Kant's moral philosophy is often faced with the charge that in its conception of moral agency feelings play no part whatsoever. As decisive proof of this criticism the following passage from the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is very frequently cited.
To be beneficent where one can is a duty, and besides there are many souls so sympathetically attuned that, without any other motive of vanity or self-interest they find an inner satisfaction in spreading joy around them and can take delight in the satisfaction of others so far as it is their own work. But I assert that in such a case an action of this kind, however it may conform with duty and however amiable it may be, has nevertheless no true moral worth but is on the same footing with other inclinations (Neigungen) … for the maxim lacks moral content, namely that of doing such actions not from inclination but from duty (aus Pflicht). (G 4: 398)
Kant goes on to say that if the same sympathetically attuned person is struck with grief and no longer feels sympathy for others but ‘nevertheless tears himself out of his deadly insensibility (tödlichen Unempfindlichkeit) and does the action without any inclination, simply from duty; then the action first has its genuine moral worth’ (G 4: 398). Even more provocatively, he goes on to praise the dutiful acts of a man with little sympathy in his heart who is ‘by temperament cold and indifferent (kalt und gleichgültig) to the sufferings of others’ (G 4: 398). To very many readers the criticism that Kant's conception of moral agency leaves no room for feelings seems well aimed indeed.
The charge is a very serious one. Feelings seem to be essential to moral life – and indeed to acting dutifully – and in more than one way. First, it seems very hard to accept that we would even be aware of many of our duties if we did not have the right feelings. Is not a particular concern for a friend often a condition of seeing he needs our help? Is there not a certain sensibility that is a condition of noting a morally significant affront to our own selves? Feelings seem to be a necessary condition of moral perception. Second, it seems that many duties can only be fulfilled if they are done with the right sort of feeling. A child will not find comfort if she does not feel love in our touch and reassurance in our voice. Fulfilling our duty is rarely a matter of perfunctorily doing the right thing. It is doing the right thing in the right way. Feelings thus often seem to be a necessary condition of actual moral agency.Footnote 1 Third, the inner life of moral agents is a stage for many feelings: often, pangs or scruples of conscience; sometimes, self-contempt; more rarely, self-satisfaction at having overcome a moral weakness and having done our duty.
In what follows I will argue that such feelings are perfectly consistent with Kant's theory of moral motivation. Moreover, I will argue that Kant himself claims that these types of feelings are necessary conditions of moral agency. Let me say emphatically that Kant certainly does not think that morality ever requires us to be guided by our feelings rather than obey the law of reason. I will argue, however, that he does hold that a necessary condition of obeying the commands of reason is an affective attunement to the rational claims of morality. It is worth stressing at the outset of the discussion that the feelings Kant claims are necessary conditions of moral agency are not what he calls inclinations. They belong to a distinct category of affects, namely, rational moral feelings.
Indeed, the very Groundwork passage which is so often cited as decisive proof that feelings play no role in Kant's theory of moral agency can be – and I will argue below, should be – read quite differently. The text says quite explicitly that the naturally sympathetic agent, who has lost all inclination to help others because of his own grief, ‘tears himself out of this deadly insensibility (risse er sich doch aus dieser tödlichen Unempfindlichkeit heraus) and does the action without any inclination, simply from duty’ (G 4: 398). The point is precisely that to act dutifully the person has to tear himself out of his deadly insensibility. Though he acts without any inclination to help, he is not acting without feeling. He is acting with what Kant describes in the Groundwork as ‘a feeling self-wrought by means of a rational concept and therefore specifically different from … inclination or fear’ (G 4: 401 n.); and in the Doctrine of Virtue, we will see, he speaks of a rational feeling of love of others as well as other rational feelings. The same holds true of the man who is ‘by temperament cold and indifferent to the suffering of others, perhaps because he himself is provided with the special gift of patience and endurance towards his own sufferings’ (G 4: 398). Though this resolute individual lacks the inclination of natural sympathy, Kant seems to be suggesting that his distinct affective character is of moral significance; he responds with patience and endurance to his own sufferings. In doing his duty, furthermore, he is not – or so I will argue – acting without feeling. He too acts with the rational feelings of respect for the law and a rational love of others and with other feelings as well.Footnote 2
The focus of this paper is Kant's theory of rational moral feelings in the Metaphysics of Morals. Nevertheless, it begins with an exposition of the one rational feeling Kant is famous for discussing, namely, respect for the moral law. It is important, first, simply because it is indisputably a necessary aspect of our affective moral life as Kant conceives of it. No less significantly, the lengthy discussion of respect in the Critique of Practical Reason reveals that reason and feeling do not necessarily oppose each other and that indeed they are both aspects of moral agency. I will claim that understanding Kant's conception of moral feeling in the second Critique is the key to understanding the later development of his views (section 1). Kant does claim in the second Critique that respect for the moral law is the only moral feeling. However, in the introduction to the Doctrine of Virtue he claims that there are other moral feelings. These feelings, he claims, are necessary conditions of moral agency. I will examine these affective capacities and try to explain what Kant means by the categories of moral feeling, conscience, love of human beings, and self-respect, and how these affective capacities are related to each other and to the feeling of respect for the law (section 2). I will go on to try and determine just how rich is the palette with which Kant paints the affective lives of moral agents. I will first examine what appears to be a shift in his conception of the tasks of metaphysics in the introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals (section 3). I will then suggest that this shift explains why the variety of moral feelings in the body of the Doctrine of Virtue appears to be as diverse as the variety of duties the work discusses, indeed even more varied (section 4).
