Download 1 Kantian Moral Psychology Michelle A. Schwarze Ph.D. Candidate

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Kantian Moral Psychology
Michelle A. Schwarze
Ph.D. Candidate
Kerr 677
Department of Political Science
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616
775-813-8020
(530) 752-8666
[email protected]
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Abstract
Kantian moral theory is well known for its attempt to ground morality in a priori
principles. Unfortunately, this attempt has led some critics to claim that Kant’s reliance upon
rational cognition for moral motivation provides inadequate provisions for ensuring adherence.
Yet Kant’s moral theory is not without an account of incentive. Indeed, Kant introduces respect,
a moral feeling of reverence for duty, as the source of affective ties to the moral law. The most
unique aspect of respect, however, is its development. As I argue in this paper, respect is
engendered by the humiliation of our self-conceit (arrogantia), a transformation which requires
prior self-conceit in order to occur, as pure self-love (philautia) does not force us to confront the
inconsistency between an unwarranted esteem in ourselves and the supreme dignity presented to
us by the moral law. We must first possess this comparative esteem for ourselves for the moral
law to be able to transform our affective attachment to ourselves into a necessary affective
attachment to the moral law. By examining respect, I reveal a Kantian moral incentive structure
that is not based on, but strengthened by feeling.
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1. Introduction
Kantian moral theory is well known for its attempt to ground morality in a priori
principles. For Kant, moral worth is conferred only to actions motivated by a sense of duty and
not to those precipitated by particular desires or inclinations. Acting from duty requires that our
actions are subjectively determined by nothing other than the moral law itself, rather than
particular moral sentiments, like sympathy or benevolence, as only actions willed are
representative of free choice. These strong claims about moral motivation have led some critics
to argue that Kant presents us with an “implausibly mechanistic account of desires” (Brewer
2002, 103). In his attempt to purge moral theory of emotional incentives in order to make room
for freedom and responsibility, they claim that Kant renders it “counter to normal intuition and
commonsense” (Blasi 1999, 14; see also the “Kantian fallacy” in Field 2006, 48). Put differently,
these critics claim that the moral law alone, and Kant’s reliance upon rational cognition for moral
action, provides inadequate provisions for ensuring adherence.
Yet Kant’s moral theory is not without an account of incentive. Indeed, in the chapter of
the Critique of Practical Reason [hereafter CPrR] entitled, “On the Incentives of Pure Practical
Reason,” Kant introduces the concept of respect1 for the moral law, a moral feeling of reverence
for dutiful actions in individuals. However, respect alone cannot be the incentive (in the
traditional sense of either term) for dutiful actions, as that would be inconsistent with the
freedom Kant presumes is inherent in rational agency. Respect appears to provide an affective
attachment to the moral law, which ultimately serves as the subjective determining ground for all
our actions, but it also represents a rational acknowledgement of the law’s authority.
1
I follow Wood’s (1996, 1998) translations of Achtung as “respect” throughout this paper,
though I emphasize the emphasis the sense of reverence or awe it implies (see Satkunanandan
2011, 247, 32n).
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What is most unique about this moral feeling of respect is not merely its role as a source
of affective ties to the moral law, but rather the necessary conditions for its development. As I
will show in this paper, respect is engendered by the humiliation of our self-conceit
(arrogantia).2 This transformation requires self-conceit in order to occur, because pure self-love3
or benevolence towards oneself (philautia) does not force us to confront the inconsistency
between an unwarranted esteem in ourselves and the supreme dignity presented to us by the
moral law. We must first possess a comparative esteem for ourselves for the moral law, once
presented to us by an exemplar of the law, to infringe upon our self-conceit and to transform our
affective attachment to ourselves into an affective attachment to the law itself. Through this
analysis of respect, I will also reveal how, contrary to some accounts (Reath 1989, Allison 1990),
Kant provides us with a moral incentive structure that is not based on, but is strengthened by
feeling.
In what follows, I present a developmental argument for moral feeling in Kant’s moral
psychology. I begin by explaining Kant’s basic argument against sentimentalism and for the
moral law as the only true moral incentive. I subsequently present potential problems associated
with this argument, including the claim that Kant’s account of moral motivation is inadequate.
Next, I address this criticism by detailing the nature and origins of respect as a moral feeling,
through an analysis of the distinction between self-conceit and self-love and the necessary
requirements of humiliation. Finally, I argue that this more complete understanding of respect
2
In the original German, Kant denotes self-conceit or Eigendünkel as a “pleasure in oneself” or
“delight in oneself” (oder die des Wohlgefallens an sich selbst) (Kant 1968, 193).
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In the Religion with the Boundaries of Mere Reason [hereafter Religion AK], Kant identifies
this type of “mechanical self love” with “the predisposition to the animality of the human being”
(Religion AK 6:26). Unlike comparative self-love and self-conceit, which I discuss in greater
detail in the second section, pure self-love “does not have reason at its root at all” and thus
cannot engage in comparison with others or discover logical inconsistencies between behavior
and law.
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helps us understand its function as both an affective and “intellectual” response to the moral law,
as well as the role of emotions in Kant’s moral psychology, more generally.
