Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
PATRICK R. FRIERSON
Whitman College
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Contents
Preface page ix
i. the problem
1 The Asymmetry in Kant’s Conception of Freedom 13
2 Anthropology as an Empirical Science 31
3 The Moral Importance of Kant’s “Pragmatic” Anthropology 48
4 Moral Anthropology in Contemporary Neokantian Ethics 68
Notes 167
References 200
Index of Kant’s Works 205
Name Index 207
Subject Index 209
vii
Preface
have grown to appreciate into the theory of freedom that first drew me
to Kant.
Acknowledgments
Without the generous and perceptive criticism of Karl Ameriks, this book
would not exist. As my advisor at the University of Notre Dame, he pushed
me to refine and expand ideas that eventually made their way into this
book. Since that time, he has continued to offer suggestions for which I
am extremely grateful.
G. Felicitas Munzel, Philip Quinn, and Robert Solomon also read var-
ious drafts and provided extensive and invaluable comments. Robert
Louden was extremely generous, not only to give me an early draft of
his book, but to discuss my comments on his work in detail at an earlier
stage of this project. Natalie Brender also gave very helpful comments
on an early draft of this book. I also thank Eric Newman and my anony-
mous reviewers at Cambridge University Press. Travis Exstrom at Whitman
College provided help with the index of Kant’s works and the name index.
Samuel Fleischacker deserves a special thanks for introducing me first
to philosophy, and then to Kant, while I was an undergraduate at Williams
College.
Finally, this work is built on the support and sacrifice of family. I am
grateful to my parents for their encouragement and patience. And I thank
my wife, Katheryn, whose calls for clarity and relevance in my work cer-
tainly improved this book and made me both a better philosopher and a
better person.
Introduction
1
2 Introduction
Critique. And in the second Critique, Kant again emphasizes the asymmetry
between the free cause – the agent – and the empirical world in which
one’s agency is effective. Not only for theoretical reasons (the nature
of causation) but for moral ones (the conditions of possibility of moral
responsibility), the free agent must affect but not be affected by the world.
books and articles, has shown that Kant’s account of emotions can con-
tribute to a richer Kantian ethical theory (Sherman 1990, 1995, 1997,
and 1998). All of these developments spring from Kant’s anthropological
observations.
The attention to Kant’s anthropology in contemporary ethics is not
merely an attempt to be historically accurate. Neokantian moral theo-
rists find in Kant’s anthropology a richness of detail and attention to
human particularity that should be an important part of any moral the-
ory. The recent rise of neo-Aristotelian, Humean, and anti-theoretical
approaches to moral theory has presented serious challenges for Kantian
moral theories.11 These apparent alternatives to Kant tend to focus on
character rather than action, virtues rather than rights or duties, and take
into account a wide range of features of human psychology that Kantians
have sometimes ignored. They thus present sensitive accounts of moral
development and the role of emotions in moral motivation, and they can
seem to provide a very nuanced account of ethical life. The focus on for-
mulaic applications of the categorical imperative, and a general empha-
sis on the Groundwork in Kantian moral theory, has made some Kantians
particularly susceptible to challenges from these alternative accounts of
ethics.
Kant’s anthropology provides effective responses to many of these ob-
jections. His moral anthropology includes extensive discussions of the
importance of community and education for moral development. He
discusses and differentiates different sorts of emotions and various roles
that these can play in moral life. His moral anthropology focuses on culti-
vating a virtuous character, rather than on merely doing good deeds. And
throughout his anthropological writings, Kant discusses character, dispo-
sition, and virtue.12 Moreover, his anthropology provides detailed, even
if scattered, accounts of the particulars of human life. He analyzes the
psychology that underlies sexual temptation, gives a sophisticated treat-
ment of the role of politeness in modern life, and even provides advice
on conducting an excellent dinner party. Even when these descriptions
of human life fall short of what one might hope for, they go far beyond
the abstraction of the categorical imperative.
In the brief Epilogue, I reflect on where the debate between Kant and
Schleiermacher, and Kant’s many other critics, stands given the account
of Kant’s moral theory offered in this book. Although this book does not
show that Kant’s moral theory is the only reasonable option, it does show
that one of the most important objections to that moral theory fails. Kant
can integrate moral anthropology into his ethics without sacrificing the
account of freedom that lies at the core of his philosophy.
part i
THE PROBLEM
1
13
14 The Problem
at least shows that nothing that one knows about natural causation rules
out some sort of freedom. As he explains,
It should be noted that we have not been trying to establish the reality of
freedom. . ., [and] we have not even tried to prove the possibility of freedom . . . .
[To show] that . . . nature at least does not conflict with causality through freedom –
that was the sole thing we could accomplish, and it alone was our sole concern.
(A558/B586)
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant’s goal is simply to open a space for
freedom.
In the second stage of the argument, Kant argues for the reality of
freedom.6 In the second Critique, Kant claims it is a “fact of reason” that
people have moral obligations. Kant uses this fact “of which we become
immediately conscious” to support the reality of freedom (5:29, cf. 5:6,
31–2, 42, 47, 55, 91, and 104–5; and Rawls 2000: 253–72; Beck 1960:
166–75; Allison 1990: 230–49; and Ameriks 1981). Moreover, this moral
obligation does not depend upon any particular details about oneself.
Rather, the good concerns something that anyone ought to do in the same
situation. The moral law that underlies this obligation binds universally.
And this universality is not merely contingent. Obligation is not due to
some feature that agents happen to have in common such that if particular
persons came to lack this shared characteristic they could be excused from
morality. Moral obligation is both universal and necessary. From these
general features of moral obligation, Kant argues in the Groundwork that
the moral law that underlies obligation must have nothing to do with any
particular or contingent content or context of choices but with the form of
morally acceptable choice.7 Because whether or not a choice is permitted
does not depend on the particular empirical influences in the context of
which the choice is made, the way in which one is obligated to act is not
determined by natural causes in the world. And yet, to be obligated, it must
be possible to act in the way required. But then one must be free in the
sense that one can act in a way that is not causally determined by empirical
influences alone. Because the moral law requires action on a basis distinct
from natural causes, and because transcendental idealism allows freedom
beyond natural causes, it must be possible to act on such a basis whenever
the moral law is applicable. When morality is at stake, then, one is free
in the sense that one’s actions need not have their ultimate ground in
natural causes but can be chosen freely in accordance with a universal
moral law.8
16 The Problem
The deliberating agent, employing reason practically, views the world as it were
from a noumenal standpoint. . . . The theorizing spectator, on the other hand,
views the world as phenomena, mechanistic and fully determined. The interests
of morality demand a different conceptual organization of the world than those
of theoretical explanation (MM 217; 221; 225). Both interests are rational and
legitimate. (Korsgaard 1996a: 173)
Theoretical reason has two legitimate interests: one is the positive interest in
regulating the understanding and unifying into the highest possible systematic
unity the low-level empirical knowledge it provides; the other is the negative
interest in restricting speculative folly. (Rawls 2000: 324)
the priority of this new perspective to its own, theoretical reason can hold
open the possibility of satisfying its own demands. Thus Kant suggests
in the first Critique that “the architectonic interest of reason” provides
a speculative recommendation for the thesis of freedom, because with-
out it, “a complete edifice of [empirical] knowledge is . . . altogether
impossible” (A474–5/B502–3). And in the second Critique, Kant reminds
his readers that the transcendental freedom for which he argues on the
basis of the fact of the moral law is the unconditioned ground that “spec-
ulative reason needed” (5:3, see also 5:7, 48–9, 107, 120). This implies
that the structure of the two points of view involves an asymmetry between
points of view.
In “What Is Orientation in Thinking” – published just after the Ground-
work and before the second edition of the first Critique – Kant offers an
extended account of this sort of “need which reason imposes on itself ”
(8:136). Kant suggests that the “need of reason can be regarded as twofold
in character: firstly, it has a theoretical use, and secondly, a practical use”
(8:139). In this essay, Kant is particularly interested in the need of reason
to posit God, but the need of theoretical reason to posit God has a parallel
in reason’s need for a unconditioned free cause in the first Critique. Kant
suggests that the need of reason to posit something unconditioned as a
means of “orientating ourselves in thought” can give a “subjective ground
for presupposing and accepting something which [theoretical] reason
cannot presume to know on objective grounds . . . purely by means of
the need of reason itself ” (8:137). Kant is careful, later in the essay, to
point out that this subjective ground is merely conditional and thus does
not provide the kind of justified belief that is provided by the postulates
of practical reason in the second Critique. That is, whereas theoretical
reason requires positing God or freedom only “if we wish to pass judgment
on the first causes of all contingent things,” practical reason compels us
“to assume that God exists . . . because we must pass judgment ” in practical
matters (8:139). As a result, insofar as freedom is established as a condi-
tion of moral responsibility, it justifies a “conviction of truth [that] is not
inferior in any degree to [empirical] knowledge . . . even if it is totally
different from it in kind” (8:141). Because of its “need” for completeness
in empirical investigation, theoretical reason itself points to a perspective
that it cannot justify or characterize. Moreover, for this other perspective
to satisfy the need of theoretical reason, it must provide an explanation
that conditions but is not conditioned by what is described empirically.
In the second Critique, Kant nicely summarizes both the range and lim-
its of this demand on the part of theoretical reason. He there explains
Asymmetry in Kant’s Conception of Freedom 21
what could be said on the basis of theoretical reason alone, in the first
Critique, about the relationship between the theoretical and practical
perspectives:
We could defend the thought of a freely acting cause. . . . On the one side, in the
explanation of events in the world and so too of the actions of a rational being, I
grant the mechanism of natural necessity . . ., while on the other side I keep open
for speculative reason the place which for it is vacant, namely the intelligible. . . .
(5:49)
Theoretical reason has a need for and holds open a vacant space for
freedom. And this vacant space, as described by theoretical reason,
must be a perspective that is “causally” prior to the theoretical space
the need of which it satisfies. Whatever perspective fills that vacant
space must be considered, even by theoretical reason, to provide the
ultimate explanation that empirical investigation, because the forms
of intuition condition it, can never provide. Theoretical reason holds
open the possibility13 that the ultimate explanation of actions is beyond
the conditions of possibility of experience because only on this sort of
foundation can it hope for that “complete edifice of knowledge” which
is the regulative ideal of empirical investigation. What theoretical reason
can not do, however, is “realize this thought” – that is, show that there
actually is another legitimate perspective on the actions of a rational
being. “Pure practical reason now fills this vacant place” (5:49).14
At the abstract level of theoretical reason’s need, the perspective that
theoretical reason privileges is any perspective from which freedom can
be justified, not particularly the practical one. There is a space left open,
from within the perspective of theoretical reason, for a perspective that
satisfies theoretical reason’s interest in systematic completeness. But this
new perspective can play this role only by being more fundamental than
the theoretical perspective itself. Once the practical perspective provides
a basis for freedom, it satisfies the demand raised within the theoretical
perspective and is considered, from that theoretical perspective, to have
priority.15
From the practical standpoint, one also considers the status of the em-
pirical. An agent is interested in evaluating actions or volitions that occur
in the realm of experience. This is true for both moral evaluation and
moral deliberation. When one evaluates oneself or another, one evalu-
ates an action or a volition that is experienced. Only insofar as a volition
enters the realm of experience16 can it be an object of evaluation, but if
a volition is considered as experienced, it must be considered according
22 The Problem
to the perspective of empirical investigation. This does not mean that the
empirical perspective is the proper perspective for moral evaluation; it
clearly is not. But when we evaluate something, the perspective of empir-
ical investigation is at hand. We can privilege the moral perspective for
the purpose of evaluation only because we consider the moral perspective
more fundamental than the empirical one. The self considered as free is
the ultimate ground of what is observable, and not vice versa.
In the case of moral deliberation, the relationship between the em-
pirical and practical perspectives also arises. When one deliberates, one
deliberates about what to do. The decision that I make is a decision that
is a possible object of empirical investigation. What is more, and this is
crucial, I care about the decision insofar as it is an object of possible
empirical investigation. My choice has weight for me because it will have
effects in the world. This does not mean that all I care about is results. It
is crucial for Kant that morality not be based on consequences. But what I
care about is an actual decision, a decision that enters the series of causes
in experience. As Kant explains in the Critique of Practical Reason, “this
[moral] law is to furnish the sensible world . . . with the form of . . . a super-
sensible nature “(5:43, emphasis added). What I deliberate about from
the practical perspective is what I will choose to do, where this choice and
the action that proceeds from it are possible objects of empirical investi-
gation. Thus it makes all the difference in the world, from the practical
perspective, that this choice can be thought of from an empirical perspec-
tive. But it also makes all the difference in the world that the practical
perspective, according to which I am free, is more fundamental than this
empirical perspective. In deliberating I take my choice understood from
a practical perspective to be the real ground of that choice understood
from an empirical perspective, and not vice versa. Thus from both the
theoretical and the practical perspectives, the practical is considered more
fundamental than the theoretical.
Even if one does not accept in general that the theoretical standpoint
must be prior to the practical, the practical perspective has priority over
the theoretical in the arena of moral anthropology. As we will see, moral
anthropology involves empirical insights about human beings that are
put to practical use in cultivating moral character. The person putting the
insights to use must be considered from a practical perspective because he
or she is acting, and the one in whom moral character is cultivated must
be considered from a practical perspective because what is cultivated is
moral character. And within the practical perspective itself, the practical
Asymmetry in Kant’s Conception of Freedom 23
certainly has priority over the empirical. Thus even if the priority of the
practical is not maintained in general, it must be affirmed in precisely the
context in which it poses problems for Kant’s anthropology.
3. Incompatibilist Freedom
The belief in the priority of freedom precludes any straightforward
compatibilism. Like compatibilists, Kant holds that human actions are
both causally predetermined and free. But unlike most compatibilists –
so-called “soft determinists” – Kant insists that the free cause of one’s
actions cannot be predetermined. Whereas soft determinists interpret
“freedom” in such a way that a free cause can be determined by prior nat-
ural causes, Kant affirms that people are free causes of their actions, and
that those actions are determined by an infinite series of natural causes,
but also that a free cause cannot itself be causally determined. In this
sense, Allen Wood’s description of Kant’s position as a “compatibilism
between compatibilism and incompatibilism” is apt (Wood 1984). Kant
is adamant about the insufficiency of standard compatibilist accounts of
freedom as grounds for moral imputation.18 He is able to avoid these
standard accounts and the problems with them because of his belief in
the priority of freedom over natural causation.
In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant clearly expresses his dissatisfac-
tion with “soft determinist” accounts of freedom. If such an account were
true, Kant says,
Freedom that has its ultimate cause in anything else, whether this is a
natural world or divine Creator, is not real freedom but “mere delusion.”19
And this soft determinist freedom is simply not enough to provide a
condition of the possibility of moral responsibility, as Kant makes clear
elsewhere in the second Critique:
It is a wretched subterfuge to . . . say . . . that the kind of determining grounds of
[man’s] causality in accordance with natural law agrees with a comparative concept
of freedom . . ., e.g., that which a projectile accomplishes when it is in free motion,
in which case one uses the word “freedom” because while it is in flight it is not
impelled from without. (5:96)
A few sentences later, Kant explains why he believes that this compatibilist
solution is unacceptable:
They therefore leave no transcendental freedom, which must be thought as inde-
pendence from everything empirical and so from nature generally . . .; without
this freedom . . ., which alone is practical a priori, no moral law is possible and
no imputation in accordance with it [is possible]. (5:97)
the means by which freedom effects change in the world. There are, of
course, numerous problems with this view.20 What is crucial here, though,
is just that this description allows Kant to hold to a peculiar kind of com-
patibilism without a soft determinist conception of freedom. Freedom
and natural causation are compatible only because free choices, totally
undetermined by anything prior to them, are themselves the grounds of
a series of actions in the natural world.
There is one problem with Kant’s account that I take up directly. Kant’s
remarks about the cultivation of character and the role that empirical
influences can have in shaping and enabling freedom might lead one
to think that his conception of freedom cannot be as absolute as this
account makes it out to be. This problem is the subject of the rest of this
book. Before turning there, however, I must make one more provisional
comment on Kant’s account of freedom.
This intelligible character can never, indeed, be immediately known, for nothing
can be perceived except in so far as it appears. It would have to be thought in
accordance with the empirical character. (A539–40/B567–8)
This theme, that the intelligible character can be known only through
its appearance, or empirical character, is reiterated throughout Kant’s
moral philosophy.
Still, Kant does insist that one can intelligibly say at least some
things about freedom. The most important of these is that freedom is
real.
In our judgments in regard to the causality of free actions, we can get as far as the
intelligible cause, but not beyond it. We can know that it is free. (A557/B585)
26 The Problem
We could [in the first Critique] defend the thought of a freely acting cause . . .
by showing that it is not self-contradictory to regard all its actions as physi-
cally conditioned insofar as they are appearances and yet also to regard their
causality as physically unconditioned insofar as the acting being is a being of the
understanding; . . . I do not cognize at all the object to which such causality [i.e.
freedom] is attributed . . . but I nevertheless remove the obstacle inasmuch as
on the one side, . . . I grant the mechanism of natural necessity . . ., while on the
other side I keep open for speculative reason the place which for it is vacant,
namely the intelligible. . . . Pure practical reason now fills this vacant place with a
determinate law of causality in an intelligible world (with freedom), namely the
moral law. (5:49)
While speculative reason can establish a “vacant space” for freedom, prac-
tical reason establishes its reality.
Although both of these passages suggest room for some knowledge of
the free self, Kant is careful, in both contexts, to limit such knowledge
to the mere fact that one is free without any understanding of how one
is free. Hence he says in the first Critique that we can get as far as the
intelligible cause – that is, its reality – but not beyond it to understanding
its nature. He goes on,
But to explain why in the given circumstances the intelligible character should
give just these appearances and this empirical character transcends all the powers
of our reason, indeed all its rights of questioning. (A557/B585)
Even the concept of causality, which has application and so too significance strictly
speaking only in reference to appearances, in order to connect them into expe-
riences (as the Critique of Pure Reason proves) is not enlarged in such a way as to
extend its use beyond the boundaries mentioned. For, if reason sought to do this
it would have to try to show how the logical relation of ground and consequence
could be used synthetically with a kind of intuition different from the sensible,
that is, how a causa noumenon is possible; this it cannot do. (5:49)
Asymmetry in Kant’s Conception of Freedom 27
I do not now claim to know theoretically by this concept the constitution of a being
insofar as it has a pure will; it is enough for me to . . . consider myself authorized
to make no other use of it than with regard to the moral law which determines
its reality, that is, only a practical use. (5:55–6)
Insofar as the categories apply to the free self, they apply only for practical
use. One cannot have any theoretically warranted knowledge about the
causality of a free being, nor can one put the knowledge that one is free
to use in any theoretical justifications of further claims.
Second, one of the important uses of the categories is to establish the
real possibility of an object. To show that something is a real possibility,
one must show that it is a possible object of experience, and this is done by
showing that the categories and forms of intuition apply to it. In the first
Critique, Kant considers the possibility of something that cannot be an ob-
ject of possible experience for human beings because it does not conform
to the form of human intuition. About such an “object,” Kant says,
knowledge if I thus merely indicate what the intuition of an object is not, without
being able to say what it is that is contained in the intuition. For I have not then
shown that the object which I am thinking through my pure concept is even so
much as possible. . . . To such a something not a single one of all the categories
could be applied. (B149)
We have seen that concepts are altogether impossible, and can have no mean-
ing, if no object is given for them, or at least for the elements of which
they are composed. . . . We have already proved that the only manner in
which objects can be given to us is by modification of our sensibility. . . .
The conditions of sensibility [thus] constitute the universal condition un-
der which alone the category can be applied to any object. This formal and
pure condition of sensibility to which the employment of the concept of
understanding is restricted, we shall entitle the schema of the concept. (A139–40/
B178–9)
In the first Critique, Kant emphasizes that the categories can be applied
in a way that is intelligible for theoretical reason only when they are
schematized according to the intuitions of time and, for external objects,
Asymmetry in Kant’s Conception of Freedom 29
Analogy . . . is the identity of the relation between bases and consequences (causes
and effects) insofar as it is present despite what difference in kind there is between
the things themselves. . . . Though I can conceive of the causality of the supreme
world cause when I compare its purposive products in the world with the works
of art of man, by analogy with an understanding, I cannot by analogy infer that it
has these [same] properties; for in this case the principle that authorizes such an
inference is just what is lacking, i.e., we do not have paritas rationis for including
the supreme being in one and the same general kind as man (as regards their
respective causalities). The causality of world beings (which includes the causality
through understanding) is always conditioned by the sensible, [and so] cannot be
transferred to a being that has no generic concept in common with them except
that of a thing as such. (5:464fn)
Here Kant explicitly allows that the relation of causality can be applied
even to the relationship between something noumenal (the supreme
world cause) and the empirical world. However, this relation is applied
without giving knowledge of what is noumenal. It merely forms the basis
of an analogy. Similarly, Kant can allow, once the reality of the free self
has been established on practical grounds, the use of the relation of
causality to make analogical statements about freedom, but these must
be understood as merely analogical and put to purely practical use.
Kant’s restriction of the scope of knowledge of freedom has two impor-
tant implications for his account of the relationship between freedom and
30 The Problem
anthropology. First, that account need not take the form of an explanation
of freedom. Kant has theoretical reasons for claiming that it is impossible
for human beings to understand the nature of freedom and how a free
self underlies an empirical one. His account must show that moral anthro-
pology is consistent with freedom, but it need not explain how freedom
itself is possible. Second, his response cannot make use of claims about
freedom in theoretical arguments, because these claims have no theo-
retical warrant. Kant cannot apply the categories in their schematized
form to free agents. For that matter, Kant cannot apply to free agents any
concepts that make use of the intuitions of space and time. If he does
make statements that seem to apply the schematized categories, his argu-
ment must work when these are interpreted analogically.23 Moreover, he
cannot make use of the categories for any theoretical knowledge of the
self. Kant is perfectly free to discuss freedom in terms of the categories
because we cannot think of it in any other way, but such discussion must
be purely practical. It must be limited to pointing out the conditions of
possibility of moral obligation.
5. Conclusion
In this chapter, I presented Kant’s arguments for human freedom, argu-
ments based on the fact of moral responsibility. I have shown that the
freedom established on the basis of these arguments must be considered
prior to one’s appearances in the world, whether one understands this
relationship to hold between two objects or between two perspectives.
I have further shown why Kant takes this asymmetry to both imply and
allow for a stronger conception of freedom than is available from soft de-
terminist accounts. This conception of freedom raises several problems,
but the one on which I focus is that it seems to preclude any robust moral
anthropology. If the asymmetry between nature and freedom is absolute,
such that freedom can influence nature but never vice versa, as I have
indicated here, then there seems to be no room for observations about
empirical influences on the free will. The relation between freedom and
nature allows influence in only one direction. If moral anthropology re-
quires mutual influence, there seems to be no way out of the dilemma.
In the next two chapters, I take up the question of just what sorts of influ-
ences anthropology does investigate. I show that the influences are both
empirical and morally relevant, and thus that there is at least a prima
facie problem with Kant’s mature moral theory. Chapters 5 and 6 will
then show how Kant can solve that problem.
2
in its method, this proof will provide an important piece of evidence that
the subject matter is empirical. Whether or not the subject matter is em-
pirical is important both to highlight the problem of moral anthropology
for Kant and to move toward a solution to this problem. The problem
becomes clearer because if empirical anthropology finds empirical helps
and hindrances, and if these are also moral helps and hindrances (which
will be discussed in the next chapter), then there is a good prima facie
case that this sort of anthropology is incompatible with Kant’s account
of freedom. At the same time, the fact that Kant’s anthropology is pri-
marily related to the self as observed, rather than to the free noumenal
self, may provide a way to escape this apparent incompatibility. There
is no problem with empirical influences’ affecting the observed self. To
show how this limitation helps solve the dilemma, it will be necessary to
explain how the observed and free selves (or the self considered as free
and as observed) relate to each other. I will take up this task in Chapter 5.
At this point it is enough to mention briefly that by drawing attention to
the observed self, anthropology may begin to point toward Kant’s overall
account of anthropology and freedom.
[1] the most that this [empirical] evidence can show is that evil is widespread, not
that there is a universal propensity to it. [2] Moreover, since Kant insists that this
propensity concerns only the ultimate subjective ground of one’s maxims and is
perfectly compatible with a virtuous empirical character, it is difficult to see what
could conceivably falsify his claim. Consequently, it is difficult to take seriously
the suggestion that it is an empirical generalization. (Allison 1990: 154–5)
36 The Problem
The second problem – that because Kant could not give empirical con-
ditions that would falsify his claim, he cannot mean it seriously – is not
relevant to Kant. It is true that there is no empirical means by which one
can falsify Kant’s claim, but this does not mean that it cannot be empiri-
cally established. The claim cannot be falsified because a good empirical
will is consistent with either a good or an evil intelligible one. One might
look good to all appearances – even to oneself – and yet have hidden
motives that make one evil. But while a good empirical will is consistent
with really being either good or evil, an evil empirical will is consistent
only with genuine evil.7 If one can show the presence of evil in a person’s
empirical will, one can be sure that the person is evil. And showing evil
in the empirical will is something that can be accomplished empirically.
Kant goes so far as to say that “we call a man evil . . . because [his] actions
are of such a nature that we may infer from them the presence in him
of evil maxims” (5:20).8 Although one cannot falsify the claim that one
is evil by showing that one is good, one could undermine support for that
claim by showing that one’s will is empirically good. Unless Kant can show
that one has an evil empirical will, he cannot confidently assert anything
about one’s intelligible will. In this sense he has an empirical negative
test for his claim, though failing that test does not prove that his claim is
false, only that it might be false.
Still, even if one can demonstrate an evil intelligible will from an evil
empirical one, Allison seems right that one could never show on the basis
of empirical criteria that evil or the propensity thereto is a fact of human
nature, universally shared by all. Here, as we have already pointed out
from the first Critique, Kant must agree with Allison at least in a sense. His
claims that human beings are radically evil or have a propensity thereto
cannot have strict universality if they are empirical. But Kant also might
add that there is another sense of “universal” according to which his
claims can hold universally. Moreover, it is crucially important that these
claims not have strict universality. In the first Critique, Kant consistently
connects “strict universality” with “necessity,” going so far as to insist that
these are “inseparable from each other” (B4). For a predicate to hold of
human nature according to strict universality, it must be not only true of all
people but necessarily true of all. But for Kant it is crucial that the propen-
sity to evil not be universal in that sense. It must not be strictly universal
that one have a propensity to evil precisely because this propensity is the
result of one’s choice. Kant is adamant on this point: “this propensity
must itself be considered as morally evil . . . [and hence] as something
Anthropology as an Empirical Science 37
that can be imputed to man” (5:32). Allen Wood points out, in contrast
to Allison,
Since this propensity is one for which we ourselves are culpable, it could not have
derived its existence merely from the finitude of human nature. The moral im-
perfections of our volition are limitations we impose upon ourselves, limitations
for which we ourselves are responsible, and which must be inferred from the use
of our freedom, and not merely from the concept of finite rational volition in
general. (Wood 1970: 223–4)
through choice that the moral law becomes an incentive that outweighs
self-love.10 Allison claims, however, that if this were the case,
For an agent blessed with such a propensity, there would be no temptation to
adopt maxims that run counter to the law and, therefore, no thought of the law
as constraining. Within the Kantian framework, this means that the law would
not take the form of an imperative and moral requirements would not be viewed
as duties. (Allison 1990: 155)
Here Allison goes too far. The fact that one takes the demands of the
moral law to outweigh incentives of self-love does not in any way remove
the incentives of self-love. And as long as self-love is present, it is a temp-
tation. The fact that one resists that temptation, that one chooses what
is right over what is in one’s interest, does not mean that there is no
temptation to face. And this would not be any different if one always
chose the moral law over self-love. Allison’s a priori argument fails, as
Kant would hope. Still, Allison’s contention that empirical arguments
cannot establish universality is strong. If there is no a priori argument
for radical evil, it seems that Kant should not have claimed that it is
universal.
