Perfecting Virtue: New Essays on Kantian Ethics and Virtue Ethics

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Pe r fec t i ng V i rt u e

In Western philosophy today, the three leading approaches to ­normative ethics are those of Kantian ethics, virtue ethics, and utilitarianism. In recent years the debate between Kantian ethicists and virtue ethicists has assumed an especially prominent position. The twelve newly commissioned essays in this volume, by leading scholars in both traditions, explore key aspects of each approach as related to the debate, and identify new common ground but also real and lasting differences between these approaches. The volume provides a rich overview of the continuing debate between two powerful forms of enquiry, and will be valuable for a wide range of students and scholars working in these fields. l aw r e nc e jo s t is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati. He is the co-editor of Eudaimonia and Well-Being (2003). j u l i a n w u e r t h is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Kant on Mind, Action, and Ethics (2011).



Pe r fec t i ng V i rt u e New Essays on Kantian Ethics and Virtue Ethics e di t e d b y L aw r e nc e Jos t University of Cincinnati

J u l i a n W u e rt h Vanderbilt University

 c a mbr idge u ni v er sit y pr e ss Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 8ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521515252 © Cambridge University Press 2011 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2011 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Perfecting virtue : new essays on Kantian ethics and virtue ethics / [edited by] Lawrence Jost, Julian Wuerth. p.  cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-521-51525-2 (hardback) 1. Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804.  2. Ethics.  3. Virtue. I.  Jost, Lawrence J. (Lawrence John), 1944– II.  Wuerth, Julian. III. Title. b2799.e8.p44 2011 170–dc22 2010040408 isbn 978-0-521-51525-2 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Notes on contributors Acknowledgements List of abbreviations

page vii x xi

Introduction

1

1 Virtue ethics in relation to Kantian ethics: an opinionated overview and commentary

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Lawrence Jost and Julian Wuerth

Marcia Baron

2 What does the Aristotelian phronimos know?

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3 Kant and agent-oriented ethics

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4 The difference that ends make

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5 Two pictures of practical thinking

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6 Moving beyond Kant’s account of agency in the Grounding

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7 A Kantian conception of human flourishing

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8 Kantian perfectionism

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9 Aristotle, the Stoics, and Kant on anger

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Rosalind Hursthouse Allen Wood

Barbara Herman Talbot Brewer

Julian Wuerth Lara Denis

Paul Guyer

Nancy Sherman

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Contents

10 Kant’s impartial virtues of love

241

11 The problem we all have with deontology

260

12 Intuition, system, and the “paradox” of deontology

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Bibliography Index

289 302



Christine Swanton Michael Slote

Timothy Chappell

Contributors

m a rc i a b a ron is Rudy Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University. Her publications include Kantian Ethics Almost without Apology (1995); “Kantian Moral Maturity and the Cultivation of Character,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education, ed. Siegel (2009); “Excuses, Excuses,” in Criminal Law and Philosophy (2007); “Acting from Duty,” in Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, ed. and trans. Allen Wood (2002); and “Kantian Ethics and Claims of Detachment,” in Feminist Interpretations of Immanuel Kant, ed. Schott (1997). ta l b o t br e w e r is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia and a Faculty Fellow of the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He is the author of The Retrieval of Ethics (2009) and a number of articles on Kantian and Aristotelian ethical thought. t i mo t h y c h a ppe l l is Professor of Philosophy at The Open University, UK, and a Visiting Research Fellow in Philosophy at St Andrews University. He is the author of Ethics and Experience: Life beyond Moral Theory (2009), and the editor of Values and Virtues:  Aristotelianism in Contemporary Philosophy (2006) and The Moral Problem of Demandingness (2009). His current research is on Plato and on ethics. l a r a de n i s is Professor of Philosophy at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA. She is editor of Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: A Critical Guide (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Her interest in Kant’s conception of duties to oneself has resulted in essays on the primacy of perfect duties to oneself, duties regarding nonhuman animals, Kant’s condemnation of “unnatural” sex, and a Kantian approach to abortion, as well as Moral Self-Regard:  Duties to Oneself in Kant’s Moral Theory (2001). vii

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Notes on contributors

pau l gu y e r is Professor of Philosophy and Florence R.C. Murray Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his recent books are Kant (2006); Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals:  A Reader’s Guide (2007); and Knowledge, Reason, and Taste:  Kant’s Response to Hume (2008). He has edited The Cambridge Companion to the Critique of Pure Reason (Cambridge University Press, 2010). He is currently working on a history of ­modern aesthetics. b a r b a r a h e r m a n is Griffin Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Law at UCLA. She writes on Kantian themes in ethics and politics, both broadly and narrowly construed. Her publications include Moral Literacy (2007). ro s a l i n d h u r s t hous e is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is the author of On Virtue Ethics (1999); Ethics, Humans and Other Animals (2000), which is a textbook on the ethics of our treatment of the other animals; and numerous articles on ethics, applied ethics, and Aristotle. She is currently working on the question of what, if anything, evolutionary biology can contribute to ethics. l aw r e nc e jo s t is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati. His publications center on Aristotle’s ethical writings. He co-edited Eudaimonia and Well-Being (2003), a collection of essays on the intersection between ancient ethics and contemporary theories of well-being. He is presently finishing a monograph on the Eudemian Ethics in which he argues that its central argument is unified, coherent, and different from that of the Nicomachean Ethics in placing special emphasis on the individual. n a nc y s h e r m a n is University Professor and Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. She is the author of The Untold War (2010); Stoic Warriors (2005); Making a Necessity of Virtue (Cambridge University Press, 1997); and The Fabric of Character (1989). She is also the editor of Critical Essays on the Classics: Aristotle’s Ethics (1999). m ic h a e l s l o t e is UST Professor of Ethics at the University of Miami. He is the author of numerous books and articles on ethics, moral psychology, and political philosophy. His most recent work is at the intersection of virtue ethics and care ethics. His book Moral Sentimentalism was published 2010.

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c h r i s t i n e s wa n t on is a philosophy professor at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is currently working on the virtue ethics of Hume and Nietzsche. Her book on virtue ethics, Virtue Ethics:  A Pluralistic View, was published in 2003. a l l e n wo od is Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor at Stanford University. He has written numerous books and articles, especially on Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Marx. He is co-general editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. His most recent book is Kantian Ethics (Cambridge University Press 2008). j u l i a n w u e r t h is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Kant on Mind, Action, and Ethics (2011). He is currently writing a book, What Should I Do?:  Kant’s Ethics, as one in a five-book, five-author series on Kant’s “five questions,” and is editing The Cambridge Kant Lexicon (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

Acknowledgements

Five of the twelve essays in this volume (those by Marcia Baron, Paul Guyer, Rosalind Hursthouse, Nancy Sherman, and Michael Slote) are versions of papers originally presented in 2005 at a conference that we organized in Cincinnati, “Virtue Ethics vs. Kantian Ethics.” For their generous financial support for this three-day conference, we would like to thank the Hebrew Union College–University of Cincinnati Center for the Study of Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems, the University of Cincinnati College of Law, and the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center. We would also like to thank everyone in the University of Cincinnati Department of Philosophy who helped out with the event, in particular John Bickle, Head of Department. Our special thanks to Jonathan Cohen, Associate Professor at Hebrew Union College and Director of the HUC–UC Center for the Study of Ethics, and to Joseph Tomain, Dean of the University of Cincinnati College of Law, for their close work with us on the conference. We are also grateful to everyone who presented at the conference and to those in attendance. Finally, we are very appreciative of the excellent research assistance in preparing this volume provided by Garrett Bredeson and Alison Suen, graduate students in the Vanderbilt University Department of Philosophy.

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Abbreviations

Citations to Aristotle’s works will refer to the title of the work using one of the abbreviations listed below. The next reference will be to a page number, column letter, and line number in Immanuel Bekker’s 1831 Berlin edition of Aristotle’s works. The Nicomachean Ethics begins at 1094a1, for example. Normally, this will be done without book or chapter numbers. Unless otherwise indicated, the translations used are from The Complete Works of Aristotle:  The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton University Press). M NE Rhet

Metaphysics Nicomachean Ethics Rhetoric

Citations to Kant’s works, with the exception of citations to the first Critique, refer to the title of the work using one of the abbreviations listed below. They next refer to a volume and page number from Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, herausgegeben von der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (formerly the Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, and before that the Königlichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften), 29 volumes (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter [and predecessors], 1900–). Citations to the Critique of Pure Reason (trans. and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood) refer not to the title but instead to the edition of this work – “A” to the 1781 first edition, “B” to the 1787 second edition. Unless otherwise indicated, the essays in this volume use the translations listed here, all from the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. A

Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (7:117–333) [1796–97]. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Robert B. Louden, in Anthropology, History, and Education, ed. Günter Zöller and Louden, 2007, 227–429 xi

xii ABu AC AF AMr APa APi CB CF

CPJ CPrR EOAT G IUH

MD Me MK2 ML1 ML2 MM

List of abbreviations Anthropologie-Busolt (25:1431–531) [1788–89?] Anthropologie-Collins (25:1–238) [1772–73] Anthropologie-Friedländer (25:465–728) [1775–76] Anthropologie-Mrongovius (25:1205–429) [1784–85] Anthropologie-Parow (25:239–463) [1772–73] Anthropologie-Pillau (25:729–847) [1777–78] Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte (8:107–23) [1786]. Conjectural Beginning of Human History, trans. Allen W. Wood, in Anthropology, History, and Education, 163–75 Streit der Fakultäten (7:1–116) [1798]. The Conflict of the Faculties, trans. Mary J. Gregor and Robert Anchor, in Religion and Rational Theology, ed. Wood and George di Giovanni, 1996, 233–327 Kritik der Urteilskraft (5:165–485) [1790]. Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews, ed. Guyer, 2000 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (5:1–163) [1788]. Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Gregor, in Practical Philosophy, ed. Gregor, 1996, 133–271 Das Ende aller Dinge (8:325–39) [1794]. The End of All Things, trans. Wood, in Religion and Rational Theology, 217–31 Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (4:385–463) [1785]. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Gregor, in Practical Philosophy, 37–108 Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht (8:15–31) [1784]. Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim, trans. Wood, in Anthropology, History, and Education, 107–20 Metaphysik Dohna (28:611–702) [1792–93], trans. (of 28:656–90) Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon, in Lectures on Metaphysics, ed. Ameriks and Naragon, 1997, 355–91 Anthropologie-Menschenkunde (25:849–1203) [1781–82?] Metaphysik K2 (28:705–816) [early 1790s], trans. (of 28:753–75) Ameriks and Naragon, in Lectures on Metaphysics, 393–413 Metaphysik L1 (28:183–350) [1777–80], trans. (of 28:195–301) Ameriks and Naragon, in Lectures on Metaphysics, 17–106 Metaphysik L2 (28:525–609) [1790–91?], trans. (of 28:531–94) Ameriks and Naragon, in Lectures on Metaphysics, 297–354 Metaphysik der Sitten (6:203–493) [1797–98]. The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Gregor, in Practical Philosophy, 353–603

List of abbreviations MMr MoC

MoMr MoPo MoVi MVi OFBS

P PMB R REL RH

RP TP

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Metaphysik Mrongovius (29:747–940) [1782–83], trans. Ameriks and Naragon, in Lectures on Metaphysics, 107–308 Moralphilosophie Collins (27:237–473) [1784–85]. Moral Philosophy:  Collins’s Lecture Notes, trans. Peter Heath, in Lectures on Ethics, ed. Heath and J.B. Schneewind, 1997, 37–222 Moralphilosophie Mrongovius II (29:593–642) [1785]. Morality According to Prof. Kant:  Mrongovius’s Second Set of Lecture Notes (selections), trans. Heath, in Lectures on Ethics, 223–48 Praktische Philosophie Powalski (27:91–235) [1782–83?] Metaphysik der Sitten Vigilantius (27:479–732) [1793]. Kant on the Metaphysics of Morals:  Vigilantius’s Lecture Notes, trans. Heath, in Lectures on Ethics, 249–452 Metaphysik Vigilantius (K3) (29:943–1040) [1794–95], trans. Ameriks and Naragon, in Lectures on Metaphysics, 415–506 Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen (2:205–56) [1764]. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, trans. Guyer, in Anthropology, History, and Education, 23–62 Pädagogik (9:437–99) [1803]. Lectures on Pedagogy, trans. Louden, in Anthropology, History, and Education, 434–85 De medicina corporis, quae philosophorum est (15:939–53) [1786] On the Philosophers’ Medicine of the Body, trans. Gregor, in Anthropology, History, and Education, 182–91 Reflexionen (15, 17, 18, 19, 23), trans. (of selections) Bowman, Guyer, and Rauscher, in Notes and Fragments, ed. Guyer, 2005 Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (6:1–202) [1793]. Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, trans. Di Giovanni, in Religion and Rational Theology, 39–215 Recensionen von J.G. Herders Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (8:43–66) [1785]. Review of J.G. Herder’s Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Humanity, trans. Wood, in Anthropology, History, and Education, 121–42 Philosophische Religionslehre nach Pölitz (28:989–1126) [mid1780s?]. Lectures on the Philosophical Doctrine of Religion, trans. Wood, in Religion and Rational Theology, 335–451 Über den Gemeinspruch:  Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis (8:273–313) [1793]. On the

xiv

TPP WDO

List of abbreviations Common Saying: That May Be Correct in Theory, But It Is of No Use in Practice, trans. Gregor, in Practical Philosophy, 273–309 Zum ewigen Frieden (8:341–86) [1795]. Toward Perpetual Peace trans. Gregor, in Practical Philosophy, 311–51 Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientieren? (8:131–47) [1786]. What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?, trans. Wood, in Religion and Rational Theology, 1–18

Introduction Lawrence Jost and Julian Wuerth

The origin of the contemporary debate between Kantian ethics and ­virtue ethics can be traced back to G.E.M. Anscombe’s 1958 essay, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” which revived interest in virtue ethics in contemporary philosophy and challenged the way modern moral philosophy, including Kantian philosophy, was done, especially in contrast with Aristotle’s classical version. But it was only later, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, that discussion between virtue ethicists and Kantian ethicists really picked up. The Kantian ethics with which virtue ethics then clashed was one that had been defined and defended largely in contrast with utilitarianism. Where utilitarianism had struggled to provide an adequate account of individual rights, Kantian ethics provided a staunch defense. Kantians, most influential among them John Rawls, rested this defense largely on the lessons of Kant’s Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals. As the title of the Grounding makes clear, Kant intended for this work to provide the foundation for a “metaphysics of morals,” i.e. the foundation for an ethics grounded a priori, in pure reason, not a posteriori, in experience. And Kant believed that he accomplished this by clarifying the nature of the moral law, or the “categorical imperative.” But all too often, Kant’s defenders and detractors alike took this foundation for Kant’s ethics as a whole, focusing their attention narrowly on the categorical imperative, even more narrowly on one particular version of this law, the “formula of universal law,” and on Kant’s views on how we should apply this version of the law to our subjective principles of action, or “maxims.” The dominant interpretation of Kant’s ethics to emerge reduced moral living to a life punctuated by isolated applications of a moral litmus tests of sorts to our maxims: we were to apply the categorical imperative to our maxims at the scene of action, sort out morally impermissible from permissible maxims, and then get on with living. 1

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Virtue ethicists reacting against this Kantian account charged that it had little or nothing to say about many aspects of moral living that should occupy, and traditionally had occupied, a central place in moral theories, most notably Aristotle’s, such as moral agency, character, emotions, and the process of shaping these over time, and that it had little to offer regarding the concept of the good for man. They also held that the Kantian emphasis on a moral law rendered it rigid and unresponsive to specifics of context, leaving it unmanageable at best, plain wrong at worst. Kantians responded in kind, charging that virtue ethics offered no insight into the foundations of ethics and why the purportedly moral character, motive, or action was moral, or the immoral immoral. This failure of insight, they held, left us without guidance, exposing the concepts of individual rights and justice to morally backward cultural and historical prejudices. All the while, Kantians repeatedly requested more clarity about just what virtue ethics is. The new essays gathered in this volume reveal a changed state in the relation between Kantian ethics and virtue ethics. On the virtue ethics side, there is greater clarity about the meaning of virtue ethics, as is recognized by virtue ethicists and Kantians alike. Further, in recent years virtue ethics has expanded, now bringing in under its umbrella the sentimentalist tradition, going back to Hutcheson, Hume, and including even Nietzsche, as well as scholarly work on the Stoic tradition in Greek and Roman writers. Thus, while the Aristotelian tradition remains strong, new currents have been added. On the Kantian ethics side, the most notable development is that Kantian ethics has now advanced well beyond Kant’s Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals. The authors in this volume consider a wide range of Kant’s recorded thought in ethics, including his other major works, especially his Metaphysics of Morals, his minor works, student notes on his lectures, and his own personal notes. They also work more closely with other areas of Kant’s philosophy, including his theoretical philosophy and his anthropology. A host of factors have combined to make this transformation possible: the abundance of interpretive work on the Grounding, the availability today of much of Kant’s thought in translation and in well-edited volumes, and the pressure that virtue ethics has exerted on Kantian ethics in this direction. The main philosophical bounty of this methodological development is a new awareness of and appreciation for Kant’s views not just on isolated actions but also on the moral agent, virtue, character, emotions, and judgment grounded in

Introduction

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experience, and the moral importance of actively shaping each of these over time. The improved clarity about what virtue ethics is, together with new clarity about the broader scope of Kantian ethics, reveals that Kantians have come to agree with many of the virtue ethicists’ original criticisms of earlier Kantian views. But while the improved clarity of these approaches to ethics reveals significant new areas of overlap, not all disagreement was the result simply of confusion. Far from it; it is clearer than ever that fundamental and philosophically interesting disagreements remain between these approaches. The new essays in this volume clarify and flesh out these approaches, reveal new areas of agreement, but also underscore these remaining points of disagreement. We here provide a description of the essays in this volume. In the opening essay, “Virtue ethics in relation to Kantian ethics: an opinionated overview and commentary,” Marcia Baron offers an introductory overview as well as commentary on the debate between virtue ethics and Kantian ethics from a Kantian perspective. After reviewing a wide range of literature loosely classified as belonging to the virtue ethics tradition, and considering the sorts of problems addressed and solutions offered in this literature, Baron turns directly to the question of what virtue ethics is. Here she takes time to defend this question itself against virtue ethicists, in particular Rosalind Hursthouse, who have questioned its philosophical value. Next, relying on Christine Swanton’s definition of virtue ethics, Baron advances to discussion of the relation of virtue ethics to Kantian ethics. Here Baron notes various points of agreement and disagreement between these approaches before expressing misgivings about the exercise, suggesting that it may not be fruitful given the current aims of virtue ethicists. Often accompanying the question of how to define virtue ethics is the question of how virtue ethics can guide us. That is, as an ethics of ideals, not an ethics of principles, virtue ethics cannot be defined in terms of guiding principles, and it is this lack of guiding principles that leads people to ask not only what virtue ethics is but also how it can guide us, for what could moral knowledge consist in, if not knowledge of principles? In the next essay, “What does the Aristotelian phronimos know?” Rosalind Hursthouse explores this central question. In an Aristotelian virtue ethics, moral ideals are embodied in the phronimos, and so Hursthouse addresses the question of in what the moral knowledge of Aristotle’s phronimos consists. There has to be more to this knowledge than the knowledge of ordinary moral principles that we have, because

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this knowledge is, ex hypothesi, what makes the phronimos, unlike us, excellent at knowing what to do. Stressing Aristotle’s point that phronesis is impossible without virtue, Hursthouse argues that the knowledge is not that of the sorts of recondite principles that normative moral theorists usually seek but involves the mastery of a range of ordinary concepts, including those of the virtues. Allen Wood, in “Kant and agent-oriented ethics,” likewise directs attention to the question of what an ethics of ideals is and how it guides us, but he does this in the context of a broader discussion about the relation between Kant’s ethics as an ethics of principle and virtue ethics as an ethics of ideals, and the relative merits of these approaches. Wood considers Kant’s relation to “virtue ethics” first by examining Michael Slote’s “agent-based” type of ethical theory and arguing that it is less plausible than what Slote calls an “agent-focused” theory. Then Wood examines the degree of “agent-focusedness” in Kant’s ethical theory, by describing the role in it of good judgment, wisdom, and, above all, moral virtue, as Kant conceives virtue. Finally, Wood delimits the role of agent-focusedness in Kantian ethics, defending it on the basis of Kant’s own view that an “ethics of ideals” was suitable to a pre-modern culture, while modern culture instead requires an “ethics of principles.” After emphasizing the need to ground ethics in principles that provide a standard of justification, Barbara Herman dedicates the bulk of her essay, “The difference that ends make,” to spelling out the nature of the end that Kant’s moral law enjoins us to pursue. This end is rational nature, and Herman sees her close examination of the manner in which Kant defines this concept in the Grounding’s “formula of humanity” formulation of the moral law as providing us with a gateway concept to Kant’s view of moral action and agency. Against interpretations of Kant that have him bootstrapping the value of rational nature into his ethics by claiming that every choice we make commits us to this value, Herman argues that Kant instead believes that we must regard the principles of our reasoning as providing authoritative standards of correctness in acting and so view our own rational nature as an end in itself. We are accordingly not roped into duty, and are not envisioned by Kant to follow a moral principle imposed from without and independent of our own judgment, but instead cognize the worth of rational nature and so view moral action as an exercise in self-expression, self-realization, and autonomy. With Talbot Brewer’s “Two pictures of practical thinking,” the discussion turns directly to theories of action, with Brewer arguing that there is a fundamental difference between how Aristotelian ethics and

Introduction

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Kantian ethics understand thought to become practical. Brewer argues that, on the Aristotelian view, practical thinking is a continuous activity that accompanies those activities it guides and that involves an appreciation of their intrinsic value. In his view, Kantians and other modern theorists, by contrast, tend to picture practical thinking as a discrete and occasional process that precedes and initiates action by establishing justificatory connections between circumstances and action types. The aim of Brewer’s essay is to show that we cannot offer a complete account of ethical excellence in practical thought unless we retrieve the unfamiliar conception of practical thinking that frames Aristotle’s ethics. In “Moving beyond Kant’s account of agency in the Grounding,” Julian Wuerth provides an overview of the theory of agency and action underlying Kant’s ethics. One of virtue ethicists’ central complaints about Kantian ethics is that it is narrowly concerned with individual actions, not agents. Wuerth notes that while Kant discusses a broad range of duties to shape our agency in sources other than his Grounding, a problem keeps us from appending these broader accounts of moral duties to those in the Grounding focused on individual actions. This problem is the common interpretation of Kant’s practical agent, based on the Grounding, which reduces Kant’s practical agent to reason. For if Kant’s practical agent is nothing but reason, Kant’s discussions outside the Grounding of our duties to develop our feelings and desires make little sense. Looking beyond the Grounding, which provides a simplified account of agency for the purposes of a relatively simple account of autonomy, Wuerth shows that Kant’s practical agent has not only a faculty of cognition, which includes reason, but also distinct faculties of feeling, of desire, and of choice. It is with reference to this recognizably human moral subject that Kant’s richer account of duties to shape our own agency makes sense. In her essay “A Kantian conception of human flourishing,” Lara Denis offers an interpretation of Kant’s ethics that has it extending far beyond a narrow focus on individual actions or even broader duties to our own agency, to an account of flourishing which is often thought to be absent from Kant’s ethics. Denis argues that Kant’s ethics implicitly contains a distinctive and appealing conception of human flourishing. Denis locates the skeletal framework for this conception in Kant’s conception of the highest good in a person, and she sees Kant’s doctrine of duties developing this conception of human flourishing and directing agents toward its promotion and approximation. This conception of human flourishing addresses us as rational human beings, enjoins the development and exercise of our moral capacities and natural talents, and encompasses our

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happiness. It also reflects the central Kantian commitment to respect for rational nature and leaves unquestioned the foundational role of the moral law. Paul Guyer’s essay, “Kantian perfectionism,” likewise focuses on Kant’s views on the broader moral project of shaping our own agency. He notes that in Kant’s time, the successor to classical virtue ethics was the perfectionism of Wolff, Baumgarten, and Mendelssohn, which Kant famously criticized as empty or question-begging. Guyer notes, however, that Kant himself often used perfectionist language to characterize his own position. The crucial difference, Guyer argues, is that Kant’s fundamental moral conception of the good is the perfection of the human will rather than of the human condition, suggesting that Kant’s real criticism of Wolffian perfectionism is that it is not based on the idea of free choice alone but on an empirical conception of the human good. Basing his own theory on the perfection of the will allows Kant to introduce an a priori element into moral philosophy, the moral law, which lends structure to our individualized conceptions of human goods and virtues. In her chapter, “Aristotle, the Stoics, and Kant on anger,” Nancy Sherman explores the role of one particular emotion, anger, in an account of moral virtue. More specifically, how do ancient and modern theories of virtue, in particular those of Aristotle, the Stoics, and Kant, accommodate moral anger? Contrary to the Stoic view, Sherman argues that anger can be virtuous and that certain types of anger, such as moral outrage and indignation, are the deepest expressions of respect for humanity. Although she recognizes that Aristotle would not put the point in this way, she notes that he does insist that there are virtuous forms of anger and that failure to express these may be a sign of servility. Christine Swanton’s “Kant’s impartial virtues of love” argues that proper recognition of love as a moral force in Kant’s ethics undermines virtue-theoretic criticism of Kant’s ethics in a variety of ways, showing Kant’s ethics to be richer than many have supposed. Swanton argues, first, that the impartial and universal foundation of Kant’s ethics rests not just on respect, but also on love, which involves beneficence, gratitude, and the cultivation of sympathetic feelings. Next, love can properly be seen as particular, as a love of individuals rather than a love of “mankind,” and is compatible with partialistic forms of love or respect such as affection, friendship, and differential forms of respect based on roles. Finally, Swanton argues that the unconditional nature of the demand to love, irrespective of what an individual has done to us, is compatible with virtue. Universal love requires forgiveness, but forgiveness does not necessarily

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involve a restoration of previously partialistic relationships, nor does it entail that a wrongdoing is treated as less serious because it was forgiven. Michael Slote’s “The problem we all have with deontology” argues that Kantians, consequentialists, and virtue ethicists alike have a problem with deontology. Consequentialists deny deontology, and that is their version of the problem, he claims. Likewise, Slote thinks that Kantian ethics, the deontological approach par excellence, has struggled and struggled to offer foundations for deontological thought, but without much apparent success. Finally, virtue ethics, especially in its Aristotelian embodiments, has pretty much ignored the issue, he maintains, and sentimentalists seeking a basis for deontology have to work hard against the natural thought that deontology often has to stand in opposition to our feelings. Slote accordingly concludes that, since deontology is central to moral thought and action, it looks as if each of these approaches has its own work cut out for it. In his essay, “Intuition, system, and the ‘paradox’ of deontology,” Timothy Chappell also addresses the problem of deontology. Unlike Slote, however, Chappell presents what he takes to be a simple way out of the so-called “paradox” of deontology, which has any deontological approach requiring its own violation, by developing and defending the thesis that agency has more roles than the productive one that consequentialists fixate on. Chappell points out that many anti-consequentialist moral theorists are aware of this thesis as providing a way out of the “paradox,” but he suggests that the thesis does not need to be presented within the framework of any moral theory, and indeed is better presented outside any such framework. He substantiates this by discussing Kant’s defense of deontological constraints. This defense involves going deep into Kant’s philosophy, but that is not an advantage, in Chappell’s view, because it keeps us from giving the simple response to the “paradox.”

Ch apter 1

Virtue ethics in relation to Kantian ethics: an opinionated overview and commentary Marcia Baron

I   B ac kg rou n d a n d pl a n This paper originated as the opening lecture for a conference for which I was to provide an overview of virtue ethics in relation to Kantian ethics. My initial plan was to discuss the unclarity about just what virtue ethics is, articulate the various views of what virtue ethics is, and then to consider whether, or the extent to which, Kantian ethics is compatible with virtue ethics on each of these conceptions. But I soon had misgivings about this plan. An attempt to sort out all the different ways virtue ethics is understood by its proponents – let alone an attempt to assess the compatibility of each conception with Kantian ethics – would take up far too many pages, and make for tedious listening. What concerned me more, however, was that it might be viewed by some as a hostile act. Some who align themselves with virtue ethics take umbrage at the claim that it is not clear just what virtue ethics is, and view with mistrust, and sometimes annoyance, efforts to disentangle various theses associated with virtue ethics and to determine which theses are central, which are not, and whether those that are central are not also held by (many) Kantians (or utilitarians). At first I saw the problem simply as a “public relations” matter, a ­question of tact. How could I present the material without seeming hostile? But my attention shifted to the question of why it would seem hostile. Why would anyone take offense at the claim that it is not clear what virtue ethics is and at attempts to sort out the possibilities and arrive at a clearer picture? Philosophers are supposed to seek clarity, and to disentangle theses in order to be clear on what is being said, so why would virtue ethicists mind if this I am grateful to Kate Abramson, Christine Swanton, Kevin Toh, Allen Wood, and especially Julian Wuerth for their helpful comments, and to discussants at the Conference on Virtue Ethics vs. Kantian Ethics, held at the University of Cincinnati, where an early draft of this paper was presented.

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approach were taken to virtue ethics? After mulling it over, I decided to address that question, and not as a mere preliminary to get out of the way, but as a facet of the debate between virtue ethicists and Kantians (among others). I hope that by examining the underlying tension between virtue ethicists and Kantians I can shed light on the philosophical disagreements and perhaps also reduce the tension. To these ends I investigate, in section iii of this chapter, the objection to a demand for clarity concerning what virtue ethics is, reasons for both the objection and the demand for clarity, and underlying sensitivities and disagreements. There is admittedly something awkward about this undertaking: I am playing family therapist despite being part of the family. But the job needs to be done, and it is unlikely that anyone not in the family would be interested in taking it on, so I will roll up my sleeves and try my best to be fair.1 First, though, I offer (in section ii) a general, somewhat historical and largely introductory overview of contemporary virtue ethics.2 I do not pretend to be thorough or to offer a survey of the literature; I aim, rather, to provide a (sketchy) map for the novice (with enough opinionated commentary to provide something of interest, I hope, for others), indicating various motivations for the contemporary revival of virtue ethics, and situating virtue ethics in relation to close cousins such as care ethics. I point out obstacles to addressing the question of whether Kantian ethics and virtue ethics are compatible, and also comment on some threads of the critique of modern ethics, a critique that fueled interest in reviving virtue ethics. After examining, in section iii, the tension described above, in section  iv I return, albeit half-heartedly, to a question that I had postponed:  is Kantian ethics compatible with virtue ethics? The difficulty that virtue ethics is understood in a variety of ways can be sidestepped thanks to Christine Swanton’s very helpful distinction between virtue ethics as a species and virtue ethics as a genus. However, I end up deciding, partly as a result of reflecting in section iii on Rosalind Hursthouse’s complaint, that there is something wrongheaded about asking whether Kantian ethics is compatible with virtue ethics, understood as Swanton understands it. I take my assignment – of giving an overview of virtue ethics in relation to Kantian ethics – to be different from that of explaining or examining Aristotle’s ethics in relation to Kant’s ethics. That project is not hindered by the hostility of some virtue ethicists to questions about just what virtue ethics is, and has been pursued in a number of excellent works, most notably Engstrom and Whiting (1996) and Sherman (1997b). 2 For other overviews (and in particular, overviews with a focus on the last decade), see Stohr and Wellman (2002) and Stohr (2006). 1

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I want to clarify that I definitely do not think that there is anything wrongheaded about considering what light a Kantian approach can shed on character, individual virtues and vices, or virtue and vice in general; that I thoroughly applaud. I also cheer on (and myself have engaged in) projects of reading Kant with questions of character and virtue in mind, rather than focusing primarily on questions of rightness of actions, and the like. But for reasons reflecting my (possibly idiosyncratic) views about how the history of ethics is and is not best approached, I do not think it helpful, if we are thinking of Kantian ethics as closely tied to Kant’s ethics, to ask whether Kantian ethics is compatible with virtue ethics understood as Swanton understands it. And even if we conceive of Kantian ethics as less tied to Kant, I have doubts about the value, and the appropriateness, of challenging the virtue ethicist’s claim that they are incompatible. I I   F or t h e be g i n n e r (m a i n ly) Although the topic on which I have been asked to write is virtue ethics vs. Kantian ethics, we should keep in mind that it is part of a broader debate, virtue ethics vs. both Kantian ethics and utilitarianism, or broader still, virtue ethics vs. “modern” ethics. Contemporary virtue ethics emerged as a reaction to (or more accurately, from reactions to) perceived inadequacies. But inadequacies in what, exactly? The general suggestion shared by many who had differing but overlapping complaints about contemporary ethical theory was that we should look to ancient ethics for direction, and should have our focus in ethics be character and virtue (or perhaps virtues) rather than actions and rightness. Beyond this general suggestion, though, there was unclarity concerning which school of thought was being targeted. Sometimes utilitarianism, sometimes Kantian ethics, sometimes both, and sometimes, more vaguely, “modern moral philosophy,” with “modern” sometimes reaching back to include Hume.3 It also sometimes happened that the target was clear, but the criticisms were of more limited application than the critics claimed. Uncorrected, this left many (in particular, non-specialists trying to get the lay of the land in contemporary ethics) with the impression that utilitarianism and Kantian ethics were entirely about the rightness of actions and not at all about character, and that virtue ethics was challenging both theories and, Here I am thinking of Alasdair MacIntyre’s hostility to what he called the “Enlightenment project.” See MacIntyre (1981). See also Anscombe (1958).

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indeed, much of ethical theory from the eighteenth century to the present. I suggest that many of the criticisms from which contemporary virtue ethics emerged as an alternative approach are less apt as criticisms of utilitarianism or Kantian ethics than as criticisms of the current state of moral philosophy – the way moral philosophy was being done at the time (and had been, in recent decades). More on this shortly. A further complication in this history is the diversity of views – both positive and negative – put forward by those who shared the idea that there was something wrongheaded about the state of current moral philosophy (and that what was wrong infected both utilitarianism and Kantian ethics). The diversity of views showed up both in how they envisioned the positive course to embark on, and in just what they objected to in contemporary ethical theory (or “modern moral philosophy”). Many objected to the abstractness and the remoteness from everyday life, quoting with approval H.A. Prichard’s observation that “if we turn from books on Moral Philosophy to any vivid account of human life and action such as we find in Shakespeare, nothing strikes us more than the comparative remoteness of the discussions of Moral Philosophy from the facts of actual life” (Prichard 1912: 32n1). They opposed (among other things) the emphasis on abstract principle and the neglect of the particulars (the particulars of the situations in which ethical issues arise). Some of these critics, e.g. Annette Baier, objected to ethical theory itself and regarded virtue ethics as an alternative to ethical theory.4 Others, e.g. Michael Slote, were not at all opposed to ethical theory and sought to develop virtue ethics as an ethical theory, an ethical theory to rival utilitarianism and Kantian ethics.5 The criticisms of contemporary ethical theory (or in some instances of Kantian ethics and/or utilitarianism more specifically) are both overlapping and wide-ranging, and include the following. Contemporary ethical theory is flawed by an overemphasis on rationality; a failure to recognize the moral significance of emotion; an overemphasis on impartiality; a failure to recognize the moral significance of friendship, love, familial ties, loyalty, and community bonds; an overemphasis on the individual as the locus of moral concern; and a failure to think of community, See Baier (1985), chs. 11–12. Another proponent of virtue ethics with strong anti-theory leanings is James D. Wallace. See Wallace (1978, 1988, 1996). 5 Slote (1992); see also Slote (2001) and his contribution to Baron, Pettit, and Slote (1997). It is worth noting here that there are differing views on just what it takes to be an ethical theory, and on the extent to which the desiderata for an ethical theory are thought to be roughly the same as the desiderata for a scientific theory. For a discussion of the former in connection with virtue ethics, see Annas (1993). 4

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or relationships, except as reducible to the individuals that form them.6 Many virtue ethicists objected to what they saw as too prominent a role played by rules and principles7 in ethical theory; many claimed that aretaic terms (“good,” “virtuous”) were preferable to deontic terms (“ought,” “obligation,” “duty,” “right”). In keeping with the view, noted above, that ethics should attend to the particular and not generally be couched in very abstract terms, some favored not only aretaic terms, but “thick” virtue terms rather than “thin” ones, the idea being that we do better to speak in terms of particular virtues and vices, than in “thin” terms such as “good” or “virtuous.”8 Some objected to what they saw as an inordinate focus, in contemporary ethics, on quandaries, i.e. on resolving moral dilemmas, typically looked at in isolation from what gave rise to the dilemma.9 Relatedly, some claimed to detect in contemporary ethics (and sometimes in utilitarianism and Kantian ethics specifically) a supposition that it is the task of an ethical theory to give us an answer to the question, “What, morally, ought I to do?” in every situation. Another target of criticisms was the emphasis in contemporary (and especially Kantian) ethics on moral considerations and the assumption that moral considerations trump all other considerations.10 Pointing out that the modern notion of morality is not at home in ancient ethics, some urged that ethics should place less emphasis on “the moral” and more on the good, on excellence, on flourishing.11 Some of these objections and suggestions had Hegelian overtones; some had a Wittgensteinian cast; some bore hints of Nietzsche; some of Hume; many had an Aristotelian aspect. So many works can be cited here that one hardly knows where to begin; an added difficulty is that the best work on these topics is too nuanced for it to be appropriate to saddle the authors with precisely these positions. A groundbreaking work emphasizing the importance of friendship is Blum (1980). See also Badhwar (1993); Graham and LaFollette (1989); MacIntyre (1981, 1984b); and Thomas (1989). On impartiality, see Herman (1993), ch. 2; Williams (1976); and the entire issue of Ethics 101, no. 4 (July 1991). On the moral significance of emotion, and the alleged failure of Kantian ethics to recognize it, see Sherman (1995b, 1997a, 1997b, this volume). See also Baron (1995a), ch. 6 and (1997); Denis (2000: 48–73); Engstrom and Whiting (1996); and Guyer (1993), ch.10. More recent work includes Anderson (2008); Baxley (in press); and Fahmy (2009).  7 See Moravscik (1981) and Hursthouse’s contribution to this volume.  8 Foot (1979), esp. 311–12. For more extensive discussion of thick terms, see Williams (1985).  9 See Pincoffs (1986) and Solomon (1988). Solomon writes: “The moral life is not … best regarded as a set of episodic encounters with moral dilemmas or moral uncertainty (although anyone’s moral life will certainly contain moments of this kind); it is rather a life-long pursuit of excellence of the person” (437). 10 Sometimes this took the form of claiming that Kant’s ethics draws a very sharp division between the moral and the non-moral, a claim I find dubious given the fact that his conception of morality is very broad, encompassing duties to develop one’s talents. 11 See Williams (1985, ch. 10). This point tends to take as its target Kantian ethics far more than utilitarianism. I believe, however, that the criticism is based on a misconception about either the content of the notion of “the moral” in Kantian ethics or its ubiquity therein, or both.  6

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Complicating the task of enumerating virtue ethicists’ objections to contemporary ethical theory is the fact that many of the same objections were put forward under some heading other than virtue ethics. Some were presented as feminist claims, in part because so much of what contemporary ethics was faulted for neglecting was, according to the traditional gendered division of labor and of character traits, located under the heading of “feminine.” The emphasis on reason and the denigration of emotion had helped to provide a basis for treating women as at best second-class citizens, and, more broadly, for not regarding them as equals; one possible remedy is to call for a re-evaluation of reason and the emotions and, more specifically, to place relatively less importance on reason and principle and more on emotion and emotional ties to others. Of course that is not the only remedy; that an emphasis in ethics on reason provided a basis for discrimination against women and girls does not entail that it is itself suspect. The problem seems more centrally to be that (a) women have been assumed to be deficient in reason and excessively emotional and (b) it has further been assumed that any such deficiencies reflect inherent differences between the sexes. As J.S. Mill emphasized, to the extent that women are less rational and more emotional than men, an obvious explanation is that women have been subjected to a “hothouse and stove cultivation … of some of the capabilities of their nature, for the benefit and pleasure of their masters … while other shoots from the same root” were “left outside in the wintry air, with ice purposely heaped all round them.”12 In short, it is not at all clear that ethical theory, rather than simply the oppression of women, is the problem. At the same time, one can grant Mill’s point while still maintaining that a re-evaluation of reason and emotion is in order.13 After all, the Mill, The Subjection of Women (1988), ch. 1. It is worth quoting this passage at greater length: “What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing – the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others. It may be asserted without scruple, that no other class of dependents have had their character so entirely distorted from its natural proportions by their relations with their masters … in the case of women, a hothouse and stove cultivation has always been carried on of some of the capabilities of their nature, for the benefit and pleasure of their masters. Then, because certain products of the general vital force sprout luxuriantly and reach a great development in this heated atmosphere and under this active nurture and watering, while other shoots from the same root, which are left outside in the wintry air, with ice purposely heaped all round them, have a stunted growth, and some are burnt off with fire and disappear; men, with that inability to recognize their own work which distinguishes the unanalytic mind, indolently believe that the tree grows of itself in the way they have made it grow, and that it would die if one half of it were not kept in a vapour bath and the other half in the snow” (22–23). 13 Mill himself was well aware that the qualities said to be the province of men were overrated, and those said to be the province of women underrated. See The Subjection of Women, ch. 3. 12

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project of showing that women were unfit for public life because they were insufficiently rational and principled and were too emotional would very likely have involved exaggerating the importance of being “rational,” “principled,” and “unemotional” (as well as painting a highly masculinized picture of these traits). Thus, stressing that the qualities (and the activities) traditionally associated with women have been devalued, some have urged that moral philosophy recognize that it may be tainted by this sexism, and that some revaluing and perhaps reconceiving may be needed. Whether or not rationality (or reason) needs to be demoted, the value of being nurturing and caring needs to be given its due, and with that in mind, it is suggested that we try putting caring at the heart of ethical theory. Thus the emergence of such titles as Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Noddings 1984) as well as the classification, “care ethics.”14 So you can see some ways in which this multi-faceted critique of modern ethics became confusing (even though there are more threads to this than I have presented), confusing especially if you like your “isms” to be tidy.15 The complications can be loosely grouped as follows. First, those who called themselves “virtue ethicists” or “virtue theorists” or were so labeled by many others had an array of criticisms of what they saw as the status quo in moral philosophy, an array of views as to just what the target of the criticisms was, and divergent agendas for virtue ethics. Some proponents saw virtue ethics as rejecting cosmopolitanism, as tying ethics to one’s community, and as having a relativistic cast, while many others did not; some saw virtue ethics as opposed to theory but many did not, and so on. Second, there is the additional complication that many people joined in on (parts of) the critique but pursued something other than (though not entirely different from) virtue ethics, e.g. care ethics. All this makes it very hard to say what virtue ethics is. It is not just that there are cases on the border that are hard to classify, but that it is hard to know what to regard as the core of virtue ethics. As mentioned earlier, an additional factor complicating an assessment of the relationship of virtue ethics to Kantian ethics is that many of the See also Gilligan (1982); Held (2005); and Slote (2007). I should note that many feminists, myself included, have misgivings about “care ethics” approaches. See Baron (1997a); Card (1988); MacKinnon (1987:  38–39, 1989:  51); Moody-Adams (1991). For a discussion of care ethics and critiques of it, see Superson (2009). 15 Another sort of critic who shares a lot in common with the virtue ethicists is the critic of liberalism. Some such critics, e.g. MacIntyre, are unquestionably virtue ethicists; others share with some virtue ethicists an opposition to both the individualism and the abstraction of liberalism but would not generally be classified as virtue ethicists. See in particular Sandel (1982). 14

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criticisms from which contemporary virtue ethics emerged are not particularly apt as criticisms of Kantian ethics. They are more apt as criticisms of the way a lot of moral philosophy was being done at that time. Many who lacked a good grasp of classical utilitarianism and of Kant’s ethics conflated utilitarianism with the utilitarian approaches prominent at the time, and likewise with Kantian ethics. Something seemed to be missing in the contemporary approaches, and that shortcoming was then thought to be endemic to the theories themselves. At least some of what they found disturbing, e.g. the absence of attention to friendship, love, community, emotion, character, and so on, had less to do with the theories than with what did, and what did not, count as a philosophical topic, or at least a worthwhile philosophical topic, at that time. Some of the topics just listed were regarded as too “soft” to qualify as philosophical topics, as, in effect, unmanly topics, not for “real philosophers.” By the late 1970s, all this was beginning to change:  the proportion of (highly visible) women in philosophy was increasing, the men were changing, the gendered division of labor came to be less entrenched, and for other reasons, as well, topics thought to be feminine came to be taken more seriously as philosophical topics. Ethics was now less often viewed as a merely peripheral part of philosophy. In addition, it was no longer limited to conceptual analysis; normative ethics had again come into its own. Moreover, the history of ethics, done in a serious way, rather than by the sort of gesturing to this or that figure that one sees in, say, Anscombe’s “Modern Moral Philosophy,” had come alive. The importance for contemporary moral philosophy of this change can scarcely be exaggerated. Although it is not something that those associated with the virtue ethics debate typically complain about, the lack of serious attention to the history of ethics over several decades in the last century is a crucial part of the story here, if only because it intensified the effect that current philosophical fashion had on contemporary ethics. Philosophy was stuck in its then current way of viewing philosophy and philosophical problems. I hope I am not deluding myself in thinking that the prominence in moral philosophy today of the history of ethics keeps us from having so narrow a vision of what is important. In other ways, too, Anglo-American philosophy, at least in the USA, was undergoing significant change, intersecting with the revival of virtue ethics.16 The view that the more abstract a topic and the more remote 16

I believe similar changes were taking place in Britain, but am not sure. My impression is that such a change has only recently taken place in New Zealand and Australia.

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from human life, the more truly philosophical it was, was losing its grip. The expansion of what counted as philosophy was already well underway in political philosophy by the mid-1970s, an expansion reflected in and furthered by the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs.17 Moral philosophy followed five or ten years later, with books and articles emerging on such topics as the obligations of children to their parents and vice versa,18 friendship, altruism, and morality,19 and with influential critiques of contemporary ethical philosophy by (among others) Michael Stocker and Bernard Williams, accusing it of insufficient attention to character, friendship, and integrity.20 Such shifts in the way philosophy is pursued of course affect how classics in philosophy are read, affecting both which classics (and which parts of classics) are read and how they are interpreted. When I was an undergraduate, the understanding was that the Categorical Imperative was supposed to yield a decision procedure for determining what one should do, or at the very least a test of rightness of actions. That was a common view in part because it was thought to be the business of an ethical theory to provide such a procedure. Kant did normative ethics, so we asked what test he provided, and judged him according to the user-friendliness of the test and its tendency to generate either what we believed to be the correct results, or the results we thought he wanted. It is curious that we stuck to these views of what Kant was up to and faulted him for failing to provide what we assumed he intended to provide, rather than call into question our assumption that that was his intention. Later I came to see that insofar as the Categorical Imperative provides a test, it tests maxims, not actions, and that the isolated action is of little significance in Kant’s ethics.21 What about ancient philosophy? Was there any similar change in the way ancient philosophers were read? I think so. One shift was in which Its first issue appeared in 1971 and included J.J. Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion,” another article on abortion by Roger Wertheimer, articles on war by Michael Walzer and Richard Wasserstrom, and a piece on labor and alienation in Hegel’s Realphilosophie by Shlomo Avineri. 18 Recall, for example, English (1979), and other essays in O’Neill and Ruddick (1979). 19 I am thinking here of Blum (1980), but many other works on friendship could also be cited, including that of John Cooper, noted below. 20 Stocker (1976); Williams (1973, 1976). 21 I believe it was Onora O’Neill’s lectures in the 1983 NEH Institute for Kantian Ethics, subsequently published first as articles and then as chapters of her 1989 Constructions of Reason, that put the spotlight on the fact that it is the maxim, not the action itself, that is of significance in Kant’s moral philosophy. It is noteworthy that the 1983 lectures were to some extent stimulated by misleading claims about Kantian ethics by the then leading virtue ethicist, Alasdair MacIntyre. 17

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ancient philosophers received the attention of contemporary philosophers, especially those specializing in ancient philosophy; another was in which works (or chapters of the works) were read, and which topics deemed most important. Aristotle’s books on friendship were not coming in for a lot of discussion until the late 1970s.22 As for which ancient philosophers were read, the resurgence of interest starting in the late 1980s in the Stoics, Skeptics, and Epicureans reflects the change described above: topics that in the (recent) past would not have qualified as philosophical topics now passed muster. As Martha Nussbaum observes in The Therapy of Desire, [T]he Hellenistic philosophical schools in Greece and Rome  – Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics  – all conceived of philosophy as a way of addressing the most painful problems of human life. They focused their attention … on issues of daily and urgent human significance  – the fear of death, love and sexuality, anger and aggression – issues that are sometimes avoided as embarrassingly messy and personal by the more detached varieties of philosophy. (Nussbaum 1994b: 3–4)

The sense that such issues are embarrassingly messy and personal, especially when confronted, as they were in the Hellenistic schools, “as they arose in ordinary human lives, with a keen attention to the vicissitudes of those lives, and to what would be necessary and sufficient to make them better” (4), no doubt contributed significantly to the neglect of their work in the mid-twentieth century up to the 1980s. That it received little attention even by those specializing in ancient philosophy is indicative of the general neglect in Anglo-American philosophy of issues of urgent human significance in the decades preceding the rise of contemporary virtue ethics. In sum, much of what was (held to be) missing in contemporary moral philosophy in the 1970s (and the then recent past) was due less to utilitarianism and Kantian ethics than to the idea that the more abstract and the more remote from pressing questions of human life, the more truly philosophical an issue is,23 and to the fact that the history of ethics had not yet come into its own. It was twentieth-century Anglo-American moral philosophy up until the late 1970s that was devoid of discussions of character and virtue, not classical utilitarianism or Kant’s own writings. Interest in Books viii and ix of Nicomachean Ethics increased thanks especially to Annas (1977) and Cooper (1977a, 1977b, 1980). 23 One still often encounters the notion that epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language constitute the “core” of philosophy, and that topics in ethics count as philosophical roughly to the degree that they are close to, or resemble, the core. 22

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To fully substantiate my claim, I would cite the writings of Hume,24 Kant, and Mill to demonstrate that there is no neglect in Hume of the topics to which modern moral philosophy is said not to pay attention, that Mill shows considerable attention to character in chapter 3 of On Liberty and in his discussion of happiness in Utilitarianism, and that Kant in the Metaphysics of Morals devotes considerable attention to an array of virtues and vices (including among virtues affability, sociability, courtesy, hospitality, and gentleness, and among vices pride, envy, ingratitude, Schadenfreude, a mania for ridicule, among others).25 There is no space for this here, but since much has been published on it already and more is in progress26 (and since it is obvious that Hume did not neglect the topics in question), that there is no space for such a discussion here is not a significant loss. I I I  T h e v i r t u e e t h ici s t ’s c om pl a i n t I turn now to the tension, mentioned in my introduction, between some virtue ethicists and Kantians (among others), tension that arises when the latter complain that virtue ethicists have not made clear what exactly virtue ethics is, and, in particular, have not supported their claims that virtue ethics is an alternative to, and incompatible with, Kantian ethics (and utilitarianism). The virtue ethicist’s complaint is evident in Rosalind Hursthouse’s On Virtue Ethics. Hursthouse protests in her introduction that virtue ethicists are expected to provide “a crisp answer” to the question, “What is virtue ethics?” (Hursthouse 1999:  7). A heavier burden, she claims, is laid upon virtue ethics than upon deontology and utilitarianism: No one, as far as I know, is bothered by the fact that there are no longer satisfactory short answers to the questions “What is deontology?” and “What is I mention Hume because, though not a utilitarian, he is part of the utilitarian tradition, and because of Foot’s (1978) memorably odd opening lines in her “Virtues and Vices”:  “For many years the subject of the virtues and vices was strangely neglected by moralists working within the school of analytic philosophy. The tacitly accepted opinion was that a study of the topic would form no part of the fundamental work of ethics; and since this opinion was apparently shared by philosophers such as Hume, Kant, Mill, G.E. Moore, W.D. Ross, and H.A. Prichard …” (1). 25 MM, 6:464, 457. For a list of abbreviations of Kant’s works and a list of translations of these works as used in this and other essays in this volume, see Abbreviations at the start of this volume. 26 See in particular Nussbaum (1999). Nussbaum points out that within the utilitarian tradition, not only Mill, but also Bentham and Sidgwick had a great deal to say on moral psychology (in Bentham’s case) and virtues (in Sidgwick’s case). See also Schneewind (1990). For work specifically on Kant, see, among others, Baron (2006, 2009); Baxley (in press); Betzler (2008); O’Neill (1989a, 1996a); and Sherman (1995b, 1997a, and 1997b). 24

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utilitarianism?,” but currently, at least some philosophers seem bothered by the fact that we virtue ethicists cannot come up with one to answer “What is virtue ethics?”. The demand that virtue ethics, unlike the other two approaches, should be able to state its position succinctly, in terms both sufficiently broad (or disjunctive?) to get all virtue ethicists in and sufficiently tight to keep all deontologists and utilitarians out, seems a bit excessive. Why should anyone expect us, uniquely, to be able to do it? (Hursthouse 1999: 4)

Is there a heavier burden laid upon virtue ethicists? Not that I can see. I don’t think that I ask more of virtue ethicists by way of clarifying what they stand for than I expect of utilitarians (and more generally, consequentialists) and Kantians; I also doubt that it is the case that while I am not guilty, others are.27 Why might one think that those who try to sort out just what virtue ethics is (or urge virtue ethicists to explain just what they mean by “virtue ethics”) are expecting more of virtue ethicists than of Kantians and utilitarians? Hursthouse’s suggestion is that utilitarianism and Kantian ethics – or “deontology” (see my caveat below concerning this term) – are no better defined than virtue ethics. Now it is true that there are many points on which utilitarians do not all agree, and that Kantians differ as to how much of Kant’s ethical theory they buy and which features they think are central, which peripheral. Nonetheless, it is really not very difficult to contrast Kantian ethics to utilitarianism (nor, for that matter, to consequentialism). The problem is not that we want the answer to the question, “What is virtue ethics?” to be short (or “crisp”); we just want to be clear on what virtue ethics is. I do not see that there is any unfairness here. In fact, though, I think that Hursthouse is bothered not primarily by the (alleged) unfairness of the demand for clarification, but by what she thinks lies behind that demand. And it is here that things get interesting. But before we turn to that, a detour is necessary so that I can explain my substitution of the word “Kantians” for “deontologists” in discussing the quotation from Hursthouse in which she speaks of deontologists. My substitution needs to be defended, since it is generally best to stick to I doubt this not only because I am not aware of others who have demanded more clarity than it is reasonable to demand, but also because I think that I am one of the people Hursthouse had in mind in voicing her complaint. In an APA Pacific Division session in 1989 in which I presented a reply to her invited paper, “Applying Virtue Ethics,” I took up the question of what virtue ethics is and what differentiates it from Kantian ethics. She made it clear in her rejoinder that she did not think this helpful, and suggested that such an effort amounted to quibbling over terminology.

27

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the terminology of the person whose claims one is examining. One risks distortion, even gross unfairness, when one does otherwise.28 It is evident from numerous remarks that Hursthouse has Kantians in mind when she speaks here of deontologists. This doesn’t yet justify my decision; there needs to be a positive reason, not merely evidence of lack of harm, to justify a substitution of a term in a view that one is discussing critically. The positive reason is that the term “deontologist” is misleading and courts confusion, particularly in a context of proposing or claiming that virtue ethics is a rival to consequentialism and “deontology.” On the standard and the only reasonably clear understanding of the term, “deontological” simply means “non-consequentialist.” On this reading of “deontological,” every ethical theorist who is not a consequentialist is a deontologist. Thus Samuel Freeman (2001) writes in his encyclopedia article on deontology that “deontological theories … include all non­consequentialist views” (391). Similarly Rawls, who uses “teleological” rather than “consequentialist” as the contrasting term to “deontological,” writes that “deontological theories are defined as non-teleological ones” (Rawls 1971:  24) (where teleological theories are such that “the good is defined independently from the right, and then the right is defined as that which maximizes the good” [Rawls 1971: 24]).29 But clearly Freeman’s cannot be the way Hursthouse understands the distinction, since she regards virtue ethics as a rival to both deontological and consequentialist theories, thus denying that deontological theories and consequentialism exhaust the normative options. Rawls’s use of “deontological” is not as completely ruled out as an option for Hursthouse (assuming that we treat “teleological” and “consequentialist” as non-equivalent), but clearly she would not want to adopt it either, and indeed it would unduly constrain the options for virtue ethicists. “Deontological” can be used more restrictively, but the problem is that it is unclear just what the term then means. It seems to refer to theories that, in addition to being non-consequentialist, have duty as a central I also sometimes use “consequentialist” where she uses “utilitarian”; this is of less moment, since my focus is on Kantian ethics and virtue ethics, not consequentialism (or utilitarianism) and virtue ethics. Given the purposes of her discussion, it seems that she really has consequentialism in mind, and not only its most prominent version, utilitarianism. 29 Even on this reasonably clear use of “deontological,” there is some question as to whether the distinction between deontological ethics and teleological ethics is helpful. See Piper (1982) and Herman (1993). In addition, the distinction has the effect of conflating “teleological” with “consequentialist.” Thomas Auxter (1982) points out that classifying Kant as a deontologist contributes to the neglect of the strong teleological aspect to his ethics, evident especially in some of Kant’s essays, e.g. “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim” (1784) and “Conjectural Beginning of Human History” (1786). For historical background, see Louden (1996). 28

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concept. The paradigmatic deontologists, on this picture, are Kant and W.D. Ross (with Prichard perhaps lurking in the background as well). But these theories – Ross’s and Kant’s – are very different, and it is not even clear that the same concept of duty is a central concept in the two theories.30 Grouping them together under the rubric of “deontologist” encourages a blending of elements of Ross and elements of Kant, so that what critics put before us ends up being a straw person.31 Since Hursthouse seems to have Kantians in mind when she says “deontologists,” and since the term (at least when not used simply to mean “non-consequentialist”) is misleading, I think it both fair and wise throughout this chapter to use the term “Kantians” rather than “deontologists.”32 I return now from the detour, and try to locate the reasons for the annoyance expressed by some virtue ethicists in reaction to attempts to determine exactly what virtue ethics is. Hursthouse is bothered, I suggested, not primarily by the (alleged) unfairness of the demand for clarification, but by what she thinks lies behind the demand. She writes: A deeper reason for the demand that we should come up with a crisp answer to “What is virtue ethics?,” I suspect, is the persistence of the belief that virtue ethics is not, as I claimed above, “a rival to deontological and utilitarian approaches, as interestingly and challengingly different from either as they are from each other”. (Hursthouse 1999: 7)

On this I agree with her – with the modification that the reason behind the demand might not be a belief that virtue ethics is not a rival in the sense described, but rather a suspicion that it may well not be (or a doubt as to whether it is). I think that this (with my slight modification) is part of the motivation. But the suggestion seems to be that this motivation is somehow inappropriate. How so? One might of course disagree with those who do not regard virtue ethics as having, or deserving, the status Hursthouse claims it has, but if those who are not convinced that it is a rival in the sense described ask to hear just what virtue ethics is, so that One important difference is that whereas Kant is an internalist, Ross, like Prichard, is an externalist. As Christine Korsgaard observes, “Ross and Prichard think of the motive of duty as something like a desire that takes right action for its object, not as something that is involved in the very grasp of the fact that the action is right” (1996a: 54). 31 Allen Wood has a similar observation in his contribution to this volume. 32 In comments on an earlier draft of this paper, Christine Swanton objects to my substitution of “Kantians” for “deontologists” not because it deviates from Hursthouse’s usage but because like should be compared with like: virtue ethics is properly compared with deontology, Aristotelian virtue ethics (or any other particular kind of virtue ethics) with Kantian ethics (or any other particular type of deontological ethics). I see her point; if the classification of deontology were indeed a helpful one, it would be best to compare virtue ethics with deontology rather than with Kantian ethics. But if it is not a helpful classification, then the comparison is not apt. 30

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they can better assess whether it should be regarded as a rival theory (and whether it is as interestingly different from Kantian ethics and utilitarianism as they are from each other), why should that be viewed as somehow inappropriate? Earlier in her introduction Hursthouse traced the reception of virtue ethics, saying that the reaction was initially dismissive; but then “as more articles were written in its defence, it acquired the status of ‘the new kid on the block’ – yet to establish its right to run with the big boys, but not to be dismissed out of hand.” Now, she says, it has “acquired full status, recognized as a rival to deontological and utilitarian approaches, as interestingly and challengingly different from either as they are from each other” (Hursthouse 1999: 2). Doubts about its status are thus treated as hostile, as if utilitarians and Kantians who are not convinced that it is a genuine rival are being territorial. The attempt to get clearer on just what virtue ethics is raises hackles because it comes across as a tactic, a way of showing that the new kid actually (to put it darkly) has nothing to offer. In Hursthouse’s words: The suspicion is that, if only the virtue ethicists could be induced to state their position baldly, in a short list of theses, it would become clear that any of the theses that were not obviously and ludicrously false or indefensible could be accommodated by deontology or utilitarianism. But trying to make out that virtue ethics does have a distinctively different approach by listing putatively distinctive and plausible claims it subscribes to, seems to me a needlessly combative task. (Hursthouse 1999: 7)

We can see why virtue ethicists might be annoyed. For one thing, they are eager to press on with their project(s), developing various theories that can all count as virtue ethics. It would be tedious to have to spend a lot of time explaining in ever more detail just what virtue ethics is.33 Moreover, it would be irksome – to put it mildly – to have to hear what probably sound like attempts to discredit the entire project by pointing out serious differences among proponents of virtue ethics about what virtue ethics is and a lack of clarity about just what they are (collectively) up to. On the other hand, consider it from the perspective of Kantians and utilitarians. If the new kid on the block says, “We have a distinctive approach to ethics, and think that the way you’ve been going about it is wrongheaded,” it is not really inappropriate if the reaction of Kantians and utilitarians is to ask to hear what the approach is. It would be an 33

Christine Swanton’s Introduction to Swanton (2003) helped me understand how frustrating this must be. See especially p. 5.

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appropriate response even if the virtue ethicist said only, “We have a distinctive approach to ethics,” and not also, “We think the way you’ve been going about it is wrongheaded.” Suppose, furthermore, that in telling us why their approach is novel, important, and better than ours, the new kid seems to us to have a distorted picture of the approaches that he says are wrongheaded, a distortion, that is, of our approaches, our traditions, and our philosophical heroes (or at least, favorites). Suppose we hear once again one of those textbook oversimplifications of Kantian ethics (or utilitarianism), the sort that is a holdover from the period before the history of ethics came into its own as a field (or sub-field) of philosophy, and that still is dished out in many philosophy classes. It seems to me not inappropriate if we point out the oversimplifications.34 Suppose the Kantians say, “If we understand you correctly, it sounds as if you don’t disagree with us at all.” If the virtue ethicist takes the position, expressed by Hursthouse, that virtue ethics “has a distinctively different approach,” Kantians are not being combative if they ask for support for this claim, and that will call for hearing just what virtue ethics is. But Hursthouse disagrees, contending both that virtue ethics “has a distinctively different approach,” and that it is a “needlessly combative task” to provide support for this assertion “by listing putatively distinctive and plausible claims” to which virtue ethics subscribes.35 The source of the tension is now in view. It is easy to see why virtue ethicists sometimes bristle at (pointed) remarks about the diversity of I do not mean to suggest that virtue ethicists by and large do present a distorted picture of Kantian ethics; indeed, one recent development is that some of the leading virtue ethicists have been taking a closer look at Kant’s writings and discussing them perceptively and nondismissively. See, e.g., Hursthouse (1999), ch. 4. Also instructive here was her reply to the question “Did Aristotle Really Trump Kant on Ethics?” in an interview that was recently available online:  www.oup.co.uk/academic/humanities/philosophy/viewpoint/hursthouse. But one still finds, often as a lead-in to explaining virtue ethics, summary remarks that misrepresent Kantian ethics. See, for example, Noddings (2002); Noddings and Slote (2003). 35 Now, if her claim is that really it does not matter whether virtue ethics in fact has a distinctively different approach, fine; I am in agreement. And at one point she seems to suggest exactly that:  “Let us by all means stop caring about how we distinguish ourselves and welcome our agreements” (Hursthouse 1999: 7). But this suggestion is at odds with her emphasis on the status of virtue ethics as “a rival to deontological and utilitarian approaches, as interestingly and challengingly different from either as they are from each other” (2 and 7). One might argue in favor of discounting the latter, citing her remark that now that virtue ethics is coming to be respected, the “combative stance is no longer necessary” (7). But the combative stance she thinks no longer necessary is “that virtue ethics was not only a rival to the other two approaches but the best, and was able to solve or avoid problems that the other two were committed to finding intractable” (7). Moreover, she says only that the combative stance is no longer necessary. She does not say that it no longer matters whether virtue ethics is an independent, rival theory. See also the paragraphs below, citing Hursthouse (1996). 34

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views that go under the heading of “virtue ethics” or the unclarity about what a particular (putative) virtue ethicist means by “virtue ethics”; it is also easy to see why Kantians and utilitarians, when told that virtue ethics challenges and is a rival to both theories, should want to hear in some detail what virtue ethics is. Is there some way this tension might be reduced? Even if there is disagreement about whether either offering support for one’s claims or asking for such support is, in these circumstances, combative, perhaps we can peacefully and respectfully settle things if Kantians (and utilitarians) can convince virtue ethicists that we are not trying to usher virtue ethicists from the stage (or kick them off the block). That is not our aim when we ask challenging questions and press for greater clarity. We just want to understand what virtue ethics is, and to assess the claim that it should be viewed as a rival to Kantian ethics and utilitarianism. It is true that we are not convinced that virtue ethics should be so viewed – and some may be very skeptical indeed – but even if after hearing more from virtue ethicists about why they think it is, we conclude that it is not, that does not mean that we think it has nothing to offer. It has something to offer as an approach which has very fruitfully nudged ethicists in a different direction from the way ethics was typically pursued for quite some time. It has inspired many philosophers – both those who align themselves with one of the theories or approaches under attack, and those who do not – to take up neglected topics and to think about ethics differently, paying more attention to the agent and his or her character, rather than focusing on actions in isolation from the agent. This reply will be unsatisfying to some – perhaps to all who needed to hear some reply – and may have the annoying ring of praise so faint as to be offensive. It may sound as if we are genuinely thanking them for a job well done – for having reinvigorated utilitarianism and Kantian ethics, and the field of ethics more generally – and just as genuinely bidding them adieu. That – the latter bit – is not the intended message; the work is ongoing and valuable, and virtue ethicists not only were but remain leaders in insightful philosophical discussions of virtue, specific virtues and vices, and character – indeed, of human life in general. But I can see why some might hear it as damningly faint praise, and I will suggest in a moment that the difference in the way it is intended and the way it is received may reflect an underlying disagreement about moral philosophy. That Hursthouse would not be happy with the reply is evident from the opening paragraphs of her “Normative Virtue Ethics.” Addressing the

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view that virtue ethics “does not tell us what we should do,” she explains that on that view, “‘virtue ethics’ so-called does not figure as a normative rival to utilitarian and deontological ethics; rather, its (fairly) recent revival is seen as having served the useful purpose of reminding moral philosophers that the elaboration of a normative theory may fall short of giving a full account of our moral life” (Hursthouse 1996:  19). It is noteworthy that her argument, in the paragraph cited, against the claim that virtue ethics does not tell us what we should do centers not on that claim but on the implication she takes it to have, viz., that “it cannot be a normative rival to deontology and utilitarianism” (Hursthouse 1996: 20). Clearly, she considers it very important that virtue ethics be viewed as a rival to these theories. If it is not, she seems to assume, virtue ethics is of little consequence. Why does she think this? She does not say, but my guess is that she sees moral philosophy, or the field of ethics, as very theory-driven, carved up into normative (and meta-ethical) theories. As she sees it, nothing that is not a theory gets a place on the map. My conjecture is based on two considerations: First, it makes sense of her concern that virtue ethics be regarded as a rival theory. If one thinks the terrain is fully divided up into (competing) theories, the view that virtue ethics cannot be taken seriously unless it is held to be an independent theory makes a great deal of sense. If one could not gain a hearing without being a member of a club, and if the only accepted clubs were the utilitarians and the Kantians, this would be a strong reason for virtue ethicists to fight for recognition as a group that also forms, or has, a club of the appropriate sort. (Another approach would be to fight to be able to get a hearing without being a member of any club.) Second, the following remark – in particular, the parenthetical part – strongly suggests that Hursthouse sees the field of ethics as theory-driven, in the way just described: But anyone who wants to espouse virtue ethics as a rival to deontological or utilitarian ethics (finding it distinctly bizarre to suppose that Aristotle espoused either of the latter) will find this common belief voiced against her as an objection: “Virtue ethics does not, because it cannot, tell us what we should do. Hence it cannot be a normative rival to deontology and utilitarianism.” (Hursthouse 1996: 19–20)

I will comment in a moment on her assumption that without the category of virtue ethics we are forced to classify Aristotle as either a deontologist or a utilitarian. For now, my point is this:  whether we

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think that to be taken seriously virtue ethics must qualify as a rival to utilitarianism and Kantian ethics is likely to depend in no small part on whether we view the field of ethics as dividing up, without remainder, into theories, as Hursthouse apparently thinks it does. (Although I have no anti-theory leanings, I do not so view it.) Likewise, the sensitivity on the part of virtue ethicists to indications that some do not see virtue ethics as a rival ethical theory, and the failure (e.g. of some Kantians, myself included, before I embarked on this paper) to understand their sensitivity, are in no small part traceable to this same disagreement. I do not believe that taking virtue ethics seriously requires seeing it as a rival theory. A figure in the history of ethics – e.g. Plato – can be of great interest without being classifiable under the heading of one of the currently leading ethical theories; so can a philosopher living today. An approach can be well worth discussing without qualifying as a theory, on a par with the ethical theories that are currently the dominant theories. Moreover, dividing the terrain up into competing ethical theories and expecting all philosophers worth discussing to fit into one of our current cubbyholes invites distortion, and confusion. Distortion is particularly likely with respect to works written centuries earlier, since to fit a particular approach into one of our cubbyholes we may (perhaps inadvertently) ignore or reinterpret the parts that don’t fit. Division of all normative ethics into competing theories courts confusion because the theories, or approaches, often overlap on some matters, and at the same time may differ in their aims, in their scope, and in the questions they aim to address. Treating them as competing theories tends to exaggerate some differences and obscure differences in aims, and thereby distort, and perhaps diminish, the theory or approach itself. I have sought in this section to probe and explain a tension that has dogged debates between virtue ethicists and Kantians. Behind the resentment on the part of some virtue ethicists of demands for clarity is, I claimed, a suspicion that Kantians and others asking to hear more precisely what virtue ethics is, and questioning whether it in fact is incompatible with Kantian ethics (or utilitarianism, or both) in fact do not take virtue ethics seriously. And this suspicion, in turn, may be informed by a view of the field of ethics as dividing into competing ethical theories. Taking virtue ethics seriously requires, on this view, regarding it as an independent ethical theory, a serious rival to utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. For those of us who do not share that view of ethics, it is puzzling to be thought not to take virtue ethics seriously just because we ask to hear more precisely

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what it is and suggest that perhaps it is compatible with Kantian ethics. A better understanding of underlying disagreements perhaps can reduce the mistrust, clear away the defensiveness, and improve discussions between virtue ethicists and Kantians. I V T h e qu e s t ion of c om pat ibi l i t y I turn now to the question of whether virtue ethics and Kantian ethics are compatible. This takes us back to a problem mentioned above: different proponents of virtue ethics understand it very differently, leaving it unclear what, other than attention to character and virtue, the various versions of virtue ethics have in common. (And although that would give them something in common, it does not position virtue ethics as a rival to Kantianism and utilitarianism, since they also can, and sometimes do, accord importance to character and virtue.) Just compare the approach of Alasdair MacIntyre with that of Philippa Foot, or that of Michael Slote. Christine Swanton’s Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View helps enormously here, and spares one the task of working through the now vast literature to figure out whether the various theories or approaches that their authors call “virtue ethics” have something in common, something that warrants saying there is indeed something (distinctive) that constitutes virtue ethics. While sympathetic to the position that virtue ethicists should not have to define precisely what virtue ethics is and should allow the definition to evolve gradually, Swanton offers an account that neatly cuts through the confusion. By distinguishing between virtue ethics as a genus, and virtue ethics as a species, she allows us to make sense of there being a variety of types of virtue ethics. Virtue ethics as a genus admits of various species, neo-Aristotelianism being one of them, and Swanton’s own pluralistic virtue ethics being another. Thus there is no need to ask which of the various proponents of virtue ethics speaks for virtue ethicists. As long as what they put forward is a species of the genus, they can differ on various matters yet all espouse virtue ethics. But what is the genus of which the various types of virtue ethics are species? Swanton suggests the following (while at the same time saying that virtue ethics resists precise definition because in its modern development it is still in its infancy):36 36

She adds: “It should not therefore be shackled by preconceived ideas about its progeniture and nature” (Swanton 2003: 5).

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In virtue ethics, the notion of virtue is central in the sense that conceptions of rightness, conceptions of the good life, conceptions of “the moral point of view” and the appropriate demandingness of morality, cannot be understood without a conception of relevant virtues. (Swanton 2003: 5)

Swanton’s approach permits the variation among virtue ethicists that has been evident in the contemporary virtue ethics literature, while at the same time providing an understanding of virtue ethics that explains what they all have in common. It also leaves room for the development of new species of virtue ethics, or for arguing that a theory not generally seen to be compatible with virtue ethics (the genus) in fact is compatible with it, and perhaps even lends itself nicely to being developed as another species of virtue ethics. It is fairly ecumenical, but does not classify as a virtue ethics just any approach or theory that places emphasis on virtues and character. Without taking Swanton’s characterization of the genus to have canonical status, I will in the remainder of this chapter understand virtue ethics accordingly.37 Relying, then, on her distinction between a genus and various species of virtue ethics and on her characterization of the genus, we can, if we wish, address the question of whether Kantian ethics and virtue ethics are compatible. Narrowing the focus for now from Kantian ethics to Kant’s ethics, I begin by considering what it would take for Kant’s ethics to be classifiable as a species of virtue ethics. Is it the case that conceptions of rightness, the good life, “the moral point of view,” and the appropriate demandingness of morality cannot be understood without a conception of relevant virtues? I find the question a clumsy one to try to answer, and am tempted simply to say, “This just doesn’t fit; let’s not try to shape Kant’s ethics into this mold.” But for those who disagree and think the task worthwhile, I’ll consider how it might proceed, explaining my misgivings as I do. I’ll offer only a rough sketch, with the idea that those more enthusiastic than I about the project can pursue it more ­fully.38 Readers can judge whether there is anything to my misgivings, and can also consider whether, contrary to what I suggest, the problem lies with Swanton’s characterization of virtue ethics. If it does, perhaps Perhaps some virtue ethicists will object either to the claim that there is a genus of which all purported virtue ethics are a species or to this particular way of characterizing the genus. I am less qualified to assess its aptness than to assess the aptness of the category “deontology,” so leave it to others to critique it. 38 Since mine is only a rough sketch, let me point readers to some recent work that (without utilizing Swanton’s approach to virtue ethics) has addressed the question of how much Kantian ethics and virtue ethics differ: Hill (2008) and Johnson (2008). 37

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my discussion will prompt some thoughts of how it might be better characterized. I’ll take the four concepts (or four parts of a conceptual apparatus) in reverse order.39 Can a conception of the appropriate demandingness of morality be understood without a conception of the relevant virtues, on Kant’s ethics? I’m not sure, because the notion is not at home in Kant’s ethics. Certainly the notion of what others can appropriately demand of us has a home there; but that is (for Kant) different from the appropriate demandingness of morality. There are many things that morality demands that no person has a right to demand of anyone (other than him- or herself). In Kant’s theory, it is true of juridical duties but not of ethical duties that others have a right to demand our compliance. (See MM, 6:383.) About all one can say regarding the appropriate demandingness of morality, in Kant’s ethics, is this: (a) sometimes morality demands a great deal, e.g. that one not bear false witness against another, sending him to his death, even though refusing to do so will cost one one’s life,40 while (b) sometimes it leaves one a great deal of latitude, as in the case of the imperfect duties to promote others’ happiness and one’s own natural perfection.41 If we take Kant’s ethics to provide a conception of appropriate demandingness, we would need to frame it as consisting of two parts. Insofar as we focus on (a), a conception of moral demandingness is indeed possible without a conception of relevant virtues; with respect to (b), I think the answer would have to be that it is not possible. Regarding (b), this much is clear:  there is a very close connection between virtues and imperfect duties, so close that Kant’s notion of an imperfect duty would have to be drastically revised if one wished to sever the connection. Consider beneficence. It is an imperfect duty, and it is a virtue. This seems clearly the correct way to think about it, since beneficence, for Kant, is not simply a matter of doing certain good deeds. “Beneficence,” Kant writes, “is the maxim of making others’ happiness one’s end, and the duty to it consists in the subject’s being constrained by The idea, I take it, is that all four concepts have to pass the test for the theory to count as a species of virtue ethics. So I could legitimately quit once I find that any of them fails; but I will consider all four, my aim being to provide a sketch of how this might go, rather than an argument that Kant’s ethics cannot (or can) qualify as a species of virtue ethics. A further reason for considering all four is that it is not clear whether the test is failed if the conception that fails to pass the test is not really at home in Kant’s ethics, and often when I say it fails, it is largely for this reason. 40 See CPrR, 5:31. 41 For discussions of the question of latitude, see Gregor (1963); Hill (1992 and 2002b); Baron (1995a), ch.3; Baron and Family (2009). 39

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his reason to adopt this maxim as a universal law” (MM, 6:452). He also says that it is a duty of virtue (MM, 6:392–98), but I don’t want to rest much on his use of the word “virtue” (Tugend); the more crucial point is that what he means by beneficence is clearly something we should classify as a virtue. The duty to adopt others’ happiness as an end entails transforming ourselves (as needed) so that we are disposed to help others and, moreover, disposed to do so in a generous and cheerful frame of mind, maintaining our cheerful resolution to help them even if because of some petty grudge, or because we are preoccupied with some personal matter, we don’t feel like helping.42 In sum, the duty of beneficence calls for us to be beneficent: to have, or at least strive to have, the virtue of beneficence. Slightly different, but essentially similar points can be made regarding the imperfect duties in general, and the specific duties that fall under the general principles of imperfect duty. It is hard to imagine how the imperfect duties could be understood or articulated without the notion of a virtue. So if the question were “Is a conception of imperfect duties possible without a conception of virtue or virtues?” the answer would clearly be “No.” Whether the connection between imperfect duties and virtues entails a negative answer to the question, “Can a conception of the appropriate demandingness of morality be understood without a conception of the relevant virtues, on Kant’s ethics?” is not clear to me. What about the moral point of view? Does a conception of the moral point of view require a conception of relevant virtues, on Kant’s ethics? Once again, it is hard to know quite what to say. Kant does not speak of a moral point of view, though the idea is implicit in his remarks (G, 4:402) distinguishing two meanings of “May I do x?” viz., “Is it prudent to do x?” and “Is it in conformity with duty to do x?” 43 If we try to map the notion of a moral point of view onto his practical philosophy, we cannot say much more than this: the moral point of view is to be contrasted with the point of view of prudence, and should also not be conflated with the point of view of etiquette, or of social mores (and so on). Thus understood, it seems clear that it is indeed possible to have a Kantian conception of the moral point of view without a conception of relevant virtues. I am very much indebted in this paragraph to Allen Wood; not only the central idea of this paragraph but some of the wording comes from his comments on a draft of this paper. I am also indebted here to Melissa Seymour Fahmy. The talk of self-transformation comes from her doctoral dissertation (2007). 43 “Let the question be, for example: may I, when hard pressed, make a promise with the intention not to keep it? Here I easily distinguish two significations the question can have: whether it is prudent or whether it is in conformity with duty to make a false promise” (G, 4:402). 42

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“The good life” is even less apt a notion to work with in connection with Kant’s ethics. As Swanton observes, to ask what is a good life for human beings is not the same as asking what it is to be a good human.44 Kant has much to offer on the latter question but less on the former, and I do not think there is enough in Kant’s works on what the good life is to constitute a conception of the good life. The only other way I can see to locate a conception of the good life in Kant’s ethics would be to equate it with “the virtuous life,” in which case of course it would require a conception of the relevant virtues; but clearly that is not what Swanton intended by “the good life.” The difficulty of locating a conception of the good life in Kant’s ethics might indicate only that we need to apply the “virtue ethics test” that her account suggests to a different concept, and I will in a moment consider the one remaining concept on her list that I have not yet considered. Alternatively, it might signal that Kant’s ethics really is quite far from qualifying as a species of virtue ethics, because it lacks, as Swanton (2003) might say, an appropriate “connection between morality and the flourishing of the individual agent” (65). It probably does violate Swanton’s “Constraint on Virtue”:  “A correct conception of the virtues must be at least partly shaped by a correct conception of healthy growth and development which in part constitute our flourishing” (60). Whether it might be able to pass muster I shall not explore here, my aim in this discussion being only to sketch the considerations that arise if one is interested in showing that Kant’s ethics could qualify as a species of virtue ethics. The most Kantian of the four concepts on Swanton’s list is rightness. If we want to conceive of Kant’s ethics as a species of virtue ethics, on Swanton’s characterization of virtue ethics, this would be the place to focus our efforts. If the others fail the test, we might be able to argue that it is because those concepts, unlike rightness, have no place in Kant’s ethics. What room is there for arguing that a conception of rightness is impossible, on Kant’s ethics, without a conception of the relevant virtues? (The idea would have to be ethical rightness, not juridical rightness, but that poses no obstacle.) Nothing Kant lists as a virtue would help us here, but it might be a legitimate extension of Kant’s ethics to count as a virtue something that he does not list but arguably treats as a virtue. We might, for example, classify conscientiousness as a virtue, and argue that a   Swanton (2003), ch. 3, esp. 56.