2. Kantian Moral Incentives
a. Kant’s Moral Theory
Kant is often distinguished from the moral sentimentalists, including those in the Scottish
Enlightenment, by his distinct argument for moral motivation, which he provides in the CPrR,
the Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason [hereafter Religion] and the Groundwork for
the Metaphysics of Morals [hereafter GMM]. While Hume, Smith and others famously sought to
ground moral action in dispositions, like sympathy, that could be developed into moral habits,
Kant argues that actions performed in this manner are simply done in accordance with duty and
not from duty. Good actions done out of habit are “in accordance with the letter but not the
spirit” of the law (CPrR 5:72n). That is, these dispositions can instill a desire in us to do the right
things, but they cannot provide us with an interest in doing them for the right reasons (see, for
example, CPrR 5:79). For this reason, Kant argues that the moral law itself is “for the will of
every finite rational being a law of duty” and Kantian moral actions are determined “through
respect for this law and reverence for his duty” (CPrR 5:82). As I will show in this section, Kant
makes this distinction -- between actions done that happen to be right and actions done because
they are right -- in order to avoid founding morality on external or contingent circumstances, like
our various dispositions, and in order to ensure morality is a manifestation of our free will and
our capacity as rational agents.
For Kant, moral action cannot be grounded in our sentiments or emotional dispositions
because they are unreliable and because morality itself requires free choice, usually in the form
of self-constraint. This stands in contrast to the Scottish moral theorists of the 18th century like
David Hume – a “great interlocutor” (Saurette 2005, 41) who Kant famously claimed
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“interrupted my dogmatic slumber” (Prolegomena 4:260) and caused him to shift his research in
speculative philosophy – for whom morality is “more properly felt than judg’d of” (Treatise of
Human Nature III.I.2.1). For the Scots, moral worth (and moral approbation) is based on
perception rather than reason. Kant claims, however, that moral worth is imbued in action only
by our choice to act in a manner that the moral law dictates, often by curbing our particular
desires. As Campbell argues, “for motives to be morally good [for Kant], it is not enough that
they be directed toward the right object, viz. the doing of one’s duty. It is also necessary that the
motive proceed from the right source” (1983, 528; see also Herman 1996, 4-6). Kant emphasizes
in the GMM that an action motivated by something other than the moral law, “however it may
conform with duty and however amiable it might be, has nevertheless no true moral worth”; it
“deserves praise and encouragement but not esteem; for [it] lacks moral content” (GMM 4:398).
The reason that actions in accordance with duty but determined by our passions, such as the
disinterested benevolence for others that might result from sympathetic emotions, are bereft of
moral content is that they lack autonomy of the will. Morality requires an individual, who is
“free with respect to all laws of nature,” to choose to obey only those universalizable maxims he
gives himself (GMM 4:435). Indeed, moral duties are practically necessary rather than sufficient.
If we act in a dutiful manner as result of our sentimental inclinations rather than reasoned choice,
we are neither self-legislating nor allowing our will to be an end in itself (i.e. our will is neither a
subjective or objective determining ground for our action) (GMM 4:434). “Whenever incentives
other than the law itself (e.g. ambition, self-love in general, yes, even a kindly instinct such as
sympathy) are necessary to determine the power of choice to lawful actions,” Kant argues, “it is
purely accidental that these actions agree with the law, for the incentives might equally well
incite its violation” (Religion AK 6:31; emphasis added). Moral worth cannot and should not be
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conferred by chance because such a system would prevent individuals from exercising their
autonomy and would often condone bad intentions on the grounds that they produced benefits.
Yet the “canon of moral appraisal of action in general” is that “we must be able to will that a
maxim of our action become a universal law” (GMM 4:423; emphasis original). For this same
reason, a divine will cannot have moral character: without the ability to choose to act in a manner
that is not in accordance with duty, one cannot truly exercise a freedom (CPrR 5:72).
What is more, sentimentalist theories are unfit to ground morality because of their reliance on
unreliable passions. Kant claims that moral sense theories “put together from incentives of
feeling and inclination and also of rational concepts…must make the mind waver between
motives that cannot be brought under any principle”; they are “not at all fit to support [morality]
as its foundation” and can “lead only contingently to what is good and can very often also lead to
what is evil” (GMM 4:443, 4:411; emphasis added). Our subjective feelings, Kant argues, “by
nature differ infinitely from one another in degree,” thus rendering it difficult for them to agree
on any sort of universal standard of morality (GMM 4:442). Here, Kant implicitly raises a
criticism against the impartial spectator theories of Hume and Smith, which contemporary
scholars have echoed (Forman-Barzilai 2005, 207; Haakonssen 2002, “Introduction”), that the
universal approbation necessary for establishing general rules of morality is difficult to achieve.
By moving morality to the “court of pure reason,” he ensures that a universal, objective standard
can be “valid for all possible agents or inquirers (whether or not we are ever able to find that
answer or agree on it)” (Wood 2006; 343). Grounding morality in reason and autonomy thus
allows us to avoid the hazard of an undeterminable or changing moral standard and to ensure that
moral action contains both its letter and spirit.