The first Critique downplays the role of this kind of empirical universal
judgment in its search for a priori conditions of experience. Still, Kant’s
insistence that this universality is merely “extensive applicability” is only
a contrast to that strict universality according to which “no exception
is allowed as possible” (B4, emphasis added). As his example of heavy
Anthropology as an Empirical Science 39
bodies makes clear, these judgments need not be taken as merely claims
that something is widespread. They hold without exception, but with the
possibility of exception.11 In the Critique of Judgment, Kant even explicitly
distinguishes these two kinds of universality: “Here it is understood that
the universality [Allgemeinheit] is only comparative, so that the rules are
only general [generale] (as all empirical rules are), not universal [universale]”
(5:213). Allgemein is the term generally translated as “universal” in Kant’s
writings and in particular is the term used to describe the “universality” of
radical evil in the Religion (6:29). In the Anthropology as well, Kant is careful
to use the term Generalkenntnis to describe the “universal” knowledge
involved in anthropology (7:120). In both cases, the knowledge at issue is
universal only in the comparative sense. As Kant repeatedly insists, “there
is no cause for exempting anyone from it” (6:25), but this universality is
merely contingent (6:29).
[1] Travel is among the means of enlarging the scope of anthropology even if
such knowledge is only acquired by reading books of travel. One must, however,
have gained his knowledge of man through [2] interaction with one’s fellowmen
at home if one wishes to know what to look for abroad in order to increase one’s
range of knowledge of man. Without such a program (which presupposes [3] the
knowledge of man), the anthropology of the citizen of the world will remain very
limited. (7:120)
One who is well-traveled, and has come to know many people . . . cannot say
that he knows the person, for he has only known the condition, which is very
changeable. If, on the other hand, I know humanity, it must fit all kinds of people.
Anthropology is thus not a description of people, but of the nature of people.
(25:471)
1) The observation of people that are around us, and a sharp reflection, can
replace for us extensive experience and widely surpass whatever an unthinking
traveler gets. . . .
2) Civil association. What is essential here is the attention to the human dis-
positions that often appear in many forms. (25:734)
It is essential to recognize that when Kant points out the value of observ-
ing others for anthropology, he insists that a “sharp reflection” accom-
pany this observation. Anthropological knowledge from self-observation
comes first, especially insofar as it leads to understanding the way in which
inner dispositions are related to external forms in which they appear. But
it should be supplemented with observations of one’s fellow citizens.
Even the observation of one’s fellows, however, may not sufficiently
broaden one’s horizons. At least two potential sources of error remain.
First, the observation of one’s fellows at home may be insufficient to dis-
tinguish human nature from a second nature that is common to a group.
The scope of investigation calls for expansion to ensure that men and
women around the world share the characteristics one identifies in one’s
Anthropology as an Empirical Science 43
In his published Anthropology, Kant defends the use of literature for an-
thropology, saying,
Such characters as are created, for instance, by Richardson and Molière, still had
to be derived in their basic traits from observance of the actual doings of man.
Exaggerated as these traits may be in degree, they must still conform to human
nature. (7:121)
44 The Problem
Books and plays present the world interpreted according to the inner
experiences of their authors. Thus one is exposed not only to a broader
extent of experience (in Kant’s case, being able to explore parts of the
world he would never be able to visit) but also to an enriching intensive
perspective on human affairs. When one reads Richardson, Shakespeare,
or Montaigne, one comes to see more clearly what aspects of one’s own in-
ner and outer experience are truly universal. This refinement is especially
important for those whose judgment is immature, who are prone to mis-
take particular details of themselves for universal phenomena. By being
exposed to good literature, one comes to see both the variety of human
experience and the universal aspects of human nature. Even for someone
(Kant, perhaps?) with a relatively cultivated anthropological judgment,
reading Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, and George Eliot can
help refine that judgment. One may find that what seemed universal is
more limited than one imagined. If one goes on to read the Mahabharata
and the Tale of Genji and encounters literature from people all over the
world, one may again rethink one’s judgments. This broadening of one’s
horizons need not lead one to renounce all universal anthropological
claims, but it may require adjusting one’s views about which claims are
truly universal.16
What, then, are the sources of anthropology? The primary source is one’s
own inner experience, on the basis of which one can make reflective
judgments about the actions of others. Aids to the cultivation of this
judgment include not only direct engagement with and observations of
others but also the rich anthropological data provided by books and plays.
All of these aids to anthropological judgment, it is worth pointing out, are
empirical. One does not give a priori arguments based on the concept of a
human being or the necessary structure of experience. One’s arguments
are based on experience, enriched by a reflective judgment that is itself
shaped by experience. So anthropology is deeply empirical.
But then just how universal is anthropology? It is properly universal,
although not in the strict sense, and not infallibly. When Kant says, for
instance, “what the affect of anger does not accomplish quickly will not
be accomplished at all” (7:252), he takes this to describe a universal fact
about the feeling that he characterizes as the affect of anger. Human
beings, he supposes, are not capable of sustaining this particular sort of
feeling for long periods of time. If he is correct, then he is making a
true and universal, but not a necessary, claim. Is it possible that he is
wrong? Of course. In fact, Kant changes several of his anthropological
Anthropology as an Empirical Science 45
try to cover up political principles which are contrary to right, under the pretext
that human nature is incapable of attaining the good which reason prescribes as
an idea. . . . They may boast to know men (which is certainly to be expected, since
they have to do with so many of them), although they certainly do not know
man and what can be made of him, for this requires a higher anthropological
vantage-point. (8:373)
Although Kant does not detail the higher anthropological vantage point
to which these politicians should turn to refine their false anthropolog-
ical claims,18 he does make clear that interaction with and observations
of many people do not guarantee that one’s anthropological judgments
will be true. People can always make mistakes. And given that certain er-
rors, especially errors about human capacities, can be useful for justifying
wickedness, one might even expect mistakes to turn up in anthropology.
But in addition to pointing out that these anthropological facts give no
excuse for error, which Kant does in Perpetual Peace and throughout his
moral philosophy, it is important to fight bad anthropology with good
anthropology. And that is what Kant does.19
The fact that a claim holds for all people does not mean that one
affirms that claim with absolute certainty, nor that it holds necessarily.
The danger with empirical investigations of any sort, regardless of how
universal they are, is that one might be wrong. Even to claim that some
particular person has some characteristic at some particular time might
be wrong. So it surely might be wrong that every person has a character-
istic at every time. But one still can make reasoned judgments of these
sorts. One may conclude, on the basis of a refined judgment about what
sorts of things are due to one’s nature, that such-and-such a characteris-
tic is universal. One’s judgment can be refined by more experience, and
as it is one may change some of one’s anthropological claims. None of
this means that one is incapable of ever being right. And until one has a
reason to doubt one’s judgment, one does best to trust it.
This is especially true given the scope of the application of anthro-
pology. One is most likely to use anthropology in the context of those
with whom one is most familiar, and hence those who have primarily
formed the basis of one’s anthropological claims. Errors are less likely
to have serious practical implications than if one’s anthropology were
applied more broadly. This assumes that one gives close attention in
46 The Problem
7. Conclusion
Anthropology, for Kant, is an empirical study of human beings. It makes
claims that are contingent but universal, in the sense that they apply to
all human beings without exception. Moreover, anthropological claims
study relations among empirical objects, because this is the proper subject
matter of an empirical discipline. Thus insofar as anthropology studies
Anthropology as an Empirical Science 47
This narrower task of laying out helps and hindrances to moral choice is
particularly problematic from the standpoint of Kant’s theory of freedom.
And this narrower role is prominent in Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic
50 The Problem
Point of View. Unfortunately, whereas Kant is very explicit about the fact
that his Anthropology is empirical (as we saw in the previous chapter),
he does not as clearly indicate that it is moral. In fact, there are sug-
gestions that might lead one to think that Kant deliberately avoids call-
ing his anthropology moral. Reinhard Brandt points out that whenever
Kant discusses anthropology in his purely moral works (whether lectures
or published work), he designates it “moral” or “practical” anthropol-
ogy (Brandt 1997). Yet in the published Anthropology and throughout
his lectures on anthropology, he never calls the subject “moral” and
only rarely refers to it as “practical.”3 His use of the term “pragmatic”
(pragmatisch) to describe anthropology seems to distance Kant’s specif-
ically anthropological work from the anthropology to which he refers
in his moral philosophy. The title of Kant’s published work, Anthropol-
ogy from a Pragmatic Point of View (emphasis added), seems to reinforce
this.4
In this context, one would expect Kant’s anthropology to focus on
that sphere of practical reasoning which he elsewhere calls “pragmatic.”
And one might expect this sphere to be distinct from the realm of the
moral. But Kant’s use of the term pragmatic varies throughout his work.
This term has at least three different meanings in Kant’s moral phi-
losophy, and aspects of the Anthropology reflect each of these different
senses. “Pragmatic” reasoning can involve (1) one’s happiness, (2) the
whole sphere of the practical, and/or (3) the use of others to achieve one’s
ends.5 Of these, only the first excludes moral elements from its consid-
eration, while the second necessarily includes them. The third involves
morality, though more obliquely. In the rest of this chapter I first show
that Kant uses the term pragmatic in all of these senses, and hence that
the term need not be taken to exclude morality. Then I point out three
examples of moral anthropology in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of
View and the related lectures. Finally, I conclude with a brief remark on
the systematic place of moral anthropology in Kant’s anthropology as a
whole.
The first kind of imperatives might also be called technical (belonging to art), the
second kind pragmatic (belonging to welfare), the third kind moral (belonging
to free conduct as such, i.e., to morals). (4:416–17)6
B. Pragmatic as Practical
A second use of pragmatic contrasts the term not with technical and moral
but with physiological or theoretical reasoning. In this context, pragmatic
considerations include not only those related to happiness but moral
and technical ones as well. Anything that is practical is pragmatic. In
their introduction to Kant’s lectures on anthropology, Brandt and Stark
explain this sense of pragmatic:
This winter I am giving, for the second time, a lecture course on anthropology,
a subject that I now intend to make into a proper academic discipline. But my
plan is quite unique. I intend to disclose the bases of all sciences, the principles
of morality, of skill, of human intercourse, of the method of molding and gov-
erning men, and thus of everything that pertains to the practical. (X:146, emphasis
added)10
Kant wrote this letter in 1773, when he first began teaching his anthro-
pology lectures. Later, in a Reflexion written sometime between 1776 and
1789, Kant reiterates this general notion of pragmatic: “The historical
kind of teaching is pragmatic, when it . . . is not merely for the school,
but also for the world or ethics” (Refl. 3376, 16:804, emphasis added, cf.
25:xv).
The broad focus on all that is practical characterizes Kant’s lectures
in anthropology. Thus in a set of lecture notes taken by Kant’s stu-
dent Pillau in 1777–8, he outlines the “Uses of Anthropology,” of which
one is that “it gives us contact with the subjective principles of all the
sciences. And these subjective principles have a great influence . . . in
morals” (25:734–5).11 In the published Anthropology, Kant is not as ex-
plicit about including moral purposes in his general description of an-
thropology, but his claim that “pragmatic knowledge of man aims at
what man makes, can, or should make of himself as a freely acting
Kant’s “Pragmatic” Anthropology 53
We must trouble ourselves to form the way of thinking and the capacities of those
people with whom we have to do, so that we are not too hard nor too offensive.
So we are taught anthropology, which shows us how we can use people to our
ends. (25:1436)
In the published Anthropology the same theme emerges. Kant says in his
discussion of the different characters of various national groups:
We are interested only in [what] would permit judgment about what each has to
know about the other, and how each could use the other to its own advantage.
(7:312)
The emphasis in these passages is on the ability to use others for one’s
own ends.
Although this use of others is occasionally connected with promot-
ing what is “to one’s own advantage,” prudence need not be limited to
ends of self-interest. It is involved in any context in which one must learn
how to influence others to promote one’s ends, whether those be par-
ticular ends, one’s happiness, or moral ends. Kant even specifically says,
precisely in the context of pointing out that anthropology helps one ma-
nipulate others, that “morals must be bound together with knowledge of
man” (25:472, emphasis added). Thus Kant explicitly discusses the uses
to which anthropology can be put, and he specifically mentions moral
cultivation. Kant says,
depth and often ends his course on anthropology with applications of his
insights to the education of others (see, e.g., 25:722–8). In all of these
discussions, one of the most important kinds of education for Kant is
moral. In the Anthropology, Kant’s discussion of education includes man’s
need to be “moralized,” to be “educated to the good” (7:324, 325). In his
lectures, he claims that “respect for the worth of humanity in one’s own
person is the final level of education” (25:727). And in his lectures on ed-
ucation, Kant discusses at length “moral culture [moralische Cultur]” and
a “practical education [praktischen Erziehung]” that includes “morality”
(9:480, 486).
The second important use of anthropology relates to a passage we
looked at earlier, where Kant insisted that learning to direct others to
one’s ends can help one avoid being “too hard or too offensive.” Here
Kant examines the most extreme case, insisting that the lessons of anthro-
pology are an important alternative to violence in getting others to do
one’s will. Kant does not suggest means by which one can or should force
or deceive another into promoting one’s ends. Rather, by learning about
others, one can affect them without force, deceit, or even offense, by play-
ing off of their own natural inclinations and, in some cases, weaknesses.
This is perfectly consistent with the categorical imperative, whereby one
can never use another merely as a means. The commander who uses an-
thropological prudence not only acts in an acceptable way; she does posi-
tive good insofar as she promotes social cooperation by getting opposites
to work together. This social cooperation is a crucial part of a moral com-
munity, for it establishes the necessary condition of stability under which
such a community can flourish. In the Religion and his writings on history,
Kant points out the need for political stability as a precondition of moral
stability – that is, for a political commonwealth prior to a moral com-
monwealth (cf. Wood 1999, Louden 2000, and Anderson-Gold 2001).
Peaceful social cooperation is thus an important part of promoting moral
community.
While the first two uses can apply to moral and nonmoral concerns,
Kant’s third use for pragmatic anthropology connects it directly with
his explanations of moral anthropology in the Metaphysics of Morals. By
teaching how to get others to adopt one’s ends, one gains specific insight
into how someone can be influenced to adopt obedience to the moral law
as an end. The unconditional value of the moral law may be an end that
one seeks to influence another to adopt in the case of moral education
and may even be an end that one wants to influence oneself to adopt, as we
will see more clearly in Chapter 5. Not only does this “pragmatic” nature
56 The Problem
This brief discussion of the various senses in which Kant uses the term
pragmatic shows that his description of the Anthropology as being given from
a “pragmatic point of view” does not preclude important moral dimen-
sions to that work. Moreover, Kant’s own claims about his anthropology,
how it differs from Platner’s as well as the uses that he mentions to his
students, suggest that Kant meant to include moral anthropology in his
anthropology from a pragmatic point of view. Of course, neither the possi-
bility that anthropology includes moral anthropology nor Kant’s intention
to include moral anthropology shows that there actually is anything moral
about Kant’s specifically anthropological work. And if Schleiermacher
is right about the conflict between Kant’s Critical philosophy and his
anthropology, one might even think that Kant cannot, or should not,
succeed in actually carrying out a moral anthropology. Moreover, much
of Kant’s anthropology is clearly not moral anthropology in the narrow
sense. Almost all of his anthropological observations are relevant to ap-
plying the moral law, but only some relate directly to the task of showing
what influences strengthen or weaken the force of the moral law on the
will. This is not surprising, because there is no reading of pragmatic that
identifies it with moral concerns. But Kant’s pragmatic anthropology does
include moral anthropology, and the most effective means of illustrating
that is to offer examples. To that task we now turn.
A. Politeness
Kant’s discussion of politeness occurs primarily in a section of the An-
thropology called “on the admissible moral perception” (7:151–3) and in
Kant’s discussion of “sociability” in the Metaphysics of Morals (6:473–4).14
In Kant’s lectures on anthropology, politeness is included within a more
general discussion of the distinction between illusion and deceit (see, e.g.,
25:502–5, 1455). Kant’s account of politeness is not the most prominent
example of moral anthropology, but it is one of the most clear. Kant insists
that because of certain facts about human beings, we are susceptible to
influence through politeness, and this influence should be used for the
strengthening of moral principles in oneself and others. Politeness is an
empirical aid to the development of a good will, and it is explained in de-
tail only in Kant’s anthropology. Thus it highlights Kant’s attention to the
influence of empirical helps and hindrances on subjective conditions of
morality, as well as his recognition that anthropology is the proper place
for such attention.
Kant’s account of politeness is clearly moral anthropology, in the sense
that it discusses an aid to moral cultivation. One should be polite be-
cause politeness fosters virtue in oneself and others. In the Metaphysics of
Morals, Kant explains that although polite graces “are, indeed, only . . . a
beautiful illusion resembling virtue . . ., yet they promote the feeling for
virtue itself” (6:473). The Metaphysics of Morals focuses on the claim that
“it is a duty . . . to associate the graces with virtue” because these graces
promote virtue itself (6:473). The Metaphysics of Morals does not discuss,
however, how politeness promotes virtue. And this is proper, because such
a discussion of the empirical aids to virtue is the proper subject of moral
anthropology. In the Anthropology, Kant reiterates the moral purpose of
politeness, saying that “when men play [virtuous] roles, virtues are gradu-
ally established, whose appearance had up until now only been affected”
(7:151, cf. 7:152–3). But he also goes further, pointing out how such
politeness works to cultivate morality.
Politeness cultivates morality by “deceiving the deceiver in our-
selves” (7:151), which occurs in two main ways. First, one who is polite
58 The Problem
must often refrain from directly satisfying illegitimate desires, and this
self-restraint both reveals and cultivates a capacity for self-control that
may be ignored or undeveloped otherwise. As Kant explains, “This be-
trays a self-mastery and is the beginning of conquering oneself. It is a step
towards virtue or at least towards a capacity thereto” (25:930). Second,
politeness presents a “beautiful illusion resembling virtue” (6:473), such
that “one who loves the illusion of the good eventually is won over to
actually loving the good” (25:931).15 Kant’s account of politeness in his
Anthropology is fundamentally moral anthropology, because it studies an
aid to the cultivation of virtue, and it provides needed anthropological
background to flesh out Kant’s reference to sociability in the Metaphysics
of Morals.
Kant’s account of politeness is also not merely speculative theorizing;
it is meant to be put to use. In the Anthropology itself, this is clearest in
the language that Kant uses to describe its effects. In pointing out that
through politeness “the virtues are gradually established,” Kant adds that
this is “a good thing . . . in this world” (7:151). Throughout he speaks of
being polite in concrete terms, directing his readers’ attention to what
they can actually do in response to his anthropological insights. And in
case one is unmotivated by the good effects of politeness, the discussion
in the Metaphysics of Morals points out that one has a duty to put into
practice the insights of the Anthropology: “It is a duty to oneself as well as
to others not to isolate oneself but to use one’s moral perfections in social
intercourse . . . and so to associate the graces with virtue” (6:473). Unlike
Platner’s physiological anthropology, Kant’s discussion of politeness aims
at what one can and should do; it is practical.
Finally, Kant’s discussion of politeness in the Anthropology makes clear
that politeness is an empirical influence. In the published Anthropology,
Kant repeatedly emphasizes the fact that politeness is merely an appear-
ance (Schein). Virtue involves an “appearance of attachment” (7:151) to
others, an “appearance of affability” (7:152), and “good and honorable
formal behavior [which] is an external appearance” (7:152). It is pre-
cisely “the appearance of good in others [which] must have some value for
us, because in the long run something serious can come of [it]” (7:153).
Politeness fosters virtue precisely as an illusion, an external appearance
that can affect behavior even when one knows that it is mere appearance.
Hence politeness is a paradigm case of an empirical influence on moral-
ity, and it is discussed in detail only in Kant’s anthropology. Thus it high-
lights not only Kant’s attention to empirical aids but also his recognition
that anthropology is the proper science to which such attention belongs.
Kant’s “Pragmatic” Anthropology 59
The inclination that can hardly, or not at all, be controlled by reason is passion. On
the other hand, affect is the feeling of a pleasure or displeasure at a particular
moment, which does not give rise to reflection (namely the process of reason
whether one should submit to it or reject it). (7:251)
Here Kant makes clear that his condemnation of affects and passions
is not a condemnation of all emotions, nor even of all intense emo-
tions. What distinguishes affects and passions from ordinary emotions
is the “want of reflection” (7:254). This want of reflection, and “not the
60 The Problem
“in nature there is a propensity for frugality in elders. But reason requires
that this inclination be resisted and that one saves only for a purpose”
(25:520). By being aware of the passions that are most dangerous for
one, one can take preventative measures. In addition, there are at least
some things that one can do to lead another person out of passion despite
himself. In this context, for example, Kant reiterates the importance of
politeness as an illusion that can free one from passions: “The passion
of love is much moderated through [politeness], when one . . . conceals
the red-hot inclination that otherwise would be difficult to suppress”
(25:930).
With respect to affects, Kant suggests some preventative measures,
such as avoiding “romances and maudlin plays” (5:273), and suggests
that refining feeling through culture can help prevent and treat affects
(25:622–3). Because affects are only “precipitate” (7:252; 6:407) and
“what the affect . . . does not accomplish quickly will not be accomplished
at all” (7:252), affects provide much more room for self-treatment. One
can and probably will seek out refining influences of culture and avoid
situations that prompt affects.
Finally, affects and passions are empirical influences. Kant describes
affects as “surprise through sensation” (7:252) and offers an empirical
description of desire that culminates in his claim that “a subject’s sensu-
ous desire that has become customary . . . is called inclination . . . [and]
inclination that hinders the use of reason . . . is passion” (7:265). In both
cases, Kant describes empirical processes that characterize passions and
affects. And this is proper, not only because they are included in his
Anthropology, which is empirical in general, but because each is a disorder
of a different faculty of soul, and these faculties are themselves outlined
in Kant’s empirical description of the human being.
Whereas politeness is an empirical aid to virtue, affects and pas-
sions are empirical hindrances to virtue. And Kant describes and char-
acterizes them in his Anthropology, providing a needed anthropological
background to the brief treatment in the Metaphysics of Morals. More-
over, he suggests practical measures to take in the light of his account,
confirming that his anthropology is not only moral, but also properly
practical.
Simply to have a character relates to that property of the will by which the subject
has tied himself to certain practical principles. . . . Although these principles may
sometimes indeed be false or defective, nevertheless the formal element of will
as such, which is determined to act according to firm principles (not shifting
hither and yon like a swarm of gnats), has something precious and admirable to
it, which is also something rare. (7:292)
These are all practical principles that support and constitute the develop-
ment of character as such. The pursuit of these methods for developing
character depends on one’s already having at least some level of char-
acter. Unless one can act on the basis of principles, one will be unable
even to follow the principles for developing character. But keeping these
principles even sporadically can have some beneficial effect. The more
one avoids duplicity, bad company, and slander, the easier it will be for
one to stick to principles in the future. Insofar as one has some minimal
level of constancy, these principles can reinforce one’s character. They are
important aids to self-improvement, even if they are not sufficient. And
their inclusion here is enough to show that character as an empirical aid
to virtue is part of a practical anthropology, rather than mere speculative
theorizing.
Kant’s “Pragmatic” Anthropology 65
All these [passions and affects] are set against the steadfastness, wherein one does
not deviate from his principle and persists firmly in his decision. It is important
to have firmness in one’s decisions and not to depart from one’s principle, and
better to endure disadvantage than to let go one’s principle. When then a human
being knows something for sure, he carries it out. But whoever is not steadfast
therein often seizes a principle that he is certain that nothing will come of, because
he knows that already he has frequently broken principles. Thereby the human
being is a cream puff in his own eyes; he believes himself capable of nothing
more, from which springs hopelessness. That is a comfortless condition, when
one always postpones hope. So it is with late conversions. So it is with other
things, that one wants to break the habit of, e.g., oversleeping, for it always says,
just one more time but then no more, and so one philosophizes oneself further
away from carrying out [one’s resolution]. In such a condition one never has
hope to become better; this is an important point in morals. One must therefore
seek to hold himself ever so promptly to this word as to others. From that springs
a firm confidence in ourselves. (25:624)
Nancy Sherman assigns this sort of role to the emotions, the particu-
lar sphere of moral anthropology on which she focuses.3 Sherman not
only suggests that emotions can be part of a structure that supports
the good will, but she lays out, clearly and in several essays, “what this
Moral Anthropology in Neokantian Ethics 71
to the good will. First, an agent must have some rules of moral salience
in order to be capable of choosing to be good or evil. Empirical helps are
thus necessary for being a moral agent at all. As Herman explains, “the
Kantian moral agent must have a characteristic way of seeing if he is to
judge [morally] at all. To be a moral agent one must be trained to perceive
situations in terms of their morally significant features (as described by
the RMS [Rules of Moral Salience])” (Herman 1993:83). For Kant, the
moral status of an action depends on the maxim that underlies that action.
Beings that “act” merely from impulse, without any maxims at all, cannot
be morally accountable at all. Likewise, those who act on maxims that
incorporate no moral features at all cannot be morally accountable. One
can imagine, for example, a “person” with a certain sort of cognitive
failing such that he does not recognize basic rules of moral salience.
Such a person might “kill” another but recognize in the action nothing
more than the lifting of an arm and the moving of a finger. The person
does not even perceive – or does not see as relevant – that the hand
at the end of the arm is holding a gun and that the finger pulls the
trigger and that the gun is pointed at another person. A person for whom
every action is of this sort might act, say, for the pleasure of experiencing
new bodily positions, without any awareness of the mayhem caused by
these new positions. For such a person, moral issues simply do not arise.
Awareness is so constrained that it never captures anything of any moral
salience. Because of this peculiar cognitive failure, such a person would
be incapable of choosing either good or evil. That person would not be a
moral agent at all.
A second role of rules of moral salience is to allow a moral agent – and
Herman discusses only the case of morally good agents – to apply moral
principles more easily to particular situations. In this case, better rules of
moral salience allow one who is committed to acting only on good maxims
to choose maxims that are not only consistent with the moral law but that
also “more accurately reflect moral facts that can be obscured from plain
sight” (Herman 1993:88). A person without good rules of moral salience
would be someone who “is attentive to duty, but not very perceptive, and
so [who] does not see that his circumstances fall under a principle of duty.
