Kant's Cold Sage and the Sublimity of Apathy

Kantian Review

Volumn 4, Issue , 2000, Pages 48-73

  Denis, Lara ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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EID: 85012447350     PISSN: 13694154     EISSN: 20442394     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1369415400000509     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. The account that I use as my starting-point here is Marcia Baron's, found in ch. 6 of Kantian Ethics Almost without Apology (Ithaca, NY” Cornell University Press, 1995). But also see ch. 10 of Paul Guyer's Kant and the Experience of Freedom (New York” Cambridge University Press, 1993) and Nancy Sherman, ‘The place of emotions in Kantian morality’, in Owen Flanagan and Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (eds.), Identity, Character, and Morality, (Cambridge, MA” MIT Press, 1990), pp. 149-70.
2. Kantian Ethics p. 216.
3. The account that I use as my starting-point here is Marcia Baron's, found in ch. 6 of Kantian Ethics Almost without Apology., p. 221.
4. Baron may well think that some emotions should be totally eradicated or turned off. We are here focusing on sympathetic emotions that Kant endorses our developing to some degree; these she seems to think need not be turned off, even when they are not useful.
5. I should note that Baron's ch. 6 is broader in scope than my comments might suggest. I am focusing on just one part of a rich chapter.
6. We might have expected Kant to say that we cannot have a duty to help others from compassion because we cannot will ourselves to feel compassion (see, for example, MS 6” 401). It is also important to Kant to make clear that we do not help others simply by feeling sad for them. Except where otherwise indicated, I treat ‘affect’ and ‘agitation’ as synonymous and as translations of ‘Affekf. Furthermore, I use ‘emotion’ as a general term that stands for the collection of such things as feelings, affects and passions. By contrast, Baron uses ‘agitation’ as the translation for ‘Affekt'; she uses ‘affect’ as a broad term that covers inclinations, feelings, agitations and passions.
7. For a more complete and nuanced account of the sublime and the beautiful, including their relation to morality, see Guyer's Kant and Experience of Freedom, chs. 1, 6 and 7.
8. The Stoics’ error was the lesser because they mistook the unconditioned good, rather than the conditioned good, for the sole good. For more on Kant's views on, and in relation to, the Stoics, see Terence Irwin, ‘Kant's criticism of Eudaemonism’, John Cooper, ‘Eudaimonism, the appeal to nature, and “moral duty” in Stoicism’, and J. B. Schneewind, ‘Kant and Stoic ethics’, all in Stephen Engstrom and Jennifer Whiting (eds.), Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics (New York” Cambridge University Press, 1996).
9. Baron says that Kant ‘aligns himself with the Stoics more than he should and more than his theory would seem to mandate’ (Kantian Ethics, p. 226). Perhaps this is true. But my discussion suggests that we should be cautious in our appraisal of how and how much Kant genuinely agrees with the Stoics.
10. Baron says that Kant ‘aligns himself with the Stoics more than he should and more than his theory would seem to mandate’., p. 221.
11. Although Baron is not explicit about this, she appears to be thinking here of grief as a feeling that may or may not rise to the level of affect. She describes grief as an intense emotion, but does not suggest that it is the affect of grief in particular that we would hope or expect to find in a virtuous friend. See n. 24 concerning the stronger claim.
12. It would be a stretch to interpret Kant's remark about ‘irresistible feelings’ as implying that the affect of sympathetic sadness is an appropriate response of a virtuous person to others’ suffering. The feelings could be irresistible simply in that the agent could not help feeling them-not that he had to act as they prompted, nor that he could not stop them from interfering with his deliberation and willing. But this comment does indicate that, for Kant, human virtue neither requires nor furnishes perfect emotional control. Indeed, Kant suggests that emotions would not be as morally useful as they are if feeling them were completely up to us.
13. To do this would be akin to inferring that, because Star Trek's Vulcans can operate morally and healthily without emotions, we can too. See Michael Stocker and Elizabeth Hegeman, Valuing Emotions (New York” Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. xv-xvi, 235.
14. For a discussion of the connection between painful emotions and morally valuable relationships, To do this would be akin to inferring that, because Star Trek's Vulcans can operate morally and healthily without emotions, we can too., pp. 2 3 0-9. The authors also point out that certain emotions and emotional reactions help constitute psychological well-being.
15. This article is dedicated to the memory of my friend Michael Hudson.