Reading Onora O'Neill

David Archard, Monique Deveaux, Neil Manson, Daniel Weinstock

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135017613
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría filosóficas

Onora O'Neill is one of the foremost moral philosophers writing today. Her work on ethics and bioethics, political philosophy and the philosophy of Kant is extremely influential. Her landmark Reith Lectures on trust did much to establish the subject not only on the philosophical and political agenda but in the world of media, business and law more widely.

Reading Onora O'Neill is the first book to examine and critically appraise the work of this important thinker. It includes specially commissioned chapters by leading international philosophers in ethics, Kantian philosophy and political philosophy. The following aspects of O'Neill's work are examined:

• 
  
  

• global justice
• Kant
• the ethics of the family
• bioethics
• consent
• trust.

Featuring a substantial reply to her critics at the end of the book, Reading Onora O'Neill is essential reading for students and scholars of ethics and political philosophy.

Part 1

Kant on Action and Reason

1

Moral Worth and Moral Rightness, Maxims and Actions

Marcia Baron

My essay has a narrow focus: it explores a question – and likely disagreement – I have concerning one aspect of Onora O’Neill’s very rich, very influential ‘Consistency in Action’.¹ There is much that I agree with in that essay, and I have learned a great deal from it, as I have from O’Neill’s other work. My disagreement is small in relation to the scope of her essay, but it is not a mere quibble. I hope to elicit from Prof. O’Neill some remarks on maxims and the relation between a maxim’s passing muster – the maxim’s passing the test of the Categorical Imperative (CI) – and the moral worth of an action that has that maxim. I can best introduce my question by quoting a passage from ‘Consistency in Action’.

[R]ightness and wrongness and the other ‘categories of right’ standardly used in appraisal of outward features of action are not the fundamental forms of moral acceptability and unacceptability that he [Kant] takes the Categorical Imperative to be able to discriminate. Since the locus of application of Kant’s universality test is agents’ fundamental principles or intentions, the moral distinction that it can draw is in the first place an intentional moral distinction, namely that between acts that have and those that lack moral worth. In an application of the Categorical Imperative to an agent’s maxim we ask whether the underlying intention with which the agent acts or proposes to act—the intention that guides and controls other more specific intentions—is consistently universalizable; if it is, according to Kant, we at least know that the action will not be morally unworthy, and will not be a violation of duty.²

I completely agree with O’Neill that the fundamental form of moral acceptability that the CI is supposed to be able to discriminate is not the rightness of actions. Insofar as it is a test,³ the CI tests the agent’s maxim. So far we are in agreement. (My use of ‘maxim’ does not reflect any disagreement; see note 2.) What I want to question is O’Neill’s claim that the CI distinguishes between acts that have and those that lack moral worth.

My question thus concerns the relation between an action’s moral worth and a maxim’s passing the CI test. Does the fact that a maxim is universalizable entail, on Kant’s view, that the action that has that maxim is morally worthy?⁴ (The question can be asked with respect to any formulation of the CI; since I am discussing O’Neill’s paper, I frame the question in terms of universalizability when I do not present it simply in terms of passing the CI test.)

Here is an initial answer, to be examined and expanded on in the course of this short essay: No, it does not entail it, and we can see that by recalling that on Kant’s view, an action has moral worth only if it is done from duty. An action whose maxim is universalizable need not be done from duty. Therefore, an action whose maxim is universalizable may, but need not, have moral worth. Recall Kant’s shopkeeper who refrains from cheating in order to maintain his good reputation (G 397). His maxim – ‘In order not to harm my reputation, I will treat all my customers honestly rather than cheat those I think I can get away with cheating’ – is universalizable, but he does not act from duty, and his action lacks moral worth.

