The value of humanity and Kant's conception of evil

Journal of the History of Philosophy

Volumn 44, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 635-663

  Caswell, Matthew ^a  

^a ST JOHN S COLLEGE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950082087     PISSN: 00225053     EISSN: 15384586     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hph.2006.0054     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. See Christine Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
2. and The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996);
3. Allen Wood, Kant's Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999);
4. Paul Guyer, Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
5. Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 229.
6. J. David Velleman implicitly subscribes to this kind of interpretation in "Love as a Moral Emotion," Ethics 109 (1999), 365-66. Not all of the characteristics of the reading mentioned in this paragraph are present in each of the cited scholars' works.
7. Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends, x;
8. Guyer, Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness, 131;
9. Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment, 210.
10. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten [Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals], trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).
11. Metaphysik der Sitten [Metaphysics of Morals], trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
12. Moral Vigilatius in Lectures on Ethics, trans. Heath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
13. This claim has been singled out as one of Kant's most significant and far-reaching insights, and identified as the "Incorporation Thesis," by Henry Allison in Kant's Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 39-40.
14. For Allison's discussion of the theory of the fact of reason, see especially Kant's Theory of Freedom, 237-38.
15. Thus, Pippen makes the valuable point that "there is no way Kant could count 'being rational end-setters' [our humanity] as providing reasons to act without contradicting his most important claim in moral theory: we are bound only by what we bind ourselves to" (Pippin, "The 'New Kant'," 325).
16. Allison, Kant's Theory of Freedom, 201.
17. Although he doesn't seem to find the position particularly plausible, Pippen suggests that Kant was committed to offering just this sort of interpretation of prudential akrasia in his "Kant's Theory of Value: On Allen Wood's Kant's Ethical Thought" ["Kant's Theory of Value"], Inquiry 43 (2000), 246-48.
18. th ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1981), 511-16. The following references are to this work.
19. See Pippen's critique of the value of humanity interpretation, where he points out that even if end-setting as such requires "in general reasoning," this does not entail that "reason itself" establishes an end ("The 'New Kant'," 324).
20. Kain suggests that the rejection of the Groundwork III deduction of freedom from the nature of theoretical "judgment" does not exclude the possibility of a deduction from "the recognition of prudential norms" ("Prudential Reason in Kant's Anthropology," 258). Both options, however, are denied by the theory of the fact of reason.
21. Nevertheless, Guyer deems Kant's conception of freedom as perhaps "the most coherent basis for all our judgments of value" (171).
22. See also Pippen's critique of Guyer on this point in his "A Mandatory Reading of Kant's Ethics?," Philosophical Quarterly 51 (2001): 386-93; esp. 389-90.
23. Wood, Kant's Ethical Thought, 155. The following references are to this work.
24. Pippen's critique of Wood's reading of Kant on this matter is instructive. See his "Kant's Theory of Value," 252-54.
25. Rel, 6:175-82.)
26. The deduction by regression appears in several forms in Korsgaard's works. In Creating the Kingdom of Ends, the deduction trades on the nature of practical reasons and the "rational concept" of the good (120-23). The Sources of Normativity makes the notion of "practical identity" central, such that a commitment to any practical identity has moral identity as its necessary condition (101-05). In "Self Constitution in the Ethics of Plato and Kant" ["Self-Constitution"] (The Journal of Ethics 3 [1999]: 1-29), the argument is that moral principle provides the only adequate ground for constituting one's self as a unified, integrated agent.
27. Pippen ("The 'New Kant'," 323);
28. Samuel Kerstein ("Korsgaard's Kantian Arguments for the Value of Humanity," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 31 [2001], 30-35; 45-51).
29. Donald Regan's critique is instructive, in so far as his realist approach shares a key assumption of the Kantians he criticizes, namely, that rational choice as such presupposes a conception of unconditional value ("The Value of Rational Nature," Ethics, 112 [2002]: 267-91).
30. As we have seen, Kant denies this, holding to the contrary that the existence of unconditional value is not a condition of the possibility of rational choice-that is, that humanity and personality are normatively independent. Regan considers briefly the possibility of establishing the unconditional value of humanity on the grounds of our morally legislative reason, but rejects this approach (which he calls "'classical' Kantianism") both because he believes a formal principle cannot generate duties and because he believes (like the value of humanity interpreters) that moral value requires a non-circular grounding (287-88). In this sense, Regan and the value of humanity interpreters are also united in their rejection of the theory of the fact of reason. See also David Sussman's limited defense of the regress deduction in response to Regan's critique, which in sum tends to support the present interpretation ("The Authority of Humanity," Ethics 113 [2003]).
31. Compare Herman's value of humanity interpretation, which claims that "if anything is good . . . there must be something that is unconditionally good" (The Practice of Moral Judgment, 209).
32. The claim that objectivity of practical norms entails unconditionality can also be found in Donald Regan's critique of Korsgaard, in so far as he shares her view that practical value as such must have an unconditional ground ("The Value of Rational Nature," 272-74).
33. See David Sussman's response to Regan, where he argues that an ambiguity in the sense of 'objective' in the second part of the Groundwork leads to misunderstanding of Kant's position ("The Authority of Humanity," 7).
34. For an instructive account that is sympathetic to the "temptation to try to demonstrate a priori that reason [as such] must prescribe . . . the fundamental principle of morality" (237), see Donagan (The Theory of Morality, 237-43).
35. Nevertheless, our freedom in the strong sense is conceptually prior to our ethical orientation. Note, however, that this view does not commit Kant to a conception of "morally neutral autonomy." Kant still holds that the autonomous will necessarily binds itself to moral law, even if an autonomous will is not by that token a will oriented towards fulfilling its obligations. This consideration also explains why Sidgwick's characterization of transcendental freedom as "Neutral freedom" is inaccurate ("The Kantian Conception of Free Will," 512).
36. Sources of Normativity contains no elaborated discussion of evil. However, Korsgaard's reply to G. A. Cohen's objection that fulfillment of "practical identity" does not require compliance with morality is noteworthy. Cohen imagines an "idealized Mafioso," who is a determined, principled agent, although one with evil principles (G. A. Cohen, "Reason, Humanity, and the Moral Law", in Sources of Normativity, 183-84).
37. Korsgaard responds to the possibility of the Mafioso's evil practical identity by claiming that there is "no coherent point of view from which it can be endorsed in the full light of reflection" (Sources of Normativity, 256).
38. Sharon Anderson-Gold argues that the problem of radical evil gives rise to a novel conception of virtue as requiring the collective response of the ethical commonwealth; "Kant's Ethical Commonwealth: the Highest Good as a Social Goal," International Philosophical Quarterly 26 (1986): 23-32.
39. Allison argues that the need for "counterweights" against our radically evil tendency grounds the moral function of taste (Theory of Taste, 229-35).
40. I argue that the duty to promote the highest good and the theory of radical evil reciprocally entail one another in "Kant's Conception of the Highest Good, the Gesinnung, and Radical Evil," Kant-Studien 97 (2006): 184-209.