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conception of rightness requires a conception of this virtue. Or, we might classify as a virtue a commitment to perfecting oneself (both morally and otherwise), and argue that a conception of rightness cannot be understood without a conception of this virtue. The first is more plausible than the second, but neither is very plausible. We might even try to construe the good will as a virtue, though I think that is far too much of a stretch (even if not quite as huge a stretch as Allen Wood would consider it to be; see Wood [this volume]). I do not recommend this approach, but merely suggest it as an approach one could take should one wish to argue that Kant’s ethics can count as a species of virtue ethics. More plausible would be to argue this with respect to Kantian ethics rather than Kant’s ethics. But I do not favor that approach either (though I certainly find it less problematic). Why not? First, I hear “combative” murmured in response to attempts to do so, and this time I am inclined to agree. It seems to me somewhat hostile, when virtue ethicists have been keen on developing a conception of virtue ethics that allows it to be an alternative to  – and incompatible with  – both utilitarianism and Kantian ethics, to respond with something like, “Oh no you don’t! We can make Kantian ethics fit your requirements, so there!”45 Even put much more politely, it is an unnecessarily combative reaction, one that would quite justifiably arouse suspicions that we are simply being territorial. But why, it might be asked, do I now say that to try to show that Kantian ethics is compatible with virtue ethics (as explained by Swanton) would be needlessly combative, when earlier I defended those (myself included) who had questioned the claim that they are incompatible? The answer, in short, is that the state of the debate has changed. Earlier, it was very unclear what virtue ethics was; too often it was defined mainly negatively, as rejecting this or that (alleged) feature of Kantian ethics, or of modern ethical theory. It was thus appropriate to press for greater clarity about what virtue ethics is, to question the characterization of Kantian (or Kant’s) ethics, and to probe into just where virtue ethicists disagreed with Kantian ethics. Now that it is far clearer what virtue ethics is, to continue to insist on greater clarity is rather obstructionist. I take Swanton’s point that her definition of virtue ethics (as a genus) can be further refined by virtue ethicists as they work on developing different species of virtue ethics. It is understandable to prefer “to get on with the 45

See, in addition to Hursthouse (1999) and Swanton (2003), Baron, Pettit, and Slote (1997) and Slote (1992, 2001).

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job of developing a virtue ethics” and not get bogged down in “questions of definition” (Swanton 2003: 5). Since her characterization of virtue ethics is not, as some early statements of virtue ethics were, predicated on false claims about Kant’s ethics or Kantian ethics, we are not in a position of having to undo interpretive damage by challenging the claim that virtue ethics is incompatible with Kantian ethics. Of course to say that we do not need to challenge the claim of incompatibility does not mean that we have to consider virtue ethics to be, as Hursthouse claims it is, as different from Kantian ethics and utilitarianism as they are from each other (Hursthouse 1999: 2, 7), or accept the position that the three leading ethical theories are utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, and virtue ethics. A second reason why I am not eager to argue that Kant’s ethics can count as a species of virtue ethics reflects a view about the history of ethics, i.e. how it should, and how it should not, be pursued. I see no way in which Kant’s ethics would be illuminated by trying to show that with this or that “friendly amendment” it in fact is compatible with virtue ethics. One might suggest that even if the attempt is unsuccessful, struggling to figure out whether they are compatible is fruitful, but I don’t see that, either. The history of ethics is generally not well served by asking whether Kant, or Rousseau, or Hume counts as a —ist, where the relevant “ism” was developed in an entirely different era, responding to very different concerns from those that animated the work of the person in question.46 This is particularly the case here, where the classification “virtue ethics” has been developed in a way that reflects, to put it a bit harshly, marketing concerns: a concern to put forward virtue ethics as a rival theory.47 Whereas it was, and remains, fruitful to look at all the ways in which character and virtue play an important role in Kant’s ethics – larger than was often thought, and larger than one would guess if one read only the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason – and to challenge the There are exceptions, where the “ism” happens to capture something in the theory that merits attention, or where distinctions developed recently help us to disambiguate something in the theory that is confusing. 47 For an example of other virtue ethicists who are crafting virtue ethics with the goal of gaining recognition for it as an independent theory, and for some sense of the way this goal shapes the theory, see Crisp and Slote (1997a). They ask: “How, then, is a virtue ethicist to carve out his or her own niche? It must be by providing an account of ultimate moral reasons which not only is neither utilitarian nor Kantian, but makes essential reference to the rationality of virtue itself. Thus, for example, the real reason why I should not lie to you is not that it is against the moral law, nor that it is likely not to maximize well-being, but because it is dishonest. The notions of virtue, then, are more basic than the notions at the heart of utilitarianism and Kantian ­theory” (2). 46

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exaggerated contrasts often drawn between Aristotle’s ethics and Kant’s,48 to try to view Kant’s ethics as a theory in which virtue plays the pivotal role that, on Swanton’s picture, it plays in virtue ethics, would only distort his project. (See Wood [this volume].) Now some of what I have just said applies only (or primarily) to Kant’s ethics, not (or not as compellingly) to Kantian ethics. It might be possible to develop an account of various Kantian virtues (not necessarily enumerated by Kant), formulating them in such a way as to ensure that they meet Swanton’s criterion. I still doubt that this would be worthwhile. It would make sense only if we think that virtue ethics would provide a shape for Kantian ethics that enhances it, and I see no reason to think that it would. In addition, I see no reason for taking issue with the project on which Slote, Hursthouse, and Swanton (among others) have embarked. If they think it valuable to develop various species of virtue ethics that take as their starting point that virtue ethics is a rival to Kantian ethics, there is no need to challenge them and to claim that in fact it is not really a rival to Kantian ethics, or that it need not be.49 To do so would amount to a silly protectionist exercise, smacking of just the “We don’t want a new kid on our block” sentiment that Hursthouse suspected in the repeated requests for virtue ethicists to clarify what virtue ethics is. V A s s e s s i ng t h e de b at e In this concluding section, I offer, at the suggestion of the editors, a few comments on ways in which the debate between virtue ethicists and Kantians has gone well and ways in which it has not gone well. At the level of scholarship it has been quite fruitful, at least for Kantians; I am probably not in a position to assess how helpful it has been for virtue ethicists, so I will leave that to them. Here is roughly what has happened. The answers that Kantians received, or uncovered, to the question, “Just what is virtue ethics, and in what way is it incompatible with Kantian On this, see Sherman (1997b) and Engstrom and Whiting (1996). At a time when the claims to distinctness rested on rather vague assertions, and on a seemingly distorted picture of Kantian ethics, it was important to so challenge it, partly to bring out neglected aspects and the untapped – or under-tapped – potential of Kant’s ethics. The debate has advanced, thanks in part to rejoinders by Kantians who point out that Kant’s ethics does not involve a “big rule” from which all else is deduced; that it is not about rules and actions to the exclusion of virtue and character; that it is not concerned primarily with the rightness, or indeed the moral worth, of individual actions, etc. For one of many works depicting Kant’s ethics as involving a “big rule,” see Moravcsik (1981). For corrections of this picture, see (among others) Baron (1995a); Herman (1993); O’Neill (1989a); and Wood (1999).

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ethics?” stimulated us to assess the objections that virtue ethics posed, either implicitly or explicitly, to Kantian themes or Kantian approaches to ethics. Limiting it for now to Kant’s ethics: we asked whether, if virtue ethicists are right in what they say about Kant’s ethics, we should be perturbed. In other words, is the alleged problem really a problem? Insofar as we thought that it was, we then asked whether Kant’s ethics has the features that virtue ethicists claim it has (or lacks the features that they say any good theory should have). To the extent that we found it did, we then considered whether a “friendly amendment” was possible. Of course we did not do this as a unified group, and a further interesting development was that one Kantian might say that Kant’s ethics should be modified in a certain respect, while another says that the proposed modification is not necessary, because Kant’s view is precisely what the proposed modification would yield.50 That wasn’t the end of it; some sympathetic to the virtue ethicists’ criticisms responded with a refined version of the criticism initially put forward; the Kantian responded, and so on. All this was good for those who were immersed in Kant scholarship in that it provided new challenges, or interesting new twists on the Hegelian challenges. And the challenges stimulated some dazzling work. I think here of Onora O’Neill’s Constructions of Reason and Barbara Herman’s The Practice of Moral Judgment, both of which respond to criticisms of Kantian ethics, O’Neill especially to Alasdair MacIntyre, Herman to Bernard Williams, among others.51 Admittedly this could have happened without virtue ethicists putting forward their positive views. But also helpful for Kantian scholarship was the challenge to figure out, as we looked at various theses that seemed to be at the heart of virtue ethics (at least of some specific species of virtue ethics), whether those theses were at odds with Kantian ethics or not. In general, the attention to virtue and character coming from those advancing virtue ethics helped Kantians break away from approaching Kant in what I think was a limited and rather dull way. The effect was not limited to Kantian ethics. Virtue ethicists helped shift the focus of normative ethics away from its fairly typical focus, at the time, on evaluating actions – and moreover, evaluating them in isolation from consideration I’m thinking here of an exchange I was part of: Denis (2000) argued that a corrective that I said (Baron 1995a) is needed in fact is not needed at all; she argued that much of what I say Kant should have said concerning affect he in fact did hold. 51 Admittedly Williams does not exactly fit under the heading of “virtue ethicist,” but as noted in section ii, objections raised by virtue ethicists to Kantian ethics were often developed (either originally or later) by others. 50

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of the agent’s character, and typically even in isolation from the agent’s conduct viewed over time. But there is a significant loss that needs to be noted, as well, a loss arising, however, not precisely from the debate between Kantians, who asked for more precision regarding just what virtue ethics is, and virtue ethicists, who were anxious for virtue ethics to attain status as a leading theory or approach, but rather from that latter goal together with the unclarity about just what virtue ethics is, and the wide array of theses associated with it. One facet of the problem is that, thanks in part to the hyperbole on the part of some virtue ethicists as to just how distinctive their view is (and the uncritical response of many of their readers), together with the prominence, at least for a time, of MacIntyre’s particular version of virtue ethics, a distorted picture emerged. The distorted picture is, fortunately, no longer very often put forward in scholarly works by moral philosophers, but it continues to appear in introductions to anthologies, textbooks, and summaries in work by scholars in other fields who, dabbling in ethical theory, come across and are taken in by the misleading story. The misleading story is emphasized as such by Martha Nussbaum, who summarizes it as follows in her “Virtue Ethics: A Misleading Category?”: We are turning from an ethics based on Enlightenment ideals of universality to an ethics based on tradition and particularity; from an ethics based on principle to an ethics based on virtue; from an ethics dedicated to the elaboration of systematic theories to an ethics suspicious of theory and respectful of the wisdom embodied in local practices; from an ethics based on the individual to an ethics based on affiliation and care; from an ahistorical detached ethics to an ethics rooted in the particularity of historical communities.52

A confused story indeed. One source of the confusion is the idea that we have three competing ­theories (or approaches) in conjunction with insufficient clarity about what virtue ethics is. In addition to contributing to distortions of Kant’s ethics, it has encouraged the view that certain things are incompatible that in fact are compatible. All too often, students or “outsiders” to ethical theory pick up a book or hear some introductory lecture from which they learn that Kantian ethics emphasizes rules (or principles) and actions, while virtue ethics emphasizes virtue and character, and that Nussbaum (1999: 163–64). Nussbaum emphasizes that she is not endorsing the story, but recounting it to bring out just how confused and confusing it is.

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these are rival theories.53 A further distortion is that highly specific rules and abstract moral principles are treated as if the difference between them were insignificant, or at least as if an ethical theory that places emphasis on the latter must equally place emphasis on the former. As Nussbaum brings out, the damage reaches yet further. Not only are we given the idea that an ethical theory cannot be focused both on virtue and on principles and acting on principle, but the idea is that there are two packages which cannot be unpacked and rearranged into different groupings. Certain things, on this mistaken view, invariably go together – character, virtue, care, tradition, and affiliation, on the one hand, and actions, rules, principles, detachment, and deracination on the other.54 Apart from glib summaries in textbooks and in anthologies on virtue ethics, the confused picture is far less often put forward now. We can hope that Swanton’s distinction between virtue ethics as a species and virtue ethics as a genus will eventually reach the people who write textbooks, or provide summaries of contemporary ethics for non-­philosophers; but until that happens, a residue of confusion lingers, confusion not only about what virtue ethics is, but about what the general lay of the land is in both contemporary ethics and the history of ethics. Unfortunately, some commentaries and critiques of virtue ethics fail to challenge this simplistic picture, and thereby lend it credence. A particularly influential critique of virtue ethics that affirmed these contrasts (“agent vs. act,” “being vs. doing”) is Louden (1984), first published in American Philosophical Quarterly and reprinted in at least eight anthologies. 54 As Nussbaum observes, some of the elements of the moral life that it treats as inextricably linked not only are separable, but may even turn out to be in tension with one another. “Can one be a good parent,” Nussbaum asks, “if one refuses … to criticize local traditions in the name of justice and equality?” 53

Ch apter 2

What does the Aristotelian phronimos know? Rosalind Hursthouse

The question above is a way of asking, “What is moral knowledge, according to Aristotle?” For the Aristotelian phronimos  – the practically wise man1  – has phronesis, which is a form of knowledge, and it is this that enables him (characteristically) to make correct decisions about what he should do. What the phronimos is excellent at, because of his phronesis, is practical reasoning. What normative ethical theory aspires to do is enable those agents who apply it to reach correct decisions about what they should do, to provide a model of excellent practical reasoning. Hence modern moral philosophers who believe that we have much to learn from Aristotle have turned to his account of phronesis for insights about, among other things, the possibility of normative ethical theory. This generated a debate between particularists and generalists about codifiability and the role of moral principles, which overlapped with that between virtue ethicists and their critics over whether virtue ethics failed to be action-guiding because it failed to provide them. Now I take it that, with respect to a normative ethical theory’s providing action-guidance, the virtue ethicists have prompted new insights among the generalists. Some of the latter, at least, used to say that they were seeking not just a guide but “hopefully a determinate decision procedure” (Louden 1984:  228–29) for resolving dilemmas, and now they don’t. Indeed, the author of that quotation now says that of course no one ever thought that there could be such a decision procedure, and that everyone has always recognized that “informed judgment” and “practical wisdom” are needed to apply rules and principles correctly (Louden 1998: 494). But, in my view, the most significant aspect of Aristotelian phronesis, namely that it is impossible without virtue, has been rather It is, unfortunately, impossible to translate “phronimos” as “the practically wise person,” so this chapter has to be couched in Aristotle’s sexist terms.

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obscured by the generalist vs. particularist debate, and hence its impact on the pretensions of philosophers’ normative ethical theorizing is still not appreciated by non-virtue ethicists. This is what this chapter is about. Too new (as a technical term in moral philosophy) to have made it into the second edition of The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (1999), “particularism” is already old enough to have become unclear, and so, as far as possible, I shall avoid it, and use the less contested terms “antigeneralism” and “anti-codifiability” instead. I A n t i- c odi f i a bi l i t y: t wo r e d h e r r i ng s McDowell and Nussbaum began with an interest in what the Aristotelian phronimos knows, with what he possesses that enables him, unlike the rest of us, to be excellent at knowing what to do. And they were both concerned to deny a certain generalist picture of his knowledge; one according to which the phronimos has knowledge of a code by following which he is able to live and act well. Hence the first statement of anti-generalism in relation to Aristotle, in McDowell’s “Virtue and Reason,” where it is stated as an anti-­codifiability claim about a certain sort of ethical generalization or principle. What McDowell originally denied was that “the virtuous person’s views about how, in general, one should behave are susceptible of codification, in principles apt for serving as major premisses in [practical] syllogisms” (McDowell 1979: 148). That amounts to denying the existence of a set of (correctly) actionguiding ethical principles, viz., principles or generalizations that could ­figure as the starting points of practical reasoning, a set sufficiently large to constitute a code for acting well in general. Taking this denial as the basic anti-codifiability claim, I want to note a few points about it to get a couple of red herrings out of the way. The first red herring is the (possible) existence of a few absolute prohibitions. At NE, 1107a10–14, Aristotle does indeed tell us that “adultery,” theft, and murder are themselves bad and that one must always be wrong in doing them. But this is quite consistent with the denial of codifiability. What is denied is that the phronimos has, and employs, a general procedure, subsuming new cases under the rules in his code in order to reach a correct decision about what to do, day to day, and this need not involve the blanket rejection of all absolute prohibitions. All it requires is the plausible claim that they are few and far between and that, whatever

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they may be, they provide very little in the way of action-guidance in dayto-day life. If I want to know what the phronimos knows, so that I shall know how to act well, day to day, knowing that, say, theft, murder, and adultery cannot form part of a well-spent day still leaves me pretty much in the dark. So I put the issue of whether there are any absolute ethical generalizations or moral principles aside as a red herring. At this point, we should remind ourselves of two features of the ­phronimos. One is that, qua virtuous, the phronimos knows what anyone minimally decent knows. We may not agree with Aristotle that murder, theft, and adultery are always wrong, but whether we do or not, I assume that we all think that they are, roughly speaking, wrong, and moreover that everyone, short of the shameless and wicked, knows that this is so. It is ordinary, common or garden moral knowledge. And of course the phronimos, being neither shameless nor wicked, knows it too. However (I want to add, pointedly), this hardly marks out what the phronimos knows as special, and the second feature of the phronimos is that he has special knowledge. This point must be stressed, because, when we consider the question “What does the phronimos know?” it is only his special (or “peculiar”) knowledge that we are after, that is, the knowledge he has qua phronimos that distinguishes him from everyone who lacks phronesis, not the knowledge he has qua ordinary intellectually competent adult, nor the knowledge he has qua neither shameless nor wicked. And it is to the phronimos’s special knowledge that the anti-codifiability claim pertains. These two features give us a further reason to put the few exceptionless action-guiding rules or generalizations we can untendentiously ascribe to Aristotle and to his phronimos to one side as red herrings. They also come into play with respect to the second red herring, namely the existence of a fair number of other action-guiding ethical generalizations which are not exceptionless but hold “for the most part” (hos epi to polu). Aristotle does not mention many, but several occur in the following passage, and it is instructive to consider what we should make of it. [S]hould someone help a friend rather than a good person, and show gratitude to a benefactor rather than offer a service to a companion if he cannot do both? It is, of course, no easy matter to make precise decisions in cases like this, because they allow all sorts of variations in respect of importance and unimportance, of what is noble, and of what is necessary. But it is quite clear that we should not give everything to the same person. In general, we should return a benefit instead of doing a favor for our companions, just as we should repay a debt instead of giving the money to a companion. But perhaps even this is not

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always so. For example, if you have been ransomed from kidnappers, should you ransom in return the person who freed you, whoever he is? Or if he has not been kidnapped, but asks for his money back, should you repay him, or ransom your own father instead? It seems that you should ransom your father even in preference to yourself. As we have said, then, in general debts should be paid, but if a gift is overriding in its nobility or necessity, we should incline in favor of these considerations. (NE, 1164b30–1165a5)2

The action-guiding ethical generalizations we can find here are (i) for the most part, we should sooner return a benefit than give to a companion; (ii) for the most part, we should sooner repay a debt than give favors to companions; (iii) you should ransom your father rather than repay a debt, indeed, even in preference to ransoming yourself; and (iv) for the most part one should repay what is owed, but if giving is overridingly fine or necessary we should incline in favor of it. We may infer, given these and his earlier discussion, that Aristotle will also accept (v) for the most part we should repay debts; (vi) for the most part we should return benefits; and (vii) for the most part we should give (favors) to companions. Here, as with a few absolute rules, the anti-codifier should have no objection to ascribing knowledge of (v)–(vii) to the phronimos. But, as before, we may deny that such ascription goes any distance towards ascribing any special knowledge to him. However, there are some places in Love’s Knowledge, taken up by Irwin (2000),3 in which it looks as though Nussbaum (1990) denies that there is any sense in which the phronimos is guided by rules such as (v)–(vii), or brings them to bear on his decision. For there she seems to be committed to regarding such rules “not as normative … the ultimate authorities against which the correctness of particular choices is assessed, but more as summaries or rules of thumb, highly useful for a variety of purposes, but valid only to the extent to which they correctly describe good concrete judgments, and to be assessed, ultimately, against these” (68). She mentions three of their uses later – as part of moral education, as worth sticking to when you think you might be subject to emotional bias, and as things to use when “there is not time to formulate a fully concrete decision in the case at hand” (73). We should note that the first two do not pertain to the choices of the phronimos but that the third might. For a list of abbreviations of Aristotle’s works and a list of translations of these works as used in this and other essays in this volume, see Abbreviations at the start of this volume. 3 It should be noted that Irwin targets Nussbaum’s “An Aristotelian Conception of Rationality” and does not take account of her view in “Finely Aware and Richly Responsible” that “perceptions ‘perch on the heads of ’” standing obligations and “do not displace them” (Nussbaum 1990: 155). 2

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These remarks strike me as sounding disquietingly similar to what act utilitarians used to say about moral rules. Moral rules don’t have any sort of normative authority  – only the greatest happiness principle has that; individual acts are not to be assessed as right or wrong in terms of them, but only in terms of it. The so-called true or correct ones are correct only insofar as they summarize a large number of true judgments about the rightness or wrongness of individual acts. And, as such, they are useful in the three ways that Nussbaum mentions, even though sometimes a particular true judgment will show that the rule is, in this instance, incorrect. Now if this is what rules such as “debts should be repaid” and “benefits should be returned” are like, it is surely the case that the phronimos will hardly ever rely on them. His moral education is complete, and he is not subject to bias since his emotions are in harmony with his reason. Such rules may be useful to others, but why should he employ them when there is a correct concrete decision he can come to that the rule might have disallowed? His sole employment of them would be in those rare cases where he does not have time to find out much about the situation at hand and has to jump to a practical conclusion instead of reasoning to it, and hope for the best. But in these cases we might well say he isn’t really employing his practical reason anyhow, or at least only in a non-standard way. So qua phronimos (rather than qua human being who, inevitably, sometimes finds himself having to act on inadequate information) he is never guided by such rules in his decision making. Irwin finds this implausible, and so – though for rather different reasons – do I. Insofar as learning such rules as “debts should be repaid,” “benefits should be returned,” and “favors should be done for companions” is an important part of moral education, we should not think of the successful inculcation of such rules only in terms of being habituated to act in accordance with them (for the most part). Is it not plausible to say that the phronimos thinks of debts as the sorts of thing that are to be repaid, of benefits as the sorts of thing that are to be returned, and of friends as the sorts of people you put yourself out for? This is part of his virtue and one of the many ways in which he contrasts with the shameless and wicked, who think of debts as money for jam, of benefits as the harvest to be reaped from suckers, and of friends merely as people you know it is fun to be with. It is part of what he came to know, not by induction, but when he was receiving his good moral education in childhood. And there is no reason for him to discard that knowledge as merely statistical, because that is not what it is.

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So if this is what Nussbaum was committed to, I agree with Irwin that it should not be ascribed to Aristotle. Someone who has been so badly brought up that he does not realize that, for the most part, benefits should be returned, debts repaid, and favors done for one’s companions, will hit on correct decisions about what to do only by accident; the phronimos’s knowledge of these mother’s-knee rules surely, as Irwin (2000) puts it, “contributes essentially to (his) correct decision about what to do” in many cases in the relevant areas, in at least the same sense as a minimally decent upbringing does (122). But these are mother’s-knee rules, and the phronimos has moved well beyond what he  – and we  – learnt at our mothers’ knees in such an upbringing. So it is innocuous to allow that the phronimos is often, in relevant situations, guided by such rules, since, as that is all they are, this point does not get us any closer to understanding what his special knowledge consists in. They, and the phronimos’s possible employment of them, are another red herring. I I A n t i- c odi f i a bi l i t y: t h e p h r o n i m o s ’s spe ci a l k now l e d g e Let us now return to the passage and consider Aristotle’s two “ranking rules” (i) and (ii). Here I am much less certain that these are ethical generalizations that Aristotle might assume everyone with a minimally decent upbringing knows. If they are, the above remarks apply, so let us assume more interestingly that they are not, but examples of the sort of thing that the phronimos, especially, knows. And let us assume, with the codifiers, that his knowledge of them essentially informs some of his characteristically (or “peculiarly”) correct decisions. That is, it is because he knows them that, unlike the nicest sort of prodigal person (who is not base but foolish [NE,1121a26]) he does not give to a companion when he shouldn’t – for instance when unreturned benefits or debts are outstanding. Is there any objection those committed to the anti-codifiability claim might make to ascribing knowledge of these two ranking rules to the Aristotelian phronimos as examples of his special knowledge? If so, it should not, I think, be that the ascription is false. Rather, the objection should be that it is either misleading or not perspicuous. Let us suppose that part of what is special about the phronimos’s knowledge is that he knows these two ranking rules. How do we go on from there in our consideration of the question “What does the phronimos know?” Are we to infer, as an interpretation geared towards codifiability

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would suggest, that he knows lots and lots of such ranking rules, that what often  – even usually, perhaps?  – enables him to reach the correct decision in cases where those lacking phronesis, albeit fairly well brought up, reach the wrong one, is his knowledge of a large set of such ranking rules? Well, we certainly don’t find them in Aristotle’s text, nor any suggestion that we will find them if we think a bit harder, nor that Aristotle is seeking them. So if we take the ascription of these two ranking rules to the phronimos as indicative of a whole lot of them somewhere in the offing, the ascription is misleading; nothing in the text supports their being thus indicative. So should we say, “There is nothing to infer from the phronimos’s knowledge of these two rules, nothing in general to learn about his special knowledge from this bit of the text, just this rather odd fact that he knows a couple of ranking rules (and perhaps a very specialized rule about ransoming one’s father)”? Well, that might be true, but it is hardly a perspicuous answer to “What does the phronimos know?” For the anti-codifier, there is something more perspicuous in the offing. What we have in (i) and (ii), she may say, are examples of the phronimos’s especially good grasp of the important, the fine (or “noble”), and the necessary (at least). (Note the opening sentence of the discussion: “It is, of course, no easy matter to make precise decisions in cases like this, because they allow all sorts of variations in respect of importance and unimportance, of what is noble, and of what is necessary.”) The examples here happen to be of a rather rare sort, insofar as his understanding of these concepts in this area can be roughly expressed in a couple of what nowadays we call ranking rules. For the most part, it is not disgraceful (contrary to what is fine) to refuse a favor to a companion when this is incompatible with repaying a debt or, more generally, what one owes; for the most part, repaying the debt or returning the benefit is necessary/ what has to be done in such a case, and it would be disgraceful not to do it. On the occasions on which the rule holds, the phronimos can say truly to a friend or benefactor, “I can’t give you this $20, much as I would like to, because I have to/must repay it to so and so,” where the “can’t” and the “have to” or “must” deploy the concept of the necessary. “Of course returning benefits and doing favors to companions are important, but first things first; for the most part, repaying debts is more important  – and this is one of the cases in which that is so.” But remember (iv) – “for the most part one should repay what is owed, but if giving is overridingly fine or necessary we should incline in favor of these considerations.” There can be cases in which it would be more fine

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or necessary (and no doubt important) to do the favor rather than pay the debt or return the benefit. And the phronimos, with his special, true understanding or conception of the important, the fine, and the necessary (which enables him to make the correct decision in all sorts of cases where none of us can come up with remotely plausible ranking rules) can recognize such a case when he encounters it. So the phronimos has a grasp of the important, the fine, and the necessary superior to that of most of us. And this suggests a way to go on in our consideration of the question, “What does the phronimos know?” which immediately proves fruitful. From other bits of the text, we see that he has a superior grasp of other concepts too, such as those of the fine (again), the expedient or useful, the (truly) pleasant and their opposites (NE, 1104b30–33). He has a superior grasp of the right or correct as it occurs “to the right extent, towards the right people, for the right reason, etc.” He also has a superior grasp of eupraxia – acting well – and eudaimonia. And he has a superior grasp of the virtues and vices. Given the content of the second half of Book iii and all of Book iv, namely the extended discussion of various virtues and what they may be confounded with (which includes their corresponding vices), at the very least what we ascribe to the Aristotelian phronimos in this area is knowledge of what courage (or temperance or generosity or “mildness,” etc.) really is; we ascribe to him, in our modern terminology, a full mastery of the concept. This mastery is what enables him always to apply it correctly – something that the wicked and the well-brought-up-but-stilllacking-full-virtue people are not able to do. We know that the vicious do not have such mastery of the concepts because we know from the text that “the coward calls the brave man rash and the reckless call him a coward and so for all the other cases” (NE, 1108b25–26). That the well brought up but not yet fully virtuous lack it is interpretation, but not of a tendentious sort. When Aristotle goes to the trouble of distinguishing the character of the (truly) courageous from five other types who are thought to be courageous, we may plausibly suppose that quite a few ordinary people, not just the shameless and wicked, tend to confound the genuine article with one or some of these other five. Similarly, they confound the buffoon with the ready-witted and tend to commend certain irascible men as “manly” and “natural leaders” (NE, 1128a15, 1126b1–2). Perhaps, too, they sometimes take the open-handed prodigal to be generous. Any such mistake is liable to lead to error in action, as one praises and imitates where one should condemn and eschew. But the phronimos’s special knowledge enables him not to make these mistakes.

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So what we have so far are the beginnings of an account  – far from complete,4 but quite substantial – of the phronimos’s special knowledge, which emphasizes not his knowledge of a code of action-guiding rules, but his mastery of a large number of concepts, a mastery he displays in applying them correctly, case by case. However, at this point, a codifier might say, triumphantly, “Suppose the phronimos knows what courage, temperance, generosity, mildness, etc. really are (which most people don’t) and that it is this special knowledge that enables him, uniquely, to live and act well. Surely then his correct views about how in general one should behave are susceptible to codification in principles apt for serving as major premises in practical syllogisms, contrary to the basic claim of anti-codifiability. The principles or rules in question (the v-rules) are something like ‘one ought to do what is courageous, one ought not to do what is cowardly or reckless,’ ‘one ought to do what is temperate, one ought not to do what is licentious,’ ‘one ought to do what is generous,’ etc. The relevant minor premise in each case would be ‘Doing such and such would be courageous or doing so and so would be cowardly,’ and thereby he reaches his correct practical decision.” Now as an objection to the basic anti-codifiability claim that looks pretty strong. So what are we to say about it? I I I Be yon d a n t i- c odi f i a bi l i t y The debate about anti-codifiability began as one between the particularists and the generalists. The generalist said the phronimos knows a code; the particularist denied it. But that debate began well before explicit talk about the v-rules appeared in our philosophical literature, and it is plausible to suppose that they are not quite the sort of rules or principles the generalists, or the particularists, initially had in mind.5 For they have the following two features. “Far from complete” because nothing has been said about the close relation between political knowledge and phronesis (“same state, but their being is different” [NE, 1141b24–25]), nor what is involved in deliberative excellence. I still don’t know what to say about the former, but address the latter, and its relation to experience, in Hursthouse (2006). 5 Space does not permit defending this in detail, but we may briefly note the following. As Roger Crisp has argued (2000), the examples that form the main support for Dancy’s particularism about reasons in Moral Reasons (1993) all involve “non-ultimate” reasons such as my having borrowed a book from you, or a claim’s being a lie, rather than “ultimate” reasons such as an action’s being just or dishonest, which he does not discuss. It is only in the recent Ethics without Principles (2004) that he has a go at them. Nussbaum, as we have seen, was thinking of the sort of moral rules that might plausibly be thought of as “rules of thumb.” The target of McDowell’s “Virtue and Reason” (1979) is perhaps a very general conception of moral philosophy that he thinks most of his contemporaries mistakenly hold and is hence difficult to pin down, but it is hard to believe 4

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Firstly, they do not consist of anything recondite that philosophers have painstakingly formulated or discovered, but only common moral knowledge. But the generalist picture surely was, and still is, as Irwin (2000) describes it – that it is the moral philosophers’ task to “seek general principles that will guide agents in deciding that one course of action is morally right and another is wrong” (100), to find “in ethics as in natural science, theoretically significant generalizations,” which, in ethics, “are significant for the primarily practical purpose of ethical inquiry” (129, my italics). What they sought, and are still seeking, is something superior to the folk wisdom of the v-rules, as “natural” philosophers sought, and scientists now seek, something superior to folk wisdom about the natural world. Secondly, insofar as the v-rules are only common moral knowledge they do not, of course, capture the phronimos’s special knowledge. Once again, any minimally well-brought-up Aristotelian child knows that one ought to do what is courageous, not what is cowardly, what is temperate, not what is licentious, etc., and can understand and apply such rules to some extent. What is special about the phronimos’s knowledge is the special understanding he brings to these rules, his unique mastery of the concepts involved. All the difficult practical work, one might say, is done by this superior understanding, not by the rules themselves. To lack phronesis is to lack such mastery; so these rules, the v-rules, cannot be fully understood by those lacking phronesis. But thereby they fail to be the sort the generalists initially had in mind, which (I assume) were rules or principles that could be understood, albeit to differing effect, by the virtuous and non-virtuous alike. The generalists’ drive was, and is, to formulate the principles they seek in “non-moral” or “descriptive” terms, articulating, in detail, the phronimos’s special knowledge. If the generalist vs. particularist debate was about any sort of code, it was a pretty trivial debate. But I do not believe that it was. As a debate about what the phronimos knows, there was always more to it than that. The crucial feature of phronesis which the anti-codifiability claim on its own quite fails to capture is that its acquisition is inseparable from the acquisition of (full) virtue. And virtue, according to Aristotle, can be acquired only by habitually engaging in virtuous action, not, for example, from “discourses.”6 So phronesis  – excellence in practical reasoning  – can be acquired only by habitually engaging in virtuous action, not, for that he has the v-rules in mind when he says, “As Aristotle consistently says, the best generalizations about how one should behave hold only for the most part.” (I return to this claim below, n. 10.) 6 NE, 1103a25–b25, 1105b10–19, 1179b1–7; cf. 1142a12–20.

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example, just by learning a code of action-guiding principles comprehensible to the virtuous and non-virtuous alike. And I take this, rather than anti-codifiability per se, to be the basic insight of anti-generalism in relation to Aristotle. So we might take the central claim of an anti-generalist interpretation of Aristotle as, not just anti-codifiability tout court, but the following: the phronimos’s special knowledge – that which enables him to get practical decisions right – is not susceptible of codification in rules that are both action-guiding and fully comprehensible to those lacking virtue (and thereby phronesis).7 And I think we have good reason to suppose that Aristotle accepts that. Note that if we express the claim in this way, the issue of whether the phronimos follows a code of v-rules becomes, strictly speaking, as much of a red herring as the issue of whether he brings “Debts should be repaid” to bear on a particular case in reaching his correct decision about what to do.8 There is no significant generalist point to be made by insisting on it, but neither is there any significant anti-generalist point to be made by denying it and insisting that we talk instead of his mastery of a wide range of concepts. There might indeed be a point in the denial (with regard to truth rather than interpretation of Aristotle), but it could not be made alongside insistence on the phronimos’s mastery of a wide range of concepts. It is this. The virtues and vices, and hence concepts of them and the corresponding v-rules, are fairly culturally specific. It may be that Aristotle thought that his lists were not only correct but complete and that phronesis, and hence virtue, was impossible for anyone unfortunate enough to know only a culture with somewhat different lists. We are not so sanguine. Nor, surely, should any sensible philosopher commit herself to the claim that a proper moral education would be impossible in a culture that lacked virtue and vice terms. So, for the sake of avoiding committal to cultural relativism, an anti-generalist might well avoid committal to either the v-rules or to the phronimos’s mastery of a wide range of specified concepts. And this may be why McDowell tends to keep his discussion at the highly abstract level of the phronimos’s conception of “doing well” or of “what virtue requires.” It is, of course (returning to the phronimos’s special mastery of the virtue terms in the v-rules), open to a generalist to claim that what such I owe this formulation to Eric Brown. 

7

Cf. Broadie (1991: 248–49 and 264n.67).

8

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mastery involves is knowledge of the necessary and sufficient conditions of their correct application expressed in “non-evaluative” or “purely descriptive” terms. So what the Aristotelian phronimos knows is, at the very least, something roughly of the form “An act is courageous if and only if it is such and such, and/or so and so and/or if thus and so then this and that, etc.” That debate cannot be closed here. But in an Aristotelian context, the claim is distinctly problematic. Given Aristotle’s committal to some version of the unity of the virtues, what the phronimos knows about, say, courage, cannot be isolable from what he knows about temperance, generosity, “mildness,” justice, etc. So those rules that articulate in detail his special understanding of “Do what is courageous” would have to have written into them something that connected them (some of them?) essentially with the other sets that articulate his understanding of the other virtue and vice terms. That does not certainly show them to be impossible, but it certainly presents anyone who is seeking them with a formidable task. And it suggests a further problem. If the rules are to be couched in “descriptive” terms understood alike by the virtuous and non-virtuous, then there are surely a number of terms that must not figure in them – such as “the fine,” “the necessary,” “the important,” “the advantageous,” “the beneficial,” “the pleasant.” (Not all of these may be terms that philosophers will confidently classify as “moral,” but nor are they terms whose application the virtuous and the non-virtuous agree on.) But how could we possibly give the necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of “courage” without reference to the relevance of facing danger for a fine and thereby important but not a trivial end? Well, it might be said, these terms too are to be provided with necessary and sufficient conditions for their application in “descriptive” terms which, in their turn, can be understood by someone who lacks phronesis. But that only the fully virtuous, and thereby the phronimos, has the really correct conception of these, and that this conception cannot be acquired theoretically, just by attending lectures or reading books but only through virtuous activity itself, is another unquestionably Aristotelian thesis. Quite generally, if there were indeed some way to articulate the phronimos’s code that could be understood by someone who lacked virtue, then this is just what Aristotle should be seeking or offering in his lecture courses, for, contrary to what he says, it should be possible to acquire phronesis and thereby full virtue by attending lectures – given a minimally decent upbringing, it could replace the experience he says is needed. But it could not. Phronesis  – excellence in practical reasoning, moral

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knowledge  – can be acquired only by habitually engaging in virtuous action, not, for example, just by learning a written code of conduct. I V 

phronesis

a n d pe rc e p t ion

So far, I have left untouched two other themes in Aristotle that figure prominently in the generalist vs. particularist debate. One is found in his claims that the subject matter of ethics does not allow for a high degree of exactness, that we must be content to draw conclusions that are true only for the most part and that it is not easy to define by rule, or give an account of, this area or that. The other is found in the claims that, in at least some of these cases, “the judgment rests with perception” and in the passages that relate action and phronesis to perception.9 Are these two themes connected? And if so, how? Aristotle’s claim that “the judgment rests with perception” is usually quoted in the context in which Ross quoted it (1988:  42), namely that in which two prima facie duties or rules conflict. This suggests an obvious connection. Ethical generalizations hold only for the most part, as we see most clearly when two of them conflict and one is overridden and thereby shown to have an exception. Which one is overridden in a particular case is not determined by some exceptionless ranking rules, for they too hold only for the most part. So reaching the correct judgment about what to do in cases of conflict between rules rests with perception. That sounds very plausible, but it is worth noting that nothing in Aristotle’s text supports it directly. The two occasions on which he says that “the judgment rests with perception” both relate to the same example, and it is not an example of a conflict, but of hitting the mean or of judging how far one can deviate from it without incurring blame (NE, 1109b12ff. and 1126a31ff.). And that we should be angry on the right occasions in the right way with the right people with the right end for the right amount of time and so on is not one of the generalizations that seems to call for qualification by “for the most part.” What could possibly count as an exception to it? Moreover, there is not much in the text that looks like a discussion of conflicts between Rossian prima facie duties. All we have is the short passage discussed above concerning repaying debts and returning benefits, and the discussion of “mixed actions” in Book iii, which Aristotle   NE, 1112b34–1113a2, 1142a25–31, 1143a25–b14.

9

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concludes by saying, “It is not easy, however, to explain what sort of things ought to be chosen in return for what, since there are many differences in particulars” (NE, 1110b7) with nary a mention of perception. Furthermore, what is notably  – from a modern perspective  – lacking in him is any suggestion that the v-rules can conflict. He is seemingly unworried by the thought that, say, courage and philia, or generosity and justice, might make competing demands in a particular situation.10 Instead, there is the serene claim of the unity of the virtues: that if one possesses phronesis, all the virtues of character will be present as well. So it may be that rather than moving to the importance of perception in Aristotle via the anachronistic concern with the resolution of dilemmas when rules conflict, we should look elsewhere. The capacity for a certain sort of intellectual (rather than sensory) perception (NE, 1142a30), now often called, following Wiggins (1987), “situational appreciation” (237), is standardly taken to be something the phronimos is especially good at, one of the things that enables him to avoid the mistakes that lesser mortals make. Few generalists now dispute the necessity for this capacity for discerning the relevant features of particular situations. Many generalists accept, that is, that the correct application of their rules in a particular context requires recognizing its relevant and/or salient features. However, accepting the latter does not quite amount to assigning the importance to the intellectual perceptual capacity that is assigned to the practical nous uniquely possessed by the phronimos. The generalist thought might be that although, granted, the phronimos is especially good at seeing everything that is relevant immediately, the non-virtuous, although they tend to overlook it initially, can recognize it when it is pointed out. (After all, ex hypothesi, it is there.) And perhaps the thought is that this recognition is best brought about by appeal to ethical generalizations. In some cases that is a plausible thought (as long as we do not take the non-virtuous to include the shameless and wicked), since it is obvious enough that we often allow ourselves to drift into wrongdoing by turning a blind eye to what is relevant. (I heard of Elizabeth Anscombe’s bringing a debate about whether the imminent danger of a scandal should be averted by telling the newspapers this or that to an embarrassed halt by 10

This is why I said above (n. 5) that McDowell cannot have had the v-rules in mind when he said, “As Aristotle consistently says, the best generalizations about how one should behave hold only for the most part.” There is nothing in Aristotle one could quote to support the idea that a case would ever turn up in which doing what was courageous or generous or temperate would strike us as wrong.

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saying, “But both of those involve telling lies.” Everyone present was virtuous enough to accept that this was so relevant that a third course of action should be sought, but they had overlooked it before she pointed it out. The generalist gloss on this would be that everyone accepted “Lying is wrong” [or “Lying is a wrong-making feature”] and that all that was missing was the recognition of the relevant feature.) But things are not so straightforward if we suppose that what the phronimos often recognizes as a relevant and indeed decisive feature is that, for example, a proposed course of action is not “unspirited” but “mild,” or not generous but prodigal, or that it will not bring true pleasure or advantage to its proposed recipient, or that, in this case, giving to the friend is more important than paying the debt.11 For in these sorts of cases, it is not plausible to suppose that those lacking phronesis will recognize the feature as soon as it is pointed out. On the contrary, one rather imagines them saying, “I don’t see that.” Is there anything the phronimos – or the ideally articulate phronimos – can say to make the feature recognizable to them? A stress on (intellectual) perception need not be taken to the point of denying that no doubt there are often things he could say that might often work: “This is not generous but prodigal” and “This is more important than that” are not just like “This is not green but blue” or “This is greener than that.” They are more like “This is a babiana plant not a sparaxis – can you see that the foliage is just a little less shiny and branches in a slightly different way?” which the trained botanist can sometimes say.12 But they have an important similarity to both, viz., that mastery of the terms they employ can be acquired only through a training in which they are applied to particular instances. There is nothing the phronimos could say that would fully articulate his (intellectual) perceptual capacity, because there is nothing that could be written down that could replace the training through which he has acquired it, just as no amount of written information will enable the unpracticed eye of the amateur botanist to spot, reliably, the babiana plants. Here we see how a general Wittgensteinian move could be brought in but also that anti-Wittgensteinian Aristotelians should accept the point anyhow. A Wittgensteinian will say, “We acquire a large number of our concepts in practice. What I bring to a new example of, say, a game, is I take it these would all count as examples of perceiving what was relevant or salient. Woods (1986) suggests that the phronimos sees that a certain possible action is courageous (rather than cowardly), magnanimous (rather than pusillanimous) (see esp. 157). 12 I owe the analogy to the identification of different species of plant to Anthony Price. 11

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my mastery of ‘game’ which is part of the mastery of English I acquired through my childhood training, engaging in the practice of the application of the term to particular instances. (I do not bring a definition.) Similarly, what the phronimos brings to a new situation is his virtue (with all that that entails) acquired through his childhood training in doing what is just or temperate or courageous, and fully developed by habituation (not a set of definitions).”13 Anti-Wittgensteinians think that there must be a definition that someone brought up in a culture where games were unknown could use to work out, reliably, whether the activity going on before her was a game, absent any ostensive training. But be that as it may, no Aristotelian should believe that there is something, say a set of definitions, that someone who lacked virtue could, in theory, use to work out, reliably, whether something was important, fine, truly pleasant, or advantageous, prodigal rather than generous … or, quite generally, an instance of eupraxia or acting well, absent appropriate ostensive training in childhood and subsequent habituation in virtuous actions. The anti-generalist dispute about the “priority of perception” is indeed, as Irwin (2000) says, not just about the “temporal priority of learning” (103). Everyone agrees that, as a matter of fact, our moral education begins with our being taught to see that particular situations have certain features and trained to act accordingly. It is about whether, in theory, there could be a substitute for this early training, something else, such as a set of definitions, that would enable someone untrained in virtuous action to see, reliably, that something was generous rather than prodigal, or not disgraceful, or more important than something else, or not truly pleasant, or necessary … or an instance of acting well. And the Aristotelian claim is that there could not be. V  C onc l us ion So we return again to what I called the “basic insight,” namely that phronesis – excellence in practical reasoning, moral knowledge – can be acquired only by habitual engagement in virtuous action. There is no short cut to what the phronimos knows. Nothing but the acquisition of personal virtue will yield it. When we bring this feature of phronesis right to the surface, it clearly suppresses (on the assumption that Aristotle is right) a significant amount   Cf. McDowell (1988: 94).

13

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of the pretensions of contemporary normative ethical theory. Most startlingly, it entails that we moral philosophers, notwithstanding our claims to a grasp of what is reasonable or consistent or universalizable or objectively the case which is superior to that of the non-philosophical adults who taught us in our youth are, qua philosophers, no better equipped than they to give guidance on what we should do. And, most embarrassingly, it entails that we can claim to be better equipped only by claiming virtue. Who teaches us, or professes to teach us, how we should conduct ourselves? Well, parents and other adults who contribute to the upbringing and moral education of children, by training them to act in accordance with virtue (or not). And moral philosophers, who write and give “discourses.” (I take it that legislators impose codes of conduct rather than teach them.) But, according to Aristotle’s view of phronesis, the discourses of philosophers are useless to those who have not been well trained in childhood, because they will not listen to argument and would not understand it if they did (NE, 1179b16–17). Moreover, since it is only the phronimos, complete with his virtue, who has knowledge of how we should conduct ourselves, it is only the discourses of (fully) virtuous moral philosophers that could justifiably be claimed to teach those who are prepared to listen. If the generalists agree that there is no way to become excellent at knowing what to do without acquiring virtue, why should they continue to seek to formulate action-guiding principles? (Of course that is a big “if,” but I know of no generalist who has explicitly claimed that it is false. And no doubt there are some who do indeed think of themselves as wiser and more virtuous than most of the rest of us.) One possible generalist reply is that, although there is no short cut to phronesis, there may nevertheless be some ways that are shorter than others. The philosopher’s search for principles that are not just part of common moral knowledge leads, it may be said, to the invention or discovery of terms or concepts that make virtue easier to teach, and hence easier to acquire, providing action-guidance in that sense. An example might be the term “informed consent.” Prior to its coinage, the few (at least fairly) virtuous doctors who were making the correct decisions about how to engage with their patients before treatment – about the circumstances in which to discuss the treatment with their patients, and in which not to, and on what occasion, and in what way, and with how much giving of information and with what aim, and so on  – no doubt found it very difficult to pass this aspect of their phronesis on to

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medical students. Even a medical student who spent a year or so with such a doctor and aspired to act as she did might well not catch on to imitating what was at issue, since neither he, nor the doctor, would have the term to group the relevant instances together, distinguishing them from all the other things that the doctor was doing day by day. He might, for example, catch on to the gentle vagueness as to gruesome details present here, without noticing that here the gentleness related to soothing fears regarding a treatment already fully discussed – and go on to become untruthful. Or he might catch on to being genuinely informative but, missing the gentleness, go on to become a brutally honest bully. But the philosophers, abstracting from the instances in which the virtuous doctors made the correct decisions, worked out that what such doctors were doing was, where possible, seeking informed consent. The principle “Health practitioners should seek the informed consent of their patients to treatment” does not give medical students instant virtue, but it makes it much easier for them than hitherto to begin to habituate themselves in this area of virtuous activity. They can learn quite quickly – and moreover from lectures – a substantial part of what they have to see as salient in their engagement with a patient before treatment. Irwin (2000), I think, regards Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean in a somewhat similar light (115–18). Of course “We should hit the mean” is hardly an illuminating piece of action-guidance as it stands, but, by the time Aristotle has unpacked it into “the mean in actions and feelings,” given the general account of this as “to feel or act towards the right person to the right extent at the right time for the right reason in the right way,” placed it between excess and deficiency, and then run through its specific versions by discussing the individual virtues, he winds up by offering something quite substantial. As before, it does not give instant virtue to those who lack it. But, it might be said, it makes it much easier for the proto-virtuous to habituate themselves along the path of improvement rather than falling away from it. We can learn quite quickly – and moreover from a “discourse” – a substantial part of what we have to see as salient in our conduct and thereby learn to start looking out for it. “We should aim at hitting the mean,” we might say, once elaborated, gives the aspirant to virtuous action an instructively and formatively demanding checklist. (Action towards right person? Yes. Feeling towards right person [not necessarily the same one]? Not all of them – I do take an improper pleasure in outdoing so and so, and should work on that. To the right extent? Action – rather over the top. Feeling – covered already. Occasion? I did rush it a bit  – must curb my impulsiveness. Grounds?

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Motives, alas, mixed. Etc.) Philosophers with no interest in virtue ­ethics may well regard the consideration of such a checklist as beneath their contempt, but I would be surprised to hear from any of its adherents that they had not found illuminating Aristotle’s list of the many ways in which one can go wrong, and that they did not regard the list as one of their most powerful tools in making virtue ethics plausible to their students. These are two very specialized examples, and thereby hard to generalize from. Do they suggest that normative ethical theorists should still be seeking as yet unrecognized action-guiding ethical principles? Well, they certainly suggest that ethics is not an area in which we should say that our ordinary language and current knowledge is all right as it is. There may well be rules as yet unformulated that would enable us to train our children and indeed ourselves in virtue more easily than we do now. So it might well be worth seeking new terms that could be enshrined in new rules, or indeed new rules in our already available vocabulary. Of course, the purpose would be educative, rather than intended to find rules to resolve difficult cases, but none the worse for that. But would what we think of as normative ethical theorizing then be the obvious way to proceed? One might say that a more obvious method would be to look for currently untranslatable terms or unfamiliar rules in other cultures that were embedded in what seemed to us to be ethically good practice. If part of the drive to generalism is, as it is in O’Neill (1996b), the fear that our ordinary virtue and vice terms are too culturally specific and thereby parochial (67–68), then surely we should look for what other cultures could, specifically, teach us, not seek abstractions within the confines of our own. Another method might be to try to coin catchy new terms for bad practice – the grass-roots creation of “sexist” and “racist” made it much easier (for those of us who were willing) to recognize, and thereby try to avoid, the actions and reactions that fall under them.14 Another might be to look for easy-to-teach rules whose normative authority would be obvious to all but the shameless and wicked and which would make a substantial difference in a limited area. Would that a moral philosopher had come up with “Don’t drink and drive,” which quite transformed my generation. (Those who grew up with the rule find it hard to believe how recklessly self-indulgent, irresponsible, imprudent, and light-minded we were.) So there may indeed be important and as yet unrecognized – if somewhat unexpected  – rules for normative ethical theorists to seek. But 14

  I owe these two excellent examples to Chris Cuomo.

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Aristotelian anti-generalism, as characterized here, still carries a nasty sting, for it entails that, unless the theorists have phronesis and hence ­virtue themselves, their “shorter ways” may well make it harder, rather than easier, to acquire virtue. I believe myself that “informed consent” was a winner, but I also believe that the contemporary elevation of “person” (as a philosopher’s term that contrasts with “human being”) has already proved to be a short cut to vice rather than a shorter way to virtue.

Ch apter 3

Kant and agent-oriented ethics Allen Wood

It is often observed that “virtue ethics” is difficult to discuss because it consists less in an ethical theory in its own right than in a loose grab-bag of criticisms and complaints against other ethical theories (or even ethical theory as such). To some extent, however, this is no longer true now that some representatives of virtue ethics, such as Michael Slote and Rosalind Hursthouse, have begun to offer virtue ethics as a distinctive kind of ethical theory in its own right. The main thrust of these theories is to make judgments about agents (about their virtues and vices, often based on their motives) central or fundamental to ethical theory. This contrasts with theories that focus on judgments about the rightness or wrongness of actions (as deontic theories are supposed to do) or the goodness or badness of consequences (as with consequentialist theories). In this taxonomy (so simplistic that we should know already that it is bound to do more harm than good), Kant is conventionally regarded as a “deontic” ethical theorist. But it would require a considerable effort of will (and a rather malicious will at that) to see him as placing the rightness of actions at the center of theoretical attention. Nevertheless, this distortion often occurs in Anglophone philosophy because Kant tends to be lumped together with the rationalist-intuitionist school in British ethics, which is where people get their idea of what a deontological ethical theory must be like. That categorization may get Kant right on some points, such as his insistence on the intrinsic rightness of certain actions and the wrongness of others, irrespective of consequences (in contrast to utilitarianism), and his emphasis on reason as the foundation of morality (as opposed to sentiment, in the Scottish moral sense school). But it badly distorts much of Kant’s moral philosophy, including what is most relevant to issues about virtue and agent-orientedness. I am grateful to Julian Wuerth and Marcia Baron for helpful comments on a draft of this paper.

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If we read everything in Kant from the standpoint of the first few pages of the Groundwork (as all too many people do), then we might be tempted to treat the good will, and especially moral motivation (acting from duty), as the basic thing in Kantian ethics. An emphasis on the motivation of agents is often a distinctive feature of virtue ethics. Or if we have the patience to venture a little farther into the Groundwork, we might then become fixated (as many also are) with applying the Formula of Universal Law and then become morbidly obsessed with the four famous examples illustrating its variant, the Formula of the Law of Nature – and whether their universalizability tests give the “right” result when applied to various maxims cleverly devised as counterexamples. In that case, the focus of Kantian ethical theory might seem to be not on individual actions but on maxims. Maxims might be regarded as enduring characteristics of the agents, making Kant look something like a virtue theorist. On the other hand, suppose we take into account (as I would favor doing) the fact that the Groundwork, and even the Critique of Practical Reason, are foundational works in ethics rather than statements of Kantian ethical theory proper. Then we might look beyond these works to the Metaphysics of Morals to tell us what Kant thinks an ethical theory would be like. In that case, we would find that the basic ethical concepts are duties (narrow and wide, perfect and imperfect, duties of respect and duties of love), ends (obligatory ends, our own perfection, and the happiness of others), and perhaps above all virtue, conceived of course in the Kantian way, as moral strength of character, the strength of good maxims to secure compliance with duty in the face of recalcitrant inclinations. Kant even allows for a plurality of virtues, corresponding to the plurality of ends and maxims of duty. This shows there are various ways of dressing Kant up to look like a fan of virtue ethics, if we want to do so. And given the points to which I have just been drawing attention, I am not at all sure that garb would fit him any worse than it does Aristotle, the great philosopher whom the proponents of virtue ethics profess to admire most. Of course it is not easy to say how far any of these points actually gives Kant’s ethical theory the kind of agent-orientedness that the proponents of virtue ethics say they favor. (They may not be such good Aristotelians themselves as they think they are.) If, as I mean to argue, Kantian ethics is actually not compatible with any form of what is now called “virtue ethics,” then in my view that is because Kant understood perfectly well the possible appeal of such approaches and rejected them for sound reasons. But now I am getting

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ahead of myself. So let’s back up a little and look some more at the possible points of continuity between Kant and virtue ethics. Marcia Baron has suggested that Kant’s praise for good will as the only thing good without limitation amounts to making a kind of moral agent the central notion in his ethics.1 I doubt this, for two distinct reasons. First, I doubt that Kant’s thesis of the unlimited goodness of the good will has the central place in his ethical thought that people have conventionally thought it has. (I have argued this point elsewhere and won’t repeat those arguments here.)2 Second, and more directly to the point, I doubt that “the good will” does properly indicate a kind of person, or even a characteristic of a person, in the sense usually meant in discussions of virtue ethics and agent-orientedness. Volition for Kant is the exercise of practical reason in adopting principles and deriving actions from them (G, 4:412).3 A good will is volition on good maxims. So it is, in the parlance of virtue ethics, a kind of moral doing rather than a kind of ethical being.4 A principle or maxim may be acted on by an agent only once, perhaps in an action entirely out of character for the agent, so the fact that an agent displays a good will, in this respect, on this occasion, tells us nothing about the enduring character of the agent. The good will, in short, is an abstraction from acts and even aspects of volition; it is not an enduring property or character trait of any human being. Even the most vicious people sometimes act on the right principles, and then their volition is just as good (“good without limitation”) as the virtuous person’s (no doubt more frequent) volition conforming to moral laws. Kant himself indicates that goodness of will sometimes coexists with a lack of virtue, as in a person who is childish and weak, and sincerely adopts good principles, but does not have the strength of character to act on them (MM, 6:408). So good will is not at all the same thing as virtue, even if the principles of the good will are presupposed by virtue. For similar reasons, I do not think that what Kant calls the good “disposition” (Gesinnung) of an agent amounts to agent-orientation in the sense that interests virtue ethics. Kant describes an agent’s “disposition” as “the inner” (or “subjective”) “principle of maxims” (REL, 6:23, 37), Baron, Pettit, and Slote (1997: 39–40). Wood (2003). See also Wood (2008: 31–33). 3 For abbreviations of Kant’s works and a list of translations of these works as used in this and other essays in this volume, see Abbreviations at the start of this volume. 4 This formulation would suggest the affinity between virtue ethics and Hegel, which some proponents of virtue ethics have also urged. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss how much Hegel has in common with virtue ethics, but see Wood (1990: 214–16). 1

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which I take to refer, like the good will, not to abiding characteristics of an agent but to the principles or maxims on which the agent acts, or more specifically, to the incentive on which an agent may act upon a maxim on a given occasion – which might be something momentary, and might, like goodness of will, be either entirely characteristic or totally uncharacteristic of that agent (cf. CPrR, 5:116, 128). Kant explicitly distinguishes the moral disposition from virtue (MoC, 27:300). A disposition for Kant can be virtuous or the contrary (CPrR, 5:84), but that is only because virtue presupposes a certain kind of volition or disposition, not because a volition or disposition is to be identified with virtue. Conversely, virtue can be regarded as “a firmly grounded disposition to fulfill duty precisely” (REL, 6:23), but that makes virtue an enduring property of an agent which manifests itself in actions having a certain disposition.5 In short, a “disposition” for Kant is not what philosophers now call a “dispositional property” (such as an enduring tendency, belonging to a person’s character, to feel or will or act in determinate ways). It is rather a feature of the principle (the maxim) on which an agent is acting (or of the agent’s incentive in acting on it), even when the agent is acting this way only momentarily and highly uncharacteristically. No doubt, as we will see presently, volition, goodness of will, maxims, and the moral disposition all play their roles in Kant’s conception of the morally relevant characteristics of an agent; but none of them is, all by itself, the sort of characteristic that virtue ethics is usually interested in. I also think the stress Kant puts on moral motivation is different from that placed on it by the kind of virtue ethics that takes motivation to be fundamental to virtue. I   “Ag e n t-b a s e d” e t h ic s One project that is worth comparing with Kant here is that of an “agentbased” ethical theory, as suggested by Michael Slote (1997), but found historically in its pure form (as Slote argues) only in the nineteenthcentury British philosopher James Martineau (who is probably best Kant does distinguish the abiding maxim of the conformity of actions to the law (virtus phaenomenon), which can be acquired little by little over time, from the virtue of the intelligible character (virtus noumenon), which involves the right incentive, and appears to be the same as, or very close to, what he means by a “moral disposition” (REL, 6:47). His point in that passage is to emphasize the importance of the need for a fundamental revolution in an agent’s way of thinking in combating the propensity to radical evil, and also to emphasize that mere external changes in habitual behavior are not enough. I do not think this discussion, despite his use of the word virtus in the course of it, is really about the same topic as Kant’s discussion of virtue as moral strength.

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known through Sidgwick’s criticisms of him in Book iii, Chapter xii of the Methods of Ethics).6 According to Slote, “An agent-based approach to virtue ethics treats the moral or ethical status of acts as entirely derivative from independent and fundamental aretaic (as opposed to deontic) ethical characterizations of motives, character traits or individuals” (1997: 239). Agent-based theory as motive-based theory The suggestion that the moral rightness of acts is to be derived entirely from the virtuousness of agents naturally reminds us of J.S. Mill’s remark that “no known ethical standard decides an action to be good or bad because it is done by a good or bad man, still less because done by an amiable, a brave, or a benevolent man, or the contrary.”7 A natural way of taking Mill’s remark would explain why no ethical standard could reasonably decide things as he describes. It is this. Suppose we regard a certain famous man as a person of great courage, moral wisdom, and benevolence, one of the great moral heroes of the age in which we have lived. But then we find out that he also plagiarized some of his academic work and was repeatedly unfaithful to his wife. We may still rightly think that he was about as virtuous as human beings ever get, but our perseverance in this judgment should not lead us to conclude that his acts of plagiarism and adultery were morally right. So let’s hope this erroneous judgment is not what an “agent-based” theory is committed to say about them. Slote’s reply to this kind of objection indicates that what he means by “agent-based” ethics might sooner be called “trait-based” or “motivebased.” For the reply is that an agent can be generally virtuous while performing some morally bad actions, but then in those actions the agent will not have exhibited virtuous traits or virtuous motivation. Slote, like some other modern representatives of virtue ethics (such as Hutcheson, Hume, and Martineau), lays particular stress on motivation:  “Actions will count as wrong or contrary to obligation only if they exhibit bad or ­deficient motivation” (1997: 244). Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (1907:  366–72). Martineau’s chief work was Types of Ethical Theory (1885). Slote distinguishes an “agent-based” theory from less extreme versions of virtue ethics, such as an “agent-focused” theory (which he associates with Aristotle), which places greater emphasis on the evaluation of agents than of actions, but allows for judgments of the latter kind that are independent of aretaic judgments about agents (1997: 239–40), and also from an “agent-prior” theory (which he associates with Hursthouse) (Baron, Pettit, and Slote 1997: 202–08), which values the traits and other characteristics of agents as the main elements of a life of human well-being or flourishing. The term “agent-oriented” in the title of this chapter is designed not to trespass on any of Slote’s more fastidious terminology. 7 Utilitarianism (Mill 2001: 20). 6

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This remark clearly separates Kant’s views early in the Groundwork from the “agent-based” view Slote has in mind. For Kant’s discussion is based on a distinction between acts that are in conformity with duty (pflichtmäßig) and acts that are also done from duty (aus Pflicht). The former are often “beautiful and amiable,” deserving of “praise and encouragement, though not esteem” (G, 4:398). In that discussion, of course, Kant never considers any actions done from bad motives. (For Kant there is nothing morally bad about motives such as sympathy, self-love, self-preservation, or keeping a good reputation.) The worst that Kant ever says about these motives is that they do not represent a morally pure disposition, and they produce actions in conformity to duty only “contingently and precariously” (G, 4:390). Kant’s aim in that discussion is not to distinguish good motives from bad motives, but rather to identify the motives that give an act authentic or truly moral worth, and distinguish them from other motives that may often lead to actions in conformity with duty and be deserving of praise and encouragement, but are not essentially moral and do not give the act properly moral content.8 The point is that for him an act can possess conformity to duty (which is the nearest Kantian way of expressing the Anglophone moral philosopher’s notion of a “right action”), whether or not its motive is a purely or authentically moral one. Unlike the “agent-based” theorist, Kant does not derive an act’s conformity to duty from our moral evaluation of the motive from which it was done. He also shows no sign of thinking that conformity to duty could be derived from an examination even of the entire range of possible motives from which an action conforming to duty might be done. His criterion would rather be whether the maxim of the action conforms to universal moral laws or treats rational nature as an end in itself. One obvious objection to grounding the moral rightness or wrongness of acts on their motives is that it seems not to allow for any distinction between doing the right act and doing it for the right reasons (or with the right motives). Slote considers this objection in connection with Sidgwick’s example of the prosecutor who prosecutes someone (as is his duty), but from malice (Sidgwick 1981: 202). Slote’s response to this That acting “from duty” may involve a plurality of different motives becomes clear in the Metaphysics of Morals, where Kant distinguishes four different feelings that arise directly from moral reason, represent a pure moral disposition, and without which we could not be put under obligation at all (MM, 6:399–402). But acting “from duty” in that discussion does not refer to acting from any determinate motive or motives as acting with moral self-constraint (which, however, can be done only from certain motives, such as respect for the law, love of human beings, moral feeling, or conscience). On this, see Wood (2008).

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example is that we should consider what motives might have led him not to prosecute, and alleges that these would necessarily be bad or at least deficient, allowing agent-based virtue ethics to have “something like” the distinction between doing the right act and doing it for the right reasons (1997: 242).9 The most obvious problem with this is simply that what we need in moral philosophy is not “something like” the distinction between doing the right thing and doing it for the right reasons, but rather that very distinction itself. But the deeper objection is that it looks as if Slote himself needs that very distinction too, yet without being able to make it and without even acknowledging that he needs it. More is surely required to show that the ethical status of acts has been “entirely derived from the independent and fundamental characterizations of motives” than being able to say something negative about the agent’s motivation whenever he does the wrong thing. You also need to say the right negative thing. In the case of the prosecutor who chooses not to prosecute, it seems that we need to ask such things as whether he is insufficiently motivated to do his duty, and whether he is being swayed excessively by an otherwise good motive (such as a decent sympathy for the accused man). To answer these questions, we need first to decide whether his motives have led him to fail to act as he should have. If he acts badly, there is likely to be room for reproach aimed at his motivation, but our evaluation of his motives (as inappropriate or excessive) seems to depend on the evaluation of his actions – not the reverse. Does agent-based theory presuppose judgments of rightness for which it cannot account? Further worries of the same kind arise in connection with some of the traits on which Slote wants to ground the ethical status of acts, such as “strength of purpose” in “following one’s own better judgment.” For just as belief inherently aims at truth, so moral judgment aims at what is right to do, or (to put it in Aristotelian terms) at what is “fine” or “in conformity to right reason.” It may be that sometimes (though surely not always) the most we can say about the right action under these circumstances Slote (1997) rightly points out that a prosecutor who has malicious feelings toward a particular defendant should probably recuse himself and let someone else prosecute (241n4). It is not clear how his agent-based theory can explain this judgment, though. The natural explanation is that a person known to have malicious motives regarding the defendant might be in danger of excessive or improper conduct in the course of the prosecution, and he should therefore recuse himself in order to avoid even the appearance that there might be such improprieties. Slote’s only comment here is that the prosecutor who recused himself could not then be accused of exhibiting either malice or insufficient concern for the public good. But this is not the right explanation for why he should recuse himself, and I do not see how that explanation can be derived solely from a consideration of the prosecutor’s various motives and their admirable, blamable, or deficient qualities.

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is that it is action that the person of phronesis or good judgment would choose. When people choose acts because they are like those that a certain person (or a certain kind of person) would have performed, this seems appropriate mainly where they are trying to imitate or live up to the example of a particular real person they admire. Yet a more basic reason for doing something, which surely cannot be reduced out of our conceptual repertoire, is that it is the right or the fine thing to do, and it makes more sense to decide that a certain person is to be imitated because they usually do the right thing than to decide it is the right thing because they do it. Slote concedes that Aristotle thinks the person of good judgment or phronesis will choose the actions they do because those actions are fine or in conformity with right reason. In other words, for Aristotle many decisions made by the most virtuous agents obviously do not conform to the account of right action given by an agent-based ethical theory. Slote denies, however, that an agent-based theory must “inevitably treat human actions as subject to no moral standards or requirements. Rather, [he says] those requirements and standards operate, and bind, as it were, from within” (1997:  244). An agent-based theory, Slote claims, “allows one to consider reasons for action that include the very facts that help make an act noble or admirable or right.” “For … a benevolent person can consider whether one of his actions would be benevolently motivated, as a means to determining whether that action would be permissible or should be performed. So given agent-based morality … the virtuous agent can refer to what makes an action right as a means of deciding whether to perform it” (Baron, Pettit, and Slote 1997: 272–73). “Thus even if universal benevolence is a ground-floor moral value, someone who acts from such a motive must be open to, seek contact with, and be influenced by the world around her – her decisions will not be made in splendid causal/ epistemic isolation from what most of us take to be the morally relevant realities” (Slote 1997: 245). I find these remarks perplexing, because I do not see how they are consistent with an “agent-based” theory. What “binds an agent from within” (from the agent’s point of view) is surely not a self-congratulatory depiction of her own motives or character traits, it is rather the reasons she has to consider the action in question to be right. If a virtuous agent needs to consider what makes an action right as a means to deciding whether it would be virtuous or benevolently motivated, then this seems already to preclude the possibility that these aretaic characterizations of acts are “independent and fundamental” in relation to the non-aretaic properties that make the agent consider them right.

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Perhaps Slote here intends a distinction between what the virtuous agent regards as independent or fundamental and what the moral theorist does. Perhaps virtuous agents do not think like agent-based theorists, but agentbased theory is nevertheless supposed to give us the right account of what makes their actions right. Yet moral theories should be first and foremost theories for agents. And there is no moral theorist who is not also a moral agent, so even if we suppose moral theories are more for anthropologists or psychologists than for agents, they would still have to work for agents too. Further, every theorist who values thinking coherently would have to think the same way in both roles. So I see no plausibility in a moral theory that takes as having independent and fundamental value something that, by the theory’s own lights, agents should not take as having independent and fundamental value.10 An ethical theory should provide some account of moral judgments about a variety of different things: the moral qualities of agents, the rightness of actions, kinds of action, maxims or policies of action, and the moral value of states of affairs, especially the consequences of actions. There are good reasons (which Kant would bring under the heading of that “architectonic unity” that reason seeks in all matters) to bring these judgments as far as possible under a single principle and a single basic value  – as Hursthouse’s “agent-prior” virtue theory does with human flourishing, or as utilitarianism does with the general happiness. The basic value in Kantian theory is the dignity of rational nature, both as an end in itself and giving universal laws. Kantian theory bases judgments about acts, maxims, ends, and everything else on this fundamental value. But there seems no good reason at all, as far as I can see, why all these judgments should be reduced to a single kind of judgment – for example, judgments about the moral qualities (especially the motivation) of agents, as Slote’s “agent-based” theory tries to do. The constraint on ethical theory that it should reduce all judgments to judgments about a single kind of thing – acts, consequences, motives, or agents – seems unmotivated. 10

I realize that this may also commit me to accuse certain consequentialist theories of a similar incoherence. I am fully prepared to do that. Theories about plate tectonics need not be addressed to those geological formations, and even theories about how bats maneuver by echo-location might not have to take into account the point of view of bats. But theories about how people think and act, if they are created by people, if they are to meet the minimal standards of coherent thought, need to be integrated into the way the people who create them think about their thinking and acting in the course of that thinking and acting. Ethical theory is the very last kind of theory in which this demanding standard of coherence could be permissibly relaxed in any degree whatsoever.

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I have a notion about how Slote got into this fix that I’d like to try out on you. Once upon a time, there was a genuine ethical theory – utilitarianism – in which the basic values happened to consist in certain states of affairs – pleasure and pain – that we could regard as consequences of actions. After a while, however, people began to realize that this theory of value was incredibly simplistic, unappealing, even downright false. But what these utilitarian philosophers had fallen in love with was not the hedonistic substance of the doctrine but the mere formalism of its calculations. So they thought nothing would be lost by abandoning hedonism and simply focusing on the value of consequences (without worrying too much right away about what it is that makes consequences valuable). It looks to me as though Slote is determined to go through the same formalistic process, substituting agents (or their traits or motives) for the utilitarian’s consequences, and making the evaluation of agents the basis of everything in ethical theory, in the way that some consequentialists try to base everything on abstractly assigned evaluations of future outcomes of actions. Like them, Slote provides no determinate principle of value that tells us which traits and motives are to be valued. His “agentbased” theory merely gives a formal priority to traits and motives analogous to the formal priority that these abstract consequentialists give to consequences. Frankly, I don’t see any appeal at all in the merely formal exercise in either case. The important thing, it seems to me, is a substantive conception of some basic value – whether it is pleasure and the absence of pain, rational nature as end in itself, or human flourishing as an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue. This value might then provide a standard for determining the worth of various kinds of things – actions, consequences, maxims or policies of action, character traits, and so on. But to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, for this kind of ethical theory, in matters of great importance, it seems that style, not substance, is the vital thing. “Agent-focused” ethics If we decline the extreme option of an “agent-based” theory, then as regards the place of the moral qualities of agents within moral philosophy we are left with the weaker notion that Slote calls “agent-focused” (and identifies with Aristotle), which gives more or less prominence within ethical theory to the virtues or other moral qualities that agents possess. Clearly “agentfocusedness” is a matter of degree (as “agent-basedness” is not). J.S. Mill admits, for example, that many utilitarians do not give the moral qualities

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of agents as much emphasis as they should, and he wants to be seen as correcting that deficiency within the theory.11 Whether Kantians should make a like admission, and attempt a like correction, is open to debate, but nothing fatal to Kantian theory would hang on the outcome (just as Mill obviously thinks that the failure of utilitarians to care as much as they should about the qualities of agents is no real defect in utilitarianism). No doubt Aristotle’s ethical theory, at least on the surface, is much more “agent-focused” than Kant’s. If the complaints against Kant by representatives of neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics consist in the claim that he says too little about the moral qualities of agents, then that is a charge a Kantian should take seriously. In the rest of this chapter, I will be looking at the ways in which Kant’s theory is agent-focused, and also at why it is not more agent-focused than it is. I I  K a n t a n d t h e mor a l qua l i t i e s of ag e n t s Some of the complaints against Kant made by virtue theorists seem to depend on prevalent misunderstandings of his theory – reading it too much in light of Anglophone interpretations that liken it to British intuitionism, or overemphasizing the place of casuistical quibbling about which maxims are universalizable and which are not – as if they thought the term “Kantian ethics” denotes only the attempt to determine which acts are “right” based on some so-called “CI-procedure.” When we consider complaints not based on such hopeless errors as that, what is left is not the charge that Kant underemphasizes the moral qualities of agents (such as virtue), but rather the objection that he does not think about the moral qualities of agents (especially about the virtues) in the way that “we” do  – that is, the way Aristotle is supposed to have, or the way virtue theorists think we should. We can better understand and assess that objection by looking at the way Kant really does think about the moral qualities of agents, and at some of his reasons for thinking about them in the way he does. As I see it, Kant treats the moral qualities of agents under three basic headings:  (1) virtue, (2) practical judgment, and (3) wisdom. No doubt some will be surprised at the absence from this list of the good will or the moral disposition. Or at least they would have been surprised if I had not already explained why I do not consider the good will or the moral disposition as moral qualities of agents. It may help to add that the good will and the moral disposition are absent from the Kantian list of agents’   Utilitarianism (Mill 2001: 21).