The negative answer – the position that the fact that a maxim is universalizable does not entail, on Kant’s view, that the action that has that maxim is morally worthy – is only tentative, because we need to examine just what is meant by ‘done from duty’. ‘Done from duty’ may mean that it is done for the reason that it is morally required. This is the narrow, and more standard, notion of ‘done from duty’ (or of ‘acting from duty’). Acting from duty thus understood is what is sometimes referred to as acting from duty ‘as a primary motive’. But there is also a broader notion, which encompasses both acting from duty as a primary motive and acting from duty in the following sense: I act primarily for some other reason, but I am guided in so acting by my sense that what I do is morally recommended, or at least morally permissible. My commitment to morality thus plays a motivational role, but only a secondary one. This is sometimes referred to as acting from duty ‘as a secondary motive’.⁵

There are different views of just what acting from duty as a primary motive involves. On my view, acting from duty as a primary motive (more precisely, doing x from duty at t₁) is not compatible with acting from an inclination (more precisely, doing x from an inclination at t₁) but is compatible with having one or more inclinations (inclinations that may, but need not, conflict with duty). I have written extensively on this else-where⁶ and will not repeat it here; I want only to acknowledge that Kant scholars differ on this.⁷ There is also room to question whether it makes sense to speak of conduct that is guided by a commitment to morality – a commitment to putting moral considerations before other considerations in the event of a conflict – as acting from duty as a secondary motive, the worry being that this does not count as acting from duty.⁸ I have no investment in calling it ‘acting from duty’, and agree that there is clumsiness in the term. The point in drawing the distinction is to highlight the role played by a commitment to morality in actions other than those done from duty as a primary motive, and to suggest that the value in acting from duty lies mainly in that commitment.

When Kant says (in Groundwork I) that an action has moral worth only if it is done from duty, he is using ‘done from duty’ in the narrower sense. He is not saying that what is crucial for an action to have moral worth is that it be done in such a way that the agent’s commitment to morality plays a role in guiding and constraining the agent’s choice. I wish he were. It is hard to see why acting from duty as a primary motive should have special value. Acting from duty is certainly of value; it reflects a commitment to putting morality before competing considerations. Yet it is hard to understand why actions done from duty as a primary motive should count as more worthy – or, more precisely, worthy in a way that actions guided by duty but not from duty as a primary motive are not.

It is important not to overstate the emphasis Kant places on acting from duty as a primary motive – and thus on the moral worth of actions. As I and others have noted, Groundwork 397–401 should not be read as if the aim were simply to provide an account of the moral worth of actions; it is crucial to understand Groundwork 397–401 as part of Kant’s development of the idea of a supreme moral principle, a principle that guides without borrowing anything from inclination.⁹ Appreciation of the role of Kant’s discussion of actions done from duty in elucidating the concept of good will and thereby developing the principle that guides it, mitigates somewhat the force of the claim that only these actions have moral worth. Nonetheless, the claim stands.

In most of his ethical writings, Kant’s emphasis is indeed on what I am calling acting from duty as a secondary motive. What matters is that the agent subordinates inclination to duty, i.e., that the agent is committed to putting morality before competing considerations. What matters is not best understood by speaking of isolated actions and asking of each action what motivated it, but rather by considering the agent’s conduct over time. But in Groundwork I, virtually the only work where he speaks of the moral worth of individual actions,¹⁰ and the only work where he does so in a way that suggests he might be offering an account of the moral worth of actions, he clearly ties the moral worth of actions to acting from duty as a primary motive.

Qualifications and clarifications duly taken into account, it is clear that insofar as Kant concerns himself with the moral worth of individual actions, his position is that an action’s moral worth hinges on whether the action was done from duty as a primary motive. That being the case, I don’t see how the universalizability of a maxim can entail that an action with that maxim is morally worthy – unless my claim that an action whose maxim is universalizable need not be done from duty is false.

Is it false? Am I wrong in thinking that an action whose maxim is universalizable – or, put in more general terms, an action whose maxim passes the CI test – need not be done from duty? Kant does, after all, say that an ‘action from duty has its moral worth … in the maxim in accordance with which it is decided upon’ (G 399).¹¹ Might it be, then, that to act on a maxim that passes muster is to act from duty? I don’t think so. This much is clear: that the action’s moral worth resides in its maxim does not entail that any action whose maxim passes the CI test is morally worthy. It can still be the case – and I believe it is the case – that only some maxims that pass the CI test have moral worth.

If we were to accept the position that any action whose maxim is universalizable is morally worthy, and thus that any action whose maxim is universalizable has to have been done from duty, we would be forced to hold that in each of the examples Kant gives in Groundwork I of actions that lack moral worth, the maxim is not universalizable. Thus, we would have to hold that the maxim of refraining from overcharging inexperienced customers because it is good business policy to do so – or put differently, of treating one’s customers fairly with the aim of thereby having a more successful business (and more to the point, of thereby increasing one’s wealth) – is not universalizable. Perhaps this position can be defended, but I don’t see how. I see no reason why that maxim would not be universalizable.