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While freedom and rationality are necessary conditions of morality for Kant, only the moral
law itself (i.e. the Categorical Imperative or CI) can be a sufficient motive for moral action. The
moral law, as Kant conceives of it, is simply the Categorical Imperative (CI): “act only in
accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a
universal law” (GMM 4:421). Formulated here as the Formula of Universal Law (FUL), Kant
argues in Section II of the GMM that the CI can actually be formed in five distinct, yet
functionally equivalent ways.4 In order for our actions to obtain moral value, the CI or moral law
itself must be the incentive, or “subjective determining ground for a being whose reason does not
by its nature necessarily conform with the objective law,” for our action. That is, we must act in
accordance with universalizable maxims in order for our actions to be considered good. If, on the
contrary, our actions are determined by other incentives, then we are not acting for the sake of
the law itself and our actions are devoid of moral worth.
While conceiving of the moral law as the objective determining ground of our will might not
be so difficult, we might be a bit more perplexed about its role as the subjective determining
ground of our will or an incentive for action. Our common notions of incentives often involve
contingent desires, which are incompatible with a Kantian conception of moral action. Kant
himself even recognizes the puzzling nature of the claim that the moral law is our incentive to act
morally (CPrR 5:72-5:73). Moreover, some commentators worry that this kind of purely rational
motivation for moral action might be insufficient. As Field argued, “Kant’s fallacy lies in
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These five formulations are the Formula of Universal Law (FUL) (GMM 4:421), the Formula
of the Law of Nature (FLN) (GMM 4:421), the Formula of Humanity (FH) (GMM 4:429), the
Formula of Autonomy (FA) (GMM 4:431) and the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends (FKE)
(GMM 4:433, 4:439). It should be noted that, while these formulations are supposed to be
functionally equivalent, some seem to reveal why our perfect and imperfect duties are inviolable
in a less problematic manner. The explanation of why suicide is a violation of a perfect duty to
ourselves, for example, is perhaps more effectively illustrated by the FH than the FUL (GMM
4:429; 4:422).
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thinking that just the bare knowledge that an action is of a certain kind is sufficient to move us to
do that action” (Field 2006, 48). In the section that follows, I explain and address this criticism,
through an analysis of the development of respect and both its rational and emotional
dimensions.
3. Respect for the Moral Law: Nature and Origins
a. A Kantian “Fallacy”?
Is Kant’s understanding of the moral law as the sufficient subjective determining ground
of our will fallacious? That is, is reason alone insufficient moral motivation? Critics of Kant’s
theory of motivation argue that reason cannot always determine our actions when unaided by
feeling (Baier 1991, Goldman 1970, Honig 1993). We can easily conceive of a weak or irresolute
individual, who recognizes the moral law but acts on non-moral incentives or inclinations;
someone for whom reason commands one thing, but who acts on contrary incentives. Kant
would argue that this person’s actions are devoid of moral worth, but one might contest that the
existence of moral weakness reveals a limitation in his particular definition of motivation. This
limitation is highlighted even more in Kant’s “incorporation thesis,” or his claim that “freedom
of the will is of a wholly unique nature in that an incentive can only determine the will to action
only so far as the individual has incorporated it into his maxim” (Allison 1990, 39-40; see also,
Denis 2006, 511). According to this thesis, weakness of the kind abovementioned is impossible
(see, for example, Johnson 1998).
I argue, however, that this understanding of Kantian incentives is incomplete. The claim
that the moral law itself is the sole incentive for action “is not quite accurate and must be
qualified” (Beck 1960, 217n), as Kant does in Chapter III of the CPrR. Kant even goes so far as
to say that “the most rational being of this world might still need certain incentives, coming to
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him from the objects of inclination, to determine his power of choice” (Religion AK 6:26n). By
introducing respect for the moral law as certain type of incentive for action, Kant is able to retain
the rational and autonomous requirements of his moral theory, while explaining the development
of the passions and the role they play in moral life. The account of respect I provide below is
meant to explain what kind of moral incentive it is, its psychological development, and, in the
final section, to argue how respect affects our action.
b.
Respect
Kantian respect for the moral law is the moral sentiment responsible for our affective
attachment to moral behavior and a particular type of incentive for moral action. For Kant, the
moral law is an incentive or subjective determining ground of our will “inasmuch as it has
influence on the sensibility of the subject and effects a feeling conducive to the influence of the
law upon the will” (CPrR 5:75). This influential force on sensibility, or the “consciousness of the
subordination of my will to a law,” is the “moral feeling” that Kant terms respect (CPrR 5:75;
GMM 4:401n). Respect is not an independent incentive from the moral law for moral action. It is
not “pathologically effected” but rather “practically effected” by pure practical reason and an
effective cause of our emotions or senses (CPrR 5:75). That is, respect is an incentive for action,
though the moral law causes it, because it affects our emotional dispositions.
