the idea of personal immortality becomes incredible, this sort of historical faith may provide our last, best moral hope for ourselves. Finally, this picture may explain why !(ant represents even our freedom as an object of faith. In the second Critique, it seemed puzzling why freedom of the will should appear as one of the postulates of pure practical reason. After all, !(ant considers such freedom to be the ratio essendi of the moral law: insofar as the law is immediately given as a fact of reason, so too is our freedom. Freedom can be derived immediately from the law; only God and immortality are inferred as conditions of the Highest Good. Acknowledging the authority of the law and recognizing oneself as free are not two different judgments for I(ant; rather, these are two ways of grasping the same fact, under different metaphysical gUIses. On the picture presented in the Religion, even the recognition of our own freedom involves a kind of trust in the totality of our character. When we look at ourselves empirically, we cannot find any unified, free will, but instead confront only a heap of passions, with varying degrees of stability and dominance relative to one another. We are free (as the law assumes and demands that we be) only insofar as our true nature is to be found, not in the present, but in the whole development which that nature ceaselessly undergoes. If my life as a whole takes the right shape, then it can truly 15. At this point I
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be said that I have been an autonomous creature all along. To trust that my life really (timelessly) takes this shape is to trust that I really am (really become) the kind of creature to whom the law properly applies. Paradoxically, our autonomy is both our fundamental starting point, our ultimate goal, and the principle that guides our journey from beginning to end. Freedom turns out to be both a constitutive principle that defines what we are from the start, and our highest regulative ideal, which we can approximate but never attain in time. When I
7. Toward the Ethical Commonwealth The traditional problem of I
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fallen. If so, then wickedness does not require any further explanation-it is the default condition from which our view of ourselves must always start. Kant's problem is instead how a creature who at any given point in time could only be judged wicked, could nevertheless become morally justified. A true fall into evil would only be possible for a creature who was morally complete at a given point in tiIne, a creature whose empirical character could fully realize its intelligible character. An angel could fall, as could our first parents, who CaIne into existence perfect-only in these cases would some account of how one could abandon goodness for wickedness be needed. Yet although I(ant neither needs nor possesses an account of how a fall into evil is possible, he does have more to say about how we mayor may not successfully cope with the evil that is with us at any point in time. Our problenl is not how we are to prevent ourselves from falling; rather, given our fallen status, our problem is a matter of making ourselves receptive to grace. Although we are all wicked (at least in one sense), the good are those people who can recognize themselves in a totality of character that would be morally redeeming. Seen as creatures in time, the good differ from the wicked only by a matter of degree; both are really just clusters of passions, although the good may be dominated by more morally fortunate passions than are the wicked. The real difference between the good and the evil is in terms of the destiny they see for themselves, in the teleology of their development. The good person is able to see her present as a stage in a complete life (either of an individual or of the species), and insofar as she can coherently sustain this vision, she may take herself to be a truly autonomous, morally good creature. The wicked person, in contrast, cannot consistently see hilnself this way, for he leads a life that resists being interpreted as a part of such a morally redeeming whole. OUf lives will resist this interpretation insofar as we fail to gain control over our passions, and instead act from them to the detriment of morality. We can only maintain our trust in ultimate justification so long as we grow in empirical virtue; that is, so long as our more morally-informed passions grow in power over those passions that are antagonistic to morality. The harder it becomes to imagine our wicked past to be just an exceptional period in our development, the harder it is to keep up the faith that we may be ultimately "justified" when our life is seen as a whole. The more it seems that my moral future will resemble my sorry past, the less grace offers me. While repentance is possible at any point in life, the greater the his-
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tory of sin and vice, the more intense must be future efforts at change, if the totality of our character is to take on the significance for which we hope. As Kant notes, deathbed conversions are pointless (at least, absent an afterlife); once a life has taken its full shape, there is no new way of seeing himself that the penitent, however sincere, can even hope to lay hold of. 16 Although good and evil thus turn on how individuals can understand their own lives, !(ant does not understand the state of our dispositions to be an entirely personal affair. Rather, whether or not we can successfully take up and live consistently with the redeeming perspective depends heavily on the kinds of social life we inhabit. In the Religion, !(ant argues that certain kinds of social life tend to corrupt, by engendering those passions most antagonistic to morality. Kant tells us that: It is not the instigation of nature that arouses what should properly be called the passions, which wreak such great devastation in his originally good predisposition. His needs are but limited, and his state of mind in providing for them moderate and tranquil. He is poor (or considers hilTIself so) only to the extent that he is anxious that other human beings will consider him poor and will despise him for it. Envy, addiction to power, avarice, 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 necessary to assume that these are sunk into evil and are examples that lead him astray; it suffices that they are there, that they surround him, and that they are human beings, and they will mutually corrupt each other's moral disposition and make one another evil. (R 6:94).
Social life gives rise to the passions, and provides the· breeding ground for the "malignant" or "diabolical" vice of envy, along with the manias for power, possession, and domination. These passions are particularly dangerous beca use they most closely resemble basic principles of practical reasoning. The manias for power, possession, and dominance are all corruptions of various pragmatic imperatives, as perversions of empirical practical reason. 16. If it must be possible for every sincere act of repentance to succeed, then we may have another Kantian argument for immortality. If we can authentically repent at any point in life, then there must always be a future subsequent to that point, in which such repentance could realize itself.