(He fails to recognize some situation as one calling for help.)” (Herman
1993:81). In this case, as Herman is careful to point out, the moral sta-
tus of the agent is not at stake. More or better rules of moral salience do
not affect whether or not the agent has a good will. Because on Kant’s
account “there is no way to judge actions apart from the way they are
willed,” “morally defective RMS [rules of moral salience] may not yield
Moral Anthropology in Neokantian Ethics 73
The notion that emotions are modes of attending to moral salience may also
have application to the duty of self-knowledge. . . . Emotions can turn inward to
alert us of our own inner states, to help us to read, as he says, our own heart.
As such, they may be thought of as mediums by which we can become more
aware of our thoughts and motives. (Sherman 1997a:146; this passage is not in
1997b)
that Sherman does not give us any account of how this aid would work,
nor even how it could be possible, given Kant’s account of freedom. In
particular, if one comes to think – based on insights into oneself provided
by the emotions – that one is in fact committed to the moral law, there is
no obvious reason why this awareness should affect one’s commitment.
One might even think that such knowledge would lead to an unhealthy
complacency in one’s moral status.9 Moreover, if one is committed to
some evil maxim, there is no obvious reason why becoming aware of that
commitment will lead to any kind of moral improvement. One might
simply regard it with indifference as a moral fact about oneself, or one
might be led to a moral despair that would undermine one’s commitment
to pursue the good.10
Not only do we read circumstances through the emotions, but we respond through
them. Manifest affect is a vehicle or mode for conveying moral interest. Through
emotions, we communicate or signal moral interest to others in ways tailored to
particular circumstances and needs. (1997a:147; 1997b: 273)11
Emotions are often means by which one can carry out duties to others.
When friends suffer, one’s efforts to provide for their happiness and one’s
obligations to them as friends require that one do more than merely
say compassionate things to them, spend time with them, and so on.
One ought to have and express certain emotions such as sympathy and
compassion.
Sherman is certainly correct to point out the important role that emo-
tions can play in carrying out one’s duties, but there is an important
danger in taking this role too far. Given that emotions are not totally
within one’s control, Kant cannot allow them to have a necessary role in
the fulfillment of duties. Sherman rightly points out that Kant never says
that emotions are totally beyond one’s control.12 But for emotions to be
necessary for carrying out one’s duty, it is not enough that they be partially
within one’s control. They would have to be totally within one’s control.
Otherwise, one would be required to do something – feel sympathy, for
example – that in certain cases would be impossible for one. And this
would violate Kant’s fundamental principle that ought implies can.
Sherman at times seems to recognize that emotions themselves cannot
be necessary helps to carrying out one’s duty. As she explains,
We cannot ensure success in actually expressing the emotions that we think are ap-
propriate. For the Kantian, the most we can demand is good willing, that is,
sincere effort in certain relevant endeavors, constrained by the principles practi-
cal agency itself generates. If an agent tries to be sympathetic because she realizes
it is important for morality, but simply cannot make it happen – if she makes the
attempt part of her sincere maxim of what is relevant to helping another, but
can’t bring it off – is she subject to moral self-criticism? Presumably, a Kantian
would argue “no,” especially if the agent is one who, on the whole, takes seriously
a project of developing sympathetic feelings, exhorts herself to do better when
she fails, cultivates the right outward gestures, and monitors her behavior to see
how she is doing. A moral defect in character, on this Kantian view, shows up not
76 The Problem
emotions are just so important for virtue that part of what it is to have a
good will is to have those emotions.
Nancy Sherman suggests this last view as an important way in which emo-
tions fit into one’s moral status. Sherman explains that “in the light of
this last claim [that emotions are “ways in which we act and convey moral
interest”] especially, I would argue that emotions are constitutive of virtue
in human embodiment” (1997a:158; 1997b:278). The notion that emo-
tions can be constitutive of a good will draws on Kant’s account of im-
perfect duties in the Doctrine of Virtue as well as his description of virtue
as a “hierarchically structured composite” in the Religion. In this section,
I examine Sherman’s suggestions about the way in which empirical aids
can be constitutive of the good will in the context of both the Doctrine of
Virtue and the Religion.
In the Doctrine of Virtue, Kant insists that one has at least two obligatory
ends, one’s own perfection and the happiness of others (see 6:385–6).
One’s own perfection includes anything that helps the good will either
in an epistemic sense as described in section 1 of this chapter or in an
instrumental sense as described in section 2. Insofar as emotions serve
either of these roles, they are necessary ends of a good will, and having
them may seem to be constitutive of a good will. Moreover, if emotions
are required for the moral awareness needed to be capable of choosing
either good or evil, then they are constitutive of a good will in that they
are constitutive of any morally responsible will at all.
As in the preceding two sections, I agree with Sherman that emotions
as well as other empirical aids are constitutive of a good will at least in
the sense that a will that fails to cultivate them fails to fulfill its imperfect
duties. Moreover, I grant that there may be some minimum level of emo-
tional sensitivity or other empirical assistance that is necessary if one is
to be morally responsible at all. However, Sherman sometimes takes this
insight too far. She suggests not only that some level of moral awareness is
necessary to be morally responsible and that a deeper level is a required
end for a good agent but also that some deep level of moral awareness is a
necessary attribute of a good agent. But all that a Kantian – or anyone who
takes seriously that ought implies can – should require is that one must
pursue, to an extent that may be different for different people, emotional
sensitivity.
Moreover, Kant specifically distinguishes in the Doctrine of Virtue be-
tween instrumental aids for the good will – which would include not only
certain emotions, moral attentiveness, and so on, but also such things
78 The Problem
as physical strength and wealth – and specifically moral helps and hin-
drances. A person’s duty to perfect himself includes “a duty to cultivate
his natural powers (powers of spirit, mind, and body), as means to all sorts
of possible ends” (6:444). Some of the natural powers that one cultivates,
such as sensitivity to the pain of others, may serve primarily moral ends,
but none are uniquely moral.15 In contrast to these “natural powers,”
however, Kant points out that the duty to perfect oneself also requires
that one “increase his moral perfection” (6:446). Moral anthropology –
as opposed to anthropology that is primarily technical or pragmatic –
points out empirical helps and hindrances to this sort of perfection.
In this context, Sherman, Guyer (Guyer 1993, Chapters 9 and 10), and
others are correct to point out that the pursuit of various empirical aids
is constitutive of having a good will. And it is true that these empirical
aids are “helps” to having a good will in the sense that they are objects of
an imperfect duty to cultivate one’s natural powers. But these accounts
fail to capture the distinctive sense in which specifically moral helps and
hindrances affect the status of one’s will. It is constitutive of having a good
will that one interact with polite society or develop a sense of good taste
because these empirical influences can aid in the cultivation of a good
will. But to claim that they aid in this cultivation only in the sense that
their pursuit is constitutive of having a good will is to argue in a circle. We
can say that the pursuit of emotional sensitivity is constitutive of having a
good will16 because it is an important means for promoting the happiness
of others, which is itself a necessary end of the good will. And a good will
necessarily wills the necessary or helpful means to its necessary ends. But
some empirical influences serve not only as means to general ends that
a good will ought to have but as means by which one comes to have a
good will itself. These influences are constitutive of the good will, and
in that sense their pursuit is required, but this cannot be the end of the
story. They are means to having a good will prior to being constitutive of
such a will, and are constitutive only because they are a means. Saying that
they are constitutive does not solve the problem of moral anthropology.
It only pushes it to a new level.
There is no guarantee that people who have been exposed to these preparatory
steps will be morally good, but human beings who lack all contact with them
cannot possibly be morally good. (Louden 2000:53)
We must try the best we can to decipher the inner from the outer. And since
certain manifestations of the latter (e.g., law, art, culture, religious community)
are themselves necessary preparatory steps for the former, it is correct to say
that, from a human perspective, clear signs of outer progress also afford us clues
regarding inner progress. (Louden 2000:152)
We will come back to this passage again when I discuss a central problem
with Louden’s account, but for now it is important to note that various
empirical influences such as law, art, and culture are necessary prepara-
tions for an inner, moral conversion.
Louden ends his book with an assessment of Kant’s ethics after its
“impure” part has been reintegrated. He ends this assessment with the
question of the “internal coherence” of Kant’s ethics and specifically
questions whether “Kant’s commitment to transcendental freedom” is
consistent with his impure ethics (Louden 2000:180). Louden does
not offer a detailed response there. Instead he says, “I have demon-
strated the coherence of Kant’s concept of empirical ethics in this study”
Moral Anthropology in Neokantian Ethics 81
individualist strand of his ethical theory which holds that each moral
agent has absolute moral worth” (Louden 2000:55). Second, there is “a
charge of moral unfairness” because past generations lacked even the
possibility to be good (Louden 2000:55). Third, there is the charge that
Louden explicitly calls “Education vs. Transcendental Freedom,” which raises
the question “how exactly is the crossing-over from nature to freedom
to be achieved, and how can two such qualitatively different realms in-
teract with one another?” (Louden 2000:56), and finally there is the
problem of moral luck, that “later generations are eventually forced into
a moral condition for which they themselves deserve no credit” (Louden
2000:57).21
Kant does believe that efficacious moral education is education that somehow cuts
through the surface causal network in order to effect the grounding of character.
How this process works is something human beings cannot fully understand; we
cannot know intelligible character, nor can we ever know with certainty that our
attempts to shape and influence it are effective. But we can assume that such
efforts may succeed, and, indeed, this assumption is a necessary presupposition
of any program of moral education. (Louden 2000:59)
This is an absolutely amazing claim, and if true it would mean that Kant
rejects the asymmetrical relationship between the intelligible and the
empirical character that we saw in Chapter 1. If it is true that empiri-
cal influences can “cut through the surface network” to actually influ-
ence intelligible character, then Kant must give up the asymmetry in
his theoretical account of the relationship between appearances and
things in themselves as well as the practical insistence that freedom
84 The Problem
Culture (in particular the arts and sciences) and education are, along with law,
politics, and religion, all necessary but not sufficient conditions for human mor-
alization. There is no guarantee that people who have been exposed to all these
preparatory steps will be morally good, but human beings who lack all contact
with them cannot possibly be good. (Louden 2000:53, emphasis added, see too
pp. 149–50, 159)
Moral Anthropology in Neokantian Ethics 85
Louden suggests that because empirical influences are not sufficient con-
ditions for morality, they do not preclude transcendental freedom. Re-
gardless of how favored persons are in terms of empirical aids to morality,
they still will not be morally good unless they choose to be morally good.
In fact, Louden points out, Kant thought that in the case of peace as
an empirical aid, “peace can (and according to Kant will ) be attained
without a fundamental change in moral character occurring” (Louden
2000:159).24
This reconciliation of necessary preconditions with transcendental
freedom does successfully solve the contradiction, but only in those cases
in which all the necessary preconditions are present. By insisting that no con-
ditions are sufficient, Louden can preserve transcendental freedom and
hence moral responsibility for all those people who may live at that won-
derful time in which all necessary preconditions are present. But those liv-
ing without those advantages are not transcendentally free and hence not
morally responsible. And perpetual peace – to take just one empirical pre-
condition – is not yet available to people today. This would imply the un-
tenable conclusion that no one now or at any point in the past can be held
morally responsible, because good willing is not even an option for us.
The moral law commands compliance from everyone, and in fact the most exact
compliance. Appraising what is to be done in accordance with it must, therefore,
not be so difficult that the most common and unpracticed understanding should
not know how to go about it, even without worldly prudence. (5:36)
But even the claim that empirical aids are propaedeutics of any kind fails to
adequately address the problem of transcendental freedom. First, to say
86 The Problem
Moral character, at least on Kant’s view, is not about external events in time
and space: indeed, it is not even about an internal process taking place in time
and space. The latter is still only empirical character; and morality . . . is about
intelligible character. . . . Human beings are cognitively limited creatures. Given
these cognitive limitations, we must make do with what we have; we must try as best
we can to decipher the inner from the outer. And since certain manifestations of
the latter (e.g., law, art, culture, religious community) are themselves necessary
preparatory steps for the former, it is correct to say that, from a human perspective,
clear signs of outer progress also afford us clues regarding inner progress. . . .
Human beings have no choice but to try to read inner moral character from its
outer, empirical manifestations. (Louden 2000:152)
because those visible processes are always the expression of moral charac-
ter. Insofar as empirical influences are preparations for morality, however,
they fail as expressions. A precondition of a good will, especially if it is
a necessary precondition, cannot rightly be considered an expression of a
good will.
The lawless exercise of human nature appears feverish and swollen and calls
for discipline as the propaedeutic first step in bringing about a state of moral
health by alleviating the symptoms. Only then are the human capacities fit for,
able to undergo, their positive cultivation, which is the next step. (Munzel 1999:
280–1)
So far, this description of the relationship between the training and the
oath seems to imply that the training is a necessary but not sufficient
condition of taking the oath. Munzel’s emphasis is on the fact that no
amount of training can be sufficient. But she goes on to insist that training
is not necessary either:
In principle, consistent with Kant’s description of the adoption of this resolve as
a conversion or transformation in conduct of thought and with his fundamental
premise of freedom, there is in fact nothing to prevent someone from taking
this particular oath of office in the absence of preparatory schooling and then
acquiring the latter as a kind of on-the-job training. Pragmatically speaking, to do
so would be to take the hard road . . ., but it would not be per se impossible. (Munzel
1999:332)
THE SOLUTION
5
Over the past several chapters, I have shown that there seems to be a deep
problem in Kant’s moral philosophy, one that Schleiermacher recognized
and to which he drew attention. This problem is not limited to Kant but
is shared by any moral theory that takes seriously a strong, nondetermin-
ist conception of human freedom as a condition of moral responsibility
while at the same time recognizing the obvious importance of helps and
hindrances to moral development. Essentially, Schleiermacher points out
an apparent conflict between three fundamental assertions: that the will
is transcendentally free, that anthropology is empirical, and that anthro-
pology studies morally significant helps and hindrances. Because Kant so
forcefully articulates the nature of freedom, the problem arises for him
in a particularly stark way. The fact that Kant’s recognition of helps and
hindrances has been ignored for so long only heightens the sense today
that this recognition is incompatible with the rest of his theory. Moreover,
as we saw in the previous chapter, recent attempts to make sense of these
helps and hindrances either deny their full moral significance or sacrifice
Kant’s strong conception of freedom.
In this chapter, I offer a Kantian solution to Schleiermacher’s dilemma.
In section 1, I show that Kant has the resources to distinguish between the
empirical will, which can be affected by empirical influences, and the free
will, which cannot.1 In section 2, I explain that changes in the empirical
will are morally relevant as expressions of the moral status of the free will.
In section 3, I argue that the Kantian notion of “radical evil” requires
rethinking the nature of the good human will, and grace makes such a
rethinking possible. In section 4, I show that proper expressions of a good
human will involve attention to considerations of moral anthropology.
95
96 The Solution
For example, in the Groundwork Kant explains that one ought never act
on a maxim of the form “When I believe myself to be in need of money,
I will borrow money and promise to pay it back, although I know that I
can never do so” (4:422). One is morally good only by refraining from
false promises out of respect for the moral law. This respect for the moral
law is the deliberate and constant commitment to act in such a way that
one’s maxims can conform to the moral law.
But although neither one’s maxim nor one’s commitment to the moral
law is itself an appearance, both are directed toward appearances. A maxim is
a rule for action that specifies a certain action or type of action as a means
to an end or type of end in a certain situation or type of situation. For ex-
ample, take the maxim “When I believe myself to be in need of money, I
will borrow money and promise to pay it back, although I know that I can
never do so” (4:422). Here the action is promising, the end is acquiring
money, and the situation is having certain beliefs about one’s needs and
inability to repay. Every aspect of this maxim is tied to appearances. The
action is an action that will take place in appearances. A purely noume-
nal “act” is not likely to convince anyone to give money, because others
cannot see or hear or experience this act. A promise is something that
can be heard or otherwise perceived. Likewise, the acquisition of money,
the desire to acquire money, the inclinations that are satisfied by hav-
ing money, the pleasure of their satisfaction, and the beliefs about one’s
needs and abilities are all appearances. Although inclinations, desires,
pleasures, and beliefs may appear only in inner sense and might not be
observable to anyone other than the one who has the desire, inclination,
pleasure, or belief, they are nevertheless experiences.
Now the moral status of an agent is not purely a matter of the action,
the end, and the situation that together form the content of the agent’s
maxims. Rather, Kant insists that the form of the maxim determines its
moral worth. One might perform the same action, or act for the same
end, or act in the same situation, without moral fault. Fault enters because
of the relation between the action, end, and situation.6 And one might
think that even if every aspect of the content of a maxim is appearance
directed, the form of the maxim is not.
In fact, however, concern with the form of a maxim is concern about
the structure of one’s actions in the world. The conformity of a particular
maxim to the moral law is not reducible to the content of the maxim,
but neither is it separable from that content. To have a good will is to
choose to act on certain sorts of maxims rather than on others. And the
sorts of maxims on which one acts describe actions in the world for ends
Radical Evil and Moral Anthropology 99
in the world in situations that arise in the world. Morally upright agents
are deeply concerned with appearances because effecting certain sorts of
appearances is the way in which one expresses one’s moral goodness.
It is important to note here that the term expression is used in the
sense in which one expresses oneself through the clothes one wears, or
the music to which one listens. This sort of self-expression is not the
revealing of an already determined nature. One becomes the self one is
through one’s self-expression.7 In the moral case this is true as well. When
one expresses one’s goodness by refraining from false promising out of
a sense of duty, one does not merely show a goodness that was “already
there.” Instead, having a good will is a matter of choosing in certain
ways. Refraining from false promises, when this flows from respect for
the moral law, is a choice of the morally praiseworthy sort. By choosing in
this way, one expresses one’s moral status in the sense that one chooses
to be a morally good person.
This emphasis on expressing one’s moral goodness may seem to shift
the focus of moral attention from the moral law to oneself. Given that Kant
says that one must act purely “from respect for [the moral] law” (4:400),
this emphasis on oneself may seem inappropriate. In fact, however, acting
from respect for the moral law involves performing deeds in the world
(acting) in order to meet the demands of morality. And one always focuses
on making one’s own actions, not just actions in general, conform to the
moral law. In that sense, a person who acts so as to express his or her
moral goodness is one who acts out of respect for the moral law.
This model of the relationship between the good free will and its ap-
pearance helps to make sense of why one cares morally about one’s ap-
pearance in the world. As the expression of one’s noumenal will, one’s
appearance in the world is morally relevant in the strongest possible
sense. It is by being a certain sort of appearance that one shows oneself
to be a certain sort of free agent. Not every feature of one’s appearance is
relevant to the kind of free agent that one is. One’s physical appearance
and natural temperament, for example, do not express one’s freedom.
But all voluntary actions that are morally relevant8 express one’s free will,
even though these actions are also the effects of empirical causes.
This account still has two remaining problems, to which I will now
turn. First, it is not clear how the sorts of concerns that are central to
moral anthropology are relevant to expressing moral goodness. I ex-
plain this problem and its solution in more detail in sections 3 and
4. Second, and of more immediate concern, Kant often suggests that
there is an insuperable barrier to inferring anything about one’s ultimate
100 The Solution
moral status from one’s appearance in the world. This barrier might seem
to undermine any connection at all between the will and its expression.
Before turning to the specific issues raised by moral anthropology, I de-
vote the rest of this section to the general problem of the inscrutability
of one’s moral status.
from mere beliefs not held with practical certainty. The fact that one can
know (in this sense) that one is free raises the question of how much more
one can say about this free self on the basis of practical reason. One might
think that one could at least know whether or not one is morally good,
but Kant denies this. However, one can be certain that one is radically
evil, and one can have reasons that justify a rational hope that one is good.
Kant denies knowledge of one’s moral goodness for two reasons. The
first is an epistemological point about moral awareness: We cannot know
our own maxims, nor our volitional dispositions, with certainty. The sec-
ond is more specifically moral: If one could be certain of having a good
will, that certainty might lead to a moral complacency that would under-
mine such a will. Whereas a free will is necessary to make sense of moral
action, knowledge of one’s good will actually undermines moral action.
This practical limitation on self-knowledge will also turn out to be cru-
cial for making sense of Kant’s account of helps and hindrances. Neither
epistemic nor moral considerations, however, undermine knowledge of
one’s own radical evil or of the fact that one can have some reasons for
some confidence in one’s goodness. They limit only the extent to which
one can be sure that one is good.
For Kant, neither the consequences of one’s actions nor the actions them-
selves, either of which could be empirically verified, determine one’s
moral status. Instead, what matters are the reasons for acting, the maxims
according to which one chooses. And there are no actions for which one
cannot have a bad reason. As Kant makes clear in the Religion, even when
one is evil, one’s “actions can still turn out to be as much in conformity
to the law as if they had originated from true principles,” such that “the
empirical character is then good but the intelligible character still evil”
(6:36–7).
Moreover, although observations of one’s inner life can reveal
thoughts, feelings, and even patterns of deliberation, there is no guaran-
tee that they will reveal the actual reasons for action. This is especially true,
102 The Solution
as Kant suggests in the rest of the passage from the Groundwork, because
people have a very strong ulterior motive to present their actions as con-
forming to morality.
We like to flatter ourselves with the false claim to a more noble motive; but in fact
we can never, even by the strictest examination, completely plumb the depths of
the secret incentives of our actions. For when moral value is being considered,
the concern is not with the actions, which are seen, but rather with their inner
principles, which are not seen. (4:407)
A human being’s inner experience of himself does not allow him so to fathom the
depths of his heart as to be able to attain, through self-observation, an entirely
reliable cognition of the basis of the maxims which he professes, and of their
purity and stability. (6:63, emphasis added)
To be truly good, at the level of the free will, one’s maxims must be not only
pure but also stable. Even if self-examination could somehow overcome
self-deception and complacency to reveal the purity of one’s maxims,
no action can provide reliable assurance that one’s will is stably oriented
toward the good. The moral status of one’s will thus remains in doubt.
one’s maxim. The account offered so far shows only that one should care
about acting, in the realm of appearance, in accordance with the moral
law. But the sorts of considerations that are part of moral anthropology
are not themselves directly required by the moral law.11 In the next sec-
tion, I explain why one has an obligation not only to act in the realm of
appearance out of respect for the moral law but also to take into account
moral anthropology to promote aids and avoid obstacles to morality. For
that purpose, however, one must first take a closer look at what can be
known about one’s moral condition. Kant’s most extensive discussion of
this is in his Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason.12
We call a human being evil, however, not because he performs actions that are
evil (contrary to law), but because these are so constituted that they allow the
inference of evil maxims in him. (6:20)
Radical Evil and Moral Anthropology 105
Now through experience we can indeed notice unlawful actions, and also notice
(at least within ourselves) that they are consciously contrary to the law. But we
cannot observe maxims, we cannot do so unproblematically even within ourselves;
hence the judgment that an agent is an evil human being cannot reliably be based
on experience. (6:20)
Based on this passage, one might think that Kant will give an a priori
argument for the evil in human beings, or just give up his assertion that
one can know that they are radically evil. But Kant does neither. Rather,
he goes on later in the section to insist that “according to the cognition
we have of the human being through experience . . ., we may presuppose evil
as subjectively necessary in every human being” and that “the existence
of this propensity to evil in human nature can be established through expe-
riential demonstrations” (6:32, 6:35, emphases added). And immediately
following his apparent claim that one cannot know reliably from experi-
ence that a person is evil, Kant suggests that there might be an empirical
basis after all. He says,
In order, then, to call a human being evil, it must be possible to infer a priori from
a number of consciously evil actions, or even from a single one, an underlying
evil maxim. (6:20)
If the law fails nevertheless to determine somebody’s free power of choice with
respect to an action relating to it, an incentive opposed to it must have influence
on the power of choice of the human being in question; . . . by hypothesis, this
can only happen because this human being incorporates this incentive (and
consequently also the deviation from the moral law) into his maxim (in which
case he is an evil human being). (6:24)
From the failure to act in certain ways, one can infer the status of a per-
son’s disposition.
One might argue that what remains unknowable is precisely whether
“the law fails to determine someone’s free power of choice,” and thus that
while a person’s disposition could be inferred from knowledge of that, it
cannot be inferred from actions (or internal motivational states) alone.
In fact, however, some actions are contrary to duty and therefore cannot
be done from duty. In the Groundwork, Kant briefly mentions this when
he introduces his candidates for dutiful action:
I here omit all actions already recognized as contrary to duty, even though they
may be useful for this or that end; for in the case of these the question does not
arise at all as to whether they might be done from duty, since they even conflict
with duty. (4:397, emphasis added)
In that context, Kant offers his empirical argument for evil. He has shown
that at least for actions contrary to right, it is possible to infer with certainty
the state of one’s maxims from appearances, and thus to the disposition
of one’s free choice. More generally, for maxims that seem contrary to the
moral law, it is reasonable to conclude from evil appearances that one has
an evil disposition. To show that humans are evil, then, Kant must simply
show that humans perform the sorts of actions from which the presence
of evil can be inferred.17 And that is not particularly hard to do. Kant pref-
aces his litany of examples with the unfortunate truth that “we can spare
ourselves the formal proof that there must be such a corrupt propensity
rooted in the human being, in view of the multitude of woeful exam-
ples that the experience of human deeds parades before us” (6:32–3).
This is followed by examples of unjust cruelty, betrayal, ingratitude, and
finally war. The first and last are contrary to right, while the others are
examples of which his readers cannot deny they have at times been guilty.
All that it takes, for any individual, to be assured of one’s own evil is to
reflect upon one’s actions. If one has ever knowingly violated the rights
of others, one is evil. Kant’s argument for rigorism establishes that even a
single evil action is enough to show that one has a will uncommitted to the
moral law, which is to say an evil will.18 Even if one has never violated strict
right, if one has ever acted from self-love in contradiction to or disregard
of the moral law, one cannot reasonably deny that one is evil. Thus Kant
explains that although “this quality [evil] may [not] be inferred from the
concept of . . . a human being, . . . according to the cognition we have of
108 The Solution
If [a person] took [incentives of his sensuous nature] into his maxim as of themselves
sufficient for the determination of his power of choice, without minding the moral
law . . ., he would then become morally evil. (6:36)
Thus,
The statement, “The human being is evil,” cannot mean anything else than that
he is conscious of the moral law and yet has incorporated into his maxim the
(occasional) deviation from it. (6:32)
When a person allows him- or herself to choose in such a way that the
moral law can be overridden by sensuous incentives, that person is evil.
In characterizing this evil, however, Kant also makes use of the im-
portant concept of a propensity to evil, a propensity that is a universal
consequence of the radical evil in human nature.20 Kant explains his
notion of a propensity as follows:
depends upon certain conditions, but once those conditions are satisfied,
“there is aroused in them a . . . desire.” Someone who does not desire in-
toxicants even after trying them lacks a propensity to them. Propensities
cannot be ignored, although of course the desires to which they irre-
sistibly give rise can be resisted.