Am I wrong in thinking that Kant holds that an action has moral worth only if done from duty as a primary motive? I wish I were. I tried hard, in my earlier work, to avoid saddling Kant with that view, but could not find a way to avoid it. But perhaps someone will argue that we should jettison the distinction between primary and secondary motives and propose a new way of understanding ‘done from duty’ according to which it makes sense both to ascribe to Kant the view that an action has moral worth only if done from duty and to hold that every action whose maxim is universalizable was done from duty. I don’t see how this could go, but I mention it as a way one might support O’Neill’s claim that the CI distinguishes between acts that have moral worth and those that lack it.

I have focused in this short essay on one area of disagreement I have with Prof. O’Neill: I do not believe that the CI distinguishes between actions that have and actions that lack moral worth. I fully agree that the locus of application of the CI is an agent’s maxim, but I am not convinced – and I doubt – that a maxim’s passing the CI test entails that actions with that maxim have moral worth.

My discussion has been limited to the Groundwork, because that is the only work with anything remotely like an account of the moral worth of actions. That Kant says so little elsewhere about the moral worth of actions is, in fact, an added reason for doubting that the moral worth of actions has the significance that O’Neill suggests it has. I am curious to hear why, insofar as the CI tells us anything about the moral status of actions we are contemplating undertaking, she holds that it is the action’s moral worth, not the action’s moral rightness (or permissibility) that the CI can disclose. I understand that it cannot tell us about the action’s rightness if this is understood as referring only to its ‘external’ features; to borrow from an example J.S. Mill discusses in a footnote to the second edition of Utilitarianism, it matters what the agent’s aim is in saving someone from drowning, not merely that he is saving someone from drowning.¹² But once it is clear that the rightness in question is not mere ‘external’ rightness and must reflect the agent’s aim, why suppose that the CI is more able to discern, or more fundamentally applies to, the moral worth of an action than to its permissibility?

In closing, I want to reiterate that I agree with O’Neill that it is maxims, not actions, that are the locus of application of the CI. In addition (though a closely related point), isolated actions are of far less importance in Kant’s ethics than conduct; what matters most is how the agent conducts himself or herself. But the moral worth of actions seems to me of minor significance.

Notes

1 ‘Consistency in Action’, in her Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant’s Practical Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 86. First published in Universality and Morality: Essays on Ethical Universalizability, ed. N. Potter and M. Timmons (Reidel, 1985): 159–86.

2 ‘Consistency in Action’, p. 86. In a footnote added in Constructions of Reason (n. 3, p. 84), O’Neill indicates that she would not now use the term ‘intention’ as she did throughout this essay. In keeping with that footnote, I’ll use ‘maxim’ or ‘practical principle’ rather than ‘intention’ in presenting her view.

3 I shall not take up the question here of to what extent the Categorical Imperative is a test. For discussion, see Barbara Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment (Harvard University Press, 1993), esp. Ch. 7.

4 I am not certain that O’Neill thinks that it does; perhaps she is saying only that we can tell that it is at least not morally unworthy. That is indeed suggested by the last sentence of the quotation above. But the previous sentence seems to suggest more than that, namely, that the Categorical Imperative can distinguish between acts that have and acts that lack moral worth.

5 This terminology was first used in print by Barbara Herman in her ‘On the Value of Acting from the Motive of Duty’, Philosophical Review 90 (1981): 359–82, later published as a chapter of her The Practice of Moral Judgment. I developed the distinction a bit differently in my ‘The Alleged Moral Repugnance of Acting from Duty’, Journal of Philosophy 81 (1984): 197–220, and in Kantian Ethics Almost without Apology (Cornell, 1995). Herman gives the secondary (or as she also calls it, ‘limiting’) motive a smaller role: it filters out impermissible actions. I envision it as playing a larger regulative role.

6 See my Kantian Ethics Almost without Apology; ‘Acting from Duty,’ in Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, ed. and trans. by Allen W...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1 Kant on action and reason
• Part 2 Agency, consent and autonomy
• Part3 Some practical questions
• Part 4 Trustworthiness and trust
• Index