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Envy, malice, and the other malignant passions are corruptions of the categorical imperative itself, perverting the objective authority of the law into a kind of private privilege. The problem with the emergence of these passions is not just that they are particularly hard to master, in that they are particularly forceful. Rather, the real problem is that these passions hide from us our very need to develop virtue. These passions are dangerous not because of their strength, but because of their deceptiveness, through which they may masquerade as n10rality itself. Kant warns us of "a certain self-incurred perversity or, as we might otherwise also call this wickedness, fraud (faussite, the satanic guile through which evil came into the world."(R 6:83) Insofar as such malignant passions constitute a perverted understanding of moral concepts, they will hide from us what the true nature of moral goodness is, and of what we must do to be at least not unworthy of moral justification. We will think that we are acting rightly, and growing in virtue, when actually we are only becoming more vindictive, more jealous, and more hypocritically moralistic. These deceptions will be particularly hard to discover and root out, for "one is never more easily deceived than in what promotes a good opinion of oneself." (R 6:68). Although Kant does not make the claim explicitly, we should expect a moral understanding deformed by these passions to generate correspondingly deformed notions of God and our relation to him. As morality is the basis of rational religion, we may expect the perversions of morality to serve as the basis of the characteristic corruptions of faith. When moral understanding emerges as envy, malice, and vindictiveness, we might well conceive of God not as a judge who enforces justice, but as an overlord who demands obedience. Insofar as such a God punishes without regard to justice (but only personal pique), we might approach the task of becolning pleasing in his sight not as a matter of becoming virtuous, but of currying favor with the cosmic despot by whatever rituals and practices we take Him to prefer (cf. R 6:103). The malignant passions would thus not only resist morality, they would produce a kind of perverted faith which would keep us from clearly recognizing the moral project that was incumbent upon us. ] ust as rational faith supports morality, such a false faith will reinforce wickedness. !(ant claims that even without any particularly wicked members, some kinds of social life generate these corrupting passions in all its members. The problem, !(ant argues, arises in what he calls
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an "Ethical State of Nature." An ethical state of nature is compatible with a well-ordered political state, and can exist and grow within such a polity. However, the ethical state of nature does resemble the political in that there is no recognized authority, independent of our own individual points of view, to which we might refer our legal or moral claims. I(ant says In these two [states of nature] each individual prescribes the law to himself, and there is no external law to which he, along with others, acknowledges himself to be subject. In both each individual is his own judge, and there is no effective public authority with power to determine legitimately, according to laws, what is in given cases the duty of each individual, and to bring about universal execution of those laws. (R 6:95)
If the ethical state of nature is not also a political one, there will be recognized authority for adjudicating claims of right, which may be coercively enforced. However, there are moral questions that go beyond such matters of right: questions of what we owe one another not as a matter of broad, rather than of strict obligation. For I(ant, the juridically enforceable duties are limited to our strict duties to others; our duties to ourselves, and our imperfect duties generally, remain outside of the province of law. In the ethical state of nature, there is no external authority or even a clear standard to which we can appeal to settle these questions, questions of what degree and what sort of beneficence we should show one another, and what ways we should go about improving and developing ourselves. Although these matters can never be coercively enforced, they do nevertheless underwrite our practices of praise and blame, encouragement and disdain. An ethical state of nature appears to be that social condition in which each person is her own judge not of her rights, but of her virtue, i.e., of what is morally admirable or shameful in her own character and human character generally. Kant does not provide us with any explicit account of how such an ethical state of nature provides a breeding ground for the vices of culture, even in initially upright people. However, we can glean an explanation from what Kant has already told us about the nature of the passions. At R 6:27, I(ant located the most dangerous vices, (the "diabolical vices" or vices of culture) in the transition from our humanity to our personality. Humanity involves a kind of concern for our own self-worth, where that worth is still
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conceived in terlTIS of the worth of our condition. Absent any objective standard of such worth, we can only measure our happiness relative to the apparent happiness of others. Humanity thus involves a kind of self-love [W]hich is physical and yet involves comparison ... that is, only in comparison with others does one judge oneself happy or unhappy. Out of this self-love 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.(R 6:27).
!(ant here describes what seenlS to be a kind of state of nature with regard to one's own worth. Absent any standard or authority by which to decide whether or not we are in a good condition, our self-assessment cannot claim any objective validity. At best, such evaluations can only aspire to the selTLblance of such validity that comes from intersubjective agreement. Our worth thus becomes dependent on the opinion of others; and since these others themselves lack any objective standard to judge, they can only assess us comparatively. Here we can already see the genesis of the manias for honor and domination: by maintaining a good reputation or making others dependent on oneself, we can secure at least the appearance of their approval and esteenl. However, these qualities only do us good insofar as they are not overshadowed by the reputation or power of others. Thus in order to keep ourselves from falling behind the appearance of others, we must always seek more power, more acclaim, and lTIOre influence over others and their opinions. This structure exactly parallels Hobbes' war of all against all, except here we are not fighting to preserve our lives, but our own sense of ourselves. The most malignant vices, however, are not merely extreme instances of the "jealousy and rivalry" that emerge from this dynamic. I(ant is instead most worried about envy, ingratitude, and malice ("vices of secret or open hostility to all whom we consider alien to us") which are only "grafted" onto such rivalries. Such grafting involves a way in which the moral ideas become distorted when they emerge from this sort of diseased humanity. Jealousy and rivalry only involve ways we understand our worth as an understanding of the worth of our condition, as an assessment of
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whether we are truly happy or not. With the emergence of moral concepts, however, we come to conceive of a distinction between the worth of our condition and the worth of our person. The worth of our person, determined morally, functions as the grounds by which we may deserve to be in a particular sort of condition. Jealousy becomes envy by becoming moralized, by adding the idea of desert to the passion to remain superior to others. The jealous person fervently desires that no one surpasses or even approaches him: the envious person thinks that those who do surpass him deserve to suffer, deserve to be humbled. The jealous person only desires that others be brought down; the envious person thinks they deserve it, that this desire has something like objective justification that others should recognize and respect as welL In an ethical state of nature, we are not merely competitive regarding our happiness. Rather, this competitive attitude also infects our understanding of our moral worth, the worth not just of our condition, but of our person. Although we do recognize ourselves to be bound by moral law, and to be thus enjoined to virtue, we consider ourselves morally good only insofar as we are superior to others, only insofar as we manifest superior empirical virtue. Contrawise, we complacently consider ourselves morally wanting only insofar as we are less virtuous than others; we are satisfied if we are only bad "in a way common to all." Even when in the grip of the malignant vices, we to some degree realize that our moral worth is distinct from our satisfaction with our condition (our happiness). However, we make the nlistake of continuing to understand our relation to such moral worth on the model of our relation to such happiness. We treat our moral worth as just another kind of happiness, differing from the latter not logically, but only in terms of its content. When in the grip of the malignant vices, we realize that it is only through virtue and vice that we can deserve happiness or suffering, but we think that such desert only depends on our relative degrees of virtue. We thus deserve better, the more others are corrupted, and deserve less, the more others improve. This situation will be characterized not only by envy and malice, but also by a kind of moralistic hypocrisy, an obsession with magnifying the moral faults of others and in effacing one's own. Once moral worth is seen as this sort of zero-sum ganle, morality can no longer be conceived of as a collective enterprise. The very idea of humanity, as a totality, becoming wellpleasing to God will no longer make sense to someone trapped in this perspective. Competition for pseudo-moral worth has made it