As it is a both practically effected and emotionally effective, respect is best understood
dualistically. Specifically, as Reath (1989) highlights, respect consists of both “affective” and
“intellectual” elements. The intellectual aspect of respect consists of the “attitude which it is
appropriate to have towards a law, in which one acknowledges its authority and is motivated to
act accordingly” (Reath 1989, 287). Conversely, the affective side of respect is the “feeling or
emotion that is experienced when the Moral Law checks the inclinations and limits their
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influence on the will” (ibid.). Simply put, while respect is a “moral feeling,” it is a disposition
which has both rational and emotional elements. While Reath essentially aligns these two
elements of respect with its negative and positive, or restrictive or productive, aspects, I argue
that affective respect can be both a negative and positive incentive and, importantly, that
affective respect has a reciprocal, reinforncing relationship with the moral law. This
understanding of respect thus also differs from Beck’s, as he argues that “in spite of what Kant
says, the law itself is not the incentive” (1960, 221). I take Kant at his word and try to reconstruct
the dichotomous elements of respect, which both provide individual agents with positive ground
for action and negative constraints on behavior. My schema is therefore also distinct from
Sokoloff, who claims that resolution of the “textual tensions that constitute respect” consists in
homogenization (2001, 777).
The intellectual aspect of respect in Kant’s moral theory is the rational disposition
inspired in us by the moral law. Intellectual respect for the moral law consists of both the
positive and negative forces of the moral incentive. The moral law itself rationally determines
the intellectual aspect of respect, which is a reciprocal response to it, while respect is inclusive of
its intellectual aspect by definition. Secondly, the affective element of respect is the emotional
disposition generated by the humiliation of our self-conceit before the moral law. Notably, its
positive effects are only internal and emotional; that is to say, they do not (and cannot) determine
our actions. The generation of this emotional disposition itself is a positive effect, as it replaces
the emotion of self-conceit.6 As is evident, the affective aspect of respect has an indirect,
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As I argue below, this positive (in both senses of the term) aspect of affective respect is
important for understanding the role of humiliation in Kant’s moral psychology. While I will
show that the humiliation of self-conceit is the psychological process by which the moral
disposition is awakened in individuals, I do not mean to suggest that Kant’s moral psychology is
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negative effect on our actions as well because it “weakens the hindering influence of the
inclinations” (CPrR 5:79).
The moral law is an a priori negative incentive for Kant, as it is “felt as a constraint”
(Beck 1960, 219) on inclinations that are not law-abiding as a result of our limited nature. It acts
by “thwarting all our inclinations [to] produce a feeling that can be called pain,” which is “the
first and perhaps the only case in which we can determine a priori from concepts the relation of a
cognition to the feeling of pleasure or displeasure” (CPrR 5:73). Essentially, the moral law itself
directly infringes upon our non-moral inclinations and causes discomfort. It is an immediate
determining ground of our will for Kant, restricting us from acting in accordance with contrary
motives.
Yet respect for the moral law has a positive effect on our actions occurs as well (CPrR
5:75). It achieves this effect by incentivizing the moral law as the maxim of our actions, or
through an “elevation of the moral – that is, practical – esteem for the law itself on the
intellectual side,” and is therefore indirect (CPrR 5:76, 5:79). It is thus clear that respect alone
(i.e. without the negative effect of the moral law) cannot be the subjective determining ground of
our will, but that it is representative of our autonomy. When Kant holds that “respect for the
moral law is therefore the sole and also the undoubted moral incentive” (CPrR 5:78), his
comments should be taken into consideration with his other claims about the moral law itself as
incentive (e.g., “the incentive of the human will can never be anything other than the moral law”)
(CPrR 5:78, 5:72). By positing that cognition of the moral law and respect for it are two aspects
of a singular incentive, we can see how this tension is resolved. As Kant states, “the
consciousness of a free submission of the will to the law, yet as combined with an unavoidable
not affirmative. Rather, his moral theory promotes self-esteem or self-approbation that comes
from the recognition that the moral law is the product of an autonomous Wille. 13
constraint put on all inclinations though only by one’s reason, is respect for the law” (CPrR
5:80; second emphasis added).
In order to better understand both the negative and positive aspects of affective respect, I
explain its development in the section that follows. In the development of our moral
predisposition, self-conceit, our natural tendency to falsely esteem our own actions and our own
knowledge, is humiliated by recognition of the superiority of the moral law, as well as our own
inadequacy, and transformed into affective respect. Affective respect is therefore predicated on a
self-conceit or a prideful love of oneself, which is elevated through humiliation.
c. The Phenomenology of Affective Respect: Self-Conceit and Humiliation
For Kant, self-conceit (arrogantia) is central to the development of affective respect for
the moral law. Indeed, self-conceit is a necessary, but insufficient condition for it.8 While selflove (philautia) is merely “benevolence toward oneself,” self-conceit is “satisfaction with
oneself…[which is] null and quite unwarranted” (CPrR 5:73). The distinction between selfconceit and self-love Kant proposes is critical, because it highlights self-love’s unreflective and
non-comparative nature and thus the absence of the cognitive processes necessary to develop
respect for the moral law. Self-love alone does not contain the reason or comparison required for
individuals to recognize their unwarranted confidence in their own abilities or the superiority of
the moral law. In order to experience humiliation in the face of the law – a transformative,
beneficial process which Kant claims “infringes upon the activity of the subject so far as
inclinations are his determining grounds and hence upon the opinion of his personal worth”
(CPrR 5:78) – an individual must first falsely esteem himself.
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While my understanding of humiliation for Kant greatly benefited from Saurette’s (2002)
treatment of it, he misspecifies it as “the necessary condition of respect for the law” (61).
Humiliation, as I will show, is rather the transformative process itself.
