Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment (Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy) 9781138207011, 9781315463414, 1138207012

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Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment

Most academic philosophers and intellectual historians are familiar with the major historical figures and intellectual movements coming out of Scotland in the eighteenth century. These scholars are also familiar with the works of Immanuel Kant and his influence on Western thought. But with the exception of discussion examining David Hume’s influence on Kant’s epistemology, metaphysics, and moral theory, little attention has been paid to the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers on Kant’s philosophy. This volume aims to fill this perceived gap in the literature and provide a starting point for future discussions looking at the influence of Hume, Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, and other Scottish Enlightenment thinkers on Kant’s philosophy. Elizabeth Robinson was an assistant professor of philosophy in Rochester, New York. Her research primarily considers early modern philosophy with a focus on Hume and Kant. Chris W. Surprenant is Associate Professor of philosophy at the University of New Orleans where he directs the Alexis de Tocqueville Project in Law, Liberty, and Morality. He is the author of Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue (Routledge 2014).

Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

4 Hume’s Philosophy of the Self A E Pitson 5 Hume, Reason and Morality A Legacy of Contradiction Sophie Botros 6 Kant’s Theory of the Self Arthur Melnick 7 Aesthetics and Morals in the Philosophy of David Hume Timothy M. Costelloe 8 Hume’s Difficulty Time and Identity in the Treatise Donald L.M. Baxter 9 Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue Chris W. Surprenant 10 The Post-Critical Kant Understanding the Critical Philosophy through the Opus postumum Bryan Wesley Hall 11 Kant’s Inferentialism The Case Against Hume David Landy 12 Rousseau’s Ethics of Truth A Sublime Science of Simple Souls Jason Neidleman 13 Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment Edited by Elizabeth Robinson and Chris W. Surprenant

Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment

Edited by Elizabeth Robinson and Chris W. Surprenant

First published 2017 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Robinson, Elizabeth (Assistant Professor of Philosophy), editor. Title: Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment / edited by Elizabeth Robinson and Chris W. Surprenant. Description: 1 [edition]. | New York : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Routledge studies in eighteenth-century philosophy ; 13 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017011068 | ISBN 9781138207011 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804. | Enlightenment—Scotland. Classification: LCC B2798 .K22274 2017 | DDC 193—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017011068 ISBN: 978-1-138-20701-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-46341-4 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

For Manfred

Contents

A Note on Abbreviations and References Preface Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment: An Introduction

ix xiii 1

MANFRED KUEHN

1 Hutcheson on the Unity of Virtue and Right

19

AARON GARRETT

2 Hutcheson and Kant: Moral Sense and Moral Feeling

36

MICHAEL WALSCHOTS

3 Hutcheson’s and Kant’s Critique of Sympathy

55

WIEBKE DEIMLING

4 Kant and Hutcheson on Aesthetics and Teleology

71

REED WINEGAR

5 Outer Sense, Inner Sense, and Feeling: Hutcheson and Kant on Aesthetic Pleasure

90

J. COLIN McQUILLAN

6 Taste, Morality, and Common Sense: Kant and the Scots

108

PAUL GUYER

7 Kant and Hume on Feelings in Moral Philosophy

125

OLIVER SENSEN

8 Hume’s Principle and Kant’s Pure Rational System of Religion: Grace, Providence, and the Highest Good LAWRENCE PASTERNACK

142

viii Contents 9 A Writer More Excellent than Cicero: Hume’s Influence on Kant’s Anthropology

164

ROBERT B. LOUDEN

10 Kant and Hume on Marriage

181

ELIZABETH ROBINSON

11 Hume and Kant on Imagination: Thematic and Methodological Differences

197

FRANK SCHALOW

12 Hume and Kant on Space, Divisibility, and Antinomical Conflict

212

BRYAN HALL

13 Hume and Kant on Identity and Substance

230

MARK PICKERING

14 An Alternative to Heteronomy and Anarchy: Kant’s Reformulation of the Social Contract

245

ALEXANDER SCHAEFER

15 Kant, Smith, and the Place of Virtue in Political and Economic Organization

267

JP MESSINA

16 Adam Smith’s Kantian Phenomenology of Moral Motivation

286

JOHN McHUGH

17 Kant and Smith on Imagination, Reason, and Personhood

304

JACK RUSSELL WEINSTEIN

18 Seeing a Flower in the Garden: Common Sense, Transcendental Idealism

326

SCOTT STAPLEFORD

19 Kant’s Heuristic Methods: Feeling and Common Sense in Orientation and Taste

342

BRIGITTE SASSEN

List of Contributors Index

361 365

A Note on Abbreviations and References

References to Kant’s works are provided using the standard Akademie edition volume and page numbers (Immanuel Kant’s Schriften. Ausgabe der königlich preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1902–). Each reference also includes an abbreviation noting which of Kant’s works has been referenced. References to the Critique of Pure Reason are to the standard A and B pagination of the first and second editions rather than the Akademie page numbers. Unless otherwise noted, translations are from the Cambridge editions of Kant’s works (Cambridge Edition of the Writings of Immanuel Kant. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992–).

Abbreviations Used for Kant’s Works A AB AC AF AMe AMo AN APa APi ANI C CF CPJ CPR CPrR DR DS

E

Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht Anthropologie Busolt (student lecture notes) Anthropologie Collins (student lecture notes) Anthropologie Friedländer (student lecture notes) Anthropologie Menschenkunde (student lecture notes) Anthropologie Mrongovius (student lecture notes) Anthropology Nachlaß Anthropologie Parow (student lecture notes) Anthropologie Pillau (student lecture notes) Anthropology Lectures Index of Names Immanuel Kant’s Correspondence The Conflict of the Faculties, Der Streit der Fakultäten Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kritik der Urteilskraft Critique of Pure Reason, Kritik der reinen Vernunft Critique of Practical Reason, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft Kant’s Drafts and Revisions Concerning the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Directions in Space, Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?, Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?

x A Note on Abbreviations and References EAT FBS FS GMM HM I

ID

IUH

JL LA

LEC LEH LEM LEP LEV LL LM MFNS MM MP OP OT P

PP R Rel

The End of All Things, Das Ende aller Dinge Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, Die falsche Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogistischen Figuren Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten Essay on the Maladies of the Head, Versuch über die Krankheiten des Kopfes Inquiry concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (Prize Essay), Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World (Inaugural Dissertation), De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis Idea of a Universal History of Mankind from a Cosmopolitan Point of View, Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht The Jӓsche Logic Announcement of the Program of his Lectures for the Winter Semester 1765–1766, Nachricht von der Einrichtung seiner Vorlesungen in dem Winterhalbenjahre von 1765–1766 Lectures on Ethics Collins (student lecture notes) Lectures on Ethics Herder (student lecture notes) Lectures on Ethics Mrongovius (student lecture notes) Lectures on Ethics Powalski (student lecture notes) Lectures on Ethics Vigilantius (student lecture notes) Lectures on Logic (student lecture notes) Lectures on Metaphysics (student lecture notes) Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft Metaphysics of Morals, Die Metaphysik der Sitten Gerhard Lehmann’s notes, introduction, and appendices to the Lectures on Moral Philosophy Opus Postumum What is Orientation in Thinking?, Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientiren? Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf Reflections, Reflexionen Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft

A Note on Abbreviations and References RL RP

TP

UNH

xi

On a Supposed Right to Lie from Altruistic Motives, Über ein vermeintes Recht aus Menschliebe zu lügen What Real Progress has Metaphysics made in Germany since the Time of Leibniz and Wolff, Welches sind die wirklichen Fortschritte, die Metaphysik seit Leibnizens und Wolfs Zeiten in Deutschland gemacht hat? On the Common Saying: That May be Correct in Theory but it is of no use in Practice, Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels

Abbreviations Used for the Works of Others DNR EHU EIP EPM FOB IBV IHM LRBL LJ NCP SBN

T TMS WN

Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals Mandeville, Fable of the Bees Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue Reid, An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense Smith, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence Hutcheson, An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections: With Illustrations on the Moral Sense Selby-Bigge-Nidditch, a shorted reference to the standard page numbers for Hume’s Treatise of Hume Nature, Enquiry Concerning Human Nature, and Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Hume, A Treatise of Hume Nature Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

References to Hume’s Treatise of Hume Nature, Enquiry Concerning Human Nature, and Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals are provided using section numbers followed by the page numbers from the editions edited by Selby and Bigge and revised by Nidditch (Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978, and Hume, David. Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). References to Reid’s An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense and Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man are provided using section numbers.

Preface

This volume was initially conceived as a tribute to the work of Manfred Kuehn. One would be hard pressed to find another scholar who has done more to impress upon us the importance of taking seriously the history portion of the history of philosophy. A thoroughgoing interpretation of a philosophical text requires careful attention to the author’s historical situation and influences. Kuehn’s emphasis on the often neglected role of history led to the writing of two significant biographical works, one on Immanuel Kant and another on Johann Gottlieb Fichte. It is a testament to the growing recognition of the philosophical and interpretative importance of biography that these works are so widely cited. Though the course of his career led Kuehn to consider many topics, his scholarly endeavors began with an examination of the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment on German thought with his dissertation (and later, first book): Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy. It seemed a fitting honor for Kuehn’s retirement and seventieth birthday to return to the concern that launched his academic career. The chapters in this volume consider ways in which the work of Scottish philosophers (primarily Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith) influenced the thinking of Kant. With the exception of Hume, the scholarly literature has failed to pay significant attention to Kant’s Scottish inheritance. As the chapters will show, Kant frequently references his debt to Scottish figures through citing their work, incorporating their terminology, and responding to challenges they pose. Expanding on Kuehn’s work considering the influence of Scottish thinkers on Kant’s epistemology and metaphysics, the chapters in this volume primarily focus on areas where the Scottish influence is less discussed: Kant’s ethics, aesthetics, anthropology, and political thought. In addition to their general contributions to the literature, these chapters were selected to show Kuehn’s influence on a wide range of scholars. Some contributors are friends or former colleagues of Kuehn whose work has benefited from his suggestions or objections. Others are former students who have attempted to further a Kuehnian style project. Still others are the

xiv Preface work of young scholars whom we hope will carry this important legacy into a new generation of historical scholarship. The editors wish to thank Andrew Weckenmann and Allie Simmons at Routledge and Gordon Shannon for invaluable editing assistance. We also wish to thank Manfred Kuehn for his inestimable mentorship, guidance, insight, and example. Without him, this volume would not exist.

Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment An Introduction Manfred Kuehn

About thirty-five years ago, I began my work examining the influence of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers on Immanuel Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Since that time, scholars have made significant progress in better understanding the scope of this influence. This volume has given me the opportunity to return to where my work began and consider recent developments in this field. I am thankful to two of my former students, Elizabeth Robinson and Chris W. Surprenant, for editing this volume and for inviting me to write this introduction. My aim here is to capture some of general themes that will be explored and developed further in the contributions that follow.

I Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy divides the then “more recent” period of philosophy into three parts. The first deals with Jakob Böhme and Lord Bacon, the second with what he calls the “period of the rational understanding” (Periode des denkenden Verstandes), and the third with the newest German philosophy, that is, with Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Immanuel Kant, Fichte, and Schelling. The period of the rational understanding is divided into two—namely, a metaphysical period containing discussions of modern philosophy from René Descartes, Leibniz, Christian Wolff, and his followers, called the period of metaphysics which is relatively positive, and a largely negative account of a “period of transition.” It is interesting and most characteristic that Hegel calls this period “The Debasement of Thought up to Kantian Philosophy” (Das Verkommen des Denkens bis zur Kantischen Philosophie).1 There are four subsection in this discussion: “Idealism and Skepticism,” discussing Berkeley and Hume, “Scottish Philosophy,” “French Philosophy,” and the German “Enlightenment.” In the view he advances here, Berkeley, Hume, the French, and the Scots clearly represent a period of serious philosophical decline as compared with that of the metaphysicians. The thinkers discussed in this section not only did not take philosophical speculation seriously, but they tried to undermine it. They are too empiricist and represent a low point in the history of philosophy. The Scots are discussed in a relatively short section.

2 Manfred Kuehn Their appeal to common sense is one of the lowest points in a low period— not perhaps quite as low as the German Enlightenment but very close to it. Hegel’s tendentious account of Scottish thinkers was not the first to speak of “Scottish Philosophy” in this way, but it was clearly the most influential. Indeed, it influenced the way that friend and foe spoke of the Scottish thinkers of the eighteenth century. The main figures of the Scottish Philosophy were for Hegel, Thomas Reid (1710–1796), but he also very briefly discusses James Beattie (1735–1803), James Oswald (1703–1793), and Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) and mentions Dugald Stewart, Edward Search (or Abraham Tucker) Adam Ferguson, Francis Hutcheson, “most of whom have written on moral philosophy,” and “the political economist” Adam Smith whom he also characterizes as a philosopher from the point of view relevant for this section of his Lectures on the History of Philosophy. David Hume, clearly the most important of all the Scottish philosophers of the period, is important in his account mainly because he is completely absent from the discussion of Scottish philosophy. Beattie and Oswald seem relatively unimportant to Hegel, and they receive just a few sentences. Dugald Stewart “appears to be the last and least important.” Thomas Reid is most important: His endeavour was to discover the principles of knowledge, and the following are his conclusions: “(a) There are certain undemonstrated and undemonstrable fundamental truths which common-sense begets and recognizes as immediately conclusive and absolute.” This hence constitutes an immediate knowledge; in it an inward independent source is set forth which is hereby opposed to religion as revealed. “(b) These immediate truths require no support from any elaborated science, nor do they submit to its criticism;” they cannot be criticized by philosophy. “(c) Philosophy itself has no root other than that of an immediate, self-enlightening truth; whatever contradicts such truth is in itself false, contradictory, and absurd.” This is true for knowledge and “(d) Morality; the individual is moral if he acts in accordance with the perfect principles of the perfection of the whole and with his own duty as it is known to him.”2 Hegel’s quotations in this passage were taken from one Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann’s Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, which first appeared in 1812. It is interesting that Tennemann precedes his account of the Scottish philosophers by a section on “Hume’s Skepticism” and primarily characterizes them as “the enemies” of Hume’s skeptical view. Hegel, similarly, has “Scottish Philosophy” preceded by short discussions of Berkeley and Hume, but rather differently from Tennemann, he discusses them in their own right and ultimately independent of Berkeley and Hume. The Scots exhibit just a slightly different degree of philosophical “depravity” than Berkeley and Hume.

Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment 3 This does not mean that the Scots are unimportant to him. They clearly formulated a position that needs to be refuted or dismissed, if only because it is dangerous to true philosophical thinking. Their conclusions, as expressed by Reid were not just the affirmation of common sense as principles of knowledge, but more specifically: (a) There are certain undemonstrated and undemonstrable fundamental truths which common-sense begets and recognizes as immediately conclusive and absolute.” This hence constitutes an immediate knowledge; in it an inward independent source is set forth which is hereby opposed to religion as revealed. “(b) These immediate truths require no support from any elaborated science, nor do they submit to its criticism;” they cannot be criticized by philosophy. “(c) Philosophy itself has no root other than that of an immediate, self-enlightening truth; whatever contradicts such truth is in itself false, contradictory, and absurd.” This is true for knowledge and “(d) Morality; the individual is moral if he acts in accordance with the perfect principles of the perfection of the whole and with his own duty as it is known to him.3 He clearly appreciated their insistence on absolute or immediate a priori truths, even though he very much disliked their identification with common sense, as well as the Scottish insistence that these first truths cannot be legitimately criticized or used as points of departure for speculation. Their emphasis on first principles of common sense clearly reminded him of Kant’s insistence on a priori truths. It is also obvious from Hegel’s description of Reid’s position that the insistence on the “undemonstrable fundamental truths” of common sense is meant to be an answer to Hume. While Hegel’s view of the nature of Scottish philosophy was not original with him, it was highly influential. It determined to a large extent the way in which philosophers and historians of philosophy discussed—or failed to discuss—the Scots until the eighties of the last century. If only for this reason, its importance for an understanding of what “Scottish philosophy” amounts to cannot be underestimated.

II Tennemann, Rixner, and Hegel were, of course deeply influenced by Kant’s account of his relationship to Scottish philosophy in the Prolegomena. After pointing out that in his view, Hume’s analysis of causality was the most important development in modern philosophy since Locke and Leibniz, he describes the development of his own doctrine as follows: I . . . first tried whether Hume’s objection could not be put into a general form, and soon found that the concept of the connection of cause and effect was by no means the only concept by which the understanding

4 Manfred Kuehn thinks the connection of things a priori, but rather that metaphysics consists altogether of such concepts. (P 4:260) This shows that he understood his own theoretical philosophy essentially as a generalization and solution of Hume’s problem. Insofar as one might argue that the generalization of the problem of a priori concepts and principles can already be found in the works of Reid and his followers under the heading of “first principles of common sense,” it might also not seem unreasonable to suppose that Kant was helped along by suggestions of Reid and Beattie (and perhaps even Oswald); I have argued elsewhere that this is actually what did happen. It could therefore also be argued that Kant started where the Scots left off, and his own philosophy remains deeply influenced by the Scots. And, given that Kant knew the Scots and took into account their theories, one should only expect that he could go further and make some real and supposed advances and improvements on them. Even if he was only standing on the shoulders of philosophical dwarfs, he could see farther than he could have seen on his own.4 If Kant’s philosophy was not only a reaction to Hume, but also a reaction to, and further development of Reid, then the historical developments leading to the displacement of common-sense philosophy by Kantian thought are perhaps a necessary philosophical consequence, not due to any shortcomings on the part of Reid’s followers but a testimony to their philosophical acumen. For then Kantian philosophy might actually be a “new and improved” version of the Reidian theory, which would explain the rapid success of Kant in Scotland: his philosophy was not a foreign product, but Scottish philosophy coming home from abroad. Kant himself, however, would have wanted none of that. While admitting his debts to Hume, he apparently rejected Reid and his followers completely, saying that he had found it positively painful to see how utterly his [Hume’s] opponents Reid, Oswald, Beattie and lastly Priestley, missed the point of his problem; for while they were ever taking for granted that which he doubted, and demonstrating with zeal and often with impudence that which he never thought of doubting, they so misconstrued his valuable suggestion that everything remained in its old condition, as if nothing had happened. (P 4:258) These pronouncements have often been taken as ruling out any historical or philosophical influence of the Scots on Kant, I tried to show that they show indeed that Kant himself did not notice any strong coincidence and analogy between his philosophy and that of Reid, Oswald, Beattie (and Priestley). Accusing the Scots of not having tried to go on, and claiming that “to satisfy the conditions of the problem, the opponents of the great

Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment 5 thinker should have penetrated very deeply into the nature of reason, so far as it is concerned with pure thinking” puts a great deal of distance between his problem and that of his Scottish predecessors. He claimed essentially that they had made four related mistakes: first, they had missed Hume’s point; second, they had taken for granted what Hume had doubted; third, they had proved what Hume had not doubted; and fourth, they had given up on reason.5

III Scottish philosophers and historians of philosophy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were themselves very much influenced by Hegel’s and Kant’s estimation of the nature of Scottish philosophy. This holds of Dugald Stewart and Alexander Hamilton, for instance. Both had already claimed that there existed fundamental parallels between Reid, and Kant was already an important aspect of the self-understanding of Scottish philosophy. Thus Stewart had found that on comparing the opposition which Mr. Hume’s scepticism encountered from his own countrymen with the account . . . of some German philosophers to refute his Theory of Causation, it is impossible not to be struck with the coincidence between the leading views of his most eminent antagonists. In fact, he went on, “this coincidence one would have been disposed to consider as purely accidental, if Kant, by his petulant sneers at Reid, Beattie, and Oswald, had not expressly acknowledged that he was not unacquainted with their writings.”6 And Hamilton had argued that there was “a strong analogy between the philosophies of Reid and Kant.” They “both originate in a recoil against the skepticism of Hume; both are equally opposed to the Sensualism of Locke; both vindicate with equal zeal the moral dignity of man, and both attempt to mete out and to define the legitimate sphere of our intellectual activity.”7 When Andrew Seth in 1885 had to deliver a series of lectures to inaugurate the Balfour Lectureship in philosophy at the University of Edinburgh—the first Lectureship of its kind at a Scottish university—he could not find any “subject . . . more appropriate” for the occasion than “a critical review of Scottish philosophy,” and to compare the Scottish answer to Hume with “the answer of Kant and of the amended answer of German Idealism since Kant’s time.”8 Accordingly, the book is titled: “Scottish Philosophy: A comparison of the Scottish and German Answers to Hume.” Yet, Seth wanted the audience to know, his reason for choosing this topic was not primarily one of national patriotism. His choice, he said, was not so much due to political considerations as it was to genuinely philosophical reasons. His “critical review of Scottish philosophy” was meant to advance the philosophical discussion not only in Scotland but in all parts of the

6 Manfred Kuehn world. It was to be judged as a contribution to the philosophia perennis, and not as an exercise in national glorification. He also found that at first blush there is a savour of superfluity in discoursing on Scottish philosophy to a Scottish audience. This, however, is perhaps hardly so much the case as might be supposed. The thread of national tradition, it is tolerably well known, has been but loosely held by many of our best Scottish students of philosophy. It will hardly be denied that the philosophical productions of the younger generation of our University men are more strongly impressed with a German than with a native stamp. Against these productions we frequently hear the charge brought, that they represent an exotic culture which is destined to pass like the fashion of a day. This new way of ideas labours, it is said, under a mortal weakness, in the cumbrous jargon in which its propositions are enunciated; and its representatives are taunted with a slavish adherence to set phrases and formulae, and with a general inability to interpret and apply them in an intelligent and living way.9 Though Seth thought the charges by nationalists against the German influence were exaggerated, he believed that they were essentially correct and explained why German philosophy had but “a limited influence upon the main course of English thought.” Kant and his followers in Germany and Scotland used such an esoteric philosophical terminology as to be incomprehensible to the wider public. Seth found this unfortunate and unnecessary, and his lectures were actually an attempt to remedy that situation. He wanted to show, among other things, that the Germans should have a greater influence upon English thought, and that they had important things to say, even if they did not say them very clearly. Thus, he wanted to mediate between the German and the British traditions, and he knew no better way to mediate between the two than to show that German philosophy was not as foreign in Britain as it appeared to people at first blush. There was, he claimed, an indiginous philosophical tradition that was rather close to German thought—namely, “Scottish philosophy.” He argued that Reid’s thought was, in certain significant respects, an anticipation of Kant’s thought. For, both German philosophy, as represented mainly by Kant and Hegel, and Scottish philosophy, as represented by Reid and his followers, were, for him, fundamentally answers to Hume’s skepticism. More specifically, Seth hoped to be able to exhibit the mutual relations of the Scottish and the German answers, and be able to discover where the one is defective when judged by the standard of the other. As no one has pretended that Reid is unintelligible, the placing of his simple statement alongside of what people call the crabbed statement of German philosophy, may at least have the effect of elucidating the true bearings of the latter.10

Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment 7 This is curious: what seems to start out as a critical review of Scottish philosophy turns into a defense of German philosophy. Seth uses Reid’s thought to elucidate the meaning of Kant. Reid becomes the foil against which the true significance of the German answer to Hume could and should be assessed. Seth seems to characterize Scottish philosophy—at least implicitly—as being of secondary importance compared to German philosophy. Even though the Scottish answer was developed prior to the German one, it ends up looking very much like a translation of the German original. Scottish philosophy has become the vehicle (perhaps the Trojan horse?) by means of which Kant and Hegel are to be inducted into Britain. If Seth were correct, Scottish philosophy would no longer be a live option, or a genuine a philosophical alternative to Kantian thought, but it would rather be completely contained within Kantian philosophy. The Scottish school would, at best, be of historical interest only. Though Seth himself thought that his approach would perhaps allow him to “find even higher merits than this in Reid’s straightforward and plain-spoken attempt,” that this would happen was highly unlikely from the start.11 The comparative approach advocated by Seth is not designed to bring out the special strengths of Scottish philosophy. Nor was it really designed to bring out the distinctive feature of Kant’s philosophy. It actually led Seth to force Kantian ideas into a Reidian mold, thereby distorting them, or reducing them to something they were not. Instead of mediating between two different traditions, he muddled both of them, making both thinkers less interesting than they really are. It would be, however, a mistake to put all the blame on Seth, for his comparative approach was itself not all that original. As we have seen, it was pre-dated by Hegel and his predecessors in the history of philosophy. But it was also a reaction to his Scottish predecessors who had insisted that the Reidian position was in some respects superior to that of Kant. His position represents an almost complete reversal of the way in which Hamilton saw the relative importance of German and Sottish thought, even though he also shared Hamilton’s view that “Kant surpassed Reid in systematic power and comprehension.”12 In so far as Seth’s position was successful, it may have been almost inevitable that Scottish philosophers abondoned Reid and embraced a more Kantian approach.13 There appears to be no place outside of Germany where Kant’s thought was assimilated so readily, so thoroughly, and with such lasting effects, as in Scotland. It is no accident, I believe, that what is still the best English translation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason—namely, that of Norman Kemp Smith, was done in Edinburgh and that two of the best commentaries on the first Critique are also by professors at Scottish universities. Kemp Smith’s commentary clearly ranks among the four or five outstanding works of Kant, and H. J. Paton’s Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience is, if anything, still better than Kemp Smith’s. This is perhaps not surprising, since Paton himself can look back already on what he calls a “tradition of Kantian scholarship which is one of the glories of the University

8 Manfred Kuehn of Glasgow.”14 Accordingly, the Scottish tradition in philosophy contains a more substantial dose of German metaphysics than does philosophy done elsewhere in Britain, and it may well be that, consciously or unconsciously, the Scots used what they took to be German ideas in order to differentiate themselves from other British philosophers. Precisely this success of Kant’s philosophy in Scotland meant the demise of Reid’s. Thus neither Paton’s nor Kemp Smith’s commentaries even mention Reid, and Kemp Smith discusses only Beattie’s importance for Kant as a mediator of Humean ideas, showing contempt for this type of philosophizing.

IV It may well be impossible to write a national history of philosophy in the strictest sense of the word. Philosophy, perhaps still more than Literature and Literary Criticism, knows no national boundaries, and that therefore any discussion of the relationship between Scottish and German philosophies is misleading.15 As Lewis White Beck, in the Introduction of his own attempt at a national history of Early German Philosophy, points out most persuasively, any national history of philosophy necessarily encounters the problem of figures whose importance transcends the limits of the philosophical discussion in any one nation or language. There were always philosophers who were recognized as having formulated, if not the solution, then at least what was to count as the problem for everybody. Thus, “no history of English or German philosophy can be understood without Descartes; no history of French or German philosophy can be understood without Locke,” and for this reason “a national history of philosophy may appear at best episodic, at worst arbitrary. Why not write a history of philosophy mentioning only men whose names begin with the letter ‘p?’”16 It appears to me that this objection to “national histories of philosophy” needs to be taken seriously. If, by a national history of philosophy, we understand a historical narrative that retells the philosophical developments in any one country as a completely indigenous development, a national history of philosophy is essentially impossible. However, this does not mean that national histories of philosophy in every sense are impossible. Clearly, there are countries which have something that may be called “national traditions” in philosophy. These may be either characteristic approaches to philosophy in general, or a distinctive set of philosophical problems or solutions. Such national traditions need not, of course, exhaust all the philosophical work done in a particular nation. Nor do their origins have to be native in any special sense. One only has to think of “Kraussismo” in Spanish philosophy, which goes back to one Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781–1832) who has long been forgotten in most other countries. All we need to mean by a “national tradition” is a species of philosophy that is sufficiently distinct for us to be able to differentiate it from others—somewhat like the way we can differentiate between, say, the American and the British Cocker Spaniel.

Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment 9 I believe this is the sense in which we usually speak of “French philosophy,” or, more specifically, of “French rationalism,” for instance. We use such phrases not only to refer to a period in history when French philosophy was dominant in Western thought, but also to suggest that this period had such a significant impact upon French culture that it became part and parcel of “Frenchness.” However, in using such phrases, we do not want to deny that Descartes was influenced by thinkers from other countries. Nor do we want to claim that Rationalism is essentially French, or that Existentialism is “un-French.” In other words, talking of “national traditions” in philosophy need not involve nationalism in any sense of the word. In any case, this is the sense in which I will talk of “German” and “Scottish” philosophies. Both Scotland and Germany have significant national traditions in philosophy. However, since Germany has a richer philosophical tradition, or, to be less controversial, a more varied (some people might even say more checkered) philosophical past than most other countries, “German philosophy” can mean many things. Looking at such national traditions that are rather independent of each other and make contact only in some rare and decisive moments of confrontation or assimilation, risks overlooking some of the more incidental influences that are nevertheless important. Thus it has gone almost completely unnoticed that Reid found it necessary in his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man to refer several times to Christian Wolff’s Psychologia empirica. Though the references are by no means positive, they show—I think—that he was very well acquainted with the work of this German thinker. Thus he says, Among modern philosophers I know none that has abused definitions so much as Carolus [Christianus] Wolfius, who in a work on the human mind, called “Psychologia Empirica,” consisting of many hundred propositions, fortified by demonstrations, with a proportional accompaniment of definitions, corrolaries, and scholia, has given so many defintions of things which cannot be defined, and so many demonstrations of things self-evident, that the greatest part of the work consists of tautology, and ringing changes upon words. (EIP 220)17 Sir William Hamilton notes, “This judgment is not false; but it is exaggerated.”18 An early German reviewer, presuming that Reid could not possibly know Wolff in any detail, interpreted the references as mere “name dropping.” Reid just wanted to appear to his readers as being acquainted with German philosophy. Still, Reid was also relevant to the problems, which Wolff believed were facing German philosophers in 1786. Reid was, he found, distinguishing conception from sensation, and Wolff viewed conception as a “modification of the soul” accompanied by consciousness while the mere sensation was not clear and not about objects. Sensations are not

10 Manfred Kuehn intentional, while perceptions are. The reviewer did not notice that this distinction was in fundamental ways similar to one made by Wolff. The German was arguing similarly as the Scot that perception is a rather complex phenomenon that involves several different acts of the mind. Thus Wolff found: We say that the mind perceives (percipere) when it represents (repraesentat) an object to itself, so that a perception is an act of the mind by means of which it represents an object to itself. This means that, when the mind perceives colors, smells or sounds, it perceives both itself and the changes that are occurring within it.19 For Reid, sensation is a simple act of the mind that cannot be analyzed any further. Furthermore, it is only given to us as part of a more complex act of perception. As simple acts of the mind, “considered abstractly,” sensations do not refer to objects. So sensations can also be characterized as acts of the mind which, per se, have “no object distinct from the act itself.”20 But perceptions are necessarily accompanied by certain beliefs. And it is these beliefs that are responsible for the objects “distinct from the act itself.” In this way, sensation compels us to believe not only in the “present existence of the thing” sensed by us, but also in a “mind or something that has the power of smelling, of which it is a called a sensation, an operation or feeling.”21 So, for Wolff just as for Reid, in perception the soul is not passive, as it had seemed to Locke and others. This does not necessarily mean that Reid was indebted to Wolff for this doctrine, for it was a piece of Leibnizian psychology and Reid seems to have known Leibniz better than Wolff, but it is perhaps not entirely insignificant that there is more common ground between German and the Scottish discussions of consciousness than one might at first suppose, and that the Leibnizian account is at the very least part of the background against which Reid defines his own view. And this also explains perhaps why the Scottish philosophy as advanced by Reid could have the significant influence in Germany during the last third of the eighteenth century.