Before proceeding, it is worth noting that Kant has very interesting things to say about the phenomenology of our affective moral lives in the passages before us, in particular about the feelings of respect for the law and conscience. I hope to have occasion to discuss this aspect of his theory separately. In this paper I will focus on the more theoretical aspects of Kant's theory of rational feelings and moral agency.
1. Moral Feeling in the Critique of Practical Reason
Although Kant is often charged with leaving feeling no part to play in moral action, there is one notable and well-known exception, namely, the feeling of respect for the moral law. Kant mentions respect briefly in the Groundwork. But he devotes to it the whole third chapter of the Analytic of the Critique of Practical Reason, entitled On the Incentives of Pure Practical Reason (CPractR 5: 71–89). The focus of this paper is Kant's discussion of moral feelings in the Metaphysics of Morals. But it is important to review the discussion of respect in the earlier text for two main reasons. First, this singular feeling is an essential part of the affective life of moral agents and any complete discussion of this topic must examine it. Second and even more important for our concerns is the highly contentious question of the role that the feeling of respect plays in moral motivation. It is not my aim here to contribute directly to this complex debate. Rather, I will present in some detail the reading of respect that I think enables us to understand best the view of moral feelings developed in the Metaphysics of Morals and discuss its competitors more briefly.
In the ‘Incentives’ chapter Kant claims that the feeling of respect for the moral law is an aspect of any moral action. So moral agency does have an affective side. But what he means is a matter of considerable controversy. The question under contention is what moves agents in doing their moral duty. In Kant's terminology, the topic is the incentives (Triebfeder; elater animi) of pure practical reason, defined as ‘the subjective determining ground of the will of a being whose reason does not by its nature necessarily conform with the objective law’ (CPractR 5: 72).
The central textual difficulties of this chapter are two clusters of what appear to be contradictory assertions. On the one hand, we have Kant's central and often repeated claim that ‘pure reason can be practical – that is, can of itself, independently of anything empirical, determine the will’ (CPractR 5: 42), as well as the claim that ‘the incentive of the human will (and of every created rational being) can never be anything other than the moral law’ (CPractR 5: 72). On the other hand, Kant also says quite explicitly that the singular feeling of respect for the moral law is ‘the sole and also the undoubted moral incentive’ (CPractR 5: 78). The difficulty is only exacerbated by passages in which Kant asserts that the moral law as the objective determining ground of the will is ‘also (zugleich) the subjectively sufficient determining ground of action’ (CPractR 5: 72) and that ‘the moral law becomes the incentive (Triebfeder werde)’ (CPractR 5: 72). What then is the role of respect in Kant's theory of moral motivation?
According to one reading, recognition of the moral law incites a feeling of respect. It is only if a sufficiently strong feeling is incited that agents determine to act as the moral law commands. On this view then a feeling is part of the reason agents choose to act morally. However, this view seems plainly to contradict the claim that reason alone is the objective determining ground of moral action, for it makes the determination of the will dependent on the feeling of respect. Indeed, in the Incentives chapter Kant claims that we do not act for the sake of duty if the ‘determination of the will takes place conformably with the moral law but only by means of a feeling, of whatever kind, that has to be presupposed in order for the law to become a sufficient determining ground of the will’ (CPractR 5: 71). The feeling of respect cannot be part of the objective determination of the will.Footnote 3
According to a second view, recognition of the moral law alone moves us to action and the feeling of respect is merely its phenomenological effect. The moral law ‘must by thwarting all our inclinations produce a feeling that can be called pain (Schmerz)’ (CPractR 5: 73). As Kant emphasizes, we have here ‘the first and perhaps the only case in which we can determine a priori from concepts the relation of cognition (here the cognition of a pure practical reason) to the feeling of pleasure or displeasure’ (CPractR 5: 73). More specifically, Kant defines self-love (Eigenliebe) as the tendency to make our subjective preferences into grounds of action (CPractR 5: 74; see also CPractR 5: 73). The moral law is experienced as a painful limitation of this propensity (CPractR 5: 73). He defines self-conceit (Eigendünkel) as the tendency to make self-love into an unconditional principle (CPractR 5: 74). The legislation of morality is experienced as striking down and humiliating self-conceit (CPractR 5: 73). It is beyond dispute that this interpretation highlights an important aspect of Kant's view of respect. However, it clearly does not do justice to the claim that the feeling of respect for the moral law is ‘the sole and also undoubted moral incentive’ (CPractR 5: 78). As we will see below, it can be reconciled neither with the characterization of the feelings Kant discusses in the Metaphysics of Morals nor, more importantly, with his claim that these feelings are indeed necessary conditions of moral agency.Footnote 4
There are two further interpretations according to which respect plays a more prominent role in Kant's theory of moral psychology. According to the first, recognition of the moral law evokes a feeling of respect for the moral law. Thus, in acting as the moral law commands, agents always have a positive attitude towards the end of action as well as feeling for it. However, what actually moves them when they choose to obey the moral law is recognition of the moral law alone. One advantage of this view is that it distances Kant from the most problematic commitment of the internalist. Action is always accompanied by a desire (in the broad sense of the term) for its end. At the same time, this reading proclaims that for Kant pure reason is indeed in itself and alone practical. It makes good sense of much of what Kant says, but it stops short of the assertion that the feeling of respect for the law is ‘the sole and also the undoubted moral incentive’ (CPractR 5: 78). According to it, agents are always drawn towards the ends they pursue, but it is not this affective response that in fact draws them to these ends when they act morally. I will claim in the next section that in the Doctrine of Virtue moral feelings are not merely affective accompaniments of moral action but indeed necessary conditions of it. It is mainly this claim that speaks against this reading.Footnote 5
There is though a fourth alternative. It claims that the moral law is the reason for action, whereas the feeling of respect for the moral law is the effective force driving moral action. The main task this interpretation faces is making respect a necessary condition of moral agency (rather than a mere accompaniment of it), without compromising the key claim that acting morally is obeying the moral law and that reason is then in itself and alone practical. As we will see, the main textual difficulty for this reading is that it attributes to this claim what might appear to be a peculiar sense: reason is alone practical, but, in acting morally, it always acts through the feeling of respect.