These aspects of Kant’s discussion are general, and it is difficult to apply
this conception of propensity to the propensity for moral evil. After all,
moral evil is not something that depends upon one’s inclinations but
is just a matter of the way that one considers one’s inclination in one’s
choices. So if propensities are just proto-inclinations, how can there be a
propensity for evil itself ? Fortunately, Kant explains the special way that
the notion of a propensity should be applied to moral evil, and in the
process he drops all language of inclination. He says,
A propensity can indeed be innate yet may be represented as not being such:
it can rather also be thought of (if it is good) as acquired, or (if evil) as brought
by the human being upon himself. – Here, however, we are only talking of a
propensity to genuine evil, i.e. moral evil, which, since it is only possible as the
determination of a free power of choice and this power for its part can be judged
good or evil only on the basis of its maxims, must reside in the subjective ground
of the possibility of the deviation of the maxims from the moral law. (6:29)
That all are under sin is precisely the claim that Kant puts forward in
this section, and his basis for this claim is an empirical argument that
everyone can decide about for him- or herself. What this passage adds is
a clarification of the nature of that universal evil. The universal propen-
sity to evil implies that everyone has a price, that none is in principle
committed to the moral law above all sensuous inclination.
This propensity to evil is due to the choice of the person affected by it
because the person brings it upon him- or herself. Thus it expresses an
already present24 moral evil. Kant explains,
This propensity itself is morally evil, since it must ultimately be sought in a free
power of choice, and hence is imputable. (6:37, cf. 6:32)
incentives over the will. Kant outlines these as the “frailty . . ., impurity . . .,
[and] depravity of human nature” (6:29). All three degrees of evil are
forms of a propensity to evil that is itself the consequence of evil self-
manipulation. Frailty, the first degree of evil, is when
I incorporate the good (the law) into the maxim of my power of choice; but this
good, which is an irresistible incentive objectively or ideally, is subjectively the
weaker (in comparison with inclination) whenever the maxim is to be followed.
(6:29)
Although the maxim is good with respect to its object . . . and perhaps even
powerful enough in practice, it is not purely moral, i.e. it . . . often (and perhaps
always) needs other incentives besides [the moral law] in order to determine the
power of choice for what duty requires. (6:30)
In this case, one ensures that even apparently morally praiseworthy ac-
tions will in fact be corrupted by sensuous motives. One of the most insidi-
ous forms of self-deception is the tendency to interpret as morally upright
actions that have underlying sensuous motives, and Kant connects self-
deception of this sort with the impurity of the will.26 In a description of
human depravity that parallels his account of the three propensities to
evil, Kant explains that one origin of impurity is
The frailty of human nature . . . coupled with its dishonesty in not screening
incentives . . . in accordance with the moral guide, and hence . . . in seeing only
to the conformity of those incentives with the law, not to whether they have been
derived from the latter itself. (6:37)
that makes knowledge of one’s moral status so difficult, and here Kant
points out that it also makes becoming truly good more difficult. Because
one is likely to interpret even actions that are bad (in that they are not due
to the moral law as a sufficient motive) as morally good, one’s resolution
in remaining true to the demands of morality is weakened. One is likely to
be complacent in impurity through self-imposed ignorance. Eventually,
at the worst extent of impurity, one does not act from the incentive of
duty at all, but only such that one’s actions are “consistent” with the moral
law. One’s evil will maintains a foothold by eroding the resolution needed
to have a truly good will.
The final degree of the propensity to evil is the most extreme. The
depravity of the human heart is “the propensity of the power of choice to
maxims that subordinate the incentives of the moral law to others (not
moral ones)” (6:30). The previous two degrees of the propensity to evil
really represent the attempts of an evil will to undermine the possibility of
good. The final degree of the propensity to evil is the direct promotion
of evil. Insofar as an agent seeks to bring upon himself the propensity
for evil in this sense, he directly promotes his future performance of evil
actions. At this level too, self-deception is important. Kant explains,
The third [degree of the propensity to evil can be judged] as deliberate guilt
(dolus), and is characterized by a certain perfidy on the part of the human heart
(dolus malus) in deceiving itself [emphasis added] as regards its own good or evil
disposition. (6:38)
This evil is radical, since it corrupts the grounds of all maxims; as a natural
propensity, it is also not to be extirpated through human forces, for this could
happen only through good maxims – something that cannot take place if the
subjective supreme ground of all maxims is presupposed to be corrupted. (6:37,
cf. 6:45)
People are radically evil, such that they not only act on evil maxims but
also establish in themselves a propensity to evil which ensures that future
choices will be made against the moral law. In that context, it seems
impossible to choose to reject evil and pursue good.
This ineradicability of evil does not imply any kind of moral de-
terminism. Because the evil that is ineradicable is freely chosen, that
evil is not determined prior to choice. If one chose to be good, one
could be. The problem with radical evil is that one in fact does not
choose to be good. Thus, the ineradicability of evil does not in any
way decrease one’s culpability for that evil. Nonetheless, there is an
important practical problem for an agent who recognizes the presence
of radical evil. One is always obligated to do what is morally right. But if
one is already committed to evil, then there seems to be a relevant sense
in which one can no longer choose to obey the moral law. This is true for
two very different reasons.
First, given that one has subordinated the moral law to sensuous incli-
nations, it can never be the case that one completely prioritizes morality
over inclination. One’s overall moral status depends on one’s life as a
whole.27 To be morally good, one cannot ever compromise morality. But
if one has already compromised morality, even if one always does one’s
duty from now on, one is nonetheless a person who, given the right cir-
cumstances (which may include temporal conditions), violates the moral
law. That is to say, one is nonetheless evil. In Kant’s terms,
However steadfastly a human being may have persevered in such a [good] dispo-
sition in a life conduct conformable to it, he nevertheless started from evil, and this
is a debt which is impossible for him to wipe out. (6:72)28
114 The Solution
The first reason that one cannot be good is that one has a stain of past
evil that cannot be erased.
The second reason is that one’s evil is not merely past evil deeds but
includes a propensity to evil. The fundamental maxim governing one’s life
is a commitment to prefer inclination over morality. And this fundamental
maxim provides no ground for its own overturning. One will not reject
evil because the basis of one’s decisions is evil. And although obstacles
to choosing rightly do not erode one’s responsibility for one’s evil, they
seem to undermine the real possibility of moral reform. But Kant insists
that what is required by morality is that one do what is right, which includes
improving the basis of one’s choices. As Kant explains, “In spite of the
fall, the command that we ought to become better human beings still
resounds unabated in our souls; consequently, we must also be capable
of it” (6:45). Throughout Kant’s moral philosophy, he takes for granted
that human beings have moral obligations. In the second Critique, he
draws attention to a “fact of reason,” according to which one recognizes
that one is bound by duty.29 On the basis of this “fact,” Kant argues that
one is free, that God must exist, and that one is immortal.30 Just as those
arguments begin with the assumption of moral responsibility, Kant here
simply takes for granted that one who is radically evil is obligated. In this
case, however, because of the problem of one’s propensity to evil, one is
obligated not only to do good but even to become better, because this
is a necessary condition of choosing rightly. Because one still ought to
become better, one must still be capable of moral reform. But that means
that the radical evil that seemed ineradicable must, somehow, be possible
to overcome.
Kant’s account of radical evil involves the claim that evil cannot be
extirpated from one’s nature “through human forces” (6:37). Kant em-
phasizes both the depth of radical evil and the fact that the root of evil
lies in one’s own will, but he still insists that we must be capable, in some
sense, of moral improvement. Thus there must be some nonhuman force
through which evil can be overcome: “Some supernatural cooperation is
also needed to [a person’s] becoming good or better” (6:44).33 To un-
derstand the roles that grace plays, it is important to remember the two
very different problems posed by radical evil. First, the stain of radical evil
cannot be removed regardless of the extent to which one improves in the
future because one has done wrong in the past. Second, radical evil seems
to undermine the possibility of transformation by deliberately hindering
one’s own moral development, promoting a “propensity to evil.” Kant ad-
dresses the first problem with a conception of atoning grace, whereby one
is justified before God, “after the fact,” so to speak. The second problem
is addressed by a conception of sanctifying grace according to which God
actually facilitates moral transformation.34
Both sorts of grace reflect attempts by Kant to articulate the possibility
of a will that is fundamentally good – hence good in the eyes of God –
but the temporal expression of which reflects radical evil. Kant wants to
show how such a will is possible without weakening the requirements of
the moral law. The way that grace functions depends, in part, on the type
of grace involved. With respect to atoning grace, Kant’s emphasis is on
providing a supplement for actual (past) violations of the moral law. In
the case of sanctifying grace, Kant is concerned with a supplement that
can counteract one’s propensity to evil. I first focus on atoning grace, and
then I briefly discuss sanctifying grace.
In a series of ethics lectures given just a few years before writing the
Religion, Kant explains the role of atoning grace in his moral theory:
The holy law necessarily entails that punishments should be appropriate to ac-
tions. But is man, then, to be left without help, seeing that he is frail, after all, in
regard to morality? He cannot, indeed, hope for any remission of punishment
for his crimes from a benevolent ruler, since in that case the divine will would
not be holy; but . . . if, for our part, we do everything we can, we may hope for
a supplementation, such that we may stand before God’s justice and be found
adequate to the holy laws. . . . In that case, then, instead of a lenient justice, we
have a supplementation of justice. (27:331)
to the moral law and in the sense that one deliberately undermines one’s
capacity for good. (3) The moral law is rigorous; there is no middle ground
between moral good and evil because the moral law insists on unswerving
obedience.35
So how does grace allow Kant to reconcile these commitments? Ap-
parently the notion of a “supplementation of justice” is distinguished
from “lenient justice” in that while either would preserve moral hope (1)
and radical evil (2), “lenient justice” would do so at the cost of rigorism
(3). What is not clear is how grace preserves all three claims. It looks
as if any role that grace can play will compromise one of the claims it
is meant to save. Perhaps grace can save the rigor of the moral law at
least in one sense, in that there might not be any degrees of goodness:
One either receives grace and is thus good, or one does not. But if the
moral law demands perfect conformity with morality, then any grace that
makes one good despite one’s imperfection is for all apparent practical
purposes indistinguishable from lenient justice. Perhaps Kant thinks that
the concept of grace provides a better basis on which to argue for a con-
ception of the good will that does not allow excuses in the moment of
deliberation. Exactly what this involves will become clearer in the next
section.
For now it is enough to note that for Kant, it is crucial that in delib-
eration one measure one’s proposed maxims against the moral law in all
its rigor. To avoid despair, one must hope that one can be good despite
past evil deeds. And so some concept is necessary to allow this hope. But
whereas a lenient justice would taint one’s present deliberations by ex-
cusing one from strict obedience to the law, atoning grace should allow
one to avoid despair without providing any excuse from the full demands
of morality in deliberation. Ultimately, the issue of whether grace is more
effective in this regard than a nuanced version of lenient justice would
go beyond the limited needs of this discussion. But this is clearly a role
that Kant wants grace to play.
More important for the present purposes is the fact that one can invoke
the concept of grace at all only if it can be given some coherent sense.
To preserve his commitments to moral hope, radical evil, and rigorism,
Kant needs a concept that is distinct from “lenient justice.” He gives
this concept a name: “grace” or the “supplementation of justice.” But
it is not clear that Kant shows that anything corresponds, or even could
correspond, to the name. In general, Kant’s strategy at this juncture is to
point out that the mechanisms of grace are inscrutable to human reason.
In the middle of the passage quoted above from the lectures on ethics,
Radical Evil and Moral Anthropology 117
Kant says, “How God brings about this supplementation, and what sort
of means he employs for it, we know not, nor do we have any need to
know; but we can hope for it” (27:331, cf. 28.2.2: 1120–1, 1225, 1319). In
the Religion, Kant says that of “supernatural assistance . . . we can have not
the least cognition” (6:191).36 And in the Conflict of the Faculties, written
after the Religion,37 Kant repeats this point:
But given the role that practical reason must play in our temporally situ-
ated deliberation, we have a subjective need to believe in something like
grace.
By itself, this need is not enough to justify even a conditional warrant
for grace. Recall that the speculative need for some unconditioned does
not specify freedom or even God as the content of that unconditioned.
Until the second Critique argues on nontheoretical grounds for freedom and
God, there is merely a need for something unconditioned, not a need
for freedom or God per se. Likewise, the need of practical reason, in
the context of radical evil, is just for some concept that will unify moral
hope, radical evil, and rigorism. This need is not specifically a need for
grace.
Moreover, Kant gives no details about the perspective from within
which one can justify grace. In the realm of theoretical reason, it is not
enough to show that theoretical reason has a “need” for some uncon-
ditioned ground of appearances. Kant also shows, in the first Critique,
that such a ground would not conflict with the conditions of possibility
of experience, as long as the ground is not itself an object of possible
experience and not justified on theoretical grounds. Only once he artic-
ulates his transcendental idealism can Kant justify freedom on practical
grounds or believe in it on the grounds of a subjective need of theoretical
reason.39 In the case of grace, Kant must show that some concept of grace
can be consistent with the constraints of practical and theoretical reason.
He does not necessarily have to explain how it can be consistent, but he
must say at least enough to convince us that there is no contradiction with
the requirements of theoretical or practical reason.
In the Religion, Kant gives some detail about the way in which grace
can fill the need of practical reason, and he offers some argument that
it is not ruled out by practical or theoretical reason. With respect to
atoning grace, Kant’s account involves God’s superior knowledge of what
is nontemporal and a rational reconstruction of the Christian doctrine
of substitutionary atonement. The substitutionary doctrine is ingenious,
in that Kant essentially posits that one can suffer on one’s own behalf.
The temporal appearance that expresses a good will involves suffering,
and this suffering wipes out the stain of one’s past wickedness. Philip
Quinn has worked out Kant’s doctrine of atonement in detail in terms of
a distinction between “pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary persons”
(Quinn 1986:450). I will not go over his arguments here. Quinn rightly
notes that while Kant’s rational reconstruction improves on some aspects
of the traditional Christian doctrine of Christ’s vicarious atonement for
Radical Evil and Moral Anthropology 119
sins, it has many problems of its own (Quinn 1986). Whether or not
Kant can solve these problems, his account of atoning grace does at
least provide some sense of how grace could be consistent with the de-
mands of theoretical and practical reason. Grace in this context is re-
ally a matter of God’s recognizing an intelligible truth – one’s good-
ness – in the face of the complicated appearance of one’s whole life. As
long as Kant does not claim any theoretical warrant or empirical inter-
pretation of this grace, there do not seem to be theoretical reasons to
reject it.
Practically, it raises more problems. In particular, it is not entirely clear
how this account of atonement provides a real alternative to “lenient
justice” to save moral hope, radical evil, and rigorism. Nothing in Kant’s
account of the moral law suggests that suffering can somehow make up
for violations of the moral law. And it is crucial that this be the case, lest
people excuse themselves from obedience only to follow up vice with
further (monkish) vices of self-flagellation. This account of atonement
seems to amount to lenience in the demands of morality, albeit a very
complicated lenience. Kant seems to respond to this objection when he
argues,
Faith in a merit which is not his own, but through which he is reconciled with God,
would therefore have to precede any striving for good works, and this contradicts
the previous proposition. (6:117)
This conflict cannot be mediated through insight into the causal determination
of the freedom of a human being, i.e. into the causes that make a human being
become good or bad: in other words, it cannot be resolved theoretically, for this
question totally surpasses the speculative capacity of our reason. (6:117–18)
Practically, however, where the question is . . . whence . . . we are to make our start,
whether from faith in what God has done for our sake, or from what we ought to
do in order to become worthy of it (whatever this may be), there is no hesitation
in deciding for the second alternative. (6:117–18)
The second prong of the antinomy, that one must become worthy of
grace before one can receive it, is true in a practical sense. Whether or not
there is an actual priority (temporal or otherwise) of merit over grace,
when deciding what to do, one must think not about first getting grace but
rather first becoming worthy of it.
Radical Evil and Moral Anthropology 121
That a human being should become not merely legally good, but morally good
(pleasing to God), i.e. virtuous according to the intelligible character . . . – that,
so long as the foundation of the maxims of the human being remains impure,
cannot be effected through gradual reform but must rather be effected through
a revolution in the disposition of the human being (a transition to the maxim of
holiness of disposition). And so a “new man” can come about only through a kind
of rebirth, as it were a new creation . . ., and a change of heart. (6:47)
The first step in Kant’s articulation of the appearance of the good will
is to apply the notion of atemporal revolution to the temporal series
that constitutes the human being as appearance. In this context, Kant
remarks,
The “single and unalterable decision” is the revolution that makes one
morally good at the level of one’s free self. But this decision must be
expressed as progress in the appearance of that self. The revolution is
directly relevant to morality, but it can never be known directly through
experience. For God, who intuits one’s free will directly, “this [revolution]
is the same as actually being a good person (pleasing to him)” (6:48). One
can never know that one effects a revolution in one’s mode of thought;
one can only perceive signs of that revolution through its expression in
moral progress. As Kant explains,
For the judgment of human beings . . . who can assess themselves and the strength
of their maxims only by the upper hand they gain over the senses in time, the
change is to be regarded only as . . . a gradual reformation of the propensity to
evil. (6:48)
Just as one cannot know that one’s fundamental maxim is good, one
cannot know that one is in revolution against evil. But just as one can
reasonably hope for and pursue goodness, one can reasonably hope
for and pursue a moral revolution. And the basis for hope, as well as
the immediate object of one’s pursuit, will be the expression of moral
revolution.
Radical Evil and Moral Anthropology 125
Reason, when it is a question of the law of our intelligible existence (the moral
law), recognizes no distinction of time and asks only whether the event belongs to
me as a deed and, if it does, then always connects the same feeling with it morally,
whether it was done just now or long ago. (5:99)
When evaluating whether or not one truly revolts against evil, one
must not simply look for some particular moment or phase of life but
at one’s life as a whole. In this context, Kant considers several pos-
sibilities for how a good life would look. The most obvious option –
a life free from any evil – is ruled out already by the presence of radical
evil. Kant’s problem at this point is to consider what the most plausible
remaining option is.
Kant argues that a will in revolution must express itself in a complete
life by contrasting morality with happiness. With respect to happiness,
Griefs once endured, when we feel safe from them, leave no painful reminis-
cences behind but rather a feeling of gladness that makes the enjoyment of the
supervening good fortune all the sweeter. For pleasure and pain (since they be-
long to the senses) are both included in the temporal series, and disappear with
it; they do not constitute a totality with the present enjoyment of life but are
rather displaced by it as it succeeds them. (6:70)
The moral subjective principle of the disposition by which our life is to be judged
is (as transcending senses) not of the kind that its existence can be thought as
divisible into temporal segments but rather only as an absolute unity. (6:70)
death shows that such a person is a morally good person, that is, one who
has undergone the moral revolution. In discussing this view, Kant focuses
on the danger that it poses for morality:
Give [a human being] encouragement (as with the proverb “All is well that ends
well”) and from early on he will make his plans accordingly, with a view not
to forfeit too much of life’s pleasures unnecessarily and, by life’s end, to settle
accounts with speed and to his advantage. (6: 77–8, cf. 6:70)
The thought that one might be morally evil brings with it “moral suffer-
ings, the reproaches of one’s conscience” (6:78 fn.), not to mention fears
of suffering after death. Still, human beings have wants and needs that
tempt them to violate the moral law. If one comes to believe that one can
be morally good, can be spared from the sufferings (moral and otherwise)
associated with having an evil will, and at the same time can spend all but
the last few seconds of one’s life pursuing sensuous inclinations in disre-
gard of morality, one seems able to have one’s cake and eat it too. One
can actually be morally good while acting for most of one’s life in a way
that disregards morality.
For Kant, of course, such a possibility is a moral disaster. A view of moral
goodness that justifies evil choices erodes the foundation of morality. It is
no longer morally required, apparently, that every agent choose well. As
long as an agent has a couple of well-timed good choices, the force of all
other moral obligations erodes. And this can lead to moral complacency,
which the doctrine of grace and the new conception of a good will are
supposed to avoid. If it is impossible to be morally good, one can hardly
make a serious effort at it – this is the problem of radical evil. But if it is too
easy to be morally good, one will be almost as likely to ignore the moral
law. When Kant contrasts the application of “all’s well that ends well” to
happiness with its application to morality, he highlights this problem. Not
only does this account fail to take into account one’s whole life, but it also
has dangerous practical consequences for moral life.
Still, Kant does not completely reject the possibility of conversion at the
end of one’s life. He claims, “the common saying, ‘all’s well that ends well,’
can indeed be applied to moral cases, but only if by the ‘good ending’ we
understand that a human being becomes a genuinely good human being”
(6:70). This view fits well with his description of the sensible appearance
of one’s noumenal revolution as “progress.” One measures progress, at
least in part, by the end point at which one arrives. However, Kant is quick
to point out a problem with resting one’s entire self-evaluation on a last-
minute conversion. If one “becomes a genuinely good human being” at
Radical Evil and Moral Anthropology 127
the end of life, things will have turned out well. But, Kant asks rhetorically,
“where is he to recognize himself to be such [a good human being], since
he can draw this conclusion only from the constancy of his consequent
good conduct, and, at the end of life, there is no time left for this?” (6:70).
The inscrutability of one’s true disposition undermines shortcut attempts
at moral reform. Because one has no direct access to the fundamental
maxims of one’s actions, one can judge one’s disposition only on the
basis of consistent struggle against evil in intentions and actions. If even
the best appearances can be misleading, apparent dispositions at the end
of life, without any corresponding consistency over time, are particularly
suspect. And this suspicion will be especially pronounced when one has
lived a life of wickedness.
Of course, one can never rule out completely the possibility that a
conversion at the end of life is genuine. Kant even remarks that it is par-
ticularly important to be careful how one interacts with those on their
deathbeds. There is always hope for true reform, hope that can be un-
dermined by bad clergy offering false comforts. It is important to hold
out the need for genuine moral reform, for actually doing what is right and
correcting past wrongs, even to those near death (see 6:78 fn).
There is another sort of moral conversion that Kant does not discuss
separately but that might seem more plausible as an account of the ap-
pearance of a good will. Rather than a conversion at the end of life, or a
conversion in disposition only, one might imagine that a good will would
appear as a person who, though wicked for an early portion of his or her
life, at some point changes radically and from then on makes all choices
in accordance with the moral law. Such a person would not base hope
merely on an impression of a different resolution but would have a long
record of deeds. On this account, one would always be justified in seeking
to be good, because one can effect at any time the radical transforma-
tion that characterizes the good will. One could counteract any danger
of postponing that transformation on the grounds that only when one
turns to the good with enough time to exhibit that goodness as a stable
aspect of one’s character does one truly express a will in revolution. This
provision would eliminate many of the practical problems with deathbed
conversions.
At times, Kant seems to endorse a position similar to this one, although
he ultimately rejects it in favor of an alternative account. His endorsement
comes in the form of an emphasis on temporal conversion, on an estab-
lishment of good character at a certain time. In the Anthropology, Kant de-
scribes the establishment of character as a revolution. Because character
128 The Solution
acts. But radical evil also involves a propensity to evil according to which
one undermines one’s future choices, establishing a tendency to pursue
further evil. Kant takes this aspect of radical evil to be an empirical fact.
One recognizes not only one’s past evil deeds but also the present and
future effects of past self-manipulation. Kant’s new conception of the
good will must take into account the reality of this propensity to persist in
evil. And this means that one has reason to predict, though never excuse,
that one will do evil in the future. Whatever conversion one undergoes,
one still suffers the effects of one’s past evil choices, including effects on
one’s future behavior. One is fully responsible for these effects, because
they reflect one’s free choice of evil rather than of good. But even if
one commits to moral principles now, this commitment can only begin to
undo the effects of one’s evil actions in the past. The temporal extension
of past decisions does not undermine transcendental freedom, because
the limitations of one’s ability to effect changes in oneself are self-imposed
limitations. But the temporal extension of past decisions does affect the
sort of expression that is possible for a will in revolution. It can at most
appear as a constant struggle against evil.46
How then does an agent in revolution against evil appear in the world?
This question can be applied in the context of either moral evaluation or
deliberation. With respect to evaluation, although Kant does not think
that one can ever be certain that one truly effects a revolution against evil,
he offers some suggestions about the way to think of one’s moral status.
He begins by asking, “What can a human being expect at the end of his life,
or what can he fear, in virtue of his conduct during it?” In response to
this question, Kant allows surprisingly large room for self-knowledge:
A human being must first of all have cognition of his own character, at least to
some extent. Thus, though he may believe that there has been an improvement
in his disposition, he must be equally able to take the old (corrupted) one into
consideration, the one from which he started, and examine what and how much
of that disposition he has cast off, as well as the quality (whether pure or still
impure) and the grade of the supposed new disposition for overcoming the old
one and preventing relapse into it; he will thus have to look at his disposition
throughout his whole life. (6:76)
Kant still insists that one has no direct access to one’s disposition. The
barriers to self-knowledge have not been forgotten. Thus, one “must ex-
tract his disposition from the deed before him” (6:77). So what can one
say about one’s moral status? First, one must consider one’s “whole life”
(6:76), looking for progress throughout that life. Evils of one’s youth are
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Those valiant men [the Stoics] mistook their enemy, who is not to be sought in the
natural inclinations, which merely lack discipline and openly display themselves
unconcealed to everyone’s consciousness, but is rather as it were an invisible
enemy, one who hides behind reason and hence all the more dangerous. They
send forth wisdom against folly, which lets itself be deceived by inclinations merely
because of carelessness, instead of summoning it against the malice (of the human
heart) which secretly undermines the disposition with soul-corrupting principles.
(6:57)
In his footnote to this passage, he says even more explicitly that for the
Stoics “everything was quite correctly apportioned . . . provided that one
attributes to the human being an uncorrupted will” (6:58, emphasis added).
For the Stoics, morality demands only that one prefer the moral law
to sensuous incentives. And this is just what one might expect Kant to
demand, because his initial description of the good will is just this kind
of prioritization of predispositions. But Kant here insists that this is not
sufficient, given the fact of radical evil. As he explains,
To become a morally good human being it is not enough simply to let the germ
of good which lies in our species develop unhindered; there is in us an active and
opposing cause of evil which is also to be combated. (6:57)
We cannot start out in the ethical training of our connatural moral predispo-
sition to the good with an innocence which is natural to us but must rather begin
from the presupposition of a depravity in our power of choice in adopting max-
ims contrary to the original ethical predisposition; and since the propensity to
this [depravity] is inextirpable [in time], with unremitting counteraction against
it. (6:51)
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What ultimately determines the status of one’s will is one’s life as a whole.
And although the best indication of future progress is choosing rightly in
the present, one can never ignore the presence, in oneself, of a propensity
to choose evil. Thus at the same time that one must first and foremost
always choose good, one must also actively combat this evil in oneself.47
This is especially important because a human being who chooses evil
does not merely choose to do evil at a particular time but actively under-
mines the likelihood of choosing good with “soul-corrupting principles.”