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In the Religion, Kant provides a multifaceted understanding of self-love, in which
particular types correspond to various predispositions and which accounts for variation in human
reason. Specifically, Kant describes an animalistic predisposition characterized by a “mechanical
self love, i.e. a love for which reason is not required,” a predisposition to humanity that consists
of a “self-love which is physical and yet involves comparison (for which reason is required),”
and a predisposition to personality, in which self-love understood as a “respect for the moral law
as of itself a sufficient incentive to the power of choice” is the predominant characteristic
(Religion AK 6:26-6:27). The mechanical, arational self-love that precedes the development of
the problematic and comparative type Kant describes can produce “bestial vices” like “gluttony”
or “wild lawlessness” that do not require reflection, but it cannot lead to more egregious vices
like “envy” or “joy in others’ misfortune” which emanate from our desire to “gain worth in the
opinion of others” (Religion AK 6:27). Self-conceit has been identified as the physical and
comparative, yet reasonable “predisposition to humanity” which Kant describes in the
abovementioned passage in the Religion (e.g., Denis 2006, 514). It creates such emotions as
“jealously, rivalry, and malicious glee,” because it is an unfounded pride in oneself (Denis 2006,
515). As Kant says, it is created by an anxiety to “acquire superiority for oneself over others”
before others who might be striving toward the same goal achieve it (Religion AK 6:27). This
unfounded esteem in our selves and our abilities is, in many ways, the parallel of Rousseau’s
notion of a deleterious amour-propre.9
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Compare, for example, Kant’s position that self-conceit is a “[claim] to esteem for oneself that
[precedes] accord with the moral law” (CPrR 5:73) and Rousseau’s claim that amour-propre or
vanity “inclines each individual to have a greater esteem for himself than for anyone else”
(Rousseau 1964, 222, note O). Kant argues that self-conceit “originates in the inclination to gain
worth in the opinion of others” and is defined by “competitiveness” (Religion AK 6:27), just as
Rousseau claims that amour propre originates from competition for the interest of others
(Rousseau 1964, 149). Rousseau and Kant both differentiate between a rational and arational
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Kant’s concept of self-conceit can be divided into two distinct subtypes: an unwarranted
esteem in one’s abilities and an unwarranted esteem in one’s knowledge. While most of the
examples given in the Religion and the CPrR detail behavior that would be categorized into the
former, Kant provides additional illustrations in lesser-known works, like his essay, “On the
Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy” [hereafter Miscarriage]. There, in a
retelling of the biblical story of Job, Kant identifies the sin of Job’s supposed friends as “selfconceit” (Miscarriage 8:255) because they were arrogant enough to assume they could discern
God’s plan and duplicitous enough to act as though they knew with certainty something they
could not (Miscarriage 8:265-8:266). This false esteem in one’s knowledge, Kant argues, belies
the limits of human epistemology and has often resulted in false theodicies in the past. Job’s
friends are thus conceited because they exhibit a “presumptuous reason failing to recognize its
limitations” (Miscarriage 8:255).
Kant uses the first variant of self-conceit, an unwarranted esteem in one’s abilities, to
illustrate how humiliation substitutes the moral law for one’s own abilities as an object of awe.
As a result of its rational and comparative nature, self-conceit is the “vice opposed to the respect
that every human being can lawfully claim” (MM 6:465, emphasis added). It is opposed to
respect and, more importantly, to the moral law because once the “conceited ass” (MM 6:465)
compares his actions with the dictates of the law he is humiliated by his own inadequacies (CPrR
5:73-5:74). Yet natural inclinations like self-conceit cannot be expunged. Kant argues that “we
must rather only curb them” in order to be moral (Religion AK 6:58). Accordingly, when the
moral law “infringes without end upon self-conceit” and humiliates us precisely because it
reveals the emptiness of our high self-worth (CPrR 5:74), it constrains self-conceit while
self-love as well; in the case of the former, amour de soi and amour-propre, respectively and, in
the case of the latter, mechanical self-love and self-conceit.
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encouraging respect for the law. In other words, individuals realize the worthlessness of their
own abilities and their own knowledge in comparison to the “majesty of the law” (Religion AK
6:23n). And, as Kant claims, this humiliation is what “awakens respect” for the moral law and it
“presupposes this sensibility” (CPrR 5:74; 5:76). The moral law “instills awe (not dread which
repels; and also not fascination, which invites familiarity)” and our awe “rouses the respect of the
subject toward his master, expect that in this case, since the master lies in us, it rouses a feeling
of the sublimity of our own vocation that enraptures us more than any beauty” (Religion AK
6:23n).10 Kant argues in his early essay, “Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and
Sublime,” that we find this sublimity more valuable and rewarding than the beauty that might be
associated with our abilities or knowledge because “one can enjoy it longer without surfeit and
exhaustion” (2:208). In our humiliation, we realize what we held to be of the highest value
indeed pales in comparison to the value derived from acting from duty. Kant asserts “a human
being’s moral education must begin…with the transformation of his attitude of mind and the
establishment of a character “ (Religion AK 6:48). As Saurette contends, “we must recognize the
distance between the perfection of the law and our fallibility…[and] must therefore respect the
law as a necessary determination of our Wilkür” (2002, 61).