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moral qualities not because they are irrelevant to these qualities but rather because they pervade the list, as necessary presuppositions (in one way or another) of each of the items on it, even if they do not belong on the list themselves. This fact points to one notable way in which Kant’s conception of moral qualities differs from that of a lot of virtue ethics. For virtue theory often includes in its conception of the virtues or good human qualities some that do not involve goodness of will, and, as Hume observed, some that may not be voluntary at all.12 Kant conspicuously flaunts his defiance of the tradition early in the Groundwork by saying of courage, moderation, and self-control that they are good at all only when put in the service of a good will, and become positively bad whenever they keep company with a bad will (G, 4:393–94). But the centrality of volition in Kant’s views about the moral qualities of agents should also not lead us to exaggerate his differences with virtue ethics. For as we shall presently see, Kant too allows for non-voluntary factors in the morally good qualities of agents. Virtue Virtue as moral strength In Kant, as in Aristotle, “virtue” (Tugend) is by far the most complex moral quality of an agent that he discusses, and any serviceable treatment of it will require some investigation of the details not only of Kant’s moral psychology but also his larger empirical theory of human nature. Kant defines “virtue” as “moral strength of will,” or “the moral strength of a human being’s will in fulfilling his duty, a moral constraint through his own lawgiving reason insofar as this constitutes itself an authority executing the law” (MM, 6:405). He also describes it as “the moral disposition in the struggle [im Kampfe]” (CPrR, 5:84). Virtue in this sense is “a naturally acquired faculty of a non-holy will” (CPrR, 5:33). It is not a duty to have virtue at all, since only by having some degree of virtue is it possible to be placed under the self-constraint of duty at all (MM, 6:405). But of course greater virtue is a perfection of our will, so we have a wide or meritorious duty to strive to improve ourselves in that respect, as well as in others (MM, 6:446). There is no strict or narrow duty, however, to attain any specific degree of virtue, much less any such duty to be as virtuous as we can possibly be. A Treatise of Human Nature (Hume 1967: 608–14); An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Hume 1975: 261–67).

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In its idea (or pure concept), he says, virtue is one, because the principle of duty is one (MM, 6:447). Yet because we are morally imperfect beings, the strength of our will with respect to different morally prescribed ends may differ (MM, 6:395). The strength of our commitment to one end may be greater than to another, or the strength of our promotion of one person’s happiness may be greater than the strength of our promotion of another’s. So there can be many virtues. Virtues may be discriminated as finely as ends, and also discriminated regarding other qualities that may contribute to moral strength of will (MM, 6:447). Kant provides no list of “the virtues” (like the eight in Confucian ethics, the four – or five – in Greek ethics, or the three – or seven  – in Christian ethics).13 This is because he thinks the virtues a person needs differ with their ends and plans of life, which vary too much from person to person to make any generalized list pertinent to all of us. This is tied to the fact that Kant sees his ethical theory historically, as a modern rather than an ancient one – a topic we will explore toward the end of this chapter. Virtue is strength. Strength is measured by its capacity to overcome resistance. So a person is more virtuous the greater the inner strength of their will in resisting temptations to transgress duties. Moral strength, Kant says, is an “aptitude” (Fertigkeit, habitus), and a subjective perfection of the power of choice (Willkür, arbitrium) (MM, 6:407). But if virtue is a habit, as Aristotle says (NE, Bk. II, Chs. i–iii, 1103a15–1105a17),14 then Kant insists that it is a “free habit,” not merely “a uniformity of action that has become a necessity through repetition” (MM, 6:407). It would involve a serious misreading of Aristotle to think there is any disagreement between the two philosophers on this point, since for both philosophers virtue is exhibited in rational actions done because they are valued for their own sake. For Kant virtues also involve the setting and pursuing of ends. Promoting an end involves desire for it, and desire is the representation of an object accompanied by a feeling of pleasure (or in the case of aversion, displeasure). Therefore, Kant also agrees with Aristotle that virtue involves desire for the right things, and also pleasure and pain (NE, 1104b3–1105a17). Related to this is Kant’s insistence  – in reply to An inspection of the Metaphysics of Morals shows that he is much more interested in listing determinate “vices”  – such as arrogance, defamation, ridicule, envy, ingratitude, gloating (Schadenfreude), and hatred. But these are not so much traits of character as patterns of volition common among human beings that are opposed to duty. 14 For abbreviations of Aristotle’s works, see Abbreviations at the start of this volume. This essay uses the translation of the Nicomachean Ethics by Terence Irwin (see Bibliography). 13

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Schiller  – that the typical temperament of virtue is joyous, not fearful, dejected and ascetical (“Carthusian”) (REL, 6:23–24). This is why Kant regularly praises Epicurus for holding that a cheerful heart is a mark of virtue (REL, 6:60; CPrR, 5:111–13, 116; MM, 6:485; MoC, 27:249–50, 483; MoMr, 29:603). Virtue and rational desire Alasdair MacIntyre writes: “To act virtuously is not, as Kant [held], to act against inclination; it is to act from inclination formed by cultivation of the virtues.”15 It is correct to say that for Kant virtue is a strength to act against inclinations (against habitual empirical desires), when these oppose duty. But it would be quite false to say that virtue for Kant never involves acting from inclination. For some inclinations increase our capacity to fulfill our duty, and therefore belong to virtue, or at least assist it. This is the reason why Kant thinks we have a duty to cultivate certain inclinations, such as love and sympathy, insofar as these assist us in the fulfillment of duty (MM, 6:456–57; EOAT, 8:337–38). For Kant, however (again, as for Aristotle), the principal desires from which we act in being virtuous are rational desires (not inclinations, which are not desires arising from rational principles but empirical desires arising from sensuous impulses). The principal incentives to duty for Kant are not inclinations but the array of feelings that arise directly from reason – moral feeling, conscience, love of human beings, and respect (MM, 6:399–402). Virtuous action, even when it opposes inclination, is something we desire to do – even something we must desire to do for its own sake. On this point too Kant and Aristotle once again entirely agree. I do not think that Aristotle would agree with MacIntyre’s characterization of virtue as action “from inclination,” if that means (what it must mean, if “inclination” is used in Kant’s sense) that virtue consists simply in having one’s empirical desires so happily constituted that they always contingently incline you to do the right thing. Kant would say that piece of good fortune does not make you virtuous; it only makes virtue less necessary for you in the performance of your duty. On the other hand, perhaps by “inclination formed by cultivation of the virtues” MacIntyre means rational desires arising from your possession of those virtues that give you the strength to do the right thing (even against contrary inclinations). In that case, his account is faithful to Aristotle after all, but he is quite mistaken in thinking there is anything in it that Kant would disagree with.   MacIntyre (1984a: 149).

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Virtue and temperament or “the way of sensing” We have seen that for Kant if virtue is a habit, then it is a “ free habit,” and not merely an automatic pattern of learned behavior. Kant distinguishes sharply between what we are owing to nature (or external influences) and what we are as a result of our own freedom – in his terminology, between our “temperament,” or “natural constitution” (Naturell), and our “character.” He sometimes draws the same distinction by differentiating between our “way of thinking” (Denkungsart) and our “way of sensing” (Sinnesart) (A, 7:285). Clearly Kant wants to think of virtue as chiefly a matter of character (or Denkungsart), not of temperament (natural constitution or Sinnesart).16 Yet it is one thing to say there is a fundamental difference in principle between what is due to nature (or circumstances) and what is due to our own freedom, and quite another to hold that these two factors can be easily told apart in our experience of human action, or even that they are sharply separated (or even separable) in our psychology. We badly misunderstand Kant if we think he holds the latter kind of view (though such invidious caricatures of Kant are sadly common). This point has important implications for his conception of moral virtue, since it means that virtue can include factors of temperament or Sinnesart even if it is primarily a matter of character or Denkungsart. It is clear from many things Kant says that he thinks what belongs to our sensible nature is too much intertwined with the exercise of our freedom for us clearly to tell them apart in practice. For this reason, he allows that it contributes to virtue when we cultivate the right inclinations – by, for instance, doing good to others, which makes us come to love them (MM, 6:402). Further, we are also to some extent responsible for our inclinations, because an “inclination” refers not to just any desire, but only to “habitual sensible desire” (A, 7:251). This means that to the extent that our inclinations are the result of habits formed by voluntary actions, we are responsible for them. In particular, we are responsible for our “passions” because passions involve the adoption of maxims, which is an act of free choice (A, 7:266). A passion is an inclination that excludes the dominion of reason, because it prevents reason from comparing it with the totality of our inclinations (A, 7:251, 265). Passions are therefore frequently opposed not only to moral reason but also to prudential reason. We are responsible for our passions despite the fact that passions are also the direct result of our social relations with other human beings, without which we would 16

  This distinction is one of the primary focuses in Münzel (1999).

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have no passions (REL, 6:93–94). Kant’s view is that our character, for good or ill, is influenced decisively in certain ways both by our natural constitution and by the society in which we are entangled, but it is nevertheless a quality of our will, for which we are therefore to blame if it is bad. This means that the propensity to evil in human nature, which is responsible for the passions, is to be regarded as our own work and our responsibility, but is at the same time to be thought of as a product of our natural-social predicament, and it is manifested in our inclinations. Thus despite the sharp distinction Kant draws between the voluntary and the involuntary, between the “way of thinking” and the “way of sensing,” it is quite impossible to disentangle them in practice due to the way they interact in us. Virtue involves not only the avoidance of passions but also the control of what Kant calls “affects.” An affect is a sudden access of feeling, as of fear, anger, or joy, that takes away our capacity to govern ourselves rationally. It is this absence of uncontrollable affects (and not the absence of feeling generally  – which for sensible beings like ourselves would be not merely repugnant but even impossible) that Kant means by “moral apathy” (MM, 6:408–09). Some natural constitutions, he says, are favorable to the formation of strong character, and others are not (A, 7:293). Some temperaments are more disposed to affects or to quick emotional reactions than others. Drawing on, but significantly modifying, the traditional theory of the four humors, Kant identifies the quickly reactive with the “sanguine” and “choleric” temperaments, and the more slowly reactive with the “melancholic” and “phlegmatic” temperaments (A, 7:287–90).17 The latter temperaments, though Kant regards them as belonging entirely to the “way of sensing” and not to the “way of thinking,” are clearly more disposed to the kind of “apathy” that pertains to virtue. Kant also recognizes that our degree of susceptibility to affects depends on the condition of our body. He acknowledges that diet and medication can be quite effective in controlling affects (AF, 25:599–612; Me, 25:1155; ABu, 25:1527; 17

A “sanguine” person, as Kant uses the term, is not more disposed to pleasant feelings than a melancholic person, but only disposed to more sudden and violent feelings, whether of pleasure or displeasure. A choleric person is more disposed to quick reactions, and a phlegmatic person to slower ones, whatever form the reactions may take. Thus a sanguine person might be disposed to sudden feelings of anger or grief as much as feelings of joy, and a choleric person is disposed to react more quickly, not only indignantly (as to insults) but also cheerfully (as to compliments). Kant also gives no credit whatever to the traditional idea that these temperaments are associated with four distinct bodily fluids. Clearly he is taking over the traditional theory of the four humors only terminologically, while devising a new theory of temperament that is quite alien to it.

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PMB, 15:946). Such remedies, therefore, must be seen as contributing (at least indirectly) to moral virtue.18 It is not easy to say in general when, according to Kant’s account, some empirical desire or other feature of our “way of sensing” would count as part of virtue, and when only as part of a fortunate state of our temperament or way of sensing that makes the exercise of virtue less necessary. This would turn, I suppose, on whether that “way of sensing” belongs to the same quality of the agent that we count as the agent’s volitional strength, or instead contingently accompanies it as a fortunate factor that makes the performance of duty easier (and virtue, therefore, less necessary). Kant seems uninterested in settling the issue, perhaps because he thinks that in practice, because of the opacity of human psychology, it will be difficult or impossible to draw such a distinction, however important theoretically it may be to draw it. Virtue and acting from duty Kant holds that we have a duty to strive to make the motive of duty a sufficient incentive in all our actions, and that only those actions done from duty have genuine or authentic moral worth (MM, 6:393; G, 4:397–99). From this some might infer that for him virtuous action requires the motive of duty alone, and that no action motivated by inclination could be virtuous. This inference, however, would not only be invalid, but also represent a very serious (if sadly common) misunderstanding of Kantian ethics. Acting solely from moral motives constitutes purity of disposition (CPrR, 5:116, 128), and a pure disposition displays virtue (CPrR, 5:114, 116; REL, 6:23). But, clearly, we can sometimes act virtuously (with the moral strength to do our duty) even when we do not have a pure disposition. Further, there is nothing blameworthy in acting without a pure disposition as long as our actions conform to duty. We also have a duty to strive to make the motive of duty alone sufficient (but no duty whatever to exclude other motives we might have for doing our duty) (MM, 6:393). However, this is only a wide or imperfect duty. It is meritorious to come closer to making the motive of duty sufficient, but not blameworthy if it is not sufficient. Accordingly, we are not in the least to blame if we Kant held some crotchety views about the influence of diet and medicaments on health, both physical and mental. But it would be a serious mistake to exaggerate the thought that he regards bodily remedies as determining our moral constitution. For, on the contrary, he also held crotchety views about the ways that voluntary resolve can influence bodily health, for instance, about how the pain of gout can be diminished by directing attention away from it, and how breathing with closed lips can diminish thirst (PMB, 15:939–43; CF, 7:97–116).

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require incentives other than duty in order to do our duty, so long as we in fact do it.19 Kant distinguishes the “properly moral worth” of acting from duty from empirical incentives to do our duty. He does this not in order to assert that the latter performance of duty is devoid of worth, but only to distinguish what is central to morality from what is comparatively peripheral (though still clearly possessing positive value from the moral standpoint). Virtue, as the strength of our will in fulfilling duty, can also include (as part of what gives good maxims their strength) these incentives of inclination: “Virtue has the abiding maxim of lawful actions, no matter whence one draws the incentives that the power of choice needs for such actions” (REL, 6:47). In this respect, Kantian ethics contrasts sharply with that of the (Humean) school of virtue ethics  – and a fortiori with Martineau’s or Slote’s even more extreme version of it – that makes the rightness of an action consist entirely in its being done from the right motive. Kant’s emphasis on acting with the right motive should not blind us to the fact that motivation is much less central to his conception of morally right action than it is to the conceptions of this held by many virtue theorists. Virtue and continence It might still be thought that Kant’s conception of virtue identifies virtue not with what Aristotle would call “virtue” (arētē), but rather with what he would call “continence” (enkrateia)  – the capacity of a person with base desires to resist them and act according to right reason in spite of them (NE, Bk. vii, Ch. ix, 1151a30–1152a7). This thought, however, is seriously mistaken. Continence for Aristotle is one kind of strength to resist bad desires, but so is virtue, and virtue is stronger (NE, 1146a5). Thus Aristotelian continence could be at most one species of Kantian virtue – an inferior species of it.20 Aristotelian virtue, moreover – for instance, temperance – makes the agent enjoy abstaining from what is bad, whereas the These points were made long ago by Paul Dietrichson (1967). It is a sad commentary on the way Kant is commonly misunderstood that they still have to be made today. 20 This point is made by Stephen Engstrom (1996: 125–26). There may be an element of truth, however, in the thought that Kantian virtue is like Aristotelian continence in this respect if it is correctly interpreted. Kant does not have a very high opinion of the virtue of actual human beings, sometimes wondering whether true virtue is ever found anywhere in the world (G, 4:407). The view might be attributed to Kant that the best most of us can do in being virtuous is to achieve the weaker versions of virtue. But of course that does not mean that he would count the stronger versions, which Aristotle would call “virtue,” as something other than virtue. And it is in any case misleading to identify Kantian virtue with continence for the other reason I am about to give in the text. 19

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person without virtue who abstains (presumably including the continent person) is grieved by it (NE, 1104b7–9).21 On this point Kantian virtue is again more like Aristotelian virtue than Aristotelian continence, since Kant insists that the “aesthetic constitution, the temperament, as it were, of virtue” is “courageous and hence joyous” (REL, 6:24n). In short, to identify Kantian virtue with Aristotelian continence involves a significant underestimation (by Kant’s own standards) of what Kant thinks a virtuous agent is like. In that sense, this reading simply offers us a malicious caricature of what Kant thinks virtue is.22 Volition and inclination Kant’s concept of virtue may all too easily be misunderstood because we do not understand the important but subtle differences in the moral psychology of the two philosophers. For Aristotle, the soul is divided into rational and non-rational parts. When an agent acts virtuously, the nonrational part “listens to reason” – which is obviously different from simply having the agent’s appetites so conditioned that they always urge the same actions that right reason would urge (if it were listened to – which it obviously isn’t if we act from mere appetite rather than right reason) (NE, 1102b30–32). For Kant, however, practical reason is the will, and directly produces desires  – both good and bad. Evil is not mechanical determination of the will by empirical desire, but the free adoption of a maxim that irrationally gives preference to inclination over reason (REL, 6:33–37). When the will chooses according to reason, inclination may (or may not) contingently agree with rational desire, but there is no question of inclinations “listening to reason” (or not) in the sense in which Since what is bad about the intemperate person is not their desire to act against the right decision as such but their desire to enjoy base pleasures, presumably the continent person will not be grieved by acting according to the right decision, but only by having to forgo the base pleasures they would enjoy if they were incontinent. The continent person regrets forgoing these pleasures more than they should, and more than the virtuous person does. I am grateful to Terence Irwin for pointing out this distinction to me. 22 There are several possible explanations for someone’s doing this. Compared to many moral psychologists, Kant gives less credit to human innocence – to the kind of moral strength that might be due to a happy nature or to non-rational conditioning – and accordingly relies more on the moral strength that agents must acquire through reflection and struggling against their own corrupted nature. To these other moral psychologists, Kantian virtue may seem less attractive than the kind they are accustomed to believe in, and this might cause them to give it an invidious interpretation. More generally, Kant takes a less charitable view of human nature than many moral philosophers, and so it might be understandable that they would regard even the best moral character, viewed through his eyes, as inferior to their depiction of it. Or perhaps their gratuitous hostility toward the Kantian virtuous agent is simply a projection onto that agent of that irrational hostility toward Kant himself that for some reason seems to afflict many of Kant’s readers. Other explanations for this will be suggested presently in the text, when we consider what will happen if we mistakenly equate the Kantian distinction between rational and empirical desire with the Aristotelian distinction between rational and non-rational parts of the soul. 21

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in Aristotle’s moral psychology the non-rational part of the soul can be guided by reason. It follows that for Kant the agreement of inclination with reason is not a condition of virtuous action in the same way that for Aristotle it is a condition for virtue that non-rational appetite should be guided by reason. For Kant, the only question is whether inclinations happen to point in the same direction as this rational desire or in the opposite direction (as Kant thinks there is an inevitable tendency for them to do, owing to the innate propensity to evil in the human power of choice). This agreement is not essential to virtue, which is primarily strength of character, not a matter of fortunately constituted (or carefully cultivated) empirical temperament. For Kant, even if rational desire must overcome recalcitrant inclinations, the virtuous person, in acting virtuously, will be doing what he most truly wants to do, and will therefore do it cheerfully and joyfully. For Aristotle, however, it is an essential feature of virtue that the non-rational part of the soul should be guided by reason. If that does not happen, the best the agent can be is continent, not virtuous. Thus if we equate Kant’s distinction between rational and empirical desire with Aristotle’s talk about rational and irrational parts of the soul, we will distort the claims Kant is making about virtue, and Aristotelian virtue will even seem impossible in a Kantian framework. (Of course if, contrariwise, we were to translate Aristotelian virtue as non-rational appetite listening to right reason into Kantian terms, as the happy coincidence of inclination urging us to do what is our duty, then our misunderstanding of Aristotle would be even grosser, because it would effectively abolish the dominant role of right reason in his moral psychology.) Radical evil and socially conditioned inclinations. The differences between Kant and Aristotle go still deeper, however, when it comes to Kant’s conception of the abysmal evil in the human faculty of desire, which attaches to it owing to the corruption of our social condition.23 For Kant, human beings are so constituted by nature, and by the influence of society, that what they have most reason to do, what most deeply affirms their most authentic volition  – hence in that sense what they most properly desire to do – must often present itself to them as something they must inwardly constrain themselves to do, contrary to their natural inclinations (as these have been corrupted by their social condition). It is only against the background of a human nature Here it is well to keep in mind that the most prominent decoration displayed in Kant’s house was a portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which is sometimes reported to have hung in his study, sometimes over the sideboard in the dining room where he daily entertained his guests.

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corrupted by society  – and especially by the modern bourgeois society that Rousseau and Kant call “civilization” – that true freedom for us can never consist in “the slavery of mere appetite, but only in obedience to a law we give ourselves.”24 When Kant speaks of this moral self-constraint, we all too naturally understand it (even in the face of his explicit statements to the contrary) as a kind of external constraint, to which a person submits only unwillingly or grudgingly. This makes it difficult for us to accept at face value Kant’s (actually quite frequent) assertions that the virtuous frame of mind is inwardly free, cheerful, and joyous. Perhaps the problem is that we too readily identify with those corrupt inclinations, fostered by a society based on inequality and mutual antagonism. In that case, we misunderstand Kant simply because we conspicuously lack the virtue he is talking about. We are then the morally inferior kind of person of whom Aristotle says that following right reason and denying their base desires is painful to them. In that case, our rejection of Kant is something Aristotle too would regard with contempt. Practical judgment Virtue, as the strength of morally good maxims, presupposes good will, since the good will is simply volition according to good principles. We have seen that there can be good will accompanied not by virtue but by moral weakness, in which case the right thing will often not be done (MM, 6:408). But there is another capacity whose lack may lead to the wrong actions even where both good will and virtue are present. This is a lack of practical judgment – the capacity to descend correctly from a universal principle to particular instances that conform to it. Kant insists that judgment is a special capacity, for which we cannot substitute by supplying further instructions as to how to apply our principles, since these would only be more principles, whose correct application would once again require judgment (A133/B172; A, 7:199). Judgment cannot be taught by instruction, therefore, but is either an inborn talent or else a capacity acquired (and sharpened) by experience and practice (A, 7:227–28). This is true, of course, of all forms of judgment, which Kant distinguishes into theoretical, practical, and aesthetic, and regarding practical judgment he distinguishes practical judgment proper, which involves 24

This famous formulation of the basic idea of Kantian ethics comes, of course, from Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book 2, Chapter 8.

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the application of moral principles, from “technical” judgment, and in some places in his lectures also from prudential judgment, which chooses the means to happiness (A, 7:199; AC, 25:204; APa, 25:403–13). In the Groundwork, Kant regards practical judgment as the basic task involved in applying the moral law to human nature. “Practical anthropology” is described as the exercise of “the power of judgment sharpened by experience” in “distinguishing in what cases the moral laws are applicable” (G, 4:389). In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant devotes his “casuistical questions” to raising issues that concern the application to difficult or problematic cases of the principles of duty he is discussing. They are not a part of the “science” he is presenting (or of its “dogmatics”), but instead belong to a “practice in how to seek truth” (MM, 6:411). Apparently the closest Kant thinks we can come to giving instruction to judgment is to encourage reflection on examples whose difficulty gives us practice in exercising our faculty of practical judgment. Good practical judgment presupposes a good will (both good maxims and good ends), but consists in the capacity to apply the right principles to particular cases. Thus it resembles, at least in these respects, Aristotelian phronesis (NE, 1141a10–1142a30). Proponents of virtue ethics (and “moral particularists” as well) are fond of arguing that morally correct action cannot be action on general rules, because (they say) the application of general rules to particular cases is something that cannot itself be codified according to rules. This is a point sometimes associated with the name of Wittgenstein, but (as we have just seen) long before that it was a Kantian point. Kant saw that its correctness by no means implies that morally correct actions are not actions that follow rules, but involves only the observation that the correct application of rules requires a capacity for judgment that cannot itself be brought under rules. Perhaps there are moral theorists who try to make everything ruleguided all the way down to particular actions with no role for judgment,25 but Kant is not such a theorist. To suppose that a moral theory based on principles and rules (as Kant’s certainly is) must deny the irreducible need for judgment in applying rules is to attack only a caricature of rule-based moral theory. 25

This might be true of theories that take to heart, but exaggerate, some of what Sidgwick says is needed for a “scientific” ethics. Early in the Methods of Ethics, Sidgwick declares that “to eliminate or reduce the indefiniteness and confusion [in our common practical reasonings] is the sole immediate end I have proposed to myself in the present work” (1907: 13). “We are accustomed to expect from Morality,” he says, “clear and decisive precepts or counsels” (199). “The formulae of Intuitive Morality” (as Sidgwick calls them) are in his view unfit to do this until they are (in his words) “raised – by an effort of reflection which ordinary persons will not make – to a higher degree of precision than attaches to them in the common thought and discourse of mankind in

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If there is a good quality of the moral agent that Kant regards as comprehensive or complete, it is neither goodness of will, nor virtue, nor even practical judgment, but rather wisdom. This is “the idea of a practical use of reason that conforms perfectly with the law” (A, 7:200). Wisdom consists, Kant says, more in conduct than in knowledge (G, 4:405),26 yet it leads in the direction of a comprehensive science of the good (CPrR, 5:131), and involves being able to teach as well as to do (CPrR, 5:163). Wisdom thus involves a comprehensive knowledge of which ends to pursue, how to combine them, and how to pursue them under contingent conditions. It would seem to be enough to deny the quality of wisdom to someone if they lacked either the good will to act from the right maxims and set the right ends, or the practical judgment to select the right actions in promotion of these ends, or the virtue necessary to constrain themselves to perform those actions. Wisdom also, as far as we have it, demands a science of moral philosophy and also leads us in the direction of one. But according to Kant, this is not because the good person needs scientific instruction in order to know how to act. It is rather that without the reflection and systematization that comes with philosophical inquiry, we would be too vulnerable to the “natural dialectic” of human reason in the moral sphere, that is, to the “propensity to rationalize against the strict laws of duty and cast doubt upon their validity, or at least upon their purity and strictness, and where possible, to make them better suited to our wishes and inclinations” (G, 4:405). In other words, the closest we can ever come to wisdom is the aspiration to it and the search for it – yet not in order to find it, but rather in order to compensate in the best way we can for our corrupt tendency to deceive ourselves, for the advantage of our selfconceit and indolence, about what our duties are. The attempt to think general” (215). Thus Sidgwick rejects the notion of self-realization, for example, “on account of its indefiniteness” (91). And the results of his review of Common Sense morality are, on subject after subject, the same as what he says about Benevolence, namely, “it is difficult or impossible to extract from [the rules of Common Sense] any clear and precise principles for determining the extent of the duty in any case” (262; cf. 293, 311, 326). Sidgwick seems to me to be demanding more from a “scientific” ethics than Kant, for example, thought was possible. But I do not think Sidgwick ever meant to deny the Kantian (or Wittgensteinian) point that the final application of any rule or set of rules to the particular case will always involve a capacity for judgment that is not codifiable according to rules. 26 Here Kant is not at all far from Philippa Foot (1997: 166–68), though I do not think she realizes this, and she certainly thinks there is a more positive place for the ideal of wisdom in ethics than Kant does.

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abstractly and systematically about morality is the best way to do this because – contrary to the false doctrine later proclaimed by Nietzsche – the will to system is the highest will to integrity of which creatures like us are capable.27 Someone who had true wisdom would be a “practical philosopher” (MM, 6:163). Kant emphasizes, however, that wisdom – an idea invented by the ancients  – is more than can be asked of any human being (A, 7:200). If we entertain this idea when we think of ourselves as philosophers, Kant thinks, “it would do no harm to discourage the self-conceit of someone who ventures to claim the title of philosopher if one holds before him, in the very definition, a standard of self-estimation that would very much lower his pretension” (CPrR, 5:108). Wisdom is the best concept we can form of how we ought to be. But we form it only to teach ourselves that no one is wise, hence that there are no actual human beings we should try to imitate, and the only real guide to conduct is the moral law we give ourselves. What we accomplish in comparing ourselves with the ideal of wisdom is not to become wiser but only to strike down the foolish self-conceit that misleads us into thinking we might become truly wise. The closest we can ever actually come to the ideal of wisdom is the acquisition of that humbling Socratic self-knowledge. I I I A nci e n t e t h ic s a s t h e e t h ic s of i de a l s, mode r n e t h ic s a s t h e e t h ic s of pr i nci pl e s The advocates of virtue ethics usually overestimate the differences between Aristotle and Kant. This is partly because, under the influence of too many common caricatures, they distort and underestimate Kant. But sometimes it is even more because they distort and underestimate Aristotle – by mistakenly supposing him to be more like themselves than he is like Kant. It would be worthwhile, however, to look at the real differences between Kant and Aristotle, and consider what these differences tell us about how to do ethics. Kant (perhaps strangely) has little to say about Aristotle in “I mistrust all systematizers and I avoid them. The will to system is a lack of integrity.” Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows 26 (Nietzsche 1954: 470). Nietzsche supposes that there could be such a thing as the integrity of a fragment, or even of an isolated impulse or insight, divorced from the whole of which it is a part. In effect, this gets things exactly wrong, by treating irresponsibility as a necessary condition for integrity. It is not uncommon for Nietzsche to appeal to the kind of people who are disposed to be his followers simply through the audacious falsity of his assertions.

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his own account of the history of ethics. But that account  – which is largely ignored in the literature – is surprisingly rich, especially in the way it contrasts ancient ethics with modern ethics. And if we reflect on that contrast, as Kant presents it, and try for ourselves to see where Aristotle would best fit into it, then I think we can see what a Kantian ought to say about the differences between Kant and Aristotle. In Kant’s view, as presented mainly in his lectures on ethics, ancient ethics and modern ethics differ fundamentally in their approach. Ancient ethics is an ethics of ideals, while modern ethics is an ethics of principles. To make a long story short,28 let me briefly present Kant’s systematization both of the kinds of ancient ideals (of which he finds five) – conceptions of “the highest good (summum bonum)” – which in this context means the kind of life it would be best to live – and of the kinds of modern ethical principles (principles of heteronomy) that have been formulated prior to his own presentation of an ethics of autonomy (though here a few ancient names, such as Epicurus and the Stoics, are also alluded to). The ideals of the ancients I. The Cynic ideal (of Diogenes and Antisthenes), which is natural simplicity, and happiness as the product of nature rather than of art.   II. The Epicurean ideal, which is that of the man of the world, and happiness as a product of art, not of nature. III. The Stoic ideal (of Zeno), which is that of the sage, and happiness as identical with moral perfection or virtue. IV. The mystical ideal (of Plato), of the visionary character, in which the highest good consists in communion with the highest being.   V. The Christian ideal of holiness, whose pattern is Jesus Christ.  

(MoPo 27:100–06; MoC, 27:247–50; MoVi, 27:483–85; MoMr, 29:602–04)

Modern principles of heteronomy Curiously, Aristotle does not even find his way onto Kant’s list of ancient ethical views. He is mentioned in Kant’s account of the history of ethics only via the idea of the mean, which Kant takes to be an example of a moral principle that is analytic (hence trivial and uninformative)   For a longer version of the story, see Wood (2005).

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Subjective (Empirical) External

Internal

Education (Montaigne, [Mandeville]) Civil constitution (Mandeville, [Hobbes])

Physical feeling (Epicurus, [Helvetius, Lamettrie]) Moral feeling (Hutcheson, [Shaftesbury])

Objective (Rational) Internal

External

Perfection

The will of God

(Wolff, the Stoics, [Baumgarten, Cumberland])

(Crusius, the theological moralists, [Baumgarten])

(cf. G, 4:441–44; CPrR, 5:40; MoPo, 27:100; MoC, 27:253; MoVi, 27:510; MoMr, 29:621–22, 625–27)

(MoC, 27:264, 276–77).29 If we survey Kant’s list of ancient ideals, however, I think most interpreters would understand Aristotle’s as closest to the Stoic ideal, though with some elements of the Epicurean included as a corrective; on the other hand, if we look at Book x of the Nicomachean Ethics, we will also see affinities to the Platonic ideal, and depending on how much emphasis we place on Book x, we might even see Aristotle as closer to that ideal than to any of the others. The basic difference: an ethics of ideals and an ethics of principles More important than these lists, of course, is the basic idea behind them. The ancients thought of ethics in terms of the ideal way to live, or the ideal example of the kind of person we should be like, while the moderns Presumably Kant’s notion is that if our principle is to choose the virtuous action as the mean between two vices, this says no more than that we should choose the right action and avoid wrong ones, which would be an analytic commandment, since the concept of the right action is simply that of the action that ought to be chosen, and the concept of a wrong action is the concept of an action to be avoided.

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think of ethics in terms of ways of acting, ends to be pursued or principles to be followed. So the basic difference between Aristotle and Kant is that Aristotle’s is an ethics of ideals, while Kant’s is an ethics of principles. It follows immediately from this that Kant has a different conceptualization of the moral qualities of agents. Aristotle’s concept of phronesis combines goodness of ends (for Kant, the good will, and also virtue, the strength to pursue good ends) with the ability to discern which action, in a particular set of circumstances, will best promote these good ends (for Kant, practical judgment). Kant’s approach is more analytical, separating these discrete faculties, and anticipating that as imperfect moral agents, we are all too likely to have one without the others (good will without the virtue to sustain it in action, or good will and virtue without the good judgment to achieve by action the good ends we will and pursue). There is something bold and heroic, but (if we listen rightly to it) also something tragic and plaintive, in Kant’s famous assertion that the good will, even without good results, shines like a jewel, having its full value in itself (G, 4:394). For it implies that for the kind of agents we are, even possessing the only conceivable thing that is good without limitation may still easily leave us far short of what we need if we are to accomplish any good at all in the world. For Aristotle, the comprehensive virtue of phronesis is something he thinks some agents actually possess, something we might even hope to acquire. The Kantian analogues of phronesis, however, the ideas of wisdom and holiness of will, are entirely beyond us, and their chief function is to teach us humility and direct us to muddle along the best we can, following principles of duty as far as we are able with our limited strength of character and deficient practical judgment. Kant conceives of our good qualities in this analytical fashion because he thinks our possession of them will always be only limited and fragmentary. The fact that Kant regards ancient ethics as an ethics of ideals and modern ethics as an ethics of principles means that he is in considerable agreement with many recent proponents of virtue ethics about how ancient ethics differs from modern ethics. Of course, most of them think the difference points to ways that modern ethics has gone wrong (or at least remains incomplete), whereas Kant thinks it shows how modern ethics represents an essential and necessary advance over ancient ethics. Let’s try to see why. Kant’s systematic reason for preferring an ethics of principles Kant is not opposed to the use of ideals in ethics. On the contrary, we have seen already that wisdom functions for him as a kind of ideal, and

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so does the “ideal of humanity well-pleasing to God,” the Christ ideal, which (as we see from the above) he regards as the latest (and highest) of the ancient ideals. Kant’s endorsement of the Christian ideal presents clearly his view about the relation of ideals to principles, for he calls it “the personified idea of the good principle” (REL, 6:60). An ideal is the concept of an individual being (here, an individual human being) that corresponds to (or personifies) an a priori concept of reason, or an idea. But an idea, in turn, rests on a principle of reason (here, the good principle, which struggles against the radical evil in human nature). The modern ethical theory, oriented toward principles, hence toward what to do and why, is therefore philosophically deeper and historically superior to the ancient ethical theory of being and virtue, oriented toward ideals. It would be a topic for another paper (and not a short one, either) to explain why Kant  – from a purely systematic point of view, and in theoretical as well as practical philosophy – regards ideas, hence also ideals, as grounded on principles, rather than the reverse (see A298/B355–A332/B390; CPrR, 5:57–63). So I will say no more about this here. Ideal ethics, human equality and self-conceit Kant has other very good reasons, however, for thinking that an ethics of principles is superior to an ethics grounded on ideals. We have already been introduced to the main one of these, namely, that no human being is, or can ever be, adequate to the ideal. Historically, Kant regards the Christian ideal of holiness, which is presented within that religion as something attainable only by a divine being and approachable by humans only with the aid of divine grace, as the transitional form of ideal ethics, which leads naturally to an ethics of principles. All other ancient ideals, Kant argues, remained imperfect, because they “had no greater moral perfection than that which could come from human nature; but since this was very defective, their moral laws were also defective. So their ethical system was not pure; they accommodated virtue to human weakness, and hence it was incomplete” (MoC, 27:251). Once we see that no ideal drawn from human models can be adequate, we are driven to look for the true ground of the ideals we recognize, insofar as they are pure and uncorrupted by human frailty. This leads us toward the rational ideas, hence to the principles on which every ideal is based. Kant’s reservations about ideal ethics are also connected to the details of his moral psychology, especially his idea of unsociable

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sociability (IUH, 8:20) and the self-conceit (CPrR, 5:73) born of the social (especially the modern European or “civilized”) condition (A, 7:321–33; REL, 6:27, 93). Kantian ethics tells us that all rational beings have equal (absolute) worth. But an ethics of ideals, or a virtue ethics, celebrates the qualities of agents that distinguish one from another, and make some objects of admiration, others of contempt. Kantian empirical anthropology tells us that an ethics that does this will feed human self-conceit, envy, and the self-deceptive wish to be superior to other human beings, which is necessarily irrational and contrary to morality because our reason tells us that all rational beings necessarily have dignity and worth as ends in themselves and members of the realm of ends. Examples of good conduct are useful only in showing us that it is possible to do what we should (MM, 6:480). Kant repeatedly insists that in estimating our own morality, we must never compare ourselves with others, but only with the moral law (CPrR, 5:76–77; MM, 6:435–36; MoC, 27:349–50). Given our human nature, an ethics of ideals, one that encourages comparisons of moral worth between people, is likely to make us worse rather than better. If others are represented to us as better than we are, then this is not likely to cause us to imitate their virtues but only encourages our tendency to envy and hate them, which is directly contrary to duty: if we derive our moral ideals from particular others, we have a tendency to lower those ideals according to their imperfections, or even according to the imperfections we deceive ourselves into seeing in them (in order to make ourselves look that much better by comparison). People are very much inclined to take others as the measure of their moral worth, and if they then believe themselves to be superior to some, this feeds their self-conceit … I can always think that I am better than others, although if, for example, I am better only than the worst, I am still by no means very much better … If moral humility, then, is the curbing of self-conceit in regard to the moral law, it never implies any comparison with others, but only with that law. (MoC, 27:349) When the human being measures his worth by comparison to others, he seeks either to raise himself above the other or to diminish the worth of the other. The latter is envy. (P, 9:491) Accordingly, a teacher will not tell his naughty pupil: Take an example from that good (orderly, diligent) boy! For this would only cause him to hate that boy, who puts him in an unfavorable light … So it is not comparison with any other human being whatsoever (as he is) but with the idea (of humanity), as it ought to be, and so comparison with the law, that must serve as the standard. (MM, 6:480)

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Ideal ethics as essentially pre-modern There are further Kantian reasons for resisting an ethics founded on ideals. Ethical ideals (the Stoic sage, the Aristotelian kalos-kagathos) are always stereotypes. In a complex, diverse, corrupt, modern (“civilized”) society, they are necessarily too simple to capture the complex moral qualities that each individual must try to achieve in fashioning their own autonomous life. This (I earlier suggested) is why Kant declines to produce any list of “the virtues” (corresponding to the Greek or Christian catalogues). To ground ethics on ideals and virtues is to think in a manner suited to a more innocent age and a more tradition-bound and homogeneous culture – a culture that is also essentially less free and less respectful than it ought to be of both human equality and human individuality. In short, virtue ethics is too deferential to “culture” itself – that is, to a kind of society in which morality is closer to mere custom (Sittlichkeit) and farther from the autonomous self-government that, since the Enlightenment, we now know to be the sole fundamental vocation of every mature rational being. Virtue ethics is suited to a society in which customs are relatively simple and uniform, and the customary standards they presuppose are generally taken for granted unreflectively, so that it is even with a kind of innocence that people inflict on themselves the pernicious self-deception that there is such a thing as a “fine and good man” – that the rest of us should admire them, defer to them, and put their interests ahead of our own. In such a culture, people have not yet begun to see that their entire way of life falls short from the standpoint of reason because, for example, it involves unenlightened and unfree ways of thinking, or unjust inequalities of status, power, or wealth, and hence that no human customs should ever be venerated or deferred to uncritically.30 The most basic flaw in virtue ethics is that it has not absorbed the simple fact that we do not know how to live – if for no other reason, then because there is no one special way for human beings to live. Morality, as the disposition to obey the moral law one gives oneself, is critical even of virtue, which is at most the strength of will in following this disposition. Morality must be even more critical of mere social customs, which substitute social decorum for the moral disposition and substitute for true moral virtue the mere conformity to custom. I would put it (provocatively) this way:  Kantian ethics must be a radical ethics of permanent revolution with respect to social custom, just as it is with This point, along with many other cogent criticisms of virtue ethics, is effectively made by Robert Louden (1997: 210–13).

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respect to our socially corrupted inclinations and our civilized propensities to self-conceit and self-deception. The morality of autonomy has arisen historically out of the mere conformity to custom, but we are still at such an early stage in that historical progression that we have as yet no proper word even for “morality,” still using the word for it that signifies mere slavish adherence to social custom which is the direct opposite of the truly free moral disposition: The word Sittlichkeit has been adopted to express morality, although Sitte (custom) is really the concept of social decorum; for virtue, however, we require more than customary goodness, a certain self-constraint and self-command. Peoples can have customs and no virtue, or virtue and no customs (conduite is the propriety of customs). A science of customs is not yet virtue, and virtue is not yet morality … For virtue means strength in mastering and overcoming oneself, in regard to the moral disposition. But morality is the original source of that disposition … But because we still have no other word for morality, we take Sittlichkeit to signify morality, since we cannot take virtue to do so. (MoC, 27:300)

Kant’s main point here is that human customs are generally corrupt, so that what they consider to be virtues are often not virtue at all, but the reverse of what is authentically admirable or truly deserving of praise or encouragement. For virtue, we need more than customary goodness; we need self-constraint and self-command on rational principles. But here Kant is also concerned with the fact that even genuine virtues are, compared to the authentic source of morality, something superficial and call for critical reflection. “Virtue,” he says, “is not yet morality.” Virtue is the strength of good maxims to overcome the bad inclinations that resist them, but we are entitled to praise them as virtues only for as long as the maxims they strengthen are truly good ones, rationally justifiable maxims that arise in us from a disposition to do what is morally right. Morality – that is, practical reason, not virtue – is the source of that disposition. Virtue and education Virtue ethics necessarily places great emphasis on moral education and “the cultivation of the virtues.” Although some proponents of virtue ethics like to present virtue ethics as directly addressing the question, “How should we live our lives?” they tend to shift to the question, “How should we educate or train people so that they live their lives as they should?” Sometimes training in virtue is depicted as analogous to learning a skill.31 This is especially to be seen in the defenses of virtue ethics that have been put forward by Julia Annas. See for instance Annas (2004) and Annas (2006).

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Now it may be that Aristotelian boulesis, which concerns only the selection of the action best suited to good ends already set by the agent, is analogous to a skill, since skills typically involve the right way to bring about pre-given ends. But both Kant and Aristotle think that setting the right ends is something the virtuous person must also do, and they agree that it is something done for reasons. Deciding which ends to set in one’s life is not something to be learned like a skill, and if there did exist traditional cultures in which it was thought that people could be trained to do this, it is hard to see how anyone in a free, modern, pluralistic culture could think that we can teach people this as they might be taught skills like flute-playing or shoe-making. From a Kantian point of view, since moral education must always be understood as education within some determinate cultural tradition, every traditional system of moral education also represents the corruption of our unsociable sociability. “Cultivation of the virtues” always means the reproduction of a certain kind of human personality that was well adjusted to a society based on unenlightened traditions, inequalities, forms of oppression – in short, on the radical propensity to evil that belongs to our nature as social beings (REL, 6:94–95). For Kant, as for Rousseau, this corruption was only made worse by the advance of civilization (A, 7:326–29). “We live in an age of discipline, culture, and civilization, but we are still a long way off from an age in which we might make people moral [Moralisirung]” (P, 9:451). The only remedy that civilization produces for its own evils is the development of reason – the only faculty capable of criticizing anything, hence the critic of everything, including itself. Ethics can avoid corruption only by constantly criticizing, and seeking to reform, custom and education. The chief thing we must learn in directing our lives is how to think for ourselves, how to devise our own way of life, doing the right thing and flourishing as best we can in a situation that is unique to each of us. The basic “skill” to master is that of deciding for myself in each situation I face what is the right thing to do – in other words, the “skill” of applying exactly the kind of ethical theory virtue ethics thinks we are better off without. Modernity’s insight is that we still do not know how to teach people to be good – if for no other reason, then simply because there is no single way for human beings to be good. For this reason, Kant insists that every system of education must include moral education, but he denies that moral education can consist in “training” or “breaking in” (as you might train a horse or dog), or that it can consist in being taught mechanically, as you would teach

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a skill. Human beings must not merely be taught the means to given ends, but should learn which ends are good. Kant thinks moral training is too often left to the church, whereas the best education is that of public schools open to everyone (P, 9:454).32 Moral education must therefore consist chiefly in enlightening children, that is, teaching them to think, to think for themselves (P, 9:450). Kant advocates a “Socratic” method of moral education, in which the child is taught to exercise its own reason and to find the answers from within itself, rather than simply being told what its parents or teachers believe (P, 9:477). Proponents of virtue ethics often try to answer the charge that their kind of theory has an inherent tendency to social conservatism. They protest that a good moral education will teach people to be critical of existing institutions, take a stand against injustices, and so on. Slote also proposes to sketch the way the ideals of a progressive and democratic society can be expressed in terms of their kind of theory (for instance, see Baron, Pettit, and Slote 1997:  274–80). Even if persuasively executed, however (something Slote candidly admits he is not yet able to do), this project would still entirely miss the mark, because it is trying to answer at the level of abstract theory an objection that does not arise at the level of abstract theory. The real issue is where our very concept of “the virtues” comes from, where our practices of teaching people how to live (as if this were a mere skill) comes from, what all these ways of looking at moral education mean culturally and historically, what view of life, and which ways of life, they in fact represent. The objection is that the whole virtue-oriented attitude toward human life, the attitude that we might be taught how to live as we are taught a skill, along with its ideals of “human flourishing,” inevitably assumes there is something like a single standard for what a human being, and a human life, should be like. The lesson of modernity, however, is that there is no such thing as the human way to live or flourish. The social function of such ideals, in Aristotle as in other pre-modern philosophers who came from a society based on a hierarchy of orders or classes (always of genders, often of races), was always to justify the sorting of people into superiors and inferiors. In the societies based on thinking this way, the main point (however much we may wish to conceal this in our appropriation of their ideas) was always to justify the fact that some people “flourish” at the expense of others. To combine “virtue ethics” with such modern values Religious education, in Kant’s view, too often teaches pupils to avoid vice only out of fear of (divine) punishment, whereas they should learn to recognize it as detestable in itself (P, 9:450–51).

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as individual autonomy, equality, and democracy is to devise a monster, patching the limbs from one beast onto the body of another, a structure in which the content inevitably contradicts the form. It is understandable that we might feel nostalgia for a more comfortable way of thinking about morality, in which people can be trained to be good and their judgments and desires spontaneously fall into place without reflection or inward struggle. But if modernity has taught us anything, it is that such a way of life is no longer possible. Of course modernity too has so far never found how to go beyond an unequal and antagonistic society. Further, it has found that the Enlightenment value of rational autonomy is sooner a spiritual abyss than a principle on which people might agree in building a realm of ends on earth. But modernity’s self-dissatisfaction in these respects  – which is thus far both its most essential and most admirable characteristic – points to the uncompromising rejection of any ethics of ideals, along with the traditional, hierarchical, pre-Enlightenment kind of society in which such ideals would naturally be at home.33 Kant’s historical criticism of an ethics of ideals as essentially pre-modern is therefore continuous with J.B. Schneewind’s (1997) criticism of virtue ethics as unable to accommodate modern freedom and the plurality of moral ideals and ways of life. It involves the recognition that ideal or virtue ethics assumes too uncritical a view of our social nature, and with it too trusting an attitude toward social traditions. Kant regards an ethics of ideals as suited to a past historical age – an age that was simpler and more naïve about human nature than our own, a society that tolerated social inequalities too much and respected human individuals too little. No doubt we still have a lot to learn from the ethics of Aristotle, the Stoics, and other ancient moral philosophers. “Virtue ethics,” however, is simply the wrong lesson. 33

In this way there is also something essentially modern about virtue ethics, since its misguided nostalgia for a way of thinking about ethics and human life that is irretrievably pre-modern is one of the many expressions of modernity’s self-dissatisfaction. The hopelessly escapist, delusory, and self-deceptive form taken by this kind of self-dissatisfaction is also sadly characteristic of modernity too.

Ch apter 4

The difference that ends make Barbara Herman

The starting point for many discussions of Kantian ethics and virtue involves either a presumption or a challenge to the effect that an account of the virtues, or an ethics of virtue, is both essential to a proper understanding of morality and alien to the Kantian enterprise. I think we should be puzzled about how that idea gets going. After all, Kant has a “Doctrine of Virtue”; there are clear virtues that a Kantian moral agent should have; there is a nuanced and insightful, if not fully formed, story about how moral competence is acquired that is, partly, about the development of elements of a moral character necessary for good action. While it was for a long time thought that Kantian morals were legalistic, a matter of fixed and rigid rules of duty, requiring no more of the agent than conformity, that is no longer the prevailing view. There are duties and obligations, perfect and imperfect, but they do not subtend actions automatically:  they depend on deliberation and situation-sensitive judgment. Where there are rules of action it is because there are regions of moral or social life where having rules is essential to successful human activity – what counts as property and wrongful taking, for example. For the same reason Aristotle also regards the virtue of justice as rule-normed. But perhaps nowadays we do not think justice is paradigmatically a virtue. There are some ideas associated with virtue ethics  – noncodifiability, practical wisdom, function, teleology of the Good, the holism of the practical – that are not found in Kantian moral theory. In some cases, the issue is not about ethics but about background theories of the person or of action or explanation. In others, what’s at stake seems to me couched in mystery. For example, proponents of the noncodifiability ­thesis (and its particularist descendants) resist the very idea of general duties and For help with this paper, my thanks to Sonny Elizondo, Louis-Philippe Hodgson, and Seana Shiffrin.

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obligation.1 But, one might wonder, is the thought really that the fit of human purposes and norms with the world is such that we cannot say in advance and for similar cases that “this” must be done, or even done in such and such circumstances? Or that there are no general moral categories that guide action: human beings will stand in a variety of known relations to one another; they will, for example, make agreements; but perhaps they needn’t make promises, or perhaps, if they make promises, it is radically open in some way to say what that kind of commitment amounts to. I don’t understand why one would want to hold either position in a general way. Parts of morality can’t be captured by rules; parts involve something more like know-how (informed habits or dispositions of recognition); parts require sensitivity to the particular. But for all that there could be in the background, or at the foundation, source principles that provide standards of correctness that bear on action and practice, standards that serve both to explain and to justify even the not-foundunder-a-rule exercise of know-how or judgment. So much is common to all sorts of rule-governed activities. In thinking about the role of moral rules and principles, one should be careful not to conflate the forms of practical activity with whatever it is that gives them authority or justification. Principles (even laws) can be instantiated in a variety of ways as we move from the structure of some faculty or capacity all the way out to its intentional deployment by a reasoning agent. Some critics of the Kantian project highlight the fact that high-end experts, virtuosi, champion chess players, don’t make use of rules: they “see” things immediately, identify patterns, feel and respond directly to the normative field. I see no reason to doubt they do this. The perceptual field of animals too can be quite sophisticated, marking predator and prey, or edge and surface, directly and without inference (we often achieve through skill and practice a high form of the kind of competence that animals have by nature).2 Moreover, there is good reason to want it to be possible for a normal moral agent to make her way seamlessly through most of her activities: there should be no stress about whether her promises should be made thoughtfully or kept, whether truthfulness is her default communicative stance, that violence and deceit are not available as routine means. When someone falls and we reach out to catch them, there is nothing we don’t know, nothing we have to deliberate about – we For a good sample of particularist arguments, see Hooker and Little (2000); John McDowell (1998a, 1998c, 1998d) is frequently cited as arguing for the noncodifiability of the ethical. 2 For a very useful discussion, see Burge (2005, 2009). 1

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can and do act directly and confidently.3 In the “flow” of confident activity we achieve a melding of cognitive and conative, of intellectual and embodied knowledge. But we don’t thereby elude the reach of justification or intelligibility, or of principle. We may have to look at what we do from the outside, as it were (the way athletes watch tape), in order to explain what we responded to in the circumstances and sometimes even to understand why we reacted the way we did. Such shifting of perspective is one of the resources of our practical natures. Nothing in the Kantian account of morality resists this. The elements that its analysis uncovers do not map in any simple way onto practice. That my intentional action involves a maxim, has the form of instrumental rationality, and is under the constraint of a formal law of rational willing, while true, does not direct me to an intermediate moment in which I assemble the elements of a maxim and subject it to any test or deliberative procedure. There will be occasions where I need to go slowly and carefully, where I do need to assemble and deliberate: circumstances may be new to me, or involve unexpected conflict so that I do not know in advance what to do; I may have acted inappropriately and need to find a way to repair what I’ve done. That is, sometimes things may need to be worked out with precision, in real time; in other cases, I may need to reflect back on past action, construct a past maxim, deliberate explicitly about the action I took. But that happens as it does; it’s not required in an agent’s practice by the foundational account of morals or the role of principles that Kantian analysis reveals. There are, of course, other sorts of issues said to divide Kantian ethics and virtue theory. An important one concerns happiness or human flourishing. The virtue side is inclined to hold that it must be part of the aim or purpose of morality (each moral action? morality as a whole?) to promote human well-being for its own sake and/or the happiness of the virtuous person through good action. Happiness as such is not the aim or purpose of Kantian morality, but it is not exactly a separate concern. Human wellbeing is the object of both perfect and imperfect duties, and the successful moral agent has much to be pleased about: she has acted well towards herself and others, attended to what needs attending to, and if she has led a full life in humanly congenial circumstances, she will likely have developed rational abilities, had friends and reasonable work, pursued what we might call enjoyments (of art and food and wit), and participated in sustaining a liberal political regime that aims to enable each under its   I discuss these and related issues in greater detail in Herman (2007b).

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authority in their pursuit of these goods. The distance between the two types of theory doesn’t seem so large. Having said this much, I am hesitant to continue with this sort of thrust and parry between the two types of theory. There’s a certain amount of “they say, I say” that doesn’t get us too far. And there’s the additional problem that we lack clear and stable accounts of both types of theory. “Virtue theory” doesn’t name a settled class of positions, and we don’t yet have a complete view of Kantian theory. While I’m in no position to remedy the situation with respect to virtue theory, I can, I think, make some useful progress on the Kantian side. Since one of the ways Kantian theory is thought to differ most profoundly from virtue theory is in the role of ends – virtue theory being end-anchored in a substantive way and Kantian theory not – a better grasp of Kant’s account of ends, in both theoretical and normative arguments, should help with any eventual comparison. I Let me begin with a word of caution. Although Kant is careful to keep separate foundational- and practical-normative issues, the tradition of interpretation we have inherited is not; this makes understanding the theory harder than it needs to be. When we look at the Groundwork examples we see in them Kant’s account of moral judgment, when in fact they merely illustrate the claim that knowing no more about the principle of the categorical imperative than that it has the form of universal law is sufficient to explain why certain actions/maxims are contrary to duty. Or when we encounter the casuistry of the “Doctrine of Virtue,” the categorical imperative, especially the norm of universal law, fades from the theory. And when we do pay attention to the categorical imperative, we tend to rush by what is arguably the fulcrum of both the foundational and the practical sides of the theory, Kant’s account of ends. Given such tendencies of interpretation, it is not easy to overcome resistance to thinking that Kant’s ethics might be, at its core, about ends. The most familiar kind of end-anchored theory is teleological: there is some end, some good, that normatively sanctioned action is to promote, maybe in a maximizing way, maybe not. Where an end is scalar, where more is better, it will be a matter of rationality to maximize; where more is not better – friendship is a good example of such an end – the correct relation to the end may instead be to instantiate it, to give it a role in one’s life, shaped by the non-scalar values it represents. Teleological ends

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are substantive, objective, and regulative. Whether they are one or many, they should be able to play an organizing role in a complete human life (if they are many, they should also cohere). Kantian theory is not end-anchored in this way, and generally thought not to be end-anchored at all. Especially in the contrast with virtue theories, it is regarded as a principle- or rule-based theory whose normative elements are specific duties  – duties whose role is to constrain, not to organize or transform, activities that have their source elsewhere. How the various duties we have are to fit into a life is not a question such a theory is thought to ask or taxed to answer.4 Of course Kantian theory does contain an objective end that occupies a central place: rational nature as an end in itself. It has not been easy to get an accurate picture of the work the end does, either theoretically or practically, or to set the theoretical and practical roles in the right relation. It is assumed by many, including many Kantians, that the end’s most important role is practical, as the anchor of the formula of humanity, a formula they regard as an independent normative principle, independent, that is, of the formula of universal law. There are, I believe, compelling reasons to doubt that it could be independent. It’s true that Kant says the formula of humanity is closer to intuition, but that doesn’t mean that we should interpret it intuitively. I will be arguing that we misunderstand the formula of humanity if we do not first grasp the theoretical role of rational nature as an end in itself in the Groundwork’s overall argument. When we understand what that is, the intuitive connection will follow, as will the contribution this end makes to the substantive normative theory, and to the conception of a life that comes with acting well. But it will not be independent of the idea of universal law. Now, one of the distinguishing marks of a virtue ethics is its inclusion of end-related motivational considerations in its terms of action assessment. We should attend not only to what an agent does, but also and sometimes equally to how she does it. So, promises are to be kept and debts repaid out of a sense of their being owed; someone at risk is to be rescued and they are to be helped out of appropriate concern for their injury or their well-being. Part of the point of a virtue is to orient the agent in the The problem will seem more or less acute depending on the range and demandingness of positive duties. It is typically easier to adapt to constraints than to imposed projects, so it is not surprising that negative duties are prominent in much Kant interpretation. Positive duties are rendered less worrisome because for the most part they are imperfect duties, which are thought to allow the agent discretion in their fulfillment. This is not a sound way to think about Kantian imperfect duties (see Herman [2007d]); I describe the setting for such duties in section iv.

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appropriate way to an action, so even if the agent acts as is required, she does not act well, she does not exhibit virtue, unless her motive, her end in action, is also right. By contrast, in doing what she ought, the Kantian agent is thought to have done all that she ought. If she never acts on a maxim that cannot be willed a universal law without contradiction, she is square with the moral law; where she has discrete duties or obligations, in most cases dutiful performance is what is required of her. There is an additional quality of goodness that her actions can have if done from the regulative conviction that they are her duty (i.e. from the motive of duty); in so acting, her will is good. But this goes beyond what morality requires of her, forming a distinct category of agent assessment relatively independent of action assessment (a theory of virtue is then “added on” to a theory of right action). I do not think such separation of action and agent assessment is so clearly at home in Kant’s ethics. There are regions where an external action is judged on its own (in Recht, for example), or where there is some kind of doing that cannot be countenanced however motivated and for no matter what purpose. But these are special cases.5 In the central cases of moral action, however, the requirement is different: an agent acts as she ought (I would say she acts correctly) when her grasp of moral principle or requirement guides choice and action. Though it may appear the same as a morally motivated action, an action that arises from sources in the agent indifferent to moral concerns is not a morally correct action, even if the action is not contrary to duty. Motives and ends that lead to correct action are reciprocally related through an agent’s self-conception as an end in herself. For these and many other reasons, rational nature as an end in itself proves to be a useful focal point if our aim is to deepen the comparison between Kantian and virtue theory. Not, as I’ve indicated, as the basis of a separate normative principle, but as the gateway concept to Kant’s view of moral action and agency. Since it is such a difficult notion to get right, my plan is to go slowly and carefully through the texts where it is introduced. The view of rational nature as an end in itself that we arrive at may be less immediately appealing than the one familiar to us from many interpretations, but it coheres better with Kant’s arguments, and may make the contrast with virtue theory less stark and perhaps more interesting. Not necessarily special in the sense of rare, but special in the sense that there is an argument for why in these places the standard of moral address for actions in terms of their maxims is suspended.

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To explore the idea of rational nature as an end in itself, I am going to have to assume the reader has some familiarity with sections II and III of the Groundwork. In particular, the idea that imperatives contain rational principles addressed to the actions of finite rational natures; that the command of the categorical imperative is independent of agents’ subjective ends (their different purposes, or their purposes altogether); and that what the categorical imperative commands is that agents’ maxims be consistent with the form of universal law (if I cannot will that my maxim of action be a universal law – that is, cannot so will it without contradiction – then it is impermissible to act on it). An agent acts well when her maxim is (or instantiates) a principle of universal form. Kant’s analytic project starts with the idea of morality as an unconditional command and proceeds to the formula of universal law(-giving) as the expression of what this command must be like if indeed it commands unconditionally. Four examples are offered to show that the principle arrived at through this analysis can both generate and explain familiar duties. In the argument structure of the Groundwork, rational nature as an end in itself is introduced to answer a question. Having shown that if there is a categorical imperative its command is directed at the form of an agent’s willing, and not its material end, there is then a question about the volition so constrained. It is a Kantian postulate that ends control volitions: ends are what volitions descend from, rather like steps in an argument. If a volition has to have a certain form, it will get that form from a kind of end that calls for it. So, it is because an agent has an end that she would realize as an effect of her action – a material end – that her maxim has instrumental form (and is regulated by the hypothetical imperative). And if the categorical imperative requires of an agent’s maxim/volition that it have the form of universal law-giving, there must be an end (a kind of end) that is its source. The first part of Kant’s approach to rational nature as an end in itself sets out the criteria for such an end; the second part considers what can be said in support of there being such an end. The idea behind the initiating question (and so the end-volition postulate) is familiar. I am driving across town to visit with a friend. The red light at the intersection constrains my action, without regard to my end in driving (setting aside possible practical complexities). Yet in being constrained, in stopping because the light turns red, I also have an end:  typically, obeying traffic signals, or possibly, acting so as to avoid traffic citations. If I had no such end, I could not be constrained. Of

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course the end need not be a further end of my driving: if I stop because “I obey traffic signals,” then stopping instances that end (I say “instances” rather than “promotes” to avoid the thought that I am racking up trafficobedience points). An end does not always signal a state of affairs different from and to be produced by an agent’s action. Ends can call for acting-in-a-way (playing the song softly); they can represent ideals, only partially or even indirectly expressed through what we do; they can also be or represent principles (conformity to the letter of the US Constitution as a principle of judging). We tend to think of the latter kinds of ends as regulative, where regulative contrasts with to-be-promoted; but strictly speaking, to-be-promoted ends are regulative, i.e. guiding, as well. The difference is rather about the nature and authority of the regulation, or the kind of value the end brings to bear on our willing. An end that can anchor a categorical imperative that constrains actions and maxims would have to be an end whose value was neither conditional nor relative. That is, it could not be an end for the agent only on condition that something else was her end. If it were, the further end would have authority over the imperative, which would not then be categorical. Likewise, any ends that depend on even general empirical facts about the agent (about her sensible nature, her sympathy or susceptibility to pleasure and pain) would also fail as “categorical” anchors; they could at best be a source of practical rules for creatures with our kind of sensitivity. “Hence the distinction between subjective ends, which rest on incentives, and objective ends, which depend on motives, which hold for every rational being” (G, 4:428).6 What we need is a source of wholly rational constraint. Kant goes on: But suppose there were something the existence of which in itself has an absolute worth, something which as an end it itself could be a ground of determinate laws; then in it, and in it alone, would lie the ground of a possible categorical imperative, that is, of a practical law. (G, 4:428)

Since we already know that the end we are seeking has to be an end whose value or regulative authority is not for the sake of something else, an end not dependent on some condition of sensibility (or subjectivity), the end would have to be one whose value is in itself, an end that, by virtue of its nature, can provide categorical regulation of volitions – i.e. valid for every rational being. If the value of an end is both non-relative and unconditional in its requirement, its value can be said to be absolute, meaning no For abbreviations of Kant’s works and a list of translations of these works as used in this and other essays in this volume, see Abbreviations at the start of this volume.

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end can be regulative of it (absolute does not here mean of greatest value on some scale). And if it is something that, in existing, has absolute worth or value, it is not the fact of its existence that has the value (as if a rare or wondrous thing), but that in existing, in being what it is (viz., a kind of end), it has absolute worth or value. In response to the criteria for the sought-for end, Kant offers “rational nature as an end in itself.” It is a response that sets off a stream of questions. Why and how is rational nature an objective end for us (and for all rational beings, on the very same grounds)?7 And how an end in itself? What could such an end, that is, an end in itself and for all rational beings, direct us to do? Indeed, in what sense could “rational nature” be an end at all? Some of the questions have ready answers. Something is an end if it, or a principle that represents it, is regulative for the will of a rational being. It is an end in itself if it, or its principle of regulation, does not depend on anything external to it. It is a candidate anchoring end for a categorical imperative if it is an end in itself and fully authoritative. Now once the criteria are in place, it verges on obvious that nothing other than rational nature could be the end in itself. That is, since an end in itself is not an end for the sake of something else, and it regulates volition without regard to the ends or needs or objects of our (or any) specific nature, what is left is an end that can regulate volition with regard to itself: its own nature must be able to serve as a regulative standard for volition.8 Rational nature fills the bill. So, if rational nature supports a principle for volition – which is to say: if pure reason can be practical9 – it can secure the needed categorical or a priori connection between deed and will.10

Kant says of the end sought for that it must be an end for all rational beings, and (equivalently) that the concept of duty requires that what is a law for our will must be a law for all rational beings (G, 4:425–27). The independence of morality from the special conditions of human nature thus has two related elements. One concerns practical scope: if lying is wrong, it must be wrong for any rational being who can lie (G, 4:389). The other is about the conditions of applicability of an unconditional rational principle or law: since such a principle cannot be empirical, and it applies to us qua rational natures, it must apply to every rational nature.  8 If we think of regulation as a consequence of value, there are other kinds of value to be counted than that of subjective ends: aesthetic value or beauty, for example. But while beautiful objects stand in a regulative relation to our will independent of our interests, their value, their beauty, is relative to our faculties.  9 This then prepares the way for the conclusion that morality is possible if pure reason can be practical. 10 This is the task Kant flags and then postpones when he introduces the formula of universal law:  to show that a deed could be connected with the will “without a presupposed condition from any inclination, a priori and hence necessarily” (G, 4:420n).  7

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Now it follows that any regulation of volition that were to flow from rational nature itself would apply to all rational natures. We could then say that no volition whose principle was not a possible principle for all rational natures could be consistent with rational nature as an end in itself. Phrased in the imperatival mood, we seem very close to the formula that we should act on no maxim that is inconsistent with a universal law of rational willing (or the form of universal law-giving, a level up characterization of the constraint). This is in many respects a nice result. It supports Kant’s equivalence claim about the formulas of the categorical imperative; it explains why we cannot expect different substantive results from the first two formulations; and, reasoning in the other direction, it fills out a bit the reason why, in the very idea of a categorical imperative, we are talking about universal law (viz., universality with respect to a domain, here a kind: rational nature). It is not such a nice result if one hopes for practical advantages from the non-equivalence of the first two formulations of the categorical imperative.11 However, if what lies behind that hope is the thought that rational nature as an end in itself might offer more robust moral content than bare universalizability does, we will see that it can do that, once we move away from the theoretical argument (where the equivalence claim resides) to practical applications in principles of duty and obligation. But we are not yet ready to leave the theoretical issues that come with rational nature as an end in itself. It is not enough that the concept of rational nature satisfies the criteria for an end in itself; to do the work of the end in itself it must be an end for a rational being. Indeed, it must be an end for me, for you, and for all rational beings. So how do we show that each and every rational being has this end? One might expect an argument that having such an end is constitutive of being a rational being (as it surely is). Kant doesn’t offer that argument, or not directly. Instead, he proceeds this way: (1) If, then, there is to be a supreme practical principle and, with respect to the human will, a categorical imperative, it must be one such that, from the representation of what is necessarily an end for everyone because it is an end in itself, it constitutes an objective principle of the will and thus can serve as a universal practical law. (2) The ground of this principle is: rational nature exists as an end in itself. (3) The human being necessarily represents his own existence this way; so far it is a subjective principle of human actions. (4) But every other rational being also represents his existence in this way consequent on just the There’s little agreement about Kant’s “equivalence claim.” Onora O’Neill (1989b) is one who supports it; Christine Korsgaard (1996c) does not.

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same rational grounds that hold for me; thus it is at the same time an objective principle from which, as a supreme practical ground, it must be able to derive all laws of the will. (G, 4:428–29 [sentence numbers added])

Since this is among the more vexed paragraphs in the Groundwork, we’ll take it slowly. Sentence (1) is a reprise of the challenge:  a categorical imperative requires an objective principle of the will that has its ground or basis in what is necessarily an end for all rational beings; only an end in itself could possibly support such a principle. Sentence (2) gives us the candidate end: rational nature as an end in itself (something that is, in virtue of its nature, such an end). Sentence (3) introduces both a solution and a difficulty. It tells us how “the human being” necessarily represents his own existence – viz., as an end in itself – and that this representation is thereby a subjective principle of human actions. That principle would be objective, and so a source of law for the rational will, if the same fact of self-representation were true for all rational beings. Kant cannot at this point show that the principle is objective, and directs us to proceed while regarding it as a postulate. So more questions. Why is it obvious that we do so represent ourselves? Why must all rational beings represent themselves in the way we do in order for what is (already) a subjective principle for us to be an objective principle for us (and not just for us)? And why does Kant draw back from making the claim about all rational beings, marking it off as a postulate, the argument for which has to wait until Groundwork III (G, 4:429n)? One thing to flag is that “subjective” in this and related passages does not seem to direct us to think about what individual human agents will (what I will versus what you will), but rather speaks to the conditions and scope of a practical principle: a principle is subjective if it holds of a subject or class of subjects because of what they are like, and not because of their rational natures.12 The principle of happiness is just such a subjective principle for human beings. Kant says that, necessarily, humans desire happiness and have it as an end  – something they actively seek. Because they are self-conscious agents, they represent themselves to themselves as happiness-seekers. In fact, you could not have happiness as an end if you were not self-conscious, since happiness requires having the idea of one’s own life (as something that can go well or badly for you). Thus Kant speaks generically of “the human” and not “each human.” When Kant speaks of a maxim as a subjective principle of acting “determined by reason conformably with the conditions of the subject” (G, 4:421n), it is subjective not just because it is the principle of a subject, but also because it is not of necessity a practical law. It is a principle whose authority depends on the subject.

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This self-representation is the ground of a practical principle of self-love (CPrR, 5:22); it is so far a subjective principle of action because true of all human subjects. Now, even though in the pursuit of happiness reason is deployed, the principle of self-love is not an objective principle; the condition of application of the principle is human sensible nature: in seeking happiness we seek pleasure, avoid pain, and secure as we can the satisfaction of our inclinations. For this reason, not every rational being necessarily represents its existence as happiness-seeking.13 But exactly what representation of its existence is it that the human being necessarily has that is even a candidate representation that all rational beings have, and have on the same rational grounds? Kant seems just to assume that we already know that the human being necessarily represents its existence as an end in itself. So what is it that we know? Curiously, in the extensive literature on this passage, the answer is often regarded as providing the means to bridge a moral gap between self and other:  something about the way we think about ourselves has implications for how we must treat others. The idea is something like this. Each of us regards him or herself to be of value as a person – not of value to this or that related other or for this or that purpose, but of value in ourselves (we matter; our lives matter). One therefore regards oneself and one’s doings as a source of claims on others. We also know that others have the same grounds for so regarding themselves and for making the same kind of claim. We thereby, and reciprocally, establish our common moral status. The responsive challenge is swift: why should it follow from the fact that I cannot represent myself as having only relative or conditional value (and why can’t I do that?), and even recognize that others cannot either (and must I do that?), that we have the same moral status, as opposed to, for example, each of us having a fixed thought about ourselves?14 I may make a claim, but what makes it a valid one? The answer matters both for understanding Kant’s argument and for any principle of action that is supposed to come from such self-representations. It is one thing to recognize a common pattern of thought, quite another for it to amount to common moral status. More needs to be said to give us reasons to respect others in action and choice. One need not be a sensible being to have a life that goes well or badly. Lucifer’s “life” presumably went badly. It is the dependence on sensibility that makes the principle of happiness subjective. For a challenging discussion of non-sensible pleasure and pure rational agency, see Elizondo (2010). 14 This is the view of the argument Bernard Williams elicits and then criticizes in Williams (1986: 56–57). 13

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Two interpretive counters are made to deepen the first move; both rely on the fact of our end-setting. Persons don’t just happen to regard ­themselves as of value; they set ends, and in end-setting there is something that has practical implications for others. How so? One approach involves bootstrapping value into the ends. What starts out as of value to me (getting food or fame), becomes at least prima facie of value per se when chosen as an end (my dinner, my blog). Choice moves something from the status of object of a need or want to the status of value, and so to something that is, at least prima facie, a source of reasons for others. To choose is to declare good. A second approach takes having an end – the fact that something is the object of one’s choice – to be (directly) the source of a principle of action for others. It is not the value (or imputed value) of the end that is reason-giving, but the fact that it is of value to the agent whose end it is. It might even be tempting to say that through end-setting, an agent makes her rational nature actual. Her ends are not just goals she seeks, but expressions of her rational nature in the world. As such, she deserves respect from other persons.15 It is hard to see how either approach could bridge the gap between taking-myself or taking-my-ends to be a source of reasons (or value) and being a source of reasons (or value). Each starts with a feature of the way human beings will: we adopt ends. It then appeals to some attitude we have, that we must have, given the feature:  either that our end is of value and so worthy of respect (i.e. a source of at least prima facie reasons to promote or preserve), or that we, in adopting ends, are of value and ­worthy of respect. Since the value to be secured has to be present even if the ends set are unworthy or even bad, the ends can’t be its source (for some ends, we wouldn’t want to say that they gave rise even to prima facie reasons). If, on the other hand, it is the agent’s power of end-setting that is of value (indeed, of absolute value), independent of its realization in specific ends, why would that be reflected in respect for ends set? Even if the power is the condition of our taking things to be of value or of our taking the power itself to be of value, it does not simply fall out of the nature of its activity that it is of value in itself and so to be valued in its activity (not even as a necessary condition of good willing  – we cannot just assume backwards transitivity). It seems to me unlikely that any argument of this form can succeed.

Christine Korsgaard (1996b) seems to combine the two, with greater emphasis on the second. Problems with the first approach are discussed at greater length in Herman (2007a).

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I would suggest that the source of the difficulty is the assumption that the argument at G, 4:428 is intended to bridge a gap between self and other, between subjective valuing and objective value, or to show that because ends have rational nature as their necessary condition, what is a reason for me because valued by me is ipso facto a reason for you (if not because what is valued is valuable, then because it is valued by a rational nature). There is not much indication, here or elsewhere, that Kant sees the theoretical gap between subjective and objective principle in this way.16 What Kant says is that “the human being” representing herself as an end in herself is a source of only a subjective principle; to get to an objective principle will require the arguments of Groundwork III in order to show that something that is the case for us is also the case for all rational beings. There is a gap, just not a normative gap between persons, but a metaphysical gap between the human and other possible rational natures. So let’s return to the set-up of 428–29. There, we noted, Kant sought an end in itself as something that could provide the anchor for categorical regulation of volition  – that is, without appeal to subjective conditions or other ends. Rational nature as an end in itself is introduced as an end (the sole end) that could do that. With this in mind, we should read the question that comes with 428 more literally: what in the human being’s representation of her existence is (or could be) the same for all rational beings and can be the anchor for an objective principle of action/volition? If the self-representation that is a necessary feature of our rational natures is true for all rational beings, and if it is the source of a principle of volition, then the categorical imperative represents an objective principle or law of the rational will. The first and most obvious feature of our self-representation as it bears on this question is that we regard ourselves as active and rational. As active, we view ourselves as agents of ends we adopt, and as rational, we see our activity with respect to these ends as tied to evaluative judgments, or practical cognition about the good. We judge our actions successful as they produce the states of affairs that match our ends; we judge them correct or good when they satisfy rational standards of choice. Typically, we act to bring about objects that meet our needs or promote our interests; we engage instrumentally with the world (animate and inanimate) to realize our ends. The objects, the inclinations, the means, are of relative and 16

Of course to say that there is no theoretical gap is not to say that there is no gap in practice. It’s rather that the practical gap doesn’t generate a philosophical problem. Rational nature as an end in itself even-handedly gives rise to duties to self and to others.

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conditional value – relative and conditional, that is, with respect to our self-conscious activity. Material ends as such have no authority over our will. If I want food, or fame, then there are things I would need to do to be successful. But I needn’t take either the reasons for action or the source of the reasons as necessitating. By contrast, Kant thinks, my representation of myself as an active rational being is different:  in adopting ends and acting to bring them about, I also represent myself as acting from good and sufficient reasons, reasons that reflect my judgment of what is good about my action.17 In holding my reasons to be good and sufficient, I ­cannot also have reason to reject them. This is because they are, as we might say, my reason’s reasons. But that is to say that I regard the principles of my reasoning, the principles of my rational nature, as providing authoritative standards of correctness for action. And if I regard things that way, my rational nature is for me an end in itself. But why must I, why must the human being represent itself as an end in itself? Can’t we imagine a human being who didn’t represent her existence this way? Perhaps she represents herself as a mere means, or as a relative or conditional end (something that was a terminus of means, but of value only relative to something else, say a part in a whole):  God’s servant; a member of the army of whatever cause. Such a person in effect represents herself as subordinate to a source of reasons external to herself. Why can’t someone do that? Why can’t “the human being” do that? What necessity do we subvert if we suppose this possible? Of course we can and sometimes do represent ourselves as passive (a cog in a machine; a locus of systems of life support). However, when we represent ourselves as active, as making choices, even choices to subordinate our will to someone or something else, we represent ourselves as choosing (and then acting) as we judge appropriate. We regard our practical cognition as both final and sound: it is our judgment that determines what we choose, and we presume that we have (or that we could have) chosen well. Even the embrace of an exalted ideal for the direction of our life is subject to our judging that it is the way we should act: ideals cannot authorize themselves. So we do and we must take our practical cognition, our rational nature, to be the source of final and authorizing judgment. Not that we must think we can never be in error, but even our acknowledgment of error is subject to the authority of our own judgment. We therefore can conclude that insofar as the human being makes choices, 17

Imperatives, which are representations of objective principles of the will, in turn represent possible action either as good as a means to something else or as in itself good (G, 4:414).