V “Scottish philosophy” in the eighteenth century is usually taken to refer to “Common-sense philosophy,” or the theory put forward by Reid and his followers. And in this sense it is just as unproblematic as is the discussion of particular German and Scottish thinkers. This is how I took it in Scottish Common Sense in Germany, in which I undertook to investigate how the Scottish philosophy actually influenced German thought during the last third of the eighteenth century. It might be useful briefly to summarize the contents of this book and the approach I took: after first characterizing the philosophical situation in Germany around 1770, trying to show

Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment 11 what made the Germans so receptive to the Scottish view, I gave a short account of the earliest reception of Reid, Oswald, and Beattie in Germany, and trying to make clear that no philosophically interested thinker of the period—including Kant—could have avoided knowing much more about the Scots than had been traditionally assumed. The remainder of the work explored some of the more significant effects of the Scottish view on individual philosophers in Germany. I argued that they concerned exactly those issues that were at the center of the philosophical discussion—namely, those connected with Kant’s critical philosophy. Chapters IV–VIII dealt with the period preceding the appearance of Kant’s first Critique and Prolegomena. In these chapters, the central importance of Scottish common sense for the German attempt to create an “empirical rationalism” is shown. I argued that the Scottish influence was of importance especially with regard to the theory of common sense and the theory of ideas, and thus also with regard to the German views of skepticism and idealism. The Germans, like the Scots, were aiming at some sort of common-sense realism. But they could not accept the Scottish theory without modifications. While Reid, Oswald, and Beattie were arguing that the theory of ideas or representationalism, which they saw as underlying all of modern philosophy, necessarily leads to skepticism concerning the reality of external objects, and thus to Berkeleyan Idealism, the Germans felt that representationalism could be saved, and they set out to do just that. The Germans also believed that they could go further in the theory of common sense than did the Scots. Thus Reid and his followers insisted that common sense neither needed justification nor could be justified and defended in any strict sense, the Germans felt that some form of defense or justification of common sense was both possible and desirable from a philosophical point of view. I tried to show this using the work of Christoph Meiners and Johann Georg Heinrich Feder in Göttingen (Chapter 4) and the attempt to give a materialistic foundation of common sense by Christian Lossius (Chapter 5). The discussions of the relationship of common sense and rational metaphysical speculation found in Moses Mendelssohn and Johann August Eberhard (Chapter 6) was also interesting in this context. However, the work of Johann Nicolaus Tetens, perhaps the most important philosopher in Germany during the period from the seventies to the appearance of the Kant’s first Critique, represents also the high point of the German discussion of Scottish principles (Chapter 7). Tetens pressed the German criticism of the Scots by developing an elaborate theory of representation, and by trying to justify the principles of common sense as subjective expressions of basic and objective laws of thought. In doing so he anticipated and influenced Kant’s critical philosophy, thus opening up a very important indirect avenue of Scottish influence upon Kant. At the same time there was a group of thinkers usually referred to as the “Counter-Enlightenment.” The most important thinkers of this group were Hamann, Herder, and Jacobi. They used the Scottish common-sense doctrines for a fundamental critique of the entire enlightenment project. As

12 Manfred Kuehn I argued in Chapter 8, these so-called philosophers of faith agreed with the Scots in arguing that representationalism necessarily leads to nihilism, and in advocating a “radical realism.” They were also close to the Scots in rejecting justification and choosing common sense, whose principles, they said, must be believed blindly. On the basis of these considerations I argued that Kant, principally starting from Tetens, came to believe that our principles of thought and knowledge cannot be justified by means of a descriptive and psychological analysis of the contents of our minds. His transcendental philosophy was, at least in part, a response to this problem. He explained why common sense, as itself giving rise to natural illusions and necessary contradictions (the antinomies), was in need of justification, and he made clear that the theory of representation allowed only an empirical realism, while necessarily implying a transcendental idealism. Though his contemporaries were most unwilling to accept Kant’s conclusions, what they considered to be Kant’s skepticism (the doctrines developed in the Transcendental Dialectic) as well as what they tried to discredit as idealism (the conclusions of the Transcendental Analytic) were consequences of their own basic position as well. Yet, Kant’s thought represented only a very unstable balance of the tenets of common sense versus justification, on the one hand, and of the theory of ideas versus realism, on the other. This becomes very clear in the thought of Kant’s successors. A number of philosophers gave up any attempt at a justification of knowledge. They became radical skeptics and/or followed the so-called philosophers of faith, rejecting any form of representationalism. The so-called idealists, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, and their followers, rejected Kant’s understanding of philosophy as a clarification and justification of common sense and advocated the view that philosophy can only exist as the “inversion” (Verkehrung) of it. For these idealists philosophy is no longer justification and piecemeal revision of common sense, but a radical displacement of it. They also rejected the theory of representation, arguing that it is inconsistent to speak of “representations” that require “things-inthemselves” that are unknowable. The history of German philosophy in the late eighteenth century is in this way shown to have been a struggle for a solution to the problem of knowledge, or, more exactly, as an attempt to exhibit and justify the structures of thought that enable us to know the world. It was a battle against empirical idealism and empirical skepticism, and this battle was fought more fiercely in Germany than in either the France or the Britain of that time. But it was fought with weapons forged in these two countries. Kant’s contemporaries, who are usually dismissed as unoriginal and shallow, had a greater part in this struggle than they have been given credit for. They developed the framework in which the problems were seen—namely, the theory of common sense and the theory of representation. I have no doubts that I did not exhaustively discuss all the effects of the Scots in Germany. Thus there is more work to be done regarding some of

Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment 13 the minor figures of the late German enlightenment. At the Prussian University of Erlangen, for instance, the Scots had a great deal of influence through such figures Georg Friedrich Seiler und Johann Heinrich Abicht until the 1790. At the same time, there is also still much more to be said about the debts owed by the Scots to their French, German, and Italian predecessors and contemporaries. Still, I believe that I succeeded in sketching the main outlines of the effects the Scots had on German thought, and that this approach of looking at the actual influence of Scottish philosophers on German thought is superior to the mere comparison of their philosophical positions, as it can be found in Seth’s Scottish Philosophy: A Comparison of the Scottish and German Answers to Hume. In general, comparative Studies do not make for good history of philosophy. They may be necessary condions for historical studies, but they are by no means sufficient.

VI I would say that one of the main results of my early book on Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800, which I subtitled A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy, was that Kant owed much more to the Reidian interpretation of “Hume’s problem” than he let on.22 His generalization of the problem of causality as a principle that must be presupposed for experience to be possible could already be found in Reid, for instance. And his view that our conception of space is logically prior and independent of experience was also foreshadowed by Reid. But I take it that the book also shows that in many ways Kant is closer to Hume than to Reid. While Reid wanted to answer Hume by rejecting his problem as a mere pseudo-problem, Kant continued to work on it. Indeed, Kant saw this very clearly and accused the Scots of not having tried to go on farther.23 For, he claimed, “to satisfy the conditions of the problem, the opponents of the great thinker [Hume] should have penetrated very deeply into the nature of reason, so far as it is concerned with pure thinking” (P 4:259). So much is certainly true: the Scots did not “satisfy the conditions of Hume’s problem.” But, and this is the important point, not because it simply “did not suit them,” as Kant alleges, but because they felt that it was impossible in principle to satisfy the conditions of Hume’s problem. They thought that human beings could never attain the kind of knowledge that an answer of Hume’s problem required, that there are limits to what philosophy can do, and that any fundamental answer to Hume would not fall within the limits of what is possible. Kant just as staunchly believed that Hume’s problem can and must be solved. We have to justify the principles which enable us to make knowledge claims. In very much the same way as the Scots—especially Beattie—had done it, Kant tried to answer the questions “How is Pure Mathematics Possible?” and “How is Pure Science of Nature Possible?” and he also conceives in analogy the questions as to how metaphysics might be possible. But to

14 Manfred Kuehn answer Reid and Beattie, he would also have had to answer the question “How is Critical Philosophy Possible?” Did Kant answer this question? Some Kant scholars which were very much aware of the problem generally answered in the negative. In fact, some of the characterizations of the final foundation of Kant’s critical philosophy sound peculiarly familiar to anybody acquainted with Reid. Thus W. H. Walsh finds that what Kant does in the Critique is build on facts we all take as obvious in our non-philosophical moments, such facts as that we can make mathematical judgments, discriminate objective from subjective successions, make determinate statements about what is happening in ourselves, generally distinguish the real from the apparent. As thus stated, these are facts of a highly general kind; behind each of them lies a vast number of more particular facts. It is these which form the ultimate basis of Kant’s philosophy.24 The Scots built on exactly the same kinds of facts.25 They argued therefore that philosophical justification was impossible and that description had to replace deduction. Does not Kant beg Reid’s question, if Walsh is correct? Does not Kant take for granted that which Reid doubted—the possibility of justification—and demonstrate with Gründlichkeit or thoroughness which Reid never thought of doubting? To be sure, that is what Hamann, Herder and Jacobi thought, and those are the topics of their Metakritiken. Furthermore, since it could justifiably be argued that Hume built his more skeptical conclusions on precisely the same facts, we might ask whether the similarity of Hume and Kant is not greater still than has been commonly recognized. Hegel argued that “the exoteric doctrine of Kantian philosophy that the understanding is not allowed to transgress experience,” had to be rejected because in this way “science and common sense worked into each other’s hand in order to destroy metaphysics.”26 But, if Walsh is right, then it may well be that even Kant’s esoteric doctrine is more dependent on facts that we all take as obvious in our non-philosophical moments, and that the program of “naturalizing Kant” is not as foreign to his thinking as it has appeared to some. But whether or not that is true, discussing Thomas Reid’s and Scottish philosophy just in relation to Kant’s answer to Hume would be clearly not represent an adequate assessment of Reid and Scottish common sense. As Professor Lewis White Beck pointed out many years ago, “what is a good answer to Hume may be a very inadequate system of philosophy.”27 And, as I wrote in my first work, thirty years ago, responding to this observation: “if Scottish common sense was merely the attempt to disprove Hume’s specific conclusions, it would perhaps deserve the general lack of interest with which it has been treated for a long time. But it is clearly more than that.”28 The last

Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment 15 fifteen years or so, seem to show to me that especially Thomas Reid’s philosophy is much more than an answer to Hume. Philosophers have come to realize that there are many more philosophical resources in Reid than have been expected. Since 1987, there have been quite a few significant discussion of his views, as, for instance, Keith Lehrer, Thomas Reid (London: Routledge, 1989); William Rowe, Thomas Reid on Freedom and Morality (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991); Nicholas Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001); John Haldane and Stephen Read (eds.), The Philosophy of Thomas Reid (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003); T. Cuneo and R. Van Woudenberg, (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Reid (New York: Cambridge, 2004); and Ryan Nichols, Thomas Reid’s Theory of Perception (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). There have also been many papers concentrating on various aspects of Reid’s thought, not to forget a new critical edition of Reid’s works and correspondence, so that there seems to be little danger that Reid will be soon forgotten again.29 If there is any danger at all, it is, perhaps, that his historical significance and especially his effects in Germany, are now underappreciated. If only for this reason, this volume is timely.

Notes 1. See Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Werke in zwanzig Bänden, vol. 20: Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1971), 281–6. “Debasement” is to some extent too weak as a translation of “Verkommen“ because it often has the implication of being “morally depraved.” 2. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 3, trans. Elizabeth Haldane and Frances Simson (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., Ltd., 1896), 376–7. 3. He refers in this context not just to Reid’s inquiry, but also to Thaddä Anselm Rixner, Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 3 (Sulzbach: Seidelsche Buchhandlung, 1829), §119, 259. In fact, the four points characterizing Reid’s position are taken almost verbatim from Rixner. Whether Hegel read Reid himself cannot easily be established. Given his philosophical education, it is, however, not unlikely. He is also dependent on Johann Gottlieb Buhle, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie und einer kritischen Literatur derselben (Göttingen: Vandenhöck und Ruprecht, 1796–1804); and Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann, Geschichte der Philosophie (Johann Ambrosius Barth: Leipzig, 1789–1819). 4. For an interesting discussion of the trope of standing on the shoulders of Giants, see Robert K. Merton, On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postsript (New York: The Free Press, 1965). 5. We might ask whether it is true that Reid actually made the four related mistakes Kant accuses him of, and I do try to answer this question in my book on Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987). See also Manfred Kuehn, “The Early Reception of Reid, Oswald and Beattie in Germany,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 21 (1983): 59–69. 6. Dugald Stewart, Collected Works, vol. 1, ed. William Hamilton (Edinburgh: William Constable & Co., 1854), 460.

16 Manfred Kuehn 7. Sir William Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1860), 643. 8. Andrew Seth, Scottish Philosophy: A Comparison of the Scottish and German Answers to Hume, second edition (New York: Burtt Franklin, 1971), 4, 1. 9. Seth, Scottish Philosophy, 2. 10. Seth, Scottish Philosophy, 4f. 11. Seth, Scottish Philosophy, 5. 12. See also Manfred Kuehn, “Hamilton’s Reading of Kant,” in Kant and His Influence, ed. G. MacDonald Ross and Tony Macwalter (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1990), 315–47. 13. But it should also be pointed out that the Scottish approach of comparing the two answers to Hume had a lasting, and, I believe, not always beneficial effect upon ther interpretation of Kant in English-speaking countries. 14. H. J. Paton, Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, vol. 1 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1970), 20. This traditon has been continued until today. So Scotland may truly be called “a world center of Kant scholarship.” See Lewis White Beck, “William Henry Walsh,” Kant-Studien 77 (l986): 407–8. 15. I explore some of these issues in “Scotland and Germany: The Intertwined Threads of Two National Philosophical Traditions,” Scottish Studies Yearbook 8 (1989): 257–68. The next few paragraphs are dependent on this paper. 16. Lewis White Beck, Early German Philosophy (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996), 2. 17. Since Reid explicitly says in another context that he “has seen the Psychologia empirica,” but does not know whether his Psychologia rationalis has even appeared. 18. Sir William Hamilton in, Thomas Reid, The Works of Thomas Reid, D.D.; Now Fully Collected, with Selections from His Umpublished Letters, vol. 1, ed. William Hamilton (Edinburgh: MacLachlan and Stewart, 1852). EIP 13. 19. Wolff, Christian. Psychologia empirica: methodo scientifica pertracta, qua ea, quae de anima humana indubia experientiae fide constant, continentur et as solidam universae philosophiae practicae ac theologiae naturalis tractationem via sternitur. (Francofurti: Prostat in Officina Libraria Rengeriana, 1738), §24. 20. Reid, Works, vol. 1, 299. Compare also Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense, 25. 21. Reid, Works, vol. 1, 105, 111. Compare also Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense, 25. 22. My thoughts on this have not changed much since I initially wrote on this topic. See Chapter 9 in particular. See also Manfred Kuehn, “Reid’s Contribution to Hume’s Problem,” in The Science of Man in the Scottish Enlightenment: Hume, Reid, and Their Contemporaries, ed. Peter Jones (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1989), 124–48; and Manfred Kuehn, “Kant’s Conception of Hume’s Problem,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 21 (1983): 175–93 [reprint in David Hume: Critical Assessments (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1995; and Kant’s Prolegomena, ed. Beryl Logan (London: Routledge, 1996)]. 23. This also shows that Seth’s interpretation of the Scottish and German answers is inadequate. 24. W. H. Walsh, Kant’s Criticism of Metaphysics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1975), 253f. 25. See also Louis E. Loeb, “The Naturalisms of Hume and Reid,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 81 (2007): 65–92. 26. Hegel, Werke in zwanzig Bänden, vol. 3, 65. 27. Lewis White Beck, “Towards a Meta-Critique of Pure Reason,” in Essays on Kant and Hume (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978), 20–37, 24. 28. Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense, 14. 29. For a more complete bibliography, see the entry “Thomas Reid” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reid/). It is, however, not complete, as it does not refer to my book or any of my papers.

Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment 17

References Beck, Lewis White. Early German Philosophy: Kant and His Predecessors. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996. Beck, Lewis White. “Towards a Meta-Critique of Pure Reason.” In Essays on Kant and Hume, edited by Lewis White Beck, 20–37. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978. Beck, Lewis White. “William Henry Walsh.” Kant-Studien 77 (1986): 407–8. Buhle, Johann Gottlieb. Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie und einer kritischen Literatur derselben. Göttingen: Vandenhöck und Ruprecht, 1796–1804. Hamilton, Sir William. Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic. Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1860. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 3. Translated by Elizabeth Haldane and Frances Simson. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., Ltd., 1896. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Werke in zwanzig Bänden: Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1971. Kuehn, Manfred. “The Early Reception of Reid, Oswald and Beattie in Germany.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 21 (1983): 52–69. Kuehn, Manfred. “Hamilton’s Reading of Kant.” In Kant and His Influence, edited by George MacDonald Ross and Tony Macwalter, 315-47. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1990. Kuehn, Manfred. “Kant’s Conception of Hume’s Problem.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 21 (1983): 175–93; reprinted in David Hume: Critical Assessments. Bristol: Thoemmes, 1995; reprinted in Kant’s Prolegomena., edited by Beryl Logan. London: Routledge, 1996. Kuehn, Manfred. “Reid’s Contribution to Hume’s Problem.” In The Science of Man in the Scottish Enlightenment: Hume, Reid, and Their Contemporaries, edited by Peter Jones, 124–48. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1989a. Kuehn, Manfred. “Scotland and Germany: The Intertwined Threads of Two National Philosophical Traditions.” Scottish Studies Yearbook 8 (1989b): 257–68. Kuehn, Manfred. Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987. Loeb, Louis E. “The Naturalisms of Hume and Reid.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 81 (2007): 65–92. Merton, Robert K. On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postsript. New York: The Free Press, 1965. Nichols, Ryan. “Thomas Reid.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reid/. Paton, H. J. Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, 2 vols. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1970. Reid, Thomas. The Works of Thomas Reid, D.D.: Now Fully Collected, with Selections from His Umpublished Letters. Edited by William Hamilton. Edinburgh: MacLachlan and Stewart, 1852. Rixner, Thaddä Anselm. Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie. Sulzbach: Seidelsche Buchhandlung, 1829. Seth, Andrew. Scottish Philosophy: A Comparison of the Scottish and German Answers to Hume, second edition. New York: Burtt Franklin, 1971.

18 Manfred Kuehn Stewart, Dugald. Collected Works. Edited by William Hamilton. Edinburgh: William Constable & Co., 1854. Tennemann, Wilhelm Gottlieb. Geschichte der Philosophie. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1789–1819. Walsh, W. H. Kant’s Criticism of Metaphysics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1975. Wolff, Christian. Psychologia empirica: methodo scientifica pertracta, qua ea, quae de anima humana indubia experientiae fide constant, continentur et as solidam universae philosophiae practicae ac theologiae naturalis tractationem via sternitur. Francofurti: Prostat in Officina Libraria Rengeriana, 1738.

1

Hutcheson on the Unity of Virtue and Right Aaron Garrett

I. Introduction From his earliest work, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue published in 1725, to the posthumously published System of Moral Philosophy that appeared thirty years later, Francis Hutcheson argued for a unified account of morality. The unifying principle was the moral sense and what was to be unified was natural law and Virtue or moral goodness.1 Philosophers in the Protestant natural law tradition from Hugo Grotius onward had attempted to accommodate virtues within a broader account of rights, most often in the category of imperfect duties. Hutcheson was not interested in the natural law project of accommodating virtues to right. Rather he wished to explain the relation between what he understood as the source of our distinctively moral approbation for virtues and the source of our approval of rights as such. This can be stated as a problem: in what sense are rights, and the obligations connected with rights, moral? In the conclusion of the essay I will argue that responding to Hutcheson’s diagnosis was important for the next generation of moral philosophers: David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, and Immanuel Kant.2

II. The Natural Law Tradition Natural law, for Hutcheson, was a tradition initiated by Grotius.3 Hutcheson’s teacher Gershom Carmichael taught in and through this tradition. Carmichael’s commentary on Samuel Pufendorf’s De Officio hominis et civis (one of the main teaching texts of natural law) was used by Hutcheson in delivering his own moral philosophy lectures at Glasgow. Unlike his teacher and other natural lawyers, Hutcheson did not equate natural law with moral and political philosophy as such. After graduating from Glasgow Hutcheson studied classics for a year and then returned to Dublin where he belonged to a circle influenced by Robert, Viscount Molesworth, a friend and advocate of Lord Shaftesbury.4 The combination of Cicero and Shaftesbury led Hutcheson to advocate for an approach to moral philosophy focused on moral goodness and virtue (in distinction from

20 Aaron Garrett rights). Hutcheson thought of this tradition as continuous from the Old Academy to the Renaissance to Lord Shaftesbury.5 With the revival of humane letters in the West, philosophy too was improved, especially through the strenuous efforts of those who have earned the gratitude of the human race by editing and interpreting the books of the ancients. With great acclaim, however, [moderns] have pointed out or entered upon a new road: in physics, Bacon, Descartes, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton; in ethics Grotius, Cumberland, and Pufendorf (for it was the Old Academy that was revived by Mirandula, Ficino, and the Earl of Shaftesbury); and Locke in logic and metaphysics.6 As the quotation makes evident, Hutcheson saw natural law—unlike the Virtue tradition—as a modern philosophical movement, like the new science and the new theory of knowledge. As I will discuss shortly Hutcheson was strongly influenced by Locke’s theory of knowledge and very admiring of Newton and the new science. But unlike in the special sciences or the theory of knowledge, the Virtue tradition was not superseded by a new science of morality. Indeed it had an important modern advocate, Shaftesbury, who was highly critical of the Epicurean accounts7 of motivation and justification associated with Hobbes and with natural law. The problem confronting Hutcheson was how to coherently combine the ancient and the modern, natural law with virtue. As just noted, from Grotius onwards, natural lawyers had assumed that particular moral virtues could be accommodated within a system of natural law.8 They also attempted to accommodate virtue or moral goodness as such. Richard Cumberland and Samuel Pufendorf used a voluntarist strategy to unite the obligation to the natural law with our obligation to virtue.9 For both, the obligation to the natural (and civil) law is due to the legation of a superior and the obligation to moral goodness is a consequence of this legation and God’s creative power. Hutcheson, like Shaftesbury and Leibniz,10 thought that this strategy tended to make morality arbitrary and reduce all moral obligations to self-interested motivations. Unlike Leibniz, a cornerstone of Hutcheson’s account was the rejection of moral rationalism. Hutcheson expressly criticized Leibniz’s use of the Principle of Sufficient Reason in An Inquiry Concerning Beauty and Order to make a more general methodological criticism (a point I will return to shortly).11 Mr. Leibnitzii had an equal Affection for his favorite Principle of a sufficient Reason for every thing in Nature, and brags to Dr. Clarke of the Wonders he had wrought in the intellectual World by its Assistance; but his learned Antagonist seems to think he had not sufficient Reason for his Boasting. If we look into particular Sciences, we may see in the Systems learned Men have given us of them, the Inconveniences of this Love of Uniformity. (IBO III.5)

Hutcheson on Unity of Virtue 21 For Hutcheson, Mr. Leibnitzii achieved demonstrative unity and methodological uniformity at the expense of plausibility by overstating his rationalist principles. A successful moral theory would instead exemplify the empiricism of Locke (and of the natural law tradition) but in a way that avoided voluntarism and instead drew on the moral goodness associated with the Old Academy back. This ruled out rationalist perfectionism as a means of explaining the obligation to justice within a non-voluntarist theory. The problem was then how explain obligation without recourse to the voluntarist’s attractive explanation of how and why we were obligated to the law and why the obligation was binding: the will of a superior. One might look to Grotius of course for a Stoicism friendly account of natural law. But since Grotius had no one cogent answer to this—indeed one might think of the post-Grotian tradition as forging a variety of answers for him— Hutcheson resurrected the Old Academy in a novel way. As I will discuss in the next sections, he drew on Newton and Locke in order to argue for the centrality of Virtue in ethics. But first, the Old Academy itself needed defending from a different Epicurean threat.

III. Mandeville and Shaftesbury The subtitle of the first edition of the Inquiry was “In Which The Principles of the late Earl of Shaftesbury are Explain’d and Defended, against the Author of the Fable of the Bees.” Mandeville had included a pointed polemic against Shaftesbury in the 1723 edition of The Fable of the Bees entitled “A Search into the Nature of Society” and Hutcheson’s Inquiries attempted to counter Mandeville’s criticisms. For the purposes of this essay I will focus on Mandeville’s criticism of Shaftesbury’s claims concerning pulchrum et honestum, the Ciceronian standard of morality and beauty and a focal point of Shaftesbury’s moral philosophy.12 The phrase was not unique to Shaftesbury. Grotius, for example, invokes it in the dedication of De Jure Belli ac Pacis. But Mandeville was using the phrase to characterize and attack Shaftesbury and the Virtue tradition: In respect to our Species he looks upon Virtue and Vice as permanent Realities that must ever be the same in all Ages, and imagines that a Man of sound Understanding, by following the rules of Good Sense may not only find out that Pulchrum & honestum both in Morality and the Works of Art and Nature, but likewise Govern himself by his Reason with as much ease and readiness as a good Rider manages a well taught Horse by the Bridle. (FOB I:372) Mandeville characterized Shaftesbury as offering a paradigmatic example of the revival of the Stoic and Platonic models of self-governance13 or self-mastery. Reason allows us to directly access the standards of morality and beauty and to govern ourselves with (relative) ease.