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impossible for individuals to morally identify with the whole of humanity; and with the failure of this identification, one cannot have faith in the redemptive power of grace. I(ant tells us that to escape this situation, we must leave the ethical state of nature and instead form what he calls an "Ethical Commonwealth," a "republic under laws of virtue." (R 6:100). !(ant emphasizes that such laws cannot be coercive in character; insofar virtue concerns the "inner morality" of actions, and not their outward form, virtue is not a fit subject of legal punishment. Nevertheless, such laws are supposed to be publicly recognized and authoritative in character. What Kant seems to have in mind here are publicly recognized standards of what counts as a respectable degree of virtue, standards that are to guide our ordinary moral discourse of praise and blame, as well as our forms of moral education. Of course, the moral law itself determines what sort of qualities in general count as virtue and vice; even in the ethical state of nature there must be at least this much of a publicly recognized law that directs us to beneficence and self-improvement in general. However, the moral law does not, in itself, determine what counts as better or worse ways to be beneficent, nor does this iluperfect duty determine just what degree of importance we should attach to the interests of others. The moral law only vaguely sketches what can count as real self-improvement, and does not specify how important we should consider this concern, relative to beneficence and our other non-moral interests. In an Ethical State of Nature, all these matters, which bear heavily on how we think of our own moral worth, are left up for grabs. In the absence of any other standard, we are likely to try to resolve these questions along lines suggested by our competitive understanding of happiness, itself already dominated by the passions of jealously and rivalry. In order to avoid this kind of confusion, we need objective standards that determine what counts as a meritorious, or shameful degree of virtue, standards that are taken to hold regardless of what any particular people think. Such standards, I take it, are the non-coercive laws that Kant sees as constitutive of the ethical commonwealth. Such laws perform the same basic function with regard to virtue as the laws of a political commonwealth do with regard to questions of right. Yet unlike the political case, I(ant thinks we can only conceive of the legislator of these laws as God, rather than something like the General Will of any community in particular. Kant claims that
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If, however, the community is to be an ethical one, the people, as a people, cannot itself be regarded as legislator. For in such a community all the laws are exclusively designed to promote the morality of actions (which is something internal, and hence cannot be subject to public human laws) whereas these public laws ... are on the contrary directed to the legality of actions, which is visible to the eye, and not to (inner) morality which alone is at issue here.)(R 6:99)
Kant's denial that the community itself can serve as ethical legislator is initially puzzling. I(ant appeals to the fact that ethical standards would concern the "inner" quality of our actions, and that this quality could never be judged with any degree of certainty by ordinary observers. This argument, however seems to assume that ethical laws must conform to the standards appropriate for positive laws: i.e., be something that can be judged with a high enough degree of certainly as to allow for punishment and coercion. In order to be punished for our vices (and not merely our crimes), we might indeed need an enforcement mechanism that has greater insight and power than any temporal institution could have. However, this would only show that God alone could properly enforce the laws of virtue, not that only He can legislate thenl. In any event, if these laws are really standards for rationally disputing about and assessing our own virtue, then none of these enforcement issues need arise. As long as we can take some lTIOre or less educated guesses about what our maXilTIS and motives are, we will be able to put these standards to their primary use. So long as we are not absolutely opaque to ourselves, a community should be able to serve as its own ethical legislator (relative to a constitution, the moral law, which can only be represented as ordained by God). Instead of securing God's sovereignty through His epistemic superiority, I(ant should instead appeal directly to His moral authority. Even when we put questions of punishlTIent and coercion aside, the laws of virtue are still meant to be moral principles, binding upon us categorically. How we stand with regard to these laws makes a difference as to what we nl0rally deserve, a difference in our participation in the Highest Good. Juridical laws settle matters of right within one conlnlunity; their authority can be limited to that community, since it is only within fairly rich contexts of interaction that real disputes about rights can arise. Although I may formally stand in a political state of nature with regard to rational Martians, so long as we do not interact, compete, or depend
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on one another, we do not need a common political authority over us both. Since the state of nature devolves into a state of war only under such special circumstances, political authority can be similarly limited in scope. In the case of the ethical comn10nwealth, however, the laws are meant to set standards not just for this or that community, but for human beings as such. There is no restriction on the scope of the authority of these laws; they are meant to apply to all actual and possible human beings, whether past, present, or yet to cOlne. Unlike positive laws, the problem to which laws of virtue are addressed is not lilnited by the "circumstances of justice," but rather range over everyone with whom we stand or could stand in moral relations. As such, no particular community can claim to legislate for the entirety of humanity. As I(ant notes earlier since the duties of virtue concern the entire human race, the concept of an ethical community always refers to the ideal of a totality of human beings, and in this it distinguishes itself from the concept of a political community. (R 6:95)
The only authority that could promulgate ethical laws (without introducing heteronomy) would be the very object that is bound by them, considered not as subject, but as sovereign. Insofar as all of humanity is to be so bound, the only appropriate legislator would be humanity itself, conceived of as a unified judging subject. As I have argued above, this perspective on the whole is for Kant what is represented by the idea of God. Thus there can be only one true Ethical Commonwealth, insofar as there can be only one set of objectively and universally valid ethical standards for human beings, and that Commonwealth can be conceived of as ruled by God; i.e., by the totality of humanity conceived as an active judging perspective. This may explain why I(ant refers to his ethics as one of "anthroponomy," the autonomy that humanity as a whole possesses with regard to its individual members. (MM 6:406) In our ordinary lives, we must strive to live in a way that might be ultin1ately justified when seen as part of the whole of our individual character. In our social life, we are similarly committed to developing a shared ethical understanding that might be redeemed by the totality not just of our personal character, but the character of the species as a whole. !(ant continues,
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Hence a multitude of human beings united in that purpose cannot yet be called the ethical community as such but only a particular society that strives after the consensus of all human beings (indeed, of all finite rational beings) in order to establish an absolute ethical whole of which each partial society is only a representation or schema ... (R 6:96) Now we have a duty sui generis, not of human toward human beings but of the hUlnan race toward itself. (R 6:97).