According to this interpretation, Kant is contending with the question of the transcendental conditions of moral agency: how can the noumenally free subject act morally in the phenomenal world? It is, of course, Kant's view that moral action is action determined by the moral law. According to what might be called the conative interpretation of respect, the Incentives chapter contends with the question of how the moral law actually moves agents to action. The moral law gives us an objectively or categorically compelling reason to act. This is clearly a fundamental commitment of Kant's theory of moral agency. But we need a further explanation of how this single objective reason becomes, in Kant's words, the subjective determining ground of the will. In other words, on the conative view of respect, Kant is asking by what force or capacity does reason drive our action. An incentive is thus the driving force or mainspring of action. The crucial assumption that underlies the whole discussion, according to the conative interpretation (in contrast with the previous two), is that the effective forces driving naturally affected beings – what actually move us to action in the phenomenal world – are feelings. This is the insight that Kant, surprisingly perhaps, takes from the empiricist view of agency.Footnote 6
Now Kant stresses that he is not asking ‘how a law can be of itself and immediately a determining ground of the will’ (CPractR 5: 72). This is ‘an insoluble problem and identical with that of how a free will is possible’ (CPractR 5: 72; see also, V-Mo/Collins, 27: 1428). Assuming that we are noumenally free and reason can determine the will to action, Kant's investigation targets the conative aspect of autonomous moral action: how does the moral law actually move us? Differently put, Kant does not intend to dispel the mystery of noumenal agency in this chapter (or anywhere else for that matter). Rather, he assumes its possibility and investigates the capacity that enables the noumenal self to trigger an action of the phenomenal self. He is searching for the affective capacity of the phenomenal self that is responsive to the rational command of the moral law. In this way, he will be able to maintain that in moral action reason alone is practical, while still attributing to the feeling of respect a necessary role in fulfilling the commands of reason.Footnote 7
Though Kant does not contend with it in this chapter (but see CPractR 5: 22), the answer to the question of what incentives drive heteronomous action is quite simple. When an inclination determines our will – perhaps in transgression of our duty – it is the feeling that underlies it that is our incentive, our desire for some object, say honour or wealth. According to Kant, inclinations never immediately move us to action. We freely choose to act on an inclination.Footnote 8 But when we do, there is, so to speak, a mainspring we need only release in order to act, namely, the desire for the object. The difficult question to answer is what kind of feeling could possibly drive autonomous moral action.
Kant is walking a very fine line. He wants to identify the feeling that drives moral action. But the moral law rather than that feeling must be the reason for action, in Kant's terms, the objective determining ground of the will. As we saw above, to claim that a feeling – any feeling – is part of the objective determining ground of the will would be to claim that the feeling and the moral law together give us a reason to act. Thus, Kant vehemently denies that there is an ‘antecedent feeling in the subject that would be attuned to morality’ (CPractR 5: 75). According to the conative view, in contrast, it is the moral law (the objective ground of action) that causes the feeling of respect for the moral law (the subjective determining ground of the will). The law is the cause; the feeling of respect for it, its effect.Footnote 9 Thus, feeling is not the objective determining ground of the will of the moral agent. It is not the feeling of respect that gives us a reason to act: ‘It does not serve for appraising (Beurteilung) actions and certainly not for grounding the objective moral law itself’ (CPractR 5: 76; see also V-Mo/Collins, 27: 274–5, 1428). It is the moral law – through its effect on feeling – that drives agents to moral action. This very close connection between recognition of the moral law and the feeling of respect as the force driving moral action might explain why Kant sometimes speaks of them as two aspects of one moment and indeed even as identical.Footnote 10
The feeling of respect for the moral law is then a necessary affective condition of moral agency. This sensible attunement to the rational claims of morality is part of the transcendental makeup of moral agents. No reason could possibly compel us to acquire it. If we lacked it, we would be incapable of moral action. The moral law would exert no practical force upon us: reason would not be practical.
Kant's important claim then is that a sensible attunement to the claims of morality is a necessary condition of rational moral agency. As he remarks himself, the feeling of respect for the moral law is highly peculiar:
There is something so singular in the boundless esteem for the pure moral law stripped of all advantage … that one cannot wonder at finding this influence of a mere intellectual idea on feeling quite impenetrable for speculative reason and at having to be satisfied that one can yet see a priori this much: that such a feeling is inseparably connected with the representation of the moral law in every finite rational being. (CPractR 5: 79–80)
In order for the intellectual recognition of the authority of the moral law to move us to action, our sensible nature must be attuned to the rational claims of morality. Our sensible nature is thus responsive to intellectual claims. Yet though it drives moral action, it cannot by any means take on the task of determining its course. The feeling of respect can thus be said to understand the language of morality. But it is entirely incapable of formulating moral claims itself and directing our action. It follows the dictates of reason, but cannot itself formulate rational directives. Sellars defines the logical space of reason as the space of asking for and giving reasons. Our moral sensibility can be said to ask for reasons and respond to them – but it cannot give reasons. Respect is in this sense passive – it is put into action by reason. Nevertheless, it is a necessary condition of autonomous rational activity, precisely because it is put into action by reason. According to the conative interpretation, it is precisely this that enables Kant to claim that the feeling of respect is a necessary condition of moral action and yet maintain that in acting morally it is reason alone that is practical.