Kant provides a lucid example of self-conceit’s pivotal role in the development of respect
in his discussion of the difference between admiration and respect. Admiration is ephemeral and
based on a love or interest in the various extraordinary talents of another man (e.g., wit, courage,
10
Satkunanandan (2011) argues that the transformative encounter we have with the moral law is
in fact brought on by the ontological aspect of the categorical imperative, or the the mode of
being suggested by the formulas of the categorical imperative rather than the particular
prescriptions the provide for moral action. While I agree that the “extraordinary categorical
imperative” and moral feeling of respect can “help us articluate an ethical stance appropriate to
politics” (2011, 252), I emphasize the critical ontological effects of the humiliation of our selfconceit instead, without which agents might retain the “satsifaction” inherent in arrogantia
(CPrR 5:73) and thus lack the determination necessary to act from duty.
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social ranking) (CPrR 5:75). Respect, on the other hand, is aroused when I “perceive uprightness
of character in a higher degree than I am aware of in myself” (ibid.). This is not because his
moral character solely humbles me, but because “his example holds before me a law that strikes
down my self-conceit when I compare it with my conduct, and I see observance of that law and
hence its practicability proved before me in fact” (ibid.). Yet a person must first esteem himself
highly, if not in the utmost, for the force of the moral law on our affect to truly be felt. As the
result of a comparative process, respect for the moral law requires that an individual has
juxtaposed two objects of esteem – the moral law and oneself – and determined that one – the
moral law – is superior. The humiliation that results from this comparison immediately changes
an individual’s predisposition; Kant insists “education, examples and teaching cannot bring
about this firmness and persistence in [moral] principles gradually, but only, as it were, by an
explosion” (Anthropology 7:294). This process of humiliation is therefore referred to as
“intellectual contempt,” as it is a realization of the inconsistency in our high self-esteem and the
true esteem or majesty of the moral law (CPrR 5:75).
Kant’s notion of humiliation also closely parallels Tarnopolsky’s (2004, 8-9) “moment of
recognition” in the “occurrent experience of shame,” which “consists of the discomforting and
perplexing…cognitive recognition of the gaze of an ‘other’ that reveals a certain inadequacy in
the self,” though the “other” in Kant’s case is simply the moral law itself. Kant’s account of
humiliation is also similar to the occurent experience of shame because of its beneficial results.
Contrary to the claim made by some authors that there are “very good reasons to share [his]
ethical disavowal of humiliation and [to] hope that it is a practice we are working to overcome”
(Saurette 2005, 5; for the tension between humiliation and a sense of dignity, see Meyer 202,
196-197)Kant seems to suggest that humiliation is advantageous, as it allows us to develop our
18
moral predisposition and to recognize the enormous value of our own autonomy. No matter how
it’s rephrased, what is crucial is that without self-conceit respect could not be generated (see
Allison 1990, 127). To put it more strongly, self-love alone is inadequate for the moral law to
humiliate us in the way necessary to generate respect.
While this affective aspect of respect supplants self-conceit through humiliation, it is still
unclear as to its specific effects on our emotions. How does this affective respect interact with its
intellectual counterpart? What are its particular effects on our emotions and on our will,
respectively? In the final section of this paper, I discuss the reinforcing role of affective respect
in moral motivation and conclude by offering a brief reconstruction of a Kantian theory of the
moral sentiments, so to speak.
4. The Reinforcing Role of Respect
The appropriate role of the affective aspect of respect is one of reinforcement. As was
elucidated above, respect cannot be the subjective determining ground of the will for Kant,
whose theory of moral worth requires the practical necessitation of the CI and free submission to
the law. “In a morally good will the law itself must be the incentive” because reason, not the
passions, must determine our actions (CPrR 5:79). That is, while respect can “have an affective
force of some sort,” the “role assigned to such force…must be limited so as to leave room for the
notion of choice” (Reath 1989, 290; emphasis added). The affective force respect produces is
therefore simply this: it reinforces the strength of the moral law in us by replacing self-conceit
with reverence or esteem for the law itself. After the process of humiliation that follows our
exposure to a clear representation of the law (e.g., “an action of integrity done with a steadfast
soul”), respect “elevates the soul and awakens a wish to be able to act in like manner oneself”
(GMM 4:410n). In doing so, it reinforces the internal force of the law, which is the determining
19
ground of our external moral actions. Respect fulfills the “need to be impelled to activity” that is
created by our limitations and finitude (CPrR 5:79).
To be clear, the affective aspect of respect produces neither pleasure nor satisfaction in its
reinforcing role. This is critical for two reasons. First, we might be more likely to consider
respect alone the cause of our actions, rather than an effect of the law, if a pathological pleasure
was associated with it (CPrR 5:80). That is, if either respect or the process of humiliation
necessary for its development was pleasant, we might enter into that emotional state for the sake
of pleasure and not for the sake of the law itself. “So little is respect a feeling of pleasure,” Kant
tells us, “that we give way to it only reluctantly” (CPrR 5:77, emphasis in original; see also CPrR
5:89). Secondly, affective respect for the law is never a disposition of satisfaction. Rather, we
strive to “resist respect” for the moral law as a result of the discomfort associated with it (ibid.).