22 Aaron Garrett In attacking Shaftesbury, the revival of the Old Academy Mandeville denied that we actually have access to the pulchrum et honestum and argued that virtue and beauty can be explained wholly via self-interest with no need to posit such occult qualities. He concluded, “It is manifest then that the hunting after this Pulchrum & Honestum is not much better than a WildGoose-Chace that is but little to be depended upon.” (FOB 332) Indeed the belief in the pulchrum et honestum and the ease of the bridle of virtue promoted vice: But this is not the greatest Fault I find with it. The imaginary Notions that Men may be Virtuous without Self-denial are a vast Inlet to Hypocrisy, which being once made habitual, we must not only deceive others, but likewise become altogether unknown to our selves, and in an Instance I am going to give, it will appear, how for want of duly examining himself this might happen to a Person of Quality of Parts and Erudition, one every way resembling the Author of the Characteristicks himself. (FOB 331) Consequently, Shaftesbury’s position was actively self-undermining. With no honestum to access attempts at self-mastery only promoted hypocrisy. In responding to Mandeville and in defending the Old Academy against his criticisms, Hutcheson attempted to show that we can access the pulchrum et honestum via sense: the sense of beauty and the moral sense. The expression “moral sense” was taken from Shaftesbury, but Hutcheson filled in Shaftesbury’s elusive discussion with a Lockean account of perception.14 In the Inquiry on Virtue Hutcheson defined virtue or “moral goodness”—the object of the moral sense—as “our idea of some Quality apprehended in Actions, which procures Approbation and Love towards the Actor, from those who receive no Advantage by the Action” (IGE 85). Virtue was an idea acquired from perceptions of qualities in actions, as with other forms of Lockean perception. Furthermore the ideas that are object of the moral sense track or respond to the pulchrum et honestum in the same way that our ideas of sensible qualities represented real facts about the world on a Lockean theory of perception. But because virtue was an idea there was no need to offer direct access to the pulchrum as such. We are instead considering virtue as an idea that arises from our empirical perceptions of actions and characters. How the relation between the idea and the quality is to work is unclear. Perhaps the sensible qualities were like colors and signaled dispositions to give rise to benevolent actions. Or perhaps they directly represented moral properties or qualities like Locke’s primary qualities.15 But however the mechanism was to work, Hutcheson thought that our sentiments and ideas provided immediate first-person empirical evidence of the nature of virtue on analogy with the Lockean theory of perception. Contra Mandeville, Hutcheson thought the evidence unearthed by the moral sense was not reducible to interest. When we read of a benevolent

Hutcheson on Unity of Virtue 23 action in a history this raises ideas of virtue and feelings of moral approval in us. But there is no obvious interested motivation to feel this. The simplest explanation seems to be that we are approving benevolent actions via our immediate apprehension of ideas of virtue. Hutcheson thought that this provided one with an honestum impervious to Mandeville’s reductionist strategy.16 There are many puzzles connected with Hutcheson’s moral sense, not the least of which the aforementioned relation between ideas of virtue and the qualities apprehended in the actions.17 What is evident, though, is that Hutcheson saw the moral sense as effectively countering Mandeville insofar as it explained how we had access to moral standards that were independent of interest (and not self-undermining). The independence of morality from interest was particularly important and distinctive. As Simon Grote has pointed out it distinguished Hutcheson not just from Mandeville but from Shaftesbury: Whereas Shaftesbury held virtue to be natural in the sense that, in contradistinction to Locke’s view, human beings are able to develop a desire for the private happiness specifically afforded by it, by recourse merely to the exercise of their innate affection for beauty and the cultivation of their powers of rational contemplation, Hutcheson held virtue to be natural in the sense that human beings are naturally endowed with an instinct which, if properly cultivated, allows them to pursue it without any regard whatever to the happiness it affords them.18 Crucially, even if virtue educed to welfare for Hutcheson, and ought to educe to virtuous agents, unlike for Shaftesbury, the obligation to virtue was independent of interest.19

IV. Obligation and Rights In the concluding chapter of his Inquiry Concerning Moral Good and Evil, “A Deduction of some Complex moral Ideas, viz. of Obligation, and Right, Perfect, Imperfect, and External, Alienable, and Unalienable, from this moral Sense,” Hutcheson asked “Can we have any sense of obligation abstracting from the Laws of a Superior?” (IGE VII.1).20 The authority of the superior was a crucial element in Pufendorf’s account of obligation.21 Hutcheson was asking whether there was a sense of obligation independent of the legitimating moral force of the superior’s imposition of laws—which rested on the recognition of the legitimacy of the superior’s volition—and the sanctions attached to them. If so, what was this sense of obligation? The question is phrased as a challenge to Pufendorf and Cumberland insofar as “the laws of the superior” are central for both their accounts. Hutcheson was suggesting that Pufendorf’s account of obligation rested on something besides that the obligation was created by the superior. Pufendorf’s account

24 Aaron Garrett of obligation was constructed in such a way as to make motivation distinct from the obligation and independent of our evaluation of it. There are many ways that I might discharge an obligation, but what is important is that I have discharged it regardless of my motivations, beliefs, etc. This independence of obligations is a theoretical virtue for Pufendorf given the background of religious conflict against which he assembled his theory. Whether I am a Catholic or a Lutheran, and however I am motivated, what is important and sufficient is that the obligations that uphold the State and make life in it beneficial are met. Here we get to the heart of Hutcheson’s case. If obligation is entirely independent of the motivation and discharging it is all that matters, then we should approve of the satisfaction of the obligation to the same degree whatever the motivation. In Inquiry III Hutcheson had argued that the degree of virtue which we ascribe to an action varies according to whether the action is undertaken to serve interest or not (see particularly IGE III.xi). Evidence from the moral sense shows us that motivations actually do alter the moral value of actions and characters. If two agents undertake an action and I discover one did it for selfish reasons and the other from benevolence, I judge the latter as morally superior even if the obligation is discharged in both cases. The same also holds of the consequences of the action—the more and greater happiness they both attempt to promote and actually promote the greater the more I morally value the action. Hutcheson took this as evidence that there are two distinct senses of obligation—i.e., two independent reasons for undertaking actions or approving of characters—corresponding to variations in the response of our moral sense to variations in motivations and outcome. The first sense of obligation was what we ought to promote individual welfare or interest: Considering those Reasons which prove a constant Course of benevolent and social Actions, to be the most probable means of promoting the natural Good22 of every Individual; as Cumberland and Puffendorf have prov’d: And all this without Relation to a Law. (IGE VII.1) Note, there is no mention of superiors or lawgivers in this account of obligation. Hutcheson is suggesting that what Pufendorf and Cumberland explain by recourse to natural law, including sociability and treating your neighbor beneficently, can be explained through reasonable individuals desire for welfare.23 There is, though, a further source of obligation that is explanatorily independent of the first kind of obligation: an “Instinct toward Benevolence.” By this Hutcheson understood that we ought to naturally and immediately respond to praiseworthy characters and actions with benevolent sentiments even when our interest is not served or even sometimes when it conflicts

Hutcheson on Unity of Virtue 25 with our interest. We can see that this obligation is distinct for reasons given earlier: to explain it in terms of interest would alter and diminish the merit of the obligation which suggests the distinctness of the obligation. Furthermore that it is an “instinct” suggests that it cannot be explained in terms of any deliberation about interest.24 These two sources of obligation are normally combined in particular actions and characters.25 The problem then is how are the two sorts of obligations related? One could argue that they are independent and carve out different arenas that never meet. Hutcheson’s strategy was instead to argue for our instinct to benevolence as grounding a theory of rights via the moral sense. The problem can now be seen more clearly. The distinction between moral obligations and natural obligations made the relation between the distinctively moral approbation that we feel for virtue and the natural goods guaranteed by rights on the natural law picture difficult to explain. The standard natural law position that virtues are ultimately justified by their support for sociability, which is in turn derived from interest, was a reduction of all obligations to the first type. For Hutcheson goodness was connected to the second sort of non-interested obligation. How to bring rights into commerce with the Old Academy? Hutcheson’s answer, as mentioned earlier, drew on Locke and Newton. Hutcheson grounded rights on the Locke-influenced moral sense, and more particularly on the judgment of the moral sense that an action or ability tends to the general good: From this Sense too we derive our Ideas of Rights. Whenever it appears to us, that a Faculty of doing, demanding, or possessing any thing, universally allow’d in certain Circumstances, would in the whole tend to the general Good, we say that any Person in such Circumstances, has a Right to do, possess, or demand that Thing. And according as this Tendency to the publick Good is greater or less, the Right is greater or less. (IGE VII.6) Given the distinctions described earlier one might wonder how this renders right moral? Is Hutcheson offering a consequentialist justification that ultimately boils down to maximizing interest? For Hutcheson rights are moral insofar as they tend to the general good and are approved of as beneficent by the moral sense.26 What is doing the moral work is not that the rights happen to promote the general good. Rather promotion of the general good is a beneficent motivation, promotion of the goods of others is a benevolent motivation, and both are approved of by the moral sense.27 With a justification for rights in place Hutcheson then developed the Grotian distinction, via Pufendorf and Carmichael, between perfect and imperfect rights. Perfect rights “are of such necessity to the publick Good, that the universal Violation of them would make human Life intolerable; and it actually makes those miserable, whose Rights are thus violated.” Imperfect

26 Aaron Garrett rights are those that “tend to the improvement and increase of positive Good in any Society, but are not absolutely necessary to prevent universal Misery.” Perfect rights are those connected with social stability and justice and imperfect rights those connected with virtuous actions in the narrow sense. This reflects the way in which natural lawyers attempted to explain the virtues, via imperfect rights. But, importantly, both sorts of rights were ultimately obligatory because they were approved of by the moral sense28 as promoting and securing beneficience and benevolence.29 We can now see Hutcheson’s strategy for uniting the Virtue tradition and natural law. Just as our moral sense approved of benevolent and beneficent actions and characters so too it approves of doings, demandings, and possessings that contribute to the general good. This secures the rights to these doings, demandings, and possessings. The foundation is the moral obligation that Hutcheson associated with the Virtue tradition not the natural obligation of the natural lawyers. And the foundation is secured not by divine volition but by the spectatorial approval of all disinterested judges.

V. A Newtonian Deduction of Right Hutcheson also thought there were methodological reasons for preferring his account of the justification of rights to the natural lawyers. In the Inquiry on Beauty, Hutcheson distinguished between good and bad demonstrations. Bad demonstrations, like Leibniz’s demonstrations from the PSR, attempt to secure too much from an inappropriate principle. The same could be said of Pufendorf: “How aukardly is Puffendorf forc’d to deduce the several Dutys of Men to God, themselves, and their Neighbours, from his single fundamental Principle of Sociableness to the whole Race of Mankind?” (IBO III.5). The natural lawyers’ demonstrations failed because the principle used—sociability derived from interest—was inadequate to derive the desired results. Hutcheson contrasted Pufendorf’s awkward deduction with a Newtonian form of demonstration: “In the search of Nature there is the like Beauty in the Knowledge of some great Principles, or universal Forces, from which innumerable Effects do flow. Such is Gravitation, in Sir Isaac Newton’s Scheme.” The paragraph continues by suggesting its application to rights: Such also is the Knowledge of the Original of Rights, perfect and imperfect, and external; alienable and unalienable, with their manner of Translations; from whence the greatest Part of moral Dutys may be deduc’d in the various Relations of human Life. (IBO III.5) In An Inquiry Concerning Moral Good and Evil III Hutcheson argued that the moral sense shows that moral praiseworthiness of a character or an action varied according to the benevolence of the agent in conjunction

Hutcheson on Unity of Virtue 27 with interest and ability. In the first edition of the Inquiry the Newtonian credentials of the analysis of moral experience were underscored by the use of quasi-mathematical notation. Hutcheson thought that just as Newton had explained diverse observed motions—from planetary orbits to apples falling to the trajectory of a thrown rock—via one central force interacting with other local forces, so too he had explained diverse phenomena of moral experience through the ways in which our judgment of benevolence was modified through concourse with self-interest and benevolence. He offered a kind of Newtonian theory of moral collisions.30 This was in opposition to the unnatural theory of Pufendorf that like Cartesian physics relied too heavily on one wrongheaded principle. Returning to the legislative model of Pufendorf and Cumberland, one can see that Hutcheson thought without the moral sense at its base the recourse to law obscured a profound defect in the theory: The Writers upon opposite Schemes, who deduce all Ideas of Good and Evil from the private Advantage of the Actor, or from Relation to a Law and its Sanctions, either known from Reason, or Revelation, are perpetually recurring to this moral Sense which they deny; not only in calling the Laws of the Deity just and good, and alledging Justice and Right in the Deity to govern us; but by using a set of Words which import something different from what they will allow to be their only meaning. Obligation, with them, is only such a Constitution, either of Nature, or some governing Power, as makes it advantageous for the Agent to act in a certain manner. Let this Definition be substituted, wherever we meet with the words, ought, should, must, in a moral Sense, and many of their Sentences would seem very strange; as that the Deity must act rationally, must not, or ought not to punish the Innocent, must make the state of the Virtuous better than that of the Wicked, must observe Promises; substituting the Definition of the Words, must, ought, should, would make these Sentences either ridiculous, or very disputable. (IGE VII.4) The passage is reminiscent of both Hume and G. E. Moore. Like Hume, Hutcheson argues that it is necessary that rights and laws have a distinctively moral sense or otherwise their obligatory character is not explained. Recourse to the superiority of the legislator in a natural law account of obligation hides the fact that interest doesn’t get you the right sort of obligation, and the superiority of the legislator fudges it. From the observations of variations, Hutcheson then deduced a series of rules.31 These rules formed a “Canon,” again modeled on Newtonian laws, from which were derived fifteen rules used to “adjust” (IGE VII.9) the “Rights of Mankind.” The moral sense could provide a means of adjusting sanctions and other interested motivations in a limited way32 in order to promote and reward virtue.

28 Aaron Garrett Hutcheson also discussed the distinction between perfect and imperfect rights again. Perfect rights could not be violated, but there was “little Virtue” in their fulfillment (IGE VII.9 §10). The truest Matter of Praise are those Actions or Offices which others claim from us by an imperfect Right; and generally, the stronger their Right is, there is the less Virtue in fulfilling it, but the greater Vice in violating it. (IGE VII.9 §11) In other words, imperfect rights described some of virtue, but unlike for the natural lawyers, it did not exhaust virtue. Rather, rights were derived from a part of virtue or moral goodness in the broader sense.

VI. Conclusion Hutcheson could lay claim to being the most influential Western systematic moral philosopher writing in the second quarter of the eighteenth century. His works were translated widely and had great influence in Britain and the colonies, France, Germany, and beyond. Many philosophers influenced by Hutcheson developed some of his insights and rejected others in order to make his moral and political philosophy more coherent. John Gay drew on what he took to be Hutcheson’s providentialist utilitarianism while criticizing his moral sense theory in order to develop what is often considered the first utilitarian moral theory.33 David Hume accepted Hutcheson’s anti-rationalist sentimentalism and some version of the moral sense and the utilitarianism, but strongly rejected many other features of Hutcheson’s account including his providentialism and his foundational account of natural virtue. Thomas Reid developed Hutcheson’s moral epistemology in a different and far more rationalist direction. Due to the piecemeal character of Hutcheson’s influence, it is sometimes difficult to see just how pervasive it is. I want to suggest that the moral goodness of rights was another influential Hutchesonian theme, albeit like the others influential for being fraught with problems needing repair. Hume’s distinction between natural and artificial virtues in Treatise III.ii-iii, and the puzzles concerning natural and artificial motivations are direct legacies. Hume’s solution is far more Mandevillean than Hutchesonian: to show that rights (insofar as they can be said to exist) are prudential and gain any moral force they have from a historical process of association with morally approved outcomes. But the need to explain how an account of rights responds to two sorts of motivations and obligations, and the need to explain how we come to see laws and rights as moral—even if the consequence of association—was a major motivation for the theory. Adam Smith took Hutcheson’s picture over even more directly with his own spectatorial theory of rights, albeit with a number of Humean and Kamesian provisos. And Thomas Reid both stressed the role of moral perception in an

Hutcheson on Unity of Virtue 29 account of rights while drawing a strong line between political and moral justifications. All are responses to Hutcheson. Hutcheson’s influence was also felt in Germany. In the description of his ethics course of 1765–6 Kant wrote, For the time being, I shall lecture on universal practical philosophy and the doctrine of virtue, basing both of them on Baumgarten. The attempts of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and Hume, although incomplete and defective, have nonetheless penetrated furthest in the search for the fundamental principles of all morality. (LA 2:311) In this passage, Kant distinguishes between universal practical philosophy and virtue and suggests that Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume are the most important regarding the foundational questions in these areas. In the prize essay of 1764, Kant refers to “Hutcheson and others” which suggests that Hutcheson was the most important of the three in this period. Some of Kant’s nineteenth-century readers mentioned Hutcheson’s importance for Kant.34 Over fifty years ago, Dieter Henrich argued that Hutcheson’s contributions to the genesis of Kant’s mature moral philosophy have been undervalued. Kant was drawn to Hutcheson’s arguments in the early stages of the development of his own moral philosophy. He owned copies of Hutcheson’s Inquiries in translation from the third edition, and Hutcheson is regularly mentioned in his notes. References to Hutcheson—either by name or to the doctrine of moral sense—persist through his ethical writings up through the Metaphysics of Morals.35 As Henrich rightly emphasizes, Kant broke with the empiricism of his predecessors and saw that neither the moral sense (nor Wolff’s perfection) was a sufficient metaphysical ground for morals due to numerous problems, including its lack of universality.36 That said it is rarely noted that Hutcheson was seeking universality in his moral theory as well.37 The Newtonian moral sense experiments that Hutcheson used to argue against the Pufendorfian demonstration from sociability is similar to Kant’s procedure in the first part of the Groundwork. Like Kant, Hutcheson wished to show that common-sense morality could give rise to universal rules of morality that then guide the theory of rights. In a passage that has clear resonances with the Groundwork Hutcheson claimed “had we any Notions of rational Agents, capable of moral Affections, in the most distant Planets, our good Wishes would still attend them, and we should delight in their Happiness” (IGE II.10). Hume, Smith, and Kant would all see the attempt to use benevolent sentiments as a means to explain our extensive or even universal moral obligations as failed. But the systematic aspiration of locating a human capacity or human power that connected to universal or extensive moral obligations can be seen as an important theoretical desiderata for Kant as well as the next generation of Scottish philosophers.

30 Aaron Garrett And the general project, the moral unity of right—i.e., natural law—and virtue as Kant understood it was the project of Hutcheson’s Inquiries and also of the Metaphysics of Morals. In the aforementioned quote, Kant suggests that although Baumgarten provided the structure for his course, he had not penetrated as deeply as Hutcheson et al. The course was an early source of Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals among other later moral works. I suggest that what Kant saw as deeper was the attempt to provide a unity between right and virtue that explains their interactions with interested but shows the ultimate source of obligation to be moral. How this was to be spelled out has many other influences and took a rather different form. But that this was the goal was a legacy of Hutcheson.38

Notes 1. Hutcheson’s used virtue and moral goodness interchangeably. I will in this chapter as well. 2. Manfred Kuehn has been pivotal in making historians of philosophy aware of the connections between German philosophers and the philosophical world outside of Germany beyond Hume and Rousseau. More particularly, in Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800, Kant: A Biography, and numerous papers he has with great historical care made clear the pervasive influence of the philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment on Kant and other German philosophers. 3. See John Cairns, “The First Edinburgh Chair in Law: Grotius and the Scottish Enlightenment,” Fundamina 1 (2005): 31–57, for a discussion of the importance of Grotius in the teaching of natural law in Scotland. 4. See James Moore, “Hutcheson, Francis (1694–1746),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, online edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Daniel Carey, “Francis Hutcheson’s Philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment,” in Scottish Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Aaron Garrett and James Harris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 36–76. 5. I will refer to this as “the Virtue Tradition”. The examples Hutcheson gives are Platonists but it is clear that he also included Stoics in this category. 6. Francis Hutcheson, Logic, Metaphysics, and the Natural Sociability of Mankind, ed. James Moore, trans. Michael Silverthorne (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006), 9. 7. Hutcheson, like many other modern philosophers including Hume and Kant, also thought of the ancient schools as perennial and the disagreement between natural lawyers and Shaftesburians as a revival of the conflicts between Epicureans and other schools. But, although Hutcheson thought that in the end natural law justification boiled down to Epicureanism, he also thought that the form obligation took on this theory associated with the notion of a lawgiver in a way distinct from ancient Epicureanism. 8. It can even be argued that this is true of Hobbes. See David Boonin-Vail, Thomas Hobbes and the Science of Moral Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 9. Terence Irwin, The Development of Ethics: Volume 2: From Suarez to Rousseau (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), §539; Knud Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), ch. 1; J. B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge

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10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

22.

University Press, 1998), I.6–7; J. B. Schneewind, Essays on the History of Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), ch. 9; Jon Parkin, Science, Religion, and Politics in Restoration England: Richard Cumberland’s De Legibus Naturae (Royal Historical Society/Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 1999), ch. 5. Andrew Youpa, “Leibniz’s Ethics,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, online edition (2015); Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy, II.12.4–5; Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy, 1.8. An Inquiry Concerning Beauty and Order was published in 1725 along with An Inquiry Concerning Moral Good and Evil as An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. Paddy Bullard, “The Review of English Studies Prize Essay: The Meaning of the ‘Sublime and Beautiful’: Shaftesburian Contexts and Rhetorical Issues in Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry,” The Review of English Studies 224 (2005): 169–91. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy, 303–6. Given Shaftesbury’s criticisms of Locke it is a strange combination and there are many associated problems, including the need to explain how a sense that is natural and innate for Shaftesbury doesn’t conflict with Lockean empiricism. How exactly to understand the relation between ideas and moral qualities is disputed. See Kenneth P. Winkler, “Hutcheson and Hume on the Color of Virtue,” Hume Studies 22, No. 1 (1996): 3–22; and P. J. E. Kail, “Hutcheson’s Moral Sense: Skepticism, Realism, and Secondary Qualities,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 18, No. 1 (2001): 57–77. I am not suggesting that this is an adequate response. See Michael B. Gill, “Moral Phenomenology in Hutcheson and Hume,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 47, No. 4 (2009): 569–94, for a discussion of the problems with trying to secure a moral theory with phenomenological evidence. Also conventionalism of the sort argued for by John Gay and Hume can circumvent Hutcheson’s objection. We have conventions that arise for approving of actions that do not directly serve our interest but which we associate with our interest. Hume’s suggestion that moral qualities are secondary qualities and so can be shown to be wholly mind dependent in correspondence with Hutcheson and in A Treatise is an attempt to show the skeptical consequences of Hutcheson’s view. Simon Grote, “Hutcheson’s Divergence from Shaftesbury,” Journal of Scottish Philosophy 4/2 (2006): 169. By “obligation” I understand something that we ought to do. My emphasis on Hutcheson’s stress on rights as part of morality is (I think) consistent with and influenced by Knud Haakonssen’s discussion in Natural Law and Moral Philosophy, ch. 2. Haakonssen’s emphasizes the differences between Hutcheson and the Grotian tradition from the side of the rights tradition and the breadth of Hutcheson’s works, whereas I focus on moral obligation in the Inquiry and its relation to method. See also James Moore, “The Two Systems of Francis Hutcheson: On the Origins of the Scottish Enlightenment,” in Studies in the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. M. A. Stewart (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) 37–59; “Natural Rights in the Scottish Enlightenment,” in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, ed. Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 291–316. For an excellent discussion see Michael Seidler, “Pufendorf’s Moral and Political Philosophy,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, online edition (2015), 3.2. Throughout this section and the next I am primarily considering Hutcheson’s interpretation of Pufendorf. According to Hutcheson natural goods were distinct from moral goods” “These Descriptions seem to contain an universally acknowledg’d Difference of Moral Good and Evil, from Natural. All Men who speak of moral Good, acknowledge

32 Aaron Garrett

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29. 30.

that it procures Love toward those we apprehend possess’d of it; whereas natural Good does not. In this matter Men must consult their own Breasts. How differently are they affected toward those they suppose possess’d of Honesty, Faith, Generosity, Kindness, even when they expect no Benefit from these admir’d Quality; and those who are possess’d of the natural Goods, such as Houses, Lands, Gardens, Vineyards, Health, Strength, Sagacity?” (IGE “Introduction”). Natural goods are consequently those goods which add to or are part of our welfare. This is not to suggest that benevolence and beneficence were unimportant for natural lawyers. Pufendorf did not exclude benevolence, he just thought (quite reasonably) that interest was a more reliable basis for human associations and thus the source of obligation. Cumberland placed benevolence at the center of his account, and Hutcheson’s prioritizing of benevolence and the greatest good for the greatest number may be in part due to Cumberland’s influence. But Cumberland also saw self-preservation as the initial motivation to society and saw God’s will qua superior as the basis for the obligatory force of the natural law. See Jon Parkin, Science, Religion, and Politics in Restoration England, 176–7 and “Preface”. What is the motivation to benevolence when benevolent sentiments are lacking? This was the focal puzzle of Hume’s A Treatise III. 2. Hutcheson, like Butler, held that conscience will “make us very uneasy and dissatisfy’d; and we shall be conscious that we are in a base unhappy State, even without considering any Law whatsoever, or any external Advantages lost, or Disadvantages impending from its Sanctions” (IGE VII.1). I take that our state is both unhappy and base to reflect conscious recognition of the need to satisfy both obligations. Hume’s later distinction between natural virtues and artificial virtues, the former of which are immediate natural responses such as benevolence and the latter of which are conventions for interest is clearly influenced by Hutcheson’s distinction. There is a great deal of ambiguity in Hutcheson’s writings between benevolence, beneficience, and what we would call utility. John Gay teased out the difference between Hutcheson’s benevolence and utility, but it is not clear Hutcheson saw much of a distinction. Shaftesbury had argued in his Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit that there was continuity between private virtue and public republican virtue. Mandeville’s “private vices, public virtues” thesis was in part an attempt to undermine this continuity. Hume’s arguments against this Shaftesburian thesis were a cornerstone of his account of artificial virtues in A Treatise. Hutcheson can be seen as providing an indirect argument for Shaftesbury’s thesis via the moral sense. A problem with the scheme became evident with the introduction of a further sort of right: external right or those rights acquired by contract or agreement. Hutcheson gives the example of the right of “a wealthy Miser to recall his Loan from the most industrious poor Tradesman at any time”. In this case the right is recalled for either not virtuous or even vicious reasons (i.e., miser). Hutcheson thinks that these rights must be backed, insofar as “it tends to the universal Good to allow Force in pursuance of them.” Insofar as the idea of benevolence is paradigmatic virtue, and insofar as the action not only does not locally promote virtue but indeed perhaps promotes vice, there seems a conflict between imperfect rights and Old Academy virtue and perfect rights and welfare. The relation between benevolence and beneficience is another problem for a Hutchesonian theory. Hutcheson seems to trade on ambiguities between the two. I think the inspiration for this was likely Hutcheson’s schoolmate the great Newtonian Colin MacLaurin. MacLaurin won the Royal Academy of Science in Paris essay prize in 1724 with a dissertation on collisions that calculates added forces in Newtonian terms. Hutcheson’s discussion in III is a moral

Hutcheson on Unity of Virtue 33

31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

analogue insofar as it explains the interactions of colliding moral forces. See Ian Tweddle, ed., MacLaurin’s Physical Dissertations (London: Springer Verlag, 2007), ch. II. These are the rules in the third edition of the Inquiry: “The moral Importance of any Agent, or the Quantity of publick Good he produces, is in a compound Proportion of his Benevolence and Abilitys. For ‘tis plain that his good Offices depend upon these two jointly. In like manner, the Quantity of private Good which any Agent obtains for himself, is in a like compound Proportion of his selfish Principles, and his Abilitys. We speak here only of the external Goods of this World, which one pursues from some selfish Principles. For as to internal Goods of the Mind, these are most effectually obtain’d by the Exercise of other Affections than those called Selfish, even those which carry the Agent beyond himself toward the Good of others. 2. In comparing the Virtues of different Agents, when the Abilitys are equal, the Moments of publick Good are proportioned to the Goodness of the Temper, or the Benevolence; and when the Tempers are equal, the Quantitys of Good are as the Abilitys. 3. The Virtue then or Goodness of Temper is directly as the Moment of Good, when other Circumstances are equal, and inversly as the Abilitys. That is to say, where the Abilitys are greatest, there is less Virtue evidenced in any given Moment of Good produced. 4. But as the natural Consequences of our Actions are various, some good to ourselves, and evil to the Publick; and others evil to ourselves, and good to the Publick; or either useful both to ourselves and others, or pernicious to both; the intire Spring of good Actions is not always Benevolence alone; or of Evil, Malice alone (nay, sedate Malice is rarely found); but in most Actions we must look upon Self-Love as another Force, sometimes conspiring with Benevolence, and assisting it, when we are excited by Views of private Interest, as well as publick Good; and sometimes opposing Benevolence, when the good Action is anyway difficult or painful in the Performance, or detrimental in its Consequences to the Agent.” (IGE 1738 III.11–2). Limited insofar as Hutcheson recognizes that anothers intentions and the individual relation to God are both beyond laws. This point was stressed by Adam Smith in his discussion of moral luck in TMS II.iii.3. See John Gay, “Preliminary Dissertation Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality,” Prefixed to William King, in Essay on the Origin of Evil edited by Edmund Law (London: R. Knaplock, J. and J. Knapton, and W. Innis, 1731). Michael Walschots, “Moral Sense Theory and the Development of Kant’s Ethics” (Phd diss., London, Ontario: University of Western Ontario, 2015), xi. Kuehn, Manfred, “Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: The History and Significance of Its Deferral,” In Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: A Critical Guide, ed. Lara Denis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 12. Dieter Henrich, “Hutcheson and Kant,” In Kant’s Moral and Legal Philosophy, ed. Karl Ameriks and Otfried Höffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 29–57. See Walschots, “Moral Sense Theory and the Development of Kant’s Ethics,” 65, 87–8. I do not wish to suggest it was an exclusive legacy of Hutcheson. But I do think Hutcheson made the problem far more explicit than the other sources.

References Boonin-Vail, David. Thomas Hobbes and the Science of Moral Virtue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Bullard, Paddy. “The Review of English Studies Prize Essay: The Meaning of the ‘Sublime and Beautiful’: Shaftesburian Contexts and Rhetorical Issues in Edmund

34 Aaron Garrett Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry.” The Review of English Studies 224 (2005): 169–91. Cairns, John W. “The First Edinburgh Chair in Law: Grotius and the Scottish Enlightenment.” Fundamina 1 (2005): 31–57. Carey, Daniel. “Francis Hutcheson’s Philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment.” In Scottish Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, Volume I: Morals, Politics, Art, Religion, edited by Aaron Garrett and James Harris, 36–76. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Gay, John. “Preliminary Dissertation Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality.” Prefixed to William King, In Essay on the Origin of Evil. edited by Edmund Law. London: R. Knaplock, J. and J. Knapton, and W. Innis, 1731. Gill, Michael B. “Moral Phenomenology in Hutcheson and Hume.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 47/4 (2009): 569–94. Grote, Simon. “Hutcheson’s Divergence from Shaftesbury.” Journal of Scottish Philosophy 4/2 (2006): 159–72. Haakonssen, Knud. Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Henrich, Dieter. “Hutcheson and Kant.” In Kant’s Moral and Legal Philosophy, edited by Karl Ameriks and Otfried Höffe, 29–57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Hutcheson, Francis. An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue: In Two Treatises. Edited by Wolfgang Leidhold, revised edition. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008. Hutcheson, Francis. Logic, Metaphysics, and the Natural Sociability of Mankind. Edited by James Moore. Translated by Michael Silverthorne. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006. Irwin, Terence. The Development of Ethics: Volume 2: From Suarez to Rousseau. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Kail, P. J. E. “Hutcheson’s Moral Sense: Skepticism, Realism, and Secondary Qualities.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 18/1 (2001): 57–77. Kant, Immanuel. Lecture on Ethics. Edited by Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Kuehn, Manfred. “Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: The History and Significance of Its Deferral.” In Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: A Critical Guide, edited by Lara Denis, 9–27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Kuehn, Manfred. Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987. Mandeville, Bernard. The Fable of the Bees: Or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits, 2 vols. Edited by F. B. Kaye. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924. Moore, James. “Hutcheson, Francis (1694–1746).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, online edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Moore, James. “Natural Rights in the Scottish Enlightenment.” In The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, edited by Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler, 291–316. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Moore, James. “The Two Systems of Francis Hutcheson: On the Origins of the Scottish Enlightenment.” In Studies in the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, edited by M. A. Stewart, 37–59. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.