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insofar as she is rational and active, she represents herself, her rational nature, as the ultimate authority for her actions  – that is, as an end in itself.18 This is the representation of its existence that “the human being” cannot evade. That still leaves the question whether our so representing ourselves might yet be a feature of human rational nature and not hold for other and all rational beings. If it is possible for a rational and active being not to find the authority for its choices in its reason, then what is a necessity for us would not be, as it seems it is to us, a necessity of rational nature. Rational nature would not then be an end in itself, and any principle we derive from our representation of our active nature would not have the authority of reason, and so not be a suitable ground for a categorical imperative. In a footnote at G, 4:429, Kant acknowledges the problem and defers the discussion of rational natures in general to the third part of the Groundwork, proposing in the meantime to regard the general claim that rational nature exists as an end in itself as a postulate. There may be all sorts of reasons why the argument for the truth of the postulate can’t be given here, but one obvious reason is that something about the concept of rational nature as an end in itself has yet to be explicated, and that it is a piece necessary for the argument. The missing piece is, we can assume, autonomy: “the concept of every rational being as one who must regard himself as giving universal law through all the maxims of his will, so as to appraise himself and his actions from this point of view” (G, 4:433).19 The standard of appraisal that comes with the idea of rational nature as an end in itself must be both individually self-legislated and applicable to all rational beings (each will giving universal law through its own maxims). Only so, Kant argues, could the categorical imperative (or its principle) be unconditional, “since it can have no interest as its basis” (G, 4:432) – that is, no subjective interest. That is we assume, as a postulate, that rational nature is an end in itself and that the grounds for this self-representation are the same in each and every (kind of) active rational being. Its principle provides a final and unconditional standard of appraisal for rational activity (and so, for maxims of a will). Insofar as the standard is unconditional, it is not dependent Of course other persons are equally final authorities for their actions, and presumptive authorities for activity in general. That is why the exposition of rational nature as an end in itself is one of the approaches to morality. 19 We should now find it natural that the sentence at 433 goes on to say that this concept “leads to a very fruitful concept dependent upon it, namely that of a kingdom of ends.” 18

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in its application on any contingent facts about her nature, on what she wills or her (subjective) interests, and, a fortiori, not applicable only to the agent’s own will. If its authority is final, it must have its seat in the agent’s own rational nature, for if the source of the standard were external to the agent (or her reason), she would have to be attached to it by some interest not itself subject to the standard, and the standard would then not be unconditional.20 It is the idea of rational natures as subordinate only to their own universal law-giving that puts Kant in position to defend the postulate in Groundwork III. When Kant returns to the question in Groundwork III, the terms have shifted, now to talk of the causality and so the freedom of will, but the challenge he takes up is the same. Here is the key paragraph: It is not enough that we ascribe freedom to our will on whatever ground, if we do not have sufficient ground for attributing it also to all rational beings … [I]t [freedom] must be proved to belong to the activity of all beings whatever that are rational and endowed with a will … Now I assert that to every rational being having a will we must necessarily lend the idea of freedom also, under which alone he acts. For in such a being we think of a reason that is practical, that is, has a causality with respect to its objects. Now, one cannot possibly think of a reason that would consciously receive direction from any other quarter with respect to its judgments, since the subject would then attribute the determination of his judgment not to reason but to an impulse. Reason must regard itself as the author of its principles independently of alien influences. (G, 4:448)

It seems obvious that although the talk is about freedom and independence of the will from alien influences, Kant is continuing the discussion of rational natures as ends in themselves, aiming to show that we do in fact have warrant for holding that all rational natures with a will necessarily represent themselves as authoritative and final causes of their volitions, that is, as autonomous ends in themselves. What we learned from Groundwork II is that combining the concept of rational nature as an end in itself and the principle of the formula of universal law, we can derive the idea of autonomy – the idea of the will of a rational being as under a universal law that it gives to itself. The first paragraphs of Groundwork III pick up the idea of the rational will as a cause and connect freedom of the will and autonomy of the will as reciprocal concepts. So if, as in the above-quoted paragraph, we cannot think of a “Thus the principle of every human will as a will giving universal law through all its maxims, provided it is otherwise correct, would be very well suited to be the categorical imperative by this: that just because of the idea of giving universal law it is based on no interest and therefore, among all possible imperatives, can alone be unconditional ” (G, 4:432).

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rational will as a cause that receives its determination from anywhere else than itself (for then it would belong to the domain of impulse and efficient causality), we cannot think of any rational will as not autonomous, or, therefore, as not representing itself, its rational nature, as an end in itself. As Kant puts it, we therefore have warrant to “lend” the idea we necessarily have of ourselves as active and rational to rational natures in general. The threat that we might not be able to say of rational nature in general what we say of our own rational nature is then abated. This does not show that the will of any rational being is free – there remains the hard question of the spontaneity of reason or pure self-activity (G, 4:452) – or explain the kind of non-empirical or objective interest we might have in our freedom, but it does show that there is no gap between how we regard ourselves and how we must regard the nature of all rational natures. So in regarding our own will as free, or as autonomous, the subjective principle we ascribe to our active rational nature can be regarded as an objective principle, for us and for all rational natures with a will.21 This completes the argument that rational nature as an end in itself is the (objective) ground of the supreme practical principle. III What does all of this mean for the formula of humanity? Once we have the theoretical elements of the argument in place, it is clear that the formula of humanity is, as Kant says it is, just another formulation of the one moral law, equivalent in its normative import to the formula of universal law. To treat a person as an end in herself is to act, with respect to her, only on maxims that can be willed a universal law; we treat her merely as a means when we don’t. For those who find in the formula of humanity Kant’s deepest moral insight, this austere conclusion will seem to come at a great cost. I think that, to the contrary, the austere conclusion makes sense of the formula and secures its place as a distinctive source of moral insight. To see why, it will be best, once again, to proceed slowly. As an end in herself, a rational being regards herself and is to be regarded as the final source of authoritative practical judgment for her actions. She also (thereby) regards herself and is to be regarded as giving (or capable of giving) universal law through all of her maxims. Entities 21

Or, as Kant puts it more delicately in a footnote, if we have no reason to think we are not free, and cannot act except under the idea of our freedom, then unless there is reason to regard the very idea of our freedom as impossible, the law of a free will is binding on us.

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we use for our purposes we treat as means (G, 4:427). Some entities we treat or use as means are called things: they are not a site of practical cognition and lack a rational will (G, 4:428). Some entities we treat or use as means are persons: they do have rational wills, and we make use of that power for our own purposes. To use another person as a means and at the same time as an end is to accept that the rational nature (the humanity) of the other that is made use of is an equal and equally final source of justificational authority for what you will.22 So when we make use of the humanity of another, we ought to be able to regard our maxim as one that could be co-willed by each of us. This is not to say that each must have an equal interest in the purpose of the action. Rather, the principle of action must be one that each can judge to be valid on the same rational grounds, and our maxim, our principle of action, should acknowledge and accept the conditions of co-willing.23 This condition is not satisfied when the principle of our action is one that cannot be willed a universal law (in that case, no one can judge it valid on rational grounds). It is also not satisfied when, in making use of another, we aim to block the possibility of fully reciprocal practical reasoning (as when we misrepresent the principle we act on or the facts that make it rational).24 And last, we go wrong when our maxims are not responsive to the general conditions necessary for ends in themselves to carry out their work (as when we neglect our talents or fail to take on the ends of others that bear on their ability to will and act rationally).25 Determining which actions are wrong, or which maxims fail to treat humanity as an end in itself, typically involves reference to conditions To treat humanity in yourself this way is to bind your choice to the final authority of rational nature. 23 We are here within a hair’s breadth of the idea of a kingdom of ends. 24 Kant says of the deceived person that she is unable to contain in herself the end (of the action). Under the interpretation given here, the end referred to is not merely the false promisor’s purpose (e.g. getting money), but the end as represented in the promisor’s maxim, which here involves the subordination of the rational nature of the deceived person to the subjective value of the promisor’s purpose. A false promise depends on the object of deceit being a person, a reasoner, but then refuses the person’s final authority over her own actions. It is this representation of herself that she cannot contain, since she necessarily represents herself as an end in herself. 25 Kant also speaks of promoting the ends of subjects who are ends in themselves (G, 4:430). How we stand to the happiness of others (or of ourselves, for that matter) is a large question. It is easy to see why we cannot be indifferent to the “true needs” of rational beings, and perhaps not hard to see why we have reason to promote the ends of others when those ends are objectively good (those ends are our ends, too). The difficult thing to work out is how we stand towards one another’s adventitious ends – the beach holiday, the piano lessons – except insofar as having and successfully pursuing some such ends is important to the health of our kind of rational nature. 22

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specific to human rational natures: that we are finite and vulnerable, that our thought is discursive and dependent on testimony in belief formation, and so on. Reference at this level to the nature of our rational nature is not a problem for the argument since, even if determinations of wrongness are specific to what human beings are like (and perhaps more local than that), the principle that accounts for wrongness is not. Under the formula of humanity, wrongness in acting is about failure to cede final authority in practical judgment to rational nature (usually for the sake of something one values as a subject). So even though there are no grounds for regarding the formula of humanity as offering a different array of requirements and permissions from those of the formula of universal law, it does offer a deeper understanding of what the formula of universal law requires, and so of the kinds of duties and obligations we will have as ends in ourselves. In shifting attention from the moral law to the persons who are its source, the formula of humanity makes vivid that in addition to the bare idea of universal law-giving, the subject matter of morality is principles of action and volition that are consistent with and protective of (our) rational nature as an end in itself.26 IV The goal of the Groundwork argument is realized in the articulation of the formulas of the moral law by means of which we find out (a) what the nature of moral requirement is; (b) what an agent must be like in order to be under such requirement; and (c) the demonstration that the moral law is in fact an authoritative principle of the will of active rational natures. Although in the course of the argument we learn a great deal about morality and rational agency, and something about our duties and obligations, it is not until the elements of the Groundwork are further developed in the Critique of Practical Reason and the practical accounts of right and virtue in the Metaphysics of Morals that the full shape of Kant’s ethics becomes clear. In this last section, I want to point out just a few of the parts of the fuller moral theory that connect with the notion of objective ends we have been examining. They show how the shift to

One nice consequence of uncovering the subject matter of morality is a partial solution to the action-description problem. We can now say that maxims must represent actions in terms that connect with the way we are engaging with and valuing rational nature in pursuit of our ends.

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an ­end-anchored Kantian ethics affects the angle of comparison with ­theories of virtue. By the time we reach the second Critique, Kant replaces talk about motive with the language of determining grounds of the will. It’s not a change in view, but a shift in focus to the idea of reason having causality with respect to its objects. If reason is, as Groundwork III tells us it must be, sufficient to determine the will, it must have its own object; it cannot be merely regulative with respect to objects of our sensible and interested nature. And since the will is autonomous, the object can only be reason or rational nature as an end in itself. We saw the first moments of an account of the ends of reason in the third and fourth examples under the formulas of universal law and of humanity. It is developed in the second part of the Metaphysics of Morals in terms of obligatory ends (for human beings), ends of our own perfection and the happiness (rational well-being) of others. These are ends we have by virtue of being rational natures; they can be thought of as reflecting the interests of reason in us (MM, 6:395).27 Obligatory ends set norms (further specified by imperfect duties) responsive to the conditions of human rational agency: in all of our action we are to be attentive to such facts about us that our reasoning is discursive, fact- and testimonydependent, that we are embodied and sensibly affected, desiderative and finite, and although metaphysically individual, not isolated in either our sensible or our rational activities. So it is an interest of reason that we develop and refine our rational abilities (as well as the nonrational perceptual and imaginative skills on which they depend), discipline our desires so that they become reason-responsive, and pursue projects and activities, work and relationships, in ways that enhance rather than detract from realizing sound practical judgment. It is equally in reason’s interest, in each human being’s interest as a reasoning being, that others not reason badly. Defective reasoning in another can be to our advantage, narrowly understood, but that is no more an interest of reason than bad science can be of interest to a scientist, though it too may be to the scientist’s advantage, narrowly understood. Human reasoning is immediately located in individuals, but qua human reason it is not; the reasoning of each depends on the reasoning of others, and might even, in an extended sense, be thought as a possession of the species. We sometimes reason together; when something is shown by reason Talk of reason’s object or interests feels awkward but is ultimately no more peculiar than talk about the objects of desire or the interests of appetite. No more peculiar, that is, once we forgo the idea that reason’s contribution to action is merely instrumental.

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it is demonstrated by this or that reasoning person, but it is a result of reason for all persons. Together the obligatory ends set a complete framework within which we are to adopt discretionary ends and activities: in that way they delimit the rational form for a human life, filling out our self-conception as ends in ourselves. The effect is not a requirement that all lives look the same; it is a requirement that all choices meet the dual standard of consistency with universal law-giving and fit with obligatory ends. So, for example, if all work and no play made us dull, cramped, and self-absorbed, we would be living in a way that inhibits sound practical cognition. We might not, as a result, be alert to need we could meet, or notice the harms that we passively allow, or the damage we do to others because we lack the practical poise a less restricted life would have enabled. There is no set way we should change things; that is in obvious ways for each to judge for herself; but the injunction to change is a requirement of reason, applicable to anyone in the same condition. Although our choices are under the final authority of our own rational nature, the standard of reason is not a standard that is up to us. It should not be surprising that the full account of obligatory ends frames a doctrine (a Lehre or teaching) of virtue. Acting under the authority of obligatory ends and the imperfect duties they support, a life gains a certain shape, substantial self-consciousness about choice and justification, and guidance for the development of the cognitive faculties and affective capacities needed for sound judgment and action. There is thus, in Kant, as in many traditional virtue theories, a holism of the moral. The development of the moral capacities and abilities depends on their exercise across a wide array of choices and circumstances. And because morality is not possible for individuals in isolation, as with the Aristotelian phronimos, the existence conditions for a morally good person involve sound political institutions.28 And in Kantian, as in Aristotelian, theory the source of the holism of the moral lies in the object of pure practical reason – the good – as specified in ends and principles of action suited for the condition of human rational beings. As I noted earlier, one of the most attractive features of virtue theory is that normative directives for action involve motivation: it matters how a person comes to an action, how she understands herself acting, what her In the Metaphysics of Morals, the conditions of sound political life precede the discussion of virtue.

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ends are, what the fit of doing this is with other things that matter, how her action is a moment of human excellence. One of the least attractive features of Kantian ethics is the motive of duty, a psychological state of obedience to a rule – duty for its own sake – without connection to what matters to persons. But if Kantian moral motivation is the reasonguided self-determination of the form we’ve described, that picture of the motive of duty cannot be right. The motive is not a psychological state of obedience; its relation to moral requirement involves adherence to a common rational standard of deliberative correctness for action and ends. Rather than talking about rule-following or obedience to duty, action that is morally motivated – having its causal source in an agent’s self-conception as a rational and active being  – is better described in the language of self-expression or self-realization for our kind of rational being. It makes sense to say that action so motivated exhibits an excellence of reason, an excellence, it should be noted, whose expression goes beyond our own nature: to be motivated to act morally is, in the broadest sense, to be moved to give rational form to the world that action can effect (CPrR, 5:43). Last, we might ask, what about the good of the agent acting? Do we find in Kantian moral action, as we do in many accounts of the virtues, a concern for the good of the agent? Although there is a certain sort of personal interest in the moral that Kantian theory devalues (think of self-righteousness), quite another, a rational interest, is prized. And while we should not care about the moral for the sake of our well-being, well-being is not at all a matter of indifference to morality, given its subject matter. We act in a way and for what we take to be responsive to rational standards; if we get it right, and if the world is reasonably friendly to us, then we can not only expect the good we aim for, it is fitting that we succeed. Kant calls this condition the highest good. V Where does this leave the comparison between Kantian and virtue ethics? There is no grand conclusion to be drawn from this discussion. Its chief purpose was to explore an end-anchored interpretation of Kant’s ethics, and to use that interpretation to build out the ethics in terms congenial to the ambitions of virtue theory. The last section made a start at showing where they might make common cause. Especially once we factor in obligatory ends, differences at the level of practice, and even of moral

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self-conception, are not likely to be great. Differences about theoretical foundations are another matter. On the Kant side of things, the theoretical foundation is necessary to the practice. Without rational nature as an end in itself, final and authoritative for us as free agents, there could be no doctrine of virtue. Whether theories of virtue can get along without some such foundations is, I think, an important question to ask.

Ch apter 5

Two pictures of practical thinking Talbot Brewer

I   I n t roduc t ion In her influential attack on “modern moral philosophy” Elizabeth Anscombe writes, “If someone professes to be expounding Aristotle and talks in a modern fashion about ‘moral’ such-and-such he must be very imperceptive if he does not constantly feel like someone whose jaws have somehow got out of alignment: the teeth don’t come together in a proper bite.”1 One of the principal sources of the sense of misalignment that Anscombe so vividly describes is that Aristotelian ethics is keyed to a conception of the nature and proper tasks of practical thinking that differs strikingly from the conception that frames Kantianism and most other positions in modern philosophical ethics. On the Aristotelian view, the most ethically valuable sort of practical thinking is a continuous activity that accompanies and completes those activities it guides and that forms an essential constituent of those activities. Modern theorists, by contrast, tend to picture practical thinking as a discrete and occasional process that precedes and initiates action. We can neither arrive at a full appreciation of the ethical thought of the ancients, nor offer a complete account of ethical excellence in practical thought, unless we begin by retrieving the unfamiliar conception of practical thinking that frames Aristotle’s inquiry into ethics. This essay is intended as a sketch of some of the main contours and consequences of this project of conceptual retrieval. I I T h e mode r n pic t u r e of pr ac t ic a l r e a s on If we wish to know how ethical theorists conceive of the practical thought with which their discipline is concerned, we might reasonably begin by This essay includes portions of chs. 2, 3, and 4 of Brewer (2009). This material reappears here with the permission of the original publisher. 1 Anscombe (1981: 26).

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looking at the cases that they use to explain and assess their own normative views and those of their rivals. Few such cases are better known than the four that Kant sketched in the Groundwork to illustrate the implications of the Categorical Imperative. Each portrays an agent who has arrived at a conception of his circumstances and wishes to know whether a certain action or omission is permissible given these circumstances (G, 4:422–23).2 The most prominent works of contemporary ethical theory are replete with cases that share this basic template. An anthropologist has wandered into a South American village and is told by a local strongman that he must either kill one of twenty innocent prisoners or stand by while all twenty prisoners are gunned.3 A lawyer is in possession of a secret yet legally binding will that would redirect her recently deceased client’s vast wealth from worthwhile medical research to the pockets of a worthless nephew and must decide whether to dispose of the will or redirect the funds.4 A grown daughter must decide whether to ask doctors to keep her unconscious mother on life support for yet another year or to withdraw treatment and let her mother die.5 The driver of a runaway trolley car finds himself bearing down on five people tied to the track and must decide whether to save the lives of these five people by diverting the trolley onto a second track to which one person is tied.6 Yet another run-away trolley car is bearing down on five people tied to the track and a bystander must decide whether to push a fat man into the path of the train, killing him to stop the train and save the lives of the five.7 A quick perusal of this list of cases will certainly leave one hoping fervently not to end up in the starkly catastrophic terrain of a moral theorist’s thought experiment, and for the most part we do somehow manage to avoid such predicaments. More tellingly, even when we do have the misfortune of facing such emergencies, we are unlikely to enjoy the clairvoyance about the future that is so blithely attributed to the protagonists of these brief fictions. This is a problematic supposition, one that can lend unearned plausibility to direct consequentialist pictures of the ­ethical proprieties of practical reasoning. But in this essay I will explore a more fundamental difficulty with these cases. The problem is that in their narrative structure, they implicitly manifest a commitment to a partial and potentially misleading conception of practical thinking  – one that For abbreviations of Kant’s works and a list of translations of these works as used in this and other essays in this volume, see Abbreviations at the start of this volume. 3 Williams (1973: 98–99).  4  Korsgaard (1996c: 86). 5 Hursthouse (1999: 69). A similar case appears in Slote (1997: 259). 6 Foot (2002: 23).  7  Thomson (1976, 1985). 2

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provides an alien conceptual framework for understanding ancient writings on ethics and an unpromising beginning for working up an adequate ethical theory of our own. On the conception in question, practical thought can be represented without distortion or loss as occurring in a moment of stasis prior to action, taking as its input some representation of the circumstances at hand, and yielding some distinctively practical output – for instance, an action or intention that is deemed apt in prevailing circumstances, or a judgment concerning which intentions or actions would be apt in those circumstances. This conception of practical reason provides the basic narrative structure for the cases listed above. These cases begin with an agent who is aware that s/he is in circumstances with certain generically describable features, and they raise the question which generically describable action the agent ought to choose in light of the specified facts about the circumstances. By illustrating and assessing their moral theories with cases that adhere to this general narrative formula, moral theorists are tacitly assuming that all practical thinking – or, at least, all ethically significant practical thinking – can be represented in a way that makes clear its fundamental logical structure as a movement of thought from an achieved picture of prevailing circumstances to the initiation of an action (or perhaps to a judgment concerning what action it would make sense to perform in the pictured circumstances). Call this the modern view of practical reason. On the modern view, practical reasoning can be pictured without distortion or loss as a discrete and occasional process that occurs in the interval between two relatively well-defined temporal boundaries. What precedes and sets the stage for an episode of practical reasoning is the ongoing monitoring of one’s surroundings through which one arrives at a concrete conception of one’s circumstances. This temporal boundary constitutes a working interpretation of the philosophical thesis that reason has two modes of deployment, theoretical and practical, and that these two kinds of reasoning bear on action in very different ways. If mistakes are made in bringing one’s circumstances into view, these will ordinarily be errors of theoretical reasoning and not errors of practical reasoning.8 Of course, those who are not initiated in the jargon of post-Kantian philosophy are likely to regard “theoretical” as an overblown adjective for the continuous and usually effortless attentiveness by which we form and I say “ordinarily” here because the putative boundary must be crafted in such a way as to accommodate the possibility of morally culpable ignorance and negligence.

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revise beliefs about our changing circumstances. But the point of this jargon is to mark off a division between the sort of thinking that yields true beliefs about the way things are and the sort that yields practically efficacious judgments concerning what to do given how things are. The basic thought is that reasons for doing one thing rather than another are given by the features of our circumstances, hence that practical reason can make headway only after theoretical reason has supplied it with a working conception of the circumstances at hand. There is considerable perplexity about how best to picture the second temporal boundary of practical thinking. It is tempting to say that such thinking comes to its proper consummation with the initiation of an intentional action, yet on reflection it seems that an episode of practical reasoning can come to a successful culmination even without yielding an action. This happens, for instance, when we deliberate about what we would do in counterfactual circumstances, or about what others who are in some ways unlike us ought to do in various circumstances. Indeed, this is precisely the sort of deliberation called forth by the above-listed thought experiments. It would be counterintuitive to deny that such deliberation is practical, since it seems to involve just the sort of thinking we would engage in if we found ourselves in the circumstances specified by these thought experiments. At any rate, the ethical theorists who use such cases are committed to categorizing such thinking as practical, since otherwise these cases would not yield intuitive practical judgments against which to test their theories. Still, even if reasoning can count as practical without actually resulting in action, intentional action is generally taken to be the paradigmatic upshot of practical thinking. There would be no such thing as practical thought if thinking did not sometimes culminate in intentional action. In more exact terms, the paradigmatic culmination of an episode of practical deliberation is generally taken to be the adoption of an intention to act rather than the actual initiation of an intentional action. To see why this slight emendation is necessary, consider that if one has deliberately adopted a laudable intention but is prevented from putting it into effect by obstacles external to the will (perhaps one has been secretly injected with a paralytic agent), one’s failure does not itself reveal a defect in one’s practical thinking. Conversely, if one deliberately forms a malicious intention yet is prevented by external circumstances from acting upon it (here again, imagine a secretly injected paralytic agent), one’s reasoning has gone just as badly as if the intention had been put into effect. In general we can neither reconstruct nor reliably assess the deliberation

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lying behind an action until we understand the intention on which the action was performed. For instance, if someone intentionally fires a gun and thereby unintentionally shoots a friend, it makes no sense to ask what the agent regarded as a sufficient reason for shooting a friend, though it makes perfect sense to ask why the agent thought it acceptable to fire the gun. The intention incorporates the picture of the action under which the agent deemed it justifiable, hence the intention is suited to play the role of the conclusion of a line of justificatory thinking. On the modern picture of practical thinking, then, paradigmatic cases of practical deliberation come to an end with the adoption of an intention. It must be stressed, however, that the adoption of an intention to perform some action cannot possibly bring to an end the practical thought that lies behind that action unless the intention’s object is entirely nonevaluative. After all, an intention to perform a brave action or to write a good book will yield a determinate action only when conjoined with an understanding of what counts as bravery or literary excellence, and arriving at such an understanding requires a further stretch of thinking. Since the role of this further thinking is to arrive at a determinate and practically efficacious (i.e. action-guiding) picture of what exactly it makes sense to do, it must surely be counted as practical rather than theoretical. If one held otherwise, it would be hard to avoid the disastrous conclusion that one could instantaneously complete one’s lifelong task of practical reasoning simply by adopting the intention to live a good life, leaving only the theoretical task of determining what a good life consists in. Hence if practical reasoning is to be regarded as a discrete and occasional process rather than as a continuous activity, there is strong pressure to suppose that it paradigmatically culminates in the adoption of an intention whose object is a purely non-evaluative description of some action type (or perhaps of some state of affairs that one’s actions might be calculated to bring about). This seemingly innocuous picture of the logical form of practical reason goes hand-in-hand with an allied picture of what a successful normative ethical theory would consist in, if there could be such a thing. Such a theory would set out the ethical norms that govern practical reasoning, and it would seek to shed light on the authority of these norms. Since the task of practical reason is to move from generic descriptions of circumstances to non-evaluative descriptions of the actions justified by the circumstances so conceived, the task of normative ethical theory must be to inquire into the justificatory connections between types of circumstances and types of actions. Thought experiments of the sort set out above are designed

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precisely to elicit intuitions about these justificatory connections. On this picture, the substantive content of morality can be captured in the form of general principles specifying what kinds of actions can and cannot be done, morally speaking, in what kinds of circumstances.9 In the words of one prominent theorist, a complete moral theory would be “a system of general principles of moral evaluation that, when combined with the relevant bits of specific information, generated accurate overall moral verdicts about particular actions.”10 This is a widely accepted view of what a successful moral theory would be like, if there could be such a thing.11 It is the predominant view not only among partisans of normative ethical theory but also among its opponents. There are, for instance, growing numbers of “particularists” who reject the possibility of normative moral theory on the ground that the moral proprieties of practical reasoning cannot be captured in tractable and invariant principles. Particularists often attempt to make their case by showing that certain properties that might seem to have invariant reason-giving force in fact shift their justificatory valence in some imaginable circumstance. It is said, for instance, that prospective pleasures ordinarily count in favor of the actions that produce them, but that the fact that one would take sadistic pleasure in causing another to suffer is an additional reason not to do it. By arguing in this way, the particularist tacitly accepts the background notion that the task of practical reason is to move from a representation of one’s circumstances to a conclusion concerning what is to be done in those circumstances.12 This is a serious misstep, since this picture of practical thought stacks the deck in favor of generalism. Once we accept this picture, it is hard to resist the generalist conclusion that any complete or intention-yielding episode of practical reasoning implicitly commits the reasoner to a general practical principle to the effect that the circumstances believed to obtain are sufficient warrant for the type of action intended. After all, we can hardly begin deliberation with an ostensive specification of the particular circumstances that For affirmations of this conception of moral reasons and their relation to principles, see Hare (1963), chs. 2 and 3; Ross (1939: 146); Scanlon (1998: 73–74, 197–202); and Singer (1971: 13–15). 10 Scheffler (1992: 39). 11 One could find many theorists who explicitly affirm this conception of ethical theory. Here are two: Hare (1963: 1–4, 89); Kamm (1998: 7). 12 Sometimes the acceptance of this picture is made quite explicit. For instance, one of the most influential contemporary particularists, Jonathan Dancy (2004), writes, “If I have some duty to do this action, there must be some feature of the situation that makes it so. If in some more general way I ought to do it, still there must be some feature of the situation that makes it so” (33). Elsewhere Dancy (1993) writes, “To justify one’s choice is to give the reasons one sees for making it, and to give those reasons is just to lay out how one sees the situation” (113).  9

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happen to prevail, since such a starting point would sweep in features of the circumstances of which one is wholly unaware, and one clearly is not premising one’s practical judgment on these features. One must begin from the circumstances as one is construing them, and any construal of the circumstances could in principle be an apt construal of another possible circumstance differing only in features of which one is unaware. Nor can one’s deliberation yield an intention with a demonstrative rather than a descriptive content – e.g. an intention to do this (next) action. The role of intention is to guide the production of a temporally extended action; hence its content cannot be fixed by the contours of the particular action it ends up yielding. Given the picture of deliberation tacitly accepted by particularists, it is hard to see how one can avoid the generalist conclusion that practical reasoning must run from a generic representation of the circumstances to a generic representation of a possible action. Nor can one coherently regard such reasoning as justified without committing oneself at least to a ceteris paribus principle according to which actions of the kind intended are justified in circumstances of the kind apprehended. This path of reflection bolsters the Kantian contention that all actions are performed on subjective principles of action, or maxims.13 In his influential lectures on Kant, John Rawls maintains that maxims contain a generic description of the action under which it seems worthwhile, and a generic description of the circumstances and purposes that seem to justify the action.14 To act on a maxim is to make the practical judgment that the circumstances and purposes (which might include previously adopted plans and intentions) specified by the maxim are sufficient justification for actions of the type specified by the maxim. For the Kantian, maxims form the focal element of explicit episodes of practical deliberation and the proper target of assessments of actions. An action can justifiably be performed if its maxim is universalizable. Maxims also play a vital role in Kantian action theory, explaining the sense in which we are active in those bodily motions that count as actions. Agents and actions come into view together when we interpret a conscious being as taking some set of circumstances to be sufficient reason for a performance of some type. Actions, then, are born of exercises of practical reason, and these always take the form of the adoption of a maxim and the simultaneous acceptance of the picture implicit in that maxim of the justificatory Kant introduces the notion of maxims of action in Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (G, 4:401, 420). 14 Rawls (1999); see especially 497–99. 13

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relation between generic features of circumstances and types of actions.15 The modern picture of practical reason, then, might fairly be called the Kantian picture, though it has by now been adopted by most contemporary action theorists and ethicists. If it is mistaken, then there is reason to rethink the conceptual underpinnings not only of Kantian ethics but also of many of its contemporary rivals. I I I Di a l e c t ic a l ac t i v i t y a n d pr ac t ic a l t h i n k i ng Sometimes practical deliberation ends with the initiation of a temporally extended activity that the agent regards as intrinsically valuable. Certain of these activities have a self-unveiling or dialectical character, in the sense that engagement in them yields a further stretch of understanding of the goods internal to them, hence of what counts as a proper mode of engagement in them, and thereby prepares the way for another more adequate engagement. These dialectical activities are accompanied and carried forward by a continuous straining to gain a clearer view of the intrinsic value that the activity at its best can realize. This sort of thought is decidedly practical. When it goes well, it yields a clearer picture of how best to carry forward with the activity, and it inspires a further stretch of activity that answers to this picture. Attaining a grasp of the intrinsic value of an activity is not the same as attaining a grasp of the reason-giving force of one’s circumstances. It directs one’s practical attention to what one is doing rather than to ­anything that might naturally be called the circumstances in which one is doing it. For this reason, if one attempts to shoehorn this sort of thinking into the conceptual framework offered by the modern picture of practical thinking, one ends up with a severely distorted account of it – or so I will argue below. If this argument is on target, then the modern view does not provide us with a comprehensive understanding of how thought makes itself practical. This would present no problem for those ethical theories that are conditioned on the modern view if the practical thinking it overlooks were ethically inconsequential. I hope to show, however, that this sort of thinking can be ethically better or worse, and that this dimension of ethical excellence in practical thinking is systematically neglected by While this view is, I think, accepted by most contemporary Kantians and Kant scholars, Allen Wood seems to suggest – though with little elaboration or textual evidence – that it is a mistaken reading of Kant. On Wood’s view, it is possible for desires to induce us to act contrary to our own maxims, and this need not imply that we have adopted some other, contrary maxim. See Wood (1999: 52).

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contemporary ethical theorists because of their tacit or explicit acceptance of the modern view of practical thinking. The notion of a dialectical activity is unfamiliar enough that it will help to begin our exploration of it with an example that readers will presumably find familiar:  philosophical thought. Those who throw themselves into the pursuit of philosophy have no choice but to do so without a full understanding of what the activity calls for (that is, of what would count as an ideally good mode of engagement in it). There is no other possibility, since a developed sense of what counts as good philosophy is itself a high philosophical achievement. Further, it is not the sort of achievement that is ever finally secured or possessed, since there is always room for further clarification or deeper understanding. Under propitious conditions – that is, with the right motivations, the right capacities, the right environment, the right conversational partners, etc. – our first and still halting attempts to philosophize can begin to open our eyes to the goods realizable in philosophy, bringing into progressively clearer focus the initially obscure object of whatever desire might have induced us to give it a try. I choose the example of philosophy only because readers will find it familiar, and not because activities that are dialectical in the sense I have specified are the peculiar province of the philosopher. Dialectical activities are a familiar part of most human lives. Whenever we undertake to kindle a friendship, initiate an intimate love relationship, parent a child, start up a conversation with an intriguing stranger, take a walk in the woods, read a book, explore some foreign land, or deepen our appreciation of an unfamiliar genre of music, we are initiating an activity whose value cannot be grasped with perfect lucidity from the outset, but can only be clarified by attentive engagement in the activity itself. If our engagement goes well, it provides us with a clearer sense of the point of the activity and hence of what would count as a fully satisfactory engagement in the activity. All of these activities, and many more beside them, count as dialectical in the sense at hand.16 Indeed, while my argument requires only the premise that some activities are dialectical, there is considerable appeal to the thesis that all intrinsically valuable human activities are dialectical. It is, after all, hard to see how one could possibly gain a full appreciation of the intrinsic value of some activity (as opposed 16

This is particularly obvious in the case of activities that we improvise jointly with other people, such as conversations or friendships or love affairs, since carrying them forward requires that we interpret and respond to another’s sense of their point or value, as manifest in the other’s words and deeds.

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to conceptually independent goods such as sensory pleasure that might emerge as a by-product of some activity) except by engaging in the activity and gaining firsthand experience of that value. After all, the value of these diverse activities does not seem to lie in some abstract property that could be seen “from the outside” to belong to them. If we run through the list of human activities that are widely regarded as intrinsically good – for example, contemplative thought, convivial conversation among friends, the creation or appreciation of artwork, athletic competition, mountain climbing, intimate sex  – they do not seem to have any common properties whose confirmed presence would convey their value to those who have not experienced them. Nor does it seem possible for an activity to be complex and interesting enough to count as intrinsically valuable yet transparent enough that beginners can fully appreciate the nature and value of its highest possibilities. To return to the main thread of the argument, suppose it is accepted that practical thinking does not grind to a halt when temporally extended activities are initiated. How might we account for this continuous sort of thinking while remaining within the modern view of practical reason? On one approach, temporally extended courses of action and modes of activity are launched by intentions or plans that specify a state of affairs to be produced, and continuous course corrections are made with an eye to the efficient production of that state of affairs. This approach preserves an episodic picture of the practical deliberation that yields intentions while allowing for a second, more continuous sort of practical thinking that makes whatever course corrections are necessary to effect these intentions. Still, this view has no place for the distinctive sort of practical thinking that accompanies and carries forward dialectical activities. This latter sort of thinking gives rise to alterations in one’s unfolding activities, but it would not be natural to call these “course corrections” since this phrase would imply that one already has a clear idea of the end to which one seeks a sensible course. The mid-stream adjustments characteristic of dialectical activity are changes in one’s idea of one’s end. Since the end is not a state of affairs to be brought about but the activity itself in its best and highest form, what changes is one’s sense of what exactly one is doing and what it would mean to do it well. It will be pointed out that the intentions we adopt sometimes control subsequent deliberation by inducing us to arrive at a more specific formulation of their object. For instance, if one intends to get some exercise and an opportunity arises to plan a weekly jog with a friend, one might specify the content of one’s previously rather vague plan by adopting the

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intention to jog weekly with this friend. This sort of deliberation can be accommodated within the modern picture of practical deliberation in a relatively straightforward way, by counting one’s existing plans and intentions among the circumstances that can justify the adoption of a new intention (or, as in this case, a more specific version of an existing intention).17 Further, it seems in general that there is practical reason to act in accordance with those purposes one has already adopted, since a wholesale failure to do so would spell one’s dissolution as an agent. Still, this sort of deliberation is wholly unlike the sort of deliberation that carries forward dialectical activities, since one’s deliberative gaze is directed towards opportunities presented by changing circumstances for the specific enactment of vague intentions. One could specify an intended end in this way even before one has begun to act on the intention, as in the above example. The refinement of the intention need not be guided by a deepening sense of the intrinsic value of the intended activity. Indeed, the intended activity could be seen as having a merely instrumental value. By contrast, the sort of practical thinking that deepens and extends dialectical activities is directed at the activity itself and focuses on arriving at a more tenable picture of the intrinsic goodness latent in the activity, hence of what would count as a full and proper engagement in it. The idea of specification, then, is inadequate to the task of displaying the unity of temporally extended dialectical activities. As just shown, it encompasses forms of ongoing thought that are not dialectical. Moreover, it omits certain key instances of dialectical thought. An example is the sort of lifelong quest described by Augustine in his Confessions. It will hardly do to hold that the life of religious devotion is merely a more specific version of the guiding project that steered a younger Augustine to brothels and philosophy seminars. In Augustine’s eyes, at least, it sprang from a clearer apprehension of the indistinctly perceived objects of these prior longings. Furthermore, even in those cases where the moments of a dialectical activity can be counted as successive specifications of an initially vague intention, this conceptual framework leaves out the more fine-toothed practical thinking that determines why the activity ends up taking one and not another of the many specific forms that it might have 17

In fact, this possibility is explicitly accommodated in the Kantian notion of a maxim, at least on Rawls’s reconstruction of it. As noted above, Rawls holds that there is a placeholder in Kantian maxims for the purpose for which an action is performed, and this purpose might naturally be regarded as an existing plan or intention which, in combination with (other) prevailing circumstances, provides sufficient reason to adopt and act on some other, more specific intention. It is not obvious that all action, or even all morally relevant action, will be chosen in order to serve a purpose. Yet certainly some actions will be.

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taken. Experience with dialectical activities sometimes seems to make one’s aspirations deeper and more discerning rather than merely more specific. This seemingly laudable sort of evolution in practical thinking cannot be captured in the language of specification. For instance, if one progresses from the activity of counting blades of grass to counting those blades of grass that are longer than one’s thumb, one’s sense of how to carry forward with one’s activity has become more specific but it seems not to have become deeper or more discerning. Without some further story, there is no temptation here to speak of a growth in practical understanding or wisdom. By contrast, someone who has never been in a genuine friendship and who has only a vague “outsider’s” understanding of the value of friendship might nonetheless begin to spend time with another person, perhaps to avoid feelings of loneliness that already involve an inchoate intimation of the possible value of human intimacy. This might lead to a growing appreciation of the other person’s delightful quirks and of the shared activities that these idiosyncrasies afford, and this in turn might supply a concrete exemplar by which to gain a deeper and more articulate understanding of the place of intimate friendship in a life well lived. Such a progression of thought might well yield a more fine-toothed specification of an initially vague intention to spend time with the other person. Yet in this sort of case, the language of specification seems to leave out the most important feature of the change in one’s sense of how best to carry forward with the activity into which one has thrown oneself. It is overwhelmingly tempting to say that the latter aspirations are not only more specific but also deeper, wiser, and more discerning. Yet depth and wisdom cannot be captured in the language of specificity. As the grass-counting example shows, specificity is entirely compatible with superficiality and folly. A second way to fit dialectical activities within the modern view would be to hold that such activities are modified on the fly by repeated episodes of practical deliberation, each yielding a fresh intention to act in a new and slightly different way. As noted above, if practical reasoning is to consist solely in the adoption of such a series of intentions, these intentions must provide a non-evaluative specification of the actions at which they aim. Otherwise there would be further practical thinking involved in interpreting the evaluative predicates featured in one’s intentions. This picture effectively fractures dialectical activities into a series of disparate acts related only by spatio-temporal contiguity and not as the successive moments of a single temporally extended activity or biography. If we are to keep these successive intentions in view as the motivational sources of

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a single evolving activity, we must understand them as attempts to answer more adequately to a single ideal or standard of excellence  – one that is grasped more distinctly as the activity unfolds. Otherwise what will appear to the agent or the sympathetic biographer as the attainment of greater depth or excellence in a single evolving activity will show up as a series of unrelated shifts in one’s way of behaving.18 It would be mistaken, then, to adopt the influential suggestion of John Searle that activities are carried forward by “intentions in action,” understood as propositional attitudes which take bodily motions as their subject matter and which have a world-to-mind direction of fit.19 We can begin to bring out the nature of this mistake by imagining the case of a masterful interpreter of blues songs who is searching for the right phrasing and intonation for a key line in a blues number. What induces her to sing is not a concrete propositional representation of a way of singing the song, towards which she has adopted an attitude with a world-to-mind direction of fit. Rather, it is her grasp of a kind of goodness present in an interpretation of the song of which she has an as-yet-indistinct intimation. There is a benign paradox of inquiry here (and, indeed, in any dialectical activity whose constitutive goods have not been fully mastered): the singer is here imagined as sufficiently aware of what she would count as good to stretch her voice in its direction and to recognize it when she manages to sing it, yet her grasp is not sufficiently clear to permit her to produce it forthwith. She has no way of discerning what counts as the interpretation she After I first elaborated my conception of activity and worked up my argument to the effect that contemporary theories of motivation and practical reason provide us with a fractured view of these activities, I discovered that my main criticisms were anticipated by John Dewey in his seminal 1896 paper “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology.” In that paper, Dewey conceives of human actions as the product of a “sensori-motor circuit” (359) composed of two running activities: a continuous, practically structured, and active apprehension of one’s circumstances and a continuous production of apt bodily motions. Dewey claims that the relation between apprehension and action is not a one-way street but a circuit, with activities continuously conditioning the apprehensions that inspire and guide them. One’s apprehension of one’s circumstances is already practically structured, in the sense that it highlights the lines of sensible action that are afforded or closed off by one’s circumstances. For instance, if one is burned by a flame, one’s apprehension is altered so that one no longer sees a mere flame but rather “a-light-that-means-pain-when-contact-occurs” (360). Ongoing activities also shape the salience and meaning of contemporaneous perceptions. In this vein, Dewey considers what it is like to hear a loud, unexpected sound while engaged in different activities. “If one is reading a book, if one is hunting, if one is watching in a dark place on a lonely night, if one is performing a chemical experiment, in each case, the noise has a very different psychical value; it is a different experience” (361). Because the psychologists of his time conceive of environmental stimuli in isolation from the actions they cause, Dewey claims that they fail to see the unity of our activities, leaving us “nothing but a series of jerks, the origin of each jerk to be found outside the process of experience itself ” (360). (I thank Chris Collins for having directed my attention to Dewey’s essay.) 19 Searle (1983), ch. 3. 18

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wants except by trying to sharpen her grasp of this goodness she indistinctly perceives, and she may be unable to do this except by attempting to approximate it in song, trusting (or at least hoping) that she will recognize it when she hears herself sing it. She might sing the line many times over before achieving the interpretation towards which she is drawn. She would then have uncovered what was drawing her all along. If things go well, her patterns of bodily motion (e.g. the motions of her tongue and mouth) change as a result of refinement in her grasp of what she is after. These changes count as the successive moments of a single activity because they are successive and increasingly adequate approximations of a single intention with an irreducibly evaluative content. What this suggests is that if we are to keep in view the cross-temporal unity of dialectical activities and make room for the sort of practical thinking that seems to be at work in them, the intentions that guide these activities must be assigned an irreducibly evaluative content. This, however, opens the way for a new kind of practical thinking  – a kind that strains for clearer and deeper understanding of the forms of human excellence that animate one’s activities and that one seeks to actualize in those activities. Indeed, it is impossible to engage in certain dialectical activities simply by adopting the intention to perform them well and then making a sincere and sustained effort to enact this intention. In the case of many dialectical activities, one must have at least an intimation of the activity’s intrinsic goodness and be inspired by this intimation if one is to succeed in engaging in the activity at all. One is not befriending another if one lacks any intimation of the other’s value or of the value of intimate relationships, nor is one philosophizing if one lacks any intimation of the value of philosophical inquiry. It is not always possible to conjure up such intimations at will, though there are disciplines of attention that can help to enliven them when they wane. When one does manage to engage in such activities, one’s doings are guided by practical thought in the sense that they are apt responses to a motivating apprehension of an appearance of intrinsic goodness or value, and not merely in the sense that they emerge from an intention that can be adopted at will. Practical reason and the will cannot be identified with each other, after the Kantian fashion. Knowing how best to continue an activity requires not only a grasp of what in general it would mean to do the activity well, but also and more particularly a grasp of the best and highest possibilities made available by the portion of the activity that has already run its course. The continuous task of practical thinking, then, is analogous to the one faced by an author who has written half of a book and who must discern the

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most compelling complete book for which the finished half could serve as a beginning. What has already been written constrains what it could possibly make sense to write next, but the meaning of what has been written is itself in an important sense up for grabs, since its proper interpretation will depend partly on as-yet-undetermined features of the complete story. It can make sense for a writer in this position to turn his gaze at the already written portion of the novel to try to discern the best and most interesting of the many complete stories latent in it, as its unfinished possibilities. To take an example closer to home, this task of practical thinking is comparable to the task faced by the philosopher who is in the midst of explaining an inchoate line of thought and who is continuously searching for the right words to stretch his unfolding sentences towards a faint intimation of insight lying at the horizon of his understanding. In such cases, one does not yet have in mind a fully determinate thought for which one is attempting to find the right words. There must be such cases if it is possible for philosophical dialectic to be a form of active inquiry – that is, a path to discovery rather than merely a means of communicating already achieved insights. In such cases (which I believe will be recognized as familiar by most readers of this text) one has the sense of trying to wrest the thought that has inspired one’s interest from a partially veiling obscurity and to bring it into words that vindicate one’s incipient excitement. If this is one’s task, the already completed temporal part of one’s ongoing activity cannot be regarded as a mere circumstance to be grasped by purely theoretical reflection so as to set the stage for deliberating about what to say next. One’s task, instead, is to uncover the best and most interesting thought towards which one’s words are already reaching. My suggestion is that practical thinking sometimes takes this same general form. If it does, then excellence in practical thinking cannot consist solely in discerning and acting on justificatory links between non-­evaluative facts about one’s circumstances and non-evaluative specifications of proposed actions. It sometimes requires a continuous effort to bring into view the best and highest conception of one’s own unfolding activity. This focal object will straddle the supposed divide between the circumstances of choice and the action being chosen. The task will be to grasp what one is doing in such a way as to lift it, with each moment, closer to the ideal form in whose light it is understood. This sort of thought does not ordinarily protrude as a separate introspectible concomitant of the activity it accompanies and guides. Rather, it ordinarily takes the form of rapt or concentrated attention to what one is doing. In such cases, the

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content of one’s practical thinking is embedded in the evolving desires that sustain the activity and shape those of the activity’s evolving contours that are subject to the control of the agent. It is through these desires that the agent’s evaluative outlook is expressed in the activity; hence we must attempt to grasp the picture of value embedded in these desires if we are to understand or assess the practical thinking expressed in the activity. It might be thought that desires are too passive to count as the registers or determinants of the practical thinking expressed in our actions. This objection can seem to gain additional strength from the observation that we are open to praise or moral criticism for the content of the practical thinking that inspires and shapes our actions. Given this, it can seem counterintuitive to suppose that our desires fix the content of our practical thinking, since our desires are to a great degree beyond our control. Yet it would be far more counterintuitive to insist that we are answerable for our practical thinking only if we have made its content explicit to ourselves. One occupational hazard of moral theorists is to overestimate the degree to which actual people – and even that hyper-deliberate breed of people called philosophers – actually deliberate. Few of our daily doings are preceded by an introspectively identifiable episode of conscious deliberation. It would be fatally counterintuitive to maintain that these performances are therefore not actions, or that we can neither be praised nor blamed for them. This suggests that performances can owe their status as actions to their origins in an inexplicit picture of their point or value, and that these pictures can be as morally consequential as the explicit practical judgments that bring introspectively discernible episodes of practical deliberation to their end. Another problem with limiting moral evaluation to explicit episodes of practical deliberation is that we can be praised or blamed not only for our actions but also for our omissions. We need not explicitly decide not to cheat or steal in order for these omissions to redound to our credit. Indeed, we are likely to regard people who would never consider such courses of action as more praiseworthy than people who often find themselves explicitly rejecting them. Nor are we excused from blame if it simply does not occur to us to help those who are in dire need and could easily be helped. Thoughtlessness can be as consequential, morally speaking, as explicit thought. If we follow Kant in regarding all practical reasoning as capturable in the reasoner’s maxims, and in taking maxims to be the exclusive object of moral praise and blame, it is hard to see how we could possibly accommodate this latter bit of common sense. It does not seem possible to regard

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our blind spots as having been adopted on the strength of a maxim. They might at best be characterized in terms of maxims we have failed to apply. Yet our failures to think are not themselves chosen on the strength of maxims that count in favor of thoughtlessness; hence we cannot be held accountable for them unless we can be held accountable for elements of our outlook that cannot be characterized as maxims. There seems to be no way to do justice to our conviction that we are sometimes assessable for our mindless actions or our moral blind spots unless we regard ourselves as assessable for those elements of our immediate evaluative outlook that give shape to our actions and omissions. If we do, then we will have construed excellence in practical thinking as attainable by an upbringing that gives a proper and discerning shape to our pre-deliberative evaluative outlook, partly by giving a proper and discerning shape to our characteristic desires. We will thereby have taken a key step towards a virtuetheoretic conception of excellence in practical thinking. I have emphasized that the main object of the practical thinking by which dialectical activities are carried forward is not the circumstances in which one finds oneself but rather the activity itself, conceived in light of its constitutive goods or ideals. This does not mean that circumstances are irrelevant to such deliberation. One ought to have a background awareness of when circumstances call for ongoing activities to be altered or discontinued, since there are few if any activities that are intrinsically valuable, or even so much as possible, regardless of the circumstances. What is important is that this desirable sort of attentiveness to circumstances is radically insufficient to determine how best to continue the activity itself. If we are fully to reckon with the sort of deliberation by which dialectical activities are carried forward, we must abandon the idea that deliberation can be separated into two sharply distinguished activities: an exercise of theoretical rationality whose aim is to arrive at a true characterization of one’s circumstances and alternatives, and a moment of practical deliberation culminating in a decision to opt for one or another of the alternatives. Practical thinking will sometimes require making sense of what one is already in the course of doing, and the requisite sort of “sense-making” will itself require an effort to interpret these ongoing activities in such a way as to bring to light their best and highest possibilities. This will not be mere theoretical stage-setting for practical deliberation but will already be practical deliberation. In such cases, one’s deliberative gaze is not turned forward, towards some yet-to-be-produced action or outcome that might figure as the object of one’s next intention. One’s attention is

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turned instead towards one’s evolving doings and their intrinsic value. Hence one does not absent or reserve oneself from one’s activities when one engages in the practical thinking that carries them forward; rather, one consummates these activities with a vivid and continuously deepening apprehension of the good latent in them. I V Di a l e c t ic a l ac t i v i t y a n d A r i s t o t e l i a n

energeia

Aristotle sees an important relation between pleasure and virtuous activity: those who are virtuous will characteristically take pleasure in virtuous activity. This relation is crucial to the plausibility of Aristotle’s ethical eudaimonism. If virtuous activity were not pleasurable, we would have little reason to accept the notion that such virtues as justice, truthfulness, and kindness are necessary conditions for an achievement that can be rendered without obvious infelicity with the English-language term “happiness” (the standard translation of Aristotle’s “eudaimonia”). When Aristotle turns to the task of explaining the pleasure of the best human activities, he holds that such pleasure is itself an activity and that it accompanies and completes the activities in which it is taken. This raises the question what sort of activity pleasure could be and why the virtuous activities of virtuous persons are invariably accompanied by this additional activity. We cannot answer these questions without first attaining some insight into Aristotle’s idea of activity (energeia). Aristotle explains this notion by contrast with another sort of human doing that he calls a process (kinesis). He proposes the following grammatical test to distinguish activities from processes: if the present progressive description of a doing implies the past perfect, then the doing is an activity; if not, it is a process (M, 1048b18– 35).20 For instance, “I am seeing X” implies “I have seen X”; hence seeing is an activity. By contrast, “I am building the house” does not imply “I have built the house” – indeed it implies that I have not yet built it; hence building a house is a process. This test is fundamentally flawed, since its verdicts will be sensitive to arbitrary changes in our descriptions of our doings. For instance, listening to a lecture will be counted as a process, but listening to a lecturer’s voice will count as an activity. Similarly, we could introduce a new verb, “shmuilding,” and stipulate that it means “engaging in activity aimed at building.” We could then redescribe any For abbreviations of Aristotle’s works and a list of translations of these works as used in this and other essays in this volume, see Abbreviations at the start of this volume.

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instance of building as shmuilding, and magically transform it into an activity. The problem is that the test tracks fallible grammatical indications of a metaphysical distinction. The obvious solution, then, is to dispense with the grammatical test and characterize the underlying metaphysical distinction that it fallibly indicates. However, when we attempt to say just what metaphysical distinction Aristotle had in mind, we run into interpretive difficulties. In the Metaphysics, Aristotle holds that activities contain their own completion in each of their moments, while processes do not. Yet in Book x of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle holds that pleasure is a distinctive activity that accompanies other activities, and that no activity can be complete unless it is accompanied and completed by pleasure (see NE, 1174b20–24, 1175a20). This raises the question how Aristotle could have held both that all activities contain their own completion in each moment and that no activity can be complete unless accompanied and completed by the separate activity of pleasure.21 The puzzle is deepened by the fact that there are doings that seem to have no temporal course to run in order to have occurred, yet seem not to be candidates for the sort of completeness associated with pleasure. An example is seeing the corpse of a loved one. Indeed, Aristotle tacitly acknowledges this point when he holds that the perception of any perceptible object will always count as an activity but that no faculty of perception will be completely active unless it is “in good condition in relation to the finest of its perceptible objects” (NE, 1174b14–19). The soundest interpretive approach – one that has been ably defended by David Bostock  – is to assume that Aristotle speaks of activities as complete (teleion) in two different senses.22 There is a temporal sort of completeness possessed by all activities in virtue of which they are distinguished from processes, and there is a perfectionist sense of completeness present in those activities that are pleasurable and absent in those that are not. Aristotle’s view is that our doings must be temporally complete, hence count as activities, if they are to be accompanied and completed in the perfectionist sense by pleasure. Aristotle is notoriously obscure about what the activity could be that completes and renders pleasurable those activities that it accompanies. However, he does provide some textual clues from which it is possible to 21

See Bostock (1988). Bostock (1988: 257–60).

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extrapolate an extremely plausible view. Aristotle notes that we human beings are not continuously pleased even by the best and highest sort of activity. If we persist in any activity long enough, the pleasure eventually fades, either because we grow tired or because the activity becomes too routine or familiar. In either case, the underlying explanation is that our thought towards the activity ceases to be “stimulated and intense” and becomes “lax and careless” (NE, 1175a4–10). When it does, the faculty in virtue of which we take pleasure in activities is no longer in its best condition, and this makes our activity less complete and hence less pleasant (NE, 1175a5). These passages imply that the activity of pleasure has its seat in a faculty of thought, and that at its best this faculty directs stimulated and intensely active thought towards our activities. Yet clearly we can direct “stimulated and intensely active” thought towards our doings without thereby making them pleasurable. If I were directed on pain of death to rivet my attention on some task that I find entirely pointless, I might perform the activity very attentively indeed, but this would hardly make the task pleasurable. Nor is it sufficient that my thought be elicited by my activity itself rather than by the thought of its effects. I might for instance be unable to keep myself from replaying in my head the catchy chorus of a song I dislike. What sort of “stimulated and intensely active” thought might Aristotle have regarded as sufficient to make our activities pleasurable? We can find a textual clue in Aristotle’s comment that “each kind of person finds pleasure in whatever he is called a lover of” (NE, 1099a8–9). Perhaps Aristotle’s thought was that if we love an activity and have not grown tired of it, we apprehend it as good with no further end in view. Such activities elicit an appreciative attention that draws us into them and renders them unimpeded or wholehearted. This is what makes them complete in the perfectionist sense. This interpretation has the advantage of giving considerable intuitive plausibility to Aristotle’s claim that we take pleasure in activities that are complete in the perfectionist sense. Activities are pleasurable when we are appreciatively engrossed in them and are wholly free of any worry that perhaps we are doing something inapt or valueless. It matters, here, that the word for activity (energeia) can also be credibly translated with the English term “actualization.” In explaining the idea of an energeia in the Metaphysics, Aristotle takes pains to underline its etymological connection to the term “ergon,” which refers to the characteristic function or work of a functionally organized kind. He writes, “For the work [ergon] is a completion, and the actuality is the work, hence

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even the name, ‘en-ergeia,’ is said with respect to the ergon, and aims at the completedness” (M, 1050a21–22). The actualization of a human being’s defining capacity for self-directed activity cannot lie in a pure process, since the point of a pure process lies wholly in effects that could in principle be secured without engaging in the process at all. The actualization of this capacity must lie, instead, in doings whose point is seen to lie in each of their moments – that is, in energeia or activities. Our function, however, is completely realized only in those activities that are accompanied and carried forward by the active thought of their point, which is to say by active appreciation of their intrinsic value.23 The human telos does not lie beyond such activities in the form of something to which they conduce. Rather, it is constituted by the right mix over a lifetime of activities completed in this way – which is to say, activities in which we are unreservedly and hence pleasurably engaged. This is what makes such activities quite literally teleion (i.e. telos-containing).24 This strikes me as an appealing interpretive approach, but if we adopt it without further qualification, we run headlong into what is perhaps the most difficult interpretive problem posed by the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle argues at the outset of the book that the highest good for human beings is the life of activity manifesting the virtues. He clearly regards such activities as valuable in themselves, and he holds that those who are properly constituted will consistently take pleasure in them.25 Yet it can’t have been lost on Aristotle that the doings we regard as kind, just, and courageous unfold over time and sometimes include stages geared towards the production of some state of affairs. The courageous person does not act in the name of courage but in the name (say) of defending the city, which takes time; likewise, the kind person does not choose acts because they are kind but because they will deliver needed help to someone in distress, and this task too takes time to complete. Indeed, in most cases we will be able to see that an activity is kind or courageous or just only if we appreciate its connection to past activities or events and to possible future outcomes. Yet on the interpretation sketched above, Aristotle Such thought need not be thematized in consciousness, side by side with one’s unfolding activities. Indeed, if the thought became explicit, it would distract one from one’s doings and impede full engagement in them. 24 In his discussion of Aristotle’s notion of the teleion, Friedemann Buddensiek translates the term with the German neologism “zielhaft” (roughly, “end-containing” or “goal-containing”) to mark this important linguistic connection between the notion of a telos and that of completeness – a connection that is ordinarily lost in translation. See the review of Buddensiek’s Die Theorie des Glücks in Aristoteles’ Eudemischer Ethik by Ludger Jansen (2002). 25 For a representative passage, see NE, 1099a6–20. 23

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holds that nothing counts as an activity unless it contains its completion in each of its moments and that only an activity can be completed by pleasure. This might perhaps explain why his discussion of pleasure in Book x of the Nicomachean Ethics is immediately followed by a second, fundamentally different account of the highest good for human beings, centering on unchanging contemplation. But it leaves the reader wondering what to make of the discussion of civic virtue that occupies most of the first nine books. Are we to reject the life of virtuous civic engagement as fundamentally unfitting or unfulfilling, and disregard Aristotle’s repeated insistence that those who are properly brought up will find such activity pleasurable? On inspection, the text does not force us to make so stark an interpretive choice. In his Book vii discussion of pleasure and activity, Aristotle distinguishes between activities of movement or change and activities of immobility or rest (NE, 1154b21–33). He clearly indicates that the immobile activities are more pleasant and more divine, but nonetheless he counts the others as activities and suggests that it is possible to take pleasure in them. Presumably the shared activities of a polity, insofar as they manifest the virtues of citizens, would count as activities of movement rather than rest, as would the centrally valuable activity that Aristotle calls friendship. But what exactly is it that activities of movement and rest have in common that sets them apart from mere processes and makes it possible for them to be accompanied and completed by pleasure? In my view, the most plausible answer requires a more complicated notion of temporal completeness than can readily be found in Aristotle’s text.26 We can arrive at this view by distinguishing two importantly different ways that pictures of the past and future can confer value on present doings. If we see our present doings as valuable only as efficient means for producing some future result that we value, then it seems right that we will be unable to complete our present doings with pleasure. However, sometimes our conception of our future (and, for that matter, our past) can confer intelligibility and value on present doings by situating them in an unfolding narrative that we find intrinsically valuable as a whole. When we are falling in love, or kindling a friendship, participating in a philosophy seminar, or joining in the shared life of a well-constituted community or polis, the value of our doings does not lie solely in their In Book ix of the Metaphysics, Aristotle distinguishes between the way in which activities and processes relate to the telos in light of which they are performed by saying that processes move towards a telos that does not yet belong to them, while the telos of an activity is contained in it.

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instrumental contribution to the production of some expected end state – whether friendship, love, fresh philosophical beliefs, or a healthy community.27 It is true that we would lose track of the value of these doings – and perhaps even their intelligibility as doings  – if we considered them in isolation from the time-extended narrative they collectively constitute. Yet this does not prevent us from wholehearted absorption in our activities themselves, any more than the fact that the individual sentences of a novel make no sense apart from their place in a larger story prevents us from becoming thoroughly absorbed in them.28 When our doings await completion in the non-instrumental way that the sentences of a novel await completion, this does not rule out seeing what we are doing as intrinsically valuable. It does rule out finding intrinsic value in each time-slice of our activity considered in isolation from the rest. But that is because, when we abstract from the rest, we literally lose our grip on what we are doing. In such cases, it is not the actual arrival of some anticipated result that confers value on present activities; it is the thought of their relation to the past and future that makes present activities intelligible and brings their intrinsic value to light. If taking pleasure in an activity is a matter of vividly apprehending its value as it unfolds, then there is no obstacle to taking pleasure in these sorts of activities. They can be brought to completion and made pleasurable by the sort of wholehearted engagement that Aristotle takes to be essential to complete or telos-containing human activity. This interpretive approach puts us in a position to accommodate Aristotle’s insight that the human good consists in unreserved engagement in intrinsically valuable activities while avoiding the implausibly “presentist” conclusion that the most final and complete human good must be static over time, as is the contemplation of timeless truths. This seems like a genuine step forward, since it does not seem to be accidental to the most valuable human doings – including for instance the most intimate relationships and the most compelling stretches of human contemplation – that they unfold in time. A human life is, after all, something that unfolds over time. Further, a background awareness of our Even if we could identify and assign value to some relevant and suitably fixed end state, still we might well think that the end state’s value depends upon the way it was created. For example, a painting’s value might depend upon its being the congealed form of my own artistic activity; likewise, the value of mutual love might depend upon its being the consummation of a history of shared activities. 28 The pleasure of reading a good novel seems, by the way, to be a paradigm instance of the kind of pleasure I have been discussing, yet Aristotle’s grammatical test would categorize reading a novel as a process and not an activity. 27

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impermanence seems to play an essential role in lending to our passing moments the sort of evanescent sweetness we are able to savor, the sort that does not linger so long as to inure us to its value.29 We can now see, at least in outline, what Aristotle might have had in mind when he asserted that the virtuous characteristically take pleasure in their virtuous activity (NE, 1099a7–21, 1120a27–31). The virtues come in a unified package that entails and is entailed by the possession of phronesis, or practical wisdom (NE, 1144b12–1145a2). The phronimos has something more than mere reliable knowledge of how best to act; the phronimos is distinguished from the merely enkratic or strong-willed agent by a vivid running appreciation of the intrinsic value of virtuous activity – an appreciation that rules out finding pleasure in vicious action (NE, 1152a1–3). If the human faculty for practical rationality is correctly and reliably attuned to the fine or intrinsically good in human activity, then it gives rise to virtuous activities and yields the sort of running appreciation of them that completes them and makes them pleasurable. When these activities unfold from a vivid running sense of their intrinsic value, this does not leave them unchanged. Outwardly virtuous activity is consummated as an intrinsically valuable element of the shared life of fellow human beings when performed with a vivid sense of its proper place in that shared life. This brings us to a more general observation about the relation between activities and the appreciative attentiveness that sometimes accompanies and completes them. The character of an activity is partly determined by this running appreciative attention, sometimes in ways that help to actualize the sort of value that the attention brings into view, as when a favor depends for its status as a gesture of incipient friendship on the agent’s sense that friendship is a looming and valuable possibility towards which it makes sense to extend her current activity. This, of course, is not to say that intrinsic value is invested in any activities that seem to the agent to have it. The possibility of severe dissonance between one’s doings This thought is not so much explored as incarnated in Wallace Stevens’s incomparable poem “Sunday Morning.” One question I am left with by this poem is just how it encourages us to view the impulse to capture beauty in poetry. Does this involve a suspect longing to make permanent that which can only be savored in evanescence? But one cannot pursue this question without making it even harder than usual to avoid the related question of how we ought to view the philosophical longing to understand pleasurable activity. Is it a distraction from the unmet call to unimpeded activity? A pallid compensation for forgone pleasures? An exemplary form of unimpeded activity in its own right? Probably no sweeping answer will do here, unless it trades implicitly on a special and exclusionary idea of which longings count as genuinely philosophical.

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and one’s picture of their nature and point is the common theme of a great deal of comedy (e.g. Quixote and his windmills) and tragedy (e.g. Oedipus and his mother). We humans live in risk of seeing loving intimacy in relations that are shot through with condescension or deceit, noble civic activity in our role in an evil military cause, or sustaining purpose in a job whose terms are unjustly sculpted to serve the interests of another person or class. When our picture of the value of our doings comes loose in such ways from the context within which our actions unfold, these pictures cannot unilaterally found the valuable doings they portray. Nor are we always in a position unilaterally to found the sort of value to which, by Aristotle’s lights, the virtues conduce. The virtues make possible forms of personal and civic friendship that we cannot conjure into existence unilaterally, but that depend upon real interactivity with other human beings who also appreciate the value of these relations. These intrinsically valuable forms of life are not realizable by unilateral willing. They are both more worldly and more sensitive to fortune than the Kantian kingdom of ends – a notional community that one can join unilaterally in any social circumstance by the moral purification of one’s own will. I have tried to bring out the place, in Aristotelian ethical theory, of a form of practical thought that accompanies and carries forward virtuous activities by providing a running sense of their intrinsic value. What I have yet to show is that there is a dialectical interaction between this sort of thought and the virtuous activities that it inspires and completes. That Aristotle envisioned such an interaction is strongly suggested by his scattered comments on the way in which children come to appreciate the nature and value of virtuous activity. On Myles Burnyeat’s persuasive interpretation, Aristotle held that one can learn to value virtuous activity only by acting in outward conformity with virtue and coming to appreciate, from the participant perspective, the intrinsic value of this way of acting.30 Until one gains this evaluative insight, one can have only a vague, secondhand grasp of the value of virtuous activity. This, according to Burnyeat, is why Aristotle places such great importance in a proper upbringing: it is only if one is brought up with the right habits that one will have any hope of seeing for oneself that virtuous action is intrinsically valuable, or of reliably distinguishing which activities are virtuous and which are not. For instance, a child might initially see fairness as having little point except as an instrument for currying favor with parents or securing other extrinsic rewards. Yet given a minimally decent   See Burnyeat (1981: 69–92).

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upbringing, many children eventually see from the inside how human interactions are transfigured and take on an unexpected and pleasing value when conducted in a spirit of mutual recognition and respect. As Burnyeat summarizes the point, “It turns out that Aristotle is not simply giving us a bland reminder that virtue takes practice. Rather, practice has cognitive powers, in that it is the way we learn what is noble or just.”31 It is through sustained activity (or interactivity) that we deepen and extend our sense of how best to answer to the ideals to which we are answerable as human beings among others, and in our more particular status as friends, neighbors, citizens, parents, children, and devotees of various practices and vocations. Nor was it Aristotle’s view that a little bit of experience completes the job of learning to be good. He held that even those who are virtuous can deepen their capacity to discern and appreciate the value of virtuous activity, and that the route to greater insight goes by way of active lifelong friendships with other people of good character (NE, 1155a12–16, 1170a11–12, 1172a10–14). This suggests that for Aristotle, virtuous activity is dialectical in the sense set out above, and that it is accompanied and carried forward by the unfamiliar sort of practical thinking that dialectical activity involves. V Di a l e c t ic a l ac t i v i t y a n d t h e s u bj e c t m at t e r of e t h ic s Some might recognize that dialectical activities involve a distinctive kind of practical thinking yet balk at the idea that this sort of practical thought can be better or worse in a recognizably ethical sense. I believe that this would be a mistake. To see why, consider the case of a parent embarking upon a conversation with a teenage child who has become withdrawn, very nearly estranged from the family, and who seems both pained by this detachment and stubbornly insistent upon it. The parent wishes to mend the relationship but realizes that this mending does not call for the production of some inactive state of affairs; rather, it must be realized in precisely the sort of shared activity now getting underway. The best outcome, then, is for the conversation to count as a fit constituent of a temporally extended and ethically laudable parent–child relation. Yet the parent might be quite uncertain what the conversation would have Burnyeat (1981: 73). Perhaps Aquinas is making a similar point when he claims that docility is part of prudence because it conduces to patient learning from elders, something which is necessary if one is to internalize the insight into the proper ends of action that elders have accumulated as a result of their long experience. See Aquinas, Summa Theologica, ii-ii, 49, 3.

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to be like if it were to be a fit constituent of such a relationship. It might be clear that this will require listening to the teenager and forging some sort of common ground or shared understanding. Still, it might be quite unclear in what ways this process should be similar to and in what ways different from the reciprocal forging of common ground and mutual understanding that marks a deep and mutually nourishing friendship between adults. What sorts of exceptions to this sort of reciprocity count as a proper accommodation of the fact that one’s conversational partner is a teenager? What would count in such a case as proper parental concern, and what would count as condescension or as stultification of the child’s yearnings for independence? In what ways might one’s words and tone manifest an objectionable tendency to mistake the battles, achievements, and failures of one’s child for one’s own, and how might such vicarious feelings distort the relationship or harm the child? All of these ethically pregnant questions are in play, and many others besides. Even if one cannot answer such questions definitively, still one might have a vague sense of what a genuinely good parent–child relationship would be like. This sense might be sufficient to provide guidance for one’s first and still halting efforts to talk and to listen. As the conversation unfolds, it might become clearer what is called for, in something like the way that the blues singer described above is able to become clearer about how she wants to sing by hearing her progressive attempts to give voice to the as-yet-obscure object of her desire. It seems possible, then, for the conversation to have all the attributes of a dialectical activity, and to involve the distinctive sort of practical thinking that carries forward such activities. On reflection, it seems not only possible but ethically laudable for the parent’s engagement in this sort of conversation to be accompanied and guided by a continuous straining to see and to actualize the highest possibilities latent in the unfolding conversation. Indeed, while it might be a mistake to blame a parent for not managing to resuscitate such a damaged relationship, there would be something morally amiss with a parent who did not try mightily to do so. In the absence of a special story, there would also be something morally amiss with a parent who wholly lacked the sort of running appreciation of the value of the child and of the relationship that is necessary (though hardly sufficient) to turn the most devoted “trying” into something approaching a success. This last point is crucial, since this dawning appreciation is precisely the achievement of practical thought that cannot adequately be represented in the maxim-based Kantian model.

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To illuminate this point, it will help to note that to attend to a conversation in this way is to be fully present in the conversation – as opposed, say, to being distracted or detached from the conversation itself by the orientation of one’s evaluative attention towards some desired effect that one’s words are calculated to bring about. Part of what makes certain conversations fit constituents of ethically laudable relationships is that the parties to them are present to each other in this rather elusive sense. If the evaluative attention of the parent is focused entirely on the not-yetpresent value of the child’s possible future traits or achievements, and not at all on the already-wholly-present value of the child, the parent–child relationship will thereby be impoverished. Here we catch sight again of a point that we encountered in our earlier discussion of philosophical thought and the desires that drive it:  there are some activities that we cannot engage in except in caricature or parody if we are not continuously attentive and responsive to the goods internal to them. One such activity is that particularly valuable sort of shared conversation between parent and child that is sometimes called a “heart-to-heart” or a moment of genuine “connection.” Dwelling on the ethical stakes of proper and complete absorption in such an activity provides a point of entry for contesting the sense that Aristotle (or at least the Aristotle of our translations) makes a category mistake when he counts the ethical virtues as necessary for, and ideally conducive to, a genuinely happy life. Authentic presence in conversation or speech is a special case, and an especially illuminating case, of authentic presence in action. Whether in speech or in action, we know this sort of presence by its signs, among which must be counted a kind of suppleness in our unfolding engagement in our activities. We feel the quality of a human being in his unscripted and spontaneous activities far more viscerally than in those premeditated performances that would take on a less tidy form if not for prior rehearsal, or coaching, or pre-commitment to a few simple rules of action. Here we run across what seems to be a common feature of all those human activities in which excellence (and not, for example, mere proficiency) is a distinct and worthy possibility. It might be possible to attain a certain level of competence in such activities by pre-commitment to a plan of engagement, but to approach excellence in them seems to require a running awareness of goods that come to light in and through the activity, and that could not be captured by any tractable intention or plan to which one might usefully pre-commit. The only “plans” broad enough to capture everything necessary for excellence in such activities are variations on the plan to perform the activity surpassingly well – that

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is, in such a way as to excel in it. One might “plan,” for instance, to enact a properly ideal parent–child relation in one’s conversation. To anyone genuinely seeking to excel in such interactivity and perplexed about what it would take to do so, this abstractly idealist sort of “plan” is obviously not an adequate practical guide. This is not to say that one might not profitably engage in some planning prior to activities such as the abovedescribed conversation with one’s teenager. One might usefully remind oneself, for example, that one has a tendency to mistake the child’s fearinduced withdrawal from risky action for mere laziness, and to respond to it with a misguided anger that deepens the withdrawal. But this sort of plan is a propaedeutic for vividly apprehending the values that ought to give running shape to the conversation and not a self-standing recipe for enacting such a conversation. For the Kantian, the moral quality of our practical reasoning is entirely a matter of the content and provenance of the maxims on which we act. The practical thinking that matters, morally speaking, begins from a morally innocent description of our circumstances and culminates in a verdict about what to do in those circumstances. To complete such an episode of thought just is to adopt a maxim counting said circumstances as sufficient reason for the type of action upon which one has settled. If we act only on universalizable maxims, and if we do so not by accident but from a higher-order commitment to act only on universalizable maxims (that is, from recognition of the authority of the Categorical Imperative), then our practical reasoning is beyond moral reproach. This Kantian conception of practical reasoning cannot properly accommodate the sort of thinking through which we monitor our own unfolding activities and discern the highest possibilities latent in them. Our apprehension of these activities could enter into our maxims only as part of a morally innocent account of our circumstances or as part of a proposed course of action that the maxim represents as justified by our circumstances. The former alternative is unworkable, since an apt interpretation of these unfolding activities can itself be an ethical achievement. The latter alternative is also unworkable, because the next stretch of activity towards which our intentions are directed is represented in an irreducibly evaluative light that does not bring practical thought to an end but rather provides it with the intimation of value that it must continue to clarify. Nor is it apt to think of the relation between our idea of the stretch of activity that has already unfolded and the next stretch as a reason-giving relation. The past figures not primarily as a reason to carry on in some particular way but as an imperfect instantiation of our working sense of what it would be best to

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do. It plays a deliberative role that is closely analogous to the role played by an artist’s sketch in inspiring another, more nearly adequate sketch. If these activities are to enter our evolving practical thought under their proper aspect, they must enter as the reified form, or embodiment, of our own evolving conception of a certain kind of goodness – an embodiment that must be interpreted in such a way as to bring that evolving conception into a more fine-toothed and satisfying articulacy. There is no room in the Kantian conception of practical reason for this sort of continuous and practically efficacious straining to bring into view the good latent in our unfolding activities. By contesting the notion that practical thinking ends when we embark upon an intentional action, we have uncovered a fresh objection to the notion that it begins with an already formulated and purely theoretical picture of the circumstances in which we must choose an action. Practical thinking cannot be contained within either of its supposed temporal boundaries; it often involves a continuous straining to see the point or value of activities that are already underway, including a master activity that is always underway as long as any practical question is live – that is, the activity of living a good human life. We cannot understand the fully active and ideally good life, nor the temporally extended activities of which it is composed, if we atomize this life or these activities into a series of discrete choices, each governed by a new maxim and each yielding a separate and distinct act. This is the real problem with Kant’s suggestion that if we grasp the principles that ought to govern our choice of actions, we will thereby have grasped the nature of wisdom and virtue, and indeed that being wise and virtuous is simply a matter of reliably acting on proper principles (G, 4:404). It is hardly surprising that there is a conflict between Kantianism, with its constructivist leanings, and the broadly Aristotelian realism implicit in my discussion of dialectical activities. The surprise lies in the fact that the Kantian conception of practical reasoning, which is often taken to be a neutral framework for ethical theorizing, already hides the very possibility of the sort of practical thinking that Aristotelian ethics regards as most distinctively ethical. What is at issue in the confrontation between Kantianism and Aristotelianism, at the most fundamental level, is how exactly thought becomes practical, and by extension how the philosophical inquiry into excellence in practical thinking is to be framed. When Aristotelianism is forwarded as one of a number of possible theories of the proprieties that govern episodic deliberation about what to do next, or what to do in this or that imaginable circumstance, this fundamental confrontation drops from view. Aristotelianism is made to look like an alternative

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position in a debate with settled contours rather than like a fundamental challenge to the contemporary way of framing the philosophical inquiry into ethics.32 This is the sort of “normalization” of Aristotelian ethical thought that induces the sense of misalignment described by Anscombe in the passage quoted at the outset. The Aristotelian who theorizes in this way is attempting to vindicate a realist ethics on a field of argument that has an unacknowledged anti-realist tilt. For instances of contemporary virtue-theoretic writings that seem to me to fall into this category, see Hursthouse (1999:  1–2); Louden (1984); Trianosky (1990), especially 336–38; and Watson (1990), especially 450–52.