The Ethical Commonwealth, like a human being pleasing to God, is an ideal that we must trust in, in order to see our communities, or ourselves, as anything other than heaps of competing opinions or passions. Rather than view our communities as sets of individuals all striving for their own virtue, we must rather see ourselves engaged in a common project of articulating a richer conception of virtue than what the law readily gives us, a project in which all rational subjects are involved. The concept of a human community, like that of a human being, is thus dependent on the idea of the totality of humanity, and on its moral destiny. In both cases, a kind of unconditional moral commitment (and moral identity) rests upon our trust in a kind of agency that we could never see at any point in time, but which must nevertheless take to constitute our true nature all along.
8. Conclusion: From Faith to Duty I have said very little in this dissertation about moral casuistry, about the proper way of applying the moral law to particular circumstances. In particular, I have said nothing about the supposed "gap" between the moral law as it emerges from I
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fered in this dissertation is n1eant as the beginnings of such an expanded account of Kantian subjectivity, an account that lTIay be used to illuminate some of the darker corners of Kant's substantive moral theory. The preceding chapters have thus been a kind of prologue to the question of how Kant is entitled to claim any determinate content for the moral law at all. I am not, however, going to offer a complete account of how the moral law, on this reading, resolves itself into the substantive versions of the Categorical Imperative-such a project would constitute another dissertation in itself. However, I do want to offer a few suggestions about how the above understanding of human character might help us to make sense of some of the more puzzling aspects of I(ant's understanding of the proper application of the moral law. Given the scope of the topic, I will limit myself here only to I(ant's initial discussions in the Groundwork about how the lTIorallaw should be applied. In particular, I want to look at the contradiction tests associated with the formula of universal law. The formula of universal law seems to be the closest to the moral law that emerges in both the third chapter of the Groundwork and in the second Critique. I(ant explicitly privileges this formula, as the one we should consider when confronting particularly difficult cases. Moreover, the problem of emptiness is most acute for the forn1ula of Universal Law. The formulas of Humanity and of the I(ingdom of Ends seem to offer us richer resources for understanding the limits that the moral law places on our maxims. The formula of universal law, while closest to the arguments that defend the moral law, also seems to be the one furthest from determinate application-it is here that the problem of the gap is most keenly felt. A major problem with the contradiction tests is that they often seem to rely on teleological assumptions in order to generate determinate content. This problem does not afflict our perfect duties to others, which are generated only by the "contradictions in conception" typically suffered by maxims of lying, false promising, and, in general, free-riding. This kind of contradiction, and the consequent duties, have often been taken as the least problematic; if I(ant's account works at all, it seems, it works here. Yet such duties clearly concern only a small region of the moral realm-there is much more to morality than not exploiting practices (or exploiting the participants in such practices). Yet J(ant's further account of duties to the self and of duties of virtue seems to bring in illicit teleological considera~ions. When Kant considers suicide,
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which touches on a perfect duty to ourselves, he claims we should reason this way: His maxim, however, is: from self-love I make it my principle to shorten my life when its longer duration threatens more troubles than it promises agreeableness. The only further questiDn is whether this principle of self-love could become a universal law of nature. It is then seen at once that a nature whose law it would be to destroy life itself by means of the same feeling whose destination is to impel toward the furtherance of life would contradict itself and would therefore not subsist as nature; thus that maxin1 could not possibly be a law of nature and, accordingly, altogether opposes the supreme principle of all duty. (G 4:422).
And considering a general maxin1 of self-neglect: He now sees that a nature could indeed always subsist with such a universal law, although (as with the South Sea Islanders) the human being should let his talents rust ... only he cannot possibly will that this become a universal law or be put in us as such by means of natural instinct. For, as a rational being he necessarily wills that all the capacities in hiln be developed, since they serve him and are given to him for all sorts of possible purposes. (G 4:423).