On this reading, the objects of Kant's transcendental investigations are the rational and sensible conditions of empirical knowledge and moral action. Indeed, in the introduction to the second Critique, Kant claims that, like the Critique of Pure Reason, it begins with a Doctrine of Elements that contains chapters dealing with the senses, the concepts, and the principle of reason, but the order is reversed. The Incentives chapter is thus analogous to the Transcendental Aesthetic; specifically, its task is the application of moral laws ‘to the subject and its sensibility’ (CPractR 5: 16; see also CPractR 5: 90).Footnote 11 It is through its effect on our sensibility that the moral law finds purchase in the world. It is Kant's view then that action as well as knowledge have both intellectual and sensible or aesthetic a priori elements. As we will see in the next section, this is the key to understanding Kant's conception of moral feelings in the Doctrine of Virtue.
It is worth stressing that respect is described as a single undifferentiated feeling. Had Kant had here in mind a detailed conception of our moral duties and of our various moral failings, the affective depiction of respect would be richer. But the moral law always appears in this context in the singular. Kant is clearly thinking of respect as the affective response to the universal authority of moral laws in general and not of the plethora of affects that respect for the varied claims of morality might take. This point is worth emphasizing because it is partly for this reason that the discussion of respect in the second Critique seems too narrow and formal to capture the rich texture of our affective moral lives. It is also worth emphasizing, of course, because in the Metaphysics of Morals, to which we now turn, the variety of moral feelings is greater. Furthermore, according to the reading developed in sections 3 and 4, this variety is not only greater in number but is also rich in affective detail.
2. Moral Feelings in the Introduction to the Doctrine of Virtue
In the previous section I presented the conative conception of respect. This view lays the ground for the discussion of the sensible conditions of moral agency in the twelfth section of the introduction to the Doctrine of Virtue. Its title might be translated as Aesthetic Preliminary Notions of the Receptivity of the Mind to Concepts of Duty in General (Ästhetische Vorbegriffe der Empfänglichkeit des Gemüts für Pflichtbegriffe Überhaupt). In it Kant discusses four necessary aesthetic or affective conditions of moral agency: ‘moral feeling, conscience, love of one's neighbor, and respect for oneself (self-esteem)’ (M 6: 399).
Before turning to the characterization of each of these forms of affective receptivity to morality, it is important to emphasize that they are all similar in character to respect for the moral law, as it is viewed by the conative interpretation: they are all necessarily related to intellectual recognition of a moral law and they are all necessary subjective affective or sensible conditions of rational moral agency. Kant emphasizes that we cannot have a duty to acquire these forms of sensibility, though we have a duty to cultivate them.Footnote 12 They are necessary conditions of moral constraint and thus must be part of the makeup of a mind constrained by moral laws. Thus, investigating them is the task of a metaphysics of morals. This significant structural similarity to the feeling of respect notwithstanding, I will claim that none of these forms of moral sensibility is the feeling of respect for the moral law. Though closely allied to respect, I think they complement Kant's early conception of the necessary aesthetic condition of moral agency, as it is conceived by the conative interpretation of respect. For the feelings Kant discusses in his later work are quite clearly necessary conditions of agency and not merely phenomenological responses to – or accompaniments of action driven by – intellectual recognition of moral laws: ‘every human being has them, and it is by virtue of them that he can be put under obligation’ (M 6: 399).Footnote 13
It is important to stress that the passages we are targeting are by no means easy to decipher. There is relatively little text to go on and parts of the descriptions of the four specific affective conditions seem to hold for all of them. Moreover, Kant does not tell us how he derives this list or why it is complete. Our task then is to answer the following questions. First, what are these four affective conditions of moral agency? Second, what are the systematic connections between them and how do they relate to the feeling of respect for the moral law?Footnote 14
Moral feeling
The first notion is ambiguously named moral feeling (moralische Gefühl). This is the one feeling that does not have a clearly related longer discussion in the body of the Doctrine of Virtue. So we have only several paragraphs to go on. Although in the second Critique Kant claims emphatically that there is but one moral feeling (moralische Gefühl), namely, respect for the moral law (CPractR 5: 85), he is not here speaking of respect. He does not use the term respect in this section, though he often employs it elsewhere in the Metaphysics of Morals, with what appears to be the same sense he gives the term in the earlier work.Footnote 15 Moreover, Kant says that the primary affective qualities of respect are pain and humiliation (see CPractR 5: 73, 77). In contrast, moral feeling here is a susceptibility to feel pleasure in view of a dutiful action (M 6: 399). Finally, moral feeling is not defined as related to consciousness of any moral law, but to the representation of the particular action enjoined by a specific moral duty: ‘Every determination of choice proceeds from the representation of a possible action to the deed through the feeling of pleasure or displeasure, taking an interest in the action or its effect’ (M 6: 399).Footnote 16
It is a central tenet of Kant's conception of action that to view an action as leading to an end we have set is to view the action as a cause of pleasure (and to view an action opposed to our end as a cause of displeasure); and, of course, carrying out such a course of action is a source of pleasure.Footnote 17 However, this does not at all mean that action is always heteronomous, motivated by the pleasure we hope to gain. Not all feeling is pathological. To represent an action as leading to an end commanded by a moral law is to view it with a moral feeling of pleasure. Put plainly, in doing their duty moral agents do not act because their action will bring them pleasure. Rather, it is because an action is their duty that carrying it out is distinctly pleasurable.