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Moving beyond Kant’s account of agency in the Grounding Julian Wuerth

I   I n t roduc t ion If there is one criticism that has come to define virtue ethicists’ opposition to Kant’s ethics in recent years, it is that Kant’s ethics is concerned with actions, not agents. As some of the other essays in this volume make clear, this complaint reflects an overemphasis on the part of many of Kant’s defenders and detractors alike on just one of Kant’s works in ethics, his Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals, with its focus on the application of the categorical imperative to maxims regarding individual, isolated actions. When we turn to Kant’s other recorded thought, as is increasingly common, we find Kant going beyond these discussions to discussions of broader duties to develop our agency. And here Kant underscores not just the importance of cultivating our capacity for cognition but also our capacity for feeling, our capacity for desiring, and our strength of will. But addressing the virtue ethicists’ challenge to Kant’s ethics is not as simple as supplementing a text focused on isolated actions in the Grounding with these other accounts describing broader duties to our own agency. The problem is that, just as the Grounding has little to say about broader duties to our agency, so too does it have little to say about agency at all, and, most importantly, to the extent it does say something about agency, generally says vague things that have been widely misconstrued to imply an account of agency incompatible with Kant’s other, supplemental accounts of broader duties to our own agency. In particular, the Grounding at times seems to suggest the radical view that the self is nothing but reason, or that it is a noumenal being unaffected by sensible I presented an earlier version of this paper at a symposium, “Kant’s 5 Questions,” held at the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Chicago and co-hosted by Routledge and the Chicago Area German Philosophy Consortium. I thank the other participants and the audience for their helpful discussion.

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feelings and desires. But if this is the self, it makes little sense to speak of its need to develop its feelings, desires, or the strength of will to resist them, because this self does not have feelings and desires, much less a need for strength of will to resist them. In other words, the virtue ethicists’ complaint that Kant’s ethics says nothing about the moral project of shaping our agency is, in the end, rooted in a deeper problem:  that Kant’s account of the self, as it is commonly understood on the basis of the Grounding, lacks an agent to shape. The nature of this deeper problem has not been lost on virtue ethicists, from Elizabeth Anscombe’s day to the present, as evidenced in Rosalind Hursthouse’s observation that while there are hints of a richer account of the emotions in Kant’s last major work in ethics, his Metaphysics of Morals, his moral philosophy “still suffers from the fault to which Anscombe drew attention back in 1958 – it lacks ‘an adequate philosophy of psychology’” (Hursthouse 1999: 119). In what follows, section ii addresses this perceived shortcoming by offering an overview of Kant’s account of human psychology as presented by Kant across his recorded thought and not just in the Grounding. Section iii then argues that Kant’s description of agency in the Grounding is not only compromised, but also intentionally so. It reviews the shortcomings of this account of agency and Kant’s likely motivations for these shortcomings. Part iv then concludes with a few remarks about the ways in which Kant supplements his account of a recognizably human agent with an account of moral duties that is responsive to the particulars of this account. The vague nature of the Grounding’s account of agency and the minimalist nature of its mentioned duties notwithstanding, Kant believes that there is much more to living in a manner appropriately responsive to the dignity of humanity than ad hoc applications of the categorical imperative test to maxims concerning isolated, individual actions. We ought instead to engage in the continuous project of shaping ourselves, of reflecting on and setting lifelong maxims and doing what we can to shape the very nature of our cognitions, emotions, desires, and strength of will. I I  T h e acc ou n t of ag e nc y at t h e c e n t e r of K a n t ’s ph i l o s oph y From the time of the Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals to the present, influential critics and defenders alike of Kant’s ethics have interpreted Kant to reduce the choosing, acting, practical agent to nothing

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more than reason,1 while recent interpreters of Kant’s theory of mind have tended to reduce the self to nothing more than our faculty of cognition as a whole, which includes not only reason but also understanding, judgment, imagination, and sensibility.2 Left out of the picture is Kant’s recognition of two additional, irreducible, and fundamental faculties of the self, central to his philosophy as a whole, his ethics, and his theory of mind and action, namely, the faculty of feeling and the faculty of desire. One reason for this common neglect, especially in the English-language literature, is that Kant’s most widely read and influential works have been the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), the Prolegomena (1783), and the Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), each of which focuses largely on cognition. The first two focus on the nature and limits of cognition, examining the cognitive faculties of reason, understanding, judgment, imagination, and sensibility, while the Grounding focuses on the foundations of morality in reason’s a priori cognition of the moral law. It is only with the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), with its focus on the way that the faculty of reason’s a priori concept of the moral law relates to the faculty of desire, and the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790), with its focus on the way that the faculty of judgment’s a priori concept of purposiveness relates to the faculty of feeling of pleasure and displeasure, that these other fundamental faculties, beyond the faculty of cognition, enter the mainstream of the discussion. But even here Kant tends to employ his account of the various faculties in the course of addressing other matters rather than addressing this account itself, as reflected in the titles of these works, which refer to the a priori cognitions that relate to these faculties of feeling and desire rather than to these faculties themselves. Also, in the case of the Critique of Judgment, Kant chose not to publish its original introduction (because it was too long), which discussed Kant’s architectonic of faculties in greater detail than his second introduction, and this introduction accordingly received very little attention until recently. Finally, as we will discuss in further detail in section iii, the hugely influential Grounding is vague and incomplete when it does address the topic of the moral agent. Despite the frequent lack of recognition in the secondary literature of the roles Kant ascribes to the faculties of feeling and desire, and despite Korsgaard (1996a, 1996b, 1996d); Reinhold (1792); Sidgwick (1907). For a more detailed discussion of the contrast between my interpretation of Kant’s theory of practical agency and the interpretations of Korsgaard and Sidgwick, see Wuerth (2010a, 2011). 2 See, for example, Kitcher (1990) and Waxman (1991). 1

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Kant’s tendency to avoid directly explaining the nature and roles of these faculties in his major works, Kant nonetheless regularly employs a highly technical vocabulary that can be difficult to make sense of, which refers in passing to these faculties, their many subfaculties and groups of subfaculties, the various types of mental states that the exercise of these faculties yields, and the interrelations of these faculties. As challenging as this vocabulary can be, Kant’s imprecision in his use of this technical terminology only compounds the interpretive challenge. Nonetheless, understanding Kant’s broader account of our mental faculties and their interrelations is crucial. For one, the whole architectonic of Kant’s system of philosophy is based on this account, so that the division of labor between Kant’s works, the organization of these works, and Kant’s understanding of the nature of philosophical problems and their solutions in these works, including his works in moral philosophy, are all shaped by reference back to this account. Further, this account is, in the end, of a recognizably human subject. In relation to this account, rather than to the one-dimensional caricature of Kant’s human subject as pure reason that is commonly presented and even defended, Kant’s reflections on the dignity of humanity and his accompanying list of duties in works other than the Grounding make more sense and are also rendered more continuous with the interests of virtue ethicists. In what follows, I begin with what Kant has to say about the faculty of cognition, before turning to the faculty of feeling and then the faculty of desire. Throughout I draw from a broad range of Kant’s recorded thought from the mid-1760s onward. This overview of Kant’s account of agency is quite dense, but I am hopeful that it will help to eliminate the mentioned caricature of Kant’s agent in favor of a richer account and, more generally, will serve as a useful resource in approaching Kant’s ethics and his philosophy more broadly.3 The faculty of cognition. Representations belong to the faculty of cognition, according to Kant, insofar as they relate, or purport to relate, to objects, and so could be an element of our representation of objects, whether these objects are objects of outer sense, in space and time, or objects in inner sense, in time alone. Kant divides the faculty of cognition, as he does each of the three fundamental faculties, into higher and lower subfaculties, depending on whether these subfaculties presuppose the capacity of self-consciousness or not, respectively. The higher cognitive For a more detailed account of the faculties of the self, see Wuerth (2011), from which this description borrows material.

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faculties are reason (both theoretical and practical), understanding, judgment, and sometimes imagination, and the lower cognitive faculties are sensibility and sometimes imagination. But the faculty of cognition is not for Kant our only faculty, as is commonly assumed. The second fundamental faculty is the faculty of the feeling of pleasure and displeasure. Representations in the faculty of pleasure and displeasure, by contrast with those of the faculty of cognition, do not refer to objects but instead merely to how an object affects the subject, and in particular whether the object causes a feeling in the subject of the advancement of or hindrance to the subject’s “life” (AF, 25:559 [1775/6]; R 3855, 17:313; Me, 25:1068 [1781/2]; ML1, 28:246–47; cf., OFBS, 2:299 [1764]; R 651, 15:288 [1769–70]4), i.e. the advancement of or hindrance to the subject’s “inner principle of self-activity,” or their desire (ML1, 28:247; MMr, 29:894 [1782–83]; CPrR, 5:23 [1788]; ML2, 28:587 [1790–91]). These representations can also be understood in terms of their effects, insofar as they can serve as efficient causes of a subjective sort, for producing or maintaining themselves as pleasures (MD, 28:675 [1792–93] and MK2, 28:741 [early 1790s]; CPJ, First Introduction, 20:206 [1790]; ML2, 28:586 [1790–91]). Higher pleasures include the feeling of respect for the moral law, the feeling of the sublime, and the feeling of the beautiful; lower pleasures include feelings of gratification and affects. The third fundamental faculty is the faculty of desire and aversion. Whereas the representations of the faculty of pleasure and displeasure have subjective causality, the representations of the faculty of desire have objective causality (AC, 25:206 [1772/3]; MD, 28:675 [1792–93]; MK2, 737, 741 [early 1790s]; CPJ, First Introduction, 20:206; CPrR, 9n [1788]; MM, 211–14 [1797]). That is, the representations of the faculty of desire do not merely act to reproduce themselves as representations but instead to cause the objects of these representations in accordance with the satisfaction taken in the object (ML2, 587 [1790–91]). Despite the similarity of desire and feeling insofar as both serve as causes of something, desire is similar to cognition (and dissimilar to feeling) in relating to an object, though to produce this object rather than know it. Because generally, in Kant’s view, our feelings depend on our previous cognitions and our desires, in turn, depend on both previous feelings and the cognitions that make them possible, Kant distinguishes between higher and lower desires on the basis of whether they depend on higher For abbreviations of Kant’s works and a list of translations of these works as used in this and other essays in this volume, see Abbreviations at the start of this volume.

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or lower feelings and, in turn, on higher or lower cognitions. As Kant explains in his 1777–80 Metaphysik L1, “The faculty of desire is either a higher or a lower faculty of desire. The lower faculty of desire is a power to desire something so far as we are affected by objects. The higher faculty of desire is a power to desire something from ourselves independently of objects” (ML1, 28:228–9; APa, 25:408; Me, 25:1334). All of these desires are what Kant terms “impelling causes” (causae impulsivae) (ML1, 28:254), and they are representations of objects, coupled with satisfaction or dissatisfaction, now urging us toward a choice of action (ML1, 28:254). The higher, intellectual impelling causes are what Kant generally calls “motives” (Motive) or “motive grounds” (Bewegungsgründe). Motives are the representation of the moral law or (sometimes) the beautiful (MMr, 29:895),5 together with the manner in which it is pleasing or displeasing, or elicits respect or causes pain in us, urging a choice of action (ML1, 28:254; CPrR, 5:73). Thus here we have a cognition of the moral law by means of pure practical reason, we have a feeling of respect for the moral law as authoritative, and we have a desire, here a motive, to act in accordance with the moral law out of respect for the moral law (ML1, 28:258; CPrR, 78; MM 399; REL, 6:36). In addition to our higher, intellectual impelling causes, there are the lower, sensitive impelling causes, which Kant generally calls “stimuli” (stimuli or Anreiz), “motive causes” (Bewegursachen), or “impulses” (Antriebe) (ML1, 28:254; R 1008, 15:448; CPJ, 5:209). These sensible desires are grounded in sensible feeling (CPrR, 5:72–73). Sensible desires include inclinations, instincts, propensities, passions, and sometimes affects (though Kant usually classifies these as feelings). An “inclination” (Neigung, or concupiscentia), in contrast to an impulse, is a sensible desire for an object that has become habitual (REL, 6:28, MM, 6:212; Vorarbeiten zur Metaphysik der Sitten, 23:383; Me, 25:1112). In Kant’s view, because an impulse becomes an inclination only through repeated indulgence (though exactly how often will vary from person to person), one is responsible for inclinations and can be reproached for having them (APa, 25:409; AF, 25:580; Me, 25:1112; CPrR, 5:118). By contrast with stimuli and inclinations, an instinct is a desire for a yet-unknown or unspecified object (APa, 25:408; APi, 25:797; Me, 25:1112), as with hunger or sexual desire. A “propensity” (Hang) is the inner ground for a possible inclination, Kant Usually Kant makes no reference to the beautiful when discussing intellectual or sensitive impelling causes, likely for the reason that this feeling in itself is not interested in the existence of its object but only its form.

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often naming the propensity to drink here, where some do not advance from a propensity to drink to an inclination to drink only because they never have any alcohol (AF, 25:580; APi, 25:796–97; Me, 25:1112). A “passion” (Leidenschaft) is a sensible desire that has been reflected on and accepted (MM, 6:407–08) and has become so deeply entrenched and powerful as to render us unable to weigh this desire against the sum of our other desires (AC, 25:212; APi, 25:797; MoPo, 27:205–06 [1782/3]; Me, 25:1114; R 1514, 15:845 [1780–84]), making passions especially detrimental to freedom, as we here have no desire to change and free ourselves from this monopolizing desire. Kant usually classifies an “affect” (Affect) as a feeling, not a desire, but its short-lived but overwhelming power causes us to momentarily lose grip on ourselves (Me, 25:1115; AC, 25:212; MD, 28:679), and perhaps because of this momentary but severe impact on our current desires, Kant sometimes refers to them as stimuli (ML1, 28:256) and so sometimes provisionally classifies them as desires.6 We now turn, finally, to another aspect of our faculty of desire, namely, our capacity to choose to pursue certain objects of desire. Kant refers to every power of choice as a “Willkür” (also “Willkühr”), or “arbitrium,” and even (non-rational) animals have a power of choice. Whether a being is for Kant merely an animal is a question of whether it has the capacity for self-consciousness: if it lacks this capacity, and along with it the capacity for reflection, it is an animal (though Kant recognizes that determining which beings have this capacity for self-consciousness is an empirical matter). Without the capacity for self-consciousness and reflection, the only impelling causes affecting the power of choice in animals are sensitive ones, and without self-consciousness and reflection, these sensitive impelling causes are also necessitating causes: “Stimuli thus have either necessitating power or impelling power. With all non-rational animals the stimuli have necessitating power” (ML1, 28:255). Kant has other terms that he uses to make the same point. While “arbitrium” refers to any sort of power of choice, Kant specifies that an arbitrium that is affected by sensibility is an “arbitrium sensitivum,” and that “The arbitrium sensitivum without consciousness is brutum” (R 4226, 17:465 [1769–70]), where “brutum” means “necessitation by stimuli” (R 1021, 15:457 [1775–79]). Accordingly, animals (who are without consciousness in the sense of selfconsciousness) have an arbitrium brutum, and so, again, are necessitated in their actions: “the arbitrium brutum is necessitated by stimuli” (R 4548, 17:589; A534/B562; A802/B830; MMr, 29:896; MoPo, 27:123, 131).   See, for example, AC, 25:208–12; APa, 25:413; ABu, 25:1514; APi, 25:797.

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At the opposite extreme is the divine being, which has no faculty of sensibility at all and is therefore what Kant terms a “pure intelligence” (R  1021, 15:547; MMr, 29:896). Just as animals can act only on sensible stimuli, so too a pure intelligence can act only on motives, or the moral law, so that the objective law presented in the faculty of cognition by reason is automatically rendered an active, subjective law for action. Thus Kant tells us that while the arbitrium brutum is necessitated by stimuli, the “divine power of choice” (R 4226, 17:465), or arbitrium purum (R 1021, 15:457 L-8; ML2, 28:588, MD, 28:677; MVi, 29:1015), is necessitated according to intellectual grounds, or motives (R 4226, 17:465; R 1112, 15:457–58; MMr, 29:896; ML1, 28:255; MD, 28:677). Nonetheless, because this being is self-conscious and authors its own objective law which becomes its subjective law for action, it is a being that still acts freely (R 4226, 17:465; R 4227, 17:466; R 1021, 15:457). The human soul, by contrast to both God and animals, has both higher powers, of intellectuality, which rest on the capacity for self-consciousness and reflection, and lower powers, of sensibility. As we have seen, the human soul thus has both a higher and lower power of cognition, a higher and lower power of pleasure, and, in the same manner, a higher and lower power of desire. When it comes to the human power of choice (Willkür), Kant therefore argues that it is “affected,” or an “arbitrium sensitivum,” because it is affected by stimuli as impelling causes (MMr, 29:895–96; MD, 28:677; MVi, 29:1015–16), unlike an arbitrium purum; at the same time, it differs from an arbitrium brutum because it is also subject to motives, or intellectual impelling causes. Both of these impelling causes, motives and stimuli, are what Kant also calls “incentives” (Triebfedern) (ML1, 28:257–58; AMr, 25:1334; R 6906, 19:202; R 6796, 19:163–64; R 6798, 19:164; CPrR, 5:72–73, 128n; REL, 6:27, 35; Vorarbeiten zur Metaphysik der Sitten, 23:378, 383). As opposed to animal choice and divine choice, then, human choice is not restricted to either domain of incentives; and, like a divine being, we are self-conscious and can reflect on our choice. Our desires thus can become what Kant terms “determining grounds” (Bestimmungsgründe) only through a choice on the part of a sensibly affected but nonetheless reflective agent, and so these desires “determine” (Bestimmen) the actions we perform only in the sense of defining their nature to the exclusion of other possible natures but not in the sense of causing them. These choices can be expressed in the form of subjective principles of action, or “maxims,” although these maxims can be merely implicit and in fact usually are not formulated in the richest sense, deliberately and explicitly, according to Kant (OFBS, 2:227 [1764];

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MoPo, 27:207 [1776–78]; Me, 25:1169 [1781–82]; APa, 25:409 [1772/3]; A, 7:291, 292, 294 [1796]). This overview of the faculties of the mind according to Kant makes clear that in Kant’s view it is not pure practical reason that chooses. We exercise our cognitive faculty of pure practical reason (A14/B28–A15/B29; A796/B824–A797/B825; CPrR, 5:4, 20, 66, 73; CPJ, First Introduction, 20:206) when we legislate the moral law, while we exercise a different faculty, the executive faculty of choice, or Willkür, when we choose our actions. Moreover, the distinction between the faculty of pure practical reason and Willkür is matched by a genuine depth of options for Willkür beyond those on pure practical reason’s moral law. While we feel respect for the moral law as something that we have authored and as something that accurately commands what we morally ought to do, and while we therefore have a higher desire, or a motive, to act on morally permissible maxims out of respect for the moral law when we choose action, we can also at the same time have any number of lower desires, such as desires for food or sex. Even though we have not authored these lower desires, they nonetheless urge our choice of maxims on them and can do this without resting their appeal explicitly or implicitly on recognition of the dignity of humanity. They therefore do not involve a contradiction internal to themselves (as lower desires) when they urge action opposed to the moral law, even if these morally impermissible actions do contradict the moral law and thus our higher desire, or motive, to act on the moral law. If we choose to act on inclinations and against the moral law, we therefore do not act incoherently but only immorally; this immoral choice is only incoherent if we also choose to act morally, so that we, in effect, knowingly both choose to act on maxims that stand in the right relation to the dignity of humanity and also choose to act on maxims that do not stand in this relation to the dignity of humanity. I I I T h e s i m pl i f i e d acc ou n t of ag e nc y i n t h e grounding As noted earlier, when it comes to popular misconceptions about Kant’s account of human agency, the influential Grounding is a big part of the problem. The Grounding’s first problem is its compromised empirical psychology: the crucial distinction that Kant already clearly had in place in the late 1770s, between our legislative faculty of cognition, reason, on the one hand, and our executive faculty of desire, Willkür, on the other hand, is absent from this work. Instead, Kant speaks almost exclusively,

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often, and ambiguously, about our Wille. Sidgwick famously takes Kant’s identification of reason with our Wille as conclusive proof that for Kant reason is what chooses action, concluding on this basis that Kant accordingly thought it would be impossible for us to knowingly and voluntarily choose to act immorally. In Sidgwick’s words, “I may quote one or two of the numerous passages in which Kant, either expressly or by implication, identifies Will and Reason; for this identification obviously excludes the possibility of Will’s choosing between Reason and non-rational impulses. Thus in the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, he tells us that ‘as Reason is required to deduce actions from laws, Will is nothing but pure practical reason’.” 7 The Grounding’s next problem is its vague allusions to metaphysics: Kant tells us that, from the side of our higher powers, we belong to the intelligible world, while from the side of our lower powers we belong to the sensible world and that the intelligible world contains the ground of the sensible world. This could be misinterpreted to imply that our sensible inclinations are nothing to us when we choose and that there is in fact no depth of options available to us on which to act, i.e. that the only live option we have when we self-consciously choose, the only coherent option, is action on pure practical reason’s moral law. Turning to the first problem, regarding the Grounding’s vague empirical psychology and its lack of a clearly distinguished Willkür, we find that various commentators have already in part addressed the resulting concern (as expressed by Sidgwick) that Kant’s theory of agency rules out moral responsibility for immoral actions, by showing that Kant offers this distinction in his later writings, especially the Metaphysics of Morals and Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason.8 What’s more, as reviewed above, Kant also had the distinction between a legislative faculty of cognition and an executive faculty of choice in place earlier, well before the Grounding. But this still leaves the question why, if Kant had this distinction in place both before and after the Grounding, he would consistently avoid discussion of it and of the Willkür in the Grounding and also generally relegate to footnotes discussions about the role of the feeling of respect in allowing reason to become practical. A clue is Kant’s emphasis throughout much of the Grounding on the manner in which we are autonomous in acting on the categorical Sidgwick (1907: 515). Note, however, that Sidgwick has misquoted Kant here, attributing to him the identification of will with pure practical reason when actually Kant identifies the will (Wille) with “practical reason” (praktische Vernunft), not pure practical reason. 8 Allison (1990); Beck (1960); Meerbote (1982); Silber (1963). 7

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imperative. Kant tells us that “all previous attempts” to discover the principle of morality had failed because “it was not seen that man is subject only to his own, yet universal, legislation” (G, 4:432). It was essential for Kant to show that we are not only subject to but also the author of the moral law, for otherwise the question would be why we should bother to act on this imperative imposed from without, i.e., in what the authority of this law over us rests. And Kant believes that the only answer to this question, where the law is imposed solely from without, would come by reference to some empirical incentive: if “man is thought as being merely subject to a law (whatever it might be), then the law had to carry with it some interest functioning as an attracting stimulus or as a constraining force for obedience, inasmuch as the law did not arise as a law from his own will” (G, 4:433). And once we need to turn to these empirical incentives, we are no longer searching for the right sort of thing anyway, but instead for an ulterior motive for following the principle, as Kant explains in reference to the history of ethics, where the law was not recognized to issue from within: here “all the labor spent in finding a supreme ground for duty was irretrievably lost; duty was never discovered, but only the necessity of acting from a certain interest” (G, 4:433). Having thus emphasized in the Grounding that it is one agent that both legislates and is subject to the moral law and that we are therefore autonomous in following the moral law, Kant could not have been eager to draw his readers’ attention to a gap within this one agent, between their role as legislator of their moral law and their executive role in deciding whether to choose to act on this law. This would only invite questions about why we, in exercising our faculty of choice, should indeed favor action on the moral law over action on any existing, competing inclinations, or even how we could do this, i.e., how the moral law could motivate. And here any appeal Kant would make to the role of the feeling of respect for the moral law would in turn only invite more questions, about how the feeling of respect for the moral law is not, in the end, like a feeling of sensual gratification and so just “some interest functioning as an attracting stimulus or as a constraining force for obedience” (G, 4:433) that renders the categorical imperative hypothetical. Finally, this complicated task would have distracted Kant from the main project of the Grounding, of articulating a new formula for the moral law. Turning to Kant’s 1788 Critique of Practical Reason, we find confirmation of this hypothesis. In a footnote in the second Critique, Kant explains why he had not said more about the faculty of feeling and the faculty of desire in the Grounding:

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One could also raise the objection that I have not previously explained the concept of the faculty of desire or the feeling of pleasure. This reproach would be unfair, however, because this explanation, as given in psychology, could reasonably be presupposed. But then the definition given in psychology might be so framed that the feeling of pleasure would be made basic to the determination of the faculty of desire (as this is commonly done); and, as a result, the supreme principle of practical philosophy would necessarily turn out to be empirical, a conclusion which would have to be proved first and which is, in fact, completely refuted in this Critique. (CPrR, 5:7n)

Here Kant first (“This reproach …”) points out that it was reasonable for him to have presupposed that his audience would assume a tripartite distinction between the faculties of cognition, feeling, and desire, even though he does not draw this distinction himself. And Kant is right, because this distinction was commonplace among the rationalists, such as Baumgarten and Wolff, with whom his audience was very familiar, even if there were important differences between Kant’s and these other philosophers’ respective understandings of the nature of these three faculties. However, next in this passage (“But then …”), and most importantly for the purposes of our inquiry into Kant’s lack of reference to the faculties of feeling and desire in the Grounding, Kant explains the concern he has about drawing attention to these faculties. As commonly understood, the faculty of pleasure was basic to the determination of desire because it was pleasure that ultimately determined our ends. On this common understanding, reason might be said to issue imperatives, but only in the sense of offering general rules of guidance for pursuing empirical ends whose value derived from the pleasure they promised, so that here reason would offer only hypothetical imperatives. At the heart of this problem of an ethics of merely hypothetical ends, in Kant’s view, is the failure to recognize a distinction in kind between reason and sensibility, which is what would allow us to recognize reason’s ability to author its own laws a priori rather than merely offering general rules for pursuing empirical ends. Thus in the Grounding’s Preface, Kant makes clear that Wolff had failed to draw this distinction in kind and was therefore unable to “distinguish the motives which, as such, are presented completely a priori by reason alone and are properly moral from the empirical motives” (G, 4:391). Here, accordingly, the rationalists in effect rest reason’s authority on “some interest functioning as an attracting stimulus or as a constraining force for obedience” (G, 4:433). And this amounts to calling off one’s search for a moral law, reducing reason to a mere slave of the passions. Thus while Kant, like the rationalists, sees the faculty of pleasure playing

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a necessary role in allowing reason to be practical – insofar as he sees the feeling of respect playing a necessary role, where this feeling of respect is a higher form of a feeling of pleasure – on Kant’s account this feeling of respect is not the basis for reason’s authority and so basic to the determination of desire:  this feeling is instead the response to our recognition of reason’s authority. Unfortunately, as the extended nature of Kant’s discussion of this topic (of the practical nature of pure reason) in the Critique of Pure Reason demonstrates, Kant did not regard it as a topic that could be done justice in brief fashion, and so his recognition of this fact, together with his stated recognition of the danger of being misunderstood to offer an account in which pleasure was basic to the determination of desire if he brought up the roles of pleasure and desire, accounts for why Kant avoids discussion of the complexities of the determination of the will in the course of the Grounding’s focused discussion of the nature of the moral law.9 Having reviewed Kant’s breakdown of the mind’s faculties in his empirical psychology and having considered the limitations of the Grounding’s account of our faculties, we can now turn to the mentioned problem of the Grounding’s brief allusions to metaphysics. The problem is that these allusions are easily misinterpreted to imply that when we choose, we do so as pure reason. According to such misinterpretations, our sensible inclinations are not incentives to action independent of their moral status but instead incentives to action ultimately grounded in and so dependent on respect for the moral law. The result is that, on such readings, we cannot have true conflicts between two types of incentives that are distinct in kind: sensible inclinations, on the one hand, and motives to act morally, on the other. Instead, according to these readings, because an inclination’s status as an incentive, i.e., an inclination’s appeal, is not distinct from the motive to act morally but instead ultimately grounded in this motive to act morally, an inclination at odds with the moral law is internally inconsistent and thus strictly incoherent, and not merely inconsistent with the moral law and thus immoral. What we have seen in Kant’s descriptions of agency has been the opposite of this sort of metaphysical tale of incentives. These descriptions made clear that the status of sensible inclinations as incentives does not rest on their moral status:  for example, physical pain serves as an incentive to action independent of its moral status, so that while acting on this incentive could conceivably violate the moral law, this action is not therefore   See here the footnotes on pages 401 and 413 of the Grounding.

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incoherent, because the incentive is not grounded in respect for the moral law. But while the burden of proof is therefore on an interpretation of Kant’s metaphysics that would require us to reject his many descriptions of agency, I will nonetheless briefly address Kant’s metaphysics to show why it is, in fact, consistent with the empirical psychology that we have reviewed, considering Kant’s more detailed accounts of the ontology of substances, faculties (or powers),10 and accidents. Our mental faculties, in Kant’s view, are nothing more than the capacities of our noumenal mental substance to bring about certain types of accidents, or states (here representations), where “substance” is understood indeterminately and so without the determinate attribute of permanence.11 Kant draws distinctions between faculties insofar as their respective accidents cannot be reduced to one another in type, and for this reason he draws the most fundamental distinction between the faculties of cognition, feeling, and desire, on the basis of what he takes to be the irreducible nature of these three types of representations. Now, in Kant’s view, our higher faculties presuppose our capacity for self-consciousness, whereas the lower faculties do not, and in this sense the higher faculties are active whereas the lower are passive. Nonetheless, Kant is always clear that the representations of our lower faculties – say, in the cognitions of sensibility – do presuppose some activity on our part, even if not spontaneous activity, which is why we can have sensible cognitions, while a wooden post, it would seem, cannot. His simplest explanation for why this is so is that one substance does not and cannot simply pass its accidents to another substance, because these accidents are states, or modes, not things existing apart from a substance, and so they cannot be transferred between substances. Instead, one substance acts on another through it, by changing its states rather than giving it new ones, and here the nature of the affected substance and its manner of actively resisting change always plays a role in influencing the nature of the resulting change. Accordingly, while in one sense we can identify our higher faculties with ourselves because these are the ones over which we have spontaneous control, this by no means implies that we lack lower faculties or the states that their exercise makes possible, or that these lower states, specifically lower incentives, are dependent for their status as incentives on an underlying commitment to the moral law, so that these lower He sometimes distinguishes between the term “faculty” and the term “power,” saying that the latter refers to a faculty that has been activated and so determined in a certain way; but he just as often uses “faculties” and “powers” interchangeably. 11 See Wuerth (2006, 2010b). 10

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incentives are nothing to us when they are at odds with our commitment to the moral law. Even if we do not spontaneously control these faculties, and even if we accordingly have no respect for them as our creations, they inhere in us, register in us, and exercise an irreducible and sometimes powerful influence on us, so that each of us when choosing our actions is, as we saw Kant conclude, above, an “arbitrium sensitivum,” not an “arbitrium purum.” I V  K a n t ’s mor a l i t y f or r e c o g n i z a bly h u m a n ag e n t s Kant’s account of agency in the Grounding should accordingly be recognized for what it is:  an incomplete and vague version of Kant’s relatively rich considered account of agency. Once we do this, and once we recognize the place of feelings and desires in Kant’s subject, we can take seriously Kant’s stated concerns about the manner in which feelings and desires can impact moral living and should accordingly be addressed. Kant, after all, argues not only that we should obey the moral law but also that there are “subjective conditions in human nature that hinder men or help them in fulfilling the laws of a metaphysics of morals” (MM, 6:217), and indeed he is repeatedly struck by the “force and herculean strength needed to subdue the vice-breeding inclinations” (MM, 6:376). We accordingly have a duty to affect these subjective conditions of human nature that hinder or help us in fulfilling these laws of a metaphysics of morals. In other words, we would be morally remiss to neglect these subjective conditions and assume that last-minute, ad hoc applications of the categorical imperative test to maxims regarding individual actions would be sufficient. Just as an athlete bent on victory should cultivate skills prior to being tested, not leaving success to a last-ditch effort, so too should someone bent on living morally. We should instead stack the deck in our favor, “summoning … all the means in [our] power” (G, 4:394). Thus Kant asserts that “one does not acquire the power to put the rules of virtue into practice merely by being taught how one ought to behave in order to conform with the concept of virtue [, and so virtue] must instead be exercised and cultivated by efforts to combat the enemy within man (asceticism); for one cannot straightway do all one wants to do, without having first tried out and exercised one’s powers” (MM, 6:477). One important way in which we can cultivate our powers to effectively combat problematic inclinations is to deliberately reflect on and formulate maxims of action to guide us throughout our lives. While Kant

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may well believe that maxims as understood in some sense accompany all choice, he clearly does not think this where the maxims in question are understood in this rich sense. Far from it, he thinks that these maxims are actually quite rare, as mentioned earlier. The change to a life guided by such maxims is accordingly one that Kant often describes as nothing less than a “revolution” (A, 7:241; MM, 6:477), prompted by disgust with the unsteady state of one’s condition as determined by inclinations. Without such deliberately formulated maxims, we leave ourselves more vulnerable to the contingencies of inclinations, in effect tempting fate: in Kant’s words, without these “considered, firm, and continually purified principles … [we] are neither armed for all situations nor adequately secured against the changes that new temptations could bring about” (MM, 6:383–84). In addition to enjoining us to curb the influence of wayward cognitions, feelings, and desires by developing “character” one lifelong maxim at a time, Kant directs us to shape our capacities for cognition, feeling, and desire themselves. When properly cultivated, our capacities will facilitate, not hinder, action on the moral law. Further, cultivating our capacities is valuable in itself, making us “worthy of the humanity” in us (MM, 6:387, 445). But because Kant’s views here are extensive, and because other essays in this volume address them, I will not try to do so here. V  C onc l us ion As a number of other essays in this volume describe, Kant has plenty to say outside the Grounding about the moral importance of cultivating our feelings and desires. The question, though, is whether Kant’s account of agency allows for such talk. In particular, the hugely influential Grounding gives us reason to believe that Kant’s moral agent is nothing but pure reason, distinct from and unaffected by feelings and desires. In this case it makes little sense to speak of the moral importance of cultivating our feelings and desires. We have now seen, though, that Kant’s considered account of the moral agent, as presented both before and after the Grounding, characterizes the moral agent as far more than pure reason, as having both higher and lower faculties of cognition, feeling, and desire. In relation to this account of moral agency, Kant’s calls to develop our feelings and desires make sense. But what, then, to make of the Grounding’s account of moral agency? What we have seen here is that Kant’s focus in the Grounding on

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formulating the moral law and making clear its origin in pure reason, combined with his keen awareness of the dangers of a quick mention of the role of feelings and desires in moral agency, account for the abbreviated and vague account of agency in the Grounding. Knowing this, we can work with Kant’s richer account of agency as presented in his other work, moving beyond his account of agency in the Grounding.

Ch apter 7

A Kantian conception of human flourishing Lara Denis

For many of us, the most engaging moral questions are not about rights or what makes acts right, but about what sort of person to be and how to live – questions more usually associated with virtue ethics than with Kantian ethics. In this essay, I focus on a central feature of eudaimonistic1 virtue ethics generally regarded as absent from Kant’s ethical theory:  a conception of human flourishing. I argue that Kant’s ethics contains a conception of human flourishing, with Kant’s highest good providing its structure and an abstract account of its content, and his doctrine of duties filling out this conception and pointing agents toward its approximation. The conception of flourishing that emerges is distinctively Kantian, though latent in Kant’s work: it is clearly grounded in important aspects of Kant’s moral thought, but is not presented by Kant as a conception of human flourishing. The construction of this conception from Kant’s work is worthwhile both because it illuminates important strands of his thought and their relations to one another (and so enriches our understanding of Kant’s ethics), and because it provides compelling, characteristically Kantian answers to deep, enduring questions about how to live and what sort of person to strive to be (and so enhances the appeal of Kantian ethics). Section i sets out basic features of an Aristotelian account of human flourishing, highlights attractive elements of it, discusses why we cannot attribute an Aristotelian eudaimonism to Kant, and offers criteria for a Kantian conception of human flourishing. Section ii gives an account of one source of a Kantian conception of human flourishing, the highest good. I argue that Kant’s concept of the highest good, and his I am grateful to Richard Parry, Roger Wertheimer, and Allen Wood for comments on an early draft and to Amy Lara and Donald Wilson for comments on a later draft. 1 I follow T.H. Irwin’s (1996) use of “eudaimonistic” in “Kant’s Criticisms of Eudaemonism,” using the term to describe theories that are “concerned with eudaimonia, conceived as the ultimate good” (64).

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intertwined conceptions of the highest good in a person and the highest good of a possible world, provide a provisional account of Kantian flourishing. Section iii further develops this Kantian conception of flourishing through a discussion of Kant’s doctrine of duties, especially his system of self-regarding duties. I argue that Kant’s doctrine of duties fleshes out the skeletal conception of flourishing furnished by his conception of the highest good in a person, providing an agent with distinctively Kantian answers to questions of how best to live, what sort of person to be, and how most fully to realize herself as the particular human being she is. The conclusion draws together threads of argument from previous sections, showing how the resulting conception of flourishing fares in relation to the criteria put forth in section i, and suggesting its importance for understanding Kant’s ethics and appreciating Kantian ethics. I H u m a n f l ou r i s h i ng I begin the discussion of human flourishing with Aristotle’s account of eudaimonia.2 This is not because Aristotle’s ethics is an important reference point in Kant’s moral thought,3 but rather because there is much that is attractive in Aristotle’s approach, neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics is dominant within contemporary virtue ethics, and Aristotle’s account of eudaimonia has done much to shape what contemporary philosophers have in mind when they talk about human flourishing. Following Terence Irwin, we can break Aristotle’s account of eudaimonia into three parts: the concept of eudaimonia, the criteria for it, and the content of it.4 “Eudaimonia” is the widely agreed upon term identifying the final good (highest or chief good, ultimate end) for human beings (NE, 1095a17–22).5 As such, it is the central concept and starting point for Aristotle’s ethics. From the outset Aristotle assumes that eudaimonia For the purposes of this paper, I use “human flourishing” rather than “happiness” as a translation of “eudaimonia.” Some scholars of ancient philosophy find this the preferable translation (e.g. John Cooper [1975], ch. 3, esp. 89–90n1). Julia Annas, however, cautions that using “human flourishing” obscures the fact that for both ancient and modern philosophers, “the starting point for considering happiness is a conventionally successful life which the agent finds satisfactory.” See Annas (1993: 453). My primary reason for using “human flourishing” is to mark the distinction between Aristotle’s notion of eudaimonia and Kant’s notion of happiness (Glückseligkeit). I do not distinguish between eudaimōn and makarios; my talk of a flourishing agent will refer to both (see Annas 1993: 44). 3 See Paul Guyer (this volume) and Allen Wood (this volume). 4 Irwin (1996: 72). 5 For abbreviations of Aristotle’s works, see Abbreviations at the start of this volume. This essay uses the translation of the Nicomachean Ethics by Terence Irwin (see Bibliography). 2

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has to do with living a certain kind of life, and is the same as living well and doing well. The criteria for the human good are completeness and self-sufficiency (NE, 1097a15–b21). The human good is “complete without qualification,” in that it is always choiceworthy, and is worth choosing for itself rather than as a means to any further end; this completeness implies both finality (satisfaction of desire) and comprehensiveness (inclusion, subsumption, or culmination of all other goods). It is self-sufficient in that it lacks nothing; it could not be made better by the addition of any other sort of good. Given Aristotle’s view that “a human being is a naturally political [animal],” an implication of the self-sufficiency of the ultimate good is that we must understand eudaimonia as “not what suffices for a solitary person by himself, living an isolated life, but what suffices also for parents, children, wife and, in general, for friends and fellow citizens” (NE, 1097b8–15). Aristotle uses the notion of the human function to move from the concept of and criteria for human flourishing to the content of it. Since “the human function is the activity of the soul in accord with reason or requiring reason,” “each function is completed well by being completed in accord with the virtue proper [to that kind of thing],” and we are looking for a way of living that is the complete, ultimate good for a human being, Aristotle concludes that “the human good proves to be the activity of the soul in accord with virtue” in a complete life (NE, 1098a7–20). For Aristotle, virtue is not merely a means to human flourishing, but is largely constitutive of it; it is the enduring and controlling element of flourishing (NE, 1100b1–20). Virtue is not sufficient for human flourishing, however: external goods such as wealth, health, children, and beauty are also necessary (NE, 1099a31–1099b6, 1178b34–1179a2).6 As virtue is the chief constituent of human flourishing, Aristotle devotes most of the Nicomachean Ethics to the virtues of character and intellect. Among his theses are that virtue of character is a mean between vices of excess and deficiency, relative to us, as defined by reference to reason as the prudent person would define it (NE, 1107a1–5); that virtue of character involves a harmony between the rational and appetitive parts of the soul that mere continence lacks (NE, 1102a5–1103a10, 1151b35– 1152a9); that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit injustice (NE, 1138a30–b5); that prudence, a virtue of thought, links the virtues of character (NE, 1144b14–1145a2); that pleasure characteristically accompanies 6

Although Aristotle describes virtue in general as “up to us,” he also claims that external goods are necessary for the exercise of certain virtues, such as magnificence (NE, 1122b25–35, 1178b8).

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virtuous activity, completing it (NE, 1134b20–35); and that being raised well is crucial for living well (NE, 1104b10–15). In Book x, Aristotle completes his account of human flourishing by arguing that the best kind of human life is one devoted to study (theōrein, theōria).7 Contemporary accounts of human flourishing echo much of Aristotle’s account of eudaimonia. For example, Richard Kraut (2007) says that flourishing “is primarily a biological phenomenon … above all, it is plants, animals, and human beings that flourish when conditions are favorable” (131). Living things flourish “by developing properly and fully, that is, by growing, maturing, making full use of the potentialities, capacities, and faculties that (under favorable conditions) they naturally have at an early stage of their existence. Anything that impedes that development or the exercise of those mature faculties – disease, the sapping of vigor and strength, injuries, the loss of organs – is bad for them” (131). A flourishing human being “is one who possesses, develops, and enjoys the exercise of cognitive, affective, sensory, and social powers (no less than physical powers)” (137). “For human beings, no less than other living things, it is always good to flourish; and if a human being is flourishing in all ways … he is doing very well indeed” (133). To sum up this Aristotelian account of flourishing: as the ultimate end of a human life, flourishing must be understood as the best and most complete good, a good that comprises or grounds the value of, or is the final goal of, all other ends. Human flourishing involves the blossoming of an agent’s characteristically human capacities, and the experience of pleasures proper to the exercise of those capacities. We cannot understand human flourishing without understanding human nature, for human flourishing must be suited to humans, capturing what makes the best life for beings of this kind. The most characteristically human of capacities are rational; so human flourishing requires the full development and expression of these capacities. Contemplative study expresses reason in an especially pure form, and so must play an important role in the best kind of human life. But as we are not only rational, and as reason’s exercise extends beyond contemplation, human flourishing also involves the rational education and governance of one’s appetites and emotions. In a flourishing life, appetites and emotions are neither extinguished nor limitlessly indulged, but are brought into harmony with reason. Whether Interpreters disagree on how to reconcile Aristotle’s apparent identification of flourishing with study in Book x with the apparently more inclusive account of flourishing in the preceding chapters of the Nicomachean Ethics. This is the focus of several pieces in Rorty (1980). See also Cooper (1975), chs. 2–3; Kraut (1989); Lear (2004); and Whiting (1986).

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an agent flourishes depends in part on factors not wholly in her control, but is primarily dependent on virtue, which is up to her. Not all details of this Aristotelian picture have wide appeal. For example, many contemporary “neo-Aristotelian” virtue ethicists reject Aristotle’s view that study is essential for and central to the best kind of life.8 Nevertheless, much of the Aristotelian view of human flourishing is compelling. The concept of eudaimonia provides an organizing principle or focal point for the ethical life, an ultimate end in relation to which one can think about one’s more specific choices and goals. Because this conception of how to live is grounded in a view of human nature that recognizes our interdependence with others, our rational and appetitive natures, and the like, the Aristotelian conception of flourishing promises to respond realistically and sensitively to us as beings with distinctively human capacities, needs, vulnerabilities, drives, desires, and difficulties. As a normative conception, eudaimonia directs us to cultivate our natural capacities, so that we live as fully and well as possible as the kind of beings that we are. Because Aristotelian flourishing is an end that results in large part but not entirely from virtue, it provides agents with a goal that can rationally be hoped for and worked toward, though without certainty of success. The centrality of virtue to this conception of human flourishing allows it to direct us in how to live, and in what sort of people to strive to be. Yet because virtue is not the whole of flourishing, and because Aristotle’s account of virtue and the virtues is itself broad, eudaimonia is not a narrow, moralistic conception of living well. However attractive aspects of the Aristotelian account of flourishing are, there are several reasons that we cannot attribute a similar eudaimonism to Kant. First, Aristotelian eudaimonism makes foundational to ethics a concept grounded in human nature. Kant’s conception of moral obligation as based in a law that holds for all rational beings implies his rejection of any approach to ethics that grounds fundamental ethical principles in human nature: “The ground of obligation … must not be sought in the nature of the human being or in the circumstances of the world in which he is placed, but a priori simply in concepts of pure At the outset of On Virtue Ethics, Rosalind Hursthouse explains that part of her reason for calling herself a “neo-Aristotelian” rather than an “Aristotelian” concerns her rejection of Aristotle’s views about slaves and women, and her unwillingness to be confined to Aristotle’s list of virtues (1999: 8–9). Later arguments show her to be unwilling to endorse contemplation as an essential element of human flourishing, or as a key constituent of the best kind of human life (see ch. 10, esp. 218).

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r­ eason” (G, 4:389; see also 442).9 So for Kant, the Aristotelian approach is too empirical, and can generate only principles that are too contingent. Second, Kant sees eudaimonistic ethics as defining morality in reference to a prior end (G, 4:444). Part of Kant’s conception of autonomous moral agency is that rational beings take a pure, unmediated interest in the moral law (G, 4:449). Kant often criticizes Greek eudaimonism as heteronomous for making an inclination-based end the determining ground of the will, deriving the moral law from that end, and deriving our interest in morality from our interest in this end (CPrR, 5:126–27; G, 4:441–42, 444; MM, 6:377–78).10 Furthermore, Kant objects to the ancients’ “method of ultimate moral investigations,” which begins by positing an ultimate end of human action and then develops a conception of morality in relation to that end (CPrR, 5:64). Even if the initial account of the ultimate end is rough and unspecific – and even if one develops it further, as Aristotle does, chiefly by considering the nature of virtue – this method seems to portray our interest in morality as properly mediated by and contingent upon our prior interest in a pre-moral (or amoral) notion of living well. Third, Kant’s conception of the end that all human beings desire, Glückseligkeit (happiness), is far more subjective and variable than Aristotle’s eudaimonia, and plays a comparatively minor role in Kant’s theory. Kant gives several related accounts of happiness. He describes happiness as “continuous well-being, enjoyment of life, complete satisfaction with one’s condition” (MM, 6:480), as “the state of a rational being in the world in the whole of whose existence everything goes according to his wish and will” (CPrR, 5:124), and as a meta-end consisting in “the sum of satisfaction of all inclinations” (G, 4:399). Kant calls happiness “a fluctuating idea” (G, 4:399) and an “ideal … of imagination” (G, 4:418), declaring that “it is a misfortune that the concept of happiness is such an indeterminate concept that, although every human being wishes to attain this, he can still never say determinately and consistently with himself what he really wishes and wills” (G, 4:418; see also CPJ, 5:430). Kant takes happiness to be distinct from virtue and from the sense of moral selfcontentment – “an analogue of happiness” – that necessarily accompanies virtue, though he recognizes that morally committed agents’ satisfaction with their state requires consciousness of their virtue (CPrR, 5:38, 117–19; For abbreviations of Kant’s works and a list of translations of these works as used in this and other essays in this volume, see Abbreviations at the start of this volume. 10 For arguments against Kant’s criticisms of eudaimonism, see Irwin (1996), esp. 66–72, 78–84, 93–95, and Engstrom (1996), esp. 112–13 and 135n14.  9

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MoVi, 27:649–50). Kant neither identifies happiness with the ultimate practical good,11 nor takes happiness as an end by reference to which to construct his moral theory. Fourth, Kant rejects ethical approaches that make conceptions of human perfection fundamental to ethics in ways similar to Aristotle’s use of the man of practical wisdom to fill in the picture of virtue and hence of flourishing.12 This rejection is based in part on the imperfection of all would-be human moral exemplars:  “The ancients had no greater moral perfection than that which could come from the nature of man; but since this was very defective, their moral laws were also defective” (MoC, 27:251). A deeper problem with such an approach is that it is circular. We must already have a conception of moral goodness in order to recognize someone as exemplifying it (MoC, 27:332–33; CPrR, 5:127–28n). So principles, not ideals, are fundamental to Kant’s ethics.13 Finally, Thomas E. Hill, Jr. and Allen W. Wood argue that Kant has reasons based in central commitments of his normative ethics for not giving human flourishing a focal role in his theory.14 They argue that Kant associates eudaimonism with the retrograde, pre-modern view that there is only one way for human beings to live well. Such a view conflicts with Kant’s recognition of significant differences among people that appropriately shape their plans of life and with the characteristically Kantian respect for individuals’ free choice of how to live their own lives; it may also invite paternalism (CPrR, 5:25–26; MM, 6:215, 388, 454). In addition, Wood argues that Kant may have seen eudaimonistic theories as endorsing conventional views of human nature and social relations, which is contrary to the critical attitude Kantian ethics takes to custom (MM, 6:216; MoC, 27:300; MoVi, 27:706–07).15 Granting that it would be wrong to attribute Aristotelian eudaimonism to Kant, Kantians may nevertheless hope to draw from Kant’s own Indeed, Kant denies that ancient ethicists considered happiness (as he conceives it) to be the ultimate end (MoC, 27:247–48). 12 On Aristotle’s use of the man of practical wisdom, see Louden (1984); Hursthouse (1999: 35–39); and Hursthouse (this volume). 13 On Kant’s ethics as an ethics of principles rather than ideals, see Wood (this volume); on Kant’s rejection of Wolffian perfectionism, see Guyer (this volume). 14 See Wood (this volume) and Hill (2002a), esp. 195–99. Hill and Wood do not claim that no conception of human flourishing could be compatible with basic Kantian commitments. 15 Annas suggests that an assumption that ancient ethics works from a nonmoral, fully determinate conception of human nature constitutes a “misconception [that] lies behind a number of drearily familiar criticisms of ancient ethics, on the ground that it presupposes such a thing as ‘the single best way of life for a human being,’ which we moderns reject,” and denies that the way ancients think about human nature and flourishing leads their ethics to ratify rather than challenge conventional elements of ethical thought and practice (Annas 1993: 440). 11

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moral philosophy a broadly comparable, genuinely Kantian conception of human flourishing – one that presents a distinctively Kantian vision of living well as a human being. A Kantian conception of human flourishing should be recognizable as an account of human flourishing that is worth having in a moral theory; it need not in detail be very like Aristotle’s account of eudaimonia, but should share some of its attractive general features. A Kantian account of flourishing should not run afoul of Kant’s criticisms of ancient eudaimonism by, for example, treating human flourishing as the starting point for moral investigations or our interest in morality as contingent on a pre-moral interest in flourishing. It must be well-grounded in Kant’s texts and consistent with central commitments of his ethics, such as the fundamental equality of all rational beings. It should not imply that there is only one, narrowly defined way for people to live well, and it should not invite paternalism. II T h e h ig h e s t g o od Despite Kant’s criticisms of ancient conceptions and uses of an ultimate end, Kant incorporates an ultimate end into his own philosophy under the name “the highest good.”16 For Kant, the concept of the highest good is that of “the unconditioned totality of the object of pure practical reason” (CPrR, 5:108). Completeness is a salient feature of the concept and a crucial criterion for the content of this end. Kant calls the highest good “the whole and complete good as the object of the faculty of desire of rational finite beings” (CPrR, 5:110). All ends that pure practical reason recognizes as good are included within the highest good as a rationally ordered whole. The highest good is an end to which morality gives rise rather than an end prior to morality (CPrR, 5:109; REL, 6:5; TP, 8:279; WDO, 8:139). Kant does not take the highest good to be the fundamental concept of his moral philosophy, the starting point for his search for the supreme moral principle, or an end by reference to which to determine duties. As an end set forth for us by pure practical reason, the highest good is an end we must promote (CPrR, 5:113, 119, 122, 125).17 Yet Kant usually portrays our promotion of the highest good as something accomplished through In explicating Kant’s highest good, I focus on, but do not limit myself to, the Critique of Practical Reason, which seems to me to contain Kant’s most systematic account of it. On the evolution of Kant’s view of the highest good, see Förster (2000), ch. 5. 17 Kant also treats the highest good as an end that nature (or providence) promotes through the human race over the course of history, with or without our intentional promotion of it. See, e.g., CPJ, 5:431–32; TP, 8:310–12; TPP, 8:360–65; IUH, 8:19–21; RH, 8:65. 16

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compliance with prior moral requirements, suggesting that its promotion does not necessitate our adoption of it as a distinct end (REL, 6:5; CPJ, 5:451; cf. TP, 8:279; REL, 6:97–98, 151). Recognizing this end, however, provides us with “a special point of reference for the unification of all ends,” which is something that reason seeks (REL, 6:5; CPrR, 5:108). The content of the highest good consists in virtue and happiness. In this context, “virtue” (Tugend) refers mainly to a finite rational being’s volitional conformity to the moral law from respect for that law. Kant here emphasizes the pure moral disposition (Gesinnung) or cast of mind (Denkungsart) essential to virtue (CPrR, 5:114, 122–23, 125; and see G, 4:436; MM, 6:395; REL, 6:23n) over the power or capacity (Vermögen) or strength (Stärke) necessary for human expression of this disposition in action  – for example, as “the moral strength of a human being’s will in fulfilling his duty” (MM, 6:405; and see 380, 394, 397, 407–08, 447, 481; MoC, 27:300).18 Kant describes the moral component of the highest good as “immediately within our power” (CPrR, 5:119; and see CPJ, 5:453). Happiness consists in the satisfaction of all a finite rational being’s desires. That we desire happiness follows from our nature as finite rational beings with needs (CPrR, 5:25); attainment of happiness is not fully within an agent’s power, but depends on “the harmony of nature with his whole end as well as with the essential determining ground of his will” (CPrR, 5:124; and see CPJ, 5:453). Virtue is the supreme, unconditioned element of the highest good;19 happiness is the conditioned element. Reason recognizes virtue as good in itself, whereas it recognizes happiness as good if and only if it is enjoyed by a virtuous (or good-willed) person (G, 4:393; CPJ, 5:443) – or (at least) results from morally permissible conduct (CPrR, 5:111, 130). Despite the conditional status of happiness, Kant emphasizes that no amount of virtue alone can constitute the highest good:  “Happiness is also required, and not merely in the partial eyes of a person who makes himself an end but even in the judgment of an impartial reason, which regards a person in the world generally as an end in itself” (CPrR, 5:110). Kant considers virtue a person’s “worthiness to be happy,” and says that reason represents happiness as a “necessary result” of morality (CPrR, 5:119, 110). Happiness remains conceptually distinct from virtue within the highest good. Yet as On Kant’s various accounts of virtue, see Denis (2006), esp. 510–13. Kant sometimes identifies the fullest realization of the unconditioned part of the highest good with holiness (CPrR, 5:122–23; and see MM, 6:446). This is problematic in that Kant holds that human agents cannot have holy wills (CPrR, 5:32–33; G, 4:414). On holiness as an ideal within Kant’s ethics, see Wood (this volume) and Allison (1990: 171–79).

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the conditioned element of the highest good, happiness is fundamentally shaped by morality, and thus is importantly different from happiness not so conditioned.20 The inclination-based ends that constitute happiness within the highest good are rendered harmonious and structurally ordered not simply among themselves but also and more fundamentally by their relation to morality.21 Through this arrangement, these inclination-based ends and the happiness they compose become objectively good. Kant distinguishes between the highest good “in a person,” which he describes simply as “virtue and happiness together” (CPrR, 5:110), and the highest good “of a possible world,” which he describes as “happiness distributed in exact proportion to morality (as the worth of a person and his worthiness to be happy)” (CPrR, 5:110–11), as “a happiness of rational beings harmoniously coinciding with conformity to the moral law” (CPJ, 5:451), and as “universal happiness combined with and in conformity with the purest morality throughout the world” (TP, 8:279; also see CPJ, 5:453). The conceptions of the highest good in a person and of a possible world are not in competition with each other. Rather, the conception of the highest good in a person expresses what an individual can rationally hope for, for herself, as a member of a world in which the highest good of a possible world is realized: that “if we do not make ourselves unworthy of happiness, by violating our duty, we can also hope to share in happiness” (MM, 6:482). Kant makes clear both the interconnection of the highest good in a person and the highest good for a possible world, and the latter’s status as the ultimate end. The conception of the highest good of a possible world is more complete than that of the highest good in a person; the ends of pure practical reason extend beyond any one individual’s morality and happiness, even one’s own. It is the highest good of a possible world that Kant identifies as “the whole object of pure practical reason, which … commands us to contribute everything possible to its realization” (CPrR, 5:119; and see TP, 8:279). The problems reason presents regarding how to This helps to mitigate the tension between Kant’s claims that our happiness is not an end that reason is fit to achieve (G, 4:395–96) and is too indeterminate an end for us rationally to pursue (G, 4:418; CPJ, 5:430), and his claim that we may hope for and pursue the highest good, which contains happiness. The fact (discussed shortly) that the happiness we can hope for as part of the highest good is our share of a universal happiness also helps. I thank Jeanine Grenberg for calling my attention to this tension in her comments on a draft of Denis (2008). For more on happiness within and outside of the highest good, see Engstrom (1996: 105–07). 21 Thus what constitutes happiness for an individual who approximates the highest good in a person is shaped by her virtue, and almost certainly differs from what would constitute her happiness were she not virtuous. For Kantian reflections on how morality shapes desires and conceptions of happiness, see Herman (2007c), esp. 13–24, 191–200. 20

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combine the heterogeneous elements of the highest good into a final end and how to justify our belief in the possible realization of this end – as well as the solutions Kant proposes  – situate individual human beings within a community of beings who are subject to both natural and moral laws (e.g. CPrR, 5:125–26; CPJ, 5:451–53, 458). Kant often presents the individual’s own happiness as a morally legitimate end only insofar as it is part of universal (and morally conditioned) happiness (CPrR, 5:129–30; TP, 8:279–80; MM, 6:451).22 Kant’s conception of the highest good in a person constitutes a conception of human flourishing according to which living well consists in fully satisfying moral requirements out of respect for the moral law, and, because of that, rightfully enjoying complete satisfaction of a rationally ordered, morally conditioned system of inclination-based ends  – and doing these things as a member of a world in which universal, maximal happiness follows from universal, maximal virtue.23 There are many ways in which this conception satisfies the criteria for a Kantian conception of flourishing set out in section i. As it is drawn directly from Kant’s account of the highest good in the Critique of Practical Reason (and elsewhere), this conception is well grounded in Kant’s texts. The conception’s recognition of the unconditioned goodness of virtue and the morally conditioned goodness of happiness reflects a well-known aspect of Kant’s thought (G, 4:393–94; CPJ, 5:443). As Stephen Engstrom argues, Kant’s highest good shares some important and attractive features of Aristotelian eudaimonia: it constitutes an end in relation to which agents can orient their practical life; it speaks to the agent’s nature as both a rational and a natural being; and it makes virtue central without obscuring the importance of goods that are nonmoral and largely beyond our control.24 This conception neither implies morality’s subordination to a prior end, nor its grounding in an ideal specific to human nature. Because it follows from moral principles rather than grounding those principles, this conception provides agents with something to work toward and rationally hope for, without challenging the standing of Kant’s ethics as an ethics of principles. It does not suggest that there is only one narrowly construed way for a human being to live well. It neither supports moral conservatism nor otherwise undermines Kant’s Enlightenment commitments. See Guyer (this volume). In Denis (2008), I draw on the conception of the highest good of a possible world to develop a collective, species-wide conception of human flourishing, which I distinguish from the conception of individual flourishing that I link to the highest good in a person. 24 See Engstrom (1996), esp. 121–32. 22 23

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Finally, this conception of flourishing enhances the appeal of Kant’s ethics. It challenges the portrayal of Kant’s ethics as excessively individualistic by linking inextricably the flourishing of an individual with that of others as part of a morally ordered possible world. It also lessens the impression that Kant’s moral theory presupposes an antagonism between rationality and sensibility that necessitates an objectionable suppression of the sensible aspect of the self. This conception instead shows agents that their own happiness can be objectively good, and suggests how they may harmonize aspects of their nature that often appear in opposition to each other (e.g. at G, 4:405 and MoC, 27:465). There are two kinds of objection one might now raise. One is that the proposed conception is too thin. The Aristotelian conception of flourishing emphasizes the development of a wide variety of characteristic human capacities, recognizes the role of emotions in the moral life, and draws substantive content from the nature of the human being. The Kantian conception, by contrast, is so abstract as to do little more than acknowledge that humans desire happiness and recognize virtue as the condition of the goodness of happiness. Even apart from the comparison with Aristotle, this conception seems too vague to do many of the things we may want a conception of flourishing to do. It indicates little about the kind of person we should strive to be, beyond that we should be the kind of person who puts morality first and happiness second. It suggests little about what we should aspire to for ourselves and our community. Indeed, perhaps the reason that this conception is not objectionably prescriptive or exclusive is that it is so minimal. Beyond reiterating that we should not expect a Kantian conception of human flourishing to be in all respects like an Aristotelian one, my main response to the first objection is to grant it, though only for now. The conception of the highest good in a person constitutes only a provisional account of the conception of flourishing that I wish to develop. The highest good in a person supplies a sketch of the content and structure of the Kantian conception of flourishing – virtue and morally conditioned, morally shaped happiness – and ties the flourishing of an individual to that of a broader community. My aim in section iii is to fill out this framework, adding greater content to this thin conception of flourishing by considering what Kant’s doctrine of duties tells us about what morality requires of human beings (particularly in regard to our own self-development), what it implies about the virtuous person, and what it suggests about how one’s feelings, inclinations, and pursuit of happiness are best integrated into a moral life.

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The second objection is that the highest good in a person cannot ground a conception of human flourishing because the highest good is not an end that a human being can expect to achieve through her efforts during her lifetime.25 This concern springs from several aspects of Kant’s discussion of the highest good:  Kant states that there is no necessary connection between virtue and happiness in this world (CPrR, 5:115, 145); that we must distinguish between noumenal and phenomenal worlds and postulate26 the existence of God to think possible a causal, proportional relation between virtue and happiness (CPrR, 5:124–25); that because complete conformity of the disposition with the moral law (holiness) cannot be achieved by human beings during their finite lifetimes as members of the natural world, we must postulate the immortality of our souls to think possible the unconditioned element of the highest good (CPrR, 5:122–24);27 and that universal happiness cannot be thought of as a certain reward for universal virtue, for if it were, that would deprive the moral incentive of its purity (CPrR, 5:147; MoMr, 29:624; RP, 28:1083–84). These claims, according to this objection, make the highest good unfit to ground a conception of living well. As I understand this objection, it assumes that a conception cannot be a conception of human flourishing if its realization requires a realm beyond nature, or human agency’s existence beyond the sensible world, or the participation of God – or if it is possible that the full realization of this conception may never occur. The first three of these assumptions beg the question against any conception of flourishing that is not thoroughly naturalistic.28 Given Kant’s view that we must think of ourselves as noumena in order to regard ourselves as having the freedom requisite for moral agency, it is unreasonable to expect a Kantian conception

Thanks to Jeanine Grenberg for raising this objection in her comments on Denis (2008). My development of this objection here may not reflect her concerns in raising it. 26 Kant says that by “a postulate of pure practical reason … I understand a theoretical proposition, though one not demonstrable as such, insofar as it is attached inseparably to an a priori unconditionally valid practical law” (CPrR, 5:122). 27 On the problematic role of holiness in the argument for the postulate of immortality, see Guyer (2000: 350–52). For an attempt to make sense of Kant’s argument, see Wood (1970), esp. 116–29, 226–48. 28 It would exclude, for example, the views of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. See chapter xix of The City of God against the Pagans and Q5, Part 1, Second Part, Summa Theologiae. For an interpretation of Kant’s highest good as following in the Augustinian tradition, see Beiser (2006), esp. 593–99. 25

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of human flourishing to address human beings only as members of the sensible world (CPrR, 5:87–89, 132; G, 4:454; MM, 6:418).29 In addition, the second objection may reflect a misunderstanding of relations between the sensible and intelligible worlds, and between God and us, as they pertain to the highest good. Kant’s view is not that the highest good must be realized in a noumenal realm instead of in the natural world, or by God instead of by us. His view is that God makes possible a harmony between the laws of the natural and moral worlds such that happiness in the sensible world can result from virtue – and such that our moral intentions can be expressed, and our moral ends promoted, through our actions in the natural world (CPrR, 5:125).30 As the “intelligible author of nature,” God can make a mediate but necessary connection between the morality of one’s disposition, which reflects the moral law’s serving as a “purely intellectual determining ground of my causality (in the world of sense)” and happiness “as an effect in the sensible world” (CPrR, 5:114–15). Although the possibility of the causal, proportional relation between virtue and happiness that is necessary for the highest good “belongs wholly to the supersensible relation of things and cannot be given in accordance with the laws of the sensible world,” nevertheless “the practical results of this idea – namely actions that aim at realizing the highest good – belong to the sensible world” (CPrR, 5:119). Finally, a conception need not be fully realizable by humans in order to be a conception of human flourishing. A lofty, unrealizable conception may plausibly count as a conception of human flourishing if we can approach or approximate it to a recognizable degree, and if, in doing so, we live well (e.g. in a way that embodies attractive elements of the Aristotelian conception sketched in section i). In Kant’s view, we must regard the highest good as possible so that the moral law, which commands its promotion, retains credibility in our eyes (CPrR, 5:113–14; RP, 28:1071–73). Moreover, the highest good is not an object of mere wish, but something for us to help bring about. It is an object “to be made real through our will,” “to be made actual by means of our actions in the world” (CPrR, 5:113; CPJ, 5:453; also see CPrR, 5:121, 125–26, 142). If we could not at least promote the highest good, it would not be an end for us, for an “end is an object of free choice, the representation of which determines it to an action (by which the object is brought about)” (MM, 6:384–85). The highest good If talk of sensible and intelligible “worlds” seems metaphysically troubling, note Kant’s claim that the “concept of a world of understanding is … only a standpoint that reason sees itself constrained to take outside appearances in order to think of itself as practical” (G, 4:458). 30 See Guyer (2005), esp. ch. 11. 29

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answers not only the question, “If I do what I should, what may I then hope?” but also, “What … is the result of this right conduct of ours?” (A805/ B833; REL, 6:5). Importantly, the highest good is an end that agents not only can promote, but also – in so doing – can approximate.31 These promotions and approximations involve agents’ living well, though living in ways that fall short of participation in the full realization of the highest good. Individually, we promote the highest good largely by promoting our own perfection and the happiness of others, without neglecting our own happiness or the rights of others; the next section will elaborate on how, by doing this, we approximate it as well as promote it. Collectively, we can promote the highest good further by forming and participating in ethical communities through which we support one another’s efforts toward virtue as well as toward happiness, and thus also approximate it (REL, 6:94–95).32 Our ability to approximate the highest good makes it a credible conception of human flourishing, even if the highest good were never – or could never be – fully realized. Furthermore, although one could refuse to describe an agent as “flourishing” according to the Kantian conception unless the highest good of a possible world were fully realized with her as a member, it is a legitimate expansion of the notion of flourishing to describe an agent that way if she approximates the highest good in a person through her own virtue and moral progress, along with her morally governed pursuit and enjoyment of happiness. III  K a n t ’s d o c t r i n e of du t i e s In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant divides duties into two main categories: duties of right and duties of virtue (MM, 6:479–81). Duties of right concern external freedom; compliance with these duties can be externally compelled. Duties of right can be fulfilled as right requires through outer behavior, regardless of motivation. The universal principle of right states, “An action is right if it can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law, or if on its maxim the freedom of choice of each can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law” (MM, 6:230). Duties of virtue pertain to maxims, attitudes, and ends. There are passages in which Kant suggests that the highest good can be realized by us only approximately (e.g. MoVi, 27:647; MoC, 27:247), but they appear concerned with the highest good as understood by ancient philosophers. 32 Engstrom argues that the command to promote the highest good is directed to us as individuals, whereas the command to realize it is directed to us as members of an ethical community that includes God as sovereign. See Engstrom (1992), esp. 773–79. 31

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They depend for their fulfillment on agents’ inner freedom and moral motivation; no external compulsion can force someone to comply with them. (Fulfillment of duties of right from the motive of duty or respect for right is a matter of virtue.) The supreme principle of the doctrine of virtue is “Act in accordance with a maxim of ends that it can be a universal law for everyone to have” (MM, 6:395). Kant elaborates: “In accordance with this principle a human being is an end for himself as well as for others, and it is not enough that he is not authorized to use either himself or others merely as means (since he could then still be indifferent to them); it is in itself his duty to make the human being as such his end.” Making the human being as such our end in the fullest sense – i.e. in a way that goes beyond a commitment not to use a human being as a mere means to arbitrary ends – requires that we adopt the “obligatory ends” of one’s own perfection and the happiness of others (MM, 6:385–88, 391–94). Kant’s doctrine of duties is the obvious place to look in order to learn what promotion of the highest good involves: The highest good is an end that results from our right conduct and that we promote in the course of fulfilling our duties (REL, 6:5); Kant’s doctrine of duties tells us what our duties and right conduct consist in; so the doctrine of duties tells us what our promotion of the highest good consists in. In order to see that Kant’s doctrine of duties directs us to approximate the highest good, we need to see what Kant’s duties demand, forbid, and permit. Examination of these duties reveals that they direct us to live so as both to approximate the highest good in a person (e.g. by pursuing and enjoying our own happiness insofar as doing so is part of a life structured by a fundamental commitment to the moral law), and to flourish (if we understand “flourishing” roughly along the lines sketched in section i). Kant’s doctrine of duties directs us to live in a way proper to the kind of natural and rational beings we are, to develop and exercise our rational and other capacities, to recognize the relation between our own flourishing and that of others, to enjoy the pleasures consequent on and consistent with compliance with the moral law, and to recognize roles for emotions within morality. My focus will be on duties to oneself, which are among the duties of virtue. Duties to oneself are duties practically to respect oneself as a rational being, and to adopt and promote one’s own perfection as an end. Kant presents self-regarding duties as duties to care for and develop ourselves in ways proper to our nature as human beings. Kant says that perfect selfregarding duties “ forbid a human being to act contrary to the end of his nature and so have to do merely with his moral self-preservation” (MM, 6:419); they have to do with “the moral health … of a human being.”

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Imperfect self-regarding duties concern “his cultivation (active perfecting) of himself.” Kant implies a relation between perfect self-regarding duties and the Stoic dictum, “‘live in conformity with nature’ … that is, preserve yourself in the perfection of your nature,” and between imperfect selfregarding duties and the dictum, “‘make yourself more perfect than mere nature has made you’ (perfice te ut finem, perfice te ut medium [perfect yourself as an end, perfect yourself as a means])” (MM, 6:419). Perfect duties to oneself as a moral being only (which forbid the vices of lying, avarice, and servility) require the agent to protect and otherwise show proper regard for his inner freedom, and thus aim to preserve his ability to act morally from duty. Perfect duties to oneself as an animal and moral being concern a human being’s proper treatment of himself as a rational being who has impulses through which “nature aims at (a) his self-preservation, (b) the preservation of the species, and (c) the preservation of his capacity to enjoy life, though still on the animal level only” (MM, 6:420). Among vices contrary to duties to oneself as an animal and moral being, Kant includes suicide and self-mutilation, “unnatural use of one’s sexual capacity,” and “such excessive consumption of food and drink as weakens his capacity for making purposive use of his powers” (MM, 6:420; and see MoC, 27:369). The concern for the conditions of our agency embodied by these duties properly constrains one’s pursuit not only of one’s own happiness, but also of one’s natural perfection and the happiness of others. Imperfect self-regarding duties are duties to promote one’s own perfection. The obligation to adopt the end of one’s own perfection and promote it through imperfect duties requires our cultivation and exercise of characteristic human capacities. Regarding the duty to strive for one’s natural perfection, Kant says: “A human being has a duty to himself to cultivate … his natural powers (powers of spirit, mind, and body), as means to all sorts of possible ends. – He owes it to himself (as a rational being) not to leave idle and, as it were, rusting away the natural predispositions and capacities that his reason can someday use” (MM, 6:444). Powers of spirit involve the use of “a priori principles, of the sort to be found in mathematics, logic, and the metaphysics of nature” (MM, 6:445). Powers of mind include “memory, imagination, and the like.” Cultivating the physical powers amounts to “looking after the basic stuff (the matter) in a human being, without which he could not realize his ends”; it requires “the continuing and purposive invigoration of the animal in him” (MM, 6:445). The duty to promote natural perfection does not imply that there is any one way (or even a finite number of determinate possible ways) that a

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human being ought to develop herself. On the contrary, inherent in this duty is great latitude for each agent to determine how and how much to develop various capacities:  “No rational principle prescribes specifically how far one should go in cultivating one’s capacities … Then too, the different situations in which human beings may find themselves make a human being’s choice of the occupation for which he should cultivate his talents very much a matter for him to decide as he chooses” (MM, 6:392; see also 445). Thus, the duty to promote one’s natural perfection enjoins one’s realization of oneself as the particular human being one is, with one’s own preferences, social context, material conditions, temperament, abilities, and so on. What an agent’s natural perfection consists in cannot be specified independently of her own choices about how she would like to live. Yet while a human being who promotes her own natural perfection as this duty dictates will, under favorable conditions, be in a strong position to lead the sort of life she is most drawn to, the duty to promote one’s natural perfection is grounded not in an interest in one’s own happiness, but in respect for oneself as a rational being: “Even supposing that [a rational being] could be satisfied with the innate scope of his capacities for his natural needs, his reason must first show him, by principles, that this meager scope of his capacities is satisfactory; for as a being capable of ends … he must owe the use of his powers not merely to natural instinct but rather to the freedom by which he determines their scope” (MM, 6:444–45; see also 391–92). Moral self-cultivation has primacy within the self-development enjoined by duties to oneself. Kant declares: “The greatest perfection of a human being is to do his duty from duty” (MM, 6:392; see also 387). This view is also reflected in Kant’s claim in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason that personality is the highest among the three predispositions original to human nature, although animality and humanity are also good (REL, 6:26–28). Because the moral predisposition is the highest and goodness of will is the greatest moral perfection of which a human being is capable, cultivation of morality has greater claim on the human being than development of his natural capacities, and indeed should shape his development of them (MoC, 27:265–66). We subvert our proper self-development if we subordinate the cultivation of our morality to that of any other capacity. The duty to promote one’s moral perfection consists most directly in one’s striving for the purity of one’s moral disposition and the fulfillment of all one’s duties (MM, 6:446). A natural extension of the former and condition of the latter is the cultivation of virtue as the strength of will to act morally even in the face of

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contrary inclinations (MM, 6:405–10). Yet although there are important, general things we can say about Kantian moral perfection, there is little we can specify about the details of any particular agent’s moral perfection – save one’s own. There are innumerable qualities that allow us to overcome obstacles to morality and to become morally better, just as there are innumerable duties that we may acquire, and often many ways to fulfill them (MM 6:406, 446–47). Which duties are ours to fulfill depends not only on whom we happen to encounter and where we find ourselves in the world, but also on which relationships we enter or maintain, and which responsibilities or challenges we accept. Which virtues we must cultivate cannot be determined except through our own reflection on our own specific temperament, moral obstacles, and moral condition (MM, 6:441).33 Thus an agent’s individuality and particularity are expressed through the promotion of her moral perfection as well as her natural perfection. Kant’s account of self-regarding duties reflects the integral role of feelings in human morality. This may seem surprising, for early in the Metaphysics of Morals’s “Doctrine of Virtue,” Kant urges the cultivation of apathy and self-mastery as fundamental conditions of the inner freedom necessary for virtue as moral self-constraint, warning that “unless reason holds the reins of government in his own hands, a human being’s feelings and inclinations play the master over him” (MM, 6:408; and see 405, 407). The kinds of emotions Kant is most worried about are affects and passions. Affects (Affekte) (such as anger, joy, and fright) are sudden, fleeting emotions that temporarily interfere with rational reflection and self-control (MM, 6:407–08; A, 7:253, 267). Passions (Leidenschaften) (such as hatred, the desire for revenge, and the inclination to freedom) are persistent inclinations underwritten by maxims of pursuing their satisfaction regardless of counsels of prudence or requirements of morality; thus they are far more pernicious than affects (A, 7:265–67). The moral apathy that Kant advocates does not entail insensibility, but only resistance to the influence of affects.34 Self-mastery, which is more comprehensive and includes resistance to the influence of passions, also involves harnessing one’s feelings and inclinations for use in ways compatible with or conducive to morality. We are not completely passive with regard to The picture of diverse human beings choosing their own distinctive paths to moral self­improvement fits well with Kant’s view of moral perfection as the realization of autonomy: “The perfection of … [a] human being, as a person, consists just in this: that he himself is able to set his end in accordance with his own concepts of duty” (MM, 6:386; see also A, 7:321). 34 See Denis (2000: 48–73). 33

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our ­emotions; they respond to our cultivation, and so are in part products of our choices (MM, 6:402; A, 7:254). Kant associates some feelings specifically with morality. He claims that there is an aesthetic temperament characteristic of virtue that is “valiant and cheerful” in fulfilling one’s duties, even when this involves personal sacrifice (MM, 6:484). Kant also identifies moral feeling, conscience, love of human beings, and respect (for oneself) as feelings of which we are made aware only though consciousness of the moral law (MM, 6:399). He describes these feelings as “moral endowments” that “lie at the basis of morality, as subjective conditions of receptiveness to the concept of duty” (MM, 6:399). Although Kant regards reason as the source of moral motivation, he holds that reason motivates finite rational beings (such as humans) through feelings, particularly those of pleasure and pain.35 In the Groundwork, for example, Kant states:  “In order for a sensibly affected rational being to will that for which reason alone prescribes the ‘ought,’ it is … required that his reason have the capacity to induce a feeling of pleasure or of delight in the fulfillment of duty, and thus there is required a causality of reason to determine sensibility in conformity with its principles” (G, 4:460). According to Kant, these rationally grounded feelings allow human beings to feel pleasure or displeasure solely in relation to the morality of our actions (MM, 6:399–400; CPrR, 5:78–80; MM, 6:405). As such, they are part of pure moral motivation in human beings, and a source of a distinctly moral contentment with oneself (CPrR, 5:38, 117–19). All moral agents must be assumed to have these feelings, and all have duties to cultivate them. It is not, however, only rationally grounded feelings that we ought to cultivate. Many sensibly grounded (“pathological”) feelings can facilitate the fulfillment of our duties (MM, 6:456–57, 458; MoMr, 29:626). Sympathy, for example, allows us better to understand others’ needs, helps us to communicate our concern for them, and acts as an additional incentive to promote their happiness. Such sensibly grounded feelings can work with rationally grounded feelings in order to motivate us to act morally. We may cultivate sympathetic feelings from respect for the law, and then find these feelings prompting us to act in certain ways. Kant even acknowledges duties to preserve and foster our natural feelings of sympathy and love for nonhuman animals as a morally useful aspect of our animal nature (MM, 6:442–43, MoC, 27:458–60; MoVi, 27:710). As these are feelings that are responsive to our cultivation and that we have duties   See Guyer (2008), esp. 179–89.