I(ant here seems to think that to consider a maxim as a law of nature is to consider it as a law that would fit into a teleologically organized system of nature, a law that would be consistent with nature making sense the way a well-designed artifact makes sense. Taking "law of nature" in this strongly teleological sense certainly puts more bite into the contradiction tests. A maxim of general self-neglect is indeed in tension with the view that there is some point in our having the capacities we do, some point to which we need to respect in our employment of those capacities. In the case of suicide, Kant is even willing to assign a particular natural purpose to self-love (that of self-preservation), and treat that purpose as something that must be accommodated in the world of the universalized maxim. However, it is never clear how Kant is entitled to appeal to such a robustly teleological sense of natural law, let alone any specific natural purposes. His arguments for morality only invoke the idea of law in a perfectly generic sense, as the principle of some kind of necessary connection. Kant defines nature in general as any realm of objects governed by law of some sort; for
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him purposive organization should be only one possible, but not necessary, way that such objects could stand under laws. Even Kant's account of the duty of beneficence, the other major imperfect duty, can be read as having an irreducibly teleological component. I? According to many interpretations, the problem with a maxim of indifference to the interests of others is that, when universalized, basic human needs $could not be satisfied, needs that must be met in order for us to endure and function effectively as rational agents. There is much to be said for this view, but it does pay the price of introducing a surprising element of contingency into the duty of beneficence. After all, it seems to be a contingent matter whether or not such a law of indifference would in fact make rational agency per se impossible. Given great enough individual powers (or sufficient generosity of nature), rational agents might manage to thrive even though no one places any direct value on the needs of others. We might after all still place all sorts of indirect value on the needs of others; the world of the universalized maxim excludes only disinterested help, not help altogether. I suggest that the problem with the world of the universalized maxim of indifference is not that we could not satisfy our needs in such a world; rather, the problem is that we could not regard any of our interests as needs at all. In this world one n1ight still retain a very strong interest in food, shelter, and medical care. However, such interests could not be represented as real needs, insofar as a need is a source of reasons for the needy agent that is independent of that agent's attitude toward it. The world of universal indifference might be one of human wants, of varying degrees of intensity, but nothing that could properly be described as a need simpliciter. If this is where the contradiction lies, then Kant still has to show us why it is rationally necessary to see ourselves 17. There have been many different attempts to reconstruct what is at work in the duty of beneficence and in contradictions in the will generally. What I offer here is one way of reconstructing this view, without any argument to rule out other proposals. In general, I suspect other strategies will suffer because they make the duty of beneficence turn on particular facts about hUlnan psychology, sociology and economics that may not even be true, and if true, are only contingently so. Such contingency would then infect the duty of beneficence itself. While this might be a bullet many would be willing to bite, the picture I give here has the advantage that it retains the kind of necessity for the duty of beneficence that !(ant seems to associate with it.
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as possessed not just of wants and preferences but of true needs. I8 The idea of a need is an inherently teleological concept, and it is not clear why !(ant can avail himself of such considerations to give substance to his testing procedure. We nlight dismiss such teleological elenlents of Kant's discussion of the CI as traces of dogmatic rationalism that I(ant has failed to fully purge from his system. My suggestion is that we instead consider such teleology not as a vestige of Kant's philosophical past, but rather as an anticipation of the moral psychology which fully emerges only in J(ant's later works. I have argued that in the Religion, Anthropology, and Education, I(ant articulates a richly teleological conception of the self, a teleology that is consistent and even required by Kant's understanding of hunlan freedom and autonomy. On this picture, to even identify oneself as a rational agent is to understand oneself in terms of our characteristic moral destiny. Only relative to that destiny can we be free, autonomous, rational, or moral; and it is only so long as we are committed to morality, rationality, autonomy and freedom that we can acknowledge that destiny as our destiny. A creature that has such a characteristic normative destiny is, however, also a creature that has to understand itself in terms of its own immanent purposes and needs. Contradictions in the will, I suggest, are just what result from maxims that, when universalized, become inconsistent with this conception of the self, a conception we must possess insofar as we can coherently claim to have a will at all. To adopt a maxim of self-neglect is to deny that our powers have any such purposes whatsoever, regardless of how those purposes might be spelled out. Our capacities would thus be mere property for us, tools that we may use at our discretion, but which are not bound up any kind of activity, or any kind of project, appropriate to humanity as such. Similarly, a universalized maxim of indifference would entail that we can only have wants, not true needs that attach to us as human beings, and which must have a special status in our deliberations. These attitudes, I suspect, are inconsistent with a real identification with the totality of hUluanity by which we are entitled to claim a will at all. To identify with the totality is to see oneself in terms of the proper moral destiny of humanity; and relative to this destiny there are objective 18. Cf. MM 6:393-4, where !(ant seems to expressly run together the sense of happiness at stake in beneficence with a hUlnan being's real needs as such: "For, a maxim of promoting other's happiness at the sacrifice of one's own happiness, one's true needs ... ").