Kant thinks (wrongly perhaps) that no human being is ‘morally dead’ (M 6: 400; see also M 6: 380 n., 438; V-Mo/Collins, 27: 465; cf. CPractR 5: 80). Such a person would be unable to view any action with a moral feeling of pleasure and thus would be incapable of moral action. For such a person duty would be a purely theoretical notion lacking all practical force. Indeed, agents lacking moral feeling would not be able to acquire it. We are all already sensibly attuned to morality. Thus, viewing certain actions as causes of a moral feeling of pleasure is a necessary precondition of moral agency. Kant is claiming here that to act morally is not just to carry out a certain objectively designated course of action. A necessary condition of moral agency is the capacity to view and experience the actions enjoined by the moral law as the source of a distinct affective pleasure. This pleasure accompanies any dutiful action – and is indeed a condition of fulfilling our duty. More specifically, Kant might be describing a variety of such feelings that accompany and make possible different types of dutiful action (I will consider this possibility in section 4).
Conscience
Kant says that ‘conscience is practical reason holding the human being's duty before him for his acquittal or condemnation in every case that comes under the law’ (M 6: 400; see also M 6: 437–8, V-MS/Vigil, 27: 618). He emphasizes (unfortunately though, he is not careful in his usage of the term) that it is not the task of conscience to pronounce the right objective judgement of what law holds in a given situation and what action it commands or forbids: ‘it is not directed to an object but merely to the subject (to affect moral feeling by its act)’ (M 6: 400). Conscience is thus the subjective affective response to judging a particular course of action we are contemplating, or have actually carried out, in light of objective judgements. It is the feeling of being condemned or acquitted by such comparisons. The feelings of our conscience thus accompany objective judgements and indeed enable us to assume moral responsibility for our plans and actions. Without it objective judgements would have no practical import. Here again we see Kant's typical and crucial reversal of the empiricist view of moral motivation. It is not that we act morally in order to feel self-approbation (and avoid the feeling of self-condemnation). Rather, it is because an action is our duty that carrying it out is a source of self-approbation.Footnote 18
Kant does not say more precisely what role conscience plays in our moral life in the introduction to the Doctrine of Virtue. There is, however, a second discussion of conscience in the body of the work, in which this matter is addressed. (Unfortunately, in this discussion, Kant often runs together objective judgement and subjective feeling.) The subjective feeling of conscience has motive force: it pronounces its verdict with ‘rightful force’ (M 6: 438).Footnote 19 Indeed, Kant confirms that conscience is closely allied to the feeling of respect, while at the same time suggesting that it comprises a variety of feelings: ‘Every human being has a conscience and finds himself observed, threatened, and, in general, kept in awe (Respekt) (respect (Achtung) coupled with fear) by an internal judge; and this authority watching over the law in him is not something that he himself (voluntarily) makes, but something incorporated in his being’ (M 6: 438). In the Lectures on Ethics Kant says, more specifically, that conscience can warn us before we act, we feel it more strongly during the act, and even more strongly after the fact (V-Mo/Collins, 27: 356; cf. V-PP/Herder, 27: 43). We saw above that respect is characterized as the affective response to the authority of moral laws quite generally. In contrast, conscience compares our intentions and choices with particular moral duties that bind us in concrete situations. Conscience, we might therefore say, harnesses the force of the feeling of respect for a moral law and tries to employ it to guide our particular actions. It tries to prevent trespasses; and through remorse it guides us in trying to rectify the wrongs we have done and urges us to mend our ways, whereas moments of self-approbation strengthen our moral resolve. Conscience is the host of subjective affective responses that accompany particular objective moral judgements. This affective imputation is a necessary condition of a reflective and abiding moral agency.
Love of human beings and respect for oneself (self-esteem)
The next two modes of moral sensibility correspond to the primary division of the system of duties presented in the Doctrine of Virtue into duties that have to do with one's own moral perfection and duties whose object is the happiness of others. Indeed, Kant says explicitly that the feeling of self-respect is the ‘basis (Grund) for certain duties, that is, of certain actions that are consistent with his [the human being's] duty to himself’ (M 6: 403).Footnote 20 Later he says that the duties of love and respect for others are accompanied by feelings of love and respect (M 6: 448). (Although Kant speaks here of respect for others, this feeling ‘comes from comparing our own worth with another's’: M 6: 449.) So just as the first category of moral feeling has as its object the actions duty commands, love of others and self-respect have as their object the ends of morality. In this way, I suggest, the latter two categories complement the first.
The discussion of love of others is tortuous, partly because Kant is particularly concerned not to be misunderstood as saying that the feeling of love can be the objective determining ground of moral action, and partly because of the need to distinguish the feeling of love for others from the duties of active benevolence or beneficence.Footnote 21 The last and shortest of the paragraphs of the discussion says in what sense the feeling of love is a necessary condition of morality. The love Kant calls ‘delight (Liebe des Wohlgefallens) (amor complacentiae) is direct … a pleasure joined immediately to the representation of an object's existence” (M 6: 402).Footnote 22 The objects here are clearly other human beings. In order to perceive the happiness of others as placing moral demands upon us we must be sensibly attuned to them. Kant, I am suggesting, is speaking here of affective moral perception. To view others as the objects of moral duties is not merely to search for objectively specifiable signs of their needs, but to view them with affective sensibility as well. This affective sensibility is a condition of perceiving the needs and permitted happiness of others as placing moral demands upon us. It is worth emphasizing that, unlike the modalities of perception that serve theoretical knowledge, moral perception ‘yields no cognition’ (M 6: 400).Footnote 23 It is rather a condition of taking the objectively observable needs of others as moral demands. As Kant says later, it is taking ‘pleasure in the perfection of others’ (M 6: 449).Footnote 24 Again, it is not these feelings of love that are the determining grounds of action. They are the sensible and thus subjective conditions of perceiving our objective moral duties. It is because others place moral demands upon us that we must be sensibly attuned to their needs and happiness. It is this capacity and these feelings that Kant calls love of others.
