Autonomy, Moral Worth, and Right

Jeffrey Edwards

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783110516111
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Philosophie moderne

This book examines the surprising ramifications of Kant's late account of practical reason's obligatory ends as well as a revolutionary implication of his theory of property. It thereby sheds new light on Kant's place in the history of modern moral philosophy.

Part IObligatory Ends, Material Practical Principles, and Practical Law in Kant’s Doctrine of Morals

This opening phase of our investigations has the following tasks to complete: (1) to explain the architectonic significance of the concept of ‘an end that is also a duty’ that Kant introduces into his theory of morals in the 1797 introduction to the Doctrine of Virtue; (2) to determine the relationship between the ends that are also duties (namely, one’s own perfection and the happiness of others); (3) to lay out the key problem for Kant’s metaphysics of morals that comes to light in connection with these obligatory ends of morally practical reason; (4) to explain the solution to this problem apparently offered by the Critique of Practical Reason’s account of the relationship between empirically conditioned and pure practical reason; (5) to determine the crucial difficulty for Kant’s metaphysical project that underlies this initially promising solution.

Chapter 1 is concerned with the first two of these tasks. Beginning with the Metaphysics of Morals’ systematic portrayal of reason’s universally legislative role with respect to duties of right and duties of virtue, I explain why Kant requires the concept of an end that is also a duty if the distinction that he draws between juridical and ethical lawgiving is to ground the basic architectonic setup of his overall doctrine of morals, i. e., its division into a doctrine of right and a doctrine of virtue. Then, after explicating this a priori concept of an objectively necessary end of morally practical reason, I treat Kant’s account of one’s own perfection and others’ happiness as the only two promotable ends of action that can qualify as ends that are also duties, i. e., as intrinsically obligatory ends.

Chapter 2 deals with the third of the aforementioned tasks, which derives from the following consideration: As it is outlined in the Doctrine of Virtue’s 1797 introduction, Kant’s dualistic theory of obligatory ends seems to leave open the possibility that there is an end of inclination that is necessarily an end that is also a duty. For that theory involves the idea that own-perfection and others’ happiness must be understood as non-formal determining grounds —that is to say: material determining grounds—of the power of choice that feature in maxims that are apt for possible universal lawgiving. If this is the case, however, it seems that even an empirically grounded maxim—for example, a maxim that one has because one happens to be inclined to promote others’ happiness—should be able to serve as a practical law that presents a duty of virtue. But such a conclusion, of course, calls into question a central tenet of Kant’s overall theory of practical reason: the supposition that no empirical or material practical principle can furnish a universal law of the will. So what resource does Kant have at his disposal to block the line of inference just described?

Chapter 3 comes to grips with the fourth and fifth tasks mentioned above by following up on the blocking clue that Kant offers in the context of the Doctrine of Virtue’s introduction. This clue is signaled by the claim that all ends that provide empirical grounds for the adoption of maxims are self-seeking ends, i. e., ends that one is inclined to bring about in order to promote one’s own happiness instead of the happiness of others or one’s own perfection. That Kant in fact accepts this claim is confirmed by reaching back into the opening chapter of the second Critique’s Analytic of Pure Practical Reason, where he maintains, as one of the basic theorems of his theory of practical reason, that all material practical principles belong under the general principle of self-love or one’s own happiness. Paying close attention to Kant’s use of this self-love theorem in the Critique of Practical Reason, however, also serves to highlight a deeper problem that will continue to occupy us in subsequent chapters devoted to Kant’s ethics as a doctrine of virtue. For to the extent that this doctrine is grounded in Kant’s late metaphysical theory of obligatory ends, it must also rely on a motivational tenet belonging to practical anthropology as long as it presupposes that no empirically grounded maxim can be apt for a possible universal lawgiving.

Chapter 1Reason’s Lawgiving and Obligatory Ends in the Metaphysics of Morals

§ 1Laws of Freedom, Ethical Lawgiving, and the Systematic Division between Kant’s Doctrines of Right and Virtue

Kant’s doctrine of morals is based on the understanding of moral laws as laws of freedom. He holds that the practical part of philosophy is a morally practical doctrine to the extent that it has freedom of the power of choice (Freiheit der Willkür) as its theme. The metaphysical theory of morals, which makes up the a priori part of this doctrine, gives a systematic account of the fundamental prescriptive laws by which reason can determine the power of choice in relation to what can be brought about through action. For human beings, the power of choice is free just to the extent that it can be determined by these a priori laws of (pure) practical reason. The choice-determining laws of practical reason are therefore laws of freedom that apply to human agents’ ability to bring about objects of the faculty of desire, i.e., to achieve the purposes that such agents set for themselves as ends of action.1

The laws of freedom established in the Metaphysics of Morals are set forth by means of the examination of the prescriptive role that reason plays with respect to actions. The analysis of this role focuses on what Kant calls “the form of aptness of a maxim of the power of choice to be universal law” 2 (MS 6:214.7–8). Kant’s conception of the laws of morally practical reason revolves around this notion of the suitability of subjective principles of action for universal prescription. Only the maxim of my action that satisfies the condition of its aptness for being universal law can furnish a law of freedom; and only a law of freedom can serve for the articulation and exposition of practical reason’s universally prescriptive role in relation to the conditions of action in general and the determining grounds of actions.3 According to Kant, all practical propositions that can be thought of as moral laws are necessarily laws of freedom pertaining to the power of choice (Willkür).4

As laws of freedom, moral laws are for human beings imperatives that command or prohibit unconditionally. They are, for us, the categorical imperatives of morally practical reason. A categorical imperative, then, is a morally practical law. It is, on Kant’s account, a practical proposition that (a) asserts obligation, which Kant defines modally in terms of the necessity of a free action;5 and (b) presents a duty in as the matter (or content) of obligation (die Materie der Verbindlichkeit).6 The supreme principle of all obligation and all duties—the most basic principle of Kant’s entire doctrine of morals—is furnished by the theoretical formula according to which a maxim can be known to satisfy morally practical reason’s overarching universality requirement: “act on a maxim that can also hold as a universal law” 7 (MS 6:226.1–2).

