Duty versus inclination

And here Kant makes a very famous and basic distinction between what he calls acting from inclination
and acting from duty. Acting from inclination means doing something because you want to perform that
action, there is some personal goal you are seeking afterit makes you happy, it achieves some
advantageand therefore, you want to take it. Thats acting from inclination. Acting from duty is doing
something thats your duty because its your duty. Not because you have some ulterior motive, desire,
goal, but simply your reverence for the Categorical Imperative.

Now, it may be the case in a particular situation that your inclination and your duty point in the same
direction; it may be the case that you want to do a certain action for personal reasons, and it happens to
be the very action that your duty dictates. In such a case, says Kant, you should of course take the action;
you still have to do your duty. But you dont get any moral credit for acting correctly in that situation,
because your action is adulterated by your desire to do it.

When would you get moral credit? You action has to be not only, as he puts it, in accordance with your
duty; it has to be done from the motive of duty. Now let me read you, because he is as clear on this point
as anyone can be. Take the case of maintaining your life. Now Kant thinks that by the Categorical
Imperative you have a duty not to commit suicide. And Ill quote him now.

He says, It is a duty to maintain ones life. But in addition, everyone has also a direct inclination to do
so. In other words, they want to remain alive, they have goals they want to achieve. Continuing with
Kant, But on this account, the often anxious care which most men take for their life has no intrinsic
worth, and their maxim has no moral import. They preserve their life as duty requires, no doubt, but not
because duty requires it. Therefore, they get no moral credit. Their action is in accordance with duty,
but its not from duty.

Well, you say, when would a man get real moral credit for remaining alive. Well, Kant says, continuing
the same quote, On the other hand, if adversity and hopeless sorrow have completely taken away the
relish for life, if the unfortunate one strong in mind, indignant at his fate rather than desponding or
dejected, wishes for death, and yet preserves his life without loving out, not from inclination or fear but
from duty, then his maxim has a moral worth. You get that, thats pretty clear I think.

Now he is so thorough on this point that even on the virtue, according to him, of helping others
altruismyou can have no inclination to it. Ill quote one last passage from him on this. You have to help
others strictly as a duty. If you get any pleasure, satisfaction, etc., out of it, you lose moral credit.

To be beneficent when we can is a duty. Now, there are many minds so sympathetically constituted that
they find a pleasure in spreading joy around them, and take delight in the satisfaction of others. But I
maintain in such a case an action of this kind, however proper, however amiable it may be, has
nevertheless no true moral worth, but is simply on a level with other inclinations. For the maxim lacks
the moral import, namely that such actions be done from duty, not from inclination.
Well you say, when, for Kant, would you get credit if you sacrificed yourself and went around spreading
joy for others? Well he says, Put the case that the mind of a philanthropist were clouded by sorrow of
his own, extinguishing all sympathy with the lot of others, and that while he still has the power to benefit
others in distress, he is not touched by their trouble because he is absorbed with his own. And now
suppose that he tears himself out of this dead insensibility [thats a typical Kantian type of phrase, he
tears himself out of this dead insensibility] and performs the action without any inclination to it, simply
from duty. Then, for the first time, does his action have genuine moral worth.

Now that is as unequivocally clear as one could make it. You get credit when your inclinations point in
one direction, and your duty in the other, and you fight your inclinations, you force yourself against your
desires to do your duty. If you want to do whats right for personal reasons, you get no credit. To get
moral credit on Kants view, you have to want to do the evil and then resist temptation.

https://campus.aynrand.org/campus/globals/transcripts/immanuel-kant-and-the-ethics-of-duty