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to cultivate, they seem – in their cultivated form – to reflect and embody the commitments of a virtuous person that led to their cultivation, and thus not only to be useful to such a person, but also proper to her.36 For Kant, then, moral health and moral prosperity involve a kind of harmony between reason and feeling, with reason playing the dominant role. That this harmony is partly constitutive of moral health and moral prosperity makes it morally desirable in a non-instrumental way: for we are to preserve our moral health and cultivate our moral prosperity not merely or primarily as means to other ends (even the performance of other duties), but fundamentally because doing so is the practical expression of taking humanity in our own person to be our end. Yet the accord between feeling and reason advocated by Kant is different both in nature and degree from that found in Aristotle’s account of virtue. For Aristotle, the harmony characteristic of virtue occurs when the appetitive part of the soul listens to and fully agrees with the rational part (NE, 1102b14– 1103a4, 1119a12–29, 1119b7–20). For Kant (who does not think in terms of parts of the soul) there is no possibility of disagreement between reason and rationally grounded feelings (e.g. respect for the moral law); since such feelings arise immediately from reason, it would be redundant to say these feelings “agree with” reason. Yet Kant’s accounts of virtue as the “moral disposition in conflict” and as the moral strength of a human being’s will in fulfilling duty presuppose at least the possibility of conflict between morally practical reason and sensibly grounded feelings (e.g. parental love) even in the morally best human beings (CPrR, 5:84; MM, 6:405). The possibility of conflict is ineradicable not because of any inherent opposition to morality within sensibly grounded feeling, but because of the radical evil in human nature: a propensity – reflecting our supreme maxim – to prefer incentives of self-love (including those associated with sensibly grounded feelings) to moral incentives (REL, 6:24–26, 30–31). Summing up the discussion so far: Kant’s self-regarding duties direct agents to care for themselves as the kind of beings that they are – rational human beings, with particular drives and needs specific to human nature. These duties enjoin key aspects of flourishing: the development and exercise of innate human capacities, the primacy of moral self-development, and the cultivation of feelings insofar as they cooperate with morally practical reason. Moreover, these injunctions are distinctly Kantian in their grounding in respect for rational nature, and in the latitude they 36

I cannot here explore how morally useful (or other) feelings of a virtuous person might differ from feelings of the same name in people who are not virtuous.

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give for each agent to realize herself as an individual. The next things to see are how Kant’s doctrine of duties links one’s own flourishing to that of others, prompts us to assist (but only to assist) others in their own attempts to flourish, and makes room for our pursuit of our own happiness as a legitimate end. There are significant connections between flourishing and fulfillment of other-regarding duties. For one thing, since one’s moral perfection consists in part in the fulfillment of all one’s duties (MM, 6:446), fulfilling duties to others promotes one’s own moral perfection, which is central to one’s flourishing. For another, none of us can flourish without the cooperation of others – cooperation that is required as a matter of other­regarding duties. The flourishing of each of us depends in part on other people’s fulfillment of duties of right, duties of respect, and duties of love toward us. Our ability to flourish is seriously hindered if others do not respect constraints on behavior that undermines basic conditions of our agency, or if others are unwilling to help us promote our ends. Duties of right, for example, generally prohibit attacks upon the bodies and the causal powers of others, and thus on crucial conditions for their flourishing. Duties of respect prohibit the vices of arrogance, defamation, and ridicule, which, when outwardly expressed, attack others’ sense of themselves and others as equal moral beings with dignity, capable of the morality essential for flourishing (MM, 6:462–64). We can advance one another’s flourishing most positively and directly through beneficence, “the maxim of making others’ happiness one’s end,” the duty to which “consists in the subject’s being constrained by his reason to adopt this maxim as a universal law” (MM, 6:452). We fulfill the duty of beneficence by promoting permissible ends of others through morally permissible means (G, 4:430; CPrR, 5:388, 393). Beneficence is a duty of love, as are sympathy and gratitude, which assist in promoting others’ happiness (MM, 6:454–57). Duties of love are grounded, as are all duties, in respect for rational nature. As Kant develops the duty of beneficence, the duty’s grounding in respect is evident. Kant emphasizes that one need not feel love for others in order to fulfill a duty of beneficence toward them; recognition of their status as finite rational beings with needs and consequent willingness to help them are adequate attitudes (MM, 6:449–50, 401–02). Kant states also that one should help others in a way that minimizes their sense of indebtedness or inequality (MM, 6:449, 453). Perhaps most importantly, he urges that one not attempt to promote the happiness of others paternalistically: “I cannot do good to anyone in accordance with my concepts of happiness (except to young

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children and the insane), thinking to benefit him by forcing a gift upon him; rather I can benefit him only in accordance with his concepts of happiness” (MM, 6:454, 388).37 The preceding discussion shows that duties to others promote their flourishing less directly and substantively than duties to oneself promote one’s own flourishing. If we make the human being as such our end, we regard others’ flourishing, as well as our own, as good. Yet because an agent’s flourishing requires her to set ends and make decisions about how to develop and enjoy herself, and because these are things that are morally or conceptually impossible for someone else to do for her, duties to others do not contribute to flourishing equally with duties to oneself. Duties to oneself show us in large part how to flourish, whereas duties to others primarily tell us how to assist them in (and how not to interfere with) their own attempts to flourish. Concern for the flourishing of others is best expressed by giving others the freedom and opportunity to work toward their own realization as the individuals they are, and assisting them in this enterprise where we can, without encroaching on their rightful freedom. The way that Kant incorporates concern with one’s own happiness into his account of the happiness of others shows how Kant’s doctrine of duties makes room for our pursuit of our own happiness as a legitimate part of a morally ordered life – and thus directs us to approximate as well as to promote the highest good through how we live. Kant holds that we have an indirect duty to promote our own happiness, at least to the extent that doing so alleviates temptations to violate one’s duty (MM, 6:388; G, 4:399). He begins his discussion of the duty of beneficence by noting that “providing for oneself to the extent necessary just to find satisfaction in living … belongs among duties to oneself,” and claiming that vices of avarice and fanatical self-discipline deprive the agent “of enjoyment of the pleasures of life” (MM, 6:452). Such self-deprivation displays a hostility 37

Among the means by which to lay the groundwork for and to promote others’ flourishing are education, political frameworks, ethical communities, and friendship. Kant sees education as essential for the natural and moral development of each individual (P, 9:441–43, 449–50; MM, 6:281, 477–78; G, 4:415). Kant sees a number of political structures as essential background conditions for human flourishing. He emphasizes just constitutions as crucial within states, and a confederation of states as essential for international justice (TP, 8:289–96; TPP, 8:354–57). Kant argues that only through the formation of and voluntary participation in ethical communities can people avoid mutual corruption and collectively promote their virtue; the coordination of efforts within such communities is essential to the fulfillment of “a duty sui generis … of the human race toward itself ” to promote “the highest good as a good common to all” (REL, 6:97). Finally, Kant thinks we have special duties to our friends, duties of a sort that involve helping each other lead better lives – better in terms of our morality and our happiness (MM, 6:469–72; MoC, 27:429; MoVi, 27:675, 680).

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to one’s animal nature that Kant regards as contrary to one’s respect for oneself as an animal and moral being (MoC, 27:379–80, 393–94). Consideration of one’s own happiness properly shapes one’s promotion of others’ happiness. The latitude of beneficence allows us to take our own relationships, feelings, and inclinations into account in deciding how to allocate our resources in helping others (MM, 6:451–52). And we must not promote the happiness of others to an extent that we then cannot satisfy our own true natural needs (MM, 6:393, 453). Furthermore, Kant argues that the obligation to promote the happiness of others itself implies a permission to promote one’s own happiness: although there is no obligation to adopt my own happiness as an end, for I do this unavoidably, “lawgiving reason, which includes the whole species (and so myself as well) in its idea of humanity as such, includes me as giving universal law along with all others in the duty of mutual benevolence, in accordance with the principle of equality, and permits you to be benevolent to yourself on the condition of your being benevolent to every other as well” (MM, 6:451, 386; see also CPrR, 5:34–35). Kant calls self-directed benevolence that is restricted “to the condition of agreement with [the moral] law” “rational self-love” (vernünftige Selbstliebe) (CPrR, 5:73). The doctrine of duties reveals that we are to promote the highest good of a possible world differently from how one might expect based on Kant’s account of it. For one thing, although Kant generally emphasizes moral purity in his account of the unconditioned, moral component of the highest good, his doctrine of duties shows that we promote this component of the highest good of a possible world not only by striving for our own moral purity, but also by cultivating our strength of will to carry out our morally good maxims, by striving to fulfill all our duties, and, to a lesser extent, by trying to support (or at least not to hinder) others’ moral progress (MM, 6:394, 464; REL, 6:97–98). For another, although Kant often alludes to the proportionality of happiness to virtue within the highest good, Kant’s doctrine of duties shows that we promote the happiness component of the highest good (universal, maximal, morally conditioned happiness) largely by promoting the morally permissible ends of others together with our own in morally permissible ways within a morally ordered life, rather than by apportioning happiness to purity of disposition. Kant is explicit that we need not (and cannot, and ought not to attempt to) apportion the happiness of other people according to the moral purity of their actual dispositions  – for example, by reducing the happiness of the vicious. Nor need (or ought) we to deprive ourselves of morally permissible happiness out of a sense of our own

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unworthiness: ­self-knowledge and self-improvement, not self-torment, are proper responses to this sense of unworthiness (MM, 6:441; REL, 6:23– 24n). Assessment of others’ moral dispositions  – let alone proportional distribution of happiness to morality – is beyond us (MM, 6:392–93, 447; REL, 6:51). Only God can perform such an evaluation, and only God can make the world such that happiness follows morality as an effect of it and in proportion to it (CPrR, 5:123–24, 125–26; REL, 6:66–67). Moreover, regardless of what we could ascertain about the present state of someone’s disposition as expressed at a particular time in the phenomenal world, to assume that she could not dramatically improve it – and thus would not, over the course of her whole existence, be worthy of a given amount of happiness – would be contrary to recognition of that agent as a rational being with a duty to promote her own moral perfection (MM, 6:463–64; REL, 6:45, 47–48).38 Kant’s doctrine of duties allows us to build on the spare framework of “virtue plus morally conditioned, morally shaped happiness” found in his account of the highest good in a person to produce a fuller, more detailed Kantian conception of human flourishing. From Kant’s discussion of duties to oneself, we can see that a flourishing Kantian agent has as her most fundamental commitment adherence to the moral law; she is aware of her own limitations and temptations, but has cultivated a strong will to resist them and morally useful sentiments to assist her in doing her duty. She works to develop and exercise her various capacities – physical, intellectual, social, artistic, and so forth – determining which to develop most in light of not only specifically moral considerations, but also many considerations having to do with her temperament, needs, abilities, preferences, social context, relationships, and so on. She enjoys some measure of moral self-contentment and has cultivated a cheerful disposition with regard to her duty, though she can still be tempted to act wrongly. If she is lucky, the efforts she has put into her self-development will pay off in her efficacy as a moral agent in the broadest sense – that is, not only in doing particular morally required actions, but also in success in accomplishing all sorts of goals she has set for herself as part of a morally ordered life. Because of this agent’s respect for others, her pursuit of her discretionary ends is constrained by consideration for others’ agency, needs, and desires; and indeed she promotes their permissible ends together with her own. Through how she lives, she both approximates the highest good in a person and promotes the highest good of a possible world. 38

  See Engstrom (1992), esp. 768–73.

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With the content added from Kant’s doctrine of duties, the worry about the thinness of a conception of flourishing grounded in the highest good in a person fades. We now have a richer conception that specifies ends, qualities, attitudes, and priorities characteristic of a flourishing agent. This conception of human flourishing is in many ways less prescriptive and restrictive than the conception often attributed to Aristotle, according to which there is only one, narrowly defined way of living well, consisting mainly of study and requiring certain external goods (in addition to virtues of character and thought).39 The Kantian conception implies that there are many paths to flourishing, and that no agent’s path to flourishing can be properly determined independently of her choice of ends. This conception allows us to distinguish between choices generally conducive to flourishing (e.g. developing a musical talent) and antagonistic to flourishing (e.g. forgoing all avoidable exercise). Yet many life choices  – e.g. to marry (anyone or a particular person) or to have children (ever or at a specific stage of life) – can either facilitate or hinder flourishing, depending on the individual’s goals and on what happens to her. Many activities cannot be assessed relative to the flourishing of this or that individual independently of the agent’s entire complex of maxims and ends and the facts of her situation. Moreover, in keeping with Kant’s skepticism about our ability to judge virtue, we should not expect a Kantian conception of flourishing to enable us to judge the flourishing of others; we must be cautious even in our own self-appraisal. Two closely related objections to presenting Kant’s doctrine of duties as a main source of content for a Kantian conception of human flourishing may arise. First, this approach may seem to equate living well with living morally, and so simply to redescribe human morality as human flourishing rather than to provide a genuine, distinct account of human flourishing.40 Second, this approach may seem to imply that Kant’s normative ethics is – in a fundamental way that it is implausible to attribute to it – eudaimonistic. There is a sense in which the first objection’s claim that my approach equates living well with living virtuously is true. Insofar as it is true, Many questions about the extent of the inclusiveness of the Kantian conception of human flourishing lie beyond the scope of this chapter. For example, the Kantian conception appears to allow for flourishing among human beings with some degree of physical or cognitive disability; but it is not obvious what (if anything) constitutes a necessary or sufficient condition for a disability to preclude an agent’s flourishing. 40 See Marcia Baron (this volume). This objection may beg the question against the Stoic conception of human flourishing; then again, it may simply be an objection to the Stoic conception. 39

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however, it does not constitute an objection. The Kantian conception of living well can be described as a conception of living virtuously. But this is so only because the Kantian conception of living virtuously suggested by Kant’s normative ethics is very rich – comprehending so many facets of human life, and recognizing so many details and contingencies as morally relevant – and because it explicitly encourages the enjoyment of morally permissible happiness as part of a morally ordered human life. The account of flourishing drawn largely from Kant’s doctrine of duties is not narrowly (or otherwise objectionably) moralistic, because Kant’s discussion of what morality requires of human agents includes discussion of what morality permits, and of how aspects of ourselves, or interest in ends, that are not specifically moral may properly find expression in a life with adherence to the moral law as the fundamental commitment. Thus, my approach does not simply identify Kantian flourishing with the activity of a good will, behavior expressing a moral strength of will, or fulfillment of one’s duties. Instead, by drawing on Kant’s accounts of our duties and the nature of virtue, it shows Kant’s notion of how humans should live to be inclusive and flexible. Moreover, we should recall something that our earlier discussion of the highest good shows about the Kantian conception of flourishing: that reason regards the virtuous agent’s happiness as not an optional or merely permitted addition to her virtue, or a mere means for avoiding temptation to violate duty, but rather as a necessary consequence of and an ineliminable complement to her virtue. Contrary to the second objection, my approach does not imply that Kant’s ethics is eudaimonistic in any way problematic to Kant’s methodological or moral commitments. It does not suggest that Kant’s ethics treats an interest in human flourishing as the motive to morality, as a fundamental moral concept, or as the starting point in the search for the supreme moral principle. Nor does my approach suggest that the duties Kant sets forth in the Metaphysics of Morals are justified as duties because they conduce to human flourishing. On the contrary, my view is that the conception of human flourishing that emerges from Kant’s doctrine of duties is distinctly Kantian precisely because those duties are grounded in rationally required respect for rational nature, and developed by considering what respect for oneself and others as rational human beings implies about how best to live. The fact that my account treats so much of Kant’s normative ethics as giving rise to this conception of flourishing should not suggest a foundational role for that conception, but rather a secure foundation for it.

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I V   C onc l us ion A Kantian conception of human flourishing emerges from Kant’s doctrine of duties insofar as it leads us to promote and approximate the highest good. The highest good in a person is a conception of what an agent may hope for in a world in which the highest good is fully realized: the enjoyment of maximal happiness as a result of maximal virtue. This conception constitutes a conception of flourishing that all human beings – separately and together – can rationally hope for and strive to approximate, and that provides us with a point of unification for our individual and collective ends. Kant’s doctrine of duties adds content and detail to this conception. His doctrine of duties shows us not only what individual promotion of the highest good of a possible world entails, but also how agents may approximate the highest good in a person. Through their injunctions to cultivate our moral and natural capacities; to preserve the formal and material conditions of our agency; to harness our emotions for moral expression; to shape our fulfillment of our imperfect duties by consideration of our circumstances, preferences, and relationships; and neither to aim at the extirpation of our natural drives nor to neglect the pursuit of our own happiness; these duties point us toward our flourishing as the particular human beings that we are. This conception of human flourishing meets the criteria set out at the end of section i. It is recognizable as an attractive kind of human flourishing. The Kantian conception of flourishing constitutes an object of individual aspiration, inextricably intertwined with an object of collective effort. It addresses our nature as human beings, includes the blossoming of moral and natural capacities, presents our animal drives as good, shows us how we may mitigate tensions between reason and emotion, and embraces as legitimate the desire for our own happiness. It urges respect and harmony of purposes among human beings. And it fundamentally involves the realization of each of us in our particularity. This conception of human flourishing is well grounded in Kant’s texts:  Kant discusses the highest good in all three Critiques (and elsewhere); the Metaphysics of Morals details Kant’s doctrine of duties (as do his lectures on ethics). This conception of human flourishing is consistent with Kant’s rejection of ancient eudaimonism, for the Kantian conception of flourishing presupposes the supreme principle of morality, which Kant argues for by considering not human nature specifically but rational nature in general; follows from rather than grounds (or begins the search for) moral principles; is distinct from happiness, though it subsumes and

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reshapes happiness within it; and does not require giving moral exemplars a fundamental role in moral theory. The Kantian conception of human flourishing is not merely consistent with, but exemplifies, Kant’s commitment to the equal dignity of each human being, his abhorrence of paternalism, his resistance to moral conservatism, and his rejection of the notion that there is only one, narrowly construed way for human beings to live well: one can specify little about how an individual should develop herself, or what her flourishing involves, without knowing what the agent herself decides about how to live and how to develop her capacities. Her perfection requires her determining how to improve herself  – and thus what improvement and flourishing amount to for her.41 The deep grounding of this conception of flourishing within Kant’s moral thought, and the unity of this conception, are emphasized by the way that rationally required respect for rational nature underlies Kant’s account of the content both of our duties and of the highest good. Respect for rational nature is commanded by the formula of humanity, in relation to which we may see all our duties as grounded (G, 4:429–31). Respect for rational nature in ourselves demands the cultivation of our own virtue; respect for rational nature in others demands that we strive not to undermine the virtue of others (MM, 6:394, 464). Respect for rational nature in others demands our promotion of their happiness; respect for it in ourselves demands our recognition of our own morally conditioned happiness as good, and allows us to promote it together with the happiness of others (MM, 6:451).42 Thus, the Kantian conception of human flourishing emerges from two closely linked aspects of Kant’s ethics that reflect Kant’s recognition of the dignity of rational nature in each individual.43 It should be no surprise that this conception of flourishing itself embodies that recognition.

Hill (2002a) briefly mentions the possibilities of viewing the highest good as a conception of flourishing and viewing duties to oneself as parts of a conception of flourishing (2002a, 194n60). He does not seriously consider the former because he assumes flourishing must be understood nonmorally (192). He does not much explore the latter (also) because he reads the flexibility of imperfect self-regarding duties as evidence that Kant endorses individual choice about how to live over perfection or flourishing – rather than as evidence that perfection and flourishing for each individual are defined in no small part relative to her choices (198–99). 42 See Guyer (2000), chs. 10 and 11, esp. 339–45 and 386–88; also see Guyer (this volume). 43 There are other connections. The final formulation of the categorical imperative, the formula of the kingdom of ends, builds on the formula of humanity, and commands us to choose maxims in such a way (it seems) as to approximate the highest good insofar as that is possible for beings like us (G, 4:433–34, 436–37; and see CPJ, 5:444). Guyer argues that the kingdom of ends and the highest good are the same notion; see Guyer (2005: 163–68). 41

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Recognizing this conception of flourishing as implicit in Kant’s ethics increases our understanding of Kant’s moral philosophy in a number of ways. For example, it illuminates the role of large-scale collective ends within his ethics, reveals some ways Kant thinks consideration of human nature important to normative ethics, and directs our attention to ways Kant integrates emotions into his ethical theory. It also facilitates our comparison of Kant’s ethical theory with the eudaimonistic views, and perhaps with a broader range of teleological approaches as well.44 Finally, this conception of flourishing enhances the appeal of Kantian ethics. First, it highlights that Kantian ethics has a place for ideals and aspirations as well as for duties. Second, it shows that there are distinctively Kantian resources for thinking about how to live well as a human being. It invites philosophers interested in the question of living well to consider what Kant’s ethics says in this regard, and allows Kantians drawn to this question to pursue it by looking within Kant’s ethics rather than by importing a conception of flourishing from outside it. Third, the Kantian conception of human flourishing calls attention to aspects of Kant’s moral theory that are attractive in their own right, and that are often overlooked or misunderstood. Fourth and finally, it reveals a greater dimension to the basic Kantian commitment of respect for rational nature. It shows that respect for rational nature rightly manifests itself in concern for one’s own and others’ flourishing, and that this flourishing consists largely in each agent’s self-realization as the particular human being that she is. For example, the emphasis on self-realization and linkage between individual self-realization and realization of a communal highest good suggests similarities with Thomas H. Green’s philosophy. See Green (1890). For a comparison of some themes in Kant and Green, see Brink (2003: 92–107).

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Kantian perfectionism Paul Guyer

I   K a n t a n d v i r t u e e t h ic s “Virtue ethics” as it is currently understood was not on Kant’s docket, nor was Aristotle, with whom contemporary virtue ethics is most closely associated, a major figure in Kant’s historiography of moral philosophy. Nevertheless, Kant clearly rejected several ancient ideas that have been taken up in contemporary virtue ethics, and did have one criticism of Aristotle that he made on several occasions. First, Kant began his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals by firmly rejecting any idea that we could characterize our moral obligations through several independent virtues such as “courage, resolution, and perseverance in one’s plans,” since while these “are undoubtedly good and desirable for many purposes … they can also be extremely evil and harmful if the will which is to make use of these gifts of nature … is not good” (G, 4:393),1 and a good will, as the Groundwork argues, requires a single fundamental principle of morality to which it freely chooses to conform, in light of which it can decide when and how to use such “virtues” as courage or perseverance. But this was not meant as a criticism of Aristotle; rather, the doctrine of the independence of the virtues was prephilosophical Greek wisdom, which was criticized by Plato through Socrates’ doctrine of the “unity of virtue” and by Aristotle in his view that the use of such virtues should be guided by the pursuit of the highest good for human beings. Kant’s doctrine of the good will, which will itself be the foundation for a conception of the highest good, can thus be seen as a variant of what was already an ancient critique of virtue ethics. Second, Kant rejected the idea that virtue should be a habit, which is often associated with Aristotle, although Kant does not mention his name in this context, on the grounds that, first, “a uniformity in action that has become a necessity through frequent repetition, For abbreviations of Kant’s works and a list of translations of these works as used in this and other essays in this volume, see Abbreviations at the start of this volume.

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is not one that proceeds through freedom, and is therefore not a moral aptitude,” and, second, any habit or aptitude that is to lead to morally acceptable results in all circumstances must be governed by the specific free choice “to determine oneself to act through the thought of the law” (MM, 6:407). That is, in Kant’s view any habit is worthy of esteem and thus truly virtuous only if it proceeds out of an act of free choice, and further any general tendency of action will produce morally proper results only if its exercise is always restricted in light of the moral law to appropriate occasions. This second point is, of course, the same as the opening point of the Groundwork. Finally, Kant’s only explicit criticism of the Aristotelian conception of virtue is aimed at Aristotle’s doctrine that a virtue is always a mean between two extremes. This criticism is made several times in the lectures on the metaphysics of morals recorded by Johann Friedrich Vigilantius in 1793–94, thus almost a decade after the Groundwork. Kant’s objection to the doctrine of the mean is essentially that it is question-begging: to know whether too much or too little is being done in some line of action, one must in fact already know what the morally right amount is; thus one must presuppose a more fundamental principle of morality than the doctrine of the mean. And once one has identified this more fundamental principle of duty, then there is no such thing as doing “too much” to realize it. As Kant is recorded as saying: Aristotle, in his day, located virtue in the mean between two extremes:  courage, for example, between cowardice and recklessness … but the rule that we should do the good neither too much nor too little loses all logical correctness and use in morals. For (1) it leaves the resolution of the task quite indeterminate, and solves it only by a tautology: the too much and too little of moral goodness stands related to the conformity of our actions to moral law; and both would represent a want of conformity. (MoVi, 27:611–12)

This is the charge that any attempt to use the doctrine of the mean would presuppose a more fundamental moral principle. Kant then makes the further point that while it is certainly possible to do less than one’s duty, the idea of doing more than one’s duty makes no sense: “It is impossible to perform more than our duty, and so in duty one cannot do too much” (MoVi, 27:612). While the second of these claims would require careful reconciliation with Kant’s recognition of imperfect duties, the first of these points is obviously correct, and one might argue that it is already conceded by Aristotle himself when he writes that “a master of any art avoids excess and defect, but seeks the intermediate and chooses this  – the intermediate not in the object but relatively to us” (NE, 1106b3–5), for

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in a moral case that “in us” to which virtue is the right amount can only be our fundamental principle of morality. The reason that Aristotle does not enjoy a larger role on Kant’s stage, however, is that Aristotle is actually a perfectionist rather than a virtue theorist in our current sense, in whose perfectionism the doctrine of the mean plays only a subsidiary role, and Kant has a perfectionist target much closer to hand than Aristotle, namely Christian Wolff and his followers such as Alexander Baumgarten and Moses Mendelssohn. And while it might seem that there must be great differences between Aristotle’s pagan perfectionism and that of these Judaeo-Christian Leibnizians, Kant is well within his rights to take a modern rather than ancient exemplar of perfectionism for his own purposes, since the differences between Aristotelian and Wolffian perfectionism are not in fact very great, at least from the Kantian point of view. I will thus comment only briefly on Aristotle’s perfectionism before turning to the Wolffian variety on my way to the central point of this chapter, namely that we can understand Kant’s own moral philosophy as a form of perfectionism, as long as we are clear about what it is that is supposed to be perfected. Aristotle begins his ethics by arguing that there must ultimately be some one end for the sake of which we desire everything else that we do, thus a highest good (NE, 1094a18–22),2 and accepts the traditional view that this is happiness, which is indeed desired for its own sake rather than as a means to anything else (NE, 1097b14–21). But he recognizes that to say that we desire happiness is tautologous and uninformative, and that ethics must in fact provide a substantive account and “rational principle” of what can best make us happy. His claim is then that “the function of man [is] a certain kind of life, and this [is] an activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle, and the function of a good man [is] the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance with the appropriate excellence, human good turns out to be activity of the soul in conformity with excellence” (NE, 1098a12–16). The doctrine of the mean is subsidiary to this aim in that it supposedly can be used to calculate the amount of various virtues needed as means to the achievement of this overall goal, but the content of the goal  – excellence in human life  – can and must be stated independently of and antecedently to the determination of appropriate means to it. Human excellence in turn consists of success in various forms of For abbreviations of Aristotle’s works and a list of translations of these works as used in this and other essays in this volume, see Abbreviations at the start of this volume.

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action, but above all in success in contemplation because “the activity of wisdom is admittedly the pleasantest of excellent activities,” and it is also “the most continuous, since we can contemplate truth more continuously than we can do anything” else (NE, 1177a21–23). Aristotle’s perfectionism is thus the doctrine that the goal of life is to make ourselves maximally happy through contemplation, to which other activities are ultimately the means, and that the doctrine of the mean or moderation applies to the virtues that we must exercise for success in these actions which are themselves only means to the goal of contemplation. The premise that the morally good is that which contributes to the realization of our vocation and that this is in turn identical to that which brings us maximal happiness also underlies Wolffian perfectionism. I I   Wol f f i a n pe r f e c t ion i s m The key elements of Wolff’s philosophical vision are that reason provides insight into the order of nature created by God, that our moral obligation is to use our reason and the insight into the order of nature that it provides to do our share in preserving and promoting that order, and that our recognition of that order through our reason is God’s final end in the creation of nature. In this section, I focus on the second of these claims. Wolff begins his account of reason with what Kant would subsequently call its “logical use,” that is, its role in the performance of inferences, which he defines as connections among truths:  “The art of inferring shows that truths are connected with one another … The insight that we have into the interconnection of truths or the capacity to have insight into the interconnection of truths is called reason” (Deutsche Metaphysik, §368 3). But Wolff immediately equates logical insight into connections of implication among truths with insight into real connections among things, and indeed illustrates this idea with connections among actions and their consequences: We say, e.g., that Sempronius has ordered his affairs rationally if he has well considered what sorts of damage and utility can arise from his actions and accordingly arranged it so that in his action and omission he is not in contradiction with himself but rather one promotes the other. Now in what does the reason that he displays here consist? Certainly in nothing other than in the insight that he has into the interconnection among things, namely into the interconnection “Deutsche Metaphysik” abbreviates Christian Wolff (1751). I have used the German text in Christian Wolff (2003). The translations of Wolff are my own.

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of his actions as well as into their interconnection with other things. (Deutsche Metaphysik, §368)

Thus in his very first illustration of his conception of reason Wolff already points toward the conception of practical reasoning that is at the core of his ethics: the fundamental use of reason in practice is to obtain insight into the advantageous and disadvantageous consequences of our actions, and then to act in accordance with reason to maximize the former and minimize the latter, thereby perfecting our condition. But let us proceed here a little more slowly than Wolff himself does. The key to Wolff’s view is that reason provides insight into the connection among things; the connection among things is what constitutes their perfection; so the role of reason is to provide insight into the perfection of things and guidance for us to act in accordance with that perfection. The middle premise of this inference is furnished even before Wolff defines reason itself, and is again immediately illustrated with an example from the sphere of human practice as well as with one from the sphere of scientific or technical inquiry: The concordance [Zusammenstimmung] of the manifold constitutes the perfection of things. For example, one judges the perfection of a clock from the fact that it shows the hours and their parts correctly. But it is composed out of many parts, and all of these as well as their combination is aimed at its hands showing the hours and their parts correctly … If, in contrast, there are any parts in the clock that hinder it from showing the time correctly, then the clock is imperfect. The course of human life [Der Wandel der Menschen] consists of many actions: if these all concord [zusammen stimmen] with one another in such a way that they are finally all grounded in one universal aim, then the course of human life is perfect. In contrast … imperfection consists in contradiction within the manifold. (Deutsche Metaphysik, §152)

Perfection, whether of things or actions, consists in concordance, or as Wolff says a few sections later, “Perfection consists in sheer order” (§156). Insofar as it is reason that provides insight into the order of things, then, it will also be reason that provides insight into the perfection of things and guidance for acting in accordance with the perfection of things. To put it kindly, this characterization of order and perfection remains at the highest level of abstraction. But Wolff does not leave matters so vague; as should be expected in a philosophy grounded on the principle of sufficient reason, the order in which perfection consists is equated with the dependence of perfectly ordered things as consequences of a ground: “For where there is a perfection, there everything is related to a common ground, from which one can explain why each is simultaneously

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beside the other or the one follows from the other” (§156). If the logical use of reason in understanding an inference is to see how the conclusion follows from the conjunction of premises, then its real use in the comprehension of perfection is to see how the simultaneous and successive order of things, whether these are other than human actions or human actions and their consequences, follows  – or should follow  – from a common ground. This characterization is emphasized subsequently in Wolff’s chapter on ontology, where he repeats his initial definition of perfection as a “correspondence of the manifold” (Übereinstimmung des mannigfaltigen), adds that the world consists of many corporeal parts, each of which itself has further parts, and draws the conclusion that “the perfection of the world consists in the correspondence of everything that is simultaneous or follows from something else with one another, that is, in the particular grounds, which everything has, always resolving into some sort of common ground. The greater this correspondence is, the greater the perfection of the world also is” (Deutsche Metaphysik, §701). Wolff already states the essence of his thoroughly consequentialist ethics within this metaphysical framework:  the good is that which makes ourselves and our condition more perfect, and since it is by means of reason that we have insight into what makes anything perfect, the use of reason to determine what will make ourselves and our condition more perfect by preserving or promoting the coherence of our actions and their consequences is the practical role of reason: That which makes ourselves and our condition more perfect is good. For example, the art of invention makes our understanding more perfect, and it is therefore something good. Health makes our body more perfect, and thus it is likewise something good. Money makes our external condition more perfect, and thus it is also something good. (Deutsche Metaphysik, §422)

An account of the ways in which we are to use our reason in order to increase the perfection of our understanding (from which the perfection of our will also follows), the perfection of our bodies, and the perfection of our external circumstances furnishes the content of Wolff’s ethics. Before we turn to the details of Wolffian ethics, one general point about his approach can be made. Wolff has defined reason as the capacity to have insight into perfection as the connected order of things, and reason’s insight into perfection as the connected order of human actions and their consequences is the basis for human morality. But the power of human reason is limited, and therefore we can never have complete

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insight into the perfection of any sufficiently complicated order of things. Wolff makes this limitation of human reason explicit in his cosmology: Since the perfection of the world must be judged on the basis of the correspondence of all things, from the greatest to the smallest, whether they must be judged to be simultaneous or successive, but it is not possible that we cognize all things, let alone have insight into how they are all concordant with one another; thus we are not in the position to comprehend the perfection of the world and to explain it completely. (Deutsche Metaphysik, §702)

Our reason provides insight into perfection, but it is not itself perfect, so our insight into perfection is always limited. In ethics, this limitation of human reason’s ability to understand the perfection of things means that our knowledge of right and wrong, thus of what we should do in the concrete and therefore infinitely detailed circumstances of actual human action, will also be limited: to do what is right is to do what maximally perfects our minds, our bodies, and our external circumstances, but since we cannot have perfect knowledge of what that is, we cannot have perfect knowledge of what it would be right to do. This consequence of Wolff’s conception of reason might seem perfectly reasonable; indeed it might seem to be a salubrious reminder to avoid excessive confidence and harshness in our moral evaluation of ourselves and others. But it was clearly a result to which Kant profoundly objected, and that may be one of the deepest reasons for his rejection of moral consequentialism, whether in Wolffian or any other form. With this in mind, let us now turn to some details of Wolffian ethics. At the most abstract level, there are of course great similarities between the moral philosophies of Wolff and Kant. Like Kant, Wolff believed that the fundamental law of morality is accessible to pure reason independently of any divine command, and further that a rational human agent does not need the promise of divine rewards or threat of divine punishments in order to be motivated to act in accordance with that law (Deutsche Ethik, §354). And Kant would follow Wolff in dividing the substance of morality into duties to self, duties to God, and duties to others, although ultimately he would argue that we have no duties to God other than to fulfill our duties to ourselves and others (see, for example, MM, 6:443–44). But beneath that level of abstraction, Wolff’s perfectionist ethics is defined precisely by the presuppositions that Kant most firmly rejects: consequentialism, naturalism, and intellectualism. Consequentialism, because in “Deutsche Ethik” abbreviates Christian Wolff (1720). I have used the German text in Christian Wolff (1976). The translations of Wolff are my own.

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Wolff’s view the fundamental law discovered by reason is that right conduct is that which will produce the greatest perfection in the internal and external condition of ourselves and others, so morality requires that we use our reason to determine the consequences of our actions for the perfection of ourselves and others; naturalism, because according to Wolff the determination of such consequences requires a thorough knowledge of the laws of nature, but the realization of such consequences is also the inherent tendency of nature; and intellectualism, because in Wolff’s view nothing is required in order for human beings to do the right thing but adequate knowledge of the natural consequences of their actions, and the only explanation for wrong conduct is ignorance. For Kant, of course, pure reason tells us to act upon maxims that meet certain formal constraints regardless, apparently, of the actual consequences of such action, and our motivation to be moral does not depend upon an assumption that nature itself will attach desirable consequences to our lawful actions, although ultimately rationality does demand that we find a way to see the laws of freedom and the laws of nature as coherent; and of course for Kant the radical freedom of human action inexorably entails the possibility of radical evil, that is, the choice to flout the demands of morality even in full cognizance of what those demands are. Thus, Kant is both more of an ethical rationalist than Wolff, for he believes we can determine what is right and wrong by pure reason alone without any detailed knowledge of nature, but also less of a rationalist than Wolff, because he does not believe that the knowledge of the moral law that pure reason affords us can ever guarantee that we will always do the right thing. The consequentialist character of Wolff’s ethics, already stated in his metaphysics, is asserted again at the outset of his moral philosophy: “The free actions of human beings promote either the perfection or the imperfection of their internal and external condition,” but “that which makes our internal as well as our external condition perfect is good” (Deutsche Ethik, §§2–3). Wolff’s general concept of what makes our condition perfect is a formal conception of coherence: “Now if the present condition is concordant with the preceding and the following and all of these together with the essence and nature of the human being, then the condition of the human being is perfect” (§3). But Wolff’s many pages on our duties to ourselves and others are filled with concrete examples of how we can improve our knowledge of the effects of our actions and thereby our will, how we can improve our health, and how we can improve our external circumstances. These descriptions belie Kant’s claim that the fundamental principle of Wolffian morality is an “empty and unphilosophical

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tautology,” but warrant his claim that Wolff’s principle is ultimately material and therefore empirical (CPrR, 5:41). Wolff himself is quite clear that his consequentialism means that the possibility of right action depends on detailed knowledge of nature: “Thus if one will judge whether actions are good or evil, one must research what alterations in our internal condition of body and soul as well as in our external condition they carry in their train, and thereby attend to whether the altered condition is concordant with the essence and nature of the human being, that is, of the body and the soul, and with the preceding condition, or is contradictory to it” (Deutsche Ethik, §4). He is also explicit that his principle that what makes actions right or wrong are their natural consequences means that it is not the attachment of divine rewards or sanctions that makes them right or wrong: “Since the free actions of human beings become good or evil through their consequence, that is, through the alteration that follows in the inner and outer condition of the human being, but what follows from them must necessarily come from them … they are good or evil for and in themselves, and are not first made thus through the will of God” (§5). The moral law is in the first instance a law of nature, and can be known and known only through knowledge of nature (§19); of course, since God is the author of nature, the laws of nature, and therefore the moral law, are also laws of God (§29). All of this leads Wolff to the remarkable statement that: A rational human being is a law to himself and beyond natural obligation needs no other; thus for him neither rewards nor punishments are motivations for good actions and for the avoidance of evil ones. And therefore a rational person does what is good because it is good, and refrains from what is evil because it is evil; in which case he is similar to God, in having no superior who can oblige him to do what is good and omit what is evil, but rather does the former and omits the latter solely through the perfection of his nature. (Deutsche Ethik, §38)

Wolff’s statement that the rational – and therefore good – human agent is a “law to himself” sounds much like Kant’s subsequent declaration that “autonomy,” the “property of the will by which it is a law to itself,” is the “supreme principle of morality” (G, 4:440). But the similarity is profoundly superficial: for Wolff, the rational agent can be a law to himself and needs no external law to be moral because the moral law is completely natural, while for Kant moral autonomy depends upon the ability to know what is right and wrong and to do it completely independently of all the mechanisms of nature  – as Kant makes clear when he continues that the property of the will to be a law to itself obtains and can

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be exercised completely “independently of any property of the objects of volition.” A further similarity masking a great difference between Wolff’s ethics and Kant’s lies in their treatments of the highest good. This concept has seemed to some to make no normative contribution to Kant’s ethics,5 but it is clearly deeply rooted in Kant’s Wolffian and indeed, beyond that, Aristotelian and Ciceronian inheritance. Wolff argues that no human being could achieve the absolutely highest good, for only God can and does possess complete perfection, but that the “highest good for human beings” consists in “unhindered progress toward greater perfections” (Deutsche Ethik, §44). But because the law to seek ever greater perfection is in Wolff’s view entirely natural, human progress toward the highest good for humans is a natural consequence of the laws of nature themselves: Now since the human being progresses toward ever greater perfection if he directs his action and omission in accordance with the law of nature, the highest good or the blessedness of which one is capable will be achieved through the observation of the law of nature and the fulfillment of the latter is therefore the means through which we attain the highest good or the blessedness of which we are capable on earth. (Deutsche Ethik, §45)

For Kant, however, the moral law is valid entirely independently of the laws of nature, and the decision to be moral can never be guaranteed or explained by natural means. The fundamental premises of Kantian morality therefore open a great “gulf” (CPJ, 5:175) between the laws of nature and the laws of freedom that must somehow be closed before the highest good can be restored to the position it enjoyed so naturally in Wolffian morality. Perhaps the deepest difference between Kant and Wolff lies in the fact that for Kant the compatibility of human autonomy and the laws of nature cannot be taken for granted, and that the bridge between human autonomy and nature can only be constructed within the limits imposed by Kant’s concepts of practical faith and reflective judgment. Before I turn to Kant’s response to Wolff’s form of perfectionism, let me illustrate the prevalence of this doctrine in Kant’s philosophical environment with a reference to its occurrence in an even closer contemporary, namely Moses Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn presents a brief purview of ethical theory in his essay “On Evidence in the Metaphysical Sciences,” the prize essay to which Kant’s own “Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality” took second place in 1764 and which, since the two essays were published together, Kant   See Lewis White Beck (1960: 245).

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must have known intimately.6 In this essay, Mendelssohn argues that the fundamental principle of morality can be known with certainty by three different but mutually compatible and reinforcing routes. First, one can simply observe “the thousandfold desires and wishes, passions and inclinations of human beings,” and induce “that they all aim at the preservation or betterment of the intrinsic or extrinsic condition of ourselves or another creature.” This observation yields the “general practical maxim, the first law of nature: make your intrinsic and extrinsic condition and that of your fellow human being, in the proper proportion, as perfect as you can.” 7 The Wolffian and indeed Aristotelian inheritance of this statement of perfectionism is self-evident. Second, Mendelssohn holds that the “same natural law can be proven a priori from the mere definition of a being with free will.” “A being endowed with free will,” he asserts, will choose “what pleases him from various objects or representations of objects,” and what will please such a being will in fact be “the perfection, beauty, and order that he perceives or believes he perceives in the preferred object” – nothing other than the “utility and sensuous pleasure that the object promises us since both belong to the perfections of our intrinsic and extrinsic condition” (297). Here Mendelssohn makes clear the tight connection between perfectionism and hedonism that obtains within the Wolffian framework and that can indeed be thought of as going back to Aristotle: perfection in our own activities (intrinsic condition) and our circumstances (extrinsic condition) is that which makes us maximally happy. Of course, Kant will radically revise this account of what we can infer a priori from the very concept of a being endowed with free will. Finally, Mendelssohn claims we can also infer the “general practical maxim” from the thought that we have been created by God as a mirror of himself, and thus since it is God’s essence to create perfection, “I conform to the great final purpose of creation and become an imitator of the divinity whenever I render a creature, myself or another, more perfect” (297–98), of course in regard to either intrinsic or extrinsic conditions. Thus Mendelssohn concludes that “Our actions are good or evil insofar as they agree with the rule of perfection,” which we can know either empirically or a priori, “or, what is the same, with God’s intentions” (299). And following the basic structure of perfectionism going back to Aristotle, he then adds that “Virtue is a proficiency in performing good actions,” that is, those that preserve or better the perfection of the intrinsic or extrinsic conditions of ourselves For a detailed contrast between the two essays, see Guyer (1991).   “On Evidence in Metaphysical Sciences,” in Moses Mendelssohn (1997: 296).

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or others, “and vice [is] a proficiency in performing evil actions,” that is, those that destroy or diminish the perfection of the intrinsic or extrinsic conditions of ourselves or others (299). Mendelssohn’s concise restatement of the fundamentals of Wolffian perfectionism thus makes clear the only sort of “virtue ethics” that Kant was concerned to combat: not one on which a number of different virtues are supposed to be self-evidently desirable or obligatory, but one on which virtues and vices are the means to the realization or diminishment of the perfection of our bodily and intellectual conditions and the external conditions on which these depend, a perfection which is in turn identical with human happiness. As we now turn to Kant, we shall see that what Kant really rejects is not the abstract concept of perfection as the goal of morality, but the specific conception of perfection that his contemporaries like Wolff and Mendelssohn had ultimately derived from Aristotle. What Kant really does is to replace the perfection of our intrinsic and extrinsic condition as the ultimate goal of virtue with the perfection of the quality of our will itself – the good will. I I I  K a n t i a n pe r f e c t ion i s m Kant transforms the traditional and Wolffian conception of reason as a power of insight into connections existing independently of our thought and action into a conception of reason as a power to create order by our thought and action. Nowhere are the implications of this transformation clearer than in Kant’s practical philosophy. But this does not mean that Kant’s moral philosophy cannot be understood as a species of perfectionism, as long as it is recognized that the role of reason is not to perfect our condition through greater insight into the available means to do so but to perfect our own will or power of choice by conforming to our own ideal of rationality. Kant transforms Wolff’s conception of reason as a capacity for insight into connections that exist independently of us into a conception of it as a power to create order that does not otherwise exist. Like Wolff, Kant begins by conceiving of the power of reason in its “logical use” as the capacity to perform inferences with judgments. But instead of assuming that all the inferences performed by reason necessarily give us insight into real connections among things, Kant argues that the unrestricted use of reason to find the condition for something given as conditioned by means of an inference leads to ideas of that which is completely unconditioned, with reason here following the “principle of pure reason” that “when the

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conditioned is given, then so is the whole series of conditions subordinated one to the other, which is itself unconditioned” (A303/B359–A305/ B361). In particular, Kant argues that by applying this principle to three different sorts of series, reason forms the ideas of the self as an absolute subject of all thoughts, of the world as an absolute whole of all objects in space and time, and of God as the absolutely necessary ground of all possibilities. But on Kant’s view we can have theoretical cognition only when a concept, whatever its origin, is applied to sensible intuition, and because sensible intuition is infinitely extendable or divisible, thus always conditioned, Kant concludes that we can have theoretical cognition only of things that are conditioned; accordingly, in not applying its ideas of the unconditioned to sensible intuition, reason does not give us theoretical cognition. This is of course Kant’s fundamental criticism of the rationalist tradition in philosophy, whether ancient or modern. But even though the ideas of reason cannot give us theoretical cognition, Kant holds that they can give us ideals, that is unique conceptions of how reality ought to be rather than determinate cognition of how it is. Thus Kant argues that while the theoretical use of pure reason can only lead to metaphysical illusion, the practical use of pure reason generates the ideals by which we ought to act in transforming the world. In the brief “Canon of Pure Reason,” which is the constructive counterpart to the long but destructive “Transcendental Dialectic,” Kant states that “Pure reason thus contains – not in its speculative use, to be sure, but yet in a certain practical use, namely the moral use – principles of the possibility of experience, namely of those actions in conformity with moral precepts which could be encountered in the history of humankind” (A807/B835). Pure reason gives us not knowledge of the world as it actually is but the ideal of a moral world, the conception of “the world as it would be if it were in conformity with all moral laws (as it can be in accordance with the freedom of rational beings and should be in accordance with the necessary laws of morality)” (A808/ B836). This radical reconception of the products of pure reason will lead to Kant’s most fundamental departures from Wolff. Kant’s ideal of a moral world, introduced in the “Canon of Pure Reason” and then developed throughout his writings in practical philosophy, is the ideal of a world in which human autonomy is fully realized, that is, a world in which the human will “is a law to itself (independently of any property of the objects of volition)” (G, 4:440) – a world in which the will is determined by a law inherent in itself rather than by the desirability of any object offered to it. The ideal of autonomy is above all the ideal of the independence of the will from all properties of objects and

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states of affairs external to it. In at least one place, Kant explicitly presents this ideal as a goal of perfection, but of the perfection of our will alone in contrast to the Wolffian goal of the perfection of our mental, bodily, and external condition. In both his lectures on ethics and in published works, Kant offers a fourfold classification of the options for moral theory arising from the intersection of two distinctions, namely, the distinction between empirical and intellectual principles for moral theory and that between internal and external sources of such principles (CPrR, 5:39–41; MoC, 27:252–55). In this classification, Kant uses only what he regards as modern moral theories (so there is no place for an ancient-inspired virtue ethics). Moral theories based on empirical internal principles are theories of self-love, such as those of Epicurus, Helvetius, and Mandeville, or theories of moral sense, such as those of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson; moral theories based on empirical external principles are those that see moral norms as arising only through custom, education, or government, such as the theories of Montaigne and Hobbes; and moral theories based on an external intellectual principles are those that base moral principles solely on the command or “will of God,” such as the theory of “Crusius and other theological moralists” (see MoC, 27:253–54; CPrR, 5:40).8 Now Kant ordinarily cites Wolff as the chief proponent of a morality based on the internal but intellectual principle of our own perfection – and then charges such a theory with being empirical in spite of itself, because it depends upon an empirical conception of the human condition and how it should be perfected (CPrR, 5:41), or with being vacuous, because it presupposes rather than provides a moral conception of what should be perfected (MoC, 27:264–65).9 But in his lectures he presents his own moral principle in the position reserved for an internal and intellectual principle of perfection, but as a principle of the perfection of choice rather than of condition: The second systema morale is the intellectual one. On this, the philosopher judges that the principle of morality has a ground in the understanding, and can be apprehended completely a priori … If I consider my free choice, it is a conformity of free choice with itself and others. It is thus a necessary law of free choice … Yes, the moral law expresses categorical necessity, and not a necessity fashioned from experience. All necessary moral rules must hold good a priori, In the latter location, Kant cites Mandeville as a representative of the theory that moral norms arise only from the external empirical principle of a “civil constitution,” while in the former he cites him as a representative of the view that moral norms arise from the internal empirical principle of self-love. 9 Kant is actually discussing Baumgarten rather than Wolff in this passage. 8

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and hence the principles are intellectual … This intellectual principle can take two forms: 1. Insofar as it rests on the inner nature of the action, so far as we apprehend it through the understanding. 2. It can also be an external principle, insofar as our actions have a relation to a being other than ourselves. The latter is the theological principle of morality. (MoC, 27:254)

While Wolff’s conception of perfection is the coherence of our condition at any time with what precedes and follows it, Kant’s conception of perfection “in the inner nature of the action” is the “conformity of free choice with itself and others” as the principle of action. That is, the fundamental principle of morality is that each of us make our exercise of our capacity for choice consistent with itself and with the exercise of that same capacity by others. This principle holds independently of any empirical principle, thus independently of the desirability of any objects of our actions. In this sense the ideal of the perfection of our choice is an ideal of autonomy. This is the most abstract way to describe Kant’s transformation of the Wolffian conception of the perfection of the practical use of reason. Of course, Kant also describes his fundamental principle of morality through a series of at least slightly more concrete principles, the several formulations of the categorical imperative in the Groundwork. These can also be understood as expressions of reason’s conception of the unconditioned as ideals for practice rather than as ideas for theoretical cognition. Kant’s first formulation of the categorical imperative, “Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law” (G, 4:421), can be understood as reason’s application of the ideal of the unconditional in the sense of universal validity to any particular maxim on which an agent proposes to act. Kant’s second formulation, “So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means” (4:429), can be understood to apply the rational ideal of unconditional value to the moral agent himself, and also to apply again the ideal of universal validity insofar as it applies the ideal of unconditional validity to all persons. And it is through this formulation, further, that Kant’s published presentation of the fundamental principle of morality connects up with his more informal presentation in his lectures, for he at least subsequently defines humanity simply as the capacity to choose or “set oneself an end – any end whatsoever” (MM, 6:392), so that what

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is being commanded through the second formulation of the categorical imperative is that the unconditional value of the freedom of choice be universally respected. Kant then gives two further formulations of the categorical imperative, although he calls each of these the “third” formulation at least once. The first of these is the “principle of every human will as a will giving universal law through all its maxims” (G, 4:432): this can be understood to express a second application of the ideal of universal validity to maxims in requiring not just that each maxim on which one proposes to act be universalizable for all agents but that all of the maxims on which both oneself and all the other members of the community of agents are to act be conjointly valid, that is, consistent with one another.10 The second version of the third formulation of the categorical imperative is the requirement “that all maxims from one’s own lawgiving harmonize with a possible realm of ends,” where such a “realm of ends” is understood as a “whole of all ends in systematic connection (a whole both of rational beings as ends in themselves and of the ends of his own that each may set himself)” (G, 4:436): this formulation applies the ideal of universal validity twice, first to the unconditional value of all rational beings and second to the derivative and therefore conditional value of the particular ends that such beings choose in the exercise of their free agency, that is, to the value that particular ends derive precisely from being determined by that in their agents which itself possesses unconditional value, their humanity or capacity for choice itself. Taken together, Kant’s formulations of the categorical imperative present autonomy as realizable only through a collective choice of maxims that preserves each agent’s capacity to choose his or her own maxims freely and which prescribes the realization of the maximally consistent sets of ends chosen by such free agents because of the value that attaches to those ends precisely in virtue of their having been freely chosen by such agents. It is in this sense that Kant’s ideal of the perfection that can be created by reason is that of the perfection of the choices of oneself and others, in contrast to Wolff’s conception of the perfection that can be understood by reason as the perfection of the condition of oneself and others – although under ideal circumstances the latter sort of perfection should be the consequence of the former, and thus the “universal happiness” that would consist in the satisfaction of a “whole of all ends” (see TP, 8:279–80) that 10

This interpretation of the first version of the third formulation of the categorical imperative, commonly referred to as the “Formula of Autonomy,” has been proposed by Allen Wood (1999: 163–65).

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is included in Kant’s conception of the highest good is for him not merely a natural good that is to be constrained by the requirements of virtue but a proper consequence of virtue. The doctrine of the highest good can in fact be considered as Kant’s attempt to incorporate the central idea of perfectionist ethics from Aristotle to the Wolffians into a proper position in his own practical philosophy, so I will now turn briefly to that doctrine. Wolff’s moral philosophy is based on the assumption of a seamless web connecting human reason, human agency, nature, and God: the human being uses his reason in order to perfect his natural capacities and conditions and thereby make his own contribution to the perfection of nature as a whole that has been willed by a perfect God. Kant’s conception of the fundamental value and the fundamental principle of morality, in contrast, introduces a radical breach between human morality and nature: the goal of morality is the perfection of our capacity of choice, not the perfection of our natural condition or the fulfillment of our natural desires, and – although it is of course arguable whether he need have thought this – for Kant our power of choice is free from determination by our antecedent history and condition in a way that nothing in nature is, an expression of our noumenal character rather than of our membership in the phenomenal, causal order of nature. For Kant, the human will is free to choose to perfect the consistency of its choice regardless of even the mightiest threats and blandishments of nature.11 But Kant did not mean simply to ignore our natural goal of happiness through the perfection of our condition or to leave the breach that he had created between freedom and nature entirely unbridged. Rather, Kant’s argument for the necessity of the highest good as the union of virtue and happiness and for the necessity of practical faith in the postulates of pure practical reason as the conditions of the possibility of this highest good is in fact the concluding argument in each of his three critiques, indeed not merely the concluding but the culminating argument in each of the critiques. The centrality of this doctrine to Kant’s thought is also evident in his lectures on ethics, which he typically began precisely by showing how none of the ancient theories of the highest good12 got the relationship between virtue and happiness right, Kant expresses this conception of the freedom of the will in the Critique of Practical Reason, of course, especially in the “Critical Elucidation of the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason” (5:89– 106), but it also comes to striking expression in his account of the “dynamical sublime” in the CPJ, §28, especially at 5:262. 12 Kant specifically mentions the Cynic, Epicurean, and Stoic accounts of the highest good, but not Aristotle’s account. 11

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thereby making it clear to his students that one if not the fundamental goal of moral philosophy must indeed be that of getting this relationship right. So we can begin our discussion of just how far Kant is willing to go in repairing the breach between freedom and nature that he has introduced into the Wolffian web with a comment on his theory of the highest good. It is possible to read some of the things that Kant says about the highest good as implying that each of us pursues happiness as a merely natural goal that all of us must constrain or confine within proper limits out of respect for duty. But at least later texts such as the essay On the Common Saying:  That May Be Correct in Theory, But It Is of No Use in Practice, the Preface to Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, and the “Doctrine of Virtue” in the Metaphysics of Morals make it clear that Kant really believes that happiness, to be sure not one’s own “selfish” happiness but “universal happiness” (see TP, 8:279–80), is not an independent, merely natural goal, but the object although of course not the motive of morality itself. The argument for such a conclusion is straightforward, although Kant never states it fully: respecting each person as an end in himself requires allowing each person to choose his ends freely to the extent that his so doing is compatible with everyone else’s doing the same; but, as Kant says in the Groundwork, “there is still only a negative and not a positive agreement with humanity as an end in itself unless everyone also tries, as far as he can, to further the ends of others” (G, 4:430); yet happiness just consists in the realization of ends (the happiness of an individual in the realization of all of the agent’s ends to the extent that they are consistent with each other, universal happiness in the realization of as many of everyone’s ends as are consistent with each other); so our duty not merely to respect but also as far as we can to further or promote the ends of all is nothing less than the duty to promote universal happiness, as far as we can. Insofar as it has moral worth this derivative but positive duty will not be motivated by the intrinsic desirability of happiness, whether one’s own or everyone’s, but solely by our respect for the moral law; but if the moral law requires the promotion of the freely chosen ends of human agents as part of what it is to respect their freedom of choice, then virtue, or being motivated by respect for duty, requires the promotion of universal happiness. I take this to be what Kant meant when he said even in the first Critique that “in the moral world, in the concept of which we have abstracted from all hindrances to morality (of the inclinations), such a system of happiness proportionately combined with morality can … be thought as necessary, since freedom, partly moved and partly restricted

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by moral laws, would itself be the cause of the general happiness.”13 Kant’s final step in the theory of the highest good is then to suppose that it can only be rational for us to act as our respect for duty requires if we can believe that it is at least possible for the object of our action from duty to be realized, or if we can believe that the laws of nature are at least compatible with the realization of the goal of our action from duty; and this, Kant supposes, we can believe only if we believe that a “highest reason, which commands in accordance with moral laws,” is “at the same time the cause of nature” (A810/B838), or if “a supreme cause of nature having a causality in keeping with the moral disposition is assumed” (CPrR, 5:125). Now Kant makes it abundantly clear in the first two critiques that the belief in the existence of God engendered by this argument is a matter of practical faith, not theoretical cognition, “a postulate from a practical point of view” that might even be expressed by representing “the upright man” as saying “I will that there be a God, that my existence in this world be also an existence in a pure world of the understanding beyond natural connections” (CPrR, 5:143).14 This is of course a direct repudiation of the conviction of Wolff and every other rationalist that we can have theoretical proof of the existence of God. Moreover, when Kant argues that pure reason must not only prove the existence of God but also form a “precisely determined concept of this original being” only from the “supreme principle of its practical use,” he repudiates not only the Wolffian argument for the existence of God but also the central premise of Wolff’s teleology, that our experience of nature can inform us of the “omniscience, all-­beneficence, and omnipotence” of God: for Kant, our only justification for attributing such properties to God, which go beyond anything that we could ever experience in nature, is that we must think of God in such terms in order to think of him as playing his assigned role of ensuring the possibility that the happiness commanded by our virtue can actually be realized in nature (CPrR, 5:126). Having initially broken all connections between morality and nature, Kant thus reconstructs a twofold connection between the two. Happiness, Critique of Pure Reason, A809/B837. Notice that Kant is careful in this sentence to say that the moral world requires abstraction from inclinations as hindrances to morality; I take this to mean that in a moral world there would be no inclinations contrary to morality, not that there would be no inclinations whatsoever, for if there were no inclinations whatsoever then agents would not even have any ends for actions that could survive restriction by morality, and thus no ends the satisfaction of which could yield happiness. 14 Kant continues, of course, “and finally that my duration be endless.” I omit discussion of the postulate of immortality. 13

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the satisfaction of our natural desire, cannot be seen as either the motivation for morality or its immediate object, but it can be seen as its indirect object; and since such happiness can be achieved only within nature, and we must be able to believe that even the indirect object of morality is possible for our attempt to be moral to be rational, that is, not undermined by a threat of the impossibility of realizing the goal that it enjoins upon us even if only indirectly, we must therefore believe that the laws of nature are at least compatible with human happiness and have the sort of authorship adequate to make them such. In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant also argues, although I have not discussed that point here, that the freedom to choose what duty requires can never be seen as a product of nature, but we can and must see nature as aimed at producing the discipline or control over our desires that we need in order to make our free choice to act out of respect for duty efficacious in the natural world (§83; CPJ, 5:429–34). Kant thus restores humankind to the central position in the system of nature that we enjoyed in Wolff’s philosophy, but to a very different end and in a very different key. For Wolff, all of nature exists to support humankind in its cognitive role as witness to the perfection of God, and this is the culminating claim of the single system of metaphysics (Deutsche Metaphysik, §1045). For Kant, all of nature can be seen as a system aimed at the development of human freedom or autonomy, but of course nature can never itself produce human autonomy: it can at most produce a necessary condition for the exercise of human autonomy, namely discipline over our desires, and the conditions for the realization of the indirect object of human autonomy, namely happiness. And God comes into this picture not as the object of our veneration, but only as the putative condition of the possibility of nature’s service to our own autonomy. Further, Kant reminds us that the image of nature as conformable to our own morality is not a part of speculative metaphysics, but only a postulate of pure practical reason. In conclusion, then: in the perfectionist tradition from Aristotle to the Wolffians, perfection and happiness are directly linked  – for Aristotle, human perfection is defined as that which will bring us greatest happiness, and while in Wolff and his followers perfection is not initially defined in terms of happiness, it is in fact equated with the perfections of our intrinsic and extrinsic conditions that lead directly to happiness. The virtues are then defined as specific means for the realization of perfection, thus as instrumentally valuable. For Kant, the moral ideal consists in the perfection of our will, choice, or autonomy, and specific virtues – which I have not had room to discuss here  – are also thought of as means to

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this end, while happiness as the perfection of our intrinsic and extrinsic conditions, the chief object of traditional perfectionism, is reincorporated into his practical philosophy as the ultimate object but not the motive of virtuous action. So in the end, the deepest difference between Kantian and traditional perfection is in Kant’s account of moral motivation, or of virtuousness in the deepest sense. In light of that, perhaps it is Kant rather than anyone else who should be regarded as the best model for an ethics of virtue.

Ch apter 9

Aristotle, the Stoics, and Kant on anger Nancy Sherman

I   V ig n e t t e s Consider three cases to help focus intuitions. First, vengeful anger Iranian style. I quote from an article in the Scottish Daily Mail of March 17, 2005: Justice took a long time to catch up with the man they called the vampire of the desert. Death came just as slowly. Under the blazing hot sun, in front of a baying crowd, Mohammad Bijeh paid a very public price yesterday for his catalogue of wicked crimes. In a grossly barbaric execution ceremony, the serial child killer was flogged at the stake, stabbed in the back by the 17-year-old brother of one of his victims and stoned by the chanting mob. Then, to shouts of “make him twist,” he was hoisted up on a crane by a noose that had been placed around his neck by the mother of another victim. It took more than five minutes for him to choke to death, while he was taunted and spat at … His corpse was then left dangling for another 20 minutes.

We can think of the scene as one of vengeful anger where the legal punishment system facilitates private revenge through public, barbaric punishment. Next, consider classic vengeful anger within war: I refer to the warrior rage of Homer’s Achilles. Achilles is the angriest, “most violent man alive,” proclaims Agamemnon, himself famous for the vindictiveness that sets the Iliad in motion and that provokes Achilles’ rage. It is Agamemnon’s snatching of Achilles’ war bride (Briseis) to replace his own snatched war bride and honor (Chryseis) that unleashes Achilles’ unrelenting fury and his refusal to fight under Agamemnon’s command. Achilles can’t let go of a revenge that has become far “sweeter than dripping streams of honey.”1 Some of the material in this chapter draws on Sherman (2005), ch. 4 and Sherman (2007). 1 Homer (1999: 18.128).

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Book 9 of the Iliad turns into a genre scene of anger, captured vividly by Fagles:2 “seething” and “mounting fury,” “heartbreaking anger,” a “rage” that “still grip[s] his proud, mighty spirit,” an “iron, ruthless heart,” warlords who keep on “blustering in their anger,” wrath that comes “sweeping” over some men, and “swells the chest of others,” “blood so fired up,” “smoldering, vengeful spirit,” “cruel, relentless fury,” “a heart that still heaves with rage,” rage that cannot be “quenched,” a rage that seizes his listeners with “stunned silence, struck dumb.” Achilles’ revenge becomes refocused or, some say, turns into a “second anger,” when Patroclus, his beloved war comrade, is killed by Hector. Patroclus is killed in battle wearing Achilles’ armour, and so, in a sense, it is as if Achilles ought to have died. Achilles’ survivor guilt is unbearable:  It should have been him that Hector killed. He’d do anything to undo the original switch. The death launches Achilles into the war effort, but with a wrath that turns ugly quickly. He kills Hector and then desecrates his body by dragging it facedown around Patroclus’s tomb. The poet’s voice finally becomes decisive:  Achilles’ rage transgresses the decorum of war:  “That man without a shred of decency in his heart,” Achilles outrages even “the senseless clay in all his fury.”3 The tragedy of Priam, Hector’s father, however, will be softened by the gods’ intervention that keeps Hector’s body intact, despite Achilles’ brutality. Finally, consider the anger of Hugh Thompson, a man some call “the hero of My Lai.” Here, too, is a case of anger within combat, but anger that is more moral indignation than warrior revenge. On the morning of March 16, 1968, Thompson, then a 25-year-old reconnaissance helicopter pilot with the 123rd Aviation Battalion, happened to be circling above a small hamlet called Tu Cung by the Vietnamese and My Lai 4 by the Americans. In the bubble were also his 18-year-old door gunner, Lawrence Colburn and his 22-year old crew chief, Glen Andreotta. As they hovered, at times, only four or five feet off the ground, they began to see a swath of devastation and a ditch filled with bodies. They had just flown over the area an hour earlier with no sign of enemy action and no reports of Americans being hurt. His mind began to go places it didn’t want to go. Relating the events to me some thirty-five years later, Thompson recalls, “I guess I was in denial. You’ve got to understand, we were ready to risk our lives to save these American guys on the ground.” And so he began to construct for himself alternative scenarios. Maybe the carnage was from the early morning aerial artillery prepping of the area. But why then the ditch? So he tried out another scenario: “When the artillery started coming, the enemy ran out into the ditch and a lucky artillery round got them. On this, see Harris (2001: 77). 

2

  Homer (1999: 22.398–405; 24.64–65).

3

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But I’m thinking, ‘Every house has a bomb shelter in it. When artillery starts coming in, are you going to leave this safe bomb shelter and take a walk in the park? I don’t think so.’ So I threw that out. So I said to myself, ‘Well, when the Americans came through, they did the humane thing and put all of the bodies in the ditch that was going to be a mass grave.’ Well then you look in the ditch and there’s live people in there. Everybody isn’t dead. Wait a minute. We don’t put the living with the dead in a grave. And then I just finally said, ‘These people were marched down in that damn ditch and murdered … The thought was there the whole time, but I was trying to justify it.’” He then sees an infantry officer (later identified as Capt. Medina) prod a wounded girl with his foot and then shoot her. Minutes later, after again asking for help with the wounded in the ditch, Andreotti heard a barrage of machine gunfire coming from a soldier near the ditch (later identified as Lt. Calley). He next saw the Americans approaching a bunker, and figured to himself that the people inside had about 15 seconds to live. “I said, ‘Dammit, it ain’t gonna happen. They ain’t gonna die …’ I was hot. I’ll tell you that. I was hot.” Those who received his radio message that day got a taste of his outrage:  “His voice was choked with emotion. He swore obscenities, cursed, and pleaded with the aerocrew to come down and help rescue the civilians.”4 At this point Thompson had had enough. He landed his aircraft, famously instructing his crew to “open fire” on the GI’s if they opened fire at him as he tried to rescue the people in the bunker. As he retells me the story thirty years later, tears well in his eyes as the moral indignation still rises. He feels all this intensely, though for years he never told his family about his rescue mission and returned from Vietnam trying to forget what he saw. “Numb is good,” he told me, clearly still overwhelmed by what he saw.5

Now these are three familiar cases of anger. The first two, of the Iranian family members and of Achilles, are cases of vengeful anger. They upset us because of their excess and lack of humanity toward the victims. They might morph into what many of us would probably view as less objectionable, retributivist forms of anger if the actions they inspired were constrained by just conceptions of punishment or just conceptions of proper conduct in war. The third case of anger is one of moral protest and outcry on behalf of others that then inspires an act of heroic courage. What concerns me in this chapter is how ancient and Kantian conceptions of virtue tend to view moral anger of these various sorts. Do the theories discriminate between different kinds of anger, distinguishing, for example, battle rage or vengeful fury from moral indignation? Can Kant, not especially known for a systematic account of the emotions, nonetheless accommodate a view of moral anger as correlative to notions Bilton and Sim (1992: 139).   This material is drawn from Sherman (2007: 269–70).

4 5

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of respect for the dignity of persons? I shall argue that while Aristotle and Kant leave room for moral anger of various sorts, the Stoics argue against its presence in the morally virtuous agent. On the Stoic view, all forms of anger are to be extirpated in that they exacerbate our vulnerability to the world and weaken self-sufficient moral agency. Kant, though following the Stoics in arguing for the importance of self-standing free agency, does not seem to be equally committed to their rejection of anger as an intolerable form of vulnerability. Quite to the contrary, I shall argue that certain forms of anger are, on a Kantian view, a morally necessary expression of our vulnerability. In what follows, I take up Aristotle, the Stoics (principally Seneca), and then Kant. Seneca’s Stoicism, as developed in On Anger, is my primary focus. I take it as a reaction to Peripatetic (i.e. Aristotelian) views and a launching point for Kant. I I  A r i s t o t l e on a ng e r But first, I come to Aristotle through a brief detour in Plato. Recall, in the Republic, that Plato regards anger as the special province of the warrior class. It is the fire in a warrior’s belly, or more precisely, in the thumos, or spirited part of the soul. Sandwiched between the reasoning and appetitive parts (just as the warrior or auxiliary class is positioned between the ruler and artisan classes), thumos can do the bidding of either. But in the healthy and just soul, the alliance with reason prevails.6 The spirited part will resist arousal should reason declare it not warranted, or it will submit to chastening, if, in a momentary lapse, it unwisely succumbs.7 Thus, anger can listen to reason. In the famous metaphor of Plato’s Phaedrus, even a wayward steed can be chastened by the commands of the charioteer. In locating anger in a special function and seat of the soul (psychē), Plato begins to offer a psychological portrait of the kind of warrior rage familiar to every Greek through Homer’s Achilles. But Plato insists that even warrior anger can be internally constrained. “Parts of the soul” talk is a way of indicating the force of internal constraints and, most especially, the constraint of internal reason. If Plato is the first to construct formally a psyche with thumos, or an angry part, Aristotle is the first to analyze anger (orgē, as he tends to call it) as part of a systematic study of the emotions, or pathē. The account appears in the Rhetoric and is intended for orators in the business of 6

See the Republic (Plato 1974: 375ff., 439ff.). 

  Republic (Plato 1974: 440c).

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manipulating the emotions of a jury or assembly. But despite its practical aim, Aristotle’s study is both deep and broad, offering a unified account of emotions unparalleled in the history of philosophy. Roughly speaking, Aristotle proposes what psychologists (and many philosophers) today call an appraisal theory. (The theory is the reigning view of emotions in cognitive psychology and, for the most part, in philosophy.8 As we shall see, the Stoics put forth the view in radical form.) On such a view, emotions are constituted by judgments or appraisals about one’s situation. To be more precise, an appraisal is an evaluation about the goodness or badness of some perceived or imagined event. Thus, anger requires an evaluation that one has been unjustly slighted by another, fear that there is present harm or danger or that something valuable is threatened, grief that something valuable has been lost. In this sense, emotions are more like thoughts than brute feelings or sensations, or, as William James once held, the proprioception of physiological changes in the viscera and musculature, such as knots in our stomach or tension in our hands. Aristotle never denies that most emotions will have a certain kind of “feel.” As he puts it, they are “accompanied” by pleasure and pain (and sometimes physiological “feels,” like the boiling of blood around the heart), but those “feels” cannot constitute the emotion independent of the thought content to which they attach. Moreover, it is the thoughts and not the “feels” that allow us to identify specific emotions. Thus, although emotions may sometimes announce themselves to us through a physiological or psychic feeling (i.e. a knotted stomach or uplifted, positive mood), those “feels” on their own are not determinate enough to convey just what emotions we are experiencing.9 The same sort of knotted stomach can be part of fear or indignation, just as a feeling of uplift can be part of excitement or hope. In addition, Aristotle claims, emotions often include a reactive desire, an “action tendency,” as contemporary psychologists call it, that motivates us to action or reactive behavior. Combining the elements, Aristotle says, anger involves an “apparent” (i.e. perceived, judged, or imagined) “wrongful slight to self or those near to one” “accompanied by pain” and issuing typically in a “desire for revenge” which can bring its own pleasure.10 Contemporary Frijda (1986); Lazarus (1984); Oatley (1992); Scherer (1993). See Zajonc (1984) for an important criticism. Among philosophers, see De Sousa (1988); Goldie (2000); Nussbaum (2002); Solomon (1973); and Stocker (1996) for a sampling.  9 Cannon (1927); Schachter and Singer (1962). 10 Rhet 1378a30–32, my translation. For abbreviations of Aristotle’s works, see Abbreviations at the start of this volume.  8

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philosophers tend to distinguish between anger as irascibility from anger as a discrete outburst (i.e. emotions as dispositions rather than episodes). Aristotle doesn’t formally make the distinction, but something like it is often implicit in his remarks. Aristotle’s appraisal view entails that emotions “share in some way,” as he puts it, in rational capacities.11 But it is not just that emotions are, in part, cognitions. It is that they can be made rational. They can respond to reason, as a child “listens to and obeys” a parent.12 In this sense, he upholds just what the Stoics deny:  even an emotion like anger can be expressed in ways that are apt and appropriate. It can “hit the mean.” This does not require, as many interpreters from the Stoic period onward have insisted, that appropriate emotions must always be moderate, with no sign of either vehemence or mildness. Rather, as Aristotle explains: “The person who is angry at the right things and with the right people, and further, as he ought, when he ought, and as long as he ought, is praised.”13 Extreme anger may be exactly the right response in certain circumstances. Consider, for example, peacekeepers in Bosnia constrained by rules of engagement that forced them to leave innocents to perish in areas slated by the Serbians for ethnic cleansing. The hands-off approach made them feel complicit in the cleansing, although their commanders insisted that to remove Bosnians from their homes would be a more direct act of complicity. We can think of their extreme anger at being commanded to let innocents die as a form of moral outrage. And we may think that in this kind of case, the expression of moral outrage is not only appropriate, in the sense of intelligible, but morally justified. It seems a sign of the good soldier’s conscience, and a sign of moral despair at being forced to leave in harm’s way those whom they could have evacuated. What seems perhaps equally intelligible, though not morally justified, was the extreme rage that some of the soldiers brought home with them after the war. Their anger and guilt would not abate. And it was displaced onto inappropriate objects. This is captured well in a BBC dramatized documentary, Peacekeepers. In one scene, a returning reservist lashes out at a whining child in a supermarket for making a scene:  Doesn’t she know that children in war zones have something real to cry about? The mother of the child scoops her away from the raving man. Another newly returned veteran flies into automatic rage when the whirring motor of an earth tiller suddenly becomes enemy artillery. He attacks the person standing nearest to him, his girlfriend, eight months pregnant. War rage NE, 1102b29–32. 

11

  NE, 1102b31–32. 

12

  NE, 1125b32–33.