Like love of human beings, self-respect or self-esteem is ‘again, something merely subjective, a feeling of a special kind, not a judgement about an object that it would be a duty to bring about or promote’ (M 6: 402). Our moral perceptiveness must be turned inwards as well as outwards. However, due to the essential difference between duties to ourselves and to others they clearly require different sensitivities. It is because we have moral responsibilities towards ourselves that our affective attunement must be turned inwards to our own moral being.
The system of moral feelings
I am suggesting then that we view respect for the moral law as the basic affective motive force of moral action. Most closely related to it are the feelings of our conscience. These feelings accompany the intellectual work of attempting to overcome our self-seeking resistance to the claims of morality by comparing the particular course of action we are setting on (or have undertaken) with the specific action duty commands. The feelings of our conscience caution us not to neglect our duty or urge us to mend our ways when we do. These feelings can thus be viewed as harnessing the force of the feeling of respect for the law. It is precisely because I feel respect for the legislation of reason, and because I have, say, failed to do my duty on a particular occasion, that I feel remorse and a desire to mend my ways. Love of others and self-respect, on the one hand, and moral feeling, on the other, are the feelings that accompany and make possible, respectively, consideration of the ends and actions moral duty prescribes.
We can now see that adding to respect these four moral affects is a direct consequence of the main task of the Doctrine of Virtue, namely, presenting a system of moral duties. The discussion of respect suffices for the more narrowly conceived metaphysical concerns of the second Critique and its focus on the notions of freedom, law, and duty, thought of quite generally. However, in the body of the Doctrine of Virtue Kant presents a system of our actual duties and thus must at the very least take into account the fact that we have two distinct types of moral ends (others and ourselves), that these prescribe certain courses of action, and that the fact that we set out on actual courses of action to fulfil ends requires that we ask ourselves whether we are doing our duty. Thus, we have answers to the questions of how Kant comes by the four types of moral affect he presents in the introduction to the Doctrine of Virtue and how they are related to one another as well as to the feeling of respect for the moral law. We also have an explanation why the introduction to the Doctrine of Virtue adds these four feelings to the one discussed in the second Critique. Indeed, they can be viewed as the specification of respect, required as a consequence of considering specific moral duties.
3. The Development of Kant's Conception of a Metaphysics of Morals
In the rest of this paper I will ask how detailed is the taxonomy of moral affects Kant in fact presents in the Doctrine of Virtue and suggest two answers. According to one, Kant is adding to respect only the four formal affective conditions of moral agency discussed in the previous section. As I suggested above, the reason why he adds these conditions to respect would presumably be that the work presents a system of actual duties and so must at the very least acknowledge that we have both others and ourselves as moral ends (love of others, self-respect) and that fulfilling our moral duties requires taking distinct courses of action (moral feeling) and scrupulously examining our motives (conscience). According to the second answer, under each of these four forms of affectivity we find a range of specific feelings at least as diverse and rich in detail as the system of duties Kant in fact presents in the work and possibly even more varied.
In the next section we will turn to the body of the Doctrine of Virtue and try to determine what support it offers for the latter reading. Properly to do so, however, I think it is important first to examine what appears to be a significant shift in Kant's conception of the tasks of a metaphysics of morals.Footnote 25
In the Preface to the Groundwork, Kant clearly distinguishes the metaphysics of morals from practical anthropology. Metaphysics, he says, is ‘pure philosophy’ (G 4: 388); it contains only a priori principles ‘completely cleansed of everything that may be only empirical and that belongs to anthropology’ (G 4: 389; see also G 4: 410, 410n., 412). In the introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals the line demarcating the two parts of practical philosophy is differently drawn.
… a metaphysics of morals cannot dispense with principles of application (Principien der Anwendung), and we shall often have to take as our object the particular nature of human beings (die besondere Natur des Menschen), which is cognized only by experience, in order to show in it (um an ihr … zu zeigen) what can be inferred from universal moral principles. But this will in no way detract from the purity of these principles or cast doubt on their a priori source. – This is to say, in effect, that a metaphysics of morals cannot be based upon anthropology but can still be applied (angewandt) to it. (M 6: 216–17)
Just as the scope of a metaphysics of morals is wider in the later work, so that of moral anthropology is narrower. It deals ‘only with the subjective conditions in human nature that hinder people or help them in fulfilling the laws of a metaphysics of morals’ (M 6: 217).
This wider conception of metaphysics clearly includes a more detailed discussion of morality than the Groundwork envisioned and, very surprisingly, it contains an empirical element. In contrast to the programme of the earlier work, the Metaphysics of Morals takes as its object ‘the particular nature of human beings’.Footnote 26 It is important to underscore that Kant is not talking about the distinction between rational beings as such and sensible rational beings. Both in the Groundwork (though perhaps not as clearly and consistently) and in the second Critique he is concerned with the latter. Such fundamental notions as duty or imperative and indeed respect as the moral incentive apply to sensible rational creatures but not to holy wills (see G 4: 397, 400–1, 401n., 412–13; CPractR 5: 79, 82–3; M 6: 379).Footnote 27 That the discussion of the a priori concepts of morality necessarily refers to the fundamental empirical facts that we are creatures who feel pleasure and displeasure and have desires and inclinations is also made perfectly plain in both editions of the introduction to the first Critique (see A14–15; B28–9). Indeed, the second edition underscores that these facts do not compromise the purity of morals: We ‘must necessarily include them in the composition of the system of pure morality in the concept of duty, as the hindrance that must be overcome or the attraction that ought not to be made into a motive’ (B 29). In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant seems then not to be talking about the mere fact that we are sensible creatures. He is talking about the empirical details of human nature.