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purposes that can be ascribed to human powers. These purposes would not explain the existence of these powers, but they would govern the proper use we make of them, in terms of our common project of self-definition. A universalized maxim of self-neglect would make it impossibLe for us to recognize any such purposiveness in our powers at all. Similarly, such an identification with our moral destiny requires that we see some of our interests not just as preferences, but as real human needs. The development of virtue is necessarily a common project: the preconditions of progress in this enterprise are thus rationally necessary interests of human beings as such; i.e., true human needs. A universalized maxim of indifference would be inconsistent with this perspective, and would represent a repudiation of the common nature of this project. The indifferent person denies any direct interest in the needs of humanity generally, and in this way denies that what she is essentially depends on what we become. The maxims of self-neglect and indifference both express a kind of fundamental faithlessness, a resistance to the notion that to be a person requires a kind of identification and trust in humanity as a whole. Universalized, these maxims cannot be willed because they would vitiate the self-understanding through which we can claim to have a will in the first place. Suicide remains a difficult case, even on the view I am advancing. In the discussion of suicide quoted above, I(ant seems to draw on a quite specific teleological claim-not only that self-love (or the inclinations that it involves) has a distinctive role in human life, but that this role is precisely to lead us to preserve our lives. Even the degree of teleology that I have claimed for Kant cannot support this more robust claim. It is one thing to argue that we must see our capacities as having some sort of characteristic and proper function, it is another to advance a substantive claim about just what this function is in a particular case. Even contradictions in the will depend only our seeing ourselves in light a general moral teleology; and it hard to see how such a teleology requires that self-love (or inclination generally) be ascribed the purpose that !(ant gives to it. 19 19. This idea of our own merely formal purposiveness to ourselves may have sOlnething to do with Kant's fan10us claim in the third Critique that beauty is the symbol or morality. For Kant, the beautiful object is one that manifests "purposiveness without a purpose." We experience the parts of the beautiful thing through the idea of its totality; but this totality cannot be articulated or specified by any determinate concept. We know the parts
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Kant's explicit argument here about the natural purpose of self-love probably cannot be sustained. Nevertheless, the sort of teleological picture I have offered does help to make sense of why I(ant thinks that there is something particularly objectionable about suicide. The suicides Kant is really after are, I suspect, the ones committed out of despair, out of a sense of one's own worthlessness, guilt, or shame. Such despair is the antithesis of faith; such hopelessness is not just ~ lack of trust, but a denial or closing off of the possibility of what trust would offer. Contradictions in the will, I have claimed, emerge when we choose in a way that is inconsistent with a proper identification with the totality of humanity, the identification which allows us to claims a will for ourselves at all. The despairing suicide, in contrast, does not simply choose in a way inconsistent with that broader self-conception. Rather, the suicide abandons that self-conception altogether. Since he retains nothing, there is nothing left to provide the grounds for any sort of contradiction. The suicide abandons any hope that the truth of what he is and has been may be contained in his future progress, for what he intends is that there be no such progress at all. His desire is that his story end here, in a way that does not even gesture toward some possible future (in this way suicide is inlporthrough the whole, but there is nothing more to that whole that what we grasp from the parts. The parts, in themselves (without the mediation of any other standard or concept), establish or bring us to that perspective on the whole, in which they are radically transfigured. To appreciate something as beautiful, then, is to see it as making a kind of unique sense of itself, which is not an instance of any other or more general sort of perfection. What Kant says we experience in the beautiful object sounds remarkably like what we look to in divine grace. When we trust in grace, we look upon our characters (or the character of humanity as a whole) as something like an object of beauty. Like an object of beauty, we take the true nature of the part that we know to be determined by the whole of our character, a whole which itself is determined by the relations of development and change of the parts within it. In the beautiful object, we see the parts transforming themselves into a whole a new kind of intelligi bility, wholly immanent to the particular thing in question. This attitude is precisely that which a moral subject must take on humanity as a whole; that he must see himself as participating in a species that creates out of itself a new kind of thing and a unique sort of intelligibility. In the beautiful object, we may get an intimation of just what success in this sort of project might look like. Beauty, of which there cannot be knowledge, may be the sensible analogue of mercy, for which there cannot be obligation. (Al-
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tandy different from just a life cut short). The suicide similarly denies his membership in the totality of humanity. He abandons hope that he could be redeemed through what humanity as a whole ultimately makes of itself. In despair, I see myself only as what I have been, not as a participant in what we might be. In terms of rational religion, such despair is a denial of God's grace. Despair is not only the abandonment of any hope of forgiveness, or mercy, but an attitude that makes forgiveness and mercy impossible, in which we become unable to receive it. 20 Such despair is not merely a lack of moral faith, but a kind of anti-faith, which denies the very possibility that we might find ourselves redeemed in light of a greater whole of which the present is only a part. I(ant n1ay have erred in claiming that we have a duty against such suicide. Talk of duties makes sense only relative to the basic teleological self-conception that constitutes us as agents. The suicide is not violating that self-conception; he is abandoning it altogether. He suffers no contradiction, because he has cast off the basic commitn1ents that make such contradictions (or agreements) possible. Suicide is bad not as a violation of duty, but as the rejection of the sort of the more general understanding that makes thought of duty possible for us, a denial of the primitive faith in humanity that allows us to recognize ourselves as agents. At the point of suicide, despair is the denial of the very possibility of morality, of agency, and of humanity itself. As !(ant claims, "To annihilate the subject of morality in one's own person is to root out the existence of morality itself fron1 the world .... "(R 6:423). Kant should not represent such an act, and such despair, as a sin: for it is in a way deeper than sin, as a repudiation of the very hope that TI10raiity holds out to us, that we may be something TI10re than we can know.
though, just as there could not be empirical knowledge without the possibility of beauty, it turns out that there could not be obligation without the possibility of mercy). In beauty, we may get a taste of what it would be to know ourselves as we trust God knows us, graciously. 20. This consideration may have something to do with the fact that suicide has frequently be represented as the one unforgivable sin, which necessarily brings with it eternal damnation.