To effectively combat this evil, a good person must respond not merely
with good choices but also with soul-correcting principles, with actions that
serve to undermine the influence of evil and increase the strength of the
moral law in one’s future deliberations. In the same way that evil human
beings not only make evil choices but effect through their maxims a
propensity to further evil, a human being who effects a revolution against
evil must not only make good choices but also undermine this propen-
sity to evil and develop the strength of will to continually pursue the
good.
As a result, Kant explains what one can do to effect progress in the pu-
rity and stability of one’s empirical commitment to the moral law. To make
sense of this concern, it is necessary again to point out the relationship
between the free will, the appearance of that will, and empirical influ-
ences on that appearance. From a metaphysical standpoint, the free will is
a noumenal ground of the appearances; and these appearances, as objects
of experience, are also capable of empirical influence. From a practical
standpoint, one considers the free will as grounding the appearances not
as an abstract truth but as the realized condition of deliberation. One’s
commitment to oneself as free ground is manifested as one holds oneself
accountable to the moral law in deliberation. Thus the crucial question
is not the metaphysical possibility of a free self, but what that free self
ought to do, what it ought to realize in the appearances of which it is the
ground.
But there is also a perspective of moral anthropology. The need for con-
sidering a moral–anthropological perspective arises from the recognition
that one has a propensity to misuse one’s freedom. This leads, as we have
seen, to a more complicated conception of the appearance in time of the
good will. Whereas one might have thought that one need only do good
deeds now to express a good will, one finds that one must act in such a
way that one will combat the propensity to evil and promote good deeds
in the future. One’s deliberation is always about what to do now, but moral
anthropology provides a means for extending the effects of deliberation
Radical Evil and Moral Anthropology 133
beyond the present. Moral anthropology, then, studies the way in which
natural causes lead to human actions that express most clearly, though
never indubitably, moral goodness. This allows an agent to pursue in the
present those causes which lead to actions that express a good will. And
because the struggle against evil, expressed in consistent moral improve-
ment, is the appearance that one must always seek to realize, one ought
always to pursue these empirical causes.
Moreover, Kant explains that ignorance of one’s moral status intensifies
the importance of helps and hindrances. Given that one can never be
sure whether one is making enough progress and that one can never be
sure that one will continue to do good in the future, one must always seek
to influence a future self that may return to evil. One must remain, as
Kant says, “forever armed for battle” (6:93). In the cool hours in which
one acts from good maxims, one must seek to increase the number and
effectiveness of future cool hours, to combat the deceptions and manip-
ulations of one’s own evil will, and to promote any empirical influences
likely to result in further improvement of one’s actions and observable
intentions. None of this will grant knowledge that one has a good will; noth-
ing can. But the greater the degree of resistance to evil, both present and
future, the more justified one’s hope that one is good. This resistance to
evil, present and future, is in any event what the moral law requires of hu-
man beings, wicked as we are. And the resistance to future evil involves
attention to empirical helps and hindrances.
This ignorance also implies that one cannot simply compare one’s life
with the lives of others. What is required to express a moral revolution
may differ depending on one’s empirical conditions. Of course, one must
always strive to act in accordance with the moral law and to promote aids
to morality. But given the fact of radical evil, one will fall short of always
acting in accordance with the moral law, and one will often fail to promote
aids to morality. And one can never know for sure whether one has gone
far enough. Thus any person committed to moral revolution ought to
express that moral revolution at every opportunity. But when it comes to
evaluating oneself or others, it is reasonable to have different levels of
hope for the same behavior, depending on external conditions.
One who has abundant advantages in terms of natural disposition,
moral education, political stability, and a community that supports ethi-
cal behavior cannot reliably express a moral revolution merely by resisting
some of the temptations to vice that occasionally arise. Given those advan-
tages, such an individual can show his or her struggle against evil only by
consistent obedience to the moral law and by promoting more subtle aids
134 The Solution
5. Conclusion
Because one’s actions in the world are susceptible to empirical influence,
and because one is prone to evil, one can and should study those influences
that aid one’s good maxims in getting the upper hand over one’s evil
maxims. This study, because it is undertaken with a practical goal (the
overcoming of evil in oneself) and because it is a study of a person who
is free (though not a study of that person insofar as he or she is free),
is rightly considered a study of “what the human being makes, can, or
should make of himself as a freely acting being” (7:119). At the same time,
because it is a study of appearances and of the causal relations between
appearances, it is a properly empirical science and can yield empirical
Radical Evil and Moral Anthropology 135
knowledge. This discipline, which teaches how one can effect the progress
in appearance from evil to good, is moral anthropology.
Kant’s anthropological observations about empirical helps and hin-
drances to the development of the good will do not undermine the
priority of freedom over nature because the empirical helps and hin-
drances affect only the appearances of the good will in the world. And this,
of course, is exactly what Kant means when he writes, “the resistance or
furtherance is . . . between nature as appearance and the effects of freedom
as appearances in the world of sense” (5:196). But Kant’s anthropology
is also morally relevant because it studies appearances that express one’s
moral status. The empirical influences described by moral anthropol-
ogy are important parts of those expressions because of a propensity to
evil that human beings freely adopt. This propensity affects one’s future
choices because it is a propensity to choose evil in certain circumstances.
The need for empirical aids to combat radical evil does not mark an ex-
ception to Kant’s principle of “ought implies can,” because this need is
due only to choices freely made. The will itself is corrupt and thus needs
help, but it is freely corrupt.
But one will not simply overcome evil through isolated choices. Rather,
one must effect changes in the empirical influences on one’s character.
Effecting these changes expresses one’s moral revolution, and knowledge
of them comes through moral anthropology. Moral anthropology thus
provides human agents empirically informed advice about how best to
express themselves morally, and this advice becomes morally relevant if
such agents freely choose to act on it.
One might think that the tension between freedom and nature is not
as serious in the interpersonal case as in the individual case because
one need not consider an agent that one seeks to improve from both
the empirical and the practical perspectives at the same time. In one’s
own case, one must consider oneself both from the practical perspective
because one is making a choice and as susceptible to empirical influ-
ence because one is choosing an empirical influence on oneself. But
in a case where one person deliberates about morally helping another,
one might think that only the deliberating person needs to be consid-
ered free while the person helped is considered capable of empirical
influence. Were that true, there would be no conflict in the case of inter-
personal moral influence, because no person would need to be consid-
ered from both the empirical and the practical perspective at the same
time.
But freedom is threatened in the interpersonal case. The notion that
one can consider oneself free while viewing the person to be helped as
an appearance might be acceptable when one seeks merely to improve
another’s physical or even intellectual capacities. But it is inadequate for
cases in which one seeks to affect another for the other’s moral improve-
ment. When one acts on a maxim like “I will do some action in order
to promote the good will of my pupil,” either one holds that the action
will promote the good will of the pupil or that it will not. If one denies
that the action can have any effect on the will of the pupil, then one
acts irrationally in following the maxim, because it violates the norms of
technical reasoning. According to these norms, one should not perform
an action for an end when one believes that the action has no effect
on bringing about the end. But all of one’s actions are, from the stand-
point of the other, empirical influences. Thus if one holds that the action
can affect the will of the other, one grants that empirical influences af-
fect the free will of another. This is the problem of interpersonal moral
influence.
In this chapter, I apply the model developed in the previous chapter
to interpersonal moral influence. In section 1, I point out a seeming
conflict between Kant’s account of virtue in the Metaphysics of Morals and
his account of ethical community in the Religion, and I articulate a model
of interpersonal influence in Kant that resolves this conflict. In section 2, I
address the possible objection that my account of interpersonal influence
ends up being self-centered. In section 3, I offer an interpretation of
Kant’s writings on history in the light of my account of interpersonal
moral influence.
138 The Solution
But how can one have a society for the sake of virtue if people are
incapable of affecting one another morally? And how can one have a duty
to establish such a society if the Metaphysics of Morals prohibits seeking to
make the moral perfection of others an end for oneself ?
The happiness of others also includes their moral well-being, and we have a duty,
but only a negative one, to promote this. . . . It is my duty to refrain from doing
anything that, considering the nature of a human being, could tempt him to do
something for which his conscience could afterwards pain him. (6:394)
Even if one cannot promote moral perfection in another, one can tempt
others to actions that express an evil will. Kant’s description of the limi-
tations on self-knowledge makes clear that although one can never know
that one has a good will, certain acts and intentions are clear signs of
evil. At least some of these actions, unless one is remarkably adept at self-
deception, will pain one’s conscience. This self-knowledge has beneficial
effects, in that it gives rise to the recognition of radical evil and ushers
140 The Solution
in Kant’s new conception of what it means to have a good will. But the
more direct effect of recognizing one’s evil is displeasure. Doing wicked
things tends to make people unhappy, all else being equal. All people
have a seed of goodness that cannot be extinguished, and that seed in-
cludes a conscience that causes pain at the recognition of moral evil in
oneself. Thus the obligation to promote the happiness of others includes
an obligation to refrain from tempting them to evil deeds for which they
will afterward suffer. The promotion of happiness may include even the
obligation to help others choose to perform more good deeds for which
they will feel the pleasure of self-respect.
It is important to point out that this reason for promoting good deeds
does not imply that one helps others to pursue virtue for the sake of
happiness. A father who helps his children do more good deeds out
of a duty to promote their happiness ought to foster morally upright
behavior at least in part for the sake of his children’s happiness, because
he has a duty to promote their happiness. But his children ought to pursue
morally upright behavior for its own sake.3 Insofar as his children perform
good deeds for the happiness they will derive from such deeds, they fail
to exhibit moral virtue, and thus they lose the proper pleasures of self-
esteem that would have come from doing good for its own sake. Insofar as
a good father cares about the happiness of his children, he will promote
in these children a tendency to act in ways which reflect that they care
more about the moral law than about their own happiness.4
In this context, it is also important to note that the promotion of
good deeds includes good intentions. Intentions, like external actions, are
appearances, and thus they are capable of empirical influence. And they
are appearances that express, but are not identical to, one’s moral status.
Thus one feels moral self-condemnation not only for external actions that
are contrary to the moral law but even for internal states. And one who
seeks to promote the happiness of another will seek to influence not only
the other’s visible actions but also the intentions, thoughts, desires, and
feelings of which only the other is directly conscious. None of this implies
that one affects the free will of the other, because these mental states
are merely objects of inner sense. But this does imply that the “deeds”
with which one is concerned include mental states as well as external
actions.5
M1: When I see some person X who can benefit from money or property belong-
ing to another person Y, I will falsely promise to repay in order to borrow the
money or property from Y and give it X, in order to benefit X.
On the one hand, this maxim is consistent with the requirement of virtue
that one make the happiness of others an end. But one who acts on such a
maxim is not virtuous, because this maxim is contrary to the moral law for
the same reasons as the more selfish example of false promising that Kant
discusses in his Groundwork (see 4:422, 4:429–30). Specifically, although
the maxim would probably be to the benefit of X and may not significantly
affect Y in any material sense, the maxim and its universalization cannot
be consistently willed, and one who acts on such a maxim makes use of Y
merely as means of promoting the good of X.
But now imagine a virtuous teacher who considers teaching her stu-
dents to act on maxim M1, or perhaps a refined version of maxim M1
that makes explicit that the transfer from Y to X will increase overall
happiness. She acts on this maxim:
Assuming that the students are smart enough to make such judgments,
acting on this maxim is likely to increase the overall happiness of others.
Thus it would be a suitable maxim for someone who takes the happiness
of others as an end. But like one who acts on M1, a person who acts on M2
is not virtuous, because this maxim is not compatible with the moral law.
Given that human beings are susceptible to instruction, universalizing M2
will cause the same sort of contradiction as universalizing M1. Moreover,
M2 makes use of others as mere means just as much as M1, even if the
142 The Solution
[A human being] remains . . . exposed to the assaults of the evil principle; and, to
assert his freedom, which is constantly under attack, he must henceforth remain
forever armed for battle. (6:93)
Moral Influence on Others 143
In Chapter 5, we saw that this struggle against evil is the way in which
human beings express a moral revolution in their free will. But in the
third part of the Religion, Kant goes on to offer a specific source of evil and
corresponding arena for struggle.
If [a human being] searches for the causes and the circumstances that draw him
into this danger [i.e., assault of the evil principle] and keep him there, he can
easily convince himself that they do not come his way from his own raw nature . . .
but rather from the human beings to whom he stands in relation or association.
(6:93)6
Kant insists that one “is in this perilous state through his own fault,” and
in the previous chapter we saw that the propensity to evil is itself an out-
growth of one’s own evil choices. But other human beings are among the
most important empirical means by which one fosters one’s propensity to
evil. Thus because one must in general oppose the propensity to evil using
empirical influences, one must oppose the corrupting influence of other
people in one’s society using particular sorts of empirical influences.
One can struggle against the corrupting influence of society only
through the moral reform of that society.
The dominion of the good principle is not otherwise attainable . . . than through
the setting up and the diffusion of a society in accordance with, and for the sake
of, laws of virtue. (6:94)
Even with the good will of each individual, because of the lack of a principle that
unites them, they deviate through their dissensions from the common goal of
goodness, as though they were instruments of evil, and expose one another to
the danger of falling once again under its dominion. (6:97, emphasis added)
Others do not cause one’s radical evil, and they cannot cause one to
undergo a moral revolution, but they can affect the way that moral rev-
olution appears. Insofar as others act wickedly, they encourage one to
act wickedly. And even the mere presence of others around someone
144 The Solution
makes him that person “anxious that other human beings will consider
him poor and will despise him for it” (6:93). People appear in the or-
der of nature, and they act causally on one another in such a way that
desires are fostered on the basis of which people act contrary to the
moral law.
This evil social influence has important implications from the stand-
point of someone wishing to express his or her struggle against evil. Such
a person, recognizing the important interdependence of human beings
at the level of appearance, must promote good deeds among those with
whom he or she comes into contact. Good deeds in others, even if these
deeds are merely appearances and do not express genuine moral good-
ness, promote good deeds in oneself. More important given the social
hindrances to morality, one who is morally good will engage in a strug-
gle against social evils by fostering an ethical community that explicitly
aims at the promotion of morality.8 Only if others act virtuously and ac-
tively promote virtue can one’s moral revolution be fully expressed in
the world. And thus insofar as one truly revolts against evil, one seeks
a community within which that revolution will be expressed. Even if
one can neither make others morally good nor even promote in oth-
ers a genuine interest in promoting morality, one can affect the way
others appear such that they at least seem to be good and to encour-
age goodness. This appearance promotes one’s own good deeds. The
ethical community, even as a mere appearance, is a help to morality.
Thus promoting an ethical community expresses one’s revolution against
evil.
This promotion of an ethical community cannot be limited to those
who are likely to affect oneself, nor even merely to the generation in
which one lives. Kant suggests that the promotion of ethical community
involves sharing in a goal of which one will personally experience only
some of the effects. Thus it might seem unreasonable to limit the signifi-
cance of an ethical community to the expression of one’s own revolution
against evil. And of course this community, insofar as it emerges, is not
an expression merely of any individual revolution but the combined ef-
fect of many revolutions, all expressing themselves in part in striving for
ethical community.
Even from the standpoint of the individual, however, there are two
important reasons for promoting ethical community beyond the likely
range of its direct influence on one’s own actions. First, one can never be
sure about what aspects of an ethical community will have a moral effect
on one. The toddler in whom one encourages virtue today might become
Moral Influence on Others 145
at least the danger that the learner will submit to a heteronomous source
of duty.
A further danger is that the very encouragement by which a good-
hearted parent or moralist seeks to raise another to moral perfection
can in fact lower the other to the level of a mere thing. By seeking to
affect the ultimate moral status of another, one treats the freedom of
the other as something natural, susceptible to empirical influence and
manipulation. What one wants to change in another – his or her moral
status – is just the sort of thing that must be changed only by the other.
To seek to promote ultimate moral change in another really just denies
that other moral autonomy and hence moral dignity.
Thus there is an important sense in which one ought to be morally self-
centered. Being morally self-centered is very different, of course, from
being selfish. One ought to take the happiness and well-being of others
as an end and ought always to behave justly and generously with others.
But one ought not take it upon oneself to ensure that others undergo
fundamental moral change. To desire to affect the ultimate moral status
of another is simply to desire too much. Such a desire is a form of hubris
that sets one’s own capacity to exercise influence in the world above the
freedom of another person.
We can admit an effect of grace [that is, a grace that is the ground rather than
the consequence of good works] as something incomprehensible, but cannot
incorporate it into our maxims for either theoretical or practical use. (6:53)
Later, Kant explains in more detail why we can admit this conception of
grace as something incomprehensible:
of one’s moral status, that other person or thing bears the moral weight.
Only if a moral status is fundamentally the result of one’s own choice can
it be a moral status of one’s own. A goodness that is fundamentally an
effect of grace is not one’s own.12
However, Kant does not rule out the possibility13 of grace. He just
rules out making use of grace from either a theoretical or a practical
perspective. As noted in the previous chapter, Kant does not suggest any
other perspective from which one might make use of grace. But there is
conceptual space for such a new perspective.
One might prefer to leave grace in a position of limbo, without a clear
standpoint from which it makes sense to talk about prevenient grace.
But one can use Kant’s argument against the impossibility of grace to
open a similar space for genuine interpersonal moral influence. This
goes beyond Kant’s own treatment of interpersonal influence, but it is
consistent with his mature moral philosophy overall. Just as the freedom
of a moral agent is “just as incomprehensible to us . . . as the supernatural,”
the freedom of one moral agent is as incomprehensible as the freedom
of the next. In the same way that the incomprehensibility of both grace
and freedom precludes the denial of a sort of relation according to which
grace affects freedom but freedom nonetheless remains the ultimate and
fundamental ground of action, the incomprehensibility of different free
agents precludes the denial of real and ultimate interpersonal moral
influence. The relation between a parent’s incomprehensible free choice
and the free choice of a child may be such that the choice of the parent
somehow affects the choice of the child, but the choice of the child is
nonetheless an uncaused and fundamental ground of the child’s actions.
As in the case of grace, this “possibility” can be put to neither theoretical
nor practical use. Perhaps one could articulate some third perspective –
say, a perspective of hope – from which it would have use. For Kantian
parents, teachers, moralists, and religious leaders who desperately want to
hold open some possibility of genuine and fundamental moral influence,
this possibility may be reassuring.
discussion of radical evil and the ethical community that one promotes
in one’s struggle against that evil. In the context of this discussion, Kant
includes a brief account of the “historical representation of the gradual
establishment of the dominion of the good principle on earth” (6:124).
About the time that Kant published the Religion (in 1792–3), he also
wrote a pair of essays that show further development in his reflection
on human history. In September 1793, just after the publication of the
Religion, he published in the Berlinische Monatsschrift the essay “On the
Common Saying: ‘This May be True in Theory, but It Does not Apply in
Practice,’” to which I refer simply as “Theory and Practice.” This essay
includes several passages that seem to support those who ascribe to Kant
the view that human history is a history of genuine moral progress. The
following year (1794) Kant published “The End of All Things,” again in
the Berlinische Monatsschrift, an essay that offers a philosophical interpre-
tation of the final end of all things, including human history. In 1795,
Kant published On Perpetual Peace, in which he outlines the role of war in
promoting progress toward peace and political right in human history.
Kant’s last major published work, The Conflict of the Faculties, published
in 1798, includes a major section devoted to “A Renewed Attempt to An-
swer the Question: Is the Human Race Continually Improving?” This essay
marks Kant’s most advanced reflections on the status of moral progress
in history. The same year Kant published The Conflict of the Faculties, he
published his Anthropology, which has its own brief discussion of historical
progress, a discussion that draws from Kant’s lectures on anthropology.
The profit that will accrue to the human race as it works its way forward will
not be an ever increasing quantity of morality in its attitudes. Instead, the legality
of its attitudes will produce an increasing number of actions governed by duty,
whatever the particular motive behind these actions may be, . . . i.e. from the
external phenomena of man’s moral nature. (7:91)
The empirical history of humans will involve progress, but history gives
no reason to believe that this progress affects the free wills of human
beings. Thus this sort of “moral” progress fits well with the account of
interpersonal moral influence developed in this chapter.
of desires” so that one can set purposes for oneself (5:432). The culture
of skill cultivates humanity’s abilities to use nature as a means (5:431–
2). Kant’s account of culture as the ultimate end of humanity includes
brief versions of several of Kant’s more specifically historical writings. For
example, Kant claims,
This claim that war is a means for cultural progress, and in particular
for progress toward a union of states, is a theme throughout Kant’s writ-
ings on history (cf. “Idea” [8:24–6], “Conjectural Beginnings” [8:121],
“Theory and Practice” [8:311], and Perpetual Peace). This connection be-
tween the discussion of culture in the Critique of Judgment and Kant’s more
specifically historical essays suggests that these essays focus on history as
the study of the ultimate and empirical, rather than the final and moral,
purpose of human beings.
But Kant’s historical essays also suggest that culture is not the only
end of human progress.21 We have already seen that the Conflict of the
Faculties focuses more on political progress and increasing good deeds
than on cultural progress. In the Critique of Judgment, political progress
is “the formal condition under which nature can alone achieve this fi-
nal aim [of culture]” (5:432). Perpetual Peace (see 8:365–6) and “The-
ory and Practice” (8:310–13) also emphasize the importance of polit-
ical progress. In Perpetual Peace, political progress is in the service of
peace, rather than the development of culture itself, and in “Theory
and Practice,” political progress is the ultimate end that “the very na-
ture of things” will establish despite us (8:310–11). Thus these later
writings are more interested in progress toward morally good ends –
peace or justice – than is the Critique of Judgment. But this progress is still
far from the final purpose of nature, the cultivation of morally good people.
Some of Kant’s writings on history, however, seem to suggest that gen-
uine moral progress does occur in human history. These seem to go
beyond the limits set by the Conflict of the Faculties. These works seem
to present a history where members of later generations not only do
more good things and live in more just societies but are actually more
156 The Solution
In “Theory and Practice,” Kant writes, “since the human race is con-
tinually progressing in cultural matters (in keeping with its natural
purpose), it is also engaged in progressive improvement in relation
to the moral end of its existence” (8:308–9). Later Kant adds that “various
evidence suggests that in our age, as compared with all previous ages, the
human race has made considerable moral progress” (8:310). Drawing
on this passage, Robert Louden says, “Kant also maintains confidently
in [“Theory and Practice”] that there exists strong empirical evidence
for asserting that humanity is progressing morally” (Louden 2000:147).
Louden is certainly correct that Kant seems to say that not only culture
(the ultimate purpose) but also morality (the final purpose) progresses
throughout human history.23
But Kant’s apparent focus on moral progress is not as straightforward
as it seems. Kant never explicitly identifies the “moral end” toward which
humanity progresses. And while it is natural to read this as a reference
to the genuine moral improvement of individuals, the essay itself sug-
gests that Kant has something else in mind. Shortly after mentioning
this moral end, Kant associates it with Mendelssohn’s goal of promoting
“the enlightenment and the welfare of the nation to which he belonged”
(8:309). And the final paragraph of the essay offers the real key to in-
terpreting the sense in which the human species progresses “morally.”
There Kant explains that political right, not moral virtue, is the “moral
end” of the human species. As he says,
For my own part, I put my trust in the theory of what the relationships between
men and states ought to be according to the principle of right. It recommends to us
earthly gods the maxim that we should proceed in our disputes in such a way that
a universal federal state may be inaugurated, so that we should therefore assume
that it is possible (in praxi). I likewise rely (in subsidium) upon the very nature of
things to force men to do what they do not willingly choose. (8:313)
others, one does have a duty to promote political right (see 6:307–13).
And in the Conflict of the Faculties as well, Kant uses language of moral
progress to refer to a political change. Thus “Theory and Practice” fits
well into Kant’s overall conception of historical progress. Politics as well
as culture progresses throughout history. But none of this requires any
deep interpersonal moral influence.
“The End of All Things,” like “Theory and Practice,” makes reference
to “the development of morality” (8:332) and “the moral disposition of
humanity” (8:332) and explicitly refers to the conformity of rational be-
ings to the “final end of their existence” (8:331), which the third Critique
describes as moral rather than merely cultural or political. What is more,
Kant connects this moral disposition to the rewards and punishments of
the last day. If his conception of the highest good and the justice of God
is to make any sense, “The End of All Things” has to be about the moral
disposition of humanity in the deepest sense. The essay cannot be limited
to mere political right, nor even merely to good deeds, but must touch
on the ultimate moral status of human beings. Thus one might think this
essay refers to moral progress in history.24
However, unlike Kant’s other historical essays, “The End of All Things”
is not empirical history. The “end” is not a final moment in time, nor even
an ultimate goal that the species asymptotically approaches. The end of
all things is the end of all temporality, the “transition from time into
eternity,” the thought of a “duratio Noumenon wholly incompatible with
time” (8:327). This end is the thought of human beings “as supersensible,
and consequently as not standing under conditions of time; thus that
duration and its state will be capable of no determination of its nature
other than a moral one” (8:327–8). Immediately after mentioning the
“development of morality,” Kant insists that “here we have to do (or are
playing) merely with ideas” (8:332). He goes further and claims that
there can really be “no alteration” with respect to this moral end (8:333).
Rather, one must
think of the final end as an alteration, proceeding to infinity (in time) in a constant
progression, in which the disposition (which is . . . something supersensible . . .)
remains the same and is persisting. . . . [We must act as if] its disposition (the homo
Noumenon, “whose change takes place in heaven”) were not subject to temporal
change at all. (8:334)
This essay, in other words, discusses the ultimate moral “end” of all things
as the unchanging timeless moral disposition that is the ultimate ground
158 The Solution
Like “Theory and Practice” and “The End of All Things,” Kant’s essay
“Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History” seems to suggest that
human beings undergo moral progress.25 Kant says, “I wish merely to
consider the development of human behavior from the ethical point of
view” (8:111) and refers to “man’s development as a moral being” (8:113).
And the final step in Kant’s outline of the development of human beings
is clearly a moral one:
The fourth and last step which reason took, thereby raising man completely above
animal society, was his (albeit obscure) realization that he is the true end of nature,
and that nothing that lives on earth can compete with him in this respect. . . .
This notion implies . . . an awareness of the following distinction: man should not
address other human beings in the same way as animals, but should regard them
as having an equal share in the gifts of nature. This was a distant preparation
for those restrictions which reason would in the future impose on man’s will in
relation to his fellows. (8:114)
morally worse to morally better. Thus Kant explains that this progress is a
“release from the womb of nature” (8:114), not from the womb of wicked-
ness, an expulsion “from a garden . . . into . . . unknown evils” (ibid.), not
a release from evil into moral virtue. Prior to this moral progress, “there
were no commandments or prohibitions, so that violations of these were
also impossible” (8:115).
Thus although “Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History”
clearly outlines moral progress of a sort, the essay does not describe a
moral progress that poses any problem for Kant’s account of freedom.
There is no indication that empirical influences can affect one’s moral
status, though they can affect whether one has a moral status. Incapable of
doing good or evil, proto–human beings were happy, but without moral-
ity. After the progress into moral responsibility, human beings became
capable of good and evil. But there is no indication in this essay that the
history of this freedom is a history of progress from evil to good. All we
get here is a conjecture on the beginning of human history.26
One final area in which Kant seems to discuss moral progress is in his An-
thropology. There Kant suggests that historical progress has three parts:
“man is destined . . . to live in a society of other people, and in this
society he has to cultivate, civilize, and moralize himself” (7:324–5, cf.