13

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and “berserking,”14 symptoms of war forms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), are manifest here. Now, Aristotle holds that to fail to be angry at the things one ought is the mark of either foolishness or servility.15 It is a deficit in virtue. But if one can’t turn off anger, however legitimate its initial object, is it still servility to abstain in the first place? Might not abstinence, as the Stoics argue, ultimately be a better kind of wisdom? Aristotle at one point tellingly says that anger “seems to listen to argument” though often “mishear” it, like a hasty servant who “muddle[s] the order.”16 But he is optimistic that with a little rational guidance, we can straighten out that servant. The Stoics challenge the optimism and the metaphor. Isn’t anger more like a disease that needs a surgeon than like a servant that needs a good talking to? And even if emotions, like anger, are cognitive, as the Stoics agree they are, why should we assume they use reason well? With this, we turn to the Stoics. I I I S t oic s on t h e i r r at ion a l i t y of a ng e r In a lesser-known dialogue by Plutarch (c. 50–120 ce), “On the Control of Anger,” Fundanus, the principal speaker, compares withholding from anger to learning sobriety. Anger, like drink, is hard to control once indulged. It is best to give it up entirely and practice full abstention. Fundanus speaks from firsthand experience of this AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) method. He himself first passed “a few days without anger, sober and wineless days, as it were,” and then a “month or two,” pure of the taint. Though he knows that anger is the kind of disease that requires lifelong therapy, the cure seems for now, at least, to be sticking: he is no longer angry towards his household slaves and, in general, is more “courteous in speech.” Those he interacts with benefit from his new humane (philanthropon) spirit, but he himself is the greatest beneficiary.17 Plutarch, here, in Stoic voice, rehearses the Roman and Hellenistic preoccupation with anger and its suppression. The wrath of an Achilles is fixed in all minds. But so too are the atrocities of political and military leaders, like Caligula or Nero, and also the abuses of lesser men – heads of household, like Fundanus, who, given the status system of Rome, exercise near monarchical powers over their slaves and dependants.18 The havoc See Shay (2002).  15  NE, 1126a2–8.  16  NE, 1149a25ff. Plutarch’s Moralia: On the Control of Anger (Plutarch 2000: 464c–d, 453d). For abstaining from anger on the AA model, see also Seneca, On Anger (1995: 2.12.3). 18 See Cooper and Procopé (1995), Introduction. 14 17

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anger wreaks on others remains a constant theme, but perhaps even more so, the havoc it wreaks on one’s own soul. This is the preoccupation of Seneca’s On Anger (De Ira). Seneca (c. 4 bce–65 ce) dedicates On Anger to his elder brother, Novatus, who served as Governor of Achaea in 51–52 ce. Although Novatus himself apparently did not need lectures on irascibility (indeed he is remembered by some for his “sweetness”),19 the essay, which is addressed to him, stands as a bold teaching to those who do need exhortation. Seneca opens the essay with a voyeuristic glimpse at the face (and body) of anger. Eyes ablaze and glittering, a deep flush over all the face as blood boils up from the vitals, quivering lips, teeth pressed together, bristling hair standing on end, breath drawn in and hissing, the crackle of writhing limbs, groans and bellowing, speech broken off with the words barely uttered, hands struck together too often, feet stamping the ground, the whole body in violent motion … the hideous horrifying face of swollen self-degradation.20

Like theatergoers watching at a safe distance, we often find fascination in the gruesome. And Seneca’s portrait may be intended, in part, to feed our appetites. But however titillated we may be, few among us would wish to be at the receiving end of such a hideous face or ourselves wearing one. “What can the mind be within if the image is so foul?” What is reflected on the face is only “a tiny fraction of its true ugliness.”21 The look of anger, Seneca says, can terrorize in the way a hideous mask strikes fear in a child.22 Indeed, the face is a mask we read all too well. Research confirms the point. We are exquisite readers of faces, and anger is one of the faces we read instantly, from early childhood onward.23 But it is what we do in anger, and not just what we communicate through our eyes or mouths, that Seneca worries about most. Anger, Seneca declares, is responsible for far too many of the atrocities to which Romans have grown accustomed: No plague has cost the human race more. You will see slaughter, poisoning, charge and sordid counter-charge in the law-courts, devastation of cities, the ruin of whole nations, persons of princely rank for sale at public auction, buildings set alight and the fire spreading beyond the city walls, huge tracts of territory glowing in flames that the enemy kindled. Look and you will see cities of See Griffin (1992: 319n5, 84n5); also Cooper and Procopé (1995: 15–16). Seneca, On Anger (1995: 1.1.3–4). Seneca, On Anger (1995: 2.36.1). 22 Seneca, On Anger (1995: 2.11.2). 23 For a lively piece on Paul Ekman’s studies of the facial expression of emotion and its implications for law enforcement, see Gladwell (2002). 19

20 21

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greatest renown, their very foundations now scarcely discernible  – anger cast them down; deserts, mile after mile without inhabitant – anger emptied them … look upon gathered throngs put to the sword, on the military sent in to butcher the populace en masse, on whole peoples condemned to death in an indiscriminate devastation.24

Seneca’s style, here and elsewhere, is hyperbolic. But more than any author, he outlines for us the futility of anger and the inherent difficulties of keeping a lid on its excesses. And with a “can-do” attitude he insists that eliminating it is a practical possibility. We shall have to ask whether, indeed, vice lurks in all or even most species of anger and whether trying to root it out is, as Seneca insists, the best way to “cultivate our humanity.”25 But in order to assess Seneca’s specific claims about anger, we need to understand the Stoic conception of emotions in greater depth. Anger, Seneca tells us, is a “departure from sanity.”26 But all ordinary emotions, on the Stoic view, are such departures. More specifically, they are perverted cognitions.27 So, Seneca claims, anger, like emotion in general, “cannot … come into being except where there is a place for reason.” But all the same, it is “the enemy of reason.” In viewing emotions as cognitive, the Stoics follow Aristotle. But they take their leave from him in holding that emotions are completely determined by their cognitive nature. They are uncompromisingly opinions or beliefs in a psyche that is itself undivided and homogenously cognitive. In this way, a unitary, rational mind comes to replace the bipartite and tripartite psyches of Aristotle and Plato. Given that emotions are perverted or false opinions,28 the task of Stoic enlightenment is to submit to a radical therapy (therapeia) that will cure one of ordinary emotions and their habits. The underlying assumption is that it is possible to have dominion over our emotional lives. The Stoics elaborate the voluntary nature of emotions in more detail. Emotions are opinions or beliefs insofar as they are voluntary assents to appearances or impressions regarding goods and evils.29 As Seneca explains, Seneca, On Anger (1995: 1.2.1–3). Seneca, On Anger (1995:  3.43.5); See Plutarch, Moralia:  On the Control of Anger (Plutarch 2000: 464d) for an anger-free soul as a humane (philanthropon) soul. See also Nussbaum (1994a) for an important discussion of this. 26 Seneca, On Anger (1995: 3.1.4). 27 Tou logou diastrophas, Von Armin (1924: i.208). 28 Accurate judgments of good and evil are components of eupatheiai, “good emotions” (sometimes translated as “equable” or “fine” emotions). I discuss this later in the text. 29 Although the Stoics take emotions to be fully cognitive, this does not entail, on their view, that emotions are flat or affectless. Emotions are accompanied by a kind of mental tension or arousal – “shrinkings” and “swellings,” “stretchings,” “contractions,” and “tearings.” In Zeno’s 24 25

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“anger is … set in motion by an impression received of a wrong. But does it follow immediately in the impression itself and break out without any involvement of the mind? … Our view is that it undertakes nothing on its own, but only with the mind’s approval.”30 Thus, emotions, however spontaneously experienced, are mediated by an appraisal, conscious or unconscious, which is voluntary. They are voluntary in the sense that while we may be “struck” by impressions, we accept or “assent” to those impressions, e.g. in the case of fear, that something in our midst is threatening. In addition, we assent to a further opinion that certain reactions or affective responses (e.g. fleeing or trembling) are appropriate.31 The overall claim is that emotional experience is, in a substantive way, voluntary.32 The view runs counter to much ordinary thinking about emotions. Emotional language is filled with passivity. We are “bowled over” by love, “overcome” with grief, “paralyzed” by fear. And while emotional experience doesn’t always leave us helpless victims, there is often lag time before we are able to take charge. The Stoics, too, suggest that we are seduced by impressions, but still we give those our assent, however unreflectively. The Greek word for emotion, pathos, underscores the sense of passivity. It derives from the verb paschein, to suffer or endure, and our Latinate term “passion” preserves some of that gloss. The Stoics, however, demand that we cease to view emotions as events that merely happen to us. However possessed we may feel by emotions, we are the possessors, ultimately “in charge” of our experience. Undoubtedly, the Stoics, as often, push their claim too far. But their views, nonetheless, give us insight into ways in which we can take responsibility for our emotions.33 The ancient Greek Stoics hold that all emotions can be classified into four basic types that divide along two major axes: they are about either novel metaphor, emotion is a “flutter.” Thus, locating emotion in a unitary, rational soul need not detract from emotion’s characteristic feel. Zeno underscores the point by adding that the belief must be fresh (prosphatos), again, a striking metaphor meant to call up in the Greek listener associations with freshly cut meat or corpses that still, in a sense, have some life. Cicero gives a temporal gloss to the term, translating with the Latin recens. But, of course, emotions like anger can linger and bite (Tusculan Disputations, 3.83) long after a perceived offense. So “recens” cannot be restricted to a temporal meaning. Cicero himself adds that a judgment remains fresh “so long as it retains some force, some liveliness or, as it were, some greenness [viriditatem]” (Tusculan Disputations, 3.75). For insightful discussion, see White (1995: 230). 30 Seneca, On Anger (1995: 2.1.3–4). 31 On the twofold evaluation view, see Seneca, On Anger (1995: 2.1.3). See also Tusculan Disputations, 3.24, 4.14, and Graver’s (2002) commentary. For further discussion, see Brennan (1998:  335); Sorabji (2000: 29); and White (1995: 230–32). 32 For a contemporary version of this, see Solomon (1973). 33 See Sherman (1999, 2000).

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goods or evils, and focused on either the future or present/past. So desire (epithumia) is directed at the appearance of a future good in the offing, fear (phobos) at the appearance of a future evil. Pleasure (hedonē) is judgment of a good in the present or past, and pain or distress (lupē) a judgment of evil in the present or past. All other emotions are conceived as subspecies of these four generic ones.34 So, for example, the Stoics, fixing on the revenge motive often linked with anger, classify anger as a desire, alongside sexual appetite and love of wealth and honor.35 Emotions, then, are assents to a mistaken conception of what is good and evil. The Stoics stipulate a further point. Emotions are, by definition, excessive. They are “excessive impulses,” in Zeno’s original formulation. Angry feelings are especially excessive, on Seneca’s view. They are like “bodies in free fall” that “have no control over themselves.”36 They drive the mind “headlong.” Chrysippus’s metaphor is apt here. Imagine a runner whose pace doesn’t allow him to stop suddenly. In a similar way, emotions rarely proceed at a walking pace; they exceed the measure of natural reason.37 Excess leads to other evils of irrationality: so anger, Seneca insists, can waver in its judgments, like a serpent whose fangs become innocuous once the venom is drawn out. And it can be capricious, leading us to treat individuals in arbitrary ways.38 It is hard to overstate the historical impact of this negative picture. Until only the past few decades or so, the overwhelming view of emotions, within and outside the academy, was that of disruptors and distorters of reason – “mist on the mental windscreen,” as one philosopher whimsically put it.39 Kant, in a clear way, helped to preserve Stoic biases in his notion that morality must be grounded in reason not emotion, lest moral motivation be held hostage to blind and capricious inclinations. But while Kant, at least in his best-known writings, subscribes to much of the negative view,40 he resists the more tenable Stoic piece, namely the descriptive, cognitive view – that emotions are essentially judgments. On Arius Didymus, 2.90, 19–91, 9 in Stobaeus (1884) = Long and Sedley (1987: 65E). We may think it better classified as a kind of distress at present evil, and close cousin with some emotions that fall under that genus. (The list includes malice, envy, jealousy, pity, grief, worry, sorrow, annoyance, mental pain, and vexation.) But note, in the conversion of ordinary emotions to more rational ones (eupatheiai), that nothing corresponding to distress will survive – for the sage enjoys a stress-free life of equanimity. In contrast, emotions corresponding to appetites do survive as rational wishes (boulêseis). 36 Seneca, On Anger (1995: 1.7.4, 3.1.4; also 3.16.2). 37 Galen, On Hippocrates’ and Plato’s Doctrines (1984: 4.2.10–18) = Long and Sedley (1987: 65J); also the latter’s comments, 420. See also Seneca, On Anger (1995: 2.35.2, 1.7.4). 38 Seneca, On Anger (1995: 1.17.5–7).  39  Peters and Mace (1962). 40 See my important qualification of this in Sherman (1997a, 1997b). 34 35

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his own view, ordinary emotions are brute feelings like itches and tickles; their irrationality, indeed their pathology, has to do with their stupidity. They are just dumb “feels,” not judgments. Even so, the Stoics, like Kant, will make significant concessions. The sage, and also Kant’s paragon of moral virtue, is not impervious to all feeling. The sage will experience cultivated “good” emotions (eupatheiai, not pathē), just as Kant’s moral paragon will feel “practical,” not merely “pathological,” emotions. In both cases, cultivated emotions are the products of mature virtue, “garments” that “dress virtue to advantage,” as Kant puts it. In the case of the Stoic sage, removing ordinary emotions will involve removing the excessive emotions that come with overestimating the importance of external goods in one’s life. With more accurate calibrations of danger, wealth, and the like (as indifferents and not proper good and evil), reasonable, “good” emotions come to replace the old ones. True, a sage may still feel shadows and scars of older feelings, bites and gnawings, as some of the texts put it.41 These may be the emotional residues of a former life, moments when he is caught off guard, and feels the stirring of an emotion, emotional preludes (proludentia adfectibus), as Seneca calls these pre-emotional phenomena. However, if he is truly a sage, then there will be no risk of backsliding. If he is not yet a sage, the fate of most of us, then these moments may threaten regression. “Thus it is,” concedes Seneca, that even the bravest man often turns pale as he puts on his armour, that the knees of even the fiercest soldier tremble a little as the signal is given for battle, that a great general’s heart is in his mouth before the lines have charged against one another, that the most eloquent orator goes numb at the fingers as he prepares to speak.42

The genuine sage will resume control almost instantly. He will refrain from assenting to impressions and will be able to catch himself before the stirring grows into a full-blown emotion. But the bravest, who yet fall short of sagehood, may not catch themselves in time. From a non-Stoic perspective, we might think of an emotional prelude as a useful signal to take tighter control; it is a kind of “affect signal,” as Freud came to characterize anxiety and the subconscious way it can alert us to take up defense.43 Or again, we might think of these pre-emotional phenomena as the sort of “enactments” trained psychotherapists say they experience:  fleeting emotional responses, such as a momentary wave of Tusculan Disputations, 3.83. 

41

42

  Seneca, On Anger (1995: 2.3.3). 

43

  Freud (1925–26).

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guilt or retaliative anger that briefly interrupts a therapist’s more neutral posture.44 In the case of the listening therapist, these enactments are, more often than not, informative. They record something the therapist finds salient in the patient’s story or in her own resonance to it. But we need to be careful here. While from the perspective of psychotherapy or other contemporary views, we might think of emotions and pre-emotional experiences as potentially informative, Stoics must resist the move. For on their view, emotions and their precursors give nothing but systematically false evaluations of genuine goods and evils in the world. They misinform. What we might think the Stoics can concede, however, is that the appearances that we assent to give us information about preferred and dispreferred indifferents. This may be. But if we go on to have full and ordinary emotional responses as a result of these assents, then we are, in fact, not evaluating the circumstances as indifferents. We are viewing them as genuine goods and evils and are thus still in the grip of the old picture. These remarks give us some insight into the extreme nature of the Stoic position on an emotion such as anger. It may be one thing to restrain abusive wrath on the ground or in command, but quite another to feel no trace of anger when one loses one’s limbs in combat or moral outrage when one witnesses genocide. This may be a kind of equanimity that is not only hard to come by, but that undoes what we hold as our essential humanity. We get a better grasp of the radical nature of the view when we examine Seneca’s full indictment of anger in the next section. I V  S e n e c a a n d t h e r avag e s of a ng e r Seneca paints a picture of all anger as incipient frenzy and cruelty. Its natural course is to turn into a thirst for bloodletting revenge. It is an urge to “lash and lacerate,” to seek retribution not for its own sake, but for pleasure.45 It is a “raging malady,” a “sheer brute force that rushes” on a person, “a butcher” of the innocent and those “dearest,” a force “to sink what cannot be drowned unless he himself drowns with it.”46 In short, anger terrorizes others as it torments us. Excessive, by definition, it becomes impossible to moderate. These characterizations are meant to apply not just to malicious anger or hatred, but to all species of anger. Indeed, Seneca takes principal aim at that anger which may seem to us Chused (1991); also Sherman (2004).  Seneca, On Anger (1995: 3.3).

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most justified – namely, moral indignation at culpable wrongdoings. In what follows, I analyze, dialectically, Seneca’s arguments. I raise objections to his condemnation of moral indignation and to the related claim that retributive anger amounts to an untenable form of revenge. Seneca begins his remarks (in Book ii) by noting that wrongdoing in the world is legion. If the wise person habitually reacted to it, “his entire life would be spent in bad temper and grief.”47 He would become a ranter and raver, not so different from those whose lives are filled with petty malice and spite, who “out of military dress” are “still at war with each other,” bickering and fighting as if in a “school of gladiators.”48 This is no life for a sage, or for even one who aspires, in more modest ways, toward virtue. Moral indignation robs one of a life of equanimity. There are several things to say in reply. Seneca is right to warn of the self-destructive and obsessive character of anger. As Aristotle pointed out before him, it is easy to deviate from the mean in anger, and become bitter on the one hand, or choleric and explosive on the other.49 Moreover, with time and repetition, those responses can become hardened into deeply habituated patterns. And we often feed our habits. We exaggerate the degree or severity of the moral injuries suffered.50 His response to the slide toward excess and abuse is extreme – we are to abstain from all moral anger. Resentment, indignation, moral outrage, retribution, and revenge, all angry attitudes of moral disapproval and protest, become suspect. Instead, we are to learn to ignore, endure, or forgive. We may assess, punish, and re-educate wrongdoers, but we are to do so without any angry feelings. We need to be fair here to Seneca’s insights. He is surely right that moral anger or righteousness can take on a life of its own that bedevils its possessor. And the urge to forgiveness and reconciliation, in some cases independent of a change of heart of the wrongdoer, may be a response to one’s urgent needs to find moral health and wholeness. It may be time to move on, time to heal, even if those who have wronged one have not repented their sins.51 But the need for this sort of repair and calm does not obviate the moral need for another kind of repair that may come only with allowing oneself, for example, to be angry rather than afraid of a violent aggressor or Seneca, On Anger (1995: 2.7.1).  48  Seneca, On Anger (1995: 2.8.2). NE, Bk. iv, Ch. v, 1125b27–1126b10. 50 See Bishop Butler’s Fifteen Sermons (Butler 1964) for insightful remarks on resentment and forgiveness. 51 See Blumenfeld (2002); Govier (1999); Hughes (1995). 47

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to protest a wrong publicly rather than through silent suffering. If calm is a moral psychic good, then so too, at the right moment, may be righteous indignation, and, moreover, it may be the means to a secure calm. It may be curative and restorative, whether as part of a private narrative, say, as a victim of rape, or as part of public protest against a reign of state torture. And, too, there may be moral outcry on behalf of others, whose voices may be silenced, or on behalf of the dead, by their survivors. A relentlessly just assessment of right and wrong and a determination to act on it needn’t preclude these sentiments. Nor need these sentiments be conflated with violent rage, hatred, or abuse to which they may be responses. A battered wife should not think that forgiving her husband is the only way to avoid meeting his brutality with her own.52 A holocaust victim need not hold that unless he grants forgiveness to a penitent Nazi torturer, he will be consumed by the same kind of hatred that fueled Nazi atrocities.53 The genocidal rape victim in war ought not think that retributivist sentiments will put her on a par with her assailants.54 Meaningful forms of vindication and moral outrage are possible where we do not ourselves morph into the brutal aggressors we condemn. Some involve appeal to legal redress, war crime tribunals, or a process of bearing witness. Moreover, public and legal forms of vindication need not replace the need for private anger or the appropriate expression of anger in public places. Nor need they replace the ongoing personal work often required to find a way to be angry that destroys neither others nor ourselves. Now Seneca may be arguing not that a rational assessment of wrongdoing precludes sentiments of moral protest, but that it can do the same job as those passions. And it can do it without the added risk of wreaking psychic havoc on an agent. As in the case of a drill sergeant’s mock anger, you don’t need to have the real thing to get the job done. The point is well taken in that context. The drill sergeant is motivating troops. Anger that can arouse a bit of shame or humiliation may bring out a fighting spirit that otherwise lies dormant. Moreover, “faking it” may be better than the real thing, insofar as it enables one to stay in control the whole time. In an arena where sadistic abuse of power is all too easy, play-acting may be the safer route. Perhaps, too, “faking it” works well in arenas that lay emphasis on decorum and “outer” comportment. Putting on the right For this example and for a popular and insightful discussion of revenge, see Jacoby (1983). See Simon Wiesenthal’s (1997) moving autobiographical account of such an encounter and the follow-up symposium. 54 For a discussion of women as victims of war crimes, see Barstow (2000). 52 53

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face may be just enough of what is required for some of the conventions of social exchange, whether it be military deference or polite gratitude. But responses to wrongdoing and violations of dignity are a different matter. Here the point is not to take up a persona that manipulates others or to observe a surface convention. Rather, it is sincerely to protest and record a moral violation. It is to defend the value which makes the action wrong, and to show the damage the action incurred. It is to express one’s heart. Seeking fair assessment and punishment are compatible with moral outrage, but they do not have the same expressive function. Seneca might reply to us that moral outrage is simply not an emotion that a sage will feel. Its expression does not have a place in the sage’s reformed emotional vocabulary. He, himself, does no wrong nor is undone by others wronging him. But then in this respect, at least, the sage offers a model that is not simply revisionist, but too removed from human moral experience to offer adequate guidance for us non-sages. We need guidance precisely in feeling moral anger that is constructive, but does not fester and that takes seriously others’ capacity to injure our dignity. The spirit of Seneca’s remarks brings to mind the phrase “forgive and forget.” But that phrase is misleading at best. We can’t forgive if we forget, for forgiving requires remembering the moral injuries we suffered and making a conscious decision to forswear for the future (or, at least, the immediate future) our resentment or rage.55 To forgive is to move beyond or overcome punishing anger, for moral reasons  – because the wrongdoer has repented, or because we see other redeeming features in the person untarnished by the wrongdoing, or because we are ready to readmit the wrongdoer from their “shunned” status back into the moral community. In forgiving, we neither “renounce” nor “repress” the protest that our anger registers, but decide that it is time to move beyond it on moral grounds. Forgetting, in contrast, is something that happens to us over time, and as therapeutic a tool as it may be, it is not something we do for moral reasons. Forgiving may achieve some of the peace that forgetting brings, but in a way that doesn’t magically erase our memory. Moreover, even if we think of the forgetting, in the above phrase, as first requiring forgiving, the point is not that we forget the earlier protest. We remember it, but it may no longer be a burning preoccupation or allconsuming source of pain.56 See Strawson (1993). See also Murphy and Hampton (1988) on this. My remarks are limited to a discussion of On Anger. For a fuller consideration of Seneca’s views on punishment and forgiveness, see his essay On Mercy, in Seneca (1995).

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In fairness to Seneca, he rightly reminds us that moral injuries come in different shapes and sizes, and minor provocations (being spat at is a favorite he invokes57) might best be left ignored. But he also says a calm demeanor might be the most beneficial response to the grossest sorts of violations, such as being forced to bear witness to the torture and murder of our own children.58 His example is important. Seneca retells a story from Herodotus in which the Median king Astyages punishes his advisor, Hapagus, for a piece of unwanted advice. His punishment was to be served up his own children for dinner, complete with their heads on the serving dish. “Did he like the seasoning?” he was asked repeatedly. “Words did not fail the poor man, his lips were not sealed. ‘Dinner with a king,’ said he, ‘is always delicious.’ What did he achieve with this flattery? He was spared the leftovers.” Seneca warns about misunderstanding his point: I am not saying that a father should not condemn anything that his king does, I am not saying that he should not try to punish such monstrous ferocity as it deserves; I am just proving, for the moment, that even anger generated by enormous affliction can be concealed and compelled to use words that express the opposite … It is necessary to bridle your indignation in this way, especially if your lot is to have this sort of life and be invited to the royal table.59

The story is about “faking it,” about demeanor that is within our control and that, in this case, might spare us a worse tragedy. (The notion of “faking it” and outer comportment is a familiar theme in Roman Stoic writing, as I argue in Stoic Warriors. It provides an important lesson for military men and women who often must assume an outer comportment that does not reveal what is felt inside.) To Seneca’s credit, in this case, with its catastrophic dimensions, he is not exhorting suppression of moral indignation itself. It is not clear that he thinks that it is even humanly possible. But he does think that putting on a good face is. Even in this “slavery,” “the way lies open to freedom.”60 However, the example leaves important questions unanswered. Ought there be a public or even private venue for the indignation? Can it not have its own kind of benefit? Can there be a controlled way of being morally angry and of expressing it in a way that has both social utility and personal reparative benefit? In striking ways, as I express elsewhere, the See Seneca, On Anger (1995: 3.38.1–2). See Seneca’s recounting of the atrocities committed by King Cambyses and Harpagus’s king at 3.14 and 15. See Nussbaum (1994a) for a moving discussion of these examples. 59 Seneca, On Anger (1995: 3.14.1–3).  60  Seneca, On Anger (1995: 3.14.3). 57 58

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Stoics take up similar positions with regard to demeanor in the case of grieving.61 Cicero, in the Tusculans, in Stoic voice, urges that we can put a wedge between our public persona and our private, inner feelings. And while the point is well taken – that we ought not underestimate what we can control in our outward appearance – it is not clear that we accomplish all that is required morally or psychologically when we put on a good face. Two other points are worth mention in Seneca’s objection to forms of moral anger and outrage. The first is the claim that we can more effectively change others through therapeutic reform than through retribution. We should take up the “kindly gaze of a doctor viewing the sick”62 and get on with the business of cure rather than moral protest. We are better off viewing wrongdoing as more pathology than evil. Our souls are like leaky ships, Seneca continues: “Surely a man whose ship has timbers loose and leaking badly will not be angry with the sailors or with the ship itself?” Prolonged help is what is needed.63 Seneca implies that even a protest that is impersonal and non-defiant – that, we might say, focuses on a moral mistake (and not the victim’s injury) and defends the value which makes the action wrong – is misguided.64 On a sympathetic note, we may agree that retributive punishment, properly understood and designed, is not just a way of redressing wrong, but also a way of educating the wrongdoer.65 Still, it would be unreasonable, however revisionist, to suspend all ordinary personal interactions of resentment, indignation, or moral protest at wrongdoing in favor of a medical model of pathology, management, and treatment. Tellingly, the therapeutic model that Seneca must ultimately recommend lays great stress on the rational powers of the patient to develop enlightened attitudes about what is truly good in her life. It is Stoic therapy, “rowing the oars of dialectic,” as Cicero earlier put it: “A medical science for the mind does exist: it is philosophy.”66 But if the engagement of reasoning is crucial in therapeutic treatment in general, then it is not clear why we should regard the “sick” person as exempt from the reason-based responsibility that attitudes of resentment and indignation presuppose. To this, Seneca might reply that moral treatment does presuppose reason-based responsibility. It is just that resentment and indignation have no function See Sherman (2005), ch. 6. Seneca, On Anger (1995: 2.10.7). For a valuable discussion of this, see Nussbaum (1994a). 63 Seneca, On Anger (1995: 2.10.8). 64 See Hampton in Murphy and Hampton (1988), 10–13, 35–87, and 111–61. 65 Morris (1995); Murphy (1995).  66  Tusculan Disputations, 3.6. 61

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once dispassionate and fair methods of holding people accountable are in place. But we have argued above that resentment and indignation do not serve the same expressive function. Nor, we can add, need they stand in the way of those proceedings. The second point worthy of note is Seneca’s claim that retaliative anger is a primitive bite-back defense. As such, he argues, it is counterproductive and ultimately undermines our mature well-being.67 “That is how an animal, struggling against the noose, tightens it.”68 We’re better off if we give up “biting back like a dog” and “agree to go easy on one another.”69 “To bite back is the mark of a wretched little man; mice and ants, if you put your hand near them, turn their jaws towards you; anything weak thinks itself hurt, if touched.”70 Seneca here touches a raw, modern nerve. The revenge component of anger makes us queasy. “Getting even,” or “demanding payback,” strikes us as thug, vigilante talk, perhaps glamorized in The Godfather or The Sopranos more recently, but not something we are keen to hear out of soldiers’ mouths. We bristle at the vengeance of Achilles, but more so at his modern counterparts: This was a time for us to get even. A time for us to settle the score. A time for revenge – when we can get revenge for our fallen comrades.71

This is Sgt. Kenneth Hodge’s recollection of Capt. Medina’s orders to the Charlie Company on the fateful night before the My Lai massacre. In context, and given the consequences of this order, it is hard not to think of revenge here as barbarous and part of a false code of military honor.72 It is worth reflecting, tangentially, that vengeance that is part of a divine prerogative makes us no less uncomfortable. Consider the narrative in Exodus 6–13, in which God punishes Pharaoh for the enslavement of the Jews. Recall, God has installed Moses (and his brother Aaron) as prophets to help liberate the Jews. Although he has armed Moses with a bag of tricks to out-trick Pharaoh’s magicians, even rods that morph into burning bushes and into serpents that devour other serpents fail to convince Pharaoh of a power greater than his own. His heart hardens, and he grows more stubborn in his enslavement of the Jews. Finally, God visits plagues upon Pharaoh and the Egyptians, with each plague an escalation of terror. The raining down of plagues becomes something of a publicity Seneca, On Anger (1995: 2.14.4).  68  Seneca, On Anger (1995: 3.16.1). Seneca, On Anger (1995: 3.27 and 26).  70  Seneca, On Anger (1995: 2.34.1). 71 Bilton and Sim (1992: 98–99).  72  See Butler (1964); Moore in Murphy (1995). 67

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act for God, to let his power be known before all, and to show that in the contest of strength between Pharaoh and himself, he is the stronger. Now there is something morally unsavory about this punishment of the Egyptians. And it is not just that redress or retribution can hurt and indeed, as in this case, be extraordinarily severe. Nor is it that we see God taking malicious pleasure in infesting a land with pestilence or locusts, or in slaying the first-born. For he doesn’t. Rather, it is that God seems caught up in a pissing match with Pharaoh that protracts the Jews’ actual enslavement. For though Pharaoh hardens his own heart in the beginning against the Jews, as the story continues, God intervenes to stiffen Pharaoh’s heart (even after Pharaoh repents).73 And in response to that new stiffened heart, God unleashes yet stronger punishments. It is this extra turn of the screw, the making of Pharaoh more evil than he need be, that has the touch of vindictiveness, of crossing the moral line.74 But must revenge always cross that line? Is it necessarily immoral or irrational? On the conventional view, revenge is the disreputable cousin of retribution. It is thought to involve a malicious satisfaction, on the part of a victim, in inflicting suffering on her wrongdoer. It is associated with excess, private retaliation, and the caprice or subjectivity of a victim’s response to wrongdoing.75 Retribution is the demand that wrongdoers get their just deserts in proportion to the suffering inflicted, without the feelings of moral anger or hatred toward the wrongdoer, or the excesses, vigilantism, and subjectivity of revenge. The Stoics themselves will assume that a just moral response is possible without revenge. What is required is calm rationality in the prosecution of justice, where again, there is no need for passion if you have relentless rational determination. But if we resist from the start identifying all revenge with private retaliation or with illegal activities such as My Lai, or with unconstrained or barbaric vindictiveness, then it is not so clear that it is the taboo, or disreputable response, it is made out to be. What may be problematic for some is the notion of satisfaction in getting even. Seneca urges that we must resist that pleasure. To want to get even is just the urge to bite back like a dog. It is a primitive response, perhaps like that of the infant that the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein depicts, who bites back instinctually at the breast when it returns from its withholding.76 Klein would argue that Exod. 10.1–2. See also 9.12 and 7.3. God’s resentment toward Pharaoh may also betray a trace of self-doubt in his own authority and envy of Pharaoh’s power; see Hampton for envy resentment in Murphy and Hampton (1988), ch. 2. On distinguishing anger resentment from envy resentment, see Velleman (2006a). 75 See Murphy (1995) and Jacoby (1983).  76 Klein (1975). 73

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humans are primed to view deprivations, deliberate and nondeliberate, with a touch of paranoic rage. With developmental maturity, we give up some of the paranoia, but not all of the anger. Towards those whom we trust and love, we learn to integrate love and hate, but toward those who willfully and actually harm us in severe ways, hatred and anger are not mere persecutory fantasies. Now there is something to be learned here. We may, in healthy ways, retain our feelings of moral anger as we go on to hold others accountable for their willful injuries of us. This is not to say our anger should be boundless or prevent us from seeing any good in those who wrong us. Nor do we want to make the mistake of viewing our natural and psychological development and our moral development as one and the same. But this said, many of us would argue that excising moral anger or outrage from our human repertoire is not a mark of moral maturity. To feel outrage in bearing witness to torture, massacre, or rape is a fundamental response to human violation, and a fundamental way that we protest the shame and abject servility that that violence inflicts. These responses are a part of our humanity to cultivate, not excise. V  K a n t i a n mor a l i n dig n at ion Kant takes many of his cues from the Stoics, including his famously wistful remarks about the “apathy” of the Stoic sage.77 That he read Cicero is fairly certain, and Seneca highly probable. But it is not clear that he shares Seneca’s enthusiasm for ridding us of all anger and, especially so, moral anger that might mark a response to violations of dignitary respect. In what follows I want to briefly sketch Kant’s general view on emotions, pathological and practical, and gesture toward how we might understand the expressive function of moral anger on a Kantian view. Most commentators agree that Kant does not really have a systematic conception of the emotions. His remarks form part of a general teetertotter  – on one hand, emotions lack the properties to be foundational for morality, but, on the other, can, when properly cultivated, support morality, make it more aesthetically pleasing, and communicate to others the right attitude or engagement without being practically ineffectual or overly sentimental. As I have argued at some length in Making a Necessity of Virtue, there is reason to hold that emotions, on Kant’s more mature MM, 6:457. See Sherman (1995a) and Baron (1995b) on this. For abbreviations of Kant’s works and a list of translations of these works as used in this and other essays in this volume, see Abbreviations at the start of this volume.

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view, form part of a more complete notion of moral character or virtue that is overall morally estimable and admirable.78 But what about anger and its various forms? We might speculate that when Kant talks about anger,79 he is thinking of it as an emotional agitation (Affekt), in contrast to a passion (Leidenschaft).80 An emotional agitation is a reactive feeling of pleasure and pain (Gefühl). In the grip of tumultuous and sudden emotion, an agent sees with blinders. She reacts suddenly and unreflectively. An emotional agitation, Kant says, “works like water breaking through a dam; a passion, like a stream that burrows ever deeper in its bed” (A, 7:252). Whereas “emotional agitation does a momentary damage to freedom and self-mastery; passion abandons them and finds its pleasure and satisfaction in slavery” (A, 7:267). So emotional agitation is violent and sudden, passion more slow building but equally damaging. Anger as an impulsive agitation, or, as the Stoics would say, “perturbation,” leads noblemen to act towards their servants in less than gracious ways. In the passage below, Kant echoes the Roman concerns that preoccupy, as we have seen, Plutarch and Seneca: Generally speaking, what constitutes a state of emotional agitation is not the intensity of a certain feeling but rather the lack of reflection that would compare this feeling with the totality of all the feelings (of pleasure or displeasure) that go with our state. A rich man whose servant awkwardly breaks a beautiful and rare goblet while carrying it around at a banquet will think nothing of this accident if, at the same moment, he compares this loss of one pleasure with the multitude of all the pleasures that his fortunate position as a rich man offers him. But if he isolates this one feeling of pain and abandons himself to it (without quickly making that mental reckoning), no wonder he feels as if he had lost his happiness completely. (A, 7:254)

Although anger may have the impulsiveness and quick duration of emotional agitation and its outbursts, it may also be dispositional – slow burning and obsessive. And as an obsessive passion, it may blind us no less than angry outbursts. Thus, Kant says about passion that it dwarfs other inclinations, that “it sweep[s] them into the corner just to please one,” that the folly of the person gripped in passion is that he makes a part of his end the whole. Passion “is an enchantment that refuses to be corrected” (A, 7:266). We are liable to these kinds of reactions when we experience what Kant calls natural and social passions. Natural passions are “ardent” passions connected with freedom (i.e. unrestrained movement)   See Sherman (1997b), esp. ch. 4, for extensive citations and discussion of the texts. See, for example, A, 7:122, for a glimpse at anger. 80 The next five paragraphs are adapted from Sherman (1997b: 165–67).

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and sexual urges;81 social or cultural passions are cooler passions for the external goods of honor, power, and possession (A, 7:268). Two significant points emerge in Kant’s discussion of the cultural passions. First, these passions reflect Kant’s sour view of our sociality. Ours is an “unsociable sociability,” naturally beset by antagonism and rivalry (IUH, 8:20–21). Our social lot is to compare and contrast ourselves, so that under the social gaze we inevitably sow the seeds of envy and greed. Our self-love feeds on competition; only morality, with its egalitarian basis of dignity for all, can be an antidote: “Envy, the lust for power, greed, and the malignant inclinations bound up with these, besiege his nature … as soon as he is among men” (REL, 6:93–94; see 27). The shadow of Rousseau looms large. Second, these social passions feed on a more fundamental vulnerability to surrender our will to others. In an interesting departure from the Stoics, who too decry enslavement to the passions, Kant holds that our passional enslavement is not ultimately to the objects of our passions,82 “fertile fields or cows,” as Kant puts it (A, 7:268), but to other persons to whom we might surrender our wills in order to hold onto those objects. The grip of the passions must be understood not “according to the objects of the appetitive power … but rather according to the principle of the use or abuse men make of their person and of their freedom, when one man makes another a mere means to his ends” (A, 7:269–70). Thus, the real problem is not attachment to impermanent objects, as the Stoics maintained, but surrender to others in virtue of that attachment. “Each of these manias is a slavish disposition by which others, when they have made themselves masters of it, have the power to use a man through his own inclinations” (A, 7:272). The point underscores one dimension of Kant’s break from eudaimonism:  for the ancients, and especially the Stoics, the problem with passional attachment is that attachment ultimately entails loss and the reversal of happiness; it threatens our eudaimonia. For Kant, the problem with passional attachment is that satisfying its demands can make us the mere plaything of other persons; it threatens our dignity. According to both the Stoic and Kantian views, passion points to the limits of our rational agency, though this fact is registered differently within each theory. 81

See IUH, 8:23. On the sexual instinct, see CB, 8:112–13. Though Kant does make the Stoic point elsewhere: “It is not by fortune but only by wisdom that life can acquire value for us: and its value is, accordingly, within our power” (A, 7:239).

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According to the above remarks, anger, especially as a socially constructed passion, is a slavish disposition by which we make others playthings of ourselves. Put simply, we abuse others in anger, use them for our own ends, violate their dignity in order to achieve ends of power, lust, greed, and malice. In acting from this sort of anger, we violate others’ dignitary status. We violate their humanity. However, we might argue, and reasonably hold that Kant could argue, that some forms of anger do not violate dignity, but preserve and promote it. As such, they are expressions of our own and others’ dignity and the absence of these expressions itself rends the fabric of humanity. I have in mind forms of self-defensive anger (or the anger of others that come to our defense) in response to aggression that violates our dignity. To record and respond to such violation are themselves ways of asserting one’s claims to dignity. And we may do so through an anger that need not devolve into vengeful fury. These kinds of emotional responses, I propose, may be best thought of as instances of “practical” forms of anger  – that is, emotional reactions, such as respect and other emotions that are “practical” derivatives of it outlined in the “Doctrine of Virtue,” that are bound up with an appreciation of our status as moral agents. (Here consider, too, “practical sympathy” and “practical love,” which are, as Kant says, “means to promoting active and rational benevolence.”)83 So moral indignation of the sort Hugh Thompson experiences that is a response to the gross violation of individuals might be thought of as an emotionally registered moral disapproval conceptually dependent upon respect for persons. It is a way of expressing respect on the occasion of its violation. The expression of moral outcry rallies solidarity with the victim as well as holds the violator as a moral equal culpable for the violation. To express moral indignation thus records both the bad of the violation as well as the responsibility of the violator for the wrongdoing. Now, in a sense I am arguing that Kant can expand his notion of “good” emotions (i.e. practical emotions) in this sort of case more readily than the Stoics can their counterpart notion of the “good” emotions (i.e. eupatheiai). This, in part, is because Kant already has a robust notion of respect for persons that is conceived of as a way of being vulnerable in the sense of being affectively sensitive to the moral personality or legislative capacity of persons.84 To feel respect is precisely to submit, affectively, to 83

  MM, 6:456; see MM, 6:457. For a fuller discussion, see Sherman (1997b). See Sherman (1998) for discussion of this.

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the force of the moral law in persons.85 (In this sense, it seems to be constituted by an appraisal of others as having certain capacities.) It is to be at once positively awed by that inner capacity in persons and negatively constrained in one’s conceit and inclinations of self-interest. Correlatively, moral indignation should be construed as an affective response to concrete and blatant violations of dignity. If Kant is committed to the affective and sensual registering of the feeling of respect, then it seems he must also be committed to the affective notion of indignation. That is, if he is committed to the idea of being vulnerable, emotionally, to the fact of our dignity, then he seems to be committed to the idea of being vulnerable, emotionally, to the violation of our dignity. Now I make these remarks only as gestures toward a more complete picture. I leave open many questions – namely, are practical emotions really cognitively constituted in the way I have suggested? That is, what evidence is there in Kant for viewing practical emotions as forms of appraisals or judgments (as emotions are on the cognitivist views of Aristotle or the Stoics) rather than simply sophisticated and cultivated pleasures and pains? Put differently, can we analyze the Kantian notion of respect as itself a cognitively complex emotion that forms part of a larger family of respect emotions which includes emotions like moral indignation, moral outrage, and resentment? What would such an analysis look like? What roles do emotional recordings of dignity and its violation play in Kant’s theory of moral motivation? How coherent within Kant’s own moral theory is the very notion of respect as an emotional response to the fact of our moral agency? These are questions for a more extended inquiry. V I   C onc l us ion My main point in this essay has been to argue that contrary to the Stoic view, anger comes in many flavors, and that some forms of anger, such as moral outrage and indignation, are deep expressions of respect for humanity. Although Aristotle would not put the point in this way, he does have the view that some forms of moral anger are characteristic of the virtuous person and that complete virtue would be lacking without proper moral anger. Moreover, even if the Stoics, following the Cynics, are authors of a notion of cosmopolitan community on the basis of reason (as Diogenes the Cynic put it, each person is a “citizen of the world,” politēs kosmou), 85

  See the crucial footnote, G, 4:401n. See also Reath (1989).

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Kant is the one who most fully elaborates that notion and the concomitant notion of respect for persons within that community.86 I suggest that his notion of respect allows for conceptual expansion to other kinds of emotion (notably, moral outrage, resentment, and indignation) by which we record and register the dignity and humanity of persons. As witnesses to the gross violations of others, to fail to be angry would be to make ourselves servile to the evil of others. And similarly in the case of our own violation. In the “Doctrine of Virtue,” Kant suggests this important point: Men have a duty to cultivate a conciliatory spirit [placabilitas]. But this must not be confused with placid toleration of injuries … renunciation of the rigorous means … for preventing the recurrence of injuries by other men; for in the latter case a man would be throwing away his right and letting others trample on it, and so would violate his duty to himself. (MM, 6:461)

Here Kant directs us to the wrongdoer and to the cost of condoning his actions. He is emphatic that what is at stake is one’s own moral agency: To let others trample on our rights is a failure of the duty of self-respect. It is a way of letting oneself become servile. But equally at stake is the moral agency of the violator. To fail to be indignant or resentful is to fail to communicate to the violator her proper role in the moral commonwealth. The Stoics have something to learn from this point. On this in the Cynics and in the writings of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, see Sherman (1998).

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Kant’s impartial virtues of love Christine Swanton

I   L ov e a s a mor a l f orc e Kant’s ethics has traditionally been perceived as violently opposed to ­virtue ethics, although much contemporary virtue ethics has argued that this opposition has been overdrawn and rests on oversimplifications of both virtue ethics and Kant. A major reason for this perception forms the basis of this chapter. Kant’s ethics is supposedly unable to accommodate love as central to ethics, by contrast with virtue ethics, because of Kant’s commitment to the impartiality of ethics. As a result of this commitment and his supposed neglect of love, he is, apparently, unable to accommodate the important partial dimensions of ethics. I believe this reason constitutes a misconception. It is due to a failure to recognize the importance of Kant’s second “great moral force,” love. In addition, it is due to a failure to recognize that the two moral forces, love and respect, have impartial and partial dimensions. To say that love has an impartial dimension for Kant is just to say that the expression of an “impartial” duty of virtue of love (such as forgiveness) cannot be withheld on partialistic grounds, such as that the person is disliked by one, is unrelated to one, is unattractive, or lacking in merit. What exactly is required by the duty will depend on context. To regard love as having impartial, and indeed universal and unconditional aspects, which underlie the duties of beneficence and forgiveness, presents special difficulties. In this essay, I defend these aspects of love against two related objections: (1) Love, understood by Kant as a “coming close” (unlike respect), cannot be both impartial and universal, and particular.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Marcia Baron for her very helpful comments.

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(2) Even if such a form of love is possible, it is unacceptable from a virtuetheoretic point of view since the duties of love in this sense are incompatible with virtue. Objection (1) is dealt with in section ii; objection (2) in section iii. First we need to understand love as a moral force. In a fascinating passage in the “Doctrine of Virtue,” in the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant makes the following claim: In speaking of laws of duty (not laws of nature) and, among these, of laws for human beings’ external relations with one another, we consider ourselves in a moral (intelligible) world where, by analogy with the physical world, attraction and repulsion bind together rational beings (on earth). The principle of mutual love admonishes them constantly to come closer to one another; that of the respect they owe one another, to keep themselves at a distance from one another; and should one of these great moral forces fail, “then nothingness (immorality), with gaping throat, would drink up the whole kingdom of (moral) beings like a drop of water” if I may use Haller’s words but in a different reference. (MM, 6:449)1

Given that Kant states that there are two great moral forces at the foundation of morality, it is curious that, in the Anglo-American tradition, his philosophy has not really developed in the direction of universal love, or agape, as opposed to universal respect and justice. In this section I shall attempt to do justice to Kant’s view that there are two great moral forces and not just one, respect. The quoted passage has been found puzzling and has been criticized by, for example, Baron (1997b) on the grounds that love and respect cannot be said to be opposed.2 Before I elaborate and reply to this objection, let me situate this passage in Kant’s philosophy as a whole. On my view it gives substance to the Formula of the End in Itself: Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end. (G, 4:429)

The moral force of respect – keeping a distance – enjoins us not to use people simply as a means; the moral force of love – coming close – treats people as ends by enjoining us to make others’ non-immoral ends our own. The duties of love and respect are many and various, including both For abbreviations of Kant’s works and a list of translations of these works as used in this and other essays in this volume, see Abbreviations at the start of this volume. 2 For a fuller discussion, see Swanton (2003). 1

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self-regarding and other-regarding duties. We have a duty not to use ourselves as mere means, and so have duties not to belittle our moral worth in degrading or servile behavior or demeanor, not to make ourselves an object of moral contempt by, for example, lying, not to be intemperate with regard to food, sex, or drink, and not to restrict “one’s own enjoyment of the means to good living so narrowly as to leave one’s own needs unsatisfied”(MM, 6:432) – an asceticism which Kant calls a kind of avarice. We have a duty to treat ourselves as ends, and so have an imperfect duty to develop our talents and to pursue moral perfection. Many of our duties are duties having to do with “man’s animality” as well as his status as a moral being (MM, 6:420). We have a duty not to treat others as mere means to our pleasure, our ends, or the ends of others. Specific duties of this kind are the respect-based duties of virtue of not being contemptuous  of others by being arrogant, by defaming, or ridiculing. They also include of course the various justice-related duties of right. The love-based duties of virtue are entailed by the obligatory end of others’ happiness. Let me turn now to a defense of Kant’s claim that love and respect are opposed moral forces. Marcia Baron (1997b) objects to this conception, claiming that “love would seem to be opposed to hate and also to indifference but not to respect” (29). For Kant, however, love and respect are opposed only as forces, analogous to the forces of attraction and repulsion in physics. The former, like love, tends to come close; the latter, like respect, tends to keep at a distance. They are not opposed, however, in re: rather the opposed forces must find an equilibrium point of stability. Kant makes the point that it is the very fact that they are opposed as forces which makes it possible for them to “bind” and for there not to be a “nothingness with gaping throat.” What are the opposed forces? In basic terms, respect as keeping distance demands merely a moderation in one’s demands (MM, 6:462). It is a constraint in the sense that one cannot violate the dignity of another in pursuing one’s own ends, or in helping others to pursue those of their ends which you have embraced. In love, one must make others’ ends one’s own, provided they are not immoral: “The duty of love for one’s neighbor can … be expressed as the duty to make others’ ends my own (provided only that these are not immoral)” (MM, 6:450). However, one can avoid violating the dignity of another – moderating one’s demands – without embracing others’ legitimate ends; and one can embrace those ends while violating the dignity of another. So respect and love as moral forces must be integrated in fully moral action. In coming close to another in beneficence, one must also keep a suitable distance, respecting his autonomy

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and not treating him with contempt or other forms of psychological wounding. In keeping a distance, one must also come close, not neglecting another’s needs, where appropriate. As opposed forces, then, love and respect must attain an equilibrium if respect is not to degenerate into excessive distance, transforming into callousness, indifference, coldness; and love is not to descend into pathological forms:  invasive paternalism, resentment-based pity, passive dependency, clinging love. So love and respect as forces are not themselves duties – for duties to be specified, the hard work of integration must be achieved. The determination of an equilibrium is a continuing substantive ethical problem in varying contexts. When does the friendly closeness of apparently affectionate banter shade into a disrespectful failure to keep a distance by, for example, the psychologically invasive mocking wounding of teasing? When does a respectful letting a person do her own thing become an unloving indifference or neglect? That Kant thinks respect and love are opposed forces which must be integrated in duty is made clear in his discussion of the duty of friendship. Here is Kant: How can [a person] be sure that if the love of one is stronger, he may not, just because of this, forfeit something of the other’s respect, so that it will be difficult for both to bring love and respect subjectively into that equal balance required for friendship? – For love can be regarded as attraction and respect as repulsion, and if the principle of love bids friends to draw closer, the principle of respect requires them to stay at a proper distance from each other. (MM, 6:470)

Kant then gives this formal problem substance in the context of friendship: From a moral point of view it is, of course, a duty for one of the friends to point out the other’s faults to him; this is in the other’s best interests and is therefore a duty of love. But the latter sees in this a lack of the respect he expected from his friend and thinks that he has either already lost or is in constant danger of losing something of his friend’s respect, since he is observed and secretly criticized by him; and even the fact that his friend observes him and finds fault with him will seem in itself offensive. (MM, 6:470)

I have claimed that for Kant, love and respect are opposed moral forces, but how is love to be manifested if it is to be distinguished from respect? I shall argue that insofar as love is a coming close, it requires an aim, which Kant expresses as making others’ non-immoral ends your own. This aim must be manifested both attitudinally and in action, in a variety of ways explicated by the content of specific duties of love. If this is so, love cannot

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be understood as a form of appreciation only. Although David Velleman, in “Love As a Moral Emotion” (2006b), takes seriously Kant’s idea of impartial love as a requirement of ethics, his analysis derives from the idea of “reverence for a person” exerting a “negative second-order motive” rather than the idea of coming close. He claims that love is “likewise the awareness of a value inhering in its object,” with the difference being that the awareness is “arresting,” “like a state of attentive suspension similar to wonder or amazement or awe” (95). He denies that love is “a particular syndrome of motives – primarily, desires to act upon, or interact with the beloved,” and rejects, inter alia, John Rawls’s account: “Love … has among its main elements the desire to advance the other person’s good as this person’s rational self love would require”(86). On the contrary, I shall argue, Rawls’s statement well captures Kant’s notion of practical love. For love to express a duty of virtue as opposed to some defective form of love, however, it is necessary that the aims of coming close conform to certain requirements. Of central importance for non-defective love is something emphasized by Velleman himself: for Kant, both love and respect essentially require awareness of a person as having “dignity” as opposed to “price.” However, having rejected the analysis of love in terms of aim, Velleman claims that “all that is necessary for love is that it disarms our emotional defences” (99: italics mine). Though Velleman is correct in his claim that for Kant love essentially requires attention or appreciation (“really looking,” as he puts it), for Kant that is not all that is essential for love. For love also requires the expression of the “coming close” duties of virtues of love such as beneficence, gratitude, and forgiveness; and these, for Kant, give rise to positive duties which “command [an agent] to make certain objects of choice his end” (MM, 6:419). Forgiveness, on the face of it, presents a difficulty for the coming close account: this problem will be discussed in section iii. Because Velleman does not incorporate the “coming close” account of love into the basic idea of love and respect involving awareness of persons having dignity as opposed to price, he rejects the claim that love can be analyzed in terms of specific “coming close” aims. These include such aims as benefiting, “caring and sharing,” or wanting to be near, which intuitively make sense of the coming close of love as a moral force. Clearly we cannot say that each of these forms of coming close is everywhere necessary for love, but maybe having some kind of coming close aim is necessary.

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A view that takes the coming close aspect of love seriously will include not only the appreciative aspects of love, but also aims related to promoting others’ ends. I accordingly present Kant’s architectonic (as related to the ethics) as follows: (A) Reverence for a person (the basic idea). (Appreciation of a human being as having dignity as opposed to price. This reverence is necessary for both respect and love.) (B) Categorical Imperative. 1. (As related to respect.) Not treating another as a mere means. 2. (As related to love.) Treating as an end. (C) Moral forces. 1. Respect as keeping distance. 2. Love as coming close. (Without the moral forces and morality in the form of ethics [“the science of how one is under obligation without any possible external lawgiving”], immorality [“nothingness with gaping throat”] would prevail in a world of earthly beings such as us.) (D) Forms of appreciation demanded by (A), appropriate to the moral forces. 1. Respect. Appreciation of another as someone not to be violated. 2. Love. Appreciation of another as “really looking,” so that his ends – the nature of his happiness – can be understood, and our interactive aims are non-invasive, sensitive, and so forth. (E) General maxims. 1. Respect. The maxim of “limiting our self-esteem by the dignity of humanity in another person” (MM, 6:449). (Respect in the practical sense.) 2. Love. The maxim of making others’ ends my own (provided only that they are not immoral). (The maxim of benevolence: love in the practical sense.) (The general maxims express the difference between the negative and the positive forms of duties of virtue, and incorporate the general incentives of love and respect. I discuss that of love below.) (F) Specific maxims expressing duties of virtue. 1. Respect. Avoiding vice that violates duties of respect, such as arrogance (as opposed to proper pride), defamation, ridicule, mockery, wanton fault-finding, contemptuousness. 2. Love

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2.1 Impartialistic duties of love (not constrained by personal merit of the beloved, or by pre-existing personal bonds):  beneficence, gratitude, forgiveness, duty to cultivate sympathy, courtesy, gentleness (in disagreeing without quarrelling). 2.2 Partialistic duties of love: friendship, parental love. 2.3 “More or less” partialistic duties of love:  affability, hospitality, sociability. (Two important points should be noted. First, the partial duties can constrain certain impartial duties:  a maxim of duty such as love of neighbor can be limited by a partialistic duty of love of one’s parents, though there are no exceptions to the adoption of the maxims themselves [MM, 6:390]. Second, all the specific duties must incorporate the general positive and negative maxims specified under (E) if they are to be implemented correctly. I discuss this requirement further below in connection with hospitality.) I I  C om bi n i ng u n i v e r s a li t y a n d pa r t ic u l a r i t y:   t h e m a x i m of (u n i v e r s a l) be n e vol e nc e We turn now to the first objection to Kant’s impartial love, namely that it cannot be both impartial and universal, and particular. Although the impartiality and universality of Kant’s ethics is generally associated with the moral force of respect, the moral force of love for Kant also has a fundamental impartial universal aspect which is also foundational. Like the duty of universal respect, universal love as a coming close is a duty to all human beings merely as human beings. As such, universal love, like universal respect, possesses the following features. These are: (1) Universality. It is owed to all human beings qua human beings. (2) Particularity. It is owed to human beings as individuals – i.e. to each and every one of them. (3) Unconditionality. It is not conditional on such factors as talents, attractiveness, moral merit, partialistic relationships, personal liking. The combination of universality, particularity, and unconditionality has not been thought problematic for universal respect, but it has rendered the ideal of universal love suspect. First, it has been thought that universal love cannot be both universal and particular for two basic reasons. The first reason is this. Given that we are not talking about a generalized love of humanity when speaking of the duties of love, it would seem impossible

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for love to be both a coming close and universal. For how can one come close to each and every individual? Furthermore, it may be thought, love cannot be both particular and universal since love of individuals is surely partialistic. By its very nature it involves favoring certain people. A second major problem with universal love is the combination of universality and unconditionality. Unconditional love entails that love is not to be withdrawn on the basis of, for example, criminal behavior, even where that behavior is directed at oneself; and this is thought counterintuitive. I deal with this objection when forgiveness is discussed in section iii. Let us now consider the first of the problems for universal love: the problem that love cannot be both universal and particular. To meet the objection that one cannot have a love that is both universal and particular, we need to understand just what kind of coming close is demanded by Kant’s general duty of love. Universal love, like universal respect, is owed to all human beings merely as humans, but the latter merely demands that we keep our distance. We can satisfy this demand in the case of each and every individual by our refraining from actions which violate dignity. Note, however, that universal respect is a substantive moral demand: it is not met simply by a physical keeping distance. King Leopold II of Belgium never set foot in the Congo, yet egregiously violated the duty of universal respect by instituting extremely vicious institutions in order to satisfy personal ends of aggrandizement and greed. Those institutions set up the brutal portage regimes for the importation of ivory, and the rubber terror. By contrast, the ideal of universal love is seen as impossible or incoherent, for we cannot come close to all. Love, unlike respect, is seen as necessarily partial, and an impossible basis for an impartialist ethics, or, as I would prefer to put it, for the impartialist aspect of ethics. To resolve this problem, it is necessary to understand the way that universal love is universal and particular, in both a formal and a substantive sense. From a formal perspective, the duty of love is a preparedness to come close to any individual regardless of personal relations, merits, and so forth, and an actual coming close in ways which are appropriate to circumstances and opportunity. As we shall see, this involves for Kant adopting the maxim of benevolence. Adopting this maxim as a universal principle means that no one is excluded from possibilities of actual closeness in action by virtue of such factors as enmity and criminality. For example, if an enemy or a criminal lies bleeding at one’s doorstep, the duty of universal love requires that one come to his aid, and not, out of malice or hatred, leave him there bleeding. As St. Augustine claims, the

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manifestation of one’s love for each and every individual is constrained by time, place, and circumstances. What, in substantive terms, does the duty of (universal) love as a coming close require? We consider first the problem that love is assumed to be a feeling and cannot therefore be a duty at all, let alone one that is owed to all human beings. A feeling is defined by Kant in the Metaphysics of Morals as “the capacity for having pleasure or displeasure in a representation” (MM, 6:211). Kant makes it clear that, as a duty, universal love is not a feeling. Love, in the context of the duty of universal love, is not a “pleasure in the perfection or merits of another,” nor is it a delight taken in others. It is thus not a “passion” in Hume’s sense. It is true that in the “Doctrine of Virtue” Kant says: “Love is a matter of feeling, and I cannot love because I will to” (MM, 6:401). It is in this context that Kant also claims that “unselfish benevolence toward human beings is often (though very inappropriately) also called love.” However, love as a feeling is not love as a duty, which is understood in paragraph 26 as follows: Since the love of human beings (philanthropy) we are thinking of here is practical love, not the love that is delight in them, it must be taken as active benevolence, and so as having to do with the maxim of actions.

What Kant calls practical love, then, is the maxim of benevolence. Paul Guyer (1993) points out that this is a maxim concerning our attitudes: it involves us adopting the incentive of love (384). We need to explain first the idea of love as an incentive (as opposed to a feeling) and the idea of adopting a maxim of benevolence. Consider now the first question. As Barbara Herman (1993) puts it, incentives are “all the sources of reason for action that apply to [an agent] in virtue of her desires and interests and in virtue of her rational agency” (221n). Incentives, such as attitudes like love, “support motives for action.” “An agent acts from a given motive when she takes it to provide good reasons for action. Such reasons are incorporated in maxims which are the principles of action for a subject” (Sherman 1997b: 297). What then, in substantive terms, is the incentive of love, given that it is not a delight or a pleasure? As an incentive required by morality, love involves the following: the source of our motivation in action such as aiding avoids malice, envy, or hatred; we have an attitude of wishing others well; and an attitude of satisfaction in people’s well-being once they have it. The incentive of love also includes a disposition not to allow distaste, dislike, or shyness to lead one to avoid people. Such attitudes support

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the agent’s reasons which are incorporated in the maxim of benevolence. Acting on the maxim of benevolence, then, is clearly not just a tendency to act in a certain way: that way of acting must be based on the incentive of love. As an attitude towards people at large considered independently of actual encounter, Kant suggests an emotional concomitant of universal love that may be even weaker than some of the above, namely not having an attitude of indifference: Now the benevolence present in love for all human beings is indeed the greatest in its extent, but the smallest in its degree; and when I say that I take an interest in this human being only out of my love for all human beings, the interest I take is as slight as an interest can be. I am only not indifferent with regard to him. (MM, 6:451; latter italics mine)

However weak the emotional nature of the incentive of love, though, it is clear that acting on the maxim of benevolence is not just acting in a certain way: that way of acting must be based on the incentive of love. It is also clear that for Kant the incentive of love is not constituted by inclination, pleasure, or delight. We may have an incentive of love in helping people we dislike, and in helping people we feel disinclined to help. Indeed there need be no pleasure in the helping. Universal love does not mean universal liking, affection, or attraction. Kant distinguishes those with the incentive of love from those possessing three inferior states of character or motivation, viz.: (i) Misanthropy. Misanthropists take satisfaction in things going badly for others. (ii) Selfishness. Selfish individuals are indifferent to how things go for others, and are rather concerned with how they go for themselves. (iii) Anthrophobia. The anthrophobic is someone who avoids human beings because he can find no delight in them, though he wishes them well. Misanthropy, selfishness, and anthrophobia as incentives are incompatible with the incentive of love, even when they support motives for beneficent action. It is possible, however, for selfish or anthrophobic individuals to be motivated by the duty of respect provided that the selfishness is merely a failure to make others’ ends their own as opposed to using others as mere means to their own ends. We turn now to the idea of adopting benevolence as a maxim. A maxim is a subjective principle of action. There has been much discussion about how general or particular is the content of maxims. According to

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Onora O’Neill (1989a), maxims should be thought of as “underlying or fundamental principles” of actions which explain more specific intentions (86–87). For example, a general maxim of offering hospitality explains specific intentions of offering biscuits and cups of tea. However, Nancy Sherman (1997b) sees a difficulty here. She asks: “What if I … snarl a bit as I pass [my guest] a delicious biscuit, or drop a barely audible comment about her cackly laughter?”(301). If these specific features are not explicitly incorporated in the maxim of hospitality, she claims, morally relevant features escape moral scrutiny. However, there are well-known difficulties in making maxims of action highly specific, and this is not the way to solve Sherman’s problem. Rather, we must get a clearer picture of the general maxim of hospitality. The maxim of hospitality involves benevolence, and that in turn involves love as an incentive, though not necessarily as a feeling (which for Kant, in this case, would be a pleasure in a relevant representation). The general maxim of hospitality, properly formulated, is still general, but it should incorporate the motive of benevolence supported by the incentive of love. So the maxim is to be benevolently hospitable, where the motive of benevolence is supported by the incentive of love. The snarl and the snide remark would not escape moral scrutiny in this general formulation of the maxim. Since the snarl and the snide remark betray hostility, the duty of benevolence (love) is not performed, so the offering of the “delicious biscuit” lacks moral worth. It lacks moral worth even if the offering does good for the guest. We need to consider now what the maxim of benevolence demands as far as coming close in action is concerned. With respect to action, the duty of love divides into three: beneficence, gratitude, and sympathy. The duty of sympathy is the “indirect duty to cultivate the compassionate … feelings in us” (MM, 6:457). Since a feeling is a pleasure (or displeasure) in a representation (such as that of another’s well-being), the duty of sympathy is the indirect duty to cultivate certain pleasures (or the ability to have certain pleasures). The three duties of beneficence, gratitude, and sympathy are three ways of expressing our benevolence in action:  three ways of making the well-being and happiness of others one’s end. Kant notes that as far as action is concerned, the duty of universal benevolence is not violated by a considerable variation in the degree of beneficence bestowed to different individuals. There is variation in accordance with such factors as a degree of concern one has for them (MM, 6:451). That is to say, the duty of universal love is consistent with the fact that, for Kant, duties such as beneficence are imperfect duties. To understand

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the nature of the latitude in such duties of love as beneficence and cultivating sympathetic feelings, we should see how that latitude is compatible with another of Kant’s duties, the duty of moral self-perfection. We may think that the combined duties of benevolence and moral selfperfection suggest that we should at all times strive to be as benevolent and indeed beneficent as possible. This suspicion seems well founded when we consider that the maxim of benevolence is not a satisficing maxim in the sense that we are permitted to stop improving ourselves when we have reached a threshold of satisfactoriness. As Kant claims, “Virtue is always in progress … it is always in progress because, considered objectively, it is an ideal and unobtainable, while yet constant approximation to it is a duty” (MM 6:409). Though we may be entitled to call ourselves compassionate when we have reached a certain level of compassion as a trait, this does not entail that we should not strive over time to become even more compassionate. However, we must distinguish between latitude in the sense of being permitted to stop improving ourselves, or being permitted to stop doing good works because we have reached a quota, and latitude in another sense described thus by Baron (1995a): “Though we are never morally permitted to omit on a given occasion treating others with respect … the duty to perfect ourselves morally does not ‘distribute’ to every occasion (every occasion on which it would be possible to do something to perfect ourselves morally)” (99). Latitude in the first sense is not permitted, though it is in the second sense. Thus the claim that “constant approximation” to a virtue is a duty is not to be read as a claim that it is a duty distributing to each occasion on which moral improvement is possible. We must bear in mind that we also have a duty to develop our own talents, and Kant is clear that there is no algorithm for determining when this duty is subordinated to beneficence. For Kant also says, in relation to the duty of beneficence, the following: I ought to sacrifice a part of my welfare to others without hope of return because this is a duty, and it is impossible to assign specific limits to the extent of this sacrifice. How far it should extend depends, in large part, on what each person’s true needs are in view of his sensibilities, and it must be left to each to decide this for himself. (MM, 6:393)3

So the duty of universal love is not maximizing in the sense that we are always to be beneficent (let alone maximally beneficent) to individuals   Cited in Baron (1995a: 93).

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when morally permitted opportunities arise for beneficence to be displayed. Nor is the duty maximizing in another sense. Since universal love is particular as opposed to aggregative, it is not the duty of what William K. Frankena (1987) calls “optimivolence” which he defines as “the constant endeavour to promote the greatest general good” (7). Let me summarize the kind of coming close that is demanded by the duty of universal love. First, there is the coming close of attitude, required by the maxim of benevolence. That involves being moved by the incentive of love. This is a wishing well and a satisfaction in others’ well-being, and it requires that one not be moved by hatred, envy, and malice. The incentive of love does not require certain feelings such as liking, delight, or pleasure in others. As far as action is concerned, the duty involves beneficence, gratitude, and the cultivation of sympathetic feelings. Note, however, that the maxim of benevolence underlies all these action-oriented duties. They have in common making others’ ends one’s own, with the incentive of love. Beneficence, for example, may fail of benevolence in a variety of ways. First, one may help another, without making another’s ends one’s own. One may help a person solely for one’s own ends. Second, one may make another’s end one’s own without the source of one’s motive being the incentive of love. For example, you may make another’s end your own by tirelessly working on his behalf to help him avoid capital punishment. But unlike Sister Helen Prejean’s motives (1993), your deepest motive is malice. You believe that once he has escaped death, he will live the rest of his life in anguish and despair, and you wish for this. Note that a maxim of universal benevolence is not incompatible with partialistic forms of love or respect such as affection, friendship, and differential forms of respect based on roles. Kant claims only that such partialisms must be laid on the foundations of the two great moral forces – universal love and respect – and cannot therefore be incompatible with them. For example, caste systems such as the treatment of the untouchables in India are not immoral because they are role-­differentiated: they are immoral because they fail to incorporate universal respect, let alone love. Finally, when we understand the relation between the duty of universal love and the duties to self we realize that the former duty is not implausibly demanding. Admittedly, as we shall see, for Kant universal love requires forgiveness, and that may be hard. But the duty of moral self-­improvement recognizes that we have limited strength, and virtue is something that is a work in progress. That is why for Kant, virtue is seen as a kind of strength rather than an Aristotelian harmony. He says: “Virtue

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is … the moral strength of a human being’s will in fulfilling his duty… strength is required, in a degree which we can assess only by the magnitude of the obstacles that the human being himself furnishes through his inclinations. The vices, the brood of dispositions opposing the law, are the monsters he has to fight” (MM, 6:405). I I I  S e l f -l ov e a n d f org i v e n e s s This section deals with objection (2), namely that even if we can make sense of both the particularity and universality of universal love, as a basis of duties, such duties are incompatible with virtue. Here we focus on the objection as applicable to certain themes implicit and explicit in Kant’s treatment of love, namely self-love and pride, and forgiveness. Since Kant in this area is so clearly inspired by the Christian tradition, my discussion will take place within it, since it is crucial that elements of universal love as understood within that tradition, such as pride and its correlative vice, and forgiveness, are not misunderstood. The sense that Kant’s ethics is opposed in a serious way to virtue ethics because of a problematic commitment to impartiality is not dispelled simply by showing that Kant takes seriously love as a moral force. If that love itself is impartial in a way incompatible with virtue, the problem is not dispelled. It may be thought that Kant’s impartial duties of love are indeed incompatible with virtue. In particular we consider the following problem: any form of universal love, presupposed by Kant’s duty of forgiveness, is incompatible with pride as a virtue. Kant describes the duty of forgiveness thus: It is … a duty of virtue not only to refrain from repaying another’s enmity with hatred out of mere revenge but also not even to call upon the judge of the world for vengeance, partly because a human being has enough guilt of his own to be greatly in need of pardon and partly, and indeed especially, because no punishment, no matter from whom it comes, may be inflicted out of hatred. – It is therefore a duty of human beings to be forgiving [placabilitas]. But this must not be confused with meek toleration of wrongs [mitis iniuriarum patentia], renunciation of rigorous means [rigorosa] for preventing the recurrence of wrongs by others; for then a human being would be throwing away his rights and letting others trample on them, and so would violate his duty to himself. (MM, 6:461)

In this passage, Kant makes three claims about forgiveness. These are: (i) It is a duty to avoid “repaying another’s enmity with hatred out of mere revenge.” (ii) It is not a “meek toleration of wrongs.”

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(iii) It involves an avoidance of a sense of superiority “because a human being has enough guilt of his own to be greatly in need of pardon.” The third of these claims may suggest that Kant’s duty of forgiveness is vulnerable to a common complaint against Christian thought:  an overemphasis on guilt, and the view that taking pride in one’s talents, merits, achievements, makes humility rather than pride a virtue. The first claim averts to the unconditionality of universal love in the form of forgiveness. We are to come close in love even to our enemy, and, it may be thought, that too is incompatible with proper pride. We deal briefly with each of these suggestions that Kant’s duties are incompatible with virtue, and in particular, virtuous pride. To overcome the first objection it is essential to uncover the nature of pride as a virtue as distinct from pride as a vice. The crucial point is that pride as a vice is not only incompatible with universal love – it also betrays lack of selflove. Hence the importance of separating that vice from virtuous pride. There are two aspects to the first objection. The first suggests that love of all (including criminals that have seriously wronged us or those we love), requires that, as Kant claims, we recognize that “we are greatly in need of pardon ourselves.” The second suggests that love of all (including the least meritorious and unattractive of us) debases the worth of talents and merits, including our own. Both aspects of the claim that universal love is incompatible with self-love have in common the idea that we cannot take proper pride in ourselves: first because, like criminals, we are greatly in need of pardon, and, second, our merits and attractiveness have but little significance. I have dealt with the second claim elsewhere (2003, ch. 6, sec. iii); here I concentrate on the first. First, what does Kant mean by his claim that we cannot demand vengeance, not even from God, for we are greatly in need of pardon ourselves? The famous biblical text which makes this clear is the following: Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? (Matt. 7.3)

To fail to pay attention to the plank in your own eye while passing judgment on others is to possess pride as a vice. The reason we should not possess such pride is that the plank in our own eye blinds us to our own faults, while causing distorted and even exaggerated views of the faults of others. We become self-righteous. But the quoted text is not an invitation to total self-abasement, robbing us of the ability to act or judge. We are

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exhorted to “first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matt. 7.5). The conjoining of the first biblical passage quoted above with others such as “Do not judge, or you too will be judged” (Matt. 7.1), or “Let [only] him that is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8.7) does not mean that we should never judge, or blame, or that we should dispense with institutions of justice. We are reminded only of our own planks, and that we should not take it upon ourselves as individuals to consign people to the class of the unredeemable. Pride as a vice, then, is not the tendency to judge or to blame at all: it is self-righteousness – the wrong sense of superiority. Indeed pride as a vice – self-righteousness – betrays lack of self-love. For persons displaying it are dependent for their sense of self-worth on comparisons with others. The tendency to compare oneself with others, and consider oneself superior as a human being because one scores more highly on certain indices, shares with the tendency to consider oneself inferior as a human being because one scores less highly the same flaw – narcissistic self-referential comparisons. Both the person with false pride and the person with false humility lack self-love because her sense of worth is based on such comparisons. By contrast, the person with pride as a virtue takes pride in her achievements from a sense of their value or their expression of her creativity, not from a sense of their superiority over the achievements of others: Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else. (Gal. 6.4)

Just as there are vicious and virtuous forms of pride, so there are vicious and virtuous forms of humility. Humility as a vice is also a vice of comparison: it involves a sense of worthlessness as a result of comparison with those regarded as superior, including God. In contrast, humility as a virtue is compatible with pride as a virtue. It involves a proper sense of one’s place in the world and a proper sense of one’s worth. One might claim that pride as a virtue and humility as a virtue are thus the same, but their fields (domains of concern) are subtly different. Pride focuses on one’s knowledge of relative worthiness, but pride as a virtue is a character trait involving dispositions of dealing properly with that knowledge, and right attitudes in relation to it. Humility by contrast focuses on one’s knowledge of relative weakness, lack of talent, lack of moral fiber and so forth, but again, humility as a virtue is a character trait involving dispositions of dealing properly with that knowledge, and right attitudes in relation to it.

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We turn now to the second objection. Universal love, like universal respect, is unconditional. This has been thought particularly problematic for love, for how are we to be moved by the incentive of love for serious criminals or our enemy? Universal love for Kant requires forgiveness because without it, the maxim of benevolence cannot be applied to all. However, it may be thought, the coming close of unconditional love is incompatible with proper pride. We cannot as it were be free to terminate all relation with the one who has wronged us, as we are free under certain circumstances to terminate a friendship. The problem lies in understanding the sense in which we are to “come close” in forgiveness. In what sense are we to make the forgiven person’s happiness our end? To shed light on this question let us consider the somewhat infamous case of the so-called grudging moralist: Still further: if nature had implanted little sympathy in this or that man’s heart; if (being in other respects an honest fellow) he were cold in temperament and indifferent to the sufferings of others – perhaps because, being endowed with the special gift of patience and robust endurance in his own sufferings, he assumed the like in others or even demanded it; if such a man (who would in truth not be the worst product of nature) were not exactly fashioned by her to be a philanthropist, would he not still find in himself a source from which he might draw a worth far higher than any that a good-natured temperament can have? Assuredly he would. It is precisely in this that the worth of character begins to show – a moral worth and beyond all comparison the highest – namely, that he does good, not from inclination, but from duty. (G, 4:398–99)

The point I wish to make is that for Kant, in forgiving a person who has seriously wronged you from the incentive of love, there is no requirement that you have “sympathy” for the person who has wronged you. The beneficence described here is compatible with the incentive of love, for the unsympathetic man is not misanthropic, selfish, or anthrophobic. He is not portrayed as taking satisfaction in things going badly for others, he is not selfishly concerned with how things are going for himself rather than with how they are going for others, and he is not avoiding human beings altogether because, for example, he can take no delight in them. His lack of sympathy is not tantamount to callousness, selfishness, or total avoidance of interaction. This somewhat minimal requirement of the incentive of love is indeed arguably all the “coming close” that is required for forgiveness. In The Art of Forgiving, Lewis B. Smedes (1996) claims that in forgiveness we rediscover the humanity of the person who wronged us – we see the person “through a cleaner lens” “less smudged by hate” (24). Since the pleasures

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of vengeance are fueled by hate, we come to eschew private vengeance, though this is not the same as renouncing justice. Forgiving involves an attitudinal coming close in the sense of coming to wish for at least mildly good things to come to the person forgiven. If we hear that good things have happened, and the wrongdoer comes our way, we may “shake his hand and tell him we are glad that he is doing so well” (24). This form of benevolence must be sharply distinguished from other forms of coming close which are not required by universal love in general, or by forgiveness in particular. First, on this view, forgiveness of persons with whom one once enjoyed a partialistic love relationship, such as friendship, need not demand reunion. Treating the person as a fellow human being, wishing him well, and welcoming him back into, say, an organization such as a church is not the same as restoring a friendship or partnership. Kant’s coming close requires appropriate non-avoidance; it does not require restoring a relationship. For one may correctly judge that the person forgiven may continue to hurt you in future. As Kant claims, forgiveness is not a “meek toleration of wrongs,” whether in action (by staying with an abuser, for example) or in word. Note that the fact that restoration or reunion is not required universally does not entail that it may not be required in certain very specific circumstances. All that is being said is that forgiveness does not entail restoration or reunion. A virtue ethicist in the Aristotelian tradition will, however, want to distinguish between Kant’s sorrowing philanthropist and the non-sympathetic person. The former’s affective state is appropriate to grief, whereas lack of sympathy in general is an affective defect, and so the beneficence of the non-sympathetic man falls short of virtue proper. For Kant, however, if the non-sympathetic man he describes is adhering to the duty to cultivate sympathetic feelings (but has so far failed), he has virtue in his sense, for he adheres to the maxim of benevolence, which requires the incentive of love. Notice that he does not say that such a man is a fine product of nature, but rather that he is “not … the worst.” A Kantian understanding of the kind of coming close required by universal love allows us to see how universal love can be particular, universal, and unconditional. Furthermore, it is compatible with a virtuous pride that is not incompatible with self-love, since though it eschews a self-righteous sense of superiority based on one’s superior talents, moral character, or whatever, it allows one to be proud of one’s achievements where this pride is not based on comparisons with others’ putatively lesser achievements. This idea is compatible with a claim that comparison is appropriate and even necessary in certain contexts – e.g. legitimate

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comparisons of merits in job applications. Universal love can be unconditional for Kant, since forgiveness does not necessarily involve a restoration of previous partialistic relationships, nor does it entail that a wrongdoing is treated as less serious because it has been forgiven. For Kant, concentrating only on the moral force of universal respect would lead to an incomplete ethics. Indeed, since that force is to be integrated with the force of love, an ethics based solely on respect would be distorted and flawed. The demands of adopting the maxim of benevolence are rich, and not touched on by standard works of justice. Certainly those demands are not mere beneficence – doing good for others. To understand the incentive of love is to understand a range of virtues and vices: among the virtues are virtuous pride and humility, patience, forgiveness, compassion. Among the vices are envy, hatred, anger, self-righteousness, resentment, vicious pride, and humility (self-abasement). To the objection that virtue based on universal love is excessively demanding we should remind ourselves that Kant recognizes that virtue is a work in progress – never to be fully realized in earthly ethics. That is why, in non-ideal ethics, Kant regards virtue as a kind of strength. For in the real world of imperfection, “virtue can never settle down in peace and quiet with its maxims adopted once and for all but, if it is not rising, is unavoidably sinking” (MM, 6:409). In this essay I have not argued that Kant’s ethics can or should be seen as a species of virtue ethics. I have argued only that the proper recognition of love as a moral force in Kant undermines virtue-theoretic criticism of Kant’s ethics in a variety of ways. The impartial and universal foundations of Kant’s ethics rest on love as well as respect and provide accordingly for a much richer view than might be supposed. The love involved can properly be seen as particular: a love of individuals, as opposed to a love of “mankind.” The impartialistic aspect of love involves, as we have seen, a rich array of duties and virtues. Furthermore, this aspect is entirely compatible with partialistic aspects of love, for the partialistic duties and virtues of love, such as friendship, can also be seen as involving integrations of coming close and keeping distance. As Kant himself suggests, this integration is a delicate matter. Indeed it recalls Aristotelian practical wisdom.