Hutcheson on Unity of Virtue 35 Parkin, Jon. Science, Religion, and Politics in Restoration England: Richard Cumberland’s De Legibus Naturae. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press/Royal Historical Society, 1999. Schneewind, J. B. Essays on the History of Moral Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Schneewind, J. B. The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Seidler, Michael. “Pufendorf’s Moral and Political Philosophy.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, online edition. 2015. Tweddle, Ian, ed. MacLaurin’s Physical Dissertations. London: Springer Verlag, 2007. Walschots, Michael. “Moral Sense Theory and the Development of Kant’s Ethics.” PhD diss., London, Ontario: University of Western Ontario, 2015. Winkler, Kenneth P. “Hutcheson and Hume on the Color of Virtue.” Hume Studies 22/1 (1996): 3–22. Youpa, Andrew. “Leibniz’s Ethics.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, online edition. 2015.

2

Hutcheson and Kant Moral Sense and Moral Feeling Michael Walschots

The eighteenth century is a rich and fascinating period in the history of Germany philosophy for a variety of reasons. Not least among these is the fact that German authors of the period somewhat extensively engaged with the writings of those in other European countries and beyond. The extent to which German philosophers engaged with eighteenth century British philosophy is an excellent example. Describing the reception of British philosophy in eighteenth century Germany, Manfred Kuehn writes that The works of Locke, Shaftsbury, Hutcheson, Hume, Smith, Ferguson, and almost every other British philosopher of note were full of problems that needed solutions and observations that needed to be explained, if German philosophy of the traditional sort was to succeed.1 Although many German philosophers of the period could read English, the wide reception of these British authors was made possible in large part by the, in some cases rapid, translation of their texts into German. This is certainly true of the Scottish philosopher who will be the focus of this chapter: Francis Hutcheson (1694–1747). A translation of Hutcheson’s posthumous System of Moral Philosophy, first published in 1755, was published just one year later in 1756. Translations of Hutcheson’s An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions (1728) and An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725) followed somewhat soon thereafter, appearing in 1760 and 1762, respectively. One of the “problems” that Hutcheson introduced to the German philosophical scene was the existence and nature of a “moral sense,” a concept first introduced by Shaftesbury but given a much more systematic treatment by Hutcheson. As Jan Engbers has explained in detail, the German authors who were among the first to discuss the idea of a moral sense and the thought of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson in general were Christian Fürchtegott Gellert (1715–1769),2 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81), Christoph Martin Wieland (1733– 1813),3 and also Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86),4 among others.5 While not always positive,6 the extent to which moral sense theory was discussed during the middle to late eighteenth century makes it unsurprising that we

Hutcheson and Kant 37 find Kant mentioning Shaftesbury and Hutcheson as well. My aim in this chapter is to discuss Kant’s engagement with what is arguably the core feature of Hutcheson’s moral sense theory—namely, the idea that the moral sense is the foundation of moral judgment.7 It is of course no new discovery that British philosophers like Shaftesbury and Hutcheson had an influence on Kant’s thought. In his early 1804 biography of Kant, for example, Ludwig Borowski states the following: In the years when I belonged among his [Kant’s] students, Hutcheson and Hume were of exceptional worth, the former in subjects of morals, the latter in his deepest philosophical investigations.  .  .  .  He recommended both of these writers to us for a most careful study.8 In the literature that currently exists on the subject, however, the extent to which the moral sense theorists in fact influenced Kant is a matter of debate. Some claim that Kant himself belonged to the moral sense school early on in his development, others that the moral sense theorists only made Kant realize that there is an emotional factor to ethical consciousness.9 Joseph Schmucker claims that the influence of the moral sense theorists is often overestimated compared to the influence of Crusius and Wolff and others go as far as to say that Kant was in fact never really impressed with these writers at all.10 Given these differing appraisals of the situation, one main aim of the following is to reevaluate the extent to which Kant agrees with Hutcheson early on in his development, and to see how Kant’s opinion of the moral sense changes as his thought evolves. What is uncontroversial is that Kant eventually rejects the moral sense as the foundation of moral judgment. At the same time, in the small amount of literature that exists on this topic not much attention has been paid to what underlies Kant’s main criticisms of the moral sense. Thus a second main aim of this chapter is to uncover the way in which Kant understands the faculty of the moral sense so as to explain his main reason for rejecting the idea. My discussion is divided into four sections. In Section I, I give an account of Hutcheson’s conception of the moral sense. This sense is a perceptive faculty that explains our ability both to feel a particular kind of pleasure upon perceiving benevolence, and to appraise such benevolence as morally good on the basis of this feeling. Section II summarizes Kant’s discussion of the moral sense during his pre-Critical period. Kant’s appraisal of the concept changes during this time and culminates in the 1769/70 rejection of the moral sense as the foundation of moral judgment. In Section III, I turn to the main reason why Kant rejects the moral sense as the foundation of moral judgment—namely, because it is incapable of issuing sufficiently universal and necessary judgments of moral good and evil. I argue that underlying Kant’s rejection of the moral sense is the fact that he understands the faculty not as a “sense” proper, but as a “feeling” according to his technical understanding of these terms. In the fourth section, I conclude by briefly

38 Michael Walschots evaluating what my analysis says about Kant’s engagement with Hutcheson. I suggest that while Kant never accepted the existence of a moral sense, Hutcheson’s position was a view with which Kant often contrasted his own, and as such it played an important role in the development and expression of Kant’s mature moral philosophy.

I. Hutcheson’s Moral Sense Hutcheson’s conception of the moral sense is based on his more general psychological theory, thus in order to understand the precise nature of the moral sense it will be beneficial to understand how Hutcheson conceives of “senses” in general. The senses, for Hutcheson, are faculties responsible for the production of sensations. Sensations are perceptions or ideas that are raised in the mind involuntarily such that the Mind in such Cases is passive, and has not Power directly to prevent the Perception or Idea, or to vary it at its Reception, as long as we continue our Bodys in a state fit to be acted upon by the external Object.11 The senses, as the origin of sensations, are therefore the faculties that make it possible to be passively affected by external objects in particular ways. Sensations—i.e., what arises in the mind when passively affected by objects via the senses—do not merely consist of perceptions or ideas, but are often accompanied by feelings of pleasure and displeasure. This is not a feature unique to sensations, for Hutcheson believes that “[t]here is scarcely any Object which our Minds are employ’d about, which is not thus constituted the necessary Occasion of some Pleasure or Pain.”12 Nonetheless, Hutcheson believes that the senses and sensations especially involve feelings of pleasure or pain, for in the Preface to the Inquiry he defines the senses in general as “Determinations to be pleas’d with any Forms, or Ideas which occur to our Observation.”13 As one might expect, Hutcheson believes in the existence of more than the five external senses. He claims: “When two Perceptions are entirely different from each other, or agree in nothing but the general Idea of Sensation, we call the Powers of receiving those different Perceptions, different Senses.”14 It is when perceptions are of distinct kinds, then, that we are warranted in positing an additional sense that explains our ability to have such perceptions. In the Inquiry, Hutcheson claims that there are two other senses in addition to the five external ones in virtue of the distinct nature of the perceptions produced by them.15 First, there is what Hutcheson calls the “Internal Sense,” which is his technical term for the sense of beauty.16 Hutcheson believes this is a distinct sense because our sensations of the beautiful are of a distinct kind—namely, they are accompanied by a particular kind of pleasure; that is, the pleasure we feel only when perceiving beautiful objects. Just like the internal sense of beauty, Hutcheson believes we are warranted in

Hutcheson and Kant 39 positing the existence of yet another sense because of the distinctness of the perceptions we seem capable of having, and this is the moral sense. According to Hutcheson, we have ideas of two distinct kinds of goods: natural goods and moral goods. A natural good is what is advantageous—i.e., what is in our private advantage or self-interest—examples being a fruitful field, houses, lands, gardens, strength, and wealth.17 Moral good, on the other hand, is not associated with private advantage or self-interest, but is rather what is good independently of what is in our personal interest, examples being: kindness, friendship, generosity, and benevolence.18 A core tenant of Hutcheson’s moral philosophy is the claim that the moral motive is benevolence—i.e., the “disinterested” desire for the happiness of others.19 The idea is that when we desire the good of another, such a desire is only true benevolence when we desire their good as an end in itself and not as a means to our own pleasure. Moral goods therefore consist in benevolent actions, affections, or characters,20 and since such things are good even when they are not in our interest, they are goods of a distinct kind. That we perceive moral good as distinct from natural good is evidence, Hutcheson believes, of a distinct sense that makes it possible for us to receive such sensations. If we did not have a moral sense then we would not distinguish between the goodness of a fruitful field and a benevolent friend—they would be good for the same reason.21 Similar to the internal sense, sensing moral goods involves experiencing a particular kind of pleasure. Indeed, Hutcheson argues both that the pleasures and pains of the moral sense are different in kind from other pleasures, and that these pleasures are the highest in degree. According to Hutcheson, the pleasures “of the external Senses” are short-lived and do not give us any kind of durable pleasure or satisfaction.22 The moral sense, on the other hand, both “gives us more Pleasure and Pain, than all our other Facultys” and these pleasures “are the most delightful Ingredient in the ordinary Pleasures of Life.”23 The pleasure we experience when we perceive and reflect on moral objects is therefore distinct from as well as superior in kind to the pleasures of the external senses.24 Most important about the pleasures of the moral sense, however, is the fact that it is on the basis of such feelings that we judge benevolence to be morally good. As Hutcheson states in the introduction to Treatise II of the Inquiry, one of his two main goals is to argue That some Actions have to Men an immediate Goodness; or, that by a superior Sense, which I call a Moral one, we perceive Pleasure in the Contemplation of such Actions in others, and are determin’d to love the agent . . . without any View of further natural Advantage from them.25 Thus, a basic reconstruction of Hutcheson’s conception of the process of moral judgment might be as follows: when benevolent actions, affections, or characters (either in ourselves or others) are presented to us, passively perceiving these with the moral sense makes it such that we necessarily experience a

40 Michael Walschots particular kind of pleasure at the same time. The moral sense, on the basis of either the positive (benevolence) or negative (malevolence) associated feeling then judges the object in question (an action, affection, or character) as morally good or evil as a result.26 In this way, the moral sense and the associated feelings associated with perceiving benevolence (and malevolence) are what ultimately ground our judgments of moral good and evil.27 An important feature of Hutcheson’s moral sense that will come into play in the following sections is that it is “universal” in two senses.28 First, everyone possesses the moral sense, and everyone is capable of making judgments of moral approval and disapproval. Second, Hutcheson is also committed to the view that human beings judge the same things to be morally good and evil—namely, benevolence and malevolence. This might seem strange given moral judgments are made on the basis of purportedly “subjective” feelings of pleasure and displeasure, but Hutcheson is not naïve and acknowledges that there is much variation among human beings with respect to what they judge to be benevolent. Nonetheless, Hutcheson makes an effort to show that this does not mean that all moral evaluation is relative to each individual’s subjective feelings of approval or disapproval. As he claims in the Inquiry, there does not seem to be any Ground to believe such a Diversity in human Minds, as that the same simple Idea or Perception should give pleasure to one and pain to another, or to the same person at different times.29 According to Hutcheson, then, our feelings of approval and disapproval are linked to the simple ideas raised in us by various objects.30 This means that if the same simple ideas were to be raised in each individual by the same objects, we would all judge these objects the exact same way. In the case of moral judgments, if the same action, character, or affection always raised the same simple idea in us, we would all judge such things as either morally good or evil. However, since it is often the case that many other simple ideas come to be associated with others, whether through education, custom, etc., this causes moral judgment to vary both between individuals, and even in the same individual at different times. Hutcheson’s position is therefore an interesting one in that moral evaluation is objective in the sense that we all use the same standard and would judge similarly if we shared the same simple ideas, but variation occurs because of the ways in which different ideas become associated with one another. Moral judgments are thus not valid only for the individual subjects making them, but are valid for all of those who judge on the basis of the moral sense. In this section, I have offered a brief account of Hutcheson’s conception of the moral sense and moral judgment. The moral sense is a perceptive faculty that makes it possible for us to experience a particular kind of pleasure when perceiving benevolent objects, and to judge them as morally good, as

Hutcheson and Kant 41 opposed to naturally good, as a result. In the next section, I turn to Kant and discuss how he engaged with this idea during his early, pre-Critical writings.

II. Moral Sense Theory in Kant’s Pre-Critical Writings According to Dieter Henrich, “[t]he first explicit account of ethical problems that comes down to us from Kant’s hands was written in the last months of 1762,” and this is the Prize Essay or Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality.31 Not only this, but Paul Menzer claims that this is the first text in which we can see the effect of English moral philosophy on Kant.32 Kant’s main purpose in the section of the essay discussing moral philosophy (the final section of the fourth reflection) is to argue that moral philosophy is currently incapable of achieving certainty, evidence for this being that the concept of obligation is still unclear. This leads Kant to put forward some of his own views on obligation. He claims, for example, that there is a fundamental distinction between what he calls here “the necessity of the means” and “the necessity of the ends” (I 2:298), where the former is conditional necessity—i.e., the necessity of an action under condition of an assumed end, and the latter is absolute necessity of an action in itself. Kant claims here that only this second kind of necessity—i.e., the necessity of an action in itself—is an obligation properly—i.e., morally, speaking. In addition to this, Kant puts forward a view of which he claims to have convinced himself “after long reflection” (I 2:299). At this point in his development Kant believes that “[t]he rule: perform the most perfect action in your power, is the first formal ground of all obligation to act. Likewise, the proposition: abstain from doing that which will hinder the realization of the greatest possible perfection is the first formal ground of the duty to abstain from acting” (I 2:299). Kant is therefore at least partially endorsing Christian Wolff’s moral philosophy here. At the same time, he finds this principle problematic, for he states, “No specifically determinate obligation flows from these two rules of the good, unless they are combined with indemonstrable material principles of practical cognition” (I 2:299). In order to overcome this shortcoming of Wolff’s position, Kant turns to moral sense theory. Immediately following this criticism of Wolff’s principle of perfection, Kant states, It is only recently, namely, that people have come to realize that the faculty of representing the true is cognition, while the faculty of experiencing the good is feeling, and that the two faculties are, on no account, to be confused with each other. (I 2:299) First, what is important to note about Kant’s use of the term “feeling [Gefühl]” and “moral feeling [das moralische Gefühl]” in particular is that the latter expression is how Hutcheson’s first German translator translated

42 Michael Walschots “moral sense” into German.33 Similar to Hutcheson’s moral sense, then, if “feeling” is the faculty of experiencing the good, this means this faculty provides us with “an unanalyzable feeling of the good (which is never encountered in a thing absolutely but only relatively to a being endowed with sensibility)” (I 2:299). Kant claims we have “simple” feelings of the good, which means that “the judgement: ‘This is good,’ will be completely indemonstrable” (I 2:299). This is so because the judgment that something is good “will be an immediate effect of the consciousness of the feeling of pleasure combined with the representation of the object” (I 2:299). In other words, if representing an object immediately brings with it the feeling of pleasure, the object is judged to be good, and this judgment is indemonstrable because it is based on an unanalyzable feeling and no further justification for why such a feeling is good can be given. Kant claims that to immediately represent an action as good means that “the necessity of this action is an indemonstrable material principle of obligation” (I 2:300). Such a principle is precisely what the Wolffian principle needed in order for “specifically determinate” obligations to flow from them. In this text, we, therefore, have Kant endorsing the idea that human beings possess a faculty of “feeling” which makes them capable of having simple feelings of the good, which in turn lead to the “immediate effect” of a judgment of the kind “This is good” (I 2:299). In other words, feeling here is the basis for judging what is indemonstrably good and evil. Because Kant states that obligations “cannot be called obligations as long as they are not subordinated to an end which is necessary in itself” (I 2:298), feeling provides us with the information of what is indemonstrably good—i.e., good in itself. In claiming that no determinate obligations follow from Wolff’s two principles, Kant was essentially saying they were indeterminate, or as he’ll later say, tautological—i.e., the principles do not specify what perfection means, and we need to know what perfection means in order to know what does and does not contribute toward our perfection.34 At this point in time Kant appears to think that “feeling” is a viable way of knowing what is indemonstrably good, and therefore of knowing what perfection might consist in. Kant is therefore suggesting here that the idea that it is through feeling that we are made aware of what is morally good and evil can overcome the “indeterminacy” or “tautology” problem pertaining to Wolff’s principles, and by pairing the principles of perfection with “feeling” we are able to know what our determinate obligations are. The doctrine of feeling Kant discusses here, as one according to which feeling is the source for our knowledge of what is immediately good, sounds strikingly similar to the moral sense theory espoused by Hutcheson. It is for this reason that Kant claims here that, with respect to the problem of determining what is unconditionally necessary, “Hutcheson and others have, under the name of moral feeling [des moralischen Gefühls], provided us with a starting point from which to develop some excellent observations” (I 2:300). At the same time, it is important to point out that Kant does not seem to be outright endorsing or agreeing with Hutcheson that we have a moral sense. Indeed, in

Hutcheson and Kant 43 the final paragraph of this section of the Prize Essay, speaking of the fundamental principle of moral philosophy Kant claims that “it has yet to be determined whether it is merely the faculty of cognition, or whether it is feeling (the first inner ground of the faculty of desire) which decides its first principles” (I 2:300, my emphasis). Not only this, but Kant adds that he is skeptical of the idea that the moral sense can tell us what is indemonstrably good in that this might be “taking for indemonstrable that which in fact is capable of proof” (I 2:300). What this means, then, is that although Kant seems to think that Hutcheson (and others), with the idea of the moral sense, have provided a good option with respect to accounting for the origin of our judgments of immediate, indemonstrable goods, his mind is not yet made up as to whether these authors have it right. Although it is clear to Kant at this point that we need to determine what is indemonstrably good and what actions are unconditionally necessary in themselves as ends, at this early stage of his development he is only interested in moral sense theory as an option, but is not fully convinced that the moral sense is the faculty that provides such information. Kant continues to conceive of a role for feeling in moral judgment in his Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. Appropriately given its title, Kant begins this text with a discussion of the “feeling” of the beautiful, and it becomes clear that Kant understands “feeling” as a capacity to feel certain kinds of pleasure and displeasures (see FBS 2:208). In this text, we also begin to see Kant thinking of morality in terms of principles. He claims, for example, that “true virtue can only be grafted upon principles” (FBS 2:217). He makes this claim in the context of discussing sympathy and complaisance as “good moral qualities that are lovable and beautiful and, to the extent that they harmonize with virtue, may also be regarded as noble, even though they cannot genuinely be counted as part of the virtuous disposition” (FBS 2:215). Kant argues that grounding virtue on sympathy and complaisance is not the most reliable way to do so, for although they often “harmonize” with virtue, they do so only contingently and not necessarily, which means that following them is no sure way to act virtuously. It is for this reason that, speaking of complaisance in particular, “unless higher principles set bounds for it and weaken it, all sorts of vices may spring from it” (FBS 2:217). Kant conceives of the nature of moral principles in this text in an interesting way. He claims here that the rules or principles for good conduct are not speculative rules, but the consciousness of a feeling that lives in every human breast and that extends much further than to the special grounds of sympathy and complaisance. I believe that I can bring all this together if I say that it is the feeling of the beauty and the dignity of human nature. (FBS 2:217) Importantly, the feeling that Kant is talking about here is what he calls a few lines later “universal moral feeling [das allgemeine moralische Gefühl]” (FBS 2:217). Thus although Kant emphasizes the importance of principles in

44 Michael Walschots virtuous conduct, the content of the principles relies on a particular kind of feeling—namely, “universal moral feeling” or the feeling of the beauty and dignity of human nature. This feeling, therefore, is at the foundation of the “rules for good conduct in general” and it seems to be the basis of acting virtuously in a reliable way. We do not get many more details about the role that feeling plays in moral principle and moral judgment in this text, nor do we get more details about this peculiar feeling for the beauty and dignity of human nature, but it is clear that Kant is still entertaining the idea that feeling is somehow involved therein. Not long after the publication of the Observations, however, we start to see Kant explicitly criticizing moral sense theory. In “M. Immanuel Kant’s Announcement of the Program of his Lectures for the Winter Semester, 1765–1766,” Kant claims that moral philosophy only has the appearance of being a science and of being thoroughly grounded when, in fact, it is not. Part of the reason for this problematic state of affairs is that many believe “[t]he distinction between good and evil in actions, and the judgement of moral rightness, can be known, easily and accurately, by the human heart through what is called sentiment [Sentiment], and that without the elaborate necessity of proofs” (LA 2:311). In other words, Kant is claiming here that he thinks it is problematic to judge actions as good or evil without any proof, and presumably, therefore, that moral sense theory is mistaken in thinking it can do so. Indeed, as discussed earlier, Kant expressed reservations about moral sense theory on precisely this point when he cautioned against “taking for indemonstrable that which in fact is capable of proof” (I 2:300). On the basis of this appraisal, Kant claims in the “Announcement” that “[t]he attempts of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume, although incomplete and defective, have nonetheless penetrated furthest in the search for the fundamental principles of all morality” (LA 2:311, emphasis added). Kant adds that the attempts of these authors lack “precision” and “completeness” and that he will supplement their attempts in his lectures (see LA 2:311). As such, what is new in this text in comparison to the Prize Essay is that Kant is explicit about the attempts of these authors being “incomplete and defective,” whereas before he seemed to be on the fence about this. We also find discussion of moral sense theory in the Herder lecture notes on moral philosophy, which originate from the mid-1760s, but unfortunately there is no appraisal of whether or not moral sense theory’s conception of moral judgments is correct or not.35 Toward the end of the 1760s, we find Kant once again discussing moral feeling as performing the function of the foundation of moral judgment, but his appraisal of the idea is now decidedly negative. In a reflection dated between 1776 and 1778, discussing what appears to be his “discovery” of the antinomies, Kant states, I saw this doctrine at the beginning in a twilight, as it were. I attempted quite seriously to prove propositions and their contraries, not because

Hutcheson and Kant 45 I wanted to institute scepticism, but because I suspected an illusion of the understanding, and I wished to discover its source. The year 69 gave me great light. (R 18:69)36 Not only did the year 1769 mark an advance of Kant’s thinking on the antinomies, but it was also a shift in his thinking as a whole. According to Kuehn, 1769/70 marks the important point where Kant began to reject what he calls the “continuity thesis”—i.e., the thesis that holds “the sensitive and the intellectual form a kind of continuum.”37 More specifically, the continuity thesis states, “The only difference between intellectual and sensitive cognitions is their degree of distinctness.”38 In contrast to this view, Kant argues in the Inaugural Dissertation that sensation and intellect are two entirely different faculties, that they are independent and irreducible—i.e. that sensation and intellect are different sources of cognition, and that they are therefore different in kind, not degree. This of course has serious consequences when it comes to Kant’s understanding of moral concepts. In this text, Kant states explicitly that moral concepts “are cognised not by experiencing them but by the pure understanding itself” (ID 2:395). Given the rejection of the continuity thesis, this means that moral concept can “belong to the understanding, even though they are confused” (ID 2:395). The point is that just because a discipline is currently confused does not mean it is a system of sensitive concepts. Therefore, even if the concepts of moral philosophy are currently confused, as Kant thought at the time of the Prize Essay, this does not mean these concepts originate from sensibility, an idea he at least entertained at the time. This new understanding of things causes Kant to distance himself from those he earlier admired, claiming that “Epicurus, who reduced its [moral philosophy’s] criteria to the sense of pleasure or pain, is very rightly blamed, together with certain moderns, who have followed him to a certain extent from afar, such as Shaftesbury and his supporters” (ID 2:396). Thus, the significant turn that takes place in Kant’s thinking at this point in time, and the one relevant to my purposes in this chapter, is that he believes the attempts of Shaftesbury and his followers (i.e., Hutcheson) to furnish the first principle of moral judgment empirically—i.e., from a moral sense, are misguided. Kant now thinks moral concepts must be a priori—i.e., that “[a]ll morality is based on ideas” (R 19:108). This negative appraisal of moral sense theory’s conception of moral judgment continues into and throughout Kant’s mature period of development. If Kant came to see moral philosophy as a rational enterprise, and thus found fault with theories like Hutcheson’s, the next question to ask is what exactly Kant sees as problematic about moral sense theory. In the following section, I venture to explain Kant’s most important criticism of moral sense theory. Not only this, but I wish to offer a suggestion as to why Kant makes this criticism. My aim is to shed light on how Kant understood moral sense theory, in an effort to clarify his reasons for rejecting the view.

46 Michael Walschots

III. Kant’s Main Objection to Moral Sense Theory Dieter Henrich has rightly claimed that Kant’s most important objection to moral sense theory concerns the extent to which the moral sense can issue properly universal moral judgments.39 Kant first presents a version of this objection around the same time as his “Great Light” (see R 19:120 and DR 20:116–7), but the definitive version can be found in both the Groundwork and the second Critique where he classifies all other “heteronomous” moral theories. In the Groundwork, for example, Kant argues that all empirical moral principles—i.e., those that have a ground “taken from the particular arrangement of human nature, or the contingent circumstances in which it is placed”—are not fit to be moral laws because such principles cannot yield “universality”—i.e., they are principles that cannot hold “for all rational beings” (GMM 4:442 and see CPrR 5:41). Kant classifies the principle of “moral feeling” as empirical, and it is not difficult to see why: as we saw earlier, Hutcheson believes that moral judgments are grounded in the moral sense’s pleasurable and displeasurable feelings of approval and disapproval.40 As based on feelings, Hutcheson holds that moral judgments are indeed based on a feature of human nature. As such, Kant believes the moral sense is incapable of issuing sufficiently universal moral principles. On the one hand, this criticism is easy enough to understand: feelings are a feature of human nature and are thus incapable of issuing moral principles to a sufficient degree of universality. On the other hand, it might seem strange that Kant calls the objectivity of the moral sense into question, for as we saw earlier, there is a sense in which Hutcheson believes the judgments of the moral sense are objective. As noted, the moral sense is “universal” for Hutcheson in the sense that everyone with a moral sense finds the same things worthy of approbation and disapprobation—namely, benevolent and malevolent actions, respectively.41 Furthermore, Hutcheson believes that there is no reason to suppose that human beings are so different from person to person such that we would not all be able to perceive the benevolence in an action, feel pleasure, and judge it to be good so long as we all possess the same simple ideas.42 If Kant read Hutcheson closely, Kant surely would have been aware of this “objective” status of judgments of the moral sense. Why, then, we might ask, does Kant claim that the moral sense is incapable of providing objective moral judgments? In order to answer this question, we need to take a close look at how Kant understands Hutcheson’s moral sense. I have already noted that Kant predominantly refers to the moral sense as a moralisches Gefühl—i.e., a moral “feeling”—in line with Hutcheson’s first German translator. Although part of the explanation for Kant’s dominant usage of moral feeling is surely that he is remaining consistent with the accepted terminology of his day, there are in fact philosophical reasons for Kant’s usage. According to Kant’s theory of the mind, the three fundamental powers of the mind are the faculty of cognition [das Erkenntnißvermögen], the faculty of desire [das Begehrungsvermögen], and the feeling of pleasure and displeasure [das Gefühl der Lust

Hutcheson and Kant 47 und Unlust] (see CPJ 5:177). I wish to suggest that Kant refers to the moral sense as a moral feeling because he believes this capacity belongs under the heading of the faculty of the feeling of pleasure and displeasure rather than the faculty of cognition, to which sensibility and the senses (both inner and outer) belong (see, e.g., A 7:153ff.). This is significant, for Kant conceives of the senses and of feeling as quite distinct, as can be gleaned from a remark he makes in the Critique of Judgement: If a determination of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure is called sensation [Empfindung], then this expression means something entirely different than if I call the representation of a thing (through sense [Sinne], as a receptivity belonging to the faculty of cognition) sensation. For in the latter case the representation is related to the object, but in the first case it is related solely to the subject, and does not serve for any cognition at all, not even that by which the subject cognizes itself. (CPJ 5:206) In this passage, we see Kant making a distinction between two kinds of sensation [Empfindung]—namely, those of feeling [Gefühl] and those of the senses [Sinne]. As Kant says here, the senses belong to the faculty of cognition, and as such, they are representations related to an object and contribute to the cognition of an object. On the other hand, representations of the faculty of feeling do not relate to objects, but refer “solely to the subject” and thus do “not serve for any cognition at all” (CPJ 5:206). The essential difference between feeling and sense, for Kant, is therefore that only sense relates to objects and cognition, whereas feeling cannot ground cognition and relates only to the subject. This basic difference between sense and feeling results in there being an important difference between a moral “sense” and a moral “feeling.” Kant acknowledges that Hutcheson seems to have understood the moral sense as a proper “sense” according to Kant’s technical understanding of the term. This is accurate given the moral sense, for Hutcheson, perceives a specific “object,” namely moral good and evil in contrast to natural good and evil (see IBV 89).43 At the same time, Kant also appears to think that, whether Hutcheson realized it or not, the involvement of feelings of pleasure and displeasure in Hutcheson’s conception of moral judgment makes it such that it is more appropriate for the moral sense to belong under the heading of feeling than sense. As Kant says in the Powalski lecture notes on moral philosophy (1782–3): “Nobody has explained the system of moral feeling more than Hutcheson. He says one can perceive many characteristics of objects through feeling [Gefühl] that one cannot cognize through the mere understanding” (LEP 27:108, my emphasis). As is clear in this passage, Kant seems to think that, according to Hutcheson’s idea of the moral sense, it is ultimately a “feeling,” and not a sense, that cognizes certain aspects of objects that the understanding cannot.

