What is the ‘force’ of moral law in Kant's practical philosophy?

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Notes

1. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Australasian Association for Philosophy conference, Melbourne 2008. I would like to thank the audience and my fellow panellists for their helpful questions on that occasion.

2. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck, Third Edition (New York: Macmillan, 1993), Preface, 4.

3. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar, (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), §91, p.362.

4. i.e., unlike the other postulates of moral law: immortality and God.

5. See Dieter Henrich's discussion of the insight of the moral fact and its genesis in Kant's philosophy ‘The Concept of Moral Insight and Kant's Doctrine of the Fact of Reason’, trans. Manfred Kuehn in Dieter Henrich's The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant's Philosophy, edited and with an introduction by Richard L. Velkely (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp.55–89. See also Kant's essay ‘On the Proverb: That May be True in Theory, But is of no Practical Use’, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History and Morals, trans. Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), pp.61–92.

6. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals, in Practical Philosophy, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, trans. and ed. by Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp.37–109 (p.82), translation modified.

7. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals, p.82. Kant's emphasis.

8. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals, p.83.

9. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals, p.83.

10. Of course, one of the difficulties of this perspective is that Kant faults the Stoics for an inadequate take on moral philosophy because their ethics is without the support of a god, i.e., an articulated metaphysics of morals. The consistency of the moral perspective requires the postulates of immortality and God so that virtue will be rewarded, etc. His main difficulty with the Stoics is that they make moral conduct a form of heroism; whereas Kant needs to establish its cogency as a universal capacity. I discuss below the contexts of moral action in which Kant also avails himself of heroic examples of moral conduct.

11. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals, p.63.

12. Immanuel Kant, ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent’, in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, pp.29–40, quotes from pages 34 and 33.

13. See on the topic of the distinction between positive law and the categorical imperative, Ingeborg Maus' ‘Liberties and Popular Sovereignty: On Jürgen Habermas's Reconstruction of the System of Rights’, Cardozo Law Review, 17 (1996), pp.825–82, especially pp.859–66.

14. At the same time moral law needs to regulate action in an effective and systematic way.

15. Immanuel Kant, ‘On a Newly Arisen Superior Tone in Philosophy’, trans. Peter Fenves, Raising the Tone of Philosophy: Late Essays by Immanuel Kant, Transformative Critique by Jacques Derrida, ed. Peter Fenves (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), pp.51–83 (p.68).

16. This feature of ascetism in morals also raises the question of the ‘satisfaction’ of such reflection on law as a motive for fidelity to moral law. I will return to this point in section 2, below.

17. There are a number of places where Kant uses this spatial metaphor for moral law: ‘True humility follows unavoidably from our sincere and exact comparison of ourselves with the moral law (its holiness and strictness)’. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. and ed. by Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p.187. It is clear, however, from his moral theory that the law is moral conscience and thus it is not ‘outside’ the moral agent, but it is ‘external’ to his venal motives just as ‘reason’ is ‘external’ to the perspective of sensuous finitude: ‘Viewed in terms of its formal principle, ethics is the science of how one is under obligation without regard for any possible external lawgiving’, The Metaphysics of Morals, p.168. It is for this reason that Kant's favoured metaphor for moral law is that of an internal court in which one has the dual role of prosecutor and defence counsel for the deed, The Metaphysics of Morals, p.188 and p.189, N.

18. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, pp.38–39.

19. Hence he cites the importance of dispositions over actions, Critique of Practical Reason, p.74.

20. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, p.155. I have discussed this problem in detail in chapter 2 of The Aesthetic Paths of Philosophy: Presentation in Kant, Heidegger, Lacoue‐Labarthe and Nancy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007).

21. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, p.214. Cf, Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals, p.100.

22. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals, p.81 and Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History and Morals, p.71.

23. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, pp.18–29 (p.24).

24. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.73.

25. Kant's frequent criticism of Stoic ‘heroism’ and moral ‘heroics’ may be contrasted here with the storytelling devices of his moral ‘Methodology’ which aim to instruct young listeners with stories of moral heroism, so long as they are not ‘overly heroic’. See my discussion in section 2 below.

26. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.30.

27. Gewalt suggests physical dominance and thus a modality of force as coercion.

28. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, p.127.

29. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.74.

30. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.169.

31. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.170.

32. In The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant states that our ‘susceptibility’ to be moved by pure practical reason is ‘what we call moral feeling’ p.160. This susceptibility covers the gap between the fact of moral conscience, and the force that is required to heed its verdict, The Metaphysics of Morals, p.160. See also the religious idiom of evil and temptation used to describe such feeling in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History and Morals, p.70: ‘no idea more elevates and inspires enthusiasm in the human mind than that of pure moral conviction, which reveres duty above all else, struggles with life's countless evils, even its most seductive temptations, and nonetheless conquers all (for we may rightly assume that man can do so). That man is aware that he can do this because he ought to reveals deep tendencies toward the divine that allow him to feel a sacred awe regarding the greatness and sublimity of his true vocation’.

33. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, p.165.

34. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, p.135. We might also cite the way aspects of traditional religious authority, the very ones Kant's critical, moral founding of religion tries to exclude, are involved in the construction of the moral conscience. For instance, Kant emphasizes the role of fear in the court of conscience in the Metaphysics of Morals and the previously cited examples from the second Critique also draw on fearful circumstances to elicit the pangs of conscience, The Metaphysics of Morals, p.189: ‘He can indeed stun himself or put himself to sleep by pleasures and distractions, but he cannot help coming to himself or waking up from time to time; and when he does, he hears at once its fearful voice. He can at most, in extreme depravity, bring himself to heed it no longer, but he still cannot help hearing it’. ‘Reverence’ [Ehrfurcht] for law breaks down into the stems of fear [furcht] and honour [ehr]. In Kant's critique of religious authority he attempts to give belief a moral basis and purge it from fear (Critique of Judgment, §87).

35. In the Metaphysics of Morals the same weight is given to moral formation in the ‘Doctrine of the Methods of Ethics’, see especially Section 1, ‘Teaching Ethics’. The Groundwork also broaches the salience of instruction for crafting the moral disposition, Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals, p.66. These perspectives are endorsed in the Critique of Judgment, which also supplements them to the extent that it looks to aesthetic experience to shape the moral disposition, eg, Critique of Judgment, §42.

36. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.167.

37. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, p.218.

38. The same hierarchical distinction between disagreement and quarrelling organizes the high value placed on the communication of aesthetic feeling in disagreements over taste. See Critique of Judgment, §56.

39. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, p.218.

40. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, p.221.

41. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, p.158–9.

42. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.157.

43. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.157.

44. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.157.

45. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.168.

46. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.158.

47. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.158.

48. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.164.

49. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.165.

50. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.165; Cf. The Metaphysics of Morals, p.223. Teaching morality must use examples only to show some ‘proof that it is possible to act in conformity with duty’. The standard of instruction should be the ‘law itself, not the conduct of other human beings’ – i.e., the law must be ‘our incentive’ (The Metaphysics of Morals, p.223).

51. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals, p.55.

52. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals, p.108; Critique of Practical Reason, p.169.

53. In the case of moral education Kant refers to ‘self‐respect’ as the engine of the force of moral law.

54. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.75. Cf. the following comment in Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals, p.106: ‘In order for a sensibly affected rational being to will that for which reason alone prescribes the ‘ought’, it is admittedly required that his reason have the capacity to induce a feeling of pleasure or of delight in the fulfilment of duty, and thus there is required a causality of reason to determine sensibility in conformity with its principles. But it is quite impossible to see, that is, to make comprehensible a priori, how a mere thought which itself contains nothing sensible produces a feeling of pleasure or displeasure; for that is a special kind of causality about which, as about any causality, we can determine nothing whatever a priori but must for this consult experience alone’. Similarly The Metaphysics of Morals describes the subjective principle of ethical reward: ‘the reward, namely, of a moral pleasure that goes beyond mere contentment with oneself (which can be merely negative) and which is celebrated in the saying that, through consciousness of this pleasure, virtue is its own reward’, p.154. On the same page Kant contrasts bitter merit (contentment with oneself) with sweet merit: consciousness of the promotion of what human beings recognize as their natural end ‘produces a moral enjoyment in which human beings are inclined by sympathy to revel’, p.154, Kant's emphasis. Leaving to one side the specifications of the feeling of moral pleasure, I would like to mention the importance of the topic of moral feeling [Gefül] for our question. Kant thinks that predispositions on the side of feeling are what allow the consciousness of moral law to work as an obligation, i.e., to have an effect on the mind. These ‘antecedent predispositions on the side of feeling…. are moral feeling, conscience, love of one's neighbor, and respect [Achtung] for oneself’ The Metaphysics of Morals, p.159.

55. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.75.

56. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.79.

57. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.79.

58. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.82.

59. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.77.

60. In Critique of Practical Reason, happiness is said to impede the ‘moving force’ of moral law, p.162. The role of ‘satisfaction’ in following moral law makes the force of moral law intelligible. I will return to this point in section 3, below.

61. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.122.

62. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p.123. As Deleuze puts it: ‘Thus, the antinomy rests on the immanent contentment of practical reason, on the inevitable confusion of this contentment with happiness. Then we sometimes think that happiness itself is the cause of virtue, sometimes that virtue by itself is the cause of happiness’. Gilles Deleuze, Kant's Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p.38.

63. Immanuel Kant, Raising the Tone of Philosophy, p.68.

64. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, pp.123–4.