“Idea” 8:26, and 9:450, 15:641, and 25:847, 1198, 1420). The reference
here to “moralization [moralisieren],” as something distinct from culti-
vation and civilization, suggests that the development of culture is not
what Kant has in mind. Robert Louden, in fact, argues that moralization
involves “the deep structure of an agent’s moral personality” (Louden
2000:42).27
Still, Louden rightly points out that with respect to the details of moral-
ization, Kant is “exasperatingly brief” (Louden 2000:43).28 One possible
interpretation of the moralization of the human species is that over time,
more and more people come to be morally good. Unless this is the only
reasonable interpretation, however, it should be rejected. It conflicts with
Kant’s claims in the Conflict of the Faculties about what can be hoped for
from history, and it suggests a sort of interpersonal moral influence that
would be incompatible with Kant’s account of freedom.
Fortunately, there are three other plausible ways to interpret
“moralization” that do not require positing that history marks moral
change in the free wills of human beings. Moralization could be inter-
preted to refer to the just political structures to which Kant refers in the
Conflict of the Faculties and “Theory and Practice.” Kant says that we can
160 The Solution
As their [human beings’] culture grows, they become more and more aware of the
wrongs which they themselves selfishly inflict upon each other. And since they
see no other remedy for them than subordinating the private interest (of the
individual) to the public interest (encompassing all), they subject themselves,
reluctantly though, to the discipline (of civil restraint), which they only obey,
however, by following laws which they themselves have given. They feel themselves
ennobled by the knowledge that they belong to a species which fits the vocation
of man as reason represents it to him in the ideal. (7:329–30)
Here Kant makes clear both why this progress is “moral,” and the lim-
its of its influence. On the one hand, by becoming subject to just
and representative political structures (“civil restraints”), human be-
ings conform to a structure that reason prescribes as a moral ideal.
On the other hand, because this conformity is possible even when peo-
ple subject themselves “reluctantly [ungern],” this does not imply any
fundamental moral change. Kant expands upon this political progress
later, arguing that people “feel destined by nature to develop, through
mutual compulsion and laws written by them, into a cosmopolitan society”
(7:331), and the Anthropology ends with the hope that humanity can “ad-
vance constantly from evil to good . . . through the progressive organiza-
tion of the citizens of the earth within and toward the species as a system
which is united by cosmopolitical bonds” (7:333).
However, in the Anthropology and “Idea,” Kant seems to think that mor-
alization goes beyond mere political progress. The cosmopolitical bonds
to which Kant summons his readers at the end of the Anthropology seem to
be the means for a more significant moral progress. Likewise in the “Idea”
Kant says that “the human race will remain in this condition [civilized
and cultured but not moralized] until it has worked itself out of the
chaotic state of political relations” (8:26). Of course, even the Conflict of
the Faculties goes beyond merely political progress. There Kant claims that
“an increasing number of actions governed by duty” will be an effect of
political progress (7:91). Moralization could refer to this increase of good
actions.
The discussion of moralization in the Anthropology might even be read
to suggest that moralization goes beyond mere progress in good deeds
and includes the kind of resistance to evil discussed in the Religion.29 Kant
introduces the notion of moralization after a discussion of “the moral
Moral Influence on Others 161
4. Conclusion
Kant’s account of interpersonal influence allows one to salvage many
common-sense views of the importance of such influence. One ought to
act for the moral improvement of others because such efforts can have
positive results. One can increase the extent to which others do good
things, which will often provide both them and others with better lives.
Moreover, we are all part of communities such that each can profoundly
162 The Solution
affect the way others behave, and this provides a further reason to cultivate
virtue not only in oneself but also in others.
Still, on Kant’s account there is no practical or theoretical basis for
believing that one person can determine, change, or even affect the fun-
damental moral status of another. Some might wish for such a possibility,
but it is not clear that such a demand is made by the common-sense
conviction that we should try to improve others morally, and that we can
improve them. Kant allows that there is a sense, and a rather important
sense, in which we can and should work toward the moral betterment of
others. All people have a responsibility to promote morality in others in
the sense that all people should promote the performance of good deeds
and an explicit commitment to virtue.
Kant can even go part of the way toward allowing for even more ro-
bust moral influence. One can rationally hope that those who perform
good deeds and express commitments to morality are actually morally
good, and this can give rise to a direct interest in the explicit goodness of
others. And Kant may even have room for an inscrutable and practically
important possibility of mutual influence at the deepest level. Thus there
is room for serious social cooperation and corporate moral responsibil-
ity, and for the cultivation of moral community and mutual encourage-
ment in virtue. And all of this is possible within the bounds of Kant’s ac-
count of transcendental freedom as a condition of the possibility of moral
obligation.
Epilogue
Near the end of Kant’s Impure Ethics, Robert Louden asks whether Kant
is “saved by impurity” (Louden 2000:167). That is, he asks whether the
anthropological and other “impure” elements of Kant’s moral philoso-
phy save it from the objections to which it has been subject over the past
two centuries. In this book, my task has been more limited. I am con-
vinced that Kant’s moral anthropology strengthens his ethical theory.
Kant rightly recognized the possibility of effecting changes in human
agents, especially oneself. And he saw that these changes can be morally
beneficial when they are directed to the cultivation of a good and strong
character. One’s moral status is not merely a matter of the choices that
one makes about the present but involves the sort of person that one is.
And becoming a certain sort of person involves cultivating and promot-
ing certain dispositions, emotional responses, interactions with others,
habits of thought and action, and social structures. These aspects of hu-
man life are clearly important parts of morality, and Kant’s moral theory
is stronger for having recognized them.
But Kant’s moral theory is stronger for having recognized the impor-
tance of anthropology only if the theory remains consistent. The impor-
tance of freedom – both practical autonomy and the transcendental free-
dom which underlies that autonomy – is still the core insight of Kantian
moral theory. Many moral philosophers have recognized the importance
of anthropological considerations. What makes Kant both distinctive and
attractive remains his emphasis on freedom from empirical influence in
determining the content of the moral law and acting on the basis of
it. Without these Kantian emphases, one may as well turn to Aristotle,
Aquinas, Smith, Nietzsche, or any of a dozen other moral theorists. Unless
163
164 Epilogue
This book leaves some unresolved issues. I have said very little about the
accuracy of Kant’s particular anthropological observations. As I noted
Defending Kantian Moral Philosophy 165
freedom.1 What I have shown in this book is that two aspects of Kant’s
moral theory – his account of freedom and his moral anthropology – are
consistent. But even if Kant’s moral theory is consistent, it might still be
wrong.
Introduction
1. See the bibliography to Thomas Sturm’s “Kant und die Wissenschaft des
Menschen,” unpublished manuscript.
2. Schleiermacher was not the only one to question Kant’s success in combining
systematicity and popularity. One of Kant’s most important early interpreters,
Karl Reinhold, sought to improve on Kant by providing a version of transcen-
dental idealism that could be both popular and systematic. For more on the
ways in which Reinhold misinterpreted Kant and thereby inaugurated the
ambitious programs of later German Idealists, see Ameriks 2000 and Franks
2000.
3. Ultimately, Schleiermacher does not think that any particularly strong con-
ception of freedom is necessary to make sense of normativity. In fact, his
critique of Kant’s Anthropology is part of a larger project of replacing Kant’s
notion of transcendental freedom with a soft determinism about human free-
dom. Still, Schleiermacher recognizes the need to give an account of the nor-
mative if one seeks to be a determinist about human choices. Much of On
Freedom (Schleiermacher 1992) is designed to give just such an account, for
both epistemological and moral normativity.
4. Even if Kant does throw out one or more aspects of his moral anthro-
pology, the dilemma arises in other areas. The dilemma permeates Kant’s
practical philosophy whenever he seeks to articulate means for promot-
ing advancement toward greater autonomy. For example, in “What Is
Enlightenment?” Kant insists that “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his
self-incurred immaturity” (8:35). But the essay also raises the question of how
man is to emerge from self-incurred immaturity. “Laziness and cowardice” lead
people to “gladly remain immature for life” (8:35). Kant goes on to shift
responsibility for promoting enlightenment from the individuals whose im-
maturity is self -incurred to those “guardians who have kindly taken upon
them the work of supervision [and who] see to it that by far the largest part of
mankind . . . should consider the step forward to maturity not only as difficult
167
168 Notes to Pages 2–7
Chapter 1
1. If one prefers more explicitly two-perspective language, one should read this
to say that the categories and forms of intuition cannot be used in order to
have knowledge of how things are when considered from a practical perspec-
tive.
2. Actually, Kant’s own language here is significantly different. The antinomy
is between a thesis that “causality in accordance with laws of nature is not
the only causality from which the appearances of the world can one and all
be described. To explain these appearances it is necessary to assume that
there is another causality, that of freedom” and an antithesis that claims that
“there is no freedom; everything in the world takes place solely in accordance
with laws of nature” (A444–5/B472–3). The tension between these claims is
different from the tension between the claims that there is and that there is
not freedom, but it is not necessary to discuss these differences for the purpose
of the present discussion. This antinomy has been discussed in detail in the
secondary literature. See for example Strawson 1966, Allison 1983, Pippin
1982, and Kemp Smith 1992.
3. There is some ambiguity in the third antinomy about the sort of priority the
cause must have. Understanding demands a cause that is prior in some sense,
and the only sense in which the understanding can describe that priority
is temporal. Kant’s resolution of the antinomy ultimately depends on the
possibility (as far as we can tell) of a nontemporal cause. Such a cause meets
the demand for a cause, but not the limitations imposed by the understanding
on the sort of cause that is available. In that sense, reason goes beyond the
understanding.
4. I intend this formulation to be neutral between two-object and two-aspect the-
ories of the relationship between things and their appearances. A two-object
theorist should read this to refer to two distinct “things” – the thing in itself
and the appearance – that are in some kind of causal interaction. The two-
perspective theorist should just read this to refer to a single thing insofar as it is
considered either “in itself” – that is, from some non-empirical perspective –
or as an object of experience. For further discussion of the distinction be-
tween two-object theories and two-aspect theories, see Ameriks 1982, Pippin
1982 (especially pp. 194–215), Prauss 1983, Allison 1983, and Nelkin 2000.
The best defense of a two-object view has been offered by Aquila (especially
in Aquila 1979). The best defense of the two-aspect theory is presented by
Allison (in Allison 1983 and Allison 1996). The two-perspective view has been
applied to issues of freedom in moral philosophy in Allison 1999 and 1996
and in Korsgaard (especially 1996a). For an excellent overview of these ac-
counts, see Nelkin 2000.
170 Notes to Pages 14–19
5. See section 4 of this chapter for more on the inscrutability of freedom and
the analogical use of the categories.
6. I take the argument of the second Critique to reflect Kant’s most considered
views about the justification of freedom. For an excellent discussion of the
differences between the argument in the Groundwork and the argument in the
second Critique, see Ameriks 1981. The clearest articulation of the argument
I paraphrase here is given in the second Critique at 5:28–30.
7. It is easy to mistake this for the claim, which Kant is not making, that context
is not relevant to what is morally required. Context is often a relevant feature
of maxims that are tested for moral permissibility. But the context itself does
not determine the way in which the maxims themselves will be evaluated.
Rather, it is insofar as the content or context of a maxim affects its form that
it becomes morally relevant.
8. Note that this does not mean that I am totally free of any influence. I am
free of any empirical influence, which means that my desires and beliefs do
not determine the way I act. But to act independent of these influences is to
act on the basis of a moral law that provides a reason for action. I can be free
of empirical causes, for Kant, but I always act for some reason.
9. This does not mean that one cannot give causal explanations of one’s actions.
But these explanations are always only conditioned. The ultimate, uncondi-
tioned explanation of any act is the free agent, the self-in-itself.
10. Possibility must be understood loosely here. In the first Critique, Kant claims,
“the fact that a concept does not contradict itself by no means proves the
possibility of its object” (A596/B624). He adds in a footnote:
A concept is always possible if it is not contradictory. . . . But it may none the less
be an empty concept, unless the objective reality of the synthesis through which the
concept is generated has been specifically proved; and such proof, as we have shown
above, rests on principles of possible experience. . . . This is a warning against arguing
directly from the logical possibility of concepts to the real possibility of things. (A596/
B624)
13. Strictly speaking, theoretical reason holds open the logical consistency of
and need for freedom as ground of experience. See footnote 10.
14. One passage in the first Critique may seem to raise a problem for this account.
In his resolution of the Third Antinomy, Kant seems to suggest that the
practical perspective – which in this context is the perspective from which one
discusses the “intelligible ground” of appearances – need not be considered
at all in empirical investigation. He says,
This intelligible ground does not have to be considered in empirical enquiries;. . . . We
have to take their strictly empirical character as the supreme ground of explanation,
leaving entirely out of account their intelligible character (that is, the transcendental
cause of their empirical character) as being completely unknown, save in so far as the
empirical serves for its sensible sign. (A545–6/B573–4)
This passage might be read to imply that from the standpoint of theoretical
understanding or empirical inquiry the status of the intelligible does not
even arise. When Kant says that it “does not have to be considered” and
should be left “entirely out of account,” he lends himself to this interpreta-
tion. But in the final part of the passage, Kant makes clear that what he in fact
opposes is not the consideration of the relationship between the practical
and theoretical perspectives but the use of insights from the practical per-
spective in empirical explanation. One can affirm, from a purely theoretical
standpoint, that if there is a practical perspective, then it provides a more
ultimate explanation than the empirical. But one cannot know that there
is such a perspective, and one certainly cannot know anything about such a
perspective, on the basis of theoretical reason. The practical perspective is
useless for empirical explanation, even if theoretical reason can and even
needs to establish that if there is such a perspective, it is prior to – in the sense
of being the ultimate ground of – empirical explanation.
15. As mentioned earlier (see footnote 12), there is still a sense in which the the-
oretical perspective has methodological priority. The priority of the practical
perspective is a priority of the moral ground over the empirically described
ground as a proper explanation of the ultimate basis of an action.
16. This “realm of experience” is not limited to the realm of outer experience.
One may evaluate desires, intentions, and plans that are experienced only
by oneself, and only through introspection. But even this introspection gets
merely at one’s appearance in experience, not at the noumenal ground
of those experiences. See Kant’s discussions of self-knowledge in the first
Critique (Bxl–xli, B68, B275f., A362–3).
17. There are some variations on these two ways of interpreting Kant that I have
not considered. Most of these resolve themselves into either a two-object or
a two-perspective interpretation. For example, Karl Ameriks has pointed out
that even if Kant has a two-object view of the relationship between things in
themselves and appearances in general, he may have a two-perspective view
with respect to the self. Thus Ameriks suggests that
at least some of the passages appealed to in defense of the two-perspective view in-
volve the special context of freedom, where it is important (and proper . . .) for Kant to
maintain that there can be an identity between the being who appears in phenomenal
172 Notes to Pages 23–26
and empirically determined action and the one who in a transcendent way is an abso-
lute source of this action. Such a view does not require that in general all phenomena
and associated noumena are to be said to involve the very same objects. (Ameriks
1982:5–6)
Such a view poses no special problem for the arguments presented here, be-
cause my arguments make a point only about the special case of freedom. For
someone who holds that in general there is a distinction between phenome-
nal objects and their noumenal counterparts, but in the case of freedom the
difference is merely one of perspective, my arguments about the asymmetry
between perspectives should be sufficient.
Another option, suggested by Ameriks in conversation and by Kant in
his resolution to the Fourth Antinomy (see especially A561/B589), is that
while the self is a single phenomenal object, its causality is free and therefore
noumenal, but not in any sense an object. This view fits into a metaphysical
middle ground between standard two-object and two-perspective accounts
of the self, but its development is beyond the scope of my discussion here,
and it is likely that the sorts of arguments developed to show asymmetry in
the case of two-object and two-aspect accounts will apply in this case as well.
18. One passage in the Critical Kantian corpus suggests some form of soft deter-
minism. In the Canon in the Critique of Pure Reason, at the end of a discussion
of human freedom through reason, Kant says,
Whether reason is not, in the actions through which it prescribes laws, itself again
determined by other influences, and whether that which, in relation to sensuous in-
fluences, is entitled freedom may not, in relation to higher and more remote operating
causes, be nature again, is a question which in the practical field does not concern
us, since we are demanding of reason nothing but the rule of conduct; it is a merely
speculative question, which we can leave aside so long as we are considering what
ought or ought not to be done. (A803/B831)
This passage has inspired a flurry of creative interpretations. (See for exam-
ple Beck 1960:190, Carnois 1987:29, Kemp Smith 1992:569–70, and Allison
1990:55–7 for some prominent examples.) The tricky phrase is “in relation to
higher and more remote operating causes,” which makes it sound as though
freedom may not be the ultimate explanation of an action. What is important
for the purposes of this section is that whatever view Kant held at the time
he wrote this passage – and it is not even clear when exactly that was – he
came to strongly reject soft determinism by the time of the second Critique.
19. In the Religion, Kant seems to take a more restrained position with respect
to the possibility of one’s freedom being determined by God at an ultimate
level. See 6:191. I discuss this in Chapters 5 and 6. See, too, Quinn 1990 and
Mariña 1997.
20. I will take up some of these issues in my discussion of the timeless moral
self in Chapter 5. Wood 1984 offers a detailed account of many of the most
important problems that arise from Kant’s position on the free self.
21. I do not mean to imply here that he goes against these limits. Kant’s argu-
ments for the reality of freedom in the first Critique do not contradict his
limitations on theoretical knowledge precisely because his arguments are
Notes to Pages 26–34 173
However exalted we may wish our concepts to be, and however abstract we may make
them in relation to the realm of the sense, they will continue to be associated with
figurative notions. The proper function of these is to make such concepts, which are
not in other respects derived from experience, suitable for use in the experiential world.
For how else could we endow our concepts with sense and significance if we did not
attach them to some intuition (which must ultimately always be an example derived
from some possible experience). (8:133)
23. As we will see in Chapter 5, this is particularly important with respect to the
notion of the “moral revolution” that supposedly takes place for the noumenal
free agent.
Chapter 2
1. Brandt 1997, for example, argues that the anthropology of the lectures and
Anthropology is not moral anthropology, while Stark 1997, Louden 2000, and
others argue that at least part of Kant’s “pragmatic” anthropology is properly
moral. I take up this debate in the next chapter.
2. Robert Louden interprets differently the significance of both the empha-
sis on practical application and the problems Kant raises for anthropology.
Whereas I point out the ways in which these confirm the empirical nature of
anthropology, Louden suggests that they point to something non-empirical
about anthropology. Thus he refers to “Kant’s conviction that accurate ex-
periments and observations of human beings are not possible” (Louden
2000:68) and claims that “the goal of an observation-based science of behav-
ior is not one he [Kant] embraces” (67). If Louden just means that Kant’s
anthropology is not based on observation of human activity in the exter-
nal world but that it also includes observations in inner sense, then his ac-
count and my own are consonant. But insofar as Louden makes the stronger
claim – that something beyond any observation is useful or necessary in
anthropology – Louden’s account varies from my understanding of Kant’s
own assertions about his project.
3. There are, of course, important moral dimensions to Kant’s discussions of
the character of the sexes and the nations. Kant points out moral dangers
and advantages of various national characters, discusses various virtues and
vices for each sex (25:719), and points out the role that women play in
morally refining men. Still, the discussions do not have the systematic place
that the accounts of the character of the individual and of the species do.
Kant says that the character of the individual “shows what man is prepared
to make of himself,” reiterating the distinguishing feature of his moral an-
thropology (7:285, cf. 7:119). By contrast, the character of the sexes is fo-
cused on “Nature’s foresight” (7:303) in the distinction between men and
women and ends with an apology that “I have spent longer on the subject
174 Notes to Pages 34–36
2. If [someone] wants to observe himself, he will reach a critical point with regard to
his emotional state where, generally, no further concealment is possible; that is to say
he is not consciously watching himself when impelling forces are in action, and that
he is observing himself when the impelling forces are at rest.
3. Conditions of time and place, when lasting, result in habits which, it is said, consti-
tute second nature, which makes man’s judgment of himself more difficult. (7:121)
Kant reiterates these later, saying that “knowledge of man through inner
experience” is difficult because “one who investigates his inner conscious-
ness easily carries many things into his own self-consciousness instead of
simply observing what is there” (see 7:143). In addition to these general
concerns about the difficulty of knowing oneself, Kant also suggests that
certain kinds of focus on inner sense can lead to dangerous fanaticism
(cf. 7:132–4, 161–2). None of these concerns, however, takes from the fact
176 Notes to Pages 40–46
that for Kant introspection is “of great importance” (7:143) as the primary
source of anthropological knowledge. The cautions simply point out how
difficult anthropology is and warn his readers away from improper sorts of
introspection.
15. Thomas Sturm has recently argued that “from at least the 1780s on, [Kant]
advances a methodological claim against introspection as the primary method
of knowing the human mind” (Sturm 2001:174; cf. Sturm’s “Kant und die
Wissenschaft der Menschen,” unpublished manuscript). While I agree that
Kant is cautious in his use of inner sense as a source of anthropological
knowledge and that Kant insists upon various corrections to inner sense,
Sturm goes too far in his condemnation of inner sense as a source of Kantian
anthropology. As we have seen, inner sense remains primary in the published
Anthropology, even if it has important dangers and must be supplemented with
other sources.
16. Literature and experience are not the only ways in which one can correct
and refine one’s judgment. Cross-cultural studies – the descendants of the
travel writings of which Kant was so fond – are also important. Moreover,
historical-genealogical projects – such as those of Nietzsche and Foucault –
can be rightly appropriated within the context of a Kantian anthropology.
Kant could not go as far as Foucault in treating these sorts of inquiries as un-
earthing a “historical a priori” (Foucault 1970:xxii), but he can and should
endorse the important empirical project of clarifying what anthropological in-
sights are historically local. Kantians should appreciate the ways in which
Nietzsche, Foucault, and others help refine anthropological judgment about
what features of human beings are universal, even if Kant would insist that
there are at least some legitimate universal claims about human beings.
17. See for example Chapter 3, footnote 17, where I point out a shift in Kant’s
views about the ability of humans to sustain passions for long periods of time.
18. At least two candidates come immediately to mind. Given the structure of
the arguments in Perpetual Peace, one might think that he is using the term
anthropological loosely here and really means that they need to adopt a moral
vantage point. If he does mean anthropology as he normally does, this higher
vantage point is probably the perspective of inner experience, within which
an honest politician will admit his or her own capacity for doing good.
19. Granted, Kant’s anthropology has its own errors. As has already been noted,
he saw some of these and changed some of his views over the course of his
life. Other errors (about women, other races, and the deaf, for example) he
never corrected.
20. One might think here of the failure to attend to women in traditional psy-
chology, or the consideration of women as merely an afterthought. See for
example Gilligan’s critiques of Kohlberg and others in Gilligan 1982. For a
different approach, with more attention to the philosophical implications
of a more inclusive focus in psychology, see Noddings 1984. The shrinking
global village also presents more possibilities for harm from anthropologi-
cal myopia, such as interventions of the U.N., the World Bank, or various
NGOs in cultures that have been excluded from consideration in the devel-
opment of the psychological theories put to use to help them. Still, while
Notes to Pages 46–50 177
Chapter 3
1. Some recent neokantian appropriations of Kant’s moral anthropology have
failed to make this distinction explicit. Thus Nancy Sherman, for example,
says of emotions that they are “primarily a matter of moral anthropology for
Kant – a way of applying the Categorical Imperative and its a priori motive
congenially to the human case” (Sherman 1990:149). I agree with Sherman
that emotions are an important part of moral anthropology but add that
this is not merely a matter of applying the Categorical Imperative to the
human case. (Sherman herself often has a more sophisticated account of
the way in which emotions fit into anthropology. I discuss her account in
detail in Chapter 4.) Robert Louden is more explicit about distinguishing
the anthropology needed to apply the moral law from the specific task of
moral anthropology. See Louden 2000:13–14.
2. Although Kant speaks specifically of a “power of judgment sharpened by
experience,” the context of this passage is an explanation of the respective
roles of pure moral philosophy and moral anthropology. Thus it is clear that
Kant conceived of “experience” here not primarily as general life experience
but as experience that is elucidated in anthropology.
3. For an example of his use of practical to describe parts of his anthropology,
see 25:1367.
4. In his introduction to the lectures on anthropology, Brandt mentions some
of the points to which I turn for evidence of Kant’s moral anthropology
178 Notes to Pages 50–52
10. For more on the relationship between Kant and Platner, see Sturm, “Kant
on the Human Sciences” (unpublished manuscript), and Sturm, “Kant und
die Wissenschaften vom Menschen,” unpublished manuscript. Sturm also
discusses the relationship between Kant’s anthropology and the disciplines
of rational and empirical psychology. For this discussion, see too Sturm
2001. It is important to recognize, in this context, that Kant’s distinction
between pragmatic and merely theoretical anthropology does not merely
distinguish his anthropology from Platner’s particular brand of psychology,
but more generally from any version of rational psychology, and many ver-
sions of empirical psychology.
11. The other purposes are:
1. The better we know people, the better we know how to arrange our actions so as to
be fitting with theirs.
2. It teaches how one should win [against] people.
3. It teaches self-satisfaction, when one has for oneself the good that one finds in
others. (25:734)
All of these uses can relate to morality. The first clearly aids in the fulfill-
ment of imperfect duties to promote the happiness of others and conduct
oneself without interfering with others. The second relates to one’s ability
to influence others and will be discussed next as a distinct sense of the term
pragmatic. The third might seem to imply that by observing others one can
come to see what promotes their happiness and thereby acquire that one-
self. But given Kant’s association of self-satisfaction with moral goodness (see
5:38, 117–18; 6:391), one might reasonably read it instead as suggesting that
anthropology teaches one how to acquire for oneself the moral good that
one finds in others.
12. Although the context here, where pragmatic seems to be distinguished from
moral and technical, might lead one to read this prudence in the first sense (as
related to happiness), the fuller context of the passage makes clear that it has
more to do with influence on others, which could be used to any practical
(including moral) ends.
13. Kant also mentions another use of the term prudence. When used in the sense
of “private wisdom,” prudence refers to “the sagacity to combine all these
purposes for one’s own lasting advantage” (4:416fn.). This sense of prudence
simply identifies it with skill in promoting one’s happiness. A pragmatic
anthropology that developed this skill would be pragmatic in the first sense
covered above. While I do not deny that this sense of pragmatic is at play in
Kant’s anthropology, it is not the primary sense of prudence there, as the rest
of this section will show.
14. For more on politeness, see Brender 1997 and 1998.
15. Kant gives numerous examples of how this illusion is supposed to work in the
Anthropology and lectures, but his focus in those books is on distinguishing this
“illusion” from deceit, in order to provide the anthropological resources for
claiming that politeness can be morally acceptable. Basically, the distinction
is that the effect of deceit depends on getting another to actually believe the
content of the deception, whereas illusions depend for their effect on an
180 Notes to Pages 58–65
appearance, such that the effect is the same whether or not one believes the
illusion to be true. For more on this, see Brender 1997 and 1998.