48 Michael Walschots Whether Kant was right to understand the moral sense as a feeling as opposed to a sense proper is not a question I can pursue here.44 What is important for my purposes are the consequences of Kant understanding the moral sense as a feeling. Given Kant’s technical understanding of sense and feeling, it is problematic to say that a feeling makes us aware of morally good and evil objects, because feeling can tell us nothing about the objects of cognition. Perhaps for this reason, Kant claims, “A moral sense is a contradiction” (R 15:353). However, if Kant is correct in thinking that Hutcheson’s moral sense should more properly be understood as a moral feeling, such that it only provides us with information about the subject, this is where its unsuitability as the foundation of moral principles arises. As Kant claims in the Groundwork: “feelings, which by nature differ infinitely in degree from one another, can do little to yield a uniform measure of good and evil, and one by his feeling cannot validly judge for others at all” (GMM 4:442 and cf. CPrR 5:41). Indeed, as concerned only with a given subject rather than an object, feelings, for Kant, differ both between themselves and also from subject to subject. As Kant says in an early reflection on anthropology: “judgement concerning good and evil does not take place through feeling, because its [feeling’s] judgements have only private validity” (R 15:237). This signals an important difference between Hutcheson’s and Kant’s understanding of feeling and sense: whereas Hutcheson believes that the feelings associated with approval and disapproval are uniform across human nature because they are linked to the same simple ideas commonly raised in all human beings by the same objects, it is clear from the aforementioned that Kant disagrees and believes that feelings relate only to each individual subject. In contrast to Hutcheson, then, Kant believes the moral sense is fundamentally based upon (subjective) feeling and is thus incapable of grounding judgments, principles, or laws valid for all rational beings, let alone human beings. Indeed, it is important to note that even if the moral sense could issue judgments valid for all human beings, Kant disagrees with Hutcheson that the application of moral demands on all human beings is sufficient for the universality required by morality. For Kant, moral laws must apply to all rational beings, and for this reason, The universality with which they [moral laws] are to hold for all rational beings regardless of differences . . . vanishes if their ground is taken from the particular arrangement of human nature, or the contingent circumstances in which it is placed. (GMM 4:442) As soon as laws are grounded on feelings of any kind, the universality and necessity of such laws are compromised, even if these feelings were uniform across human nature. In this way, Kant argues that the moral sense, as moral feeling, is incapable of issuing sufficiently universal and necessary moral judgments—i.e., ones applicable to all rational beings, and for this reason it is not suited to function as the ground of moral judgment.

Hutcheson and Kant 49

IV. Conclusion I have illustrated that Kant eventually rejects the moral sense as the foundation of judgments of moral good an evil, and I also hope to have shown why Kant rejects it in the way he does. We still have the question, however, of what is to be said of the influence of moral sense theory during Kant’s pre-Critical period. Beginning from at least around the time of the Prize Essay onwards, it is clear that Kant is interested in determining not only how we are aware of what is morally good and evil, but also in determining how we are aware of what is morally good and evil in itself—i.e., what is unconditionally good, and not simply good for a given purpose. Based on the aforementioned analysis, I think it is clear that Kant never wholeheartedly accepted the idea that human beings possess a moral sense understood as a capacity that makes us capable of distinguishing moral good from evil. In the early to mid-1760s, we can therefore say that he was interested in, albeit not fully convinced by, this idea. With his claim in the Prize Essay that “Hutcheson and others have, under the name of moral feeling, provided us with a starting point to develop some excellent observations” (I 2:300), Kant appears to be saying that the idea of a moral sense is on to something with respect to explaining where our ideas of immediate—i.e., unconditional, goodness come from. The idea of unconditional goodness was important for Kant at this time because in order for certain actions to be unconditionally necessary, we need to first recognize them as good in themselves—i.e., unconditionally. Hutcheson and others, therefore, with their way of explaining the immediate goodness of actions, explained an essential element required for explaining unconditional obligation. Thus Kant was not, even early in his development, an adherent of moral sense theory. Kant gradually became more skeptical of the idea, and from the time of the “Great Light” onwards explicitly criticized it. The moral sense nonetheless provided Kant with an interesting answer to some questions in moral philosophy that occupied Kant’s thinking relatively early in his development. Even in his Critical writings, the moral sense as the foundation of moral judgment is a position with which Kant continually contrasted his own. Thus although Kant was never positively influenced by Hutcheson’s conception of the moral sense in the sense that Kant adopted Hutcheson’s views, the development of Kant’s thinking on the ultimate principle of morality was certainly shaped by his engagement with Hutcheson and this should not be ignored by anyone seeking to understand the intricacies of Kant’s moral philosophy.45

Notes 1. Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 183–4. 2. See esp. the tenth lecture of Gellert’s Moralische Vorlesungen, C. F. Gellert, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6, ed. Bernd Witte, 7–28 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1989), 119ff. See also Manfred Kuehn, “Ethics and Anthropology in the Development of Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” in Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A Critical Guide, ed. Jens Timmermann (Cambridge: Cambridge

50 Michael Walschots

3. 4.

5. 6.

7.

8. 9. 10.

11.

12. 13. 14.

University Press, 2009) for a discussion of how these lectures may have played an important role in Kant’s early development. See Wieland’s 1755 Ankündigung einer Dunciade für die Deutschen, Christoph Martin Wieland, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4, ed. Fritz Homeyer and Hugo Bieber (Berlin: 1916), esp. 81. See Mendelssohn’s Verwandschaft des Schönen und Guten (Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4, ed. Georg B. Mendelssohn (Leipzig, 1844), 78–82), wherein he contrasts his view with that of Hutcheson; see also Jan Engbers, Der “Moral-Sense” bei Gellert, Lessing und Wieland: Zur Rezeption von Shaftesbury und Hutcheson in Deutschland (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 2001), 86ff. Furthermore, Kuehn argues (see Manfred Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800 (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987), 41n) that Mendelssohn’s Philosophische Gespräche are patterned off of a dialogue of Shaftesbury’s, that other of his works show Shaftesbury’s influence, and that Mendelssohn even began a translation of Shaftesbury’s Sensus Communis. See Engbers, Der “Moral-Sense” bei Gellert, Lessing und Wieland: Zur Rezeption von Shaftesbury und Hutcheson in Deutschland, esp. 59–66. Indeed, Engbers claims that the reception of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson in Germany falls into two stages: (1) the period between 1750–56 wherein Shaftesbury’s ideas are discussed and processed, and (2) the ten-year period after 1756 wherein Hutcheson’s thought is largely criticized; see Engbers, Der “Moral-Sense” bei Gellert, Lessing und Wieland, 8. This is of course not the only idea of Hutcheson’s that may have intrigued Kant. One other main feature of Hutcheson’s philosophy that likely caught Kant’s attention was Hutcheson’s conception of moral motivation. This topic deserves extended discussion on its own and space does not permit me to engage with it here. See however the contributions by Garrett, Deimling, and Sensen in this volume for more information.* Ludwig Ernst Borowski, Über Immanuel Kant. Erster Band: Darstellung des Lebens und Charakters Immanuel Kant’s (Königsberg: F. Nicolovius, 1804), 170. Alexander Murray MacBeath, “Kant on Moral Feeling,” Kant-Studien 64 (1973), 3, 283; and Paul Arthur Schilpp, Kant’s Pre-Critical Ethics (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1938), 39. Joseph Schmucker, Die Ursprünge der Ethik Kants in seinen vorkritischen Schriften und Reflexionen (Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Heim, 1961), 21–2. See Dieter Henrich, “Hutcheson and Kant,” in Kant’s Moral and Legal Philosophy, ed. Karl Ameriks and Ottfried Höffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 31, though Henrich does not share this view. Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (IBV), ed. with Introduction by Wolfgang Leidhold, revised edition (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 2008), 19. Although I quote from modern editions of Hutcheson’s works, in researching this chapter, I have primarily made reference to the 4th edition of the Inquiry (1738) and the 4th edition of the Essay (1756) because these are the editions that formed the basis of the translations that Kant owned. See Arthur Warda, Kants Bücher (Berlin: Martin Breslauer, 1922), 50; Heiner Klemme and Manfred Kuehn, ed., The Reception of British Aesthetics in Germany: Seven Significant Translations, 1745–1776, vol. 4 (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2001), v; and Francis Hutcheson, Abhandlung über die Natur und Beherrschung der Leidenschaften und Neigungen und über das moralische Gefühl insonderheit, anonymous translation (Leipzig: Siegert, 1760), 2. IBV 8. IBV 8. IBV 19.

Hutcheson and Kant 51 15. In the Essay Hutcheson introduces a number of additional senses, such as the sense of honour and the “publick” sense (see Francis Hutcheson, An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense, ed. Aaron Garret (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 2002), NCP 17f.). These other senses are not relevant to my aims here, so I leave them aside. 16. NCP 9. 17. IBV 89ff. 18. IBV 90. 19. IBV 103. 20. According to Scott (William Robert Scott, Francis Hutcheson (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1900), 190), although Hutcheson fairly clearly stresses that it is the affection or motive we approve of as morally good, he claims that Hutcheson is at times ambiguous whether it is one’s character that we approve, or the properly motivated actions. It is my view that Hutcheson believes that actions, characters, as well as affections are capable of being morally good. 21. IBV 90. 22. IBV 164. 23. IBV 163. 24. See Scott, Francis Hutcheson, 200; and Stephen Darwall, The British Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought’: 1640–1740 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 214 for a discussion. 25. IBV 88. 26. For more detailed discussions of how moral judgements are made, for Hutcheson, see Mark Philip Strasser, Francis Hutcheson’s Moral Theory (Wolfeboro, NH: Longwood Academic, 1900), 13, 29; and Thomas Fowler, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Kivington, 1882), 186. 27. It should be noted that there is some debate in the literature over whether it is ultimately the moral sense or reason that is the foundation of moral judgement, for Hutcheson. I side with a number of interpreters who claim the moral sense plays the role of the foundation of moral judgement see J. B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 341; William T. Blackstone, Francis Hutcheson and Contemporary Ethical Theory (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1965), 18; William Frankena, “Hutcheson’s Moral Sense Theory,” Journal of the History of Ideas 16/3 (1955): 374; Henning Jensen, Motivation and the Moral Sense (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971), 59; Luigi Turco, “Moral Sense and the Foundations of Morals,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Alexander Broadie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 141; and Michael B. Gill, The British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 159. For the interpretation that Hutcheson is ambiguous about whether this role is played by the moral sense or reason, see Scott, Francis Hutcheson, 209; Fowler, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, 188, 192–3; and D. D. Raphael, The Moral Sense (London: Oxford University Press, 1947), 25. For the question of whether it is ultimately God who defines moral goodness since He gives us the moral sense, see Fowler, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, 56; and Henrich, “Hutcheson and Kant,” 38. 28. IBV 136. 29. IBV 22. 30. IBV 21. 31. Dieter Henrich, “Concerning Kant’s Earliest Ethics: An Attempt at a Reconstruction,” in Kant’s Observations and Remarks: A Critical Guide, ed. Susan Meld Shell and Richard Velkley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 15.

52 Michael Walschots 32. Paul Menzer, “Entwicklungsgang der kantischen Ethik in den Jahren 1760– 1785,” Kant-Studien 2 (1898): 302. 33. See, e.g., Hutcheson, Abhandlung über die Natur und Beherrschung der Leidenschaften und Neigungen und über das moralische Gefühl insonderheit. 34. See esp. Immanuel Kant, Vorlesung zur Moralphilosophie, ed. Werner Stark (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004), 60. 35. Although the reliability of these notes as a source for Kant’s own ideas is questionable (see J. B. Schneewind, “Introduction,” in Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, ed. and trans. Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), xiv and Gerhard Lehmann’s discussion at MP 28: 1353f.), it is interesting to note that these notes contain a discussion of moral feeling in much the same way as Hutcheson conceived of the moral sense. For example, moral feeling is “unanalyzable” and judgements of moral good and evil on the basis of moral feeling are “basic” (LEH 27: 5, compare IBV 85f.). Additionally, moral feeling is “unequivocal” or “unanimous” [einstimmig] (LEH 27: 5), which presumably means every human being’s moral feeling finds the same things worthy of approbation and disapprobation, a feature which we have seen in shared by Hutcheson’s moral sense (see IBV 136ff.). 36. Translation from Manfred Kuehn, “The Moral Dimension of Kant’s Great Light of 1769,” in Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress, vol. 1, ed. Hoke Robinson (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1995), 373. 37. Kuehn, “The Moral Dimension of Kant’s Great Light of 1769,” 376. 38. Kuehn, “The Moral Dimension of Kant’s Great Light of 1769,” 376. 39. See Henrich, “Hutcheson and Kant,” 34. 40. See IBV 89. 41. IBV 136. 42. IBV 21. 43. Indeed, that Hutcheson understood the moral sense as concerned with the cognition of objects and not only the state of the subject is at part of the reason why there is so much debate concerning his moral realism. See Frankena, “Hutcheson’s Moral Sense Theory”; David Fate Norton, “Hutcheson’s Moral Realism,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 23 (1985): 397–418; Darwall, The British Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought’, 213; Gill, The British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular Ethics, 169, 297; and Terence Irwin, The Development of Ethics, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 399ff. for a discussion. 44. On the one hand, Kant is right to understand the moral sense as a feeling: the characteristic feature of the moral sense is that it allows us to feel pleasure or displeasure based on what we perceive, and we make judgements of moral good and evil on the basis of these feelings. Although Hutcheson says that the moral “sense” as a capacity allows us to perceive morally good and evil objects in the first place (see IBV 88), what is central to this perceptive capacity, indeed what is central to any sense, for Hutcheson, is the precise nature of the perceptions, ideas, and sentiments—i.e., feelings of pleasure and displeasure—to which a given sense gives rise (see IBV 8). On the other hand, Hutcheson explicitly states that the moral sense, as a sense, is a passive capacity that produces sensations in the mind when presented with external objects (see IBV 19). In any event, what is clear is that, regardless of whether or not Kant should have understood the moral sense as a feeling, he did understand it as such and this has important consequences for what he finds problematic about moral sense theory. 45. I wish to thank the DAAD and the SSHRC for their generous financial support, as well as Corey Dyck, Lorne Falkenstein, Heiner Klemme, and Dennis Klimchuk for their feedback on earlier versions of this chapter.

Hutcheson and Kant 53

References Blackstone, William T. Francis Hutcheson and Contemporary Ethical Theory. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1965. Borowski, Ludwig Ernst. Über Immanuel Kant. Erster Band: Darstellung des Lebens und Charakters Immanuel Kant’s. Königsberg: F. Nicolovius, 1804. Darwall, Stephen. The British Moralists and the Internal “Ought”: 1640–1740. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Engbers, Jan. Der “Moral-Sense” bei Gellert, Lessing und Wieland: Zur Rezeption von Shaftesbury und Hutcheson in Deutschland. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 2001. Fowler, Thomas. Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Kivington, 1882. Frankena, William. “Hutcheson’s Moral Sense Theory.” Journal of the History of Ideas 16 (1955): 356–75. Gellert, C. F. Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by Bernd Witte. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1989. Gill, Michael B. The British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Henrich, Dieter. “Concerning Kant’s Earliest Ethics: An Attempt at a Reconstruction.” In Kant’s Observations and Remarks: A Critical Guide, edited by Susan Meld Shell and Richard Velkley, 13–37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Henrich, Dieter. “Hutcheson and Kant.” In Kant’s Moral and Legal Philosophy, edited by Karl Ameriks and Ottfried Höffe, 29–57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Hutcheson, Francis. Abhandlung über die Natur und Beherrschung der Leidenschaften und Neigungen und über das moralische Gefühl insonderheit. Anonymous translation. Leipzig: Siegert, 1760. Hutcheson, Francis. An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections: With Illustrations on the Moral Sense. Edited by Aaron Garret. Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 2002. Hutcheson, Francis. An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, revised edition. Edited with Introduction by Wolfgang Leidhold. Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 2008. Hutcheson, Francis. On Human Nature. Edited by Thomas Mautner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Hutcheson, Francis. A System of Moral Philosophy, 2 vols. London: Miller and Longman, 1755. Hutcheson, Francis. Untersuchung unserer Begriffe von Schönheit und Tugend. Translated by Johann Heinrich Merck. Frankfurt: Fleischer, 1762. Irwin, Terence. The Development of Ethics, vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Jensen, Henning. Motivation and the Moral Sense. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971. Kant, Immanuel. Gesammelte Schriften. Akademie Ausgabe. Edited by Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. 1–22; Edited by Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, vol. 23; Edited by Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, vol. 24ff. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1900. Kant, Immanuel. Vorlesung zur Moralphilosophie. Edited by Werner Stark. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004.

54 Michael Walschots Klemme, Heiner and Manfred Kuehn, ed. The Reception of British Aesthetics in Germany: Seven Significant Translations, 1745–1776, 7 vols. With Introductions by Manfred Kuehn and Heiner Klemme. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2001. Kuehn, Manfred. “Ethics and Anthropology in the Development of Kant’s Moral Philosophy.” In Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A Critical Guide, edited by Jens Timmermann, 7–28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Kuehn, Manfred. “The Moral Dimension of Kant’s Great Light of 1769.” In Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress, vol. 1, edited by Hoke Robinson, 373–92. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1995. Kuehn, Manfred. Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800. Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987. MacBeath, Alexander Murray “Kant on Moral Feeling.” Kant-Studien 64 (1973): 283–314. Mendelssohn, Moses. Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by Georg B. Mendelssohn. Leipzig, 1844. Menzer, Paul. “Entwicklungsgang der kantischen Ethik in den Jahren 1760–1785.” Kant-Studien 2 (1898): 290–322. Norton, David Fate. “Hutcheson’s Moral Realism.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 23 (1985): 397–418. Raphael, D. D. The Moral Sense. London: Oxford University Press, 1947. Schilpp, Paul Arthur. Kant’s Pre-Critical Ethics. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1938. Schmucker, Joseph. Die Ursprünge der Ethik Kants in seinen vorkritischen Schriften und Reflexionen. Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Heim, 1961. Schneewind, J. B. “Introduction.” In Kant, Immanuel, Lectures on Ethics, edited and translated by Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Schneewind, J. B. The Invention of Autonomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Scott, William Robert. Francis Hutcheson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900. Strasser, Mark Philip. Francis Hutcheson’s Moral Theory. Wolfeboro, NH: Longwood Academic, 1900. Turco, Luigi. “Moral Sense and the Foundations of Morals.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment, edited by Alexander Broadie, 136–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Warda, Arthur. Kants Bücher. Berlin: Martin Breslauer, 1922. Wieland, Christoph Martin. Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by Fritz Homeyer and Hugo Bieber. Berlin: Wiedmann, 1916.

3

Hutcheson’s and Kant’s Critique of Sympathy Wiebke Deimling

This essay looks at Francis Hutcheson’s and Immanuel Kant’s accounts of sharing in others’ sadness and suffering. Hutcheson refers to this phenomenon as compassion while Kant calls it sympathy. I argue for three main points. (1) Even though compassion plays an important role in Hutcheson’s argument for benevolence as a true motive of our actions, his evaluation of it recommends caution: while compassion is overall a positive factor for moral action it does come with risks. (2) Kant’s evaluation of sympathy is similar to Hutcheson’s analysis of compassion: both in that he ascribes a morally positive role to sharing others’ emotions and in that he recommends caution in ways similar to Hutcheson. (3) Kant rejects Hutcheson’s idea that reflection on our emotional response can ensure that compassion is morally beneficial. In developing a moral sense theory Hutcheson’s account clearly ascribes a positive role to moral emotions. And his writings are striking in their optimism about our natural dispositions. But taking a closer look at his evaluation of compassion shows that he nevertheless takes a critical perspective on moral emotions. Kant’s evaluation of moral emotions has often been understood chiefly in terms of his deontology. This has been true for both sides of a debate in the scholarship—that is, for readings stressing Kant’s critique of moral emotions and for readings arguing that Kant ascribes a positive role to them. The canonical reading argues that moral action is based on pure practical reason and that all emotions, including moral emotions, interfere with sound moral judgment and are unreliable motivators. Challenging this picture, scholars have shown how the general deontological framework leaves room for moral emotions to be meaningful to Kant’s ethics. But the focus on what does and does not fit with the deontological framework can lead us to neglect Kant’s insights about particular emotions. This chapter takes a detailed look at Kant’s evaluation of sympathy and compares it to Hutcheson’s account of compassion. It reveals that Kant has rich thoughts on sympathy and it shows how being too focused on the deontological nature of Kant’s account can distort our understanding of Kant’s relationship with his predecessors. To make a long story short: I want to show that Hutcheson, contrary to our expectations, is fairly critical of compassion and that Kant,

56 Wiebke Deimling contrary to our expectations revised by the recent scholarship, shares and further expands those criticisms.

I. Hutcheson on Compassion and the Passions The Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections introduces compassion and its complement as follows. We naturally desire the absent Happiness of others; rejoice in it when obtained, and sorrow for it when lost. We have Aversion to any impending Misery; we are sorrowful when it befals any Person, and rejoice when it is removed. This Aversion and Sorrow we often call Pity or Compassion; the Joy we may call Congratulation. (NCP 56) Compassion, according to the Essay, is our sharing in others’ suffering and the associated motive to relieve this suffering. Hutcheson is well known for his defense of benevolence against Thomas Hobbes’s psychological egoism, Samuel Pufendorf’s divine voluntarism, and Bernard Mandeville’s skepticism regarding morality. Hutcheson argues that benevolence is a real and natural motive and not to be explained away in terms of self-love. In support of this view in the Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue Hutcheson points to our feelings of compassion. Let us next consider another Determination of our Mind, which strongly proves Benevolence to be natural to us, and that is Compassion; by which we are dispos’d to study the Interest of others, without any Views of private Advantage. This needs little Illustration. Every Mortal is made uneasy by any grievous Misery he sees another involv’d in, unless the Person be imagin’d evil, in a moral Sense: Nay, it is almost impossible for us to be unmov’d, even in that Case. Advantage may make us do a cruel Action, or may overcome Pity; but it scarce ever extinguishes it. A sudden Passion of Hatred or Anger may represent a Person as absolutely evil, and so extinguish Pity; but when the Passion is over, it often returns. (IBV 159) We feel compassion even in situations where relieving the suffering we are observing brings no advantage to us. Hutcheson does not give us examples for this general claim but we can fill in the details for him: we can feel compassion in situations where there is no hope for help in return, either because the person in need of help is not capable of helping us or because we ourselves are not in need of help. We even tend to feel compassion for someone who has wronged us, that is who has acted against our self-interest. Bolstering the argument, Hutcheson rejects the view that compassion is self-interested instead of an originally benevolent motive because we act on

Critique of Sympathy 57 it to relieve others’ suffering only to relieve our own pain in sharing their suffering (IBV 111 and 160). He argues that if relieving our own pain was the only motive for compassionate action, we might as well “run away, shut our Eyes, divert our Thoughts from the miserable Object, to avoid Pain of Compassion” (IBV 111). But we do not run away from those who suffer. On the contrary: we often seek them out deliberately (IBV 111 and 160). In the Essay Hutcheson takes his argument further. What if someone objected that sometimes we cannot turn our attention away? What if we are constantly reminded for some reason or psychologically unable to get someone’s plight off our mind? He proposes the following thought experiment: Were it our only View, in Compassion to free our selves from the Pain of the publick Sense; should the Deity propose it to our Choice, either to obliterate all Ideas of the Person in Distress, but to continue him in Misery, or on the other hand to relieve him from it; should we not upon this Scheme be perfectly indifferent, and chuse the former as soon as the latter? (NCP 27) If we have a preference for the person being relieved from their suffering over receiving divine help to forget them, it must be because we are genuinely benevolent. For Hutcheson compassion is an expression of the public sense. The latter he defines as “our Determination to be pleased with the Happiness Of others, and to be uneasy at their Misery” (NCP 17). The public sense comes with corresponding public desires “toward the Happiness of others, or the removal of Misery” (NCP 19). These are equivalent to benevolent desires and opposed to selfish desires. The public sense and the moral sense stand in close connection with one another. The moral sense responds to “Virtue, or Vice in themselves,” (NCP 17) and we recognize the expression of public sense and public desire as a virtue (NCP 19; see also 33). But Hutcheson also stresses that the two differ from one another. We can respond to others’ happiness and misery without responding to virtue or lack of virtue. While compassion is an expression of the public sense it is not its only expression. He contrasts compassion with “Natural Affection, [. . .], Friendship, or even general Benevolence to Mankind” (NCP 19). Especially the contrast between compassion and general benevolence to Mankind is important for Hutcheson’s evaluation of compassion. There are two related distinctions relevant to this contrast: that between general desires and particular affections, but also secondarily the distinction between affections and passions. Hutcheson contrasts general benevolence as a general desire, with compassion as a particular affection, along with love, anger, and ambition, which are also introduced as particular affections. While particular reflections respond to “Objects immediately presented to some sense” general desires respond immediately through “Reason or Reflection” (NCP 31). In

58 Wiebke Deimling responding immediately, general desires are calm (NCP 31). Right before he contrasts particular affections and general desires, Hutcheson makes another distinction by contrasting passions and affections. He notes that “affection” can be used in a broader sense to include the passions but also more narrowly to introduce the distinction. Passions are a special kind of affection. A passion for Hutcheson is a “confused Sensation either of Pleasure or Pain, occasioned or attended by some violent bodily Monitions, which keeps the Mind employed upon the present Affair, to the exclusion of everything else, and prolongs or strengthens the Affection sometime to such a degree, as to prevent all deliberate Reasoning about our conduct” (NCP 31). Passions are more intense than the ordinary affections at least in so far as the bodily states associated with them are concerned. Why are they “confused?” Hutcheson draws heavily on Malebranche’s taxonomy of the passions, which explains some of his terminology.1 But we can also read the last part of Hutcheson’s analysis in the passage quoted as an explanation of what it means for a passion to be confused. Passions are confused in that their perspective is inappropriately narrow. When we are excited or angry about something, for example, we might have a hard time thinking about anything else. And when we feel compassion for someone, his or her suffering might take up a lot of our attention, and it might be difficult to proceed with our lives as usual. It is not straightforwardly clear how Hutcheson takes the distinctions between general desires and particular affections on the one hand and between affections and passions on the other hand to relate to each other. Are they independent from one another, or are they two perspectives on the same distinction? Since the distinctions occur right after one another in the Essay and appear to be part of the same train of thought, one might be tempted to say that they are the same distinction, and scholars have indeed identified them.2 But the text, if we look closely, provides us with some hints that suggest the contrary. It refers to “the particular Affections or Passions of Love, Congratulation, Compassion, natural Affection” (NCP 32). We might take the “or” here to suggest equivalence in the use of the terms “Affections” and “Passions.” But it more likely indicates that the two distinctions can come apart. This fits with the fact that Hutcheson does present them as two separate distinctions. But he also refers to public particular affections as “Affections or Passions” while earlier referring to selfish particular affections only as “Passions” (NCP 31f.).3 This suggests that particular selfish affections have a strong tendency to be passions, while this tendency is not as strong for particular public desires. It suggests that there are particular affections that are not passions. There is good reason to think that Hutcheson’s distinctions draw on his engagement with the Stoics. He starts his discussion of ways of dividing our emotional responses with the Stoic system, then focuses on Malebranche, and eventually develops his own taxonomy. Christian Maurer has argued convincingly that Hutcheson’s distinction between affects and passions

Critique of Sympathy 59 maps onto the Stoic distinction between constantiæ and perturbationes to be found in Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations. I think Maurer’s assessment of the Stoic influence is right, but that having both distinctions, between affections and passions and between particular affections and general desires, complicates the issue. Maurer treats them as two ways of phrasing the same contrast, but if we treat them as independent, it is not clear which one of the two maps onto the Stoic distinction.4 I will show next how Hutcheson uses the added complexity in his taxonomy of our emotions to enable a careful evaluation of our responses. But let me first turn to what Hutcheson has to say about the evaluation of compassion in particular. The fact that compassion in contrast to “general benevolence to Mankind” is a particular affection impacts its moral standing. Our moral Sense, though it approves all particular kind Affection or Passion, as well as calm particular Benevolence abstractly considered; yet is also approves Restraint and Limitation of all particular Affections or Passions, by the calm universal benevolence. To make this Desire prevalent above all particular Affections, is the only sure way to obtain constant Self-Approbation. (NCP 33) Compassion as a particular affection does have moral value. But it is only contingently valuable depending on its relation to general benevolence. General benevolence is to guide the particular affections and has to curtail them where necessary. This, of course, poses a question: in what situations do the particular affections need to be curtailed? In the Essay, Hutcheson gives us more detail. Our publick Desires are affected by confused Ideas, in the same manner with our private Desires. What is apprehended as Good, thro’ an Association of foreign Ideas, shall be pursued for those we love, as well as what is really good for them. Our benevolent Passions in the nearer Ties, are as apt to be too violent as any whatsoever: this we may often experience in the Love of Offspring, Relations, Parties, Cabals. The Violence of our Passion makes us sometimes incapable of pursuing effectually their Good, and sinks us into an useless State of Sorrow upon their Misfortunes. Compassion often makes the Evil greater to the Spectator than to the Sufferer; and sometimes subjects the Happiness of a Person of great Worth, to every Accident befalling one entirely void of it. (NCP 71) The reference to confusion in the passage clearly points back to the definition of a passion as a “confused Sensation.” Compassion as a public desire can become a passion just like a selfish desire can. This is often overlooked in the scholarship where compassion is generally presented as unproblematically

60 Wiebke Deimling supporting benevolence and/or functioning as its source.5 In the passage quoted, Hutcheson stresses that compassion is especially likely to turn into a passion if it is compassion we feel toward those close to us. Compassion can become overwhelming in a way that renders it ineffective. The analysis of passion from the Essay discussed earlier gives us resources to interpret this claim. We have seen that passions are narrowly focused. They give us tunnel vision, which can make us incapable of seeing the relevant details and paths to action to alleviating somebody’s suffering. It can tempt us to wallow in sorrow instead of taking action. Finally, Hutcheson warns that compassion carries the risk of burdening us unnecessarily. In the Inquiry, in the framework of his argument that compassion is a natural motive, he points out that we should limit compassion when it puts an unnecessary burden on us. Feelings of compassion are only an acceptable burden when they are effective. But we are excited directly to desire the Relief of the Miserable; without any imagination that this Relief is a private Good to our selves: And if we see this impossible, we may by Reflection discern it to be vain for us to indulge our Compassion any further; and then Self-love prompts us to retire from the Object which occasions our Pain, and to endeavour to divert our Thoughts. (IBV 160) Hutcheson not only draws on the Stoic account to give a taxonomy of our emotional states but also to recommend caution regarding certain emotions. We can see his expression of this caution in his evaluation of compassion. The distinctions Hutcheson introduces enable him to recommend subtly but importantly different attitudes depending on the circumstances. Compassion in all of its expressions is a particular affection. Since, unlike general desires, it is not based on reflection it is by definition at risk of missing salient details. To support moral action it needs guidance from general benevolence. We should endorse compassion as morally edifying but be aware that it always needs monitoring and adjustment. In circumstances where compassion becomes a passion in the sense discussed earlier, it needs a firmer response. Passions, by drawing us into their narrow focus, resist the broader perspective needed for general benevolence.