Intellectual respect can also not be satisfied, “since in human beings all good is defective,”
creating a gap between our conduct and the purity of the law itself that is perpetually apparent
(ibid.). To return to an earlier example, a Kantian notion of respect is similar to Tarnopolsky’s
“respectful shame” in that it “preserves the openness to this kind of discomforting and perplexing
experience [i.e. the process of humiliation] so central to the experience of being shamed out of
one’s conformity and complacent moralism” (2004, 18).
While respect for the moral law is not the sufficient determining ground of our will, it
does assist us in overcoming the limitations associated with its fallibility. Respect works as a
strainer to retain our contingent inclinations, allowing the moral law to reach our will
unadulterated. It is produced by practical reason, but requires certain inclinations in order for the
moral law to have an appropriate, transformative effect.
20
5. A Kantian Theory of Moral Sentiments
What this phenomenological account of respect and the role it plays in moral motivation
concurrently provides for us is a sketch of what might be called a Kantian theory of moral
sentiments. While the Anthropology and Religion are often cited for an account of moral feeling
in Kant, my analysis has revealed that a comprehensive moral theory, which includes an
explanation of the role of feeling in moral behavior, is found in his “mature moral theory”
(McCarty 1993, 424) as well. Our sentiments – most especially self-conceit – play a pivotal role
in the development of a moral feeling in accord with Kant’s rational conception of duty. Without
self-conceit, respect could not emerge. Yet Kant does not restrict his discussion of feeling to
respect. Rather he accounts for other passions that might promote or hinder the development of
the moral sentiment of respect. In order to provide a more complete picture of the role of feeling
in Kant’s moral thought, I explain how Kant claims two particularly important sentiments – fear
and sympathy – interact with respect in order to promote an individual’s moral development in
the section that follows. The emotional instability and destructive desire for the approbation of
others natural to anxiety, which Kant claims to be inexorably tied to self-conceit, reveals in part
why an independent, enduring respect for the moral law might be attractive to individual agents.
Kantian sympathy supplies the ground for respect in another fashion: it is the moral sentiment
that can be most closely tied to the second formulation of the CI, the Formula of Humanity, as it
encourages individual agents to use humanity as an end in the way required by the moral law
(GMM 4:429).
Fear has an instrumental function in the development of respect for the moral law and Kant’s
moral theory. Anxiety, a constitutive emotion of self-conceit, is a “[degree] of fear”
(Anthropology 7:256). Self-conceited agents are anxious that others might usurp their position in
21
a social hierarchy or discover that they have false knowledge on a subject that they purport to
know with certainty. Yet Kant’s account of knowledge requires “a subjective condition of
conviction” (McCarty 1993, 433), as evidenced by his arguments for the various practical
postulates, that self-conceited agents simply do not have. The anxiety derived from selfconceited behavior also suggests another reason that, for Kant, the predisposition to personality
is preferable to the predisposition to humanity: a predisposition to personality and for respect for
the moral law are not subject to the uncertainty a desire to “gain worth in the opinion of others”
(Religion AK 6:27) must be. While the “anxious endeavor of others to gain a hateful superiority
over us” (ibid.) can lead to cultural advancements as well as vices, the underlying insecurity of
self-conceit can never provide individuals with the “contentment only possible for us on
condition that our maxims are subordinated to the moral law” (Religion AK 6:46n).
Within the affective aspect of respect, Kant explains the role of a type of fear that forces even
the “boldest evildoer” to “tremble” before the law (CPrR 5:79). Indeed, Kant suggests that it is
“more beneficial (for morality) to ‘work out one’s salvation with fear and trembling’” (Religion
AK 6:68) than to have a sense of complacency about one’s goodness. If we remain justifiably
fearful of the difficulty associated with acting from duty, then we are much less likely to
consciously transgress the law or to slip into acting simply in accordance with duty.
Despite its ultimate insufficiency for morality, Kant also accounts for a moral feeling of
sympathy. For Kant, sympathy is a “kindly passion” or “kindly participation in the fate of other
people, to which principles of virtue likewise lead” (Observations 2:215). Although Kant lauds it
as “beautiful and lovable” (2:215),11 sympathy is presented as an appropriate end rather than
11
While I don’t address the Metaphysics of Morals here, Kant himself is uncharacteristically
(and surprisingly) sympathetic to arguments for the utlity of sympathy at points within his
“Doctrine of Virtue.” For example, Kant postis, in reference to sympathy, that it is “still one of
22
beginning to moral judgments. Sympathy cannot serve as the foundation for morality for Kant
because, though it encourages humanity in individuals, it can often lead them to shirk their duties
because it is directionless (see, for example, de Lourdes Borges 2002; CPrR 5:81). In other
words, sympathy stunts the development of moral resolve. Because sympathy is “weak and is
always blind” (2:216), if an agent adopts it as their guiding moral principle, their actions are just
as likely to be morally bad as morally good. For example, sympathy can lead us to act from
benevolence and give to someone we see is in need despite our indebtedness to another person,
which constitutes a violation of our “strict duty of justice” to our creditor (2:216). As a result of
sympathy’s lack of directionality, actions done from a sense of sympathy can only be done
according to the “letter of the law” rather than the “spirit” (Religion AK 6:31; see also, CPrR
5:72n).