16. This example has been discussed in much greater detail in Frierson 2000
and Sorenson (In process).
17. Kant’s accounts of affects and passions change over the course of his lectures
in anthropology. Specifically, in his early lectures (e.g., the 1776 Friedlander
notes, 25:589–91, 612), neither passions nor affects are lasting conditions.
In later lectures (e.g., the 1789 Busolt notes, 25:1526) and the published
Anthropology, one of the most important differences between passions and
affects is that passions last and affects pass quickly. In my account of passions
and affects, I focus on the account in the Anthropology and supplement it with
complementary details from the lectures. For more on the differences, see
Frierson 2000.
18. There are, of course, important moral dimensions to Kant’s discussion of the
character of the sexes and the nations. The character of the races is simply
too short for Kant to make much comment in the way of its moral relevance.
But Kant points out the moral dangers and advantages of various national
characters, and with respect to the character of the sexes, Kant discusses
different virtues and vices for each sex (e.g., at 25:719), prescribes certain
sorts of relations between the sexes, and points out the moral role of women
in refining and morally improving men.
19. This is a variant reading (see note 4 in the Academy edition, 25:631) that
makes more sense in the context. The Friedlander lectures actually read
“hard wax” here.
20. Another important social help to the development of character is culture.
Kant’s accounts of the importance of culture are linked with his discussions
of politeness (mentioned earlier) and with his more general accounts of the
development of the human species. Munzel 1999 examines this in detail.
21. See Chapter 6 for more on Kant’s view of historical progress and its relation
to his anthropology.
22. He never lectured on ethics without also lecturing on anthropology during
the same year. For more on the circumstances of Kant’s lectures, see Brandt
1997 and Stark 1997.
23. In fact, in his review of Kant’s Anthropology, Schleiermacher suggests that
there is little in it that is not merely peripheral. He calls the Anthropology
a “collection of trivia” and a “clear portrayal of peculiar confusion.” Kant’s
anthropology is particularly prone to this criticism in part because, as he
proudly announces when he first writes about his course in anthropology,
he includes “so many observations of ordinary life that listeners [of his lec-
tures] have constant occasion to compare their ordinary experience with
[his] remarks and thus, from beginning to end, find the lectures enter-
taining and never dry” (Kant’s letter to Herz, 10:146). This desire to make
his lectures popular infects even Kant’s published Anthropology, and so one
frequently finds tidbits of anthropological information that hold one’s atten-
tion but that do not really deserve the attention they receive. The extensive
explanations of the character of nations and of the differences between
men and women probably fall into this category. In addition to making the
Notes to Pages 65–70 181
Chapter 4
1. To be fair, neither Herman nor Sherman is specifically concerned with rec-
onciling Kant’s anthropology with his theory of freedom. Nancy Sherman, in
particular, explicitly says, in a comment at the beginning of Making a Necessity
of Virtue that applies to all her work on Kant, that she will “not talk about
the thorny problems of Kant on freedom” (Sherman 1997a:21). Moreover,
although Sherman clearly sees her work on Kant as part of a revival of inter-
est in “what Kant would call moral anthropology” (Sherman 1995:369), her
conception of moral anthropology is considerably broader than Kant’s own.
Sherman seems to realize the difference between what she means by moral
anthropology and what Kant means by it. When she discusses Kant’s own
explicit description in the Metaphysics of Morals of the distinction between
moral anthropology and a metaphysics of morals, Sherman suggests that
“this [distinction] misses the force of Kant’s own fuller theory” (1997a:134).
Sherman finds fault with Kant here because Sherman’s own general concep-
tion of moral anthropology is so broad that it includes any anthropological
considerations that are needed to apply the categorical imperative to human
situations. I argued in Chapter 3 that it is more appropriate to read moral
anthropology in a narrower sense, dealing only with helps and hindrances
to having a good will. But Sherman generally uses the term more broadly.
Sometimes, however, Sherman does seem to include the emotions within
moral anthropology in the narrower sense (see footnote 3).
2. Louden even claims (see fn 57, p. 198) that Wood influenced his views. For
further parallels, see below, footnote 22.
3. But see above, footnote 1. In my treatment of Sherman through the next
three sections of this chapter, I look at her recommendations about the
182 Notes to Pages 70–73
roles that emotions can play in moral life as possibilities for the role of helps
and hindrances more generally. As I argue in Chapter 3, Kant conceives of
passions and affects, which Sherman sometimes includes among the emo-
tions, as important hindrances to moral life. Sherman focuses, however, on
emotions as empirical aids to moral choice. Moreover, although her concep-
tion of moral anthropology is often broader than mine, at times Sherman
clearly does recognize the role of emotions in moral anthropology narrowly
construed as providing subjective conditions that help or hinder having a
good will. She says, for example,
The emphasis in The Doctrine of Virtue is on who will act in morally worthy ways from a
pure attitude of virtue. And the thought is that what we can do to increase our chances
to be part of that pool is to cultivate emotions that do not battle with our duty motive
and that positively promote it. Such emotions are not themselves expressive of the
purest attitude of virtue in that they are not the ultimate source of adequate reasons for
doing what is required or for determining what is morally permissible. But they are a
layer of character that can, nonetheless, best support moral motivation. (1997a:144;
cf. Sherman 1997b:272 and Herman 1993:13)
In this passage, emotions that support moral motivation are connected ex-
plicitly with increasing the “chances” that one will be morally good. Emotions
help and hinder having a good will. Insofar as they have this role, it is rea-
sonable to insist that Sherman explain how they can serve that role. In that
context, it is proper to look to her recommendations regarding the place of
emotions in moral life in order to find explanations of how one class of helps
and hindrances promotes the good will.
4. See Sherman 1997a:144 and 1997b:273. I focus on the formulations in
Sherman’s most recent work. Here she outlines three roles for the emotions
but commits Kant to only two of them. She is more ambivalent about the
third, the “motivational” role, as a matter of Kant interpretation, though she
clearly thinks that it should play a role in a good moral theory. In an earlier
essay, “The Place of Emotions in Kantian Morality” (Sherman 1990), Sherman
outlines five different roles for the emotions. Three of these are the same as
those in the later essays, though the motivational role is described in terms of
emotions under a “regulative constraint” (Sherman 1990:161). The two roles
discussed in that essay but dropped in her more recent work are the role of
emotions as a “provisional morality” (Sherman 1990:158) and as an “aesthetic
ornament” (160). Sherman does not reject either of these functions in her
later work and even (in Sherman 1995) reiterates her commitment to the role
of emotions in provisional morality, but they seem to play a less significant
role.
5. Of course, this does not mean that all such failures are free of moral fault on
the part of the agent. In the United States today, for example, it is conceivable
that many people could innocently fail to recognize that referring to women
as “girls” is demeaning, but it is hard to imagine a white adult who innocently
thinks that there is nothing wrong with referring to African-Americans as
“niggers.”
6. Sometimes Herman seems to think that greater epistemic awareness is all that
is necessary for people to be morally good. Thus her account of character
Notes to Pages 73–78 183
In short, it may be that merely having the feeling is not something that Kant sees to
be morally objectionable – or at least something for which the agent may legitimately
be held responsible. But he does recognize responsibility for harboring, cultivating,
or failing to cultivate certain desires or feelings and for taking desires to be reasons to
act accordingly. (Baron 1995:199)
those around one, and if one is naturally insensitive, such that the cultivation
of sympathy would be very difficult and time consuming, it may be morally
irresponsible to cultivate one’s emotional capacities. One who lacks basic
necessities need not seek out the sickroom or the debtor’s prison in an
attempt to share in the pains of others.
17. In the previous three sections, I have had to glean general accounts of the
role of empirical influences from contemporary Kantians who are concerned
with more particular issues. By contrast, Louden is explicitly concerned with
problems of integrating moral anthropology into Kant’s account of freedom.
Kant’s Impure Ethics (Louden 2000) offers an explanation and integration of
Kant’s impure ethics into his moral philosophy. This integration is not the
primary purpose of the book (as Louden has made clear to me in corre-
spondence). Louden’s emphasis is on pointing out the moral importance of
Kant’s work in anthropology, as well as related work in aesthetics, religion,
history, and pedagogy. But even if the primary purpose of the book is to
draw attention to aspects of Kant’s moral philosophy that have not been suf-
ficiently discussed in other accounts of Kant’s ethics. Louden also explicitly
addresses the philosophical problems with which this book is concerned. He
explains that impure ethics has “the aim of locating factors that will help or
hinder the development and spread of morality within human life” (Louden
2000:13), and he even explicitly raises the problem of reconciling moral an-
thropology with freedom: “A deeper doubt is whether the idea of a moral
anthropology ‘to which empirical principles belong’ is itself consistent with
Kant’s own dualistic views concerning transcendental freedom and nature”
(Louden 2000:7). He asks, “What real impact can the various empirical pre-
cepts of practical anthropology and moral education have? Won’t they affect
only our empirical character, and not our intelligible character?” (19). In
response, Louden suggests that “Kant did not address these issues, and in or-
der for me to do so it will be necessary to offer conjectures that occasionally
go beyond his texts” (Louden 2000:19). Louden’s account, then, is explic-
itly designed to solve the problem that I address in this book and that Kant
supposedly left unsolved.
18. Except for the term indispensable on page 116, all italics are my own.
19. One aspect of Louden’s view that I will not discuss in detail is a particular sug-
gestion about how empirical aids act as necessary preparations for morality.
Louden occasionally explains that certain empirical influences help by mak-
ing the moral law more accessible to the senses. Thus he says that “aesthetic
experience offers human beings tangible access to concepts of pure ethics,
and we need this access if we are going to make ethics comprehensible”
(Louden 2000:116), that “a large part of the project of impure ethics con-
sists in finding concrete ways to make the message of pure ethics graspable
to human beings” (127) and that “Kant’s account of historical progress is
of a piece with the larger tapestry of impure ethics; it is yet another way of
making morality graspable to human beings” (152). This notion of making
morality “graspable” is similar to suggestions made by Paul Guyer (see Guyer
1993) about the way in which aesthetic feeling can facilitate moral feeling.
With respect to this particular way in which empirical influences can play a
Notes to Pages 81–82 185
role as preparation for morality, there are two important problems. First, it
is not clear why a clearer grasp of morality will make it more likely that one
will choose good rather than evil. At most, it might be necessary to make it
possible for one to recognize duties, which is necessary to be a moral agent
at all (as noted in section 1, above). These influences could play an epistemo-
logical role that enables moral responsibility, but there is no explanation of
how they facilitate virtue. In his discussions of aesthetics in particular, Kant
seems more interested in describing how beauty functions to give people
a better awareness of morality (something cognitive), rather than a greater
commitment to it (something genuinely moral). Kant may – and almost cer-
tainly does – think there is a connection between these, but Louden never
explains what this connection is nor how it is consistent with transcendental
freedom.
20. One could of course hold that earlier generations are morally responsible
and that these conditions really are necessary, if one denied that “ought
implies can.” Louden might want to do this, but if so, he is giving up the core
of Kant’s moral theory.
21. He mentions two other possible objections, but they relate less directly to
the issue of the relationship between freedom and empirical influence: the
problem of “perfecting others,” and the suggestion that there is a kind of
hubris – hard to justify after the twentieth century – in claiming that we are
morally better than previous generations.
22. Louden footnotes Allen Wood for “discussion on this topic” (fn 57, p. 198).
This is no surprise, because Wood’s recent book (Wood 1999) falls into many
of the same problems that Louden’s does. Throughout most of his discussion,
Wood is more careful (or more ambiguous). He can be read as suggesting
not that social and historical forces are necessary conditions of individuals’
coming to have good wills, but only of moral responsibility in general or the
moral progress of the species as a whole. But at times he seems to suggest
something stronger, as when he says that “Kant’s ethical thought is funda-
mentally about the human race’s collective, historical struggle to develop
its rational faculties and then through them to combat the radical propen-
sity to evil that alone makes their development possible” (Wood 1999:296).
Following this bold summary of Kant’s ethical thought, Wood suggests that
history can be divided into an “epoch of nature” that “continues today”
(Wood 1999:296) and an “epoch of freedom,” to which “all ethical duties
belong” (325). Thus Wood finally says, “Kant does not think that I can ever
achieve this inner revolution [from evil to good] entirely on my own. The
origin of evil is social, and so must be the struggle against it. . . . The pursuit
of my own morality can be distinguished from the moral progress of the
human species, but . . . the two ends are necessarily linked in their pursuit”
(Wood 1999:314). In Chapter 6, we will see that there is a sense in which
the moral revolution by which one has a good will is necessarily linked with
one’s actions to promote progress in the species. But whereas Wood, like
Louden, sees the origin of this link in the necessary social preconditions of
“my own morality,” I argue that social influences must be considered expres-
sions of a good will. Wood, like Louden, needs some account of how these
186 Notes to Pages 82–96
influences can cut through the causal network to affect one’s freedom, and
this account will get him into the same problems that Louden encounters
directly.
23. Kant does recognize that there are some historical prerequisites for moral
responsibility. He discusses some of these in his essay “Conjectures on the
Beginning of Human History,” discussed in Chapter 6. He also presumably
can allow that some human beings, such as infants and the insane, are not
morally responsible. But most of the aids to morality he discusses are not
aids of this sort.
24. Munzel makes use of a similar argument. She says, for example, “the pedagog-
ical process complete with propaedeutic functions that prepare and develop
these aptitudes, even awakening them to a state of moral responsiveness, is
deemed by Kant to be essential ” (Munzel 1999:340–1, emphasis added). Rec-
ognizing the potential threat to freedom, she then explains that “however
many external agencies are involved (nature, parents, teacher, philosopher,
constitution) on the behalf of human moral purpose, individual freedom is
not jeopardized. The others’ efforts of discipline and cultivation stop short
of the indispensable act of formation,” which can be effected only by free
choice (Munzel 1999:341–2). Munzel even uses the language of a “neces-
sary (albeit not sufficient) condition” (Munzel 1999:340). Insofar as Munzel
takes these passages to save freedom in the light of empirical influences, my
criticisms of Louden apply to her as well. In the next section, I argue that
she need not fall into this danger.
25. Ironically, the main metaphor I do not discuss (because it is not as fruitful)
is Munzel’s detailed horticultural metaphor. Munzel runs into several of the
problems that I raised with Louden’s account in the course of her analysis
of the horticultural metaphor. For one thing, empirical aids are represented
by the horticulturist and his activity, which activity is absolutely essential for
the success of the grafting process, which represents moral formation. This
leads Munzel into thinking of empirical aids as necessary but not sufficient
conditions of moral development, a mistake to which her other illustrations
are less susceptible.
Chapter 5
1. For those who prefer two-aspect accounts of the will, this could be explained
as the distinction between the empirical aspect of the will and the free aspect
of the will. For those who prefer two-perspective language, the distinction is
between the will considered as empirically determined and the will consid-
ered as free.
2. In part, this footnote is a response to criticisms raised in the first reviews
of the second Critique. See for example reviews by Pistorius, Rehberg, and
others. Several of these are collected in Bittner 1975. Rehberg’s criticism is
found in Schulz 1975.
3. I follow Pluhar’s translation here, though with some reservations. Pluhar
interprets jener in the German to refer to nature, but it could also refer to
freedom. Ultimately, the reference of this term does not affect my overall
Notes to Pages 96–102 187
point, because Kant clearly says that the appearance of the self is subject to
both the laws of nature and the laws of freedom.
4. This partially explains why most contemporary “Kantian” solutions to the
problem are quite different from Kant’s solution. Following the example of
Rawls, many contemporary Kantians are deeply resistant to making use of
this distinction (or any other aspects of Kant’s metaphysics) in their moral
theories. Again, although Kant’s language here suggests a two-object account
of the self, one could translate it into two-aspect or even two-perspective
terms. But one cannot get around the sorts of metaphysical considerations I
discuss in Chapter 1. In particular, one must take seriously the nature of the
asymmetry between nature and freedom.
5. There are metaphysical objections to this account of freedom and nature,
and these have been discussed by Wood, Allison, and others. As noted in the
Introduction, I am primarily concerned with the practical problems raised by
moral anthropology.
6. Christine Korsgaard has described this very clearly, though without sufficient
attention to the role of situation, in Korsgaard 1996a:75.
7. This notion of “expression” has some similarity to Charles Taylor’s notion of
expression in his discussion of “The Expressivist Turn” in The Sources of the
Self. Taylor explains,
To express something is to make it manifest in a given medium. I express my feelings
in my face; I express my thoughts in the words I speak or write. I express my vision of
things in some work of art, perhaps a novel or a play. . . . But to talk of ‘making manifest’
doesn’t imply that what is so revealed was already fully formulated beforehand. (Taylor
1989:374)
There are two crucial differences between this Kantian notion of expression
and Taylor’s Romantic notion. First, while expression in a Kantian sense does
not imply that what is revealed was preexistent, this is not because the ex-
pression “shapes” what it expresses (Taylor 1989:376) but because what is
expressed is necessarily something expressed, such that it “exists” only as
something expressed. Second, Romantic “expression” is the expression of
a highly individual self, such that one can express any of a vast number of
possible “selves” and thereby define oneself in any of a vast number of dif-
ferent ways. By contrast, for Kant one is fundamentally either good or evil,
and this moral status is what is expressed in one’s life. While the expressions
may be different depending on the situations in which one finds oneself, the
underlying moral disposition is, for each of us, either good or evil.
8. The restriction to voluntary actions is meant to exclude reflex actions or
actions that are the results of affects. The restriction to morally relevant
actions excludes considering eating one flavor of ice cream over another
to be expressive of one’s free will. Such nonmoral choices might be free,
but Kant is not committed to considering them expressions of one’s free
will.
9. As Kant says, “the human being knows how to distort even inner declarations
before his own conscience” (“On the Miscarriage of all Philosophical Trials in
Theodicy,” 8:270). In this attention to self-deception, Kant fits into a tradition
188 Notes to Pages 102–107
that includes Bishop Butler, Adam Smith, and Rousseau. For more on the
influence of Smith on Kant, see Fleischacker 1999 and 1991. For more on
the influence of Rousseau, see Velkley 1978 and 1989.
10. It is particularly important to point out Kant’s awareness of this problem
of self-deception in the context of those who criticize Kant for misunder-
standing the complexities of maxim formation. In fact, Kant was well aware
not only of the possibility that the same actions could be represented under
different maxims but also of the human tendency to use this fact as a means
of justifying evil deeds.
11. Of course, one’s imperfect duty of self-perfection does require promoting
helps and preventing hindrances to morality. But this requirement is due
to the moral effects that these helps and hindrances have independent of
their place as objects of an imperfect duty. Unless helps and hindrances
affect morality in a way other than being objects of an imperfect duty, the
imperfect duty to promote them cannot get off the ground. (See my criticism
of Sherman in Chapter 4, section 3.)
12. For other reasons as well, the Religion is a good place to look for an account of
the relation between the good will and its appearances that can make sense
of the importance of moral anthropology. The first half of the work involves
an extensive discussion of the nature of the good will and its appearance,
and Kant moves in the second half to his most extensive discussion of any
single empirical aid to morality – ethical community. The first and second
Critiques and the Metaphysics of Morals include significant accounts of the rela-
tionship between freedom and its appearance in the world. The Anthropology
and essays on history include extended treatments of anthropological con-
siderations. But the Religion most clearly combines an account of nature and
freedom with an account of helps and hindrances to morality.
13. This limitation of scope applies primarily to those discussions of inscrutability
that occur in a practical context. In theoretical discussions, where Kant argues
that one cannot have theoretical knowledge of the self, he does not restrict
his scope to knowledge of one’s goodness. One cannot know theoretically
whether one is good or evil.
14. For more on Kant’s empirical argument for radical evil, see Chapter 2,
section 2, where I respond to the objection that Kant’s argument cannot
be empirical because radical evil is supposed to be universal. Here I argue
against a different objection, that Kant’s account of radical evil runs afoul of
limitations on theoretical knowledge of the self.
15. One could read this passage in a slightly different way. In particular, when
Kant says that he omits “all actions recognized as contrary to duty,” he could
just mean that an action that is recognized by a particular agent as contrary to
duty cannot be performed by that agent from duty. This would not require his
positing any inherently wicked actions. Even in this case, however, whether
or not an action is recognized by an agent as contrary to duty is an answerable
empirical question, at least by that agent.
16. That said, Kant is rightly concerned about the tendency to dwell on one’s
weaknesses in a way that undermines hope in the possibility of moral reform.
See Brender 1997 and 1998.
Notes to Pages 107–110 189
17. Kant’s claim that humans are radically evil applies to both individuals and to
the species as a whole, but in this section I focus entirely on its application to
individuals. Although Kant is interested in the role of evil at the level of the
species, for his moral philosophy I take the individual case to be fundamental.
What matters is that I, as a human being, am evil, and thus I need to struggle
against that evil. Even his argument for the importance of social solutions to
the problem of evil is rooted in the fact that each human being recognizes
that evil is furthered through bad social influences. This is discussed further
in Chapter 6. For accounts that focus on the social dimensions of evil, see
Wood 1999 and Anderson-Gold 2001.
18. There is one exception. Insofar as one acts from affect, one’s will is not
involved. Hence it is conceivable that one could perform “actions” contrary
to right without having an evil will. Unless one has lived an exceptional life,
however, it would be incredible to ascribe to this cause all one’s acts that
are contrary to right. For most of us, to do so would verge on denying one’s
own freedom. See Chapter 3 for more on affects. See too Frierson 2000 and
Sorenson (in process).
19. Throughout, it is important to remember that for Kant self-love can include
actions that are normally considered altruistic. The point is simply that one
does what is in one’s sensuous interests, either in that it immediately satisfies
some desire that one happens to have or that it is conducive to the satisfaction
of desires at some later date. Thus someone who acts from a good-hearted
desire to see others flourish is acting from “self-love” in this Kantian sense.
20. Several recent commentators (see, e.g., Allison 1990:146–61 and Wood
1999:283–5, but contrast Munzel 2000) misunderstand Kant’s insistence
that all humans have a propensity to evil as the end of the story for Kant. In
fact, the propensity for evil, because it is our own fault, is itself an indication
of actual evil in human nature. Only in this context can one make sense of
the problems that Kant raises in his discussions of grace, and in particular
in his account of substitionary atonement.
21. Even in the Anthropology, when Kant points briefly to the fact that humanity
is trapped in a “labyrinth of evil,” he quickly points out that it wanders into
this labyrinth “through its own fault” (7:326).
22. Kant does not make clear the extent to which the notion of prior experi-
ence is relevant to the propensity to moral evil. That is, he does not say that
one must have some prior experience of violating the moral law for such
violation to be incorporated into one’s maxims. Moreover, it is hard to imag-
ine that such an experience could be a necessary precondition. Whereas it
is possible to experience an object for which one has no particular prior
desire, one could not similarly experience moral evil, which is a matter of
choice, without actually choosing it. Thus the conditions of actualization of
the propensity to evil must be different from the conditions of actualization
of other propensities (for objects of potential inclination). What is relevant,
for Kant, is that human beings have a potential for deviation from the moral
law, a potential that is actualized in them given appropriate conditions.
23. For more on this, recall the discussion of Allison in Chapter 2. The “necessity”
that one with a propensity to evil will perform evil is not a logical necessity, nor
190 Notes to Pages 110–114
Hare does not include (1) in this description, although denying (1) is a
way to avoid Christian doctrines or their substitutes. One can simply admit
the rigor of morality and our propensity not to live by it but claim that we
have freely fallen short and now are morally evil without any further hope
of reform. This would be an option, but it is not one that Kant is willing
to accept. For some recent versions of this option, see Scheffler 1992 and
Kagan 1998.
36. The lectures on religion both before and after the Religion emphasize the
inscrutability of atoning grace and give no further details. In the Religion,
although Kant does point out that grace is ultimately inscrutable, he offers
some details about the way in which atoning grace works. See Quinn 1986
for a discussion of these details. Even in the Religion, sanctifying grace is
thoroughly mysterious.
37. The Religion was published in parts during 1792–3. The Conflict of the Faculties
was written, at least in part, by December 1793 (see letter to Kiesewetter, Ak.
11:456), but it was not published until 1798.
38. This interpretation contrasts with Storr, who drew closer parallels be-
tween the postulates and grace, though see Rawls 2000, Chapter 10, for
a defense of the claim that even the postulates of God and immoral-
ity depend on practical concerns that are not essential for pure practical
reason.
39. See Chapter 1, especially footnote 12, for more. Hare uses an argument of
this sort to motivate Kant’s account of grace. As Hare explains,
On Kant’s principles it is perfectly fair for him to refuse to give an account of how
supernatural assistance might work to enable a person who is not naturally good to
make herself a good person. It would indeed be inconsistent for him to presume to
give such an account, which would go beyond the proper limits of our understanding.
But it is not legitimate, on Kant’s principles, simply to say that a bad person’s becoming
good is simply possible and leave it at that. This is not legitimate because it leaves us
with an antinomy, with the apparent conclusion that the revolution of will both is
possible (because obligatory) and impossible (because the ground of our maxims is
corrupt). (Hare 1996)
A concept of grace is necessary to show that this apparent contradiction is
only apparent. Of course, this concept of grace raises problems of its own and
must be shown to be coherent before it can legitimately be used to resolve
Kant’s antinomy.
40. Later philosophers and theologians do attempt to offer such a Critique. In
different ways and with different debts to Kant, Fichte (especially in his
Critique of All Revelation), Schleiermacher, Novalis, and Kierkegaard all artic-
ulate perspectives within which grace can be described. More recently, John
Hare (Hare 1996) has offered a philosophical analysis of the problems and
some attempted solutions, raised by the “moral gap” between the demands
of morality and the problem of radical evil.
41. For more details, see Hare 1996, Quinn 1984, Mariña 1997, and Adams
1998.
42. Kant does not use the phrase “will in revolution” in the Religion. However, the
revolution that he describes is a revolution that takes place in the noumenal
Notes to Pages 123–134 193
will, whereby a will “becomes” a good will. Because this revolution is nontem-
poral, however, it is appropriate to think of it as the status of the will rather
than as a change that happens to it.
43. For some reason, Wood and DiGiovanni translate Denkungsart as both “mode
of thought” and “attitude of mind,” even in the same sentence. This serves
to obscure important connections in Kant’s line of thinking. I translate
Denkungsart as “mode of thought” throughout. For an extensive discussion
of Kant’s notion of Denkungsart, see Munzel 1999.
44. G. Felicitas Munzel seems to take these passages to describe the same revolu-
tion that Kant discusses in the Religion. See Munzel 1999:27n13, 160–4, and
330. As will become clear, I disagree with this reading.
45. This conception of establishing character is not something that Kant comes
up with only after writing the Religion. Throughout his anthropology lectures
Kant reiterates the theme. In the Friedländer lectures of 1775–6, sixteen years
before the Religion was published, Kant is reported to have said, “character is
fixed very late, around [ohngefehr] the fortieth year” (25:654). Mrongovius,
in 1784–5, reports Kant’s saying that “character comes with ripe old age”
(25:1385). And by the time of the published Anthropology in 1798, Kant’s
views on the late establishment of character appear not to have changed
(see 7:294).