Ch apter 11

The problem we all have with deontology Michael Slote

I am a virtue ethicist in the sentimentalist mode, but this essay is not going to be about the advantages virtue ethics or moral sentimentalism may have over other approaches to ethics. It’s about a problem, or set of problems, that all major theories of morality share:  a problem about deontology. The problem is the problem of justifying deontology, something that Kantian ethics notably seeks to do, but that recent (and notso-recent) Aristotelian virtue ethics has largely avoided. And, of course, consequentialists don’t think deontology can be justified, and that, very briefly and according to the rest of us, is their problem. What I want to show here is how difficult it is to justify deontology. I don’t think Kantian ethics succeeds in doing so, but I also believe that Aristotelian virtue ethics would have very difficult going if it tried to justify deontology. Finally, there is sentimentalist virtue ethics, and, perhaps surprisingly, there are things the sentimentalist can say by way of defending deontology. But we shall see that there are some serious problems, nonetheless, with such a defense. What do I mean by “deontology”? Well, I can’t define it, but I can make some suggestions toward clarifying what most of us philosophers understand by the term. Moral views or theories that are deontological can contain non-deontological elements, but they all entail that it is sometimes right (or even obligatory) to perform actions whose consequences, impartially considered, would be worse or less good than those of some other act available to a given agent. In other words, deontology involves saying that it can sometimes be morally right or obligatory not to act for the best. But that isn’t all that’s involved. I don’t think the view that we owe more to our own children than to other people’s children is or sounds particularly deontological, but it certainly seems to entail that we should sometimes act on behalf of our own children even though it would have better overall effects if we instead helped someone else’s children. 260

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The deontological element that seems missing from this last thought is the idea that there are certain kinds of acts one (morally) ought to avoid performing just because of the kinds of acts they are. We have (at least prima facie) moral reason to avoid killing, lying, deceiving, stealing, raping, torturing, and assaulting because of the kinds of acts those are and even when the performance of those actions would produce (slightly) better overall results or consequences. This idea, roughly, lies at the heart of deontology and won’t, I think, be unfamiliar to readers. It would not have seemed surprising to Ross or even, perhaps, to Sidgwick. However, we nowadays have examples that illustrate the choice or disagreement, say, between deontological and consequentialist theories better than any examples known to (or spoken of by) Sidgwick, Ross, or, for that matter, Kant. Cases where one has to choose between killing one innocent person and letting someone else kill several innocent people are a staple of current debates between deontologists and their typically consequentialist opponents, and they arguably illustrate the precise issue between these approaches better than other sorts of examples. But, as far as I know, such examples didn’t surface till the latter part of the twentieth century. So even if we may be no closer to resolving the issue between deontology and consequentialism, we are working with better, more testing examples, and that is a kind of philosophical progress. Of course, the issue between deontology and its critics is also illustrated by the more familiar kind of case where one has to choose between doing harm and allowing (a greater amount of) harm, between killing and letting (a greater number of people) die. But what I want to say here is that it is more difficult to defend the deontological side of this debate (or the deontological response to particular kinds of examples) than one might think. Assuming it is so difficult, why not just be done with all the difficulties in advance by accepting (act) utilitarianism or (act) consequentialism? Well, we could. And many have. But there is a reason why so many have struggled or worked against consequentialist conclusions, or many reasons, actually. But one very strong or compelling reason has been the sheer moral counterintuitiveness of denying deontology. Consider the following fairly familiar (sketchy) example: A miraculously gifted surgeon is able, on her own, to perform any kind of operation that is needed, and one day five victims of an automobile accident are brought in late at night, each needing a different organ replaced. There is an old derelict asleep in the hospital corridor, and the surgeon knows that, by another miracle, all his organs are intact and healthy. The surgeon could anesthetize the derelict, remove his organs, and use them

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to save the accident victims at the cost of the derelict’s life. This result would presumably be better than that of not cutting up the derelict: it’s one life vs. five (and there are no other negative consequences because, for example, no one is ever going to find out what has happened, if the surgeon uses the derelict’s organs). But everyone or almost everyone would agree that killing the derelict would be absolutely and clearly wrong. That assumption or feeling is not easy to set aside or overcome, and it is what makes consequentialism seem so intuitively or morally unacceptable to so many of us. But if intuition is so forceful and important, why not just rely on it? Why not insist that deontology is intuitively plausible or obvious and insist that no (further) defense of it is needed? Well, one could say this, and I want to return to this possibility later on. However, philosophical deontologists are very often not satisfied with saying this sort of thing. For one thing, if one does, and if one makes similar claims about other commonsense moral assumptions, then one is left with a hodgepodge of ethical intuitions, and such an absence of underlying order is typically regarded as theoretically unsatisfactory (not just in philosophy, but in almost any intellectual discipline). Philosophers are always looking for deeper understanding and unity, and that is why simple reliance on intuition doesn’t seem enough to so many philosophers. To many, it seems or has seemed necessary to justify and explain our moral intuitions and deontology in particular, and (what seems to be) this impulse most famously animates Kant’s approach to deontology. The Categorical Imperative in one or another of its versions is supposed to justify and help us more deeply understand (the rationality of) our commonsense thinking about deontology (among other things). But the Kantian effort to understand, explain, and justify doesn’t seem to work very well. One can, for example, attempt to justify deontology through the Formula of Universal Law version of the Categorical Imperative, understood either in terms of what can be consistently willed or what can be consistently conceived. But there are well-known difficulties with these versions of the CI: they end up justifying too much or too little; and if we think, in particular, about the maxim of the surgeon who decides to kill the derelict in order to save a greater total number of lives, it is difficult to see how it falls afoul of either/any version of the Formula of Universal Law. Why couldn’t the surgeon will for everyone to act as he does in his circumstances? Wouldn’t there be a total net benefit if everyone did so, and wouldn’t the risk of being treated like the derelict be worth it to avoid the (likelier) risk of being one of the five accident victims a surgeon

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refused to save? And is there anything inconceivable in the idea that everyone might act as the surgeon who proposes to kill one to save five would then be acting? I find it difficult to answer such questions in a way that favors a Kantian defense of deontology – that favors the deontological answer to the specific question what the surgeon should do. Moreover, many contemporary Kantians also doubt the justificatory strength of the Formula of Universal Law and find the Formula of Humanity more promising as a way of defending deontology. The Formula of Humanity forbids us (roughly) to treat/use people solely as means, and on the face of it that is what is wrong with what the surgeon who kills one to save five does. Doesn’t she simply use the (body of the) innocent derelict in the corridor as a means to saving a greater number of other people? So let’s see if the Formula of Humanity can give the Kantian what is needed for a defense of deontology. The Formula of Humanity doesn’t tell us that we may not treat, or even use, others as means. There are many people we treat as means, but also, in Kantian terms, as ends: the bus drivers and airplane pilots we rely on, for example. What is supposed to be wrong is treating someone (including oneself) solely as a means, so the question is whether the surgeon who saves the accident victims treats the derelict she cuts up and (as a result) kills, solely as a means. I don’t think she does, or at least I don’t think she necessarily does, given the terms of our example. Someone who cuts up a derelict in order to save others might think of the derelict as totally lacking in worth or dignity, but she very possibly might not. She might think of the derelict as a less useful or upstanding member of the community than the five accident victims are (likely to turn out to be), but she might still value the derelict’s life – imagine, for example, that on many previous evenings, the surgeon had brought him food and a blanket. If the surgeon proposes to kill the derelict, it may well be that she does so because she thinks five (potentially useful) lives count for more than one (seemingly less useful) life. This has her thinking like a utilitarian, but in a way that is just my point. Utilitarianism treats each human (life) as “counting for one”; no one’s life or pleasure or pain counts in itself as less than anyone else’s; but if one can do more good by killing one person than by not doing so, the utilitarian tells us we should do so. This is not a matter of treating anyone as a mere means; it is a matter of treating greater good as morally more compelling than lesser good, and all of this applies to the situation of the surgeon and the derelict. In which

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case, the surgeon doesn’t (have to) treat the derelict solely as a means when she chooses to harvest his organs for the others, and the Formula of Humanity offers us no way to justify the deontological refusal to kill the derelict in such a case. More generally, the Formula of Humanity offers us no way to undercut act utilitarianism and its dictates about particular cases, and since the latter denies deontology at a fundamental level, it is no wonder that the Formula of Humanity cannot be used to justify deontology. Nor do I think it would help the Kantian much at this point to speak of the “infinite worth” of individuals. If the derelict and the accident victims all have infinite worth, it is not clear how this helps one to definitely decide not to save the accident victims, unless something additional  – like the Formula of Humanity  – is brought in. And, given what has been said above, it is not clear how the justification for not killing the derelict would then be able to proceed. (There is also the problem that if all lives are of infinite worth, and one has to choose between saving fifty lives or ten different lives, one has no moral reason to save the fifty rather than the ten. Some people have been willing to say this sort of thing, but I don’t think it sits very well with our moral intuitions.) It is also possible, like Frances Kamm (2000), to invoke the idea of inviolability as a means to defending deontology along Kantian lines. But, unless one takes the implausible absolutist line that one may not kill/ violate an innocent person even in order to save millions of people, one then needs to be able to say when and how (the force of) inviolability is or can be morally attenuated. And one also has a problem explaining why killing in self-defense is ever morally permissible. Something in this direction might be made to work, but, then again, it may not be possible, and so at this point I don’t think the Kantian tradition has any clear-cut way of supporting or justifying deontology. If there are possibilities I haven’t mentioned, then perhaps the Kantian who reads or has heard what I am saying here will be inspired to make clear or clearer what Kantian ethics can say on behalf of deontology. But short of that and because it is difficult to imagine Kantians being happy to live without deontology, the present argument leaves Kantian ethics in a difficult position:  lacking an explicit or satisfactory justification for an assumption or conclusion that lies at the heart of its general view of morality. (However, compare Cummiskey [1996].) And the argument to this point leaves the rest of us with a problem too. If we think deontology is important and think it important to justify it in philosophical terms, then if Kantianism doesn’t

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help us, we need to find some other way to do the same thing. But finding that other way doesn’t seem easy. For example, many ethicists who are critical of Kantian and utilitarian ethics have thought that virtue ethics is a better way to approach moral philosophy. But it is not clear that, as far as the justification of deontology is concerned, virtue ethics is in any better shape than Kantianism. Since virtue ethics began to be revived in recent decades, most virtue ethics has found its inspiration in Aristotle. But neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics has been noticeably silent on the question of justifying deontology, and it is not clear that it can offer anything useful by way of defending deontology. The currently most prominent form of neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, for example, is that advanced by Rosalind Hursthouse in her seminal essay “Virtue Theory and Abortion” (1991) and subsequently (with significant changes) in her book On Virtue Ethics (1999). Hursthouse has recently been moving away from the attempt to give ethics foundations, but there is a foundational or justificatory structure in both the works just mentioned. For Hursthouse, as for many other virtue ethicists, the moral character of actions is to be understood by reference to virtue or the virtues, and in her view what counts as (a) virtue does so by reference to some sort of good. In “Virtue Theory” what makes a trait virtuous is its contribution to the (rationally conceived) good, or the eudaimonia, of those who possess it; but in her book, the terms are expanded. Virtue is seen as, among other things, related to what advances the good of the group or species, and not just to what serves the good of the virtuous individual. But Hursthouse never tries to justify deontology in these writings or anywhere else that I know of. And it is not at all clear, in fact, how the justificatory structure she makes use of could be used to defend deontology. Deontology tells us (roughly) not to kill in order to save a few more lives, and on Hursthouse’s view it would seem that the surgeon’s refusal to kill the derelict will count as right – as deontology claims it is – if and only if the trait of being unwilling to kill in such circumstances counts as a virtue. For Hursthouse, that means that such a trait must serve some weighted combination of the good of the individual, her group, or her species. (Hursthouse is not definite about how the weighting should be made, and though she also mentions hedonic factors, I shall for simplicity ignore them here.) But is it clear – in fact, is there any reason to believe – that the justmentioned trait is more conducive to these goods than the trait of being

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willing, or the disposition, to kill in order to save a greater number of lives?1 I don’t see that there is, and in any event we need an argument that, as far as I know, no one has ever given, if we are to have reason to think that on Hursthouse’s view deontological dispositions have to be seen as virtuous and consequentalist ones as not virtuous. However, Rosalind has said to me that she doubts there is such a trait or disposition as that involved in being willing to kill in order to save lives. In that case, deontology might win by default, but I am not sure what Hursthouse means by denying the trait in question. Perhaps she means that no one actually has the trait in question, that even if there are theoretical consequentialists, no one is or acts like a consequentialist in his practical life – at least with respect to the issues that divide consequentialism from deontology. But is this right? Not Smart, not Peter Railton, not Shelly Kagan? How much does Rosalind know – how much do I know  – about how these theoretical consequentialists lead their lives? Moreover, even if there are no practical consequentialists, surely the relevant issue is what the results would be (for human welfare, etc.) as compared with the actual results of our by-and-large deontological dispositions. If Rosalind is prepared to say that a practical commitment to consequentialism is not really possible, then she will be saying something whose truth might well undercut consequentialism and support deontology, but, for the life of me, I don’t see how such an argument would or could go. This means that, at least for the present, Hursthouse’s neo-Aristotelian approach has no way to justify deontology over consequentialism. Other such approaches don’t seem to me to have any better prospects for doing so, but there has also recently been a revival of interest in sentimentalist forms of virtue ethics, and perhaps we should look in that direction for support for deontology. At first glance, however, sentimentalism seems to be the last place to look for a defense of deontology. Deontology tells us that we must restrain not only our desire for our own welfare but also our desire to help others because, so to speak, of the negative moral weight of killing, lying, stealing, etc. So the force of deontology seems to be a force that operates against certain human feelings or sentiments. Desire for one’s own and desire for other people’s good are, in Hume’s terms, natural sentiments, but there doesn’t appear to be any natural sentiment corresponding to a reluctance or unwillingness, say, to kill in order to save lives overall. 1

  A similar question arises, of course, for rule-utilitarian attempts to justify deontology.

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That reluctance or unwillingness seems, or has by Hume and others been said, to come from an antecedent belief that that sort of killing is wrong, and that gives some kind of support to ethical rationalism. If the unwillingness to kill and the belief that it is wrong to kill don’t come from any sentiment and oppose what we see are sentiments, then, assuming we have reason to believe in deontology, it is plausible to assume that its moral (justifying) force comes from reason, from the rational side of our natures. It is difficult, then, to see how any sort of justification for deontology could derive from purely sentimentalistic sources.2 But there is one possible way that it might. I have recently been working on the ethics of care, which is a familiar contemporary form of sentimentalism, and in the course of doing so, I have become convinced that care ethics needs to rely heavily on the idea or phenomenon of empathy. The kind of empathy I have in mind is what Hume describes as “contagion” by the feelings of another. When I feel another’s pain, that is empathy, whereas sympathy, in our contemporary usage of the word, can simply involve hoping that someone in pain will soon be free of the pain. Now there is reason to think that empathy can underlie our feelings of benevolence toward other people and even toward whole groups of other people, and this aspect of empathy would seem to move us in the direction of utilitarianism and consequentialism and away from deontological restrictions on helping others. But empathy is actually a two-edged sword in this respect, because empathy also supports a kind of perspectivalism that leads toward deontology. The recent literature of psychology speaks a great deal about how empathy can underlie and power altruism toward particular others and toward groups of others. But it also emphasizes ways in which empathy makes us partial, makes us favor some people over others. (For a fairly comprehensive survey of the recent psychological literature on empathy, see Hoffman 2000.) Thus we tend to be more empathically responsive to pain that we see another suffering than to pain that we merely hear or know about. It goes more against ordinary empathy not to respond to pain we see than not to respond to pain we don’t see, and this difference also seems potentially relevant to morality. We think it is more callous and reprehensible not to respond to pain that we are immediately aware of (and can without too much difficulty do something about) than not Incidentally, Hume never addresses the issues of doing vs. allowing, of killing vs. letting die, of commission vs. omission that are nowadays widely regarded as crucial to the issue of whether to accept deontology.

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to respond to pain we merely know about (and can alleviate by making a small charitable contribution). And the correlation or correspondence here between what seems morally worse and what goes more against normally developed empathy can be found, in fact, in many, many other kinds of cases. I don’t have the space here to discuss all these different cases, but one clear implication of the kind of example just mentioned is that there is a kind of perspective built into empathy, that the degree to which empathy is ordinarily felt depends somewhat on the point of view one has on that with which one is feeling or is to feel empathy. So I’d like now to mention another kind of situation in which one’s point of view or perspective on pain or other bad things determines or helps to determine the strength of one’s empathic response. We are empathically partial to what we perceive, but even where we don’t perceive, say, pain or danger, we are still empathically more responsive to what is contemporaneous with us, e.g. to present rather than to future danger or harm. If, to take a case familiar to ethicists, miners are trapped underground because of a cave-in, the public will typically advocate costly rescue efforts. And if anyone suggests that we should instead use the available money to install safety equipment that will eventually save a somewhat greater number of lives, most of us will or would recoil with a certain horror or disbelief. That is arguably because we tend to feel greater empathy toward those who are in “clear and present danger,” and this preference operates independently of perception (we may see or not see pictures of the trapped miners). Once again here, greater strength of empathic reaction appears to correspond to greater felt obligation, and if I had the space, I would argue (more fully) that empathy makes a difference to moral obligation. (For the fuller argument, see Slote [2007]. The resemblance to Hume’s Treatise should be obvious.) What I want to show now, however, is that if it does make such a difference, then sentimentalism may have a way to justify deontology. The pain or danger we witness has a perceptual immediacy for us; our empathic response to it depends to that extent on our perspective on that pain or danger. Similarly, there is a perspectival aspect to our greater empathic responsiveness to danger or pain that is present rather than future, that is temporally immediate for us. I believe deontology depends on an analogous kind of (perspectival) immediacy. As we have already said, at its most basic (at least on one familiar and intuitive construal of what is at stake in deontology), deontology distinguishes between doing and allowing or between killing and letting die. But the difference between causing harm or pain and merely allowing it is a difference in

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the closeness or strength of one’s causal connection to the harm or pain, and this difference in what we can call causal immediacy makes a difference to normal human reactions. Just as we are, other things being equal, more empathically involved in and responsive to pain or danger that we perceive or that is “clear and present,” so too, and from the perspective of our own causality, do we have a stronger empathic reaction to the possibility of causing someone harm or pain than we do to the possibility of merely allowing such. The latter is less immediate for us, and in fact we react viscerally to, flinch from, our own (potential) causing of harm and pain much more than we do with respect to harm and pain that our actions or inactions may merely allow. But given our assumption of the relevance of differential tendencies of empathy to (intuitive) moral distinctions, what we have just said gives us a sentimental basis for (a central part of) deontology. Far from opposing or conflicting (in some measure) with human feeling, deontology arises out of certain human feelings and the psychological mechanisms that underlie them. Caring contoured by empathy naturally lends itself to acting in accordance with what deontology prescribes, and rationalism is thus not the only potential way to justify our ordinary and entrenched beliefs about the moral difference between doing and allowing harm, etc. But the above purported justification comes with considerable attendant costs or disadvantages. For one thing, I have related deontology to empathy, and empathy is a very human phenomenon. Or perhaps I should say that it is a primarily mammalian phenomenon, because there is evidence that apes, elephants, dolphins, and other mammals are capable of empathy. But is it so clear that every possible being capable of morality will have to be endowed with empathy, or, more pointedly, with a capacity for empathy whose contours or perspective on the world closely resembles what we have as humans or as mammals? If not, then our sentimentalist account doesn’t clearly give a general justification for deontology, for we think that deontology holds for all intelligent species, all species with the capacity for morality, not just for humans. If we say that we are interested only in what is morally obligatory or justified for human beings, then our sentimentalist account of morality seems or can seem parochial; and if, on the contrary, we say that what holds morally for humans “fixes the reference” of moral terms for all other intelligent species, we seem parochial in a somewhat different way. On the other hand, I suspect that empathy at least somewhat like ours would be necessary to the evolution of morality in any species here on earth or elsewhere. But I can’t prove this, and I really don’t have an argument for it, and without such an argument the

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sentimentalist justification for deontology offered above doesn’t seem that much more satisfactory than what the Kantians have come up with. At this point, and given all the failures or unclear successes we have discussed, it might seem advisable to reconsider intuitionism. Perhaps deontology can be justified (enough) on the basis of intuition(s) even in the absence of (further) theoretical foundations. Well, yes, perhaps. But philosophers have wanted and attempted to provide a good deal more, and this is what all the different contemporary approaches canvassed here seem unable, at least in the present state of things, to accomplish. Those of us who believe in deontology still have our work cut out for us.

Ch apter 12

Intuition, system, and the “paradox” of deontology Timothy Chappell

I Provided you start from suitable intuitions, it is easy enough to construct a whole range of arguments any or all of which might be called “the paradox of deontology.” Suppose you think that the role of agency is to bring about goodness, and that it’s good to observe deontological constraints. Then it will follow that you should bring about the observing of deontological constraints. And if in some particular context the way to bring about such observings is via a breach of one or more deontological constraints, so be it. Or suppose, more strongly, that you think that the role of agency is to bring about maximal goodness, and that the keeping of the maximum number of deontological constraints (or the maximum weighting, if some constraints are more important than others) is a crucial part of maximal goodness. Then it will follow that you should bring this about. And again, if the route to doing this sometimes runs via the breaching of one or more deontological constraints, so be it. Or take a more particular supposition:  suppose you think that an important part of agency is to bring about the specific good that persons (or their rights) are not violated (perhaps in the way that, for example, torture or murder or rape violates them/their rights). Then you will think that agents including yourself have reason, so far as that part of agency goes, to bring about the non-violation of (the rights of) persons. And if they can only do this by violating some (rights of) persons – if nothing but one rape or murder will stop twenty rapes or murders  – then so be it. Similarly, to take one last example, if you think agency is all about bringing about the good of respecting persons as (in Kant’s familiar I am grateful to Jens Timmermann, Garrath Williams, and the editors of this volume for their helpful comments.

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phrase) ends in themselves, then agents including yourself should give themselves the aim of bringing about respectings-of-persons-as-ends-inthemselves. And if they can only do this by not respecting some person(s) as ends in themselves, then that’s what they should do. And so on. The key claim of deontology, as I will use the word here, is that there are constraints, limits, on action which it is not morally permissible to breach, even when breaching them is a good, or the best, or the only, way to achieve some good. The pattern of argument common to these four lines of thought uses that key claim as a premise in an argument which concludes by contradicting it. Thus the “paradox” of deontology is misnamed. It is not, in its formal structure, a paradox at all, but a reductio ad absurdum. Now as every schoolboy knows, the argument-form reductio has an obvious vulnerability. Reductio derives a contradiction from a set of premises, proving that one of the premises must be rejected. What reductio does not tell us, in itself, is which premise to reject. If we can derive a contradiction from the premises “It’s good to keep deontological constraints” and “The role of agency is to bring about goodness,” that does not, in and of itself, show that it’s not good to keep deontological constraints. What it shows is that either it’s not good to keep deontological constraints, or it isn’t the role of agency to bring about goodness. The consequentialist whose presentation of the “paradox” of deontology arrives at this disjunction, and then simply affirms the first disjunct, is begging the question. For the whole point of deontology is that it is the latter disjunct that we should affirm. In truth, it is not the role of agency to bring about goodness. But that claim perhaps will sound like a paradox – in the true sense of the word – at least to philosophers with moderate or more sympathy for consequentialism. If so, the claim deserves some explanation and development. That is what I shall give it here. In the process, the attractiveness of the claim to non-consequentialist moral theorists such as Kantians and virtue ethicists, indeed its indispensability to their ways of doing ethics, should become clear. Not that I think that the claim is best justified by reference to any moral theory. On the contrary, I see the claim as a component of the non-theoretical reflective ethics (not identical with “common sense” or “intuition,” but not diametrically opposed, either) by reference to which any systematic moral theory would have to be justified  – if it could be.

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II “Provided you start from suitable intuitions” is what I said; “– and provided you ignore all the unsuitable ones” is what I was implying. One characteristic mistake of systematic moral theory is to base the system on one intuition, or sort of intuition, while rejecting or explaining away another. I mean nothing special here by “(moral) intuition,” by the way, nothing more than “what we sincerely think is true (in ethics), after careful and honest reflection which is free from the impulse to systematize.” Intuitions in this sense need not be, though of course they can be, either quasi-­perceptual or non-inferential; and they need not be, and indeed cannot be, incorrigible. The main point about them is their authenticity. Our intuitions represent what we think, not what we think we think (as Bernard Williams might have put it). So understood, moral intuitions have to be the first word in our ethical thinking. Whether they are also the last word is a question we shall hear more about as this essay progresses. The picking and choosing among our intuitions that I want to criticize is found, for instance, both in consequentialism and in Kantianism. Both these systems (or fragments of systems) of moral theory appeal to at least some of our intuitions – but not to others. Hence theorists defending these views characteristically pass off as somehow illusory, or explain away, or just ignore, the contrary intuitions. The basic problem with this procedure is its arbitrariness. In case after case, there is no good reason for entrenching this intuition and rejecting that intuition rather than vice versa. The epistemic credentials of the intuition that gets entrenched are no better than those of the intuition that gets rejected. So there is no more reason to believe such theories than to disbelieve them. Despite my opposition to systematic moral theory, I may seem to be making the same mistake myself when I claim that it is not the role of agency to bring about goodness. Surely, it will be said, the idea that agency has that role is just one of the données of ethics, something that we have at least as much reason to believe as we have reason to believe that morality includes constraints. So even if I am formally correct that the deontologist can resist the “paradox” of deontology’s reductio by denying the disjunct that the consequentialist affirms and affirming the disjunct that the consequentialist denies, there still seems to be a displeasing symmetry between their positions. Both deontologist and consequentialist, apparently, are entrenching one intuition and rejecting another. So both

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are adopting arbitrary views that there is no more reason to believe than not to believe. That might be the right conclusion to draw about some of the claims that some deontologists have felt they needed to defend. It does not have to be the right conclusion about the present claim, that it is not the role of agency to bring about goodness. As it stands, that claim is obviously in need of disambiguation. The claim might be understood as the thesis that it is never even a part of the point of agency that it should bring about goodness. That is a heroically extreme thesis, though it has had its defenders (usually Kantians). Less heroically, but much more plausibly, the claim can also be understood in a way that focuses on the phrase “the role.” Bringing about goodness, we may say, is not the role of agency, because bringing about goodness is at most one of the roles that agency can sometimes play, and there are others. Putting it another way, the bringing about of goodness is not what agency is all about, or not the only thing that it is all about. Certainly the role of agency is sometimes productive (directed at bringing about goodness), as when I seek to implement a health policy, or build a dam for the thirsty, or cause happiness in a friend. But sometimes it isn’t. Agency can also be, for instance, expressive – directed at expressing my love for Wagner, or my loathing for the Nazi Party, or my awe at Sir Georg Solti’s conducting. Or it can be reactive, as when I praise you or blame you, reward you or punish you, according to what I take you to have done or been. Or again, agency can be pure praxis (to use Aristotle’s word for want of a better). Some actions can be done simply for their own sake, like climbing a rock face or playing a Bach partita on the violin (or in my case, unfortunately, the CD player), just because I find them worthwhile in themselves. And so on. I don’t mean to suggest that these three alternative roles for agency besides the productive role are exclusive of each other. Actions can and often do have both a productive and an expressive or reactive role, for instance. Nor do I mean to suggest that the four alternatives I have listed are the only ones.1 On the contrary, the more such alternatives there

Another possibility: communicative action, as when I tell you how much I love Wagner, or what time the bus leaves, is arguably a fifth role for agency. It seems to be neither the same thing as expressive action (which, unlike communicative action, needs no audience), nor reducible to productive action (since when I communicate the proposition p to you, I am evidently not merely acting on an intention to bring it about that you believe p; there are, for a start, the Gricean conditions in play).

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are, and the more they can be mixed or combined, the better it suits my argument. One way to make these four look like the only alternatives would be to time-index them. Productive agency, we might say, is future-directed, expressive agency present-directed, reactive agency past-directed, while pure praxis, perhaps, inhabits the timeless present. No doubt there is something to the idea that agency’s roles can be time-indexed in this way (notice that reasons can be time-indexed like this too); no doubt you can see the roles of agency under this seductively neat schematism. But you don’t have to. And if this schematism stops you from looking for other roles for agency, or pretending that what does not fit it can either be made to fit it, or else is not there at all – then, like so many other neat schematisms, it has become an obstacle to clear and intellectually honest thought that is not oversimplified in the name of tidiness. The key point is just the obvious intuition – in the sense of “intuition” defined at the start of this section – that agents are not necessarily concerned, at all times and in all places, with the production of goodness. Hence bringing about goodness is not the role of agency. It is just one thing that agency sometimes does. But we need more to motivate the “paradox” of deontology than the thought that one of the things that agents sometimes do is try to produce this or that form of goodness. For another thing that agents sometimes do is express their loyalty to some form of goodness. And one way of expressing one’s loyalty to a form of goodness is to observe a constraint that it grounds. Of course it is possible to ask how productive of goodness such expressive actions are. But if the answer is “Not very,” this does not show that there is anything paradoxical or irrational about expressive actions: we can just as well ask how expressive some productive action is. Unsurprisingly, the right way to assess the rationality of expressive actions is as expressive, and the right way to assess the rationality of productive actions is as productive; and so on for the other forms of agency. Only muddle can result from trying to assess every form of agency by the criteria of rationality appropriate to just one of the forms of agency. III The premises that it is the role of agency to produce goodness, and that it is good to respect constraints, together lead to a contradiction; this contradiction is best averted not by rejecting constraints, but by recalling an obvious fact – the diversity of other roles that agency can have besides

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the production of goodness. This argument is very simple. For instance it does not, in and of itself, involve us in the intriguing thickets of the long-running literature on agent-relativity, which is perhaps where consequentialists and deontologists most often seek a decision in the debate about the “paradox” of deontology. Still the argument is, so far as I can see, decisive. Once we see that no one is obliged to assess the rationality of agency always and only by the criterion of productiveness of good, it is simply impossible to go on thinking of the “paradox” of deontology as a trap from which the deontologist has no obvious way out. Nor have deontologists (or other opponents of consequentialism) failed to spot either the trap or the way out of it. David McNaughton and Piers Rawling, for example, take the notion of agent-relativity as more of a focus for their arguments against the “paradox” of deontology than I would want to. But they also reject Pettit’s claim that any theory of the right is “a view, not about which properties are valuable, but about what individual and institutional agents should do by way of responding to valuable properties” [Pettit 1991: 230] … Once the deontologist has conceded that our obligations are to be explained in terms of a requirement to realize some value, then it is hard to resist the consequentialist conclusion that the correct course of action is to promote that value. [But] the deontologist differs from the consequentialist precisely in refusing to characterize all our duties or obligations in terms of realizing the good. (McNaughton and Rawling 1992: 842)

Again, Philippa Foot, in “Utilitarianism and the Virtues,” bases more of her main case against utilitarianism than I would advise on the thesis that there cannot be a conception of better and worse states of affairs which is prior or external to morality. But she also says this: There is indeed a place within morality for the idea of better and worse states of affairs … if only because the proper end of benevolence is the good of others, and because in many situations the person who has this virtue will be able to think of good and bad states of affairs, in terms of the general good. [But] sometimes justice will forbid a certain action … and then it will not be possible to ask whether the ‘state of affairs’ containing the action and its results will be better or worse than one in which the action is not done. The action is one that cannot be done, because justice forbids it. (Foot 1998: 237)

The notion of better states of affairs and the motive to bring them about are both internal to the virtue of benevolence. But benevolence is not the only virtue, and other virtues, such as justice, give agency other roles than the production of good states of affairs.

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As McNaughton and Rawling contrast different ways of grounding obligation, and Foot contrasts the roles of different virtues, so Thomas Scanlon contrasts different ways of responding to different values: In some cases, what makes an activity worthwhile is its contribution to the wellbeing of others, so in these cases well-being in general (one’s own and that of others) is what is fundamental. But not all values are of this kind. Consider two classes of examples. The first are various moral values. Treating others fairly may make their lives go better, but this is not my reason for believing it to be worthwhile. Rather, it is worthwhile because it is required by the more general value of treating others in ways that could be justified to them … the second class of values are the values of various forms of excellence. If I devote my life … to research in pure mathematics, [this makes] my life better. But what makes these pursuits worthwhile is not that contribution [to well-being] but rather the fact that they constitute serious attempts to understand deep and important questions. (Scanlon 1998: 143)

Again, Elizabeth Anderson and Richard Pildes have developed in some detail the idea of an expressive, and hence non-consequentialist, theory of moral action, and have applied this idea in the philosophy of law: Expressive theories of action are fundamentally concerned not just with achieving certain ends … but with whether the connection between the means and the end is justified. They ask:  does performing act A for the sake of goal G express rational or morally right attitudes towards people? … Expressive theories of action do not say that one ought to take the expression of one’s attitudes towards others as one’s goal in acting. Expressive theories do not tell us to somehow maximize the amount of proper expression in the world. Instead, expressive theories are regulative theories that provide principled constraints on how we go about pursuing various ends. In this respect, expressive theories are like the rules of grammar or logic. (Anderson and Pildes 2000: 1510, 1512)

Frances Kamm, too, is aware of the possibility of distinguishing between promoting or protecting interests, and expressing the importance of those interests, or, more basically, of the person whose interests they are: Fundamental human rights … are not concerned with protecting a person’s interests, but with expressing his nature as a being of a certain sort, one whose interests are worth protecting. They express the worth of the person rather than the worth of what is in the interests of that person. (Kamm 2007: 271)2 Another broadly Kantian writer who stresses the diversity of possible conceptions of the roles of agency, and offers some interesting light on the history of these conceptions, is Schapiro (2001). I am grateful to Garrath Williams for kindly sending me her fine article.

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Last, and at the risk of self-advertisement, here is one more writer who seems well aware that promoting value(s) is not the only way of responding to it: The way to contrast consequentialist and non-consequentialist is this: the consequentialist’s “axiom on how values justify choices” [Pettit 1991: 238] is Promote whatever values you recognize, but the non-consequentialist’s axiom is Promote any value you recognize insofar as you can do so without violating any value you recognize. (Chappell 2001: 97)

I am not now as confident as I was when I wrote that that we basically have exactly two prima facie permissible ways of responding to values, promotion and non-violation (a view found in various deontological moral theorists, including the particularists McNaughton and Rawling and the natural-law theorists Finnis and Grisez, as well as in their consequentialist opponent Pettit). But this is not because I now think there may be fewer than two permissible forms of response. It is because I am fairly sure there are more than two basically different roles for agency, and because in any case agency need not always be conceived as responding to value in any substantive sense at all. The key point that I was making then, and am still making now, is the simple point that rational agency has a diversity of roles. As before, it is this diversity that undermines the claim that rational agency can only ever concern itself with the production of goodness, and thereby also undermines the supposed “paradox” of deontology. IV Is the argument that I have presented a contribution to deontological moral theory? It can be deployed that way, as we have seen. But we might doubt that this is the best deployment for the argument when we consider how a consequentialist might counterattack it. (In considering this I draw, again, upon Pettit [1991], who explicitly presents a counterattack very like this.) The diversity of the roles of agency – the consequentialist might concede – is undoubtedly an intuitive phenomenon that confronts us. That does not mean that we should simply accept this phenomenon at face value. We need a clear, rational, and organized way to assess the practical rationality of agency. The clearest and most rational assessment method on the table – really, the consequentialist may say, the only clear and rational assessment method – is the one offered by consequentialism,

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which involves treating all agency as if it had a productive role. After all, with a little massaging, all agency can be assimilated to the productive model: trivially, even a “pure praxis” concludes in something that we can call its upshot or consequence, viz., the state of affairs that that “pure praxis” has been done. So even if we respect the phenomena of diversity at the level of ethical practice, at the level of moral theory we should assess actions only by reference to their (actual or assumed) productive role. This counterattack fails for more than one reason. Notice its false and question-begging assumption that assessments of agency can only be clear and rational if they are consequentialist, and its psychologically and/ or sociologically incoherent proposal to split moral theory from ethical practice. Notice too the weight that it puts on the dubious claim that all agency can be assimilated to the model of the productive role – a claim which seems no more plausible than the parallel claims that all agency can be assimilated to the expressive model, or to the reactive model, or to the “pure praxis” model.3 Again – and more importantly for present purposes – notice that much of whatever force the counterattack might seem to have comes from its insistence on systematization. The attraction of the consequentialist’s approach to assessing agency is supposed to be its tidiness: the advantage of pretending that agency has only a productive role is that this pretense simplifies agency in a way that makes it amenable to consequentialist assessment. But that simplification involves the consequentialist in the mistake identified at the beginning of section ii, the mistake of rejecting one set of intuitions (in this case, about the diversity of the roles of agency) in order to entrench another set of intuitions (in this case, about the importance of producing good outcomes). And that simplification here misleads the consequentialist into all sorts of artificial problems elsewhere: the “paradox” of deontology, for example. It looks as if the best-grounded resistance to the “paradox” of deontology will come from those ethicists who reject not only the specifically consequentialist view that agency has only one role, the productive one, but also the view generic to all systematic moral theory, that schematic neatness is a virtue in ethical thought. For it is not only consequentialism that involves distorting tendencies to entrench one intuition at the Another possible counter for the consequentialist: “Sure, we can distinguish different roles for agency; but the cases where the paradox of deontology looms are those where the productive role is pre-eminent.” But that the productive role of agency is pre-eminent in these cases is exactly what deontologists dispute. So this counter too is question-begging.

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expense of another, and to systematize and tidy up our ethical life and experience: all systematic moral theories involve these tendencies. This brings me to my main focus for the rest of this essay: what Kant, the most systematic deontological theorist of all, has to say about the roles of agency. Does Kant admit the messy diversity of the roles of agency? Or does he try to tidy it up? V He does both. Translating what he actually says into the terms of my taxonomy in section ii (a translation that, I suggest, involves no impossible strain), Kant is happy to concede that agency can play all sorts of roles, productive, reactive, or whatever. But he also thinks that moral agency is characterized and defined by always playing one particular role. This we might classify as an expressive role. Agency, for Kant, counts as moral if and only if it plays the role of expressing reverence for the Moral Law: “Duty is the necessity to act out of reverence for the law” (G, 4:400).4 Because moral agency as such has this expressive role, it cannot as such play any other expressive role. That is why agency is not eo ipso moral, according to Kant, when it plays the role of expressing sympathy or other amiable emotions (G, 4:398). And because moral agency has, as such, an expressive, not a productive role, the consequences of actions are (apparently, but the texts vary on this) not just of secondary moral importance for Kant, but of no moral importance at all. (“A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes – because of its fitness for some proposed end; it is good through its willing alone – that is, good in itself” [G, 4:398].) Likewise, because moral agency has, as such, no reactive role either, Kant in the Metaphysics of Morals sees civil punishment (including, notoriously, capital punishment) fundamentally as a matter of expressing respect for the criminal, and only secondarily and for that reason as a matter of desert (MM, 6:490). Again, the same reading shows why the future rewards of good action, for Kant, are not in any sense natural consequences of those good actions, but rewards which we are rationally obliged, a priori, to believe will come to be assigned to good actions, by God, in a sort of occasionalism of desert: “It was the moral ideas that gave rise to that idea of the Divine Being that we now hold to be correct – and For abbreviations of Kant’s works, see Abbreviations at the start of this volume. This essay uses the following translations: G: H.J. Paton; MM: H.B. Nisbet; CPrR: Lewis White Beck; Critique of Pure Reason: N. Kemp Smith. Complete bibliographical information for these translations can be found in the Bibliography.

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we so regard it not because speculative reason convinces us of its correctness, but because it completely harmonizes with the moral principles of reason” (A818/B846). Again, there can for Kant be no such thing as moral agency which is Aristotelian “pure praxis.” Even when something, like violin playing or rock climbing, seems to be done purely for its own sake, Kant will insist that, insofar as the action is moral agency at all, it is really just another instance of us expressing our reverence for the Moral Law, perhaps via the subsidiary law that enjoins a certain sort of productive activity, viz., “furthering our own happiness” (G, 4:399). And so on for agency’s other roles, if it has other roles. In saying all this Kant is not opposing the consequentialist’s implausibly systematic view that moral action only has a productive role with a directly contrary view of his own, viz., that moral action has only an expressive role; that would be equally implausibly systematic. His point is more modest, and more plausible. It is that a single action can play more than one role at once. So there is nothing to stop an action which expresses reverence for the Law from also, for example, being productive of good, or expressive of something else as well as reverence for the Law, for example, of sympathy or amiable fellow-feeling; indeed there is nothing to stop an action from playing all these (and other) roles at once. But Kant does insist that this action will only be moral if, and insofar as, it expresses “reverence for the Law.” There are two problems with this more modest claim. The first is to understand what it means: Kant’s notion of acting so as to express reverence for the Law is not an everyday or familiar one. The second is that it is not clear that Kant can even make this more modest claim without committing himself to something implausibly systematic. In section ii I have already referred, albeit obliquely, to the familiar objection to Kant’s account of moral worth that, on the face of it, actions can be counted as “moral” – as morally admirable or praiseworthy – for all sorts of reasons, not just for one reason. His more modest claim appears to face that familiar objection. To see whether it really does face it, we need to clarify what Kant means by his more modest claim. VI How might an action express reverence for the Moral Law? The most obvious way, of course, is simply by observing it, and Kant exploits the ambiguities of achten/Achtung to make it obvious that this is part of what he means. But not all. The Moral Law is not just something that

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we “observe” or “respect” in the sense of keeping it, but something that we also “respect” in that we look upon it with awe. In the justly famous words of the Conclusion of the Second Critique: Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me, and the Moral Law within me. [Zwei Dinge erfüllen das Gemüt mit immer neuer und zunehmender Bewunderung und Ehrfurcht, je öfter und anhaltender sich das Nachdenken damit beschäftigt: der bestirnte Himmel über mir und das moralische Gesetz in mir.] (CPrR, 5:161)

Why should we feel reverence for morality? The answer, as Kant explains if we read on, is that the Moral Law is as much an intimation of infinity as der bestirnte Himmel. “The heavens … broaden the connection in which I stand into an unbounded magnitude of worlds,” while the Moral Law begins at my invisible self, my personality, and exhibits me in a world which has true infinity but which is comprehensible only to the understanding  – a world with which I recognize myself as existing in a universal and necessary … ­connection. (CPrR, 5:162)

A difference between the starry heavens above and the Moral Law within is that reflection on the starry heavens makes us aware of our smallness, whereas reflection on the Moral Law has the opposite effect: The former view of a countless multitude of worlds annihilates, as it were, my importance as an animal creature, which must give back to the planet (a mere speck in the universe) the matter from which it came, the matter which is for a little time provided with vital force, we know not how. The latter, on the contrary, infinitely raises my worth as that of an intelligence by my personality, in which the moral law reveals a life independent of all animality and even of the whole world of sense. (CPrR, 5:162)

The awe we rightly feel at “the heavens above” is our awe that life is so much as possible in such a dauntingly vast and remorselessly physical place as the cosmos. The awe we rightly feel at the Moral Law is our awe that practical reason is so much as possible in a world of animal passions and brute instincts. The fact that it is possible is, as Kant repeatedly argues, the same thing as another fact that rightly inspires awe, the fact that free will is possible: Since the material of the practical law, i.e. an object of the maxim, cannot be given except empirically, and since a free will must be independent of all empirical conditions (i.e. those belonging to the world of sense) and yet be determinable, a free will must find its ground of determination in the law, but independently of the material of the law. But besides the [material] there

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is nothing in a law except the legislative form. Therefore the legislative form, insofar as it is contained in the maxim, is the only thing which can constitute a determining ground of the will. Thus freedom and unconditional practical law reciprocally imply each other. (CPrR, 5:29)

In turn the fact that free will is possible is (or at least implies) the fact that a human is not just an “empirical” being (homo phaenomenon) but also a “supersensible” being (homo noumenon): [We conceive] man in one sense and relationship when we call him free and in another when we consider him, as a part of nature, to be subject to nature’s laws … man puts himself into another order of things, and into relation with determining causes of quite another sort, when he conceives himself as intelligence endowed with a will and consequently with causality, than he does when he perceives himself as a phenomenon in the sensible world (which he actually is as well) and subjects his causality to external determination in accordance with laws of nature. (G, 4:115–16; cf. CPrR, 5:43: “The morally good … is something which, with respect to its object, is supersensuous.”)

Again, this fact that persons are in their deepest nature supersensible is the same thing as, or at least implies, the fact that persons are ends in themselves, and must be respected as such. In other words, it leads us to the necessity for moral constraints: In the idea of a will which is absolutely good – good without any qualifying condition (namely, that it should attain this or that end) – there must be complete abstraction from every end that has to be produced (as something which would make every will only relatively good). Hence the end must here be conceived, not as an end to be produced, but as a self-existent end. It must therefore be conceived only negatively – that is, as an end against which we should never act, and consequently as one which in all our willing we must never rate merely as a means, but also at the same time as an end. (G, 4:437)

This is what we are expressing reverence for when we act morally, and by acting morally. In moral action, what motivates us is reverence for this: the astonishing, the almost miraculous, fact that universal practical reason itself can be present in mortal biological animals like us, considered – as we necessarily do consider ourselves when we reflect clearly on our own natures – as “super-empirical” rational persons. It is this universal practical reason in us, and nothing else, that makes free will possible. It is also universal practical reason that gives its structure and system to the positive and negative requirements of a true morality – requirements that, as the Groundwork argues at length, we can come to understand just by reflecting on the nature of obligation. Ought, as he could not have put it, implies Kant.

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“Almost miraculous,” I said; but perhaps I could have dispensed with the “almost.” In the first Critique Kant himself famously sees an antinomy between free will and determinism, and sets up the relation between his two worlds, phenomenal and noumenal, as a philosophical problem to which his only solution is (very roughly) to argue that we are rationally obliged to believe that there is a solution. In a closed and deterministic causal system such as Kant takes the (phenomenal) world to be, the presence of pure practical reason as a causal power motivating the Kantian individual is a kind of miracle. It is as inexplicable and mysterious as the presence in the world – in the other moral system which Kant knew most intimately – of the Holy Spirit, or divine grace, as a causal power motivating the Lutheran believer. The believer, or the Kantian, sees that he must affirm the possibility that this external grace, divine or rational, can and does operate in the world – somehow. The unbeliever (in Lutheranism or in Kantianism) finds the very idea of such an intervention from outside a philosophical offence, a “stone of stumbling.” “The concept of freedom is the stumbling block of all empiricists but the key to the most sublime practical principles for critical moralists” (CPrR, 5:7):  here Kant is using a phrase from Luther’s Bible, der Stein des Anstosses.5 The Lutheran believer confronts a “disenchanted” world of cold mechanical forces with the resources of a mysterious grace from above which alone can set him on the path of freedom and rationality; so, mutatis mutandis, does the Kantian. The Lutheran, following St. Paul, sees the believer as someone with a double identity  – someone who remains a sinner in a world of sin, but is also a new creation, “alive in Christ” (2 Cor. 5.17); for Kant, too, as we have already seen, the agent has a double identity, both homo phaenomenon and homo noumenon. Kantianism and Lutheranism alike are deeply dualistic systems (as, famously, is Barth’s “neo-orthodox” theology, the most sophisticated philosophical-theological system with a clear derivation from both of them). For them there is nothing to be said for the mundus sensibilis, nature, the flesh, except that it is utterly wretched, steeped in (one sort or another of) original sin, and that it needs to be rescued by resources that it can never provide for itself but which come from 1 Pet. 2.7–8: “Euch nun, die ihr glaubet, ist er köstlich; den Ungläubigen aber ist der Stein, der die Bauleute verworfen haben, der zum Eckstein geworden ist, ein Stein des Anstosses und ein Fels des Ärgernisses; denn sie stossen sich an dem Wort und glauben nicht daran, wozu sie auch gesetzt sind.” Compare Ps. 118.42; Is. 8.14; Rom. 9.33; Lk. 2.34. I am grateful to Jens Timmermann (who disagrees with my analysis) for discussion of der Stein des Anstosses.

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somewhere radically outside it, from the mundus intelligibilis. And this, incidentally, is why, to come back to the question that I started section vi with, the Kantian and Lutheran both act out of reverence: the Kantian out of reverence for the Moral Law that actuates every person of good will, the Lutheran out of reverence for the divine grace that he sees at work in himself and other believers. In all these ways and others, Kant’s doctrine of pure practical reason fits the template of a secularized Lutheran doctrine of grace pretty well exactly. Such architectonic parallels no doubt increased the intuitive appeal of Kant’s moral system to his contemporaries, since virtually all of them, like him, were at least brought up in Lutheranism. But as anti-intuitionists are always eager to remind us, intuitions are cultural products, and our philosophical culture is very different from eighteenth-century Prussia. Secularized philosophers today might want to “clean up” Kant’s moral system by re-presenting it without the structural parallel with Lutheranism, indeed without the whole “two-worlds” structure that unites Kant’s moral theory with the rest of his philosophy. Strikingly, this cannot be done. One reason why not concerns the following (arguably the central) move in Kant’s moral theory:6 Anyone at all, no matter what else he pursues, must value the possibility of pursuit – the capacity to act. SO Anyone at all, no matter what else he pursues, has reason to protect and promote the capacity to act.

This move, we might say, is a misstep. What the premise gives anyone at all a reason to protect and promote is not the capacity to act; it is merely his own capacity to act. It does not give him a reason to protect and promote the capacity for action or agency in anyone else. And, obviously enough, the objective of promoting my agency can conflict with the objective of promoting your agency – the more I help you, the fewer resources I will have for helping myself. Thinking about it this way, it is hard to see how Kant’s transcendental appeal to the importance of agency gives us any basis at all for anything more than a hardheaded egoism. But, of course, the point is that Kant does not want us to think about agency in this individualistic way. Rather, he wants us to see agency as the same thing in anyone: that is, he wants the reasoning that individual agents do to be reasoning from the “everyman” standpoint,   In this discussion I draw on Chappell (2009), ch. 10.

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the standpoint of the noumenal, not the phenomenal, self. From that standpoint, there is no distinction to be made between “the capacity to act” and “my own capacity to act.” And so the argument represented above goes through, provided we do the reasoning from the “everyman” stance of the noumenal self, but not otherwise. This is one reason why we cannot hope to present a “cleaned-up” Kant, whose moral system avoids metaphysical extravagances like the two-self theory, without losing crucial working parts of his system. Something similar happens when we return to my question at the end of section iv: the question whether Kant’s rationale for deontological constraints is just the simple thought that I have used to block the “paradox” of deontology, viz., that rational agency can perfectly well have other roles besides the productive role that the consequentialist needs to insist is agency’s only role in order to get the “paradox” going in the first place. The answer to that question, as we can now see, is that Kant clearly has the simple thought. But he has other, more complicated, thoughts as well, and he thinks these are better. In the last quotation in section vi above (from G, 4:437), we apparently see him arguing thus: (1) A relatively good will is good because of the end that it will attain; an absolutely good will is good in “complete abstraction from every end that has to be produced.” (2) So an absolutely good will must be conceived as a self-existent end. (3) So an absolutely good will must be conceived only negatively. (4) That is, an absolutely good will must be conceived as an end against which we should never act. (5) That is, an absolutely good will must be conceived as one which in all our willing we must never rate merely as a means, but also at the same time as an end. Clearly this is an argument for constraints; equally clearly, it is different from the simple thought that I have defended, about the diversity of the roles of agency, which can be used to argue that respecting constraints is a necessary part of certain kinds of expressive activity. Kant’s thought is that we are bound to see agency as valuable in itself, not because of what it produces. Just because we are to choose it, not its products, we cannot evaluate it by reference to its products. But since we have no positive idea of it apart from its products, we can only respond to it in a negative way – an “avoiding” way. That is, we should regard each will or locus of agency that we encounter through our own agency as a limit on that agency, something that sets a boundary to the field or scope of our agency, rather

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than something that we can incorporate directly into our practical planning as a means to some other end. There may be a good argument to be mined from this train of thought, but if so, it is not immediately obvious. (The representation I have just given it is the best that I, at any rate, can honestly manage.) What is obvious is the complexity of Kant’s argument here, and the prima facie serious objections that it faces. Why, for instance, should our lack of a positive idea of the absolutely good will imply that we can respond only negatively to it? What is also obvious is the involvement of this argument with Kant’s wider system. The distinction between the will and its products, for example, is precisely a distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal levels, and that fact about it would be crucial to any sustained attempt to make real sense of this argument.7 Anti-consequentialists who, like me, are not wedded to Kant’s system will see no need to make such an attempt anyway. (Not at least in defense of the reality of constraints – of course we might do it out of interest in Kant’s thought.) For them, the success of our efforts to defend the reality of constraints from challenges like the “paradox” of deontology will not depend on whether we can make sense of Kant’s argument here. It will depend solely on the simple thought that agency has more roles than the productive one. As I say, Kant has this thought, but wants to provide something deeper and more integral to his theoretical system. What I suspect Kant would really like to do is establish tight logical relations between all of his various philosophical and moral views. For him as for other moral systematicians, ideally our choices would be the whole system or nothing. Faced with that choice, I suspect most of us are bound to choose nothing. As indeed with other moral systems, there are just too many Steine des Anstosses in Kant’s system for it to be acceptable en bloc. Intuitively, when we deal with any moral theory, we are likely to think it best to pick and choose “the good bits” out of their theoretical setting – to say that, for example, Kantianism or utilitarianism is good at dealing with this issue, but less convincing on that one, to say, in short, that we are happy to use moral theories as aids for framing some problems, but do not wish to be obliged to adopt any one theory as our lens for seeing every problem. But that, of course, is precisely what systematic moral theorists want to oblige us to do. So if it must be all or nothing, it will have to be nothing. For recent agreement (from a card-carrying Kantian) that Kant’s ethics is essentially dualistic, see Timmermann (2009).

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In the specific case of Kantianism, if forced to choose between accepting it and rejecting it en bloc, we might choose rejection because we disagree with the aforementioned counterintuitive thesis about moral worth that it forces on us. Or we might reject it simply because we don’t think we need it for our purposes – that is, because it is at best no help, and possibly a positive hindrance, in dealing with the “paradox” of deontology. Or we might reject it because we simply don’t think that the “everyman standpoint,” the noumenal self, is a good standpoint from which to do ethics. This is one of Bernard Williams’s reasons: Practical deliberation is in every case first-personal, and the first person is not derivative or naturally replaced by anyone … The I that stands back in rational reflection from my desires is still the I that has those desires and will, empirically and concretely, act; and it is not, simply by standing back in reflection, converted into a being whose fundamental interest lies in the harmony of all interests. It cannot, just by taking this step, acquire the motivations of justice. (Williams 1985: 69)

Or again – though this would be a longer and more complex campaign of anti-theory argument – we might reject Kantianism because we simply do not buy its harsh dualism. A philosophical or ethical outlook which did not insist, as Kant does, on the fundamental impregnability of causal determinism and of epistemological skepticism alike might have a number of advantages that Kant cannot duplicate. It might, for example, be able to delineate a more united agent than Kant’s two-selves view implies. It might be less pessimistic about our prospects for doing science and causal explanation without marginalizing the possibility of agency. And it might have more time for the idea that there is value to be found in the mundus sensibilis, and so that things other than the good will might be basic sources of moral worth; it might also be content with the simple response to the “paradox” of deontology that I have sketched. Such a view in ethics – perhaps, for instance, a broadly Aristotelian, Thomist, or virtue-ethical view of the kind that Luther, Kant, and Barth alike will all despise for its worldly complacency and lack of radicalism – would no doubt lack Kantianism’s or consequentialism’s rigorous systematic purity. But that might be a price worth paying in exchange for, for instance, plausibility.

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Index

abstract principles, 11–12, 37 Achilles, 215–16, 218, 221, 233 action guidance, 38, 39, 46, 54–57, 92–93 Agamemnon, 215–16 agape, 242 ancient ethics, 116, 169, 191 as an ethics of ideals, 82–84 ancient philosophy, 16–17 hierarchy in, 90–91 Anderson, Elizabeth, 277 anger, 215–40 moral, 216–17 vengeful, 215–16 Anglo-American philosophy, 15–17, 242 Anglophone philosophy, 58 animal, 269, 283 anger as, 233 in Kant, 153, 180, 181, 186–87, 243 Anscombe, Elizabeth, 51, 116, 146, 148 Anscombe, G.E.M. “Modern Moral Philosophy,” 15 anti-codifiability, 39–50, 92 appraisal theory, 219–21 Aristotle, 12, 38, 59, 67–68, 71, 75, 90–91, 92, 113, 116, 133–41, 203–05, 223, 258, 265 and absolute prohibitions, 39–40 and actualization, 135–36 and anger, 217–21, 228, 239 and anger responsive to reason, 220–21 and the appetitive, 184 compared to Kant, 81–84, 145–46, 168–71, 175, 184, 194–97 and the completion of activity, 133–35, 167 and continence, see virtue: and continence doctrine of the mean, 55–56, 195, 197 and ethical eudaimonism, 133, 164–71 ethics of, 34 and the fine (or noble), 44–45, 49, 64 generalist v. particularist debate regarding, 46–53 and happiness, 143, 196–97

and his perfectionism, 196–97, 204 hos epi to polu in, 40–41 and the important, 44–45, 49 and Ludwig Wittgenstein, 52–53 Metaphysics, 134 and the necessary, 44–45, 49 Nicomachean Ethics, 83, 134, 136–38, 167, 196–97 on friendship, 17 and pathê, 218 and pleasurable activity, 135–40 and pure praxis, 275, 279, 281 ranking rules in, 44–45, 50 and rationality, 184 Rhetoric, 218 and the wicked, 40, 42, 45, 51, 56 Astyages, 231 autonomy, see Kant, Immanuel: and autonomy rational, 91 Baier, Annette, 11 Baron, Marcia, 60, 90, 242–43, 252 Barth, Karl, 284, 288 Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb, 83, 158, 196 beneficence, 29, 185–87, 241, 243, 245, 252–53, 258 benevolence, 187, 248–52, 258, 267, 276 as beneficence, 251 as gratitude, 251 as sympathy, 251 berserking, 221 Bible, 233–34, 255–56 Bijeh, Mohammad, 215 Bosnia and Herzegovina, 220–21 Bostock, David, 134 boulesis, 89 Burnyeat, Miles, 140–41 Caligula, 221 casuistry in Kant, 79, 95

302

Index categorical imperative, 16, 68, 95, 98, 102, 117, 144, 246, 262 and autonomy, 156–57 equivalence of its formulations, 101 as related to love, 246 as related to respect, 246 character, 15, 17, 33 in ethics, 10 in Kant, 10, 35–36 of activity, 139–41 Christian ideal, 82, 85, see also Kant, Immanuel: and the Christian tradition of holiness, 85 Chrysippus, 225 Cicero, 203, 235 Tusculans, 232 classics in philosophy interpretation, 16 cognition, see Kant, Immanuel: and cognition consequentialism, 200–01, 266, 272, see utilitarianism and intuitions, 273 and moral agency, 281 versus deontology, 20 contemporary ethical theory, 54 diversity of views regarding, 11–14 emphasis on reason in, 13 failures in, 11–12 feminist critique of, 13–14 and overemphasis on the moral, 12 virtue ethicist critique of, 11–13 cosmopolitanism, 14, 239 Crusius, Christian, 83, 207 cultural relativism, 48 Cumberland, Richard, 83 Cummiskey, David, 264 Cynic ideal (of Diogenes and Antisthenes), 82 Cynics, 239 Diogenes, 239 de La Mettrie, Julien Offray, 83 de Montaigne, Michel, 83, 207 deontology and consequentialist opposition, 261–63 and emotion, 266–67 and empathy, 267–70 and inviolability, 264, 271 justification of, 261–70 meaning of, 20–21, 260–61 paradox of, 271–72, 273, 275–76, 278, 279–80, 286–87, 288 and perspectival immediacy, 267–69 determinism, 284 dialectical activity, 123–46

303

Don Quixote, 140 duty, see Kantian ethics: duties in; see also Kant, Immanuel: and duties of right, and duties of virtue, and other-regarding duties, and self-regarding duties empathy, 267–70 and partiality, 267–69 energeia and dialectical activity, 133–41 Engstrom, Stephen, 174 enkratic, 139 Enlightenment, 87, 91, 174 Epicurean ideal, 82 Epicureans, 16–17 Epicurus, 71, 83, 207 ergon, 135 ethical rightness in Kant’s ethics, 31–32 ethics decision procedure in, 16, 38 and dialectical activity, 141–46 distortion of, 36–37 history of, 15, 17, 33 and intuitions, 262, 270, 272–75 as theory-driven, 26 ethics of care, 9, 14, 267 and empathy, 267–70 ethics of ideals, 82–84, 87–88, 91, 170 eudaimonia, 45, 133, 165–66, 168, 237, 265, see also Aristotle: and ethical eudaimonism; Kant, Immanuel: and ethical eudaimonism eupatheiai, 238 eupraxia, 45 Exodus, the Book of, 233–34 feminism, 13–15 Finnis, John, 278 flourishing, 12, 31, 66, 94, see also eudaimonia, see also virtue: and flourishing in Aristotle, 167–68, 189 in Kant, 164–93 as unattainable, 177–78 Foot, Philippa, 27 “Utilitarianism and the Virtues,” 276 forgiveness, 241, 245, see also Kant, Immanuel: on self-love and forgiveness Frankena, William K., 253 free will, 170, 195, 201, 204, 282–83, 284 Freeman, Samuel, 20 Freud, Sigmund, 226 friendship, 11, 14–17, 95, 139, 244, 253, 258, see also Aristotle: on friendship Fundanus, 221

304

Index

Galatians, the Book of, 256 gender and inherent difference, 13 gendered division of labor, 15 good life in Kant’s ethics, 31 gratitude, 245 Grisez, Germain, 278 Guyer, Paul, 249 Hapagus, 231 happiness, 18, 66, see also flourishing hedonism, 204 Hegel, G. W. F., 12, 35 Hellenistic philosophical schools, 17, 221 Hélvetius, Claude-Adrien, 83, 207 Herman, Barbara, 249 The Practice of Moral Judgment, 35 Herodotus, 231 Hill, Jr., Thomas E., 170 Hobbes, Thomas, 83, 207 Hoffman, Martin, 267 Homer The Iliad, 215–16 Hume, David, 10, 12, 18, 33, 62, 69, 266–68 A Treatise of Human Nature, 268 and contagion, 267 and Humean ethics, 75 and natural sentiments, 266 Hursthouse, Rosalind, 9, 19–20, 21–23, 33–34, 58, 66, 148, 265–66 “Normative Virtue Ethics,” 24 “Virtue Theory and Abortion,” 265 On Virtue Ethics, 18–19, 265 Hutcheson, Francis, 62, 83, 207 inclination, see volition: and inclination in Kant and Aristotle, see volition: and inclination informed consent, 54 integrity, 16 intuitionism, 68 Irwin, T. H., 41–43, 47, 53, 55, 165 James, William, 219 Kagan, Shelly, 266 Kamm, Frances, 264, 277 Kant, Immanuel and accidents, 160–61 and his account of ends, 95–96, 171–72, 193 and affects, 73–74, 153, 182, 258 agent orientation in, 58–61 and agent-based theory, 62–67

and agent-focused ethics, 67–68 and anger, 217–18, 235–40 and anthrophobia, 250, 257 and arbitrium brutum, 153–54 and arbitrium purum, 154, 161 and arbitrium sensitivum, 153–54, 161 and Aristotle, see Aristotle: compared to Kant and autonomy, 169, 202, 203, 209–10, 213, 243 “Canon of Pure Reason,” 206 and the capacity to choose, see Kant, Immanuel: and choice categorization of, 58–61 causae impulsivae, 151–52 and choice, 153–55, 156–57, 159, 177, 195, 208, 209, 210, see also Kant, Immanuel: and arbitrium brutum, and arbitrium purum, and arbitrium sensitivum and the Christian tradition, 254, 255 and cognition, 149–52, 155, 160, 162, 206 compared to Aristotle, see Aristotle: compared to Kant and the corruption of humans, 77–78, 87–89, 161–62, 170, 184 co-willed, 110 Critique of Judgment, 149, 191 Critique of Practical Reason, 33, 59, 112, 149, 157–58, 174, 191, 282 Critique of Pure Reason, 149, 159, 191, 284 Critique of the Power of Judgment, 149, 213 and custom, 170 and defective reasoning, 112–13 and desire, 149, 154, 155, 157–59, 160, 162 and desire and aversion, 151, see also Kant, Immanuel: and desire and his doctrine of duties, see Kantian ethics: duties in “Doctrine of Virtue,” 95, 182, 211, 240, 242, 249 and duties, see Kantian ethics: duties in and duties of right, 178–79, 243 and duties of virtue, 178–79, 243 and emotion, 179, 182–84, 225–26, 235–36, see also Kant, Immanuel: and desire, and the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, and harmony between reason and emotion and emotion that is moral, 151, 152, 160–61, 183 and emotion that is pathological, 151, 152–53, 155, 160–61, 183–84 and ethical eudaimonism, 168–71, 190 and an ethics of principles, 88, 170, 174 and faculties, 148–52, 160–61

Index and the faculty of cognition, see Kant, Immanuel: and cognition and the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, 149, 151, 157–59, 160, 162 formula of humanity, 96, 97, 109–11, 179, 211, 237–38, 242, 263–64, 271–72 formula of the law of nature, 59 formula of universal law, 59, 96, 98, 179, 262–63 and free will, see free will and the good disposition, 60–61 and the good will, 59, 60–61, 78, 84, 190, 194, 280, 286–87 Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals, 147–63, see alternative title Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 33, 59, 69, 79, 95, 96, 98–109, 111–12, 117, 183, 194, 208, 283 and the grudging moralist, 257 and habit, 70, 72 and happiness, 29–30, 79, 169–70, 172–78, 184–88, 213, 243 and happiness as universal, 174, 178, 211 and harmony between reason and emotion, 184 and heteronomy, 169 and the highest good, 171–75, 179, 187–92, 203 and his perfectionism, 161–62, 179–82, 205–14 and holiness, 176 and the human soul, 155 and humility, 256, 259 and incentives, 154 Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality, 203 and love, 241–59 and maxims, 16, 59, 78, 80, 94, 95, 109, 122–23, 155, 161–62, 189, 209–10, 246–47, 248–49 and metaphysics, 156, 159–61 Metaphysics of Morals, 18, 59, 79, 111–12, 156, 161, 178–90, 191, 280, see also Kant, Immanuel: “Doctrine of Virtue” and misanthropy, 250, 257 and moral agency, see moral agency: and Kant and moral education, 90 and moral judgment, 95 and moral point of view, 30 and moral psychology, 85–86 and moral self-perfection, 254 and motives, 152 and the natural dialectic, 80

305 and nature versus freedom, 72–73 and the noumenal, 147, 160, 176, 177, 210, 283, 284, 286, 287, 288 on God, 83, 84–85, 154, 176–77, 188, 200, 202, 206, 207, 212–13 on self-love and forgiveness, 254–58 On the Common Saying That May be Correct in Theory, but It Is of No Use in Practice, 211 and other-regarding duties, 185–87, 243 and passions, 153, 182, 236–37 and the phenomenal, 176, 188, 210, 283, 284, 286, 287 and physical powers, 180 and powers of mind, 180, see also Kant, Immanuel: and faculties and powers of spirit, 180, see also Kant, Immanuel: and faculties and practical judgment, 68, 78–79, 84, 112, 142, 144–46 and the practical philosopher, 81, 205 and pride, 254–56 and the principle of pure reason, 155, 205 and the products of pure reason, 155, 206 Prolegomena, 149 and pure intelligence, 154 and pure practical reason, 171–75 and purity of disposition, 60–61, 187–88 and radical evil, 77, 85, 89, 184, 201 and rational equality, 85–86, 171, 192 and rational nature as an end in itself, 96, 97–109 and rational self-love, 187, 255, see also Kant, Immanuel: on self-love and forgiveness Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, 181, 211, see alternative title Religion Within the Bounds of Mere Reason, 156 and respect, 151, 152, 155, 159, 241–47 and reverence for a person, 246 and reverence for the moral law, 168–69, 173, 281–83 and selfishness, 250, 257 and self-regarding duties, 179–85, 243 and self-representation, 102–09, 283 and Seneca, 235 and sensible desires, 152, 159–61 and sensible intuition, 206 and stimuli (or impulses), 152–53 and subjective principles, 102–03 and substances, 160–61 and threats to dignity, 237–39, 243 “Transcendental Dialectic,” 206 and the universal principle of right, 178 and virtue, 68, 113, see also virtue: in Kant

306

Index

Kant, Immanuel (cont.) volition in, 60 and W. D. Ross, 21 and the wicked, 89 and the will, 112, 129, see also Kant, Immanuel: and choice, cognition, volition, Willkür and Willkür, 70, 153, 154, 155 and wisdom, 68, 80–81, 84 Wolff, relation to Kant, 201, 203 Kantian ethics and its acceptance or rejection, 288 clarity regarding, 95 compatibility with virtue ethics, 27–34, 59–60, 92–95, 114–15, 150 contrasted with virtue ethics, 97, 113–14, 254 distortion of, 58, 95, 148–50, 155–56, 241 duties in, 59, 63, 96–97, 113, 175, 178–90, 200, 241, 244–45, 254 and its emphasis on moral action, 147 and its emphasis on reason, 58 as an ethics of principles, see Kant, Immanuel: and an ethics of principles and intuitions, 273 neglect of love in, 241 overemphasis on the moral, 12 rational principles in, 98 and rightness of actions, 10, 58, 68, 75 and the subject matter of morality, 111 and its systematicity, 287–88 and tension with virtue ethics, 22–24, 32, 194–95, 205, 241 and wrongness in acting, 110–11 kinesis, 133 Klein, Melanie, 234 Kraut, Richard, 167 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 196 Leopold II of Belgium, King, 248 Louden, Robert, 38–39 love as impartial, 241–42, 245, 254, 259 as opposed to respect, 241–47 as partial, 241, 248, 258 as philanthropy, 249 as universal, particular and unconditional, 258–59 duty of, 248–49, see also benevolence incentive of, 249–50, 258 Kant, 185, 241–59 maxims regarding, 246–47 universality, particularity, and unconditionality, 247–48 Luther, Martin, see Lutheranism Lutheranism, 284–85, 288

Luther Bible, 284 lying, 52, 180, 243, 261, 266 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 27, 35, 36, 71 Mandeville, Bernard, 83, 207 Martineau, James, 61, 62, 75 Matthew, the Book of, 255–56 McDowell, John, 48 “Virtue and Reason,” 39 McNaughton, David, 276–77, 278 Mendelssohn, Moses, 196, 203–05 and maxims, 204–05 On Evidence in the Metaphysical Sciences, 203 on God, 204 on virtue, 204 meta-ethics, 25 Mill, J. S., 13, 62, 67 On Liberty, 18 Utilitarianism, 18 moral agency as expressive of the moral law, 280–83 and Kant, 68–69, 93–95, 97, 147–50, 155–59, 161–63, 181–82, 185, 188, 191, 280–83 practical rationality of, 278–80 promotion of in Kant, 285–86 roles of, 273–78, 286–87 and subjective ends, 98 moral education, 42, 49–50, 53 and virtue ethics, 88–91 moral generalism, 38–40, 47, 48–49, 54–57, 122 moral particularism, 38–39, 79, 92, 121, 278 moral philosophy, 16 “modern,” 116, see also contemporary ethical theory teachers of, 54 moral self-perfection, 254 morality appropriate demandingness of, 29–30 Moses, 233 My Lai massacre, 216–17, 233, 234 mystical ideal (of Plato), 82 natural law theory, 278 Nazi atrocities, 229, 274 neo-Aristotelianism, 27, 168 neo-orthodoxy, 284 Nero, 221 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 12, 81 Noddings, Nel Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education, 14 nous, 51 Novatus, 222 Nussbaum, Martha, 39

Index Love’s Knowledge, 41 The Therapy of Desire, 17 “Virtue Ethics: A Misleading Category?,” 36 O’Neill, Onora, 56, 251 Constructions of Reason, 35 Oedipus, 140 paternalism, 170–71, 185, 192, 244 perfectionism, 213–14, see also Kant, Immanuel: and his perfectionism; Aristotle: and his perfectionism; Wolff, Christian: his perfectionism hedonism, 204 Pettit, Philip, 90, 276, 278 philia, 51 Philosophy and Public Affairs, 16 phronesis, 38–57, 64–65, 79, 84, 139, 170, 259 Kantian analogues of, 84 phronimos, 38–57, 113, 139 habits of, 42, 47, 50, 54, 70 and intellectual perception, 51, 52 and perception, 50–53 special knowledge of, 40, 43–46 Pildes, Richard, 277 Plato, 26, 194, 223 Phaedrus, 218 Republic, 218–19 Plutarch, 222, 236 “On the Control of Anger,” 221 political philosophy, 16 practical reasoning, 38, 121 and Christian Wolff, 197–98 and dialectical activity, 123–33 excellence in, 130–32 and intentional action, 119–20 and Kant, 142, 144–46 modern view of, 118–20, 123–33 Prejean, Sister H., 253 Prichard, H. A., 11, 21 Pride, see Kant, Immanuel: and pride prudence, 30 psychotherapy, 226–27 Railton, Peter, 266 rationalism, 212, see also Baumgarten, Wolff Kant, 158–59, 206 Rawling, Piers, 276–77, 278 Rawls, John, 122, 245 on teleological theories, 20 reason and emotion, 13 hierarchy of, 13–14 reductio ad absurdum, 272, 273

307

respect, 241–47, 259 maxims regarding, 246–47 and universality, particularity, and unconditionality, 247–48 Ross, W. D., 21, 261 and prima facie duties, 50–51 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 33, 89, 237 Scanlon, Thomas, 277 Schadenfreude, 18 Schiller, Friedrich, 71 Schneewind, J. B., 91 Searle, John, 128 Seneca, 218, 225–35, 236 On Anger, 222–24 rejection of “moral” anger in, 227–35 sentimentalism, 58, 266–70, see also virtue ethics: sentimentalist Serbian conflict, 220–21 Shaftesbury, Earl of, 83, 207 Shakespeare, William, 11 Sherman, Nancy, 251 Making a Necessity of Virtue, 235 Stoic Warriors, 231 Sidgwick, Henry, 63, 156, 261 Methods of Ethics, 62 Skeptics, 16–17 Slote, Michael, 11, 27, 34, 58, 61, 62–68, 75, 90 Smedes, Lewis B. The Art of Forgiving, 257 Socrates, 194 Solti, Sir George, 274 St. Augustine of Hippo, 248 Confessions, 127 St. Paul, 284 Stocker, Michael, 16 Stoic ideal (of Zeno), 82, 87, see also Zeno Stoics, 16–17, 91, 180, 219, 238, 239 and anger, 217–18, 221–35 and emotion, 223–27 and emotions as voluntary, 223–24 and the sage, 226, 230, 235 and therapeutic reform, 232–33 Swanton, Christine, 9–10 characterization of virtue ethics, 28–34 “Constraint on Virtue,” 31 genus and species argument, 28 Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View, 27 syllogisms, 39, 46 teleology, 96, 193 the good life, see eudaimonia Thompson, Hugh, 216–17 thumos, 218–19

308

Index

utilitarianism, 10–12, 15, 17–26, 32–33, 58, 67–68, 260, 261–67, 276, 287 and moral rules, 42 tension with virtue ethics, 22–24 Velleman, David “Love as a Moral Emotion,” 245 Vigilantius, Johann Friedrich, 195 virtue in Aristotle, 69–77 and continence, 75–76 and duty, 74–75 and flourishing, 167–68, see also flourishing in Kant, 59, 69–77, 172–75, 190 as moral strength, 71, 75, 172, 181, 184, 190 plurality of, 59 and rational desire, 71 and temperament, 72–74 unity of, 49, 70, 113, 172, 194 and vice, 12, 18, 45, 48, 58 virtue ethics, 11 and action assessment, 96–97 agent-orientedness in, 96 as an alternative to ethical theory, 11 clarity regarding, 8–9, 14, 19, 22, 32–33, 36, 58, 95 contemporary revival of, 9 critique of “modern” ethics, 9–11 debate with Kantian ethics, 9, 18–19, 26, 34–37, 68, 147 debate with utilitarians, 10–11 emphasis on motivation in, 59 as an ethical theory, 11, 58 and human flourishing, 90–91 modern interpretation of, 116

as neo-Aristotelianism, 265 and practical wisdom, 92 revival of, 15, 17, 25 as a rival theory, 25–26, 33, 265 sentimentalist, 260 status of, 22 variation in, see Swanton, Christine: genus and species argument volition, 78, 99, 100–01, 172, see also Kant, Immanuel: and choice, cognition, desire, feeling of pleasure and displeasure and inclination, 74, 76–77, 100–01, 169, 173, 182–83 Wagner, Wilhelm Richard, 274 Wiggins, David, 51 Wilde, Oscar, 67 Williams, Bernard, 16, 35, 273, 288 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 12, 79 Wolff, Christian, 83, 158, 196, 207 and consequentialism, 199, 201–03 on cosmology, 200 on duties, 201–02 on God, 197, 200, 202–03, 210, 212, 213 and intellectualism, 201 and Kant, 158–59, 201, 203 and naturalism, 201 on ontology, 199 his perfectionism, 197–203 on reason, 197–201, 205 his teleology, 212 Wood, Allen, 32, 170 Zeno, 225