Select Bibliography
WORKS OF KANT
Kant, Immanuel. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Translated by Mary]. Gregor. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974. - - a "The Conflict of the Faculties". Translated by Mary]. Gregor and Robert Anchor. In Immanuel Kant: Religion and Rational Theology, edited by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, 233-328. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. - - - a "Conjectural Beginning of Human History." Translated by Emil L. Fackenheim. In On History, edited by Lewis White Beck, 53-68. In On History, edited by Lewis White Beck. New York: Macmillan, 1963. - - - a Critique of Judgment. Translated by Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987. ---a Critique of Practical Reason. Translated by Mary]. Gregor. In Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, edited by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. - - - a Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965. - - a "The End of All Things." Translated by Allen W. Wood. In Immanuel Kant: Religion and Rational Theology, edited by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, 217-233. Cambridge: Cambridge
330
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Index
Abraham, 140 absurdu111 Practicum, 127-149 affect, 187, 195-198 agnosticism, 177-178 alienation, 8n, 11 Allison, Henry 15n, 24n, 31n, 45n, 52n,56n a1nour propre/amour de soi, 87, 232-33,269 Anderson-Gold, Sharon 308n angels, 101 Anscolnbe, G.E.M., 81n, 71n Anthropology fr01n a Prag111atic Point of View, 6n, 86, 99, 196-97, 250-56 anthroponomy, 319 apperception, practical, 88 transcendental unity of, 88-90 Aristotle, 3, 8, 55, 72-73, 84 atonement,95, 279, 293-307 Austin, ].L., 195n autonomy, 6, 25, 50 development of, 263-64 and faith, 307-310 of practical reason, 107
in the preparatory argument, 23 of the universe as a whole, 24n Baier, Annette, 95, 166n beauty 325-6n Beck, Lewis White, 53, 60, 64 beneficence, 322-33 Bennet~Jonathan, 14n Butler, Joseph, 122-25 categories, of freedom, 79-87 of the understanding, 80-81, 89-91, 101, 111 categorical imperative, 19, 320-27 and the preparatory argument, 23 unity of formulae, 47-50 causation, 24, 44-45, 51, 61 as a form of judgment, 129-137 the will as a form of, 172n character and atonement, 295-309 definition of, 250 empirical and intelligible, 5-12, 171-73
337
338 evil without, 257n, 292 of the human species, 264 intelligible as the grounds of the empirical, 44 and unity of the will, 213 children, 242, 262-63 Christ, Jesus, 281-85, 289 and vicarious suffering, 296, 301 Christianity, 263 circle of G 450,15,16,21-22,31-50, 65,58-69,103 Clarke, Samuel, 122-24 Cohen, Julia, 99n conversion, moral, 294-304 credential, of the Inorallaw, 60-69, 103, 106-108 "Conjectural Beginning of Human History," 257-67 Cooper, John, 233n Critique ofJudgment, 9, 63, 66, 136n, 144, 153, 163, 170, 3215n Critique of Practical Reason, 15-18,
21-69 Critique of Pure Reason, 1., 26, 36,
44,61-62,75-78,88,115-136 deduction of the categories, 111 and the fact of reason, 108-111 of morality, 31, 38, 56-60 Impossibility of, 51 defense, philosophy as, 114 Dennett, Dan, 29n desert, 93-100, 118, 133, 218, 237 and expiation, 294 and grace, 305-30 despair, 326-27 determinism, 5, 13, 23 and deliberation, 29, 41, 61
Index
Diamond, Cora, 4n disposition [Gesinnung], 11-13, 219-223,291-302 dogmatic faith, 157n egoism, 82-83 Entile, 267-75
"The End of All Things," 138, 146, 152, 161 env~246-47,253,261, 284,312-13 Essay of the Origins of Inequality,
260n,275n ethical commonwealth, 126,310-20 ethical state of nature, 126, 310-317 expiation, 294-307 fact of reason, 16, 21-23, 50-69, 106-109, 116, 126, 197, 201, 289, 307 and Inoral development, 273-75 faith, 17, 115-16 and self-knowledge, 15. See also rational faith, dogn1atic faith, trust Fichte, J.G., 157n Foot, Philippa, 3n, 11 n forgiveness, 18, 279-80,304. See also grace formal features of practical reasons, 37-38,48n fragility, 193-96, 204-11 Frankfurt, Harry, 3n freedom, 5, 18 action under the idea of, 28-30 as credential of the moral law, expelled from the world, 13 negative, 24 as practical postulate, 63, 130.
Index as ratio essendi of the moral law 50,57-58,309-310,60-69 See also autonomy, postulates of practical reason general will, 125, 317 gluttony. See vices of nature God, 24-25, 37-38, 120-142 and ethical cOlnmonwealth, 317-320. as holy, 6, 276 as moral standard, 9 and punishlnent, 95, 105-106 and Wille/Willkur distinction,192 See also postulates of practical reason,intellectual intuition good (das Gute), as opposed to the evil (das Bose), 81-84, 88, 92n good will, 38-39, 94n, 301 grace, xii, 18, 156, 279-80, 302-310 and beauty, 325-6n grief, 99-100 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 4, 15,22-55,66,68,103 guilt, 93-101, 152, 186, 218, 218, 237 and expiation, 294 and repentance, 295 Halnpshire, Stuart 28n happiness, 38, 86-87, 99n, 102-104, 118,129-147,217-18 and contentment, 129, 233, 236 and passion, 197 worthlessness of the wickeds's, 40 See also highest good hedonism, 82-84, 96
339 Hegel, G.W.F. 8n, 52n, 68n, 96, 101n, 105,218,263 Heine, H., xii, 117 Henrich, Dieter, Illn heteronomy, 23-25, 101 evil as, 182-187. See also autonomy highest good, 64-67, 127-157 Hill, Thomas E., Jr., 183n Hobbes, Tholnas, 125-27, 315 holiness, 21 7 and Christ, 281-85 as a duty,143 and God's will, 219n honor, 233, 243 as anticipation of morality, 272 in E1nile, 269, 272 mania for, 252 humanity, 4-5, 47, 49n. See also predispositions to goodness HUlne, David, 3, 7, 43, 57n, 72n, 51-52, 84, 12~ 125,127,206-208, 241,307 ideas of reason, 128 illusion, definition of, 254 and passion, 18 transcendental, 157-60 and weakness of will, 212-213 ilnagination, 153 immortality. See postulates of practical reason impurity, 147-48, 214-16 inclination, 16, 17, 31, 57-58, 60-61, 86-87, 121 as affect and passion, 187, 195-98 and animality, 230,