II. Kant on Sympathy and the Passions It is clear that Kant thoroughly engaged with Hutcheson. He owned translations of both the Inquiry and the Essay and he refers to Hutcheson implicitly and explicitly in many of his major works.6 Kant’s views on sympathy have received some attention over the last 20 years of scholarship. Scholars have argued for a positive role of sympathy in Kant’s account correcting the canonical reading, which sees Kant’s ethics as leaving no room for moral emotions.7 These arguments have advanced our understanding of Kant’s ethics and also provided an interesting perspective on sympathy. But I think

Critique of Sympathy 61 the resulting accounts eclipse an important part of Kant’s picture. I argued so far that Hutcheson’s distinctions between particular affections and general desires on the one hand, and between affections and passions on the other hand is central to his evaluation of sympathy. Kant does not have a distinction that maps onto Hutcheson’s distinction between particular affections and general desires but the similarity between Hutcheson’s and Kant’s accounts of the passions is striking. For Kant too passions are particularly strong and overwhelming affective states that take up all of our attention. In the published Anthropology Kant describes a passion as follows: “Inclination that prevents reason from comparing it with the sum of all inclinations in respect to a certain choice is passion (passio animi)” (A 7:265). But if we compare Kant’s account to Hutcheson’s analysis, we can see that Kant also introduces different distinctions. He describes another emotional state, which falls under the description of a state that narrows our focus. Passions for Kant are a kind of desire. But he also points to a corresponding feeling. An “affect,” for Kant is “the feeling of a pleasure or displeasure in the subject’s present state that does not let him rise to reflection” (A 7:251) and as a “surprise through sensation, by means of which the mind’s composure (animus sui compos) is suspended.” (A 7:252). He also provides an example. Generally speaking, it is not the intensity of a certain feeling that constitutes the affected state, but the lack of reflection in comparing this feeling with the sum of all feelings8 (of pleasure and displeasure). The rich person, whose servant clumsily breaks a beautiful and rare crystal goblet while carrying it around, would think nothing of this accident if, at the same moment, he were to compare this loss of one pleasure with the multitude of all the pleasures that his fortunate position as a rich man offers him. However, if he now gives himself over completely to this one feeling of pain (without quickly making that calculation in thought), then it is no wonder that, as a result, he feels as if his entire happiness were lost. (A 7:254)9 If an intense emotional state lets us maintain composure, it is not an affect. What makes it an affect is the tunnel vision it imposes on us. The rich man has an affect because he can think of nothing but the loss of the vase as a subject of his anger. Kant’s example also shows why the emotion is morally problematic. The rich man, because he is unable to take into account the relevant information, is prone to judge and treat his servant unfairly. He is unable to take into account, for example, that the servant has intended no harm and has not done much harm all things considered, that the servant has served him well for many years, and expressed regret about the incident. But it is also fairly easy for the rich man in Kant’s example to correct for his morally problematic response. He just needs to step back, take a deep breath, and “quickly mak[e] the calculation in his thought” (A 7:254). Then the affect will subside.

62 Wiebke Deimling The distinction between affects and passions for Kant is dependent on a more general contrast between feelings and desires. Affect is a type of feeling while passion is a type of desire. Kant is not always clear about these distinctions and, as we can see from the early notes on Kant’s anthropology lectures, it takes him a while to develop them. In the lecture notes we have from Collins and Parow (1772/73) Kant is presented as not only grouping affects together with desires systematically but also as introducing affect as a type of desire (AC 25:210). He is reported to have said, “Affect [Affeckt] in German is called passion [Leidenschaft]” (APa 25:412).10 But even in these two lectures, Kant paddles back and acknowledges that, strictly speaking, affects (unlike passions) should be grouped under feelings. However, this acknowledgment and taking back of his original classification does not change much about the way he integrates affects into his taxonomy. They still appear in the role of desires. The distinction between affects and passions in these early lectures is not clearly spelled out. Interestingly, he credits the British moral tradition with the distinction: “Some English authors distinguish, and rightly so, affect and passion . . . Passion is a desire . . . but affect is a feeling . . .” (AC 25:212, see also APa 25:413). The lecture notes we have from Friendländer even report Kant mentioning Hutcheson explicitly: “The agitations of the mind are twofold, affects and passions. One has taken these to be the same, however Hutcheson first made here an entirely correct distinction (see AF 25:589).” The lecture notes we have from Friedländer also show us that by 1775/76 Kant has fully worked out his taxonomy and gives a sharp distinction between what falls under feeling and what falls under desire. Here Kant does not start out his treatment of the faculty of desire with a general overview of different types of desire including affects, which appeared in the earlier lectures. He introduces affects and passions as clearly distinct. He also for the first time introduces a broader term that subsumes both affects and passions: “agitations of the mind [Gemüths Bewegungen] are twofold, affects and passions” (AF 25:589). While Kant soon clearly subsumes affects under feelings he never changes his mode of presentation. He treats affects within his discussion of desires up to the published Anthropology. In the Menschenkunde lecture notes (1781/82), Kant provides a brief justification for this: Generally affects belong in the section on pleasure and displeasure, e.g. joy and fear, and therefore to the feelings. But how feelings pass into inclinations, of this we will judge better, if we can treat affects in relation to passions. (AMe 25:1116) The thought seems to be that treating affects together with passions will make us think about affects more in terms of the consequences they can have on what we desire. This is more useful for us, since our goal is ultimately to regulate our behavior appropriately.

Critique of Sympathy 63 Even though Kant reports that his distinction between affects and passions is motivated by engagement with Hutcheson and the moral sense tradition it differs from Hutcheson’s distinction between affections and passions. Hutcheson does distinguish between feelings and desires. He does so based on whether the emotional response is caused by an object present/certain or caused by an expected/uncertain object. Perhaps it may be more easy to conceive our Affections and Passions in this manner. The Apprehension of Good, either to our selves or others, as attainable, raises Desire: The like Apprehension of Evil, or of the Loss of Good, raises Aversion, or Desire of removing or preventing it. These two are the proper Affections, distinct from all Sensation: We may call both Desires if we please. The Reflection upon the Presence or certain Futurity of any Good, raises the Sensation of Joy, which is distinct from those immediate Sensations which arise from the Object itself. A like Sensation is raised, when we reflect upon the Removal or Prevention of Evil which once threatened our selves or others. The Reflection upon the Presence of Evil, or the certain Prospect of it, or of the Loss of Good, is the Occasion of the Sensation of Sorrow, distinct from those immediate Sensations arising from the Objects or Events themselves. (NCP 50f.) This passage gives us a distinction between feeling and desire. But there is no reason to think that for Hutcheson a distinction between feeling and desire underlies the distinction between affect and passion as it does for Kant. For Kant both affects and passions are intense affective states that narrow our focus. But one is a feeling and one is a desire. For Hutcheson only passions give us tunnel vision while affections do not. Kant, like Hutcheson sees sympathy as a double-edged sword: he stresses that it can play a positive role but he also points out that it poses challenges. In his taxonomy of duties provided in the “Doctrine of Virtue” Kant claims that we have an obligation to sympathy: “Sympathetic feeling is generally a duty” (MM 6:456). He stresses that “humanity can be located [. . .] in the capacity and the will to share in others’ feelings (humanitas practica)” (MM 6:457). This clearly suggests that sympathy plays a morally positive role, that it can aid practical reason. He recommends caution toward sympathy with an appeal to the attitude of the stoic sage similar to Hutcheson’s. But there cannot possibly be a duty to increase the ills in the world and so to do good from compassion. This would also be an insulting kind of beneficence, since it expresses the kind of benevolence one has toward someone unworthy, called pity; and this has no place in people’s relations with one another, since they are not to make a display of their worthiness to be happy. [. . .] It was a sublime way of thinking that the Stoic ascribed to his wise man when he had him say “I wish for a friend,

64 Wiebke Deimling not that he might help me in poverty, sickness, imprisonment, etc., but rather that I might stand by him and rescue a human being.” But the same wise man, when he could not rescue his friend, said to himself “what is it to me?” In other words, he rejected compassion. In fact, when another suffers and, although I cannot help him, I let myself be infected by his pain (through my imagination), then two of us suffer, though the trouble really (in nature) affects only one. But there cannot possibly be a duty to increase the ills in the world. (MM 6:457)11 Kant, like Hutcheson for compassion, expresses that sympathy can be an undue burden. He also adds that sympathy can cause resentment toward the person we feel sympathy for. It leads us to see the other person as a burden, as quite literally a pain. How can we make these two claims, the claim that we have a duty to sympathetic feeling and the claim that we cannot have a duty “to do good from compassion,” consistent with one another? When Kant introduces sympathy as a duty, he stresses that it is not straightforwardly a duty to have a feeling. He distinguishes “the capacity and the will to share in others’ feelings (humanitas practica)” from “the receptivity, given by nature itself, to the feeling of joy and sadness in common with others (humanitas aesthetica)” (MM 6:457). When we feel sympathy that is supportive of morality it is at least to some extent under our control. And we have a duty to exercise this control. The sage, in the passage quoted earlier, is able to direct her attention away from sympathetic pain in situations where using it as an incentive to help is not an option. The “what is it to me?” expresses that she does not take the pain to be central to her overall disposition. In the Anthropology Kant makes the following distinction. Concerning the grief that one broods over intentionally, as something [that] will end only with his life, it is said that he grieves over it (a misfortune).—But one must not grieve over anything; what cannot be changed must be driven from the mind: because it would be nonsense to want to make what happened into what has not happened. To better oneself is good and is also a duty but to want to improve on what is already beyond my power is absurd. On the other hand, taking something to heart, which means to make a firm resolution to adopt any good advice or teaching, is the deliberate determination to connect our will with a sufficiently strong feeling for carrying it out. (A 7:236) The sage does not grieve over anything. But she can take something to heart. When taking sympathetic joy and sadness to heart she chooses to give it her attention. And she can thereby make it an incentive for action. But she can also turn her attention away from the feeling. This is not the case for someone who grieves over a feeling.12 When we grieve over a feeling, it becomes

Critique of Sympathy 65 overwhelming and narrows our focus as I have just described it for affects and passions. We are unable to shift our attention away from it. As Lara Denis notes Kant’s Stoic sage does not reject emotion altogether. But she is free of affect and, as one should add, free of passion.13 And this includes of course being free of sympathy as an affect or passion. I pointed out earlier that Hutcheson uses the distinctions between particular affections and general desires on the one hand and between affections and passions on the other hand to recommend a nuanced attitude toward our emotional responses including our sympathetic responses. I have also pointed out that Kant introduces a distinction between affects and passions that differs from Hutcheson’s. Like Hutcheson Kant uses his taxonomy of emotional states to give nuanced evaluations of our emotional responses. Thinking through his distinctions and the related evaluations bring out differences between Kant’s and Hutcheson’s accounts. Distinguishing between affects and passions as two overwhelming kinds of emotions lets Kant give a separate evaluation of each of them. We have seen that Kant takes affects to pose risks for similar reasons that Hutcheson takes passions to require caution. He thinks they are problematic enough to call them “illnesses of the mind” (A 7:251). But Kant also thinks that affects have a positive side. Some affects according to Kant are healthy: “Anger is a fairly reliable aid to digestion,” “[t]he jerky (nearly convulsive) exhaling of air attached to laughter [. . .] strengthens the feeling of vital force through the wholesome exercise of the diaphragm,” and “[w]eeping, an inhaling that occurs with (convulsive) sobs, when it is combined with an outburst of tears, is, as a soothing remedy, likewise a provision of nature for health” (A 7:261f.).14 Other affects are presented more generally as having positive consequences apart from their direct physical effect on our bodies. Shame (connected with blushing, for example), when appropriate, has the effect of both making us aware of our own guilt and of communicating the concession of our guilt to others (MP 27:1132). Anger lets us react to evil fast (A 7:255)15 and courage lets us pursue our path in the face of obstacles (A 7:257). One of the main benefits of affects is that they are exceptionally strong motivators. Kant presents passions as more harmful than affects. While he calls affects “illnesses” he says, “Passions are cancerous sores for pure practical reason, and for the most part they are incurable because the sick person does not want to be cured” (A 7:266). While affects are “merely unfortunate states of mind,” passions are “without exception evil as well” (A 7:267). And, if that is not strong enough, earlier in the Anthropology he puts it even more graphically. Affect is like drunkenness that one sleeps off, although a headache follows afterward; but passion is regarded as a sickness that comes from swallowing poison, or a deformity which requires an inner or an outer physician of the soul, one who nevertheless knows how to prescribe

66 Wiebke Deimling remedies that are for the most part not radical, but almost always merely palliative. (A 7:252) Why are passions so much more harmful? An answer that this passage suggests is that, while affects pass, passions persist over a longer period of time. In the case of an affect we can step back after a while thereby overcoming the affect and broadening our focus again. As in Kant’s example of the rich man discussed earlier. Other claims Kant makes suggest the same. A little before the analogy I have just quoted he provides the following characterization. [P]assion (a state of mind belonging to the faculty of desire) takes its time and reflects, no matter how fierce it may be, in order to reach its end.—Affect works like water that breaks through a dam; passion, like a river that digs itself deeper and deeper into its bed. (A 7:252) Later he makes similar claims while relying less on analogy. Since passions can be paired with the calmest reflection, it is easy to see that they are not thoughtless, like affects, nor stormy and transitory; rather they take root and can even co-exist with rationalizing—It is also easy to see that they do the greatest damage to freedom. (A 7:265f.) In both of these passages, Kant adds a further detail relevant to our evaluation of passions: passions are compatible with reflection. When we have a passion, we do not simply lose sight of other feelings and desires in the heat of the battle, we deliberately rearrange other feelings and desires around our passion and as a consequence might push some into the background. Passions are compatible with a calm state of mind and with principled action. The way Kant expresses his caution regarding sympathy suggests that he views it more as a passion than as an affect. The sympathy to be avoided is something that one “broods over intentionally” and “something [that] will end only with [someone’s] life,” (A 7:236) that is something of longer duration and compatible with reflection. Hutcheson’s account is optimistic. It puts forth that the risks posed by sympathy and other moral emotions can be overcome through reflection, by stepping back and taking a deep breath. Reflection yields feelings of general benevolence to mankind, which guide and limit our other moral emotions. Kant’s account is less optimistic. He claims that passions are compatible with reflection and as a result are more dangerous than affects. The emotions Kant deems as most dangerous are not hasty and careless. But instead they are deep and obsessive. And sympathy, he argues, can take the latter form. Both Hutcheson and Kant

Critique of Sympathy 67 argue that compassion or sympathy can be a problematic emotion that we have to curtail for it to be supportive of morality. But Kant suggests that being deliberate and reflective is not enough. He claims that it might make things worse. Reflection that can put sympathy in the service of morality has to be not any kind of reflection but reflection on our commitment to the Moral Law.

III. Conclusion This chapter has shown that Hutcheson and Kant are both concerned with giving a careful evaluation of our capacity to share others’ suffering. Despite the differences in their moral framework, many of their thoughts on compassion and sympathy are strikingly similar. I have shown how the distinctions both of them make in their taxonomies of our emotional states enable them to take a nuanced perspective on moral emotions and on sympathy in particular. Both agree that sympathy is important in providing us with motivation to do what is morally right. It can alert us to others’ ends and needs and it can make them salient for us. But we also have to treat it with caution. Feelings of sympathy can tempt us to narrow mindedness, complacency, and resentment of others. Hutcheson and Kant share a general orientation of their account on the ideal of the stoic sage in that they claim that being too easily moved is morally problematic. It is important that our emotional responses and in particular our sympathetic feelings for others are attended to. But they cannot and should not provide a moral compass. They agree that sharing others’ suffering can only reliably support moral action if it is properly embedded and guided by a general moral disposition. For Hutcheson this general disposition lies in general and calm public desires approved by the moral sense and for Kant it lies in commitment to the Moral Law, which is associated with the feeling of respect. While the similarities are striking this last point reveals a difference between the two. Hutcheson is optimistic that the challenges posed by sympathy and other moral emotions can be overcome by having patience with our emotions and by putting them in a broader context. Kant is less optimistic. He thinks that in order to ensure that sympathy plays a morally edifying role our non-empirical nature, the side that holds the Moral Law before us, has to step in. In the very beginning of this chapter, I argued that focusing too strongly on Kant’s deontology can make us miss his thoughts on particular moral emotions like sympathy. Now thinking in detail about sympathy and exploring the differences between Hutcheson’s and Kant’s account has brought us back to his deontology. But we arrived here after appreciating his rich account of sympathy and after asking us to reevaluate his relationship with Hutcheson as his predecessor. This makes all the difference to our understanding.

68 Wiebke Deimling

Notes 1. Emotions for Malebranche are partially constituted by distinct or confused judgments. See Nicolas Malebranche, The Search after Truth, ed. Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Book V, Chapter 3, 347. 2. See, e.g., Christian Maurer, “Hutcheson’s Relation to Stoicism in the Light of His Moral Psychology,” Journal of Scottish Philosophy 8 (2010): 33–49; and Amy M. Schmitter, “Passions, Affections, Sentiments: Taxonomy and Terminology,” in The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, ed. James A. Harris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 197–225. 3. There are a lot of distinctions to navigate here. The distinction between selfish and public desires is orthogonal to the distinctions between general desires and particular affections and between affections and passions. Anger is a particular affection that is a selfish desire and likely a passion. Love is a particular affection that is a public desire and might be a passion. The “calm Desire of private good” is a general and private desire, while the “calm desire of the Happiness of others” is a general and a public desire. 4. Maurer refers to the “distinction between calm affections and violent passions,” implying that all particular affections (i.e., affections that don’t fit the description of “calm”) are passions. Maurer, “Hutcheson’s Relation to Stoicism in the Light of His Moral Psychology,”1. 5. See, e.g., Norman S. Fiering, “Irresistible Compassion: An Aspect of EighteenthCentury Sympathy and Humanitarianism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 37 (1976): 195–218; and Alejandra Mancilla, “The Bridge of Benevolence: Hutcheson and Mencius,” Dao 12 (2013): 57–72. 6. Arthur Warda lists a 1762 translation of the Inquiry and a 1760 translation of the Essay. 7. Scholars have grown more and more optimistic about the role sympathy can play in Kant’s account. We started by arguing that the presence of sympathy as an incentive is consistent with moral action (Barbara Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993)). We went on to argue that sympathy can be put in the service of duty, where duty operates as a second order motive (Marcia Baron, Kantian Ethics almost without Apology (Syracuse: Cornell University Press, 1999)), and to stress the motive/incentive distinction to make room for a role of sympathy as a moral emotion (Maria Borges, “Physiology and the Controlling of Affects in Kant’s Philosophy,” Kantian Review 13 (2002): 46–66; and Paul Guyer, “Moral Feelings in the Metaphysics of Morals,” in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: A Critical Guide, ed. Lara Denis, 130–151 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). And we went even further to argue that feeling sympathy and communicating our feelings to others can be valuable in itself. That is, it can be valuable irrespective of whether or not it motivates us to moral action (see Lara Denis, “Kant’s Cold Sage and the Sublimity of Apathy,” Kantian Review 4 (2000): 48–73; Fiering, “Irresistible Compassion: An Aspect of Eighteenth-Century Sympathy and Humanitarianism,” 195–218; and Melissa Seymour Fahmy, “Active Sympathetic Participation: Reconsidering Kant’s Duty of Sympathy,” Kantian Review 14 (2009): 31–52). 8. Kant’s stress that it is not the intensity of a feeling that make it an affect again invites a comparison with Hume and his claim that the calmness or violence of a passion does not fully determine its strength and weakness. 9. For other examples see AF 25: 590, a similar account is given at AC 25: 210. The last lecture referenced is from 1772/73. It is important to keep in mind that Kant is still working out his taxonomy of affective states as described next.

Critique of Sympathy 69 10. Where available I use the translations from the Cambridge edition of Kant’s works (see Immanuel Kant, The Cambridge Editions of the Works of the Immanuel Kant, ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992ff.). Some of the translations of the student notes on Kant’s anthropology lectures are my own. 11. Compassion in the German is “Mitleid” and pity is “Barmherzigkeit.” 12. What is translated here as “to grieve over something” in the German original is “sich etwas zu Gemüthe ziehen.” “Letting something get to you” or something along similar lines also works well to capture the phenomenon Kant is describing. 13. See Denis, “Kant’s Cold Sage and the Sublimity of Apathy.” 14. See also “On the Philosophers’ Medicine of the Body”: “The affect of joy and the affect of indignation, which sometimes pours out in heated words, are healthful if they remain within certain limits.” (AN 15: 940), “[. . .] they can eat liberally and consume with impunity twice the amount of food they could safely eat if they were alone.” (AN 15: 949). 15. This is indicative of a broader claim that Kant makes. Nature has given us affects as a fast and reliable way to satisfy our needs. This is necessary because we develop the capability to guide ourselves through reason fairly late in life (see APa 25: 416, see also AMe 25: 1120—Kant refers to Hume here).

References Baron, Marcia. Kantian Ethics almost without Apology. Syracuse: Cornell University Press, 1999. Borges, Maria. “Physiology and the Controlling of Affects in Kant’s Philosophy.” Kantian Review 13 (2002): 46–66. Denis, Lara. “Kant’s Cold Sage and the Sublimity of Apathy.” Kantian Review 4 (2000): 48–73. Fiering, Norman S. “Irresistible Compassion: An Aspect of Eighteenth-Century Sympathy and Humanitarianism.” Journal of the History of Ideas 37 (1976): 195–218. Guyer, Paul. “Moral Feelings in the Metaphysics of Morals.” In Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: A Critical Guide, edited by Lara Denis, 130–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Herman, Barbara. The Practice of Moral Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Hutcheson, Francis. An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections: With Illustrations on the Moral Sense. Edited by Aaron Garrett. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002. Hutcheson, Francis. An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. Edited by Wolfgang Leidhold. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004. Kant, Immanuel. The Cambridge Editions of the Works of the Immanuel Kant. Edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992ff. Kant, Immanuel. Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by the Königliche Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, und Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1900ff. Malebranche, Nicolas. The Search after Truth. Edited by Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Mancilla, Alejandra. “The Bridge of Benevolence: Hutcheson and Mencius.” Dao 12 (2013): 57–72.

70 Wiebke Deimling Maurer, Christian. “Hutcheson’s Relation to Stoicism in the Light of His Moral Psychology.” Journal of Scottish Philosophy 8 (2010): 33–49. Schmitter, Amy M. “Passions, Affections, Sentiments: Taxonomy and Terminology.” In The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, edited by James A. Harris, 197–225. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Seymour Fahmy, Melissa. “Active Sympathetic Participation: Reconsidering Kant’s Duty of Sympathy.” Kantian Review 14 (2009): 31–52. Warda, Arthur. Immanuel Kants Bücher. Berlin: Verlag von Marin Breslauer, 1922.

4

Kant and Hutcheson on Aesthetics and Teleology Reed Winegar

I. Introduction To many readers, Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment seems like a fragmented work. While the book’s first part, “The Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment,” discusses aesthetic topics like beauty, sublimity, and genius, the second part, “The Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment,” focuses on teleological issues regarding organic generation. But what, one might ask, do aesthetics and teleology have to do with one another? As John Zammito writes, “The hermeneutic problem posed by the Third Critique is why Kant should have brought his treatments of aesthetics and teleology together with systematic intent.”1 In response to this question, Manfred Kuehn has persuasively argued that a sharp distinction between aesthetics and teleology is anachronistic.2 Throughout the eighteenth century, aesthetics was closely connected to the physico-theological tradition, which related specific features of the world (including natural beauty) to divine teleology. As Kuehn writes, Physico-theology, or the consideration of the ‘structure of the world with all its order and beauty,’ was closely connected to considerations that today belong to aesthetics. Aesthetics was still not a very well-defined discipline, and it was a different enterprise from what we understand it to be today.3 Consequently, one might hope to gain insight into the third Critique by comparing Kant’s treatment of the relationship between aesthetics and teleology to treatments found in other eighteenth-century writers. Although many eighteenth-century works interweave discussions of aesthetics and teleology, one particularly striking example is Francis Hutcheson’s 1725 Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue.4 Hutcheson’s treatise is one of the first major works of modern aesthetics and provides a paradigmatic example of the ways in which eighteenth-century authors related aesthetics and teleology to one another. In particular, Hutcheson prominently uses his aesthetic theory to argue that the natural world is the

72 Reed Winegar product of a wise and benevolent God.5 It is well known that Kant admired Hutcheson’s Inquiry, and Hutcheson is undoubtedly one of the many eighteenth-century theorists whom the third Critique implicitly addresses.6 In this chapter, I will aim to contextualize the third Critique’s discussion of beauty and teleology against the background of Hutcheson’s Inquiry and, in particular, against Hutcheson’s claim that natural beauty yields an argument for a wise and benevolent God’s existence.7 As we will see, Kant rejects various teleological elements of Hutcheson’s account. Most importantly, Kant rejects Hutcheson’s claim that natural beauty can provide knowledge of a wise and benevolent God who has created natural beauty for our pleasure and benefit. Yet, despite his disagreements with Hutcheson, Kant still endorses a Critical version of the inference from natural beauty to God. Indeed, Kant maintains that the inference from beauty to God is (in a sense to be described more fully next) rational for human beings, although the result of this inference is not knowledge (Wissen) but belief or faith (Glaube). However, Kant is not interested merely in rationality. Rather, Kant also relates this rational argument to the sensible experience of beauty. For although Kant rejects Hutcheson’s claim that we can know that a wise and benevolent God has created natural beauty for our pleasure and benefit, Kant still maintains that natural beauty leads to the belief that God has created nature in order to promote the human being’s Highest Good. Kant also maintains that this belief inspires feelings of gratitude and veneration toward God that mingle with the pleasure of beauty. Indeed, Kant argues that beauty’s association with these moral feelings provides one reason why human beings find the pleasure of beauty so fascinating. Consequently, Kant’s aesthetics provides a Critical reevaluation (rather than a wholesale rejection) of attempts by physico-theologians like Hutcheson to link natural beauty and theology. Of course, many contemporary philosophers may be skeptical of Kant’s own attempts to link natural beauty and theology. And I should emphasize that my goal in this chapter is to explain, rather than defend, Kant’s views on this topic.8 However, I hope to help demonstrate that interpretations of the third Critique should not simply assume our contemporary distinction between aesthetics and teleology. Rather, as Kuehn suggests, a proper historical consideration of the third Critique should aim to understand Kant’s book in relation to the eighteenth-century, physico-theological tradition that it critiques. To this end, I will first describe Hutcheson’s position and then turn to Kant.

