Autonomy and the Highest Good

Kantian Review

Volumn 10, Issue , 2005, Pages 33-59

  Denis, Lara ^a  

^a AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE   (United States)

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EID: 60950598421     PISSN: 13694154     EISSN: 20442394     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1369415400002120     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. See, for example, Lewis White Beck, A Commentary on Kant's ‘Critique of Practical Reason’ (Chicago” University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 242-4; Christian Garve, Versuche iiber verschiedene Gegenstande aus der Moral und Literatur (Breslau, 1792), part 1, pp. 111-16; Theodore Greene, ‘The historical context and religious significance of Kant's Religion’, in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Greene and Hudson (trans.), (New York” Harper & Brothers, 1960), pp. lxii-lxiii; and Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. I, E. F. J. Payne (trans.) (New York” Dover, 1969), p. 524.
2. I will leave translations of Triebfeder’ as ‘incentive’ as they are. However, I will use ‘spring’, ‘spring of action’ (following T. K. Abbott) or ‘drive’ (following L. W. Beck) to refer to what Kant called a Triebfeder. These latter terms better refer to inner sources of action than does ‘incentive’, which is frequently used to refer to external objects that appeal to agents’ desires, and thus has a misleading connotation.
3. Kant provides his most systematic account of the highest good in part one, book two, of KpV; that is the account on which I will primarily draw in this section. For an illuminating account of the development of Kant's notion of the highest good-including the nature of happiness that constitutes the conditioned element, and the role of God in realizing the highest good-see chapter 5 of Eckart Forster's Kant's Final Synthesis” An Essay on the Opus Postumum (Cambridge, MA” Harvard University Press, 2000).
4. I will assume that proportionality is part of Kant's conception of the highest good. For a critical discussion of proportionality, see Andrews Reath, ‘Two conceptions of the highest good in Kant’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 26 (4) (1988), 593-619. For a defence of proportionality, see Stephen Engstrom, ‘The concept of the highest good in Kant's moral theory’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research SI (4) (1992), 749-80.
5. There are a number of ambiguities in Kant's discussion of the highest good and the importance of faith in God for believing that the highest good is realizable. I discuss several of these at length in ‘Kant's criticisms of atheism’, Kant-Studien 94 (2003), 198-219. One of these issues concerns whether we must postulate God's existence, or simply the real possibility of it. Here I shall talk in terms of God's existence (as Kant usually does in KpV). For an argument that we need postulate only the possibility of God's existence, see M. Jamie Ferriera, ‘Kant's postulate” the possibility or the existence of God?’, Kant-Studien 74 (1983), 75-80.
6. Of course, it is a mistake to equate teleology with consequentialism. Moreover, commentators have recently challenged the traditional classification and understanding of Kant's theory as deontological and therefore not teleological. See Barbara Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, MA” Harvard University Press, 1993), chapter 10; Paul Guyer, Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness (Cambridge” Cambridge University Press, 2000), chapters 3 and 4; Allen Wood, Kant's Ethical Thought (Cambridge” Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 112-14; and Thomas Auxter, Kant's Moral Teleology (Macon, GA” Mercer University Press, 1982).
7. See Engstrom, ‘The concept of the highest good in Kant's moral theory’, sections one and two, for a fuller development of this line of argument.
8. Guyer develops and discusses this approach intermittently throughout Kant on Freedom, Law, and Morality, but see especially pp. 339-45 and 386-8. A deep analysis of the differences of these approaches, and an exploration of why Kant sometimes emphasizes one approach and sometimes another, is beyond the scope of this article-although it is clear that he sometimes (for example, in TP) emphasizes the second approach to quell objections regarding the presence of happiness within the highest good.
9. From what we see around us, nature does not sufficiently cooperate. See, for example, KU 451-3.
10. On the highest good as a social good, see Sharon Anderson-Gold, Unnecessary Evil” History and Moral Progress in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant (New York” SUNY Press, 2001); Yirmiyahu Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History (Princeton” Princeton University Press, 1980); and Gordon Michalson, Kant and the Problem of God (Maiden, MA” Blackwell, 1999), chapter 5.
11. Kant also discusses God's grace as necessary for the full realization of virtue (or for our being given credit for holiness). See Rel 44-53,72-8,190-202. I Also see John Hare, The Moral Gap (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