46. There is another, less important reason that a will in revolution cannot be
expressed as a life divided neatly into an evil phase and then a good one that
follows a sudden conversion. Kant’s explanation of atoning grace involves
the claim that one can suffer “punishment . . . executed in the situation of
conversion itself” (6:73, cf. 6:73ff.). Kant depends on a temporal coexistence
of the self that is radically evil and the self that is morally good, because
only on this basis can the morally good self properly function as an atoning
sacrifice for the wickedness of radical evil. For one way of explaining this
account, see Quinn 1986:450f. Quinn does not work out in sufficient detail
the relationship between what he calls a “lack of moral identity between the
pre-revolutionary and the post-revolutionary persons” and the unity of the
physical person. For both practical and metaphysical reasons, it is important
to understand that the lack of moral identity between the radically evil and
the morally good selves must be merely figurative, but this analysis is beyond
the scope of this book.
47. That combating one’s propensity to evil is possible is a condition of the pos-
sibility of our obligation to become better, an obligation that one recognizes
by the fact of reason. How it is possible cannot be comprehended, though
Kant makes use of the category of “grace” to describe the possibility of it, as
noted in section 3.
48. This also helps explain how Kant can respond to claims about moral un-
fairness or moral luck. Louden 2000 (pp. 55–6, 141) explains this problem
in several ways. The most troubling form of the problem is the claim that
whether or not one is morally good is a matter of luck or social conditions or
historical accident. For Kant, luck, social conditions, and historical accident
can affect the way in which one’s moral revolution is expressed, but they
cannot affect the status of the will itself.
194 Notes to Pages 134–143
49. Kant allows for empirical choices in the Metaphysics of Morals, where his gen-
eral notion of Willkühr (choice) is a faculty of desire (something empirical,
in this context) combined with “consciousness of the ability to bring about
its object by one’s action” (6:213), where such consciousness is something
that can be observed in inner sense. The empirical nature of this choice is
clear later when Kant contrasts “human choice” with “animal choice” (6:213).
There is no basis for positing anything about animals as things in themselves,
so the notion of “animal choice” can apply only to something empirical, an
empirical choice. Similarly, although there is a basis for positing a noumenal
grounding choice in human beings, this choice grounds an appearance that
includes numerous empirical “choices.”
Chapter 6
1. The absence of a duty to promote one’s own happiness is less important.
Kant’s reason for omitting such a duty is that “what everyone wants unavoid-
ably of his own accord does not come under the concept of duty” (6:386).
2. In the rest of this section, I focus on the Religion, because it provides the most
general account of the importance of interpersonal moral influence. I deal
with the writings on history in section 3.
3. The motivational structure here is more complicated than merely pursu-
ing virtue for its own sake, or for the sake of duty. See Herman 1993 and
Korsgaard 1996a (especially Chapter 2) and 1996b for discussions of the
distinctions between acting from a particular motivation and for a particular
purpose.
4. Moreover, it is important for parents to promote their children’s moral self-
esteem in a way that does not do injustice or harm to others. This requirement
is imposed by the categorical imperative, which prohibits the promotion even
of the happiness of others if that end is achieved by immoral means. In the
next section this argument is expanded with respect to the happiness of third
parties. With specific reference to promoting the happiness gained by proper
self-esteem, this requirement has the particular implication of ruling out any
strategy according to which one dulls the conscience of another, rather than
promoting their virtue, to prevent them from the pain of self-condemnation.
5. Kant uses the term deed in this broad sense when he refers to the sensible
“deed contrary to law . . . that resists the law materially and is then called
vice,” a deed that is “sensible, empirical, [and] given in time” (6:31). Just as
sensible deeds contrary to the law are called “vice,” one can refer to deeds
that reflect goodness as “virtue.” In general, Kant reserves the term virtue for
good deeds that actually reflect a good will. In this section, however, I use
the term virtue primarily to refer to good deeds themselves, whether or not
they reflect an underlying good will. Thus one can promote “virtue,” in this
sense, without promoting a good will itself.
6. In Chapter 3, we looked at passions and affects as hindrances to morality. In
this section of the Religion, Kant specifically highlights passions as a hindrance
that has a social origin. He writes, “The passions . . . assail his nature, which
on its own is undemanding, as soon as he is among human beings” (6:94).
Notes to Pages 143–145 195
being unjust. Similarly, moral communities (churches, etc.) have the moral
obligation to promote virtue. And the human race itself can be said to have
the obligation to form political and moral communities. In all of these cases,
however, the moral status of a community is not independent of the moral
status of its members, and the ultimate responsibility always lies with the
individual members of the state, the church, or the human race.
12. There is one sense in which a goodness that is the result of grace can be
one’s own, at least in part. Although Kant is adamant that from a practical
perspective, one’s choice must precede grace, the form of this choice is a
deliberate receptivity to grace. Grace can be a necessary condition of goodness,
as long as the presence of this grace is dependent on some practically prior
choice (temporal priority is not an issue here). In this case, one’s goodness
is not entirely one’s own, because grace was required. This is one way in
which a will in revolution differs from a morally untainted will. But because
receptivity is both up to oneself and the ground of receiving grace, one’s
goodness is in an important sense “ultimately” one’s own. See Mariña 1997
for more on the importance of receptivity in Kant’s account of grace.
13. Again, because of Kant’s peculiar conception of possibility, it would be better
to say that he does not commit himself to the impossibility of grace. For Kant,
to claim that something is “possible” is to make a very strong claim. All he is
willing to say with regard to prevenient grace is that we cannot know that it
is impossible.
14. See especially Yovel 1980, Despland 1973, Fackenheim 1957, Galston 1975,
Michaelson 1979, Kleingeld 1995 and 1999, and Anderson-Gold 2001. Wood
1999, Louden 2000, Munzel 1999, and Michaelson 1990 also include exten-
sive treatments of history in the context of more general accounts of Kant’s
moral philosophy. Louden 2000, in particular, has a very good overview of
the way in which different accounts understand moral progress in Kant’s
writings on history (see Louden 2000:144–9).
15. For other accounts which to varying degrees argue that historical progress
involves moral progress that cannot be reduced to appearances, see Guyer
2000: Chapter 11; van der Linden 1988; Wood 1999; and Yovel 1980.
16. My criticism of Louden in Chapter 4 presents several philosophical reasons
to reject readings of Kant that suggest any sort of historical influence on
the moral status of free human beings. In this section, I focus on exegetical
issues, dealing with what Kant actually said, which I show, in most cases, is
just what he should have said.
17. This survey covers those writings that I discuss in the following sections. “What
Is Orientation in Thinking,” “On the Miscarriage of all Philosophical Trials
in Theodicy,” and parts of Kant’s first and second Critique s have relevance
to Kant’s general account of history, but none of these focuses primarily on
history, and none contributes to the issue of whether or to what extent Kant
is concerned with moral progress. For these reasons I omit them from my
account here.
18. Herder continued to publish his Ideas through 1791, but Kant said that he
could no longer review the work because he was working on his Critique of
Judgment: “The third part of Herder’s Ideen will now probably be reviewed by
Notes to Pages 152–158 197
another . . . for I lack the time for it, since I must soon get to the Grounding
of the Critique of Taste” (Letter to Christian Schütz, 25 June 1787, 10:467).
19. Robert Louden (Louden 2000:147–8), following Friedrich Kaulbach
(Kaulbach 1975:83), claims that Kant’s reference in the Conflict of the Facul-
ties to a “moral cause” influencing human events is a sign that Kant thinks
there is “strong empirical evidence . . . that humanity is progressing morally”
(Louden 2000:147). However, Kant immediately explains that this “moral
cause is twofold: first, that of the right [to a civil constitution] . . . and second,
that of the end . . . that that same constitution alone be just” (7:85). In both
cases, the “moral cause” turns out to be a purely political one.
20. See van der Linden 1988:135f; Wood 1999:310; and Louden 2000:141–2
for other examples of using the third Critique to clarify Kant’s conception of
history.
21. They also give considerably more detail about how culture (and other ends) is
promoted in history. I do not provide the details of these discussions, because
they are not directly relevant to Kant’s views about the end of historical
progress.
22. There are other passages that I do not discuss, though these can be dealt
with in the way that I deal with one of the four passages below. For examples
of such passages and their use to support a strong notion of moral progress,
see Louden 2000:56, 147–8; Guyer 2000: Chapters 11 and 12; and Wood
1999: Chapter 9. There are other, more overarching interpretations of Kant’s
treatment of history that raise challenges for my view, but a full discussion
of these approaches is beyond the scope of this book. In this context, see
especially Yovel 1980 and Kleingeld 1995.
23. Kant’s justification for this assumption is even more provocative:
I base my argument upon my inborn duty of influencing posterity in such a way that
it will make constant progress (and I must thus assume that progress is possible), and
that this duty may rightfully be handed down from one member of the series to the
next. (8:309)
Kant seems to be saying that one can know – or at least postulate – that the
human race will make moral progress because one is obligated to promote this
progress. Were this the real import of this passage, it would provide a clear
example of the importance of intersubjective moral assistance for Kant.
24. See Louden 2000:147 for an example of using this passage to support a
reading of Kant according to which there is genuine moral progress.
25. It is not altogether clear how far this essay can be taken to be a serious repre-
sentation of Kant’s own views. Herder’s Ideen has strong religious overtones,
and Kant may have used a philosophical reconstruction of the Biblical narra-
tive as merely a means for rebutting Herder’s own supposedly pious history.
Thus even this essay, which deals directly with the development of the hu-
man species, may assume for the sake of argument that human beings have
progressed and argue about how that progress occurred. Still, this section will
show that even if one takes “Conjectures” to represent Kant’s own view about
human progress, the essay does not show that the human species progresses
morally, in the sense of its becoming more and more morally good.
198 Notes to Pages 159–161
26. This also helps makes sense of at least one way in which “nature . . . prepare[s]
man for what he himself must do in order to be a final purpose” (5:431).
For a different interpretation of this passage, see van der Linden 1988:142.
27. Louden draws heavily from Kant’s lectures on pedagogy (especially 9:450)
for his interpretation of moralization. While these lectures are generally
accepted as loosely based on Kantian ideas (see Louden 2000:33–6 and Beck
1978, but contrast Weisskopf 1975), they are unreliable as primary sources
of Kant’s view of moralization. Still, even these lectures can be interpreted
in a way that is compatible with the account of moralization offered here.
28. Louden says this specifically with regard to the “good ends” that one who is
moralized will pursue, but the point holds for all of the details of moraliza-
tion.
29. Likewise in the “Idea,” Kant specifically mentions the promotion of a “morally
good character [moralisch-gute Gesinnung],” in contrast to mere “semblances
of morality” (8:26).
30. Kant even makes oblique reference to the problem of evil and the role
of grace, saying that “this human . . . is expected to bring about what he
himself is still in need of” (7: 325) and thus “only expects [moralization]
from Providence” (7:328). Yet just as in the Religion, Kant ends up claiming
that practically one must take the stance that “the human species should and
can create its own good fortune” and thus we should “further (each to his
best ability) with all good sense and moral inspiration the approach to this
goal” (7:329).
31. See footnote 29 for a troubling text from the “Idea.” Further suggestions
of troubling texts are found in Louden 2000, Guyer 2000, van der Linden
1988, Wood 1999, and Yovel 1980.
Beyond his strictly historical writings, Kant’s discussions of education in
the Anthropology, anthropology lectures, the lecture on pedagogy, the Critique
of Practical Reason, and the Metaphysics of Morals have been taken to imply
interpersonal moral influence that goes beyond what my account allows. A
full exploration of Kant’s philosophy of education is beyond the scope of my
discussion here, but some indication of how I would deal with it is provided
by my treatment of Kant’s historical writings. L. W. Beck points out,
The ages of an individual life correspond to the stages in the history of the world. By
reading this fuller treatment of the philosophy of history we discover a key to the less
well organized treatment of the philosophy of education. (Beck 1978:197–8)
further “cultural” development. Finally, just as Kant allows for the promotion
of good deeds, and even the fostering of an ethical community explicitly
committed to virtue, he points out in his writings on education how such
commitment to virtue can be fostered in children.
Epilogue
1. Bernard Williams, for example, has argued that although Kant was right
about the connection between morality as he understood it and freedom,
he was wrong about morality, and thus about freedom as well (see Williams
1995). R. Jay Wallace (in Wallace 1994), Simon Blackburn (in Blackburn
1998), and others have worked out sentiment-based moral theories that do
not seem to depend on the kind of transcendental freedom that Kant insists
is necessary for moral responsibility. And even Schleiermacher himself (see
especially On Freedom, Scheiermacher 1992) tried to define a notion of moral
accountability according to which transcendental freedom was unnecessary.
References
Kant’s Works
References to Kant’s works are cited by volume: page number of Kant’s Gesammelte
Schriften. 1900–. Ed. The Royal Prussian (later German) Academy of Sciences.
Berlin: Georg Reimer (later Walter de Gruyter).
I have made use of the following translations, making changes where necessary:
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Victor Lyle Dowdell. Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1978.
Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Com-
pany, 1987.
Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary Gregor. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1997.
Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan,
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Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1998.
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton. New York: Harper Torch-
books, 1964.
Kant’s Philosophical Correspondence 1759–99. Ed and trans. Arnulf Zweig. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1970.
Lectures on Ethics/Immanuel Kant, Ed. J. B. Schneewind and trans. Peter Heath.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Lectures on Metaphysics/Immanuel Kant, Ed. and trans. Karl Ameriks and Steven
Naragon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Political Writings, Ed. Hans Reiss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1970.
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, ed. Allen Wood and George di
Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
200
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202 References
For the purpose of this index, I have listed Kant’s works according to the
order in which they appear in the Academy Edition. The Critique of Pure
Reason, for which I do not use Academy Edition pagination, is listed first.
Page numbers in italic indicate pages on which the work is quoted but
not mentioned by name.
Ai/Bi–A855/B883: Critique of Pure Reason, 191n33, 191n34, 192n36, 192n37,
4–5, 14–15, 17, 19–21, 25–8, 34–5, 36, 192n42, 193n44, 193n45, 193n46,
38, 41, 46, 100, 118, 123, 148, 169n2, 194n2, 194n5, 194n6, 195n8, 195n9,
170n10, 170n12, 171n14, 171n16, 195n10, 198n30
172n17, 172n18, 172–3n21, 188n12, Ak. 6: 203–493: Metaphysics of Morals, 1, 5,
196n17 6, 31, 33, 49, 51, 55, 57–9, 61, 106,
Ak. 1: 215–368 Allgemeine Naturgeschichte, 137–9, 146, 156–7, 161, 179n11, 181n1,
33 188n12, 194n49, 194n1, 198n31
Ak. 4: 384–463: Groundwork of the Ak. 6: 202–372: Doctrine of Right (Part I of
Metaphysics of Morals, 5, 7, 15, 20, 31, 32, the Metaphysics of Morals), 106
33, 48–9, 51, 53, 97–8, 100–2, 104, 106, Ak. 6: 373–493: Doctrine of Virtue (Part II of
141, 148, 170n6, 178n5, 179n13, 190n29 the Metaphysics of Morals), 77, 182n3
Ak. 4: 464–559: Metaphysical Foundations of Ak. 7: 1–116: Conflict of the Faculties, 117,
Natural Science, 175n11 153, 154, 155, 157, 159–61, 191n34,
Ak. 5: 1–163: Critique of Practical Reason, 192n37, 197n19
4–5, 15, 17, 18, 20–4, 26–7, 31, 114, 118, Ak. 7: 117–33: Anthropology from a Pragmatic
120–1, 125,170n6, 170n12, 172n18, Point of View, 1–2, 5–6, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35,
177n21, 179n11, 186n2, 188n12, 39–41, 42, 43, 44, 49–62, 63, 64, 65,
190n29, 195n9, 196n17, 198n31 66–7, 68, 127–8, 134, 153, 154, 159–60,
Ak. 5: 165–486: Critique of Judgment, 1, 29, 161, 167n3, 168n7, 173n1, 173–4n3,
31, 32, 39, 61, 96, 135, 152, 154–5, 157, 174n4, 175–6n14, 176n15, 178n4,
177n21, 196n18, 197n20, 198n31 178n5, 179n15, 180n17, 180–1n23,
Ak. 6: 1–202: Religion within the Boundaries 181n24, 181n25, 188n12, 189n21,
of Mere Reason, 1, 8, 27, 31, 32, 35, 36, 39, 193n45, 198n31
55, 67, 68, 77, 101–2, 104, 105–12, 113, Ak. 8: 15–31: Idea for a Universal History
114, 115, 117–18, 119, 120, 121–7, 128, with a Cosmopolitan Purpose, 152, 155,
129–31, 133, 137–9, 142–3, 144–5, 150, 159, 160–1
152–3, 160–1, 172n19, 174n4, 175n12, Ak. 8: 33–42: What is Enlightenment?,
188n12, 190n27, 190n28, 191n32, 167–8n4
205
206 Index of Kant’s Works
Ak. 8: 107–23: Conjectures on the Beginning of Ak. 9: 439–99: Lectures on Education, 31, 55,
Human History, 152, 155, 158–9, 161, 159, 198n31
186n23, 197n25 Ak. 10–12: Correspondence, 52, 180n23,
Ak. 8: 131–47: What is Orientation in 196–7n18
Thinking, 20, 173n22, 196n17 Ak. 15–16: Reflexionen, 34, 52, 159,
Ak. 8: 252–71: On the Miscarriage of all 174n8
Philosophical Trials in Theodicy, 187n9, Ak. 25: Lectures on Anthropology, 32, 40, 42,
196n17 43, 52, 53–5, 60–1, 62, 63–4, 65, 66, 68,
Ak. 8: 272–313: On the Common Saying: ‘This 159,173n3, 177n3, 177n4, 179n11,
May be True in Theory, but it Does not Apply 180n17, 180n18, 180n19, 180n22,
in Practice’, 153, 155–9, 161 193n45, 198n31
Ak. 8: 326–39: The End of All Things, 153, Ak. 27, 29: Lectures on Ethics, 18, 27, 31, 49,
157–8, 161 51, 55, 59, 115–16, 117
Ak. 8: 340–86: On Perpetual Peace, 45, 153, Ak. 28, 29: Lectures on Metaphysics,
155, 161, 176n18 27, 55
Name Index
207
208 Name Index
Rawls, John, 15, 19, 187n4, 190n30, Yovel, Yirmiahu, 195n9, 196n14, 196n15,
192n38 197n22, 198n31
Rehburg, August Wilhelm, 3, 168n5, 186n2
Reinhold, Karl, 167n2 Zammito, John H., 152
Subject Index
Aesthetic taste, 31, 78, 79, 81, 184–5n19 Desire, faculty of, 59–61, 65, 181n24,
Affects, 59–61, 65–6, 169n12, 180n17, 181n25, 194n49
181n25, 182n3, 189n18
Analogy, 29 Education, 6, 7, 31, 54–5, 63–4, 67, 70, 71,
Antinomy, fourth, 172n17; of grace, 120, 74, 81–4, 87, 134, 135, 138, 149, 174n4,
150–1, 192n39; third, 4, 14, 17, 19, 28, 183n7, 183n11, 183n14, 184n17,
169n2–3, 171n14 198–9n31. See also Pedagogy
Athaeneaum, 1 Emotions, 7, 43, 59, 68, 70–8, 91, 163–4,
Autonomy, 24, 147, 163, 167n4 165, 169n12, 175n14, 177n1, 181n1,
182n3–4, 183n7, 183n11–13, 184n16.
Beauty. See Aesthetic taste See also Affects; Passions
Beneficence, 76 Ethical community, 134, 137, 139, 143–4,
149, 153, 161, 188n12, 195n8–9, 199n31.
Categories, 14, 17, 27–30, 170n5 See also Moral community
Categorical imperative, 7, 48, 55, 63, 97, Evil. See Radical Evil; Will, Evil
122, 130, 177n1, 181n1, 194n4 Expression, 8–9, 87, 95, 97, 99–100, 103,
Character, 1, 6–7, 9, 54, 60, 61–7, 68–9, 104, 110, 115, 124–5, 129, 134–5, 138,
87–91, 101, 111, 127–9, 135, 153, 163–4, 142–5, 185n22, 187n7–8
169n12, 174n8, 180n18, 180n20,
180n23, 182n3, 182n6, 190n25, 193n45; Fact of reason, 15, 114, 165, 177n22,
Intelligible vs. empirical, 25–6, 35, 83, 190n29, 193n47
86, 89, 122, 171n14, 173–4n3, 184n17 Feelings, 31, 41, 43, 44, 57, 59–60, 75, 101,
Children, 64, 85, 136, 140, 146, 147, 149, 130, 140, 181n25, 183n13, 187n7.
151, 218n4, 198–9n31 See also Affects; Emotions
Christian, 114, 118, 190n28, 191n32, Feeling, faculty of, 65, 181n24
191–2n35 Frailty, 111, 113, 190n25
Civilization, 67, 79, 88, 158, 159, 160, Freedom, Asymmetry of, 4, 13–20, 83, 88,
178n5, 198n31 103, 170n11, 172n17, 187n4; Kant’s
Compatibilism, 3, 16, 23–5, 167n3, 172n18. argument for, 4–5, 14–15, 24;
See also Soft determinism Transcendental, 4, 49, 67, 70, 74, 80–7,
Culture, 55, 61, 64, 79, 80, 81, 84, 86, 152, 91, 97, 129, 134, 149, 162, 163, 165–6,
154–60, 176n20, 178n5, 180n20, 167n3, 168n7, 184n17, 185n19, 199n1
197n21 Free Will. See Will, free
Desire(s), 40–1, 58, 98, 108–9, 140, 144, God, 20, 114, 115, 117, 118–19, 120, 122,
148, 155, 170n8, 171n16, 183n6, 124, 150, 172n19, 190n30, 192n38,
183n13, 189n19, 189n22 195n9
209
210 Subject Index
Grace, 31, 95, 114–22, 123, 126, 131, Nature, final vs. ultimate purpose of,
148–51, 165, 189n20, 190–2n31–6, 154–5, 157–9, 198n26; laws of, 169n2,
192n38–40, 193n46–7, 196n12–13, 187n3
198n30
Observation, 5, 33–4, 39, 42, 173n2,
Happiness, 3, 37, 46, 49, 50–2, 54, 59, 65, 174n8. See also Introspection
73, 75–8, 83, 89, 112, 125–6, 134, Original sin, 190n28
138–42, 145, 146, 147, 148, 150, 151,
168n9, 179n11–13, 183n11, 194n1, Passions, 6, 59–61, 64, 65–7, 136, 155,
194n4, 195n9 169n12, 176n17, 180n17, 181n25, 181n1,
Highest good, 157, 195n9 195n6. See also Emotions
History, 1, 6, 32, 55, 64, 68, 79–83, 135, Peace, 64, 67, 82, 85, 153, 155, 158. See also
137, 138, 151–61, 178n5, 184n17, War
185n22, 186n23, 196n14, 196n17, Pedagogy, 54, 63, 87. See also Education
197n20–2, 197n25, 198n31 Pleasure, 51, 59–60, 65, 72, 98, 125–6, 140,
178n7, 181n25
Illusion, 57–8, 60, 180n15. See also Politeness, 3, 6, 7, 57–8, 61, 64, 67, 73, 149,
Politeness 164, 165, 168n9, 179n14–15, 180n20,
Incentive, 38, 102, 106, 108, 110–12, 131, 181n24, 183n11, 183n14. See also Illusion
175n10 Possibility, Kant’s notion of, 15, 27, 170n10
Inclinations, 40, 54, 55, 59–61, 64, 89, 98, Postulates, 20, 31, 46, 117, 120, 177n21,
108–10, 111, 112, 113, 122, 126, 131 190n30, 192n38
Inner sense, 39–44, 46, 140, 148, 173n2, Pragmatic, 5, 48, 50–6, 65–7, 78, 134,
175–6n14–15, 177n21, 194n49. See also 173n1, 178n4–6, 178n9, 179n10–13,
Introspection 181n24, 183n15. See also Prudence
Innocence, 131 Progress, 31, 64, 79–83, 124, 126, 128–33,
Inscrutability, 170n5 135, 136, 151–61, 184n19, 185n22,
Introspection, 39–44, 101–2, 107, 171n16, 195n8, 196n14–15, 197n19, 197n21–5,
176n14–15. See also Inner sense 198n31
Propensity, 35–8, 61, 63, 105, 107–15, 122,
Judgment, 43–5; logical forms of, 17; 124, 129–32, 135, 143, 161, 174n8,
moral, 3, 48, 71, 177n2 185n22, 189n20, 189–90n23–4, 192n35,
Justice, 76, 115–16, 119, 145, 155, 195n11 193n47. See also Radical Evil
Providence, 198n30
Literature, 43–4, 176n16 Prudence, 51–6, 85, 178n8, 179n12–13.
Love, 31, 58, 61. See also Self-love See also Pragmatic
Psychology, 6–7, 134, 165, 176n20, 179n10
Mahabharata, 44
Maxims, 35–6, 38, 63, 70–4, 75, 78–9, 98, Races, racism, 34, 62, 175n13, 176n19,
101–11, 113–14, 116, 122, 124, 127, 128, 180n18
130, 131–3, 134, 137, 141–2, 170n7, Radical Evil, 8–9, 35–9, 95, 101, 103–23,
174n8, 175n10, 188n10, 189n22, 192n39 125, 126, 128–9, 131, 133, 135, 136,
Moral Community, 55, 142, 162, 195n7–8, 138–9, 143, 145, 151, 153, 165, 174n6,
196n11. See also Ethical Community 174n8, 175n11–12, 188n14, 189n17,
Moral feeling, 184n19 190–1n31, 192n40, 193n46, 195n9
Moral law, 15, 20, 24, 26, 27, 37–8, 46, Respect, 31, 55, 73, 98–9, 102–4, 107, 130,
48–9, 55–6, 69, 71–4, 80, 81, 85, 96, 134, 158
97–9, 102, 103–4, 106–12, 113, 115–17,
119, 121, 122–3, 125–7, 130–4, 140, 141, Spectator, English, 43
144, 147, 149, 161, 163, 170n8, 175n10, Self-deception, 57, 102, 104, 107, 111–13,
177n21, 177n1, 178n8, 184n19, 189n22, 131, 133, 140, 148, 187–8n9–10,190n26
195n8 Self-knowledge, 41, 73, 101, 103, 129, 139,
Moral revolution, 9, 122–35, 136, 143–5, 171n17. See also Inner Sense;
151, 173n23, 185n22, 193n48, 195n8. Introspection
See also Will in revolution Self-love, 37–8, 104, 107, 108, 111, 175n10,
Moralization, 55, 67, 79–82, 84, 159–61, 189n19
198n27–8, 198n30–1 Self-mastery, 58, 59, 66
Subject Index 211