This should certainly give us pause. For the earlier distinction between the metaphysics of morals and anthropology dovetails with what is probably the prevailing reading of the primary task of the Groundwork and of Kant's moral theory more generally. According to this reading, the task is to establish the categorical imperative in its universal law formulation as the ‘supreme principle of morality’ (G 4: 392). It is this principle and its universalizability test that serve as the objective ground of actual moral permissions and prohibitions. The test is purportedly objective because it meets two requirements: first, it is formal – it tests whether the universalization of maxims leads to contradiction; and second, employing it presupposes objective empirical knowledge but no moral knowledge. It is in this way, presumably, that moral philosophy can be applied to actual human beings without borrowing the least thing from anthropology.Footnote 28
This very influential reading of the Groundwork would lead us to expect the Doctrine of Virtue to set out with the universal law formula of the categorical imperative in hand, supplement it with empirical anthropological ‘principles of application’ – and from them derive substantive moral laws. However, Kant never presents such a system of empirical ancillary principles in the later work and his formula of choice in it is the formula of humanity. What Kant actually says in the passage we are considering – and seems to be doing in the body of the work – invites a different reading of the method of the Metaphysics of Morals: We ‘take as our object the particular nature of human beings … in order to show in it what can be inferred from universal moral principles’. Our investigation begins by taking actual human nature as its object. Its end is to exhibit how the necessary conditions of moral agency and the universal principles of morality shape our real human lives. The task of the Metaphysics of Morals is not the formal derivation of the substantive moral laws that ought to shape human life from the categorical imperative and empirical ancillary principles of application. Rather, it is the exposition of the demands and conditions of the moral life Kant takes us actually to lead. As we will see, it is precisely this undertaking that has the power to explain the variety of moral feelings discussed in the Doctrine of Virtue.
4. The Variety of Moral Feelings in the Doctrine of Virtue
How varied is the conception of moral feelings presented in the body of the Doctrine of Virtue? A complete answer to this question will depend on our conception of its task and demands a careful reading of the entire work. In this section I will merely suggest that this variety might be as detailed as the system of duties the work presents (indeed, perhaps more detailed). On this reading, moral feeling, for example, is not a single pleasurable feeling that makes possible any dutiful action, but a variety of distinct feelings that give colour and shape to our distinct duties – doing the right thing, helping specifically the poor for example, in the right way; and love of others is not a single undifferentiated affective attunement to others, but a variety of such shapes of moral sensibility as diverse as the range of duties to others Kant describes, and so forth. For if indeed the four moral feelings of the introduction are as closely related as I claim they are then we should read Kant either as answering that all four feelings are undifferentiated, like respect for the moral law (see again the last paragraph of section 1), or that they are all merely the general form of a moral affectivity under which particular and closely related sensibilities are subsumed. This view builds of course on the possibility put forward in section 3, which suggested that Kant's mature methodology in the Metaphysics of Morals takes as its object the concrete lives of human beings and aims to show how our various substantive moral duties shape it. It is this methodology that would enable him to paint the Doctrine of Virtue with a rich palette of moral feelings. Thus, the claims of the first two sections of this paper can be defended independently of the view presented in the latter two sections. The former give us the narrower formal reading of Kant's doctrine of moral feelings in the Metaphysics of Morals; the latter – a wider substantive reading, though in making a stronger claim, clearly weaker.
Kant does not address the question of the variety of moral feelings in the Doctrine of Virtue explicitly. Nevertheless, the following three points support the varied reading. First and least controversially, Kant's later discussion of conscience is strewn with references (some explicit, some implicit) to the various feelings that accompany moral self-scrutiny (M 6: 437–42). So, even on the narrower formal reading of the doctrine of rational moral feelings put forward in section 2, conscience includes a variety of feelings (self-approbation, remorse, feelings of responsibility for transgressions, etc.).
Second and more significantly, Kant begins the discussion of our duties to others by separating the duties of love and respect we owe to others from the feelings that make the fulfilment of these duties possible. This by no means implies, however, that the latter are of no importance to the discussion. On the contrary, virtually every passage of Kant's examination of these duties reveals an essential affective dimension. Indeed, how are we to understand such duties as gratitude, sympathy, and friendship and the moral prohibitions against arrogance, defamation, and ridicule without grasping their essential affective depth? Diverse feelings of love and respect seem to be essential to the entire discussion of duties to others.