This formulation of the supreme principle of the doctrine of morals is found in the general introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals. It presents us with the inclusive formulation of the principle of imperation that underlies Kant’s conception of morally practical reason and its relation to the conditions of human volition. It thereby provides (according to Kant) the sufficient basis for determining whether a maxim of the power of choice qualifies for a universal lawgiving when one thinks of oneself as a being capable of legislating for all rational agents through that given maxim.8 Kant holds that all lawgiving, understood as a procedure of rational prescription, has two essential components.9 First, there is a law that objectively represents an action as something necessary to perform. Second, there is an incentive (Triebfeder) that connects a ground determining an agent’s power of choice with the representation of the law in question, this connection being the subjective feature of lawgiving by which the law represented makes a duty the incentive to act. In virtue of the first component of lawgiving, an action is represented as a duty. In virtue of the second component, the obligation to that action (or type of action) “is combined in the subject [agent] with a determining ground of the power of choice in general” 10 (MS 6: 218.21–23—italics mine).

It is with reference to the second component of practical reason’s lawgiving function that two basic types of morally rational prescription must be distinguished: ethical lawgiving and juridical lawgiving.

Ethical lawgiving involves the type of universally prescriptive thinking that (a) makes an action a duty and (b) connects the obligation to this action with a ground for determining the power of choice by making the duty itself the agent’s incentive for acting in conformity with law.11 Thus, ethical lawgiving makes the rational concept of duty (die Idee der Pflicht) the incentive for performing the action that a practical law represents as necessary for any agent to perform. Kant maintains that this sort of lawgiving cannot be external since the idea of duty itself, as distinguished from the particular action or action-type that the law represents as objectively necessary, can only be an internal incentive to action.12 Ethical lawgiving, then, “includes the internal incentive of the action (the idea of duty) within its law” (MS 6:219.25–26). Ethical lawgiving does this insofar as its law is given by the agent in whom obligation to action is combined with a ground for determining the power of choice. There can be no external lawgiver for this kind of legislation.13 Juridical lawgiving, however, does admit an incentive other than the idea of duty. It therefore grants the possibility of external incentives for action. Consequently, juridical lawgiving can be external. For this type of lawgiving does not require that an internal incentive to action must be included within the law as given to the agent. Juridical lawgiving requires only that a particular law (or laws) for action yielded by practical reason’s prescriptive procedure must be consistent with what is demanded by the most general formula of the principle of all categorical imperatives. An external lawgiver is thus possible for this type of legislative enactment.

The main divisions in the architectonic configuration of Kant’s doctrine of morals—the Doctrine of Right (ius) and the Doctrine of Virtue (ethica)—depend on the different ways in which incentives to action are linked to the concepts of practical law and duty in the account of the basic types of reason’s lawgiving function.14 Juridical lawgiving can be external because it does not require an internal incentive for the conformity of actions to law. Accordingly, the laws and corresponding duties established by this type of lawgiving—notably, the specifically juridical laws and duties presented and proved in the Doctrine of Right —can have their source in an external lawgiver. And because this universally lawgiving source can be external to any particular agent that is subject to juridical laws, the duties that these laws present must be understood as supplying the matter of obligation to external actions. Juridical laws are the practical laws by which the freedom of the power of choice (and hence freedom in action) of each agent can coexist with the freedom of the power of choice of every other agent. Since this form of freedom pertains only to external actions (i. e., to the actions that concern practical relations between different persons), juridical laws are external laws that present duties of outer freedom for every agent. The laws that accord with this description do not, taken by themselves merely as laws, require any agent to make the idea of duty the incentive to action.15

Things are more complicated with respect to the laws and duties generated by the other type of lawgiving. In the case of ethical lawgiving, the source of legislation cannot be external to the law-determined agent since the incentive by which obligation is combined with the determining ground of the power of choice must be internal to that agent. This is true even if duties with which ethics is concerned may be yielded by juridical lawgiving. All duties, just because they are duties, belong to ethics. But this does not mean that the giving of law for all duties is contained in ethics.16 Even if the scope of ethics extends to the external duties that are made known by external laws governing outer freedom, the legislation by which these juridical duties can belong to ethics is entirely distinct from (although, according to Kant, necessarily consistent with) juridical lawgiving. As a doctrine of virtue, ethics is theref...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Note on Sources, Abbreviations, and Translations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Obligatory Ends, Material Practical Principles, and Practical Law in Kant’s Doctrine of Morals
• Part II Moral Worth and Motivation in Kant and Hume
• Part III Kant’s Juridical Theory of Right and the Foundations of Property Law
• Part IV Placing Kant in his History of Moral Philosophy
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index