II. Hutcheson on Aesthetics and Teleology In the first part of the Inquiry, Hutcheson argues that human beings possess a natural sense of beauty. According to Hutcheson, this natural sense of beauty provides human beings with ideas of absolute or original beauty as well as ideas of relative or comparative beauty. More specifically, Hutcheson maintains that experiences of uniformity amidst variety naturally produce ideas of absolute or original beauty in human minds, while cases of imitation

Aesthetics and Teleology 73 (such as a portrait’s imitation of its sitter) naturally produce ideas of relative or comparative beauty in human minds. Although much of the Inquiry concerns the human being’s empirical psychology, Hutcheson is no stranger to speculative metaphysics. And rational arguments regarding God comprise a large part of Hutcheson’s aesthetics.9 As Peter Kivy observes, About one-third of Hutcheson’s first Inquiry is taken up with theological topics: the existence of God, and the theological underpinnings of aesthetic perception. If sheer bulk is any measure of intellectual interest, then we must conclude that for Hutcheson the most interesting and compelling aesthetic problems were theological ones.10 The theological points that Hutcheson pursues throughout the Inquiry’s discussion of aesthetics focus primarily on divine teleology. Hutcheson regards natural beauty as strong evidence for the existence, benevolence, and wisdom of God. Indeed, Hutcheson clearly prefers the physico-theological argument to other arguments in rational theology. In his writings, Hutcheson discusses the cosmological argument only briefly and explicitly rejects the ontological argument.11 But he discusses various versions of the physico-theological argument (including the argument from natural beauty) at great length in the Inquiry, Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, and Synopsis of Metaphysics, and commentators routinely note the influence of Hutcheson’s physico-theology on other eighteenth-century authors.12 Specifically, Hutcheson maintains that cases of uniformity amidst variety (which naturally produce ideas of absolute or original beauty in human minds) rely on divine intentions. According to Hutcheson, the number of possible cases of irregularity is vastly larger than the number of possible cases of regularity. Therefore, if matter were left to its own devices, the probability that it would take on regular forms and, thus, exhibit uniformity amidst variety would be extremely low. As Hutcheson writes, “therefore supposing any one System agitated by undesigning Force, it is infinitely more probable that it will resolve itself into an irregular Form, than a regular.”13 Consequently, Hutcheson maintains that we should appeal to divine intentions in order to explain the existence of natural objects that exhibit uniformity amidst variety. Hutcheson writes, We see this confirm’d by our constant Experience, that Regularity never arises from any undesign’d Force of ours; and from this we conclude, that wherever there is any Regularity in the disposition of a System capable of many other Dispositions, there must have been Design in the Cause; and the Force of Evidence increases, according to the Multiplicity of Parts imploy’d.14 For these reasons, Hutcheson maintains that the existence of natural objects that exhibit uniformity amidst variety provides extremely good probabilistic

74 Reed Winegar grounds for the existence of an intelligent designer. Hutcheson does not go so far as to claim that the physico-theological argument provides an apodictic demonstration. However, he thinks that the probabilistic grounds here are so strong that they surpass “every thing which is not strict Demonstration” (IBV 53).15 Hutcheson’s view that natural cases of uniformity amidst variety rely on divine intentions raises the question of why God would choose to create a universe full of such objects. Hutcheson’s general answer is that God chose to create such a universe for the benefit of human beings. For Hutcheson, ideas of beauty are pleasurable. Thus, God has benevolently created a universe full of objects with uniformity amidst variety in order to increase the pleasure of human beings. Hutcheson writes, “Upon supposition of a benevolent Deity, all the apparent Beauty produc’d is an Evidence of the Execution of a Benevolent Design, to give him [i.e., the human being] the pleasures of Beauty.”16 Additionally, Hutcheson argues that human beings are finite creatures for whom general theorems and uniformity are more comprehensible than heaps of particular facts and unordered variety. Consequently, God has benevolently created a universe full of comprehensible uniformity in order to benefit human knowledge and human action.17 Moreover, Hutcheson notes that a regular course of nature permits human beings to make reasonable predictions about the future and, thus, allows them to act prudently and purposefully for the promotion of their happiness.18 For all of these reasons, God has benevolently and wisely created a universe full of uniformity amidst variety. In fact, Hutcheson extends these points about human knowledge and human action further, arguing that God has given human beings a psychology that will aid the human being’s pursuit of useful knowledge by naturally producing ideas of absolute or original beauty in response to experiences of uniformity amidst diversity. In an important passage, Hutcheson writes, For were it not so, but on the contrary, if irregular Objects, particular Truths, and Operations pleased us, beside the endless Toil this would involve us in, there must arise a perpetual Dissatisfaction in all rational Agents with themselves; since Reason and Interest would lead us to simple general Causes, while a contrary Sense of Beauty would make us disapprove of them: Universal Theorems would appear to our Understanding the best Means of increasing our Knowledge of what might be useful; while a contrary sense would set us on the search after particular Truths: Thought and Reflection would recommend Objects with Uniformity amidst Variety, and yet this perverse Instinct would involve us in the sagacious Bounty which we suppose in the Deity, to constitute our internal Senses in the manner they are; by which Pleasure is join’d to the Contemplation of those Objects which a finite Mind can best imprint and retain the Ideas with the least Distraction; to those actions which are most efficacious, and fruitful in useful Effects; and to those Theorems which most enlarge our minds.19

Aesthetics and Teleology 75 Here Hutcheson once again notes that the human mind’s finitude entails that humans will have an easier time comprehending uniform representations and general theorems than disorganized arrays and heaps of particular facts. Accordingly, God has benevolently and wisely made human beings so that uniform representations and general theorems will produce pleasurable ideas of beauty. For these pleasures will motivate human beings to pursue, rather than to avoid or neglect, uniform representations and general theorems. Up to this point, I have focused on Hutcheson’s arguments from beauty to knowledge of a benevolent and wise God. But it is worthwhile to note that Hutcheson also thinks that knowledge of God’s existence can help to yield further ideas of beauty. As noted previously, Hutcheson claims that cases of imitation produce ideas of relative or comparative beauty in human minds. According to Hutcheson, products of art can be said to resemble artists’ intentions. Because ideas of relative or comparative beauty can result from comparing objects to the intentions of their creators, Hutcheson argues that ideas of relative or comparative beauty can result from considering the correspondence between the natural world and God’s intentions. He writes, This Beauty arising from Correspondence to Intention, would open to curious Observers a new Scene of Beauty in the Works of Nature, by considering how the Mechanism of the various Parts known to us, seems adapted to the Perfection of the Part, and yet in Subordination to the Good of some System or Whole. We generally suppose the Good of the greatest Whole, or of all Beings, to have been the Intention of the Author of Nature; and cannot avoid being pleas’d when we see any part of this Design executed in the Systems we are acquainted with.20 In this passage, Hutcheson does not claim merely that human beings take moral pleasure in the observed fact that God promotes the good of the whole (although Hutcheson thinks that they do). Rather, Hutcheson’s claim in the passage is that human beings also experience a non-moral idea of relative or comparative beauty since they recognize that the observed promotion of the good of the whole corresponds to God’s intentions. In this scenario, the comparison of the natural world to God’s intentions produces an idea of relative or comparative beauty, just as a comparison of a portrait to its subject would. Indeed, given that God’s promotion of the good of the whole also gives rise to moral feelings, Hutcheson implies that the pleasures of moral feeling and the pleasures of beauty can sometimes mingle with one another in our consideration of the natural world.

III. Kant on Aesthetics and Teleology In the preceding section, I outlined the importance of teleology to Hutcheson’s influential discussion of aesthetics. Let us now turn to Kant’s third Critique and, in particular, to the question of whether Kant, like Hutcheson,

76 Reed Winegar takes natural beauty to provide an argument for God. As I will argue in this section, Kant rejects Hutcheson’s own version of the argument from beauty but endorses a Critical version of the inference from natural beauty to God. Moreover, Kant maintains that the Critical version of this inference is (in a sense to be described more fully below) rational for human beings, although it yields merely belief or faith (Glaube) rather than knowledge. Still, Kant maintains that this belief or faith is sufficient to generate moral feelings of gratitude and veneration toward God. Thus, the feeling of beauty will mingle with these moral feelings, and Kant takes this mingling to provide one reason why human beings find beauty so fascinating. In this way, Kant’s third Critique Critically reevaluates, rather than entirely rejects, the physico-theological tradition represented by authors like Hutcheson. To begin, it is clear that Kant’s theory of taste divorces beauty from some of the teleological elements that belong to Hutcheson’s view. For example, Kant’s theory of taste leaves no room for Hutcheson’s claim that comparing the natural world to God’s intentions can yield ideas of relative or comparative beauty. Unlike Hutcheson, Kant denies that imitation as such produces a feeling of beauty. Instead, the feeling of beauty results from a free play of the cognitive faculties, and not all imitations will elicit this free play. Moreover, Kant would regard Hutcheson’s comparison of the natural world to God’s intentions as a judgment of perfection, rather than as a judgment of taste.21 According to Hutcheson’s account, one compares the natural world to one’s concept of God’s intention to promote the good of the whole. But Kant sharply distinguishes judgments that employ determinate concepts (such as the concept of God’s intention to promote the good of the whole) from judgments of taste, since judgments of taste are not based on any determinate concepts. Kant writes, “Now the judgment of taste is an aesthetic judgment, i.e., one that rests on subjective grounds, and its determining ground cannot be a concept, and thus not a determinate concept of an end” (CPJ 5:228). For Kant, the comparison of the natural world to a concept of God’s intentions would be a judgment of perfection, rather than a judgment of taste, for it would assess how well the natural world corresponds to the way that, according to God’s intention, it is supposed to be. For these reasons, Kant’s aesthetics leaves no room for Hutcheson’s proposal that ideas of relative or comparative beauty can result from comparing natural objects to God’s intentions. But what about Hutcheson’s extended argument that natural beauty provides strong (albeit not demonstrative) evidence for the existence of a wise and benevolent God? Although Kant famously denies that theoretical reason can yield knowledge of God, it is important to recognize that Kant routinely refers to the physico-theological argument in approving terms. For example, in the first Critique, Kant writes, This proof [i.e., the physico-theological proof] always deserves to be named with respect. It is the oldest, clearest and most appropriate to

Aesthetics and Teleology 77 common human reason . . . Thus it would be not only discomfiting but also quite pointless to try to remove anything from the reputation of this proof. Reason, ceaselessly elevated by the powerful though only empirical proofs that are always growing in its hands, cannot be suppressed through any doubt drawn from subtle and abstract speculation that it is not torn at once out of every brooding indecision, just as from a dream, by throwing a glance on the wonders of nature and the majesty of the world’s architecture, by which it elevates itself from magnitude to magnitude up to the highest of all, rising from the conditioned to the condition, up to the supreme and unconditioned author. (CPR A623f./B651f.) In this passage, Kant speaks vaguely of “the wonders of nature and the majesty of the world’s architecture,” but slightly earlier Kant mentions the world’s “manifoldness, order, purposiveness, and beauty” as instances of such wonders (CPR A622/B650 italics added). And in the “B Preface,” Kant again lists beauty among such wonders. There, Kant refers (once again approvingly) to “the splendid order, beauty, and providence shown forth everywhere in nature leading to the faith in a wise and great author of the world . . .” (CPR Bxxxiii). Kant’s praise for the physico-theological argument contrasts with his views regarding the ontological and cosmological arguments, which he describes as abstruse pieces of school metaphysics that have never exerted much influence on the public (CPR Bxxxiii). Thus, Kant seems to share Hutcheson’s preference for physico-theological arguments (including the argument from beauty) over rational theology’s other theoretical arguments. Of course, one might initially find Kant’s praise of the physico-theological argument, including the physico-theological argument from natural beauty, puzzling. After all, Kant maintains that human beings cannot have knowledge of God, and in the first Critique’s “Ideal of Pure Reason,” Kant criticizes the physico-theological argument, arguing that it fails to yield knowledge of God’s existence. More specifically, Kant maintains in the “Ideal of Pure Reason” that the Idea of God is the Idea of a Supreme Being. Thus, in order to prove the existence of God, the physico-theological argument would have to prove the existence of a Supreme Being. However, the physico-theological argument is not up to this task. For example, even if one granted that certain features of the natural world, such as natural beauty, had to rely on a being that is very powerful and very knowledgeable, the physico-theological argument still could not prove that such features of the natural world would require that this being possess superlative attributes like omnipotence, omniscience, and moral perfection (CPR A628/B656). Thus, the physico-theological argument cannot prove the existence of a Supreme Being and, consequently, cannot prove the existence of God. Relating this point back to Hutcheson, we can note that, on Kant’s view, even if Hutcheson’s argument showed that the existence of natural beauty relies on a wise and benevolent being,

78 Reed Winegar Hutcheson still would not have provided sufficient grounds for asserting that this being is All-Wise and Omnibenevolent and, thus, will have failed to show that this being would have to be God. Given these criticisms of the physico-theological argument, why does Kant also suggest in the first Critique that it would be “quite pointless to try to remove anything from the reputation of this [i.e., the physico-theological] proof” (CPR A624/B652)? Indeed, given that Kant’s criticism is that the physico-theological argument fails to prove the existence of a Supreme Being, why does Kant claim in the first Critique that in considering the physico-theological argument the human mind “cannot be suppressed” from rising all the way to “the supreme and unconditioned author” (CPR A624/B652 italics added)?22 Allow me to begin answering these questions by dismissing two potentially tempting interpretations. First, one might be tempted to answer these questions by suggesting that Kant approves of the physico-theological argument as a natural tendency or piece of popular thought but not as a rigorous proof. Peter Byrne suggests this interpretation, when he claims that Kant “is documenting a natural human tendency” and that, for Kant, “the proof works as a piece of popular thought but not as a rigorous or philosophical proof.”23 There are, however, strong reasons to resist Byrne’s interpretation. In particular, Byrne’s proposal does not explain why “[r]eason . . .  cannot be suppressed” from ascending to the Idea of a Supreme Being (CPR A624/B652 italics added). Given that Byrne does not regard the physico-theological argument as rigorous, his answer must be that people (either through an irrational error or due to non-rational psychological forces) mistakenly take the physico-theological argument to lead to a Supreme Being. But the first Critique denies that the physico-theological argument represents a less than fully rational piece of popular thought. Instead, the first Critique characterizes the mind’s ascent from natural order and beauty to the Idea of a Supreme Being as rational.24 Describing this ascent, Kant claims that “[r]eason  .  .  .  cannot be suppressed” and adds that he has “nothing to object against the rationality and utility of this procedure . . .” (CPR A624/B652 italics added). And in the previously quoted passage from the “B Preface,” Kant refers to the physico-theological argument as one of the “rational grounds” that lead common human understanding to the notion of God as a “great author of the world”(CPR Bxxxiii italics added). Thus, Kant does not seem to attribute the physico-theological argument’s influence to non-rational tendencies. Second, one might propose that Kant’s criticisms aim merely to show that the physico-theological argument does not provide a deductive proof or demonstration of a Supreme Being but that Kant accepts the existence of a Supreme Being as an explanatory hypothesis and takes the physico-theological argument to partially confirm (but not demonstrate) this explanatory hypothesis. On this interpretation, Kant’s criticisms of the physico-theological argument would be directed at the argument’s purported status as a deductive proof,

Aesthetics and Teleology 79 while Kant’s approval of the argument would concern its partial confirmation of the explanatory hypothesis of a Supreme Being. Lee Hardy advances this proposal: [Kant] only intends to show that the design argument is a bad deductive argument. The procedure of common human reason and its extension in the sciences does not derive God’s existence as the conclusion of a deductive argument, but posits it as an explanatory hypothesis, a hypothesis that receives fresh confirmation everywhere experience and research conducted under its auspices turn.25 Notice that this interpretation would bring Kant’s position somewhat closer to that of Hutcheson, who denies that the physico-theological argument provides a deduction or demonstration of God’s existence but insists that it provides strong probabilistic evidence in its favor. Now, Hardy is right to note that in the first Critique’s “Canon of Pure Reason” Kant claims that human beings should accept the existence of God because doing so is invaluable for empirical investigation, that Kant refers to this acceptance as “doctrinal belief,” and that Kant takes the investigation of nature to “confirm the usefulness of this presupposition” (CPR A867/B855). Nevertheless, Hardy’s interpretation is not entirely satisfying as an interpretation of Kant’s remarks in the “B Preface” and “Ideal of Pure Reason.” In particular, Hardy’s interpretation does not adequately account for Kant’s claims in these passages that common human understanding ascends from the observation of nature’s wonders to the Idea of a Supreme Being. Note that the “Ideal of Pure Reason” passage quoted earlier does not claim that the observation of nature’s wonders confirms a previously held doctrinal belief in God. Instead, the passage claims that the observation of nature’s wonders prompts common human understanding to “elevate itself” to the Idea of God (CPR A624/ B652). Similarly, in the “B Preface,” Kant does not claim that the observation of order, beauty, and providence confirms a previously held doctrinal belief in God but, instead, that it plays a role in “leading” to faith in God (CPR Bxxxiii italics added). Thus, to account for these passages properly, Kant needs to provide an argument for how the observation of nature leads the human mind to ascend up to the Idea of Supreme Being, rather than simply an account of how the observation of nature might partially confirm a previously held doctrinal belief. In contrast to these interpretations, I would like to suggest that Kant’s comments in the first Critique can be taken to anticipate a point that Kant fully elaborates only in the third Critique’s discussion of the physico-theological argument, according to which the observation of nature rationally leads to belief in a Supreme Being. Specifically, in the third Critique’s “Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment,” Kant argues that we lack any right to claim that organic generation does, in fact, rely on divine intentions. Nevertheless, Kant maintains that due to the discursive character of human

80 Reed Winegar understanding, human beings still ought to judge organic beings reflectively in terms of divine intentions.26 As Kant writes, The above fundamental principle of teleology thus stands, namely, that given the constitution of the human understanding, only intentionally acting causes for the possibility of organic beings in nature can be assumed, and the mere mechanism of nature cannot be adequate at all for the explanation of these products—even though nothing is to be decided with regard to the possibility of such things themselves by means of this fundamental principle. (CPJ 5:413) Once human beings reflectively judge organic beings in terms of divine intentions, they are rationally required to ask for what end these organic beings were intended. And the need to answer this question ultimately leads human beings to a representation of the final end of nature—that is, the final end for which all things were created. According to Kant, theoretical reason cannot provide a final end of creation, but practical reason can. In particular, Kant argues that we should identify the final end of creation with the concept of human beings under laws of freedom. He writes, For given the subjective constitution of our reason and even how we must always think of the reason of other beings, it can count as certain for us a priori that this final end can be nothing other than the human being under moral laws . . . (CPJ 5:445) Kant, then, associates this concept of human beings under laws of freedom with his well-known concept of the Highest Good, according to which human beings should receive happiness in proportion to their virtue. Finally, Kant argues, as he does repeatedly throughout the Critical period, that moral philosophy’s concept of the Highest Good provides rational, albeit practical rather than theoretical, grounds for belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, morally perfect God. Kant writes, In relation to the highest good possible under his rule alone, namely the existence of rational beings under moral laws, we will conceive of this original being as omniscient, so that even what is inmost in their dispositions . . . is not hidden from him; as omnipotent, so that he can make the whole of nature suitable for this highest end; as omnibenevolent and at the same time just, because these two properties (united as wisdom) constitute the conditions of the causality of a supreme cause of the world as a highest good under moral laws; and likewise all of the remaining transcendental properties, such eternity, omnipresence, etc.  .  .  . which

Aesthetics and Teleology 81 must be presupposed in relation to such a final end, must also be thought in such a being. (CPJ 5:444) Notice that in this passage, Kant explains that the moral argument, unlike the physico-theological argument taken by itself, rationally grounds belief not merely in a very powerful, very knowledgeable, and very moral being but in a being with superlative attributes—that is, a Supreme Being. Thus, Kant claims that the argument rationally grounds belief in God. Unfortunately, I am not able to examine here all of the details of this long, complicated argument from organic beings to belief in God.27 However, the point that I want to highlight is simply that Kant regards the entire process from reflectively judging organic beings in terms of divine intentions all the way to belief in a Supreme Being as rational for discursive understandings like ours. In particular, Kant argues that the requirement to judge organic beings reflectively in terms of divine intentions stems from the character of our own intellect. And according to Kant, it is rational for human beings to think about things, even things that go beyond what they can know, according to the requirements imposed by their own cognitive faculties.28 This requirement to reflectively judge organic beings in terms of divine intentions rationally gives rise to the question why organic beings exist, since reason demands explanations. And this question leads in turn to the question of what the final end of creation might be. In answer to this question, practical reason posits the concept of human beings under laws of freedom as the final end of nature, which rationally leads to belief in a Supreme Being as the ground of the Highest Good. Thus, Kant maintains that when taken by itself the physico-theological argument fails to lead us all the way to the notion of a Supreme Being. But he also maintains that the physico-theological argument, which is rational for discursive understandings like us, provides a rational transition from the theoretical consideration of nature to Kant’s moral argument for rational (albeit practical) belief in the existence a Supreme Being. Consequently, Kant maintains that the entire line of thought from the reflective judgment of organic beings in terms of divine intentions to belief in God as a Supreme Being is rational for creatures like us. Given that the physico-theological argument rationally leads to the moral argument in this way, Kant claims that common human understanding has a tendency to conflate, rather than sharply distinguish, the two arguments. Referring to the physico-theological and moral arguments, Kant writes, For if their separation requires much reflection, then it is usually difficult for the common and healthy understanding to distinguish between the different principles that it mixes together but from only one of which it can correctly make its inference. (CPJ 5:478)

82 Reed Winegar Here Kant explains why common human understanding has a tendency to find the physico-theological argument so convincing—namely, because it does not clearly distinguish the physico-theological argument taken by itself from the physico-theological and moral arguments taken together. Thus, Kant does not object to common human understanding’s tendency to ascend from physico-theology to belief in a Supreme Being because Kant thinks that common human understanding proceeds (albeit without fully recognizing what it is doing) through a rational process from the physico-theological argument to the moral argument and, thus, to a rational (albeit practical) justification for belief in a Supreme Being. Of course, this argument from the “Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment” begins from a consideration of organic beings, rather than from a consideration of natural beauty. But the third Critique also indicates that human beings ought to reflectively judge natural beauty in terms of divine intentions and connects natural beauty to the line of thought outlined earlier. In §42, Kant writes, To that is further added the admiration of nature, which in its beautiful products shows itself as art, not merely by chance, but as it were intentionally, in accordance with a lawful arrangement and as purposiveness without end, which latter, since we never encounter it externally, we naturally seek within ourselves, and indeed in that which constitutes the ultimate end of our existence, namely the moral vocation (the question of the ground of possibility of such a purposiveness of nature, however, will first be investigated in the Teleology). (CPJ 5:301) In line with our previous discussion, this passage signals that the representation of beautiful objects as “purposive without end” leads to the Idea of the human being’s moral vocation as a final end of creation, which in turn grounds belief in a Supreme Being.29 Here, however, we run into an interpretative puzzle. Namely, in different parts of the “Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment,” Kant’s description of beautiful objects as “purposive without end” seems to suggest that natural beauty both does and does not lead us to the notion of divine intentions. For example, in addition to §42, §10 also indicates that cases of natural beauty lead us to the notion of divine intentions. There, Kant describes beautiful objects as purposive without end, and Kant explains this description by noting that something is purposive if we can conceive of its possibility only in terms of intentions. He writes, An object or a state of mind or even an action . . . is called purposive merely because its possibility can only be explained and conceived by us insofar as we assume as its ground a causality in accordance with ends . . . (CPJ 5:220)

Aesthetics and Teleology 83 Thus, Kant seems to indicate that natural beauty is represented as purposive because we have to conceive of its possibility in terms of divine intentions (even though we cannot go so far as to claim that natural beauty does, in fact, rely on divine intentions). But in §58, Kant appears to claim that beautiful objects are without end because we do not need to appeal to divine intentions to explain the production of beautiful objects.30 Rather, we can explain the existence of beautiful objects according to merely mechanical laws. He writes, Nature displays everywhere in its free formations so much mechanical tendency to the generation of forms that seem as if they have been made for the aesthetic use of our power of judgment without giving us the slightest ground to suspect that it requires for this anything more than its mechanism, merely as nature, by means of which it can be purposive for our judging even without being based on any idea. (CPJ 5:348) Thus, in contrast to Hutcheson, Kant does not regard it is as highly improbable that mechanical laws of nature will produce beautiful objects. Instead, Kant thinks that mechanical laws do so routinely. But how, then, are we supposed to reconcile Kant’s apparently contradictory claims that we can explain beautiful objects in terms of mechanical laws and that we can conceive of an explanation of beautiful objects only in terms of divine intentions? Unfortunately, there is little direct textual evidence that one might use to answer this question. However, I propose that we can reconcile the puzzle as follows. In §58, Kant claims that beautiful objects result from the mechanical laws of nature. But in §10, Kant claims that the “possibility” of organic beings can be conceived by human beings only in terms of intelligent design. If we take the possibility of organic beings to refer not to the mechanical laws themselves but, instead, to the ground of the mechanical laws, then §10 and §58 do not contradict. On this account, human beings would have to conceive of the mechanical laws themselves as grounded on divine intentions, but would not have to conceive of beautiful objects as requiring anything beyond those mechanical laws for their production. The claim that, for Kant, human beings should conceive of nature’s mechanical laws as grounded on divine intentions should not surprise one. Rather, in the published Introduction to the third Critique, Kant argues that human beings should reflectively judge nature as specified into a system of particular laws and maintains that human beings should represent the supersensible ground of this system of particular laws in terms of divine intentions.31 He writes, Now since the concept of an object insofar as it at the same time contains the ground of the reality of this object is called an end, and the correspondence of a thing with that constitution of things that is possible only in accordance with ends is called the purposiveness of its form,

84 Reed Winegar thus the principle of the power of judgment in regard to the form of things in nature under empirical laws in general is the purposiveness of nature in its multiplicity. I.e., nature is represented through this concept as if an understanding contained the ground of the unity of the manifold of its empirical laws. (CPJ 5:180f.) Thus, we might suggest that, for Kant, beautiful objects are produced by mechanical laws, but we can conceive of the possibility of those mechanical laws themselves only in terms of divine intentions. However, one might object to this proposed resolution of the tension between §10 and §58. In particular, one might note that in §58, Kant suggests that judgments of taste require that we do not take nature to be aimed at corresponding to our power of judgment. For instance, in opposition to the view endorsed by Hutcheson that beautiful objects have been created in order to please human beings and that the beautiful thus relies on “an end for the benefit of our imagination,” Kant maintains that judgments of taste require that nature’s correspondence with the conditions of judgment be contingent. Accordingly, Kant indicates that natural beauty must be regarded as “without any end, merely an intrinsically yet contingently manifested purposive correspondence with the need of the power of judgment in regard to nature and the forms generated in it in accordance with particular laws” (CPJ 5:347). Here, Kant might seem to suggest that judgments of taste require that we take nature to contingently correspond to the human being’s power of judgment and, thus, require that we do not take natural beauty to result from mechanical laws that are themselves the products of an intelligent designer who aims to make nature correspond to the human being’s power of judgment.32 We can, however, respond to this worry as follows. Although Kant maintains that the only way that we can conceive of the possibility of the particular laws of nature is in terms of divine intentions, Kant also denies that we know that the particular laws of nature do, in fact, rely on divine intentions. Thus, even if the reflecting power of judgment demands that nature correspond with its own requirements for judging, we lack any guarantee that nature will in fact correspond with these requirements. Consequently, the fact that nature does correspond with these requirements (including in the case of beautiful objects) will still be, so far as we know, contingent. Therefore, even if we reflectively judge nature’s particular laws as products of divine intentions, the fact that nature corresponds with this representation will, so far as we can know, be contingent. Thus, this interpretation still preserves Kant’s demand for contingency. Up to this point, I have argued that Kant endorses a Critical version of the physico-theological argument from natural beauty to God. As such, my discussion has focused primarily on metaphysical aspects of the third Critique. However, it is important to stress that Kant’s Critical version of the

Aesthetics and Teleology 85 physico-theological argument from natural beauty to God also plays a major role in Kant’s account of the sensible experience of beauty. More specifically, Kant takes the fact that beautiful objects lead us to the Idea of God as the ground of the Highest Good to entail that the pleasure of beauty is often experienced alongside moral feelings of gratitude and reverence toward God that, according to Kant, lend a religious cast to the pleasure of beauty. Kant writes, The admiration of the beauty as well as the emotion aroused by the so diverse ends of nature, which a reflective mind is able to feel even prior to any clear representation of a rational author of the world, have something similar to a religious feeling about them. Hence they seem to act on the mind, by means of a kind of judgment that is analogous to the moral, primarily through the moral feeling (of gratitude and veneration towards the cause that is unknown to us) and thus by the arousal of moral ideas, when they inspire that admiration which is connected with far more interest than mere theoretical contemplation can produce. (CPJ 5:482n) Note that Kant’s point here is not that the feeling of beauty is identical to moral feelings of gratitude and veneration toward the unknown ground of beauty that is, in the end, identified with God. Instead, Kant’s point is that the pleasure of beauty is typically accompanied by moral feelings of gratitude and veneration because natural beauty leads common human understanding to the notion of a supersensible ground of nature’s purposiveness and, thus, (either inchoately or explicitly, depending on one’s level of philosophical sophistication) to the Idea of God as the ground of the Highest Good. Consequently, Kant not only endorses a version of the argument from natural beauty to God but also (like Hutcheson) claims that the pleasure of beauty can be accompanied by the pleasures of moral feelings toward God. Indeed, Kant suggests in the quoted passage that such accompaniment occurs any time that we experience natural beauty and that this accompaniment explains the special religious cast that belongs to the pleasure of beauty and provides one reason why the experience of beauty is so fascinating to human beings.

IV. Conclusion In this chapter, I have attempted to defend Kuehn’s claim that the third Critique’s interweaving of aesthetics and teleology should not surprise us. Instead, as evidenced by authors like Hutcheson, eighteenth-century aesthetics was closely connected to physico-theological considerations regarding divine teleology. In particular, Hutcheson argues that natural beauty provides extremely strong evidence in favor of the existence of a wise and benevolent God. In contrast to Hutcheson, Kant denies that we can have

86 Reed Winegar knowledge of God’s existence and nature. Yet, despite this denial of knowledge, Kant also argues that the physico-theological argument from natural beauty is rational for discursive creatures like us and naturally leads to the moral argument, which provides a rational argument for belief in God as a Supreme Being. Finally, Kant argues that this subjective but rational argument for belief in God helps to account for our fascination with the pleasure of beauty. Accordingly, Kant’s third Critique aims to critically reevaluate, rather than fully undermine, the physico-theological tradition’s attempts to link natural beauty and God. Thus, regardless of how one evaluates Kant’s particular arguments, there can be no doubt that a proper interpretation of the third Critique’s relationship to the physico-theological tradition is important for any historical understanding of Kant’s project.

Notes 1. John H. Zammito, The Genesis of Kant’s Critique of Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 2. 2. Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 345. 3. Kuehn, Kant, 345. 4. The other most prominent British example is Shaftesbury’s 1711 Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. Shaftesbury famously influenced Hutcheson and had a large impact in Germany through his influence on J.J. Spalding. The most important German-language physico-theological work is H.S. Reimarus’s 1755 Abhandlung von den vornehmsten Wahrheiten der natürlichen Religion, which also contains an argument from beauty to God. Kant singles out Reimarus’s book for praise at (CPJ 5: 476). 5. Benjamin D. Crowe, “Hutcheson on Natural Religion,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (2011): 711–40; Paul Guyer, Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 15; Peter Kivy, The Seventh Sense: Francis Hutcheson & Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetics, second edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), Ch. 6; William Robert Scott, Francis Hutcheson: His Life, Teaching and Position in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900); and M. A. Stewart, “Religion and Rational Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Alexander Broadie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 31–59 note this point. 6. Kant owned Merck’s 1762 German translation of the Inquiry (Arthur Warda, Immanuel Kants Bücher (Berlin: Martin Breslau, 1922)). 7. There are many studies of Hutcheson’s influence on Kant’s moral theory; for example, see Dieter Henrich, “Hutcheson und Kant,” Kant-Studien 49 (1958): 49–69. There is less discussion of Hutcheson’s influence on the third Critique and no serious study of the relationship between Hutcheson and Kant’s views concerning the interaction between aesthetics and teleology. 8. This is not to deny that some people might find Kant’s views important for contemporary debates. For example, Kant’s views might provide considerations against contemporary philosophers like Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, second edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 188–91 who defend non-Critical versions of the argument from beauty to God. 9. For general discussions of Hutcheson’s arguments, see Crowe, “Hutcheson on Natural Religion”; Kivy, The Seventh Sense, Ch. 6; and Scott, Francis Hutcheson: His Life, Teaching and Position in the History of Philosophy.