340 not source of evil, 222 and the vices of nature, 245 induction, 170 ingratitude, 253. See also vices of culture instinct, 245 instrulnental reasoning, 84-5, 109 and technical predisposition, 251 intelligible/sensible distinction, 41n, 119 and atonement, 295-307. priority of intelligible over sensible, 42-50 See also character intuition pure sensible, 76 rational, 51-52, 55-56 synthesis of, 90 intuitive understanding, 78, 89, 281 and God, 79 and repentance, 294 James, Aaron, 34n James, William, 117n jealousy, 246, 315-16. See also vices of culture King, Rodney, 150 Korsgaard, Christine M., 42-50, 71, 99, 141-143, 169-70, 288n,206n, 293n Lavater, J.C. 163n lawlessness, 245. See also vices of nature lust, 245. See also vices of nature Luther, Martin, 124 Malcolm, Nonnan, 166n
Index
malice, 246-47, 253, 313. See also vices of culture lTIania, 215-312. See also passion, vice, perversion maxims, 34, 185 McDowell, John, 29 Metaphysics of Morals, 10, 35n, 53, 94,234,282-85 miracles, 156-7 moral death, 35n, 153n lTIoral development, 18, 257-67 !(ant and Rousseau on, 267-75 moral luck, 300 moralism, 316-17. See also vices of culture naturalism, 3 and action, 96-97 with regard to reason, 7, 43 naturalistic fallacy, 107 Nicomachean Ethics, 72
Nietzsche, F. 8n, 74n, 93n, 96n, 105, 229, 263, 267n, 282, 293n noumena, 24, 4n, 158. See also intelligi ble/sensi ble distinction, character On Education, 97, 257, 271n On the Social Contract, 270",
"On the comlnon saying: That may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice", 93,138,161, 192n O'Neill, Onora, 2n, 8. 9n ontological argument, 137n Opus Postumum, 308
original sin, xii, 227 pain. See pleasure parerega to morality, 156-57, 181
341
Index passion, 17-18, 120, 187, 195-203, 243,282-98 generation of, 312-20. and mania, 251-56 See also perversion, vice perversion, 11, 105, 193, 219 and malignancy of reason, 222 mania as, 252, of morality, 313 passion as, 198-99 philosophical anthropology, 15 pleasure (and pain), 38, 84, 87, 96-100, definition, 231 and honor, 243 self-ascription, 241 and vice, 245, 260 postulates of practical reason, 63-64, 115,135-157,181-82 God as, 127, 135-145, 307-8 and grace, 307-310. immortality as, 127, 131, 135-145,211,308 See also freedom practical reason, 8-9, 26 contrasted with theoretical,29-30, 36 empirical and pure, 77. See also postulates of practical reason predispositions to goodness, 223-25, 229-45,257-61 to animality, 229-32, 241-5 and evil, 256-67 to humanity, 230-234 moral, 251 to personality, 91-92, 234-35 pragmatic, 251
seperability of humanity and personality, 236-45 technical 250-51 preparatory argument, 23-31, 37-38, 41-42,46 propensity to evil, 193, 223-26. See also fragility, impurity, wickedness, radical evil prudence, 57-58,110-111,237-244 psychology, 15-17, 78n no laws of, 174n punishment, 57n, 93-100, 125-27, 148,156,218,237,254-56.265 and children, 274 and expiation, 294-96, 313 Quine, W.V.O., 39, 43 radical evil, xii, 18, 82, 225-78 rational faith, xii, 17-18, 115-17, 181 and atheism, 140-41 and knowledge, 135-157 as trust, 168-180 Rawls, John, 60, 64, 82 reactive attitudes, 150 Reath, Andrews, 82n reciprocity thesis, 23-31 reflective endorsement, 71-114 regulative principles, 63, 77, 128, 136 Religion within the bounds of 1nere reason, 218-375 resentment, 261 respect, 61n, 146, 153 responsibility,S, 12n, 16, 92, 94, 183-84 development of a sense of, 261-62 for disposition, 224-227 for relapse into evil, 265
Index
342
revolution, 151n rivalry. See jealousy Rousseau, J.J., 87,125,231-32,259, 260n, 275n, 267-275 Sartre, J.P., 12, 201n, 292n, 294 Scanlon, T.M., lOIn Schopenhauer, A., lOn, 13, 13n, 16, 51-52 self-deception, 9, 18, 124, 147, 191, 293n, 313 self-knowledge, 1-2, 13, 15, 172 and wickedness, 292-3 self-love, 103-105, 194, 235-36, 291-92 of animality (mechanical), 231-32 Butler on, 122 definition of, 197 and illusion 254n lnaxim of, 12, 66-68, 74-75, 81 rational, 83, 86, 198-200 as rationally required, 216-17 and self-conceit, 86-87, 199-202 and suicide, 321-22 of humanity, 232-34, 314-15 moral, 236 self-neglect, 322-325 self-perfection, 217-18, 308-9, 317 self-worth, 40, 95 Sidgwick, Henry, 183n Silber, John, 303-304 skepticism (moral) 27, 71-75, 104-105 and the fact of reason, 52, 60, 69 speciesism, 4n Spinoza, 144 spinozism, 24-25 spontaneity, 25, 41
Stoics, 199, 211, 287-88 strong evaluations, 102 suicide, 19, 322, 325-27 taste, judgments of, 9n, 170n Taylor, Charles 15n, 840, 102,10411 teleology and interpretation of the categorical imperative, 321-27 and morality, 15 and purposiveness, 63 and regula ti ve principles, 66-67 third antinolny, 41, 61, 130 Thompson, Michael, 54n trust, 17-18, 163-179 failures of, 325-27 and the postulates, 307-310 "two standpoints," 40-50 universalization, 32-35, 50 vengefulness, 252-56, 61, 284. See also vices of culture vices, 244-56. 312-20 of culture/diabolical, 246-50, 312-20, 284-85 as grafts, 248-250, 315-16 and mania, 253-264 of nature/bestial, 245-46 vindictiveness. See vengefulness virtue, 99n, 147 Christ as exemplar, 282-83 as component of highest good, 130-33 limits of, 211-12 republic of, 317-20 virtus phaeno1nenon, 289-90
Index weakness of will, 9, 17, 124, 147, 191. See aIso frailty whims,83n ,wickedness, 35, 193, 216-227m 291-313 happiness of valueless, 40 Wiggins, David, 7 YQi II elWi llk ii r, 187-195, 203, 213-215,219,224,287-90 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 71, 75n, 105, 113, 115, 154, 171n, 209, 298n Williams, Bernard, 8n, lIn, 12n, 14n, 39n Wolf, Susan, 1111 Wood, Allen, 1n, lOn, 14n, 139n, 154n, 163n, 164n, 307n
343