12. In Versuche iiber verschiedene Gegenstdnde aus der Moral und Literatur.
13. Kant's Moral Religion (Ithaca, N.Y.” Cornell University Press, 1970), chapter 2.
14. Cf. KpV 5” 109-110, where Kant (confusingly) explains how the highest 1 good can be the determining ground or motive for the pure will in a manner ‘ consistent with autonomy” because morality itself is the unconditioned, supreme element within the highest good, no end outside of the will (or prior to or independent of the moral law) serves as the will's determining ground.
15. By contrast, in the Groundwork, Kant implies that springs [Triebfeder] are all inclination-or need-based, and that the moral law can be practically understood only as a motive [Beweggund, Bewegungsgrund], a reasonbased, objective determining ground for an agent's will (G 4” 427,444).
16. Henry Allison calls this the ‘Incorporation Thesis'; see Kant's Theory of Freedom (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 39-40, 126-7. On how this process works, see Jeanine M. Grenberg, ‘Feeling, desire and interest in Kant's theory of action’, Kant-Studien 92 (2001), 153-79.
17. Virtue also involves autocracy, the capacity to master one's inclinations. See Allison, Kant's Theory of Freedom, pp. 164,246,285 n. 35; and Anne Margaret Baxley, ‘Autocracy and autonomy’, Kant-Studien 94 (2003), 1-23.
18. Prima facie, passages from student lecture notes, especially early ones, promise a less reliable representation of Kant's views than passages from his published works. I judge these passages worthy of consideration not only because of their inherent interest, but also because of their number, their similarities and the wide time-span during which they were recorded.
19. Kant does not imply that the prospect of eventual happiness is always sufficient to motivate right action.
20. For some clear statements of Kant's distinguishing between judging something to be right and being motivated by that, see VpR 141; C 27” 274-5 [1428].
21. One can find concerns about passages like (la)-(3b) in a number of wellknown criticisms of Kant's highest good, such as Greene's ‘The historical context and religious significance of Kant's Religion’. I suspect, however, that because some of these critics also make the mistake of being disturbed by the presence of happiness in the highest good, or by not paying enough attention to the end/drive distinction, these critics were not able to focus on the troubling claims I have listed.
22. For an argument against, and an alternative to, seeing Kantian autonomy as all or nothing, see Stephen Engstrom, ‘Conditioned autonomy’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 48 (3) (1988), 4 3 5-5 3.
23. Wood, Kant's Moral Religion, chapter 4.
24. Passage (2e), which includes, ‘If I have so conducted myself as to be worthy of happiness, I can also hope to enjoy the latter, and such are the springs of morality’ (C 27” 304), is perhaps the passage least amenable to the previous interpretation, for it-much more than (2a)-(2d)-suggests that an agent's hopes for her own happiness themselves constitute springs of moral action.
25. For the sake of brevity, I will not here explore whether the fact that it is hope for our deserved happiness rather than happiness simpliciter that reduces the tension between the claim of passages (2a)-(2e) and Kant's notion of autonomy. I consider this in the discussion of claim (1).
26. What is unexpected is not Kant's claim that the representation of duty alone cannot move a human agent to action, but his suggestion that something other than respect for the moral law (which one would expect to accompany the representation of duty) is an appropriate spring of action to attach to that representation.
27. Kant's justification for ascribing radical evil to the human race is itself the topic of ongoing debate. See Allen Wood, Kant's Ethical Thought, pp. 283-90; and Henry Allison, ‘Ethics, evil, and anthropology in Kant” remarks on Allen Wood's Kant's Ethical Thought’, Ethics 111 (3) (2001), 594-613, especially 605-10.
28. Marcia Baron considers this in ‘Freedom, frailty, and impurity’, Inquiry 36 (1993), 431-41.
29. For another treatment of Kant on moral motivation, religion and emotion, see Karl Ameriks, Kant and the Fate of Autonomy (New York” Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 317-31.
30. Of course, from a practical point of view, we and he must see him as able to act rightly for its own sake.
31. See, for example, Marcia Baron, Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology (Ithaca, N.Y.” Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 152-6.
32. See, for example, Judith Baker, ‘Do one's motives have to be pure?’, in Philosophical Grounds of Rationality, Richard Grandy and Richard Warner (eds) (London” Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 457-73.
33. Also see MS 6” 406 for Kant's comments on using ‘feelings that accompany the constraining power of the moral law (e.g., disgust, horror, e t c.) ‘ which ‘make its efficacy felt, in order to get the better of merely sensible incitements’.