Some discussions of specific duties seem clearly to support this claim and thus the varied reading of the doctrine of moral feelings. In the context of the discussion of the duties of love and respect for others Kant explicitly distinguishes, as I just mentioned, these duties from the feelings that always accompany them. He goes on to give an example of a duty to another which is clearly accompanied by such specific feelings:
…we shall acknowledge (erkennen) that we are under obligation to help someone poor; but since the favor we do implies that his well-being depends on our generosity, and this humbles him, it is our duty to behave as if our help is either merely what is due him or but a slight service of love (Liebesdienst), and to spare him humiliation and maintain his respect for himself. (M 6: 448–9)
Knowing what our duty is here – the objective determining ground of action – is clear and very briefly described, namely, to help someone poor. However, the affective depth of the example is far greater. It is not simply our duty to help the poor in any way that might relieve their adversity (if only temporarily), say by handing them a sum of money. Our affective grasp of the objective situation reveals that it is our duty to do this in the right way. To spare the other humiliation we are to act with great delicacy to make sure that he or she feels that our help is no great matter. It is simply what anyone should do for any person in similar circumstances. Clearly, we have here an example of how the feelings of love and respect for others (deriving from our own sense of self-esteem), as well as moral feeling in Kant's narrow sense, are necessary aspects of fulfilling our objectively determined moral duty.Footnote 29 It is noteworthy, furthermore, that we are examining a particular duty of beneficence. Thus, the affective aspect of the duty to aid the poor gives us greater affective detail than the very general system of duties Kant presents; clearly, helping the ailing might require different sensibilities.Footnote 30
Finally, the variety of moral feelings might indeed be even greater than the variety of duties Kant actually discusses. This is first implied in the introduction to the Doctrine of Virtue. There Kant states that the very fact that his subject is wide duties invites an ever-more-detailed specification of maxims (M 6: 411), and by implication, of moral feelings. Kant later devotes a section of his discussion of duties to others to the question of the duties we have to others ‘with regard to their condition’ (M 6: 468). It reveals that the Doctrine of Virtue focuses only on principles of obligation for ‘human beings as such toward one another’ (M 6: 468). It does not discuss the duties related to different moral states, differences in culture, education, social, or professional standing, nor ‘differences in rank, age, sex, health, prosperity or poverty and so forth’ (M 6: 425; see also M 6: 483). The reason for this is not that these questions are irrelevant to a determination of our moral obligations, but because they are modifications of the first principles of a doctrine of virtue and the empirical assumptions they require cannot be classified in a comprehensive system (see also M 6: 205). We should require from a metaphysics of morals ‘a transition which, by applying the pure principles of duty to cases of experience, would schematize these principles, as it were, and present them as ready for morally practical use’ (M 6: 468). As Kant says explicitly, ‘even this application belongs to the complete presentation of the system’ (M 6: 469). But a more complete system of duties would presuppose a more finely tuned moral sensibility responsive to our moral obligations to a wide variety of different people. And indeed, the example we examined above seems to fall within this extension of the system of duties, for it deals with matters of prosperity and poverty.Footnote 31 On this reading then Kant's conception of human virtue is coloured with an abundance of distinct moral feelings.
Would this conclusion not contradict the claim that the Metaphysics of Morals will in no way detract from the purity of the universal principles of morality? Is not the contamination of his moral theory the price Kant would be forced to pay for an elaborate doctrine of moral feelings? Here it is important to highlight once again the suggestion that Kant's aim in this work is not to offer a purely formal derivation of a system of universal moral laws. His methodology is different: we ‘take as our object the particular nature of human beings, which is cognized only by experience, in order to show in it what can be inferred from universal moral principles’ (M 6: 217). Kant is not offering purely formal inferences, the conclusions of which are the system of duties he presents. He starts out, rather, with what he takes to be the conclusion of inferences, premises of which must be morally relevant empirical anthropological facts, though Kant does not specify what these premises are. Simply put, he starts with what he takes to be the system of universal moral laws that apply to our lives, rather than prove formally that they apply to us. Similarly, the particular moral feelings we examined are taken to be concrete examples of feelings necessary to fulfilling such concrete duties.
5. Conclusion
The examination of the Metaphysics of Morals has revealed that for Kant moral feelings are necessary conditions of rational moral agency. This must come as a great surprise to those readers who take the caricature of Kant as the mortal enemy of all human feelings to be a realistic portrait of his views. But it must also come as something of a surprise to the far more careful readers who defend Kant against charges of austerity by insisting that it is a grave misunderstanding to depict him as a trenchant and outspoken foe of all inclinations. Recent discussions of the matter often underline the fact that for Kant the life of moral agents is not the emotionally stunted life of continuously cranking the universalization algorithm and mechanically acting on its directives. Rather, it is a life in which the human desire for happiness is limited – indeed shaped – by the preponderant pursuit of our moral vocation. As Kant says explicitly in the passage from the Groundwork with which we began, helping others from a sympathetic inclination – if this conforms with duty – is amiable and deserves praise and encouragement (G 4: 398).
This line of defence is certainly true to the spirit as well as the letter of Kant's moral theory. Yet it still conceives of moral action as accompanied only by the reverent feeling of respect for the law. While respect for the law is a very important part of our moral life, I have argued that the Doctrine of Virtue reveals that other feelings play an essential role in it. The discussion of conscience reveals that the inner moral life of duty is rich and complex. The discussion of moral feeling and Kant's concrete examples reveal that acting morally consists of more than perfunctorily carrying out prescribed courses of action. It is acting dutifully with the right feelings. The categories of love of human beings and self-esteem teach us that affective bonds tie us to the ends of moral action, namely, other human beings and our own moral self. These feelings are all necessary conditions of moral agency. Rational moral feelings are not inclinations. They are the affective capacities that tie us to the concrete ends of morality and make possible moral action and reflection in our world.Footnote 32
Abbreviations
- A/B
Critique of Pure Reason. Ed. and trans. Paul Guyer and
Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). ‘A’ and ‘B’ refer respectively to the 1st (1781) and 2nd (1787) edns. of the work.
- CPractR
Critique of Practical Reason. In Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
- G
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In Practical Philosophy.
- V-Mo/Collins
Lectures on Ethics, ed. Peter L. Heath and Jerome B.
Schneewind, trans. Peter L. Heath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Collins's 1784–5 lecture notes.
- V-PP/Herder
Lectures on Ethics. Herder's 1762–4 lecture notes.
- V-MS/Vigil
Lectures on Ethics. Vigilantius's 1793 lecture notes.
- M
The Metaphysics of Morals. In Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