However, the distance between sympathy and respect for the moral law is perhaps closer
than might be expected. Kant emphasizes that, aside from its lack of direction, sympathy is
problematic as a moral principle because it is particularistic. Sympathy leads us to sacrifice our
“higher obligation” of “general affection towards humankind” to a particularistic “love towards
the one” (Observations 2:216). Yet Kant does not suggest that this “love towards the one” is
completely useless nor that it could be eradicated from human nature even if it was harmful.12
Rather Kant suggests that our sympathetic, particularistic love is subsumed within a “general
love of mankind” (2:216n) when we act from duty that renders it more calm and practical.
the impulses that nature has implanted in us to do what the representation of duty alone might
not accomplish” (MM 6:458).
12
In the Religion, Kant makes it quite clear that self-love and self-conceit, which provide the
ground for the humanity inherent in sympathy, are “original” (Religion AK 6:28). The individual
cannot “eradicate either of the two” (ibid.). Kant also asserts that, “considered in themselves
natural inclinations are good, i.e. not reprehensible, and to want to extirpate them would not only
be futile but harmful and blameworthy as well” (Religion AK 6:58).
23
Similar to the distinction Kant made between the seeming beauty of the self-conceited person’s
actions in his own eyes and the sublimity of our original moral predisposition, or our potential
for respect for the moral law, sympathy for an individual is a “good moral quality” that is
beautiful, while sympathy “raised to its proper universality…is sublime” (Observations 2:215,
2:216).
Given that this development of sympathy seems to resemble the “enlightenment of
sympathy” scholars argue Scottish Enlightenment philosophers like Hume and Smith proposed
(e.g., Frazer 2010), it is useful to make a very important distinction between Kant and his
predecessors. For Hume and Smith, sympathy is not a moral feeling but rather an imaginative
process by which we experience either the pains and pleasures of others or a range of various
passions (Treatise of Human Nature 2.2.9.13, 3.3.1.22; Theory of Moral Sentiments I.i.1.2I.i.1.3). That is, sympathy is the beneficial faculty that allows us to enter into the emotions of
socially or spatially proximal (Forman-Barzilai 2005) others rather than the passion we
experience when we feel compassion toward them. This stands in stark contrast to the
description of sympathy Kant provides, which more closely resembles the Scottish philosophers’
notion of a particularistic benevolence than the faculty of sympathy itself. In this same vein, the
“general love of mankind” or humanity that Kant advocates as the appropriate expression of
sympathetic feelings through our obsevance of duty parallels the general or universal
benevolence held by one of the founding fathers of the Scottish Enlightenment, Francis
Hutcheson,13 to be the basis for moral action.
13
Hutcheson’s beatific moral theory is grounded on a claim about the enlightenment of
“universal calm Benevolence” (An Essay on the nature and Conduct of the Passions and
Affections, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense I.I.ii.31 [or pp. 32]) toward others, which, like
Kant’s “general love of mankind,” is much “colder” than its particular instantiations
(Observations 2:216).
24
Kant’s theory of moral sentiments culminates in his description of the moral interest.
Respect produces “an interest in compliance with the law which we call moral interest” (CPrR
5:80) that serves as an active disposition. This moral interest replaces sympathy and benevolence
as the incentive to cultivate moral action with a practically effected feeling in a more reliable
manner and in one that can exist concomitantly with free choice. Our moral predisposition
incites us to seek a “remedy” for the “ill which [we] selfishly inflict on one another” – namely,
those vices we fall subject to in our insatiable pursuit for the esteem of others – by subjugating
“the private interest (of the individual) to the public interest (of all united)” or to the “discipline
(of a civil constraint)…[or of] laws they have themselves given” (Anthropology 7:329). In other
words, our moral feeling of respect for the law is the ground for developing a moral interest in
acting from duty.
6. Conclusion
The developmental account of Kantian respect that I have provided is meant to elucidate an
underemphasized aspect of Kant’s moral psychology – his treatment of emotional motivation.
Respect for the moral law, the moral feeling Kant asserts is produced by the law yet is also the
“incentive” for it, requires the humiliation of a prior conceitedness in either our selves or our
knowledge, because we must realize the relatively low worth of both in comparison to the
sublimity of the law itself in order to understand the superiority of the law and to develop the
moral resolve necessary to act from duty. This ontological transformation, grounded in a
profound realization about our misguided arrogance and limited epistemology, helps pave the
way for a moral life.
I have also sought to distinguish Kant’s moral theory from its Scottish predecessors, while
examining the nuanced way that moral sentiments affect Kantian moral psychology. Though
25
Kant discusses and even lauds the effects of sympathy on moral behavior, his conception of
sympathy differs greatly from the moral faculty accounted for by Hume and Smith. The Kantian
notion of anxiety and self-conceit that I have developed also reveals the affinity between Kantian
moral psychology and the moral psychology Rousseau advances. What I have aimed most to
show by providing an account of Kantian moral psychology, however, is the very serious way
Kant considers the function of the affections in morality. While Kant’s moral philosophy is
known for its rigidity and strong commitment to rationality, his description of respect and its
genealogy reveal the depth of his moral psychology as well. Though moral actions are exertions
of our free-will and reason for Kant, he explicitly recognizes the human capacity for feeling and
attends to it when constructing his account of a moral life.
26
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