Aesthetics and Teleology 87 10. Kivy, The Seventh Sense, 111. 11. For example, see Francis Hutcheson, Logic, Metaphysics, and the Natural Sociability of Mankind, ed. James Moore and Michael Silverthorne (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006), 152–61. 12. For example, see Scott, Francis Hutcheson: His Life, Teaching and Position in the History of Philosophy, 284; and Stewart, “Religion and Rational Theology.” 13. Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue in two Treatises, ed. Wolfgang Leidhold, revised edition (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008), IBV 47. 14. IBV 48. 15. Of course, whether Hutcheson is right remains a further question; for philosophical criticisms of Hutcheson’s argument, see Kivy, The Seventh Sense, Ch. 6. 16. IBV 57. 17. IBV 79f. 18. IBV 81f. 19. IBV 81. 20. IBV 45. 21. See CPJ 5: 226–9 for Kant’s discussion of judgments of perfection. 22. Lawrence Pasternack, “Regulative Principles and ‘the Wise Author of Nature’,” Religious Studies 47 (2011), 414 takes Kant’s approval to apply merely to the inference to a wise author and Kant’s criticisms to apply to the claim that this wise author is a Supreme Being. But in this passage Kant explicitly approves of common human understanding’s ascent not merely to a wise author but to a Supreme Being. 23. Peter Byrne, Kant on God (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 38. 24. Cf. Andrew Chignell, “Modal Motivations for Noumenal Ignorance: Knowledge, Cognition, and Coherence,” Kant-Studien 105 (2014), 596; Lee Hardy, “Kant’s Reidianism: The Role of Common Sense in Kant’s Epistemology of Religious Belief,” in Kant’s Moral Metaphysics: God, Freedom, and Immortality, ed. Benjamin J. Bruxvoort Lipscomb and James Krueger (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 241; and Manfred Kuehn, “Kant’s Critique of Hume’s Theory of Faith,” in Hume and Hume’s Connexions, ed. M. A. Stewart and John P. Wright (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 239–55 stress the importance of reason for Kant’s assertions of God’s existence. However, Kuehn does not address in detail Kant’s views regarding the rational status of the physico-theological argument. 25. Hardy, “Kant’s Reidianism,” 241. 26. Although I am not able to go into the details here, this aspect of Kant’s view relies on Kant’s theory of divine analogy; see Reed Winegar, “Kant’s Criticisms of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 23 (2015): 888–910; and “God’s Mind in the 3rd Critique,” in Freiheit und Natur. Akten des XII. Kant-Kongresses, ed. Violetta Waibel and Margit Ruffing (Berlin: De Gruyter, forthcoming)) for Kant’s views regarding divine analogy. 27. For criticism of Kant’s claim that the moral argument justifies belief in a Supreme Being, see Stefan Klingner, “Kant und der Monotheismus der Vernunftreligion,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 97 (2015): 458–80. 28. CPJ 5:403; for further discussion of the gap between what is rational for human beings and what yields knowledge, see Chignell, “Modal Motivations for Noumenal Ignorance,” 596; and Winegar “Kant’s Criticisms of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion” and “God’s Mind in the 3rd Critique”. 29. Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 209–13. emphasizes that beauty results from judging nature as purposive which leads to a conception of nature as morally purposive. However, Allison stresses nature’s promotion of culture

88 Reed Winegar and does not explain that, for Kant, the argument from beauty rationally leads all the way to belief in a Supreme Being. 30. Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 310f; and Alexander Rueger, “Kant and the Aesthetics of Nature,” British Journal of Aesthetics 47 (2007): 138–55 note this point. 31. For the role of divine analogy here, see Winegar “God’s Mind in the 3rd Critique.” 32. Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste; and Rueger, “Kant and the Aesthetics of Nature” press this point.

References Allison, Henry E. Kant’s Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Byrne, Peter. Kant on God. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Chignell, Andrew. “Modal Motivations for Noumenal Ignorance: Knowledge, Cognition, and Coherence.” Kant-Studien 105 (2014): 573–97. Crowe, Benjamin D. “Hutcheson on Natural Religion.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (2011): 711–40. Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Taste, second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Guyer, Paul. Knowledge, Reason, and Taste. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Guyer, Paul. Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Hardy, Lee. “Kant’s Reidianism: The Role of Common Sense in Kant’s Epistemology of Religious Belief.” In Kant’s Moral Metaphysics: God, Freedom, and Immortality, edited by Benjamin J. Bruxvoort Lipscomb and James Krueger, 233–54. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010. Henrich, Dieter. “Hutcheson und Kant.” Kant-Studien 49 (1958): 49–69. Hutcheson, Francis. An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue: In two Treatises, revised edition. Edited by Wolfgang Leidhold. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008. Hutcheson, Francis. Logic, Metaphysics, and the Natural Sociability of Mankind. Edited by James Moore and Michael Silverthorne. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006. Kant, Immanuel. The Cambridge Editions of the Works of the Immanuel Kant. Edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992ff. Kant, Immanuel. Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by the Königliche Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, und Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1900ff. Kivy, Peter. The Seventh Sense: Francis Hutcheson & Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetics, second edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. Klingner, Stefan. “Kant und der Monotheismus der Vernunftreligion.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 97 (2015): 458–80. Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Kuehn, Manfred. “Kant’s Critique of Hume’s Theory of Faith.” In Hume and Hume’s Connexions, edited by M. A. Stewart and John P. Wright, 239–55. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. Pasternack, Lawrence. “Regulative Principles and ‘the Wise Author of Nature.’” Religious Studies 47 (2011): 411–29.

Aesthetics and Teleology 89 Rueger, Alexander. “Kant and the Aesthetics of Nature.” British Journal of Aesthetics 47 (2007): 138–55. Scott, William Robert. Francis Hutcheson: His Life, Teaching and Position in the History of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900. Stewart, M. A. “Religion and Rational Theology.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment, edited by Alexander Broadie, 31–59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Swinburne, Richard. The Existence of God, second edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004. Warda, Arthur. Immanuel Kants Bücher. Berlin: Martin Breslau, 1922. Winegar, Reed. “God’s Mind in the 3rd Critique.” In Freiheit und Natur. Akten des XII. Kant-Kongresses, edited by Violetta Waibel and Margit Ruffing. Berlin: De Gruyter, forthcoming. Winegar, Reed. “Kant’s Criticisms of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 23 (2015): 888–910. Zammito, John H. The Genesis of Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

5

Outer Sense, Inner Sense, and Feeling Hutcheson and Kant on Aesthetic Pleasure J. Colin McQuillan

I. Introduction During the eighteenth century, British philosophers often appealed to the senses to explain the pleasure we derive from natural beauty and works of art. In his “Essay on the Pleasures of the Imagination” (1712), Joseph Addison insists that the pleasures of the imagination have their origin in the senses, because the sense of sight furnishes the imagination with its ideas; so that by the Pleasures of the Imagination or Fancy (which I shall use promiscuously), I here mean such as arise from visible Objects, either when we have them actually in our View, or when we call up their Ideas in our Minds by Paintings, Statues, Descriptions, or any the like Occasion.1 Hume and Burke follow Addison in treating the senses as the source of the pleasures of beauty, though they are less focused on the sense of sight than Addison was. At several points in his essay “Of the Standard of Taste” (1757), Hume comments on the relation between the disposition of our sense organs and the delicacy of our tastes, using gustation rather than vision as a model for the perception of beauty.2 Burke explores the connection between pleasure and the senses even more comprehensively in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), where he attends to a variety of different ways in which the sensible qualities of objects excite feelings of pleasure and pain in us.3 British philosophy was influential in Germany during the eighteenth century, but there was also an independent German philosophical tradition that emphasized the senses.4 Indeed, it was during this time that Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten introduced aesthetics as a new part of philosophy and charged it with guiding the sensible cognition of the lower cognitive faculty to a perfection that he called “beauty” in his Aesthetica (1750/1758).5 Baumgarten intended aesthetics to serve as a “sister science” to logic, which was supposed to direct the intellectual cognition of the higher cognitive faculty to its perfection, which Baumgarten identifies as “apprehending the truth” in his Reflections on Poetry (1736).6 By suggesting that beautiful

Outer Sense, Inner Sense, and Feeling 91 sensible cognition has a perfection analogous to the intellectual cognition of truth, Baumgarten hoped to elevate the status of the senses within philosophy and qualify the rationalism of the Leibnizian-Wolffian school, which regarded sensible cognition as confused and indistinct, and, thus, imperfect. This undertaking inspired other German philosophers like Moses Mendelssohn and Johann Gottfried Herder, though they were interested in Baumgarten’s new science for very different directions. While Mendelssohn saw in Baumgarten a rational explanation of human psychology and the things that move us most profoundly, Herder praises him for gazing into “the dark abyss of the human soul, where the sensations of the brute shade into the sensations of man,” and seeing in it the origins of poetry.7 There were, however, exceptions to the sensibilism of the critique of taste in Britain and in German aesthetics during the eighteenth century. Francis Hutcheson and Immanuel Kant are perhaps the most important of these exceptions. Hutcheson introduces a distinction between the five external senses and the internal sense of beauty in his An Inquiry Into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), while Kant draws a distinction between agreeable sensations and the feeling of aesthetic pleasure in the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790). I doubt Kant’s distinction is based on or derives from Hutcheson’s distinction in any historical sense, but it accomplishes something similar: both distinctions separate judgments of taste from sensation, so that seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling cannot be the immediate sources of aesthetic pleasure. Yet there is also a way in which Kant’s distinction goes far beyond Hutcheson’s distinction. In Kant’s critical aesthetics, aesthetic pleasure is a matter of feeling, rather than sense, so it is as far removed from internal sense as it is from external sense. It is the separation of sensible affection and aesthetic pleasure in Hutcheson’s Inquiry and Kant’s third Critique that will concern me in what follows. I will begin by exploring Hutcheson’s distinction between the external senses and the internal sense of beauty. After that, I will highlight the differences between Kant’s pre-critical and critical aesthetics in the third and fourth sections, showing how radically he separates sensation and feeling, as well as how differently he understands the feeling of aesthetic pleasure, in his critical aesthetics. Finally, in the fifth section, I will compare Hutcheson’s reasons for distinguishing the external senses and the internal sense of beauty and Kant’s reasons for distinguishing agreeable sensations and the feeling of aesthetic pleasure in his critical aesthetics, in order to highlight the differences between the way they break with the sensibilism of other accounts of beauty and taste in the eighteenth century.

II. Hutcheson’s Internal Sense and Its German Reception Hutcheson begins his first Inquiry (An Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design) by affirming a Lockean proposition with roots in Scholastic Aristotelianism: “Those ideas which are rais’d in the Mind upon the

92 J. Colin McQuillan presence of external Objects, and their acting upon our Bodys, are call’d Sensations.”8 He does not say so until later in the Inquiry, but the implication of this statement is that all ideas originate in sensation. Hutcheson rejects the doctrine of innate ideas as surely as Locke does.9 Yet he is not concerned to carry on Locke’s polemic against nativism in the first Inquiry. Instead, Hutcheson devotes his Inquiry to the “powers of receiving those different perceptions” that are called “senses” and the feelings of pleasure and pain that are associated with them. Seeing and hearing are Hutcheson’s standard examples of senses. They are to be understood as “the different Powers of receiving the Ideas of Colours and Sounds.”10 Since ideas of color have more in common with one another than they do with the ideas of sound, and because ideas of sound differ more from ideas of color than they do from one another, Hutcheson concludes that seeing and hearing are distinct senses. Hutcheson is particularly interested in the senses and the differences between them, because sensations are often accompanied by feelings of pleasure and pain. He notes that there are “vastly greater pleasures in those complex ideas of objects which obtain the names of Beautiful, Regular, Harmonious” than in ideas that do not possess these qualities. What is the origin of these pleasures? To answer this question, Hutcheson stipulates that there is a special sense—“a sense of beauty”—that allows us to perceive the qualities of beauty, regularity, and harmony. He denies that the pleasure associated with these ideas can be derived from the external senses of seeing and hearing on the following grounds: It is plain from Experience that many Men have in the common meaning, the Sense of Seeing and Hearing perfect enough; they perceive all the simple Ideas separately, and have their Pleasures; they distinguish them from each other, such as one Colour from another, either quite different, or the stronger or fainter of the same Colour, when they are plac’d beside each other, altho they may often confound their Names, when they occur a-part from each other; as some do the Names of Green and Blue: they can tell in separate Notes, the higher, lower, sharper or flatter, when separately sounded; in Figures, they discern the Length, Breadth, Wideness of each Line, Surface, Angle; and may be as capable of hearing and seeing at great distances as any men whatsoever: And yet perhaps they shall find no Pleasure in Musical Compositions, in Painting, Architecture, natural Landskip; or but a weak one in comparison of what others enjoy from the same Objects.11 In this passage, Hutcheson acknowledges that some pleasures may derive from simple sensible ideas. The capacity to feel these pleasures is common enough, even among those who are confused about the proper names of the ideas they possess—those who might be confused about the differences between the colors blue and green. Hutcheson will also grant that the

Outer Sense, Inner Sense, and Feeling 93 majority of people are able to compare different sensible ideas and ascertain the relations between them. Thus they are able to tell the differences between musical notes and the lines of figures. Still, there are some who do not derive from these relations the “vastly greater pleasures” that attend the perception of beauty, regularity, and harmony. Because insensitivity to these qualities cannot be attributed to the external senses—which might function just as well in those who do and those who do not experience the “vastly greater pleasures” of beauty, regularity, and harmony—Hutcheson thinks it is better to regard the sense of beauty as an internal sense. To help explain the nature of this internal sense, Hutcheson proposes a musical analogy. In the same way that having a “good ear” for music is different from having the capacity to hear sounds, so too is the internal sense of beauty different from the external senses of seeing and hearing.12 Some people can perceive the notes of a musical composition without being pleased by it, so it is certainly possible that they will be able to see or hear something without appreciating its beauty, regularity, or harmony. This would explain the difference between those who possess “fine Genius” or “taste” and those who do not. Those who have “good taste” are like those who possess a “good ear”—they may perceive the same things as others, but they are better able to appreciate them, and derive more pleasure from them. In the pages that follow, Hutcheson explains what it means for the internal sense of beauty to be a sense. He highlights the difference between reason and internal sense when he says, This superior power of perception is justly called a Sense, because of its Affinity to the other Senses in this, that the Pleasure does not arise from any Knowledge of Principles, Proportions, Causes, or of the Usefulness of the Object; but strikes us at first with the Idea of Beauty: nor does the most accurate Knowledge increase this Pleasure of Beauty, however it may super-add a distinct rational Pleasure from the prospects of Advantage or from the Increase of Knowledge.13 Because he does not think the pleasures of the internal sense increase with knowledge, Hutcheson concludes that the internal sense of beauty must be distinct from reason. And because the external senses differ from reason in the same way, he thinks the internal sense and external senses are sufficiently similar to call them both senses. This is a marked departure from “the principles of the late Earl of Shaftesbury,” which Hutcheson claims to be defending against the materialism of Mandeville, “the author of The Fable of the Bees,” in the first edition of the Inquiry.14 While Shaftesbury asserts in The Moralists that “neither can man by the same sense or brutish part conceive or enjoy beauty; but all the beauty and good he enjoys is in a nobler way, and by the help of what is noblest, his mind or reason,” Hutcheson rejects the Neo-Platonic identification of reason and inner sense that one finds in his predecessor.15 He may depart from the tradition of British sensibilism

94 J. Colin McQuillan by distinguishing the inner sense of beauty from the external senses, but Hutcheson will still insist that the pleasures of beauty, regularity, and harmony derive from the senses. In the final chapters of the first Inquiry, Hutcheson defends the view that the internal sense of beauty is shared universally. Experience, and the different associations of ideas that arise from experience, may distinguish those that possess a “good ear” and “good taste” from those who do not, but Hutcheson insists, “Our Sense of Beauty seems design’d to give us positive Pleasure, but not positive Pain or Disgust, any further than what arises from disappointment.”16 The interest motivating this assertion becomes apparent a few pages later, in the final chapter of the first Inquiry. There he asks, If we can find any Reasons worthy of the great Author of Nature, for making such a Connection between regular Objects, and the Pleasure which accompanys our perceptions of them; or what Reasons might possibly influence him to create the World, as it is at present is, as far as we can observe, every where full of Regularity and Uniformity?17 The answer Hutcheson provides is both theological and moral: That supposing the Deity so kind as to connect sensible Pleasure with certain Actions or Contemplations, beside the rational advantage perceivable in them; there is a great moral Necessity, from his Goodness, that the internal Sense of Men should be constituted as it is at present, so as to make Uniformity amidst Variety the Occasion of Pleasure.18 In other words, we possess an internal sense of beauty, because God is good and wants the goodness of his creation to be a source of pleasure for his creatures. Hutcheson’s account of the “final cause” of the internal sense of beauty sets the stage for his account of another internal sense, the moral sense, in the second Inquiry (An Inquiry Concerning the Original of Our Ideas of Virtue or Moral Good).19 It was Hutcheson’s account of the moral sense that attracted the most critical attention in the years following the publication of his Inquiries; yet his account of the internal sense of beauty proved controversial as well, not least in Germany.20 Mendelssohn denounces Hutcheson’s postulation of a special internal sense as an invitation to irrationalism in his essay “On the Main Principles of the Fine Arts and Sciences” (1757), where he writes “let no one create, along with that English philosopher, a new sense for beauty, which the supreme being, on the basis of wise intentions, was supposed to have placed in our soul, as though by decree,” since “this is the shortest way to cut off the train of rational investigations suddenly and transform nature, the most perfect whole, into a patchwork.”21 Herder shared Mendelssohn’s opposition to Hutcheson’s internal sense, but for a different reason. In the fourth of his Critical Forests (1769/1846), Herder maintains that Hutcheson

Outer Sense, Inner Sense, and Feeling 95 “demonstrated not so much his sixth sense as his perplexity by having to assume a sixth sense, since he himself seeks the beautiful as an intellectual, geometric entity,” suggesting that his account is excessive and not deficient in its rationalism.22 Kant’s remarks about Hutcheson’s internal sense theory are confined to his moral philosophy, so we cannot be sure what Kant thought of the internal sense of beauty. However, it is possible that a comment about Hutcheson in his Elucidations of Baumgarten’s Elements of Baumgarten’s First Practical Philosophy (Erläuterungen Kants zu A. G. Baumgartens Initia philosophiae practicae primae, c. 1764–1768/1769–1770?) could be extended to his claims about the internal sense of beauty as well. Kant declares in the Elucidations that Hutcheson’s “principle” is “unphilosophical” for two reasons: first, because it “introduces a new feeling as a ground of explanation,” and, second, because it “sees objective grounds in the laws of sensibility.”23 As we will see, both of these reasons play important roles in Kant’s pre-critical aesthetics, even if they were directed at Hutcheson’s internal moral sense in the Elucidations.

III. Kant’s Pre-Critical Aesthetics: Sensibility and Feeling Kant’s criticism of Hutcheson’s principle in the Elucidations should not obscure the similarities between his pre-critical aesthetics and the position Hutcheson defends in his first Inquiry. Kant may not appeal to the distinction between external and internal senses, but, during the pre-critical period, at about the same time as he is believed to have composed the Elucidations, he shares with Hutcheson the view that the feelings of pleasure we associate with natural and artistic beauty derive from the senses. This much is evident from the transcripts of his logic lectures, which are based on Meier’s Excerpt from the Doctrine of Reason (1752). Like Baumgarten, Meier held that the perfections of sensible and intellectual cognition were analogous to one another. The new science of aesthetics was meant to guide the sensible cognition of the lower cognitive faculty (sensibility) to its perfection, while logic was meant to cultivate the intellectual cognition of the higher cognitive faculty (understanding). Meier’s Excerpt is ostensibly devoted to logic, but Kant often employed comparisons between aesthetics and logic in his lectures to highlight the ways the two sciences differed. He makes this strategy explicit in the program of his lectures for the winter semester 1765–1766, where he says he will frequently refer to aesthetics in his logic lectures, because “the rules of the one at all times serve to elucidate the rules of the other.”24 Commenting on the distinction between the perfections of sensible and intellectual cognition in the lecture transcript known as the Blomberg Logic (c. 1770s), Kant indicates, “All the perfections of cognition are 1st aesthetic, and consist in agreement with subjective laws and conditions. 2nd logical, and consist in agreement with objective laws and conditions.”25 He does not say so explicitly, but it becomes clear as he continues that the “subjective

96 J. Colin McQuillan laws and conditions” to which he refers are the laws and conditions of sensibility. This much becomes apparent a few paragraphs later, when Kant says, “Aesthetic perfections . . . are ones that are sensed by means of confused concepts.”26 The identification of confused cognition and aesthetically perfect cognition that Kant proposes in this passage is typical of Baumgarten and Meier, though they would not say that these perfections are “sensed.” Instead, they would say that aesthetically perfect cognition is cognized through the lower cognitive faculty of sensibility. It is interesting that Kant seems to equate sensible cognition with cognition that is “sensed,” but it would be unwise to place too much emphasis on one word in the transcript of his lecture. More significant is the consistency with which Kant associates aesthetic perfection with sensibility in the transcripts of other lectures. In the transcript of the Philippi Logic (c. 1772), for example, he says aesthetic perfection “refers only to my taste.”27 A few paragraphs later, he specifies, “Aesthetic perfection rests on sensibility,” confirming something he says earlier in the transcript about taste: “taste has generally valid laws, which derive from the nature of sensibility.”28 Similarly, after introducing the distinction between intuitions and concepts and the differences between the faculties of sensibility and the understanding in the Vienna Logic (c. 1782), Kant notes that “there are two kinds of perfection: (1) Perfection according to the laws of sensibility, aesthetic perfection. (2) Perfection according to the laws of the understanding, logical perfection.”29 Unlike the Blomberg Logic, where the aesthetic perfection of cognition was said to be consistent with “subjective laws and conditions,” Kant is explicit in the Vienna Logic that aesthetic perfection adheres to “the laws of the sensibility.” Even if Kant’s identification of the aesthetic and the sensible in his logic lectures is entirely consistent with the works of Baumgarten and Meier, there is one way in which he went beyond his predecessors. Looking at an early work like Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1764), we find a fascination with feeling that is not entirely absent from German rationalist aesthetics, but which assumes a much greater significance in Kant’s pre-critical aesthetics.30 In the Observations, Kant maintains, “The different sentiments of gratification or vexation rest not so much on the constitution of the external things that arouse them as on the feeling, intrinsic to every person, of being touched by them with pleasure or displeasure.”31 The first and second sections of the Observations are devoted to cataloging these feelings and establishing their relation to human nature, but it is the transcripts of his logic lectures that Kant traces these feelings back to sensibility and connects them explicitly to aesthetics. In the process, he shows that sensibility is more than just a source of cognitive content. It is also capable of affecting our internal state and moving us emotionally. Kant suggests that aesthetics is primarily concerned with this aspect of sensibility at the beginning of the Blomberg Logic, where he defines aesthetics as “the science . . . which deals with feelings” and says it “must deal with those representations that have an effect on our feeling.”32 A few paragraphs

Outer Sense, Inner Sense, and Feeling 97 later, he defines aesthetic cognition, not as sensible cognition, but as cognition “that affects our feeling (by means of pleasure or displeasure).”33 In a subsequent passage, he also explains that aesthetically perfect cognition is confused because “much acts on me at once and affects me.”34 He then compares the confusion of aesthetically perfect cognition to being “in the theatrum” when “a hero appears suddenly, terrifyingly, frightfully, and with a huge retinue” and “our soul is overcome by that which is exciting.”35 Similar comments about the relationship between sensibility and feeling can be found in Vienna Logic, where he associates the “liveliness” of cognition with its effect on our feeling. “Feeling,” Kant says, “requires that [cognition] depict beauties and produce excitement, i.e. movement of the mind.”36 Tracing this sentiment back to the Observations and comparing it with remarks in earlier transcripts, we can see that, during his pre-critical period, Kant regards excitement and feeling as the source of aesthetic pleasure. Although he shares with Hutcheson a concern for the relationship between sensibility, feeling, and pleasure during the pre-critical period, Kant’s pre-critical aesthetics differs from Hutcheson’s account of “fine Genius” or “taste” in a number of important ways. In addition to making no appeal to a special internal sense of beauty, the transcripts of his logic lectures make it clear that he equivocated about the nature of the rules governing sensibility and taste. Instead of arguing that taste is governed by universal rules, established through the goodness and loving design of God, Kant debates with himself about the existence, universality, necessity, and objectivity of the laws governing sensibility. In the Pölitz Logic (c. 1780–1782), for instance, he says the aesthetic perfection of cognition consists of merely subjective truth and distinctness; aesthetic generality rather than universality and aesthetic necessity and certainty, instead of strict necessity or true certainty—all because it derives from the senses.37 He concludes in the same passage, “Taste cannot be brought under any rules,” because rules originate in the understanding, and not in sensibility.38 He immediately clarifies that taste cannot be brought under rules (Regeln) like the rational laws (Gesetze) one finds in logic, holding open the possibility that there might be another kind of rule or law for aesthetic judgments. Kant refers to such a rule around the same time in the Vienna Logic, where he says, “Aesthetic perfection rests on the particular laws of human sensibility, and it is thus not universal for all creatures.”39 He equivocates about the particularity of such laws in the very next sentence when he insists, “There must also be necessary and universal laws of sensibility,” since objects are represented “not only through concepts but also through intuition.”40 This leads Kant to conclude that “the ground of sensible satisfaction is subjective, to be sure, but subjective with respect to all of humanity.”41 Yet none of these equivocations are on display in the first (A) edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), where Kant unambiguously states that Baumgarten’s attempts to bring “the critical estimation of the beautiful under principles of reason” had “failed” and was “futile” from the start, because “the putative rules or criteria are merely empirical as far as

98 J. Colin McQuillan their sources are concerned, and can therefore never serve as a priori rules according to which our judgment of taste must be directed.”42 From this passage, it would seem that Kant had decisively rejected the claim that are universal and necessary rules governing aesthetic judgment, precisely because those judgments are empirical, that is, having their origin in the senses.

IV. Kant’s Critical Aesthetics: Disinterestedness, Free Play, and Aesthetic Pleasure By the time he published the second (B) edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787), Kant’s views on aesthetics had already started to change. He revised the footnote to the “Transcendental Aesthetic,” claiming it is only with respect to its “most prominent sources” that the rules or criteria of aesthetic judgment are empirical, so that they can never serve as “determinate” a priori rules.43 He also announced the publication of a work called The Critique of Taste in a letter to Carl Leonhard Reinhold, based on his discovery of “a new sort of a priori principles, different from those heretofore observed.”44 The principles to which Kant refers are described as the a priori principles of “the faculty of feeling pleasure and displeasure,” whose existence he had previously denied. The discovery of these principles revolutionized Kant’s views on aesthetics, though not in way one might expect from his letter to Reinhold. When the Critique of the Power of Judgment finally appeared in 1790, Kant had combined his “Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment” with a “Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment.”45 Both were used to defend the principle of purposiveness, which Kant presents as a new, transcendental principle of judgment. More work needs to be done to explain the development of Kant’s third Critique, the relation between aesthetics and teleology, the power of judgment, and the principle of purposiveness, but my concern here is the way Kant distinguishes sensibility and the feeling of aesthetic pleasure. In the third Critique, he no longer treats aesthetic pleasure as an effect of sensibility, as he had in his lectures on logic and in his pre-critical aesthetics more generally. Instead, he connects the feeling of aesthetic pleasure to a new account of the disinterestedness of aesthetic judgment and the free play of the cognitive faculties. These two innovations allowed him to leave behind the sensibilism of his pre-critical aesthetics and chart an entirely new course. Kant begins to articulate his new conception of aesthetic pleasure in the first moment of the “Analytic of the Beautiful,” which is devoted to the “quality” of judgments of taste. Here Kant intends to demonstrate that judgments of taste are “aesthetic.” And though it might seem like a tautology to say that judgments of taste are aesthetic, Kant has a precise conception of the aesthetic in mind, which emerges in the course of his argument. He begins by distinguishing judgments concerning “whether or not something is beautiful” from cognitive judgments and moral judgments.46 While cognitive judgments have the cognition of an object as their end, aesthetic judgments are

Outer Sense, Inner Sense, and Feeling 99 related “entirely to the subject, indeed to its feeling of life, under the name of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure, which grounds an entirely special faculty for discriminating and judging.”47 Kant even insists that this feeling “contributes nothing to cognition but only holds the given representation in the subject up to the entire faculty of representation, of which the mind becomes conscious in the feeling of its state.”48 Kant draws a similar contrast between moral judgments and aesthetic judgments in the paragraphs that follow. He maintains that moral judgments have the determination of the good as their end, while aesthetic judgments are, again, solely concerned with feeling of pleasure and displeasure. Because the good and the pleasant differ in kind, the objects and ends of moral and aesthetic judgments have to be distinguished, just cognitive judgments and moral judgments have to be separated from one another. The quality of judgments of taste is initially defined by these distinctions. As Kant proceeds, it becomes clear that there are a number of important differences between cognitive judgments, moral judgments, and aesthetic judgments. The first is the difference between the kinds of “interest” these judgments take in their objects and ends. Cognitive judgments have an interest in the existence of the object that is cognized through them, just like moral judgments have an interest in the good they determine. Aesthetic judgments differ from both cognitive and moral judgments, because they are disinterested—they are not concerned with the existence of objects or the goodness of ends. They are only concerned with the feeling of pleasure or displeasure that judgments of taste evoke “in mere contemplation (intuition) or reflection.”49 For this reason, aesthetic judgments produce a very different kind of satisfaction than either cognitive or moral judgments. The interests of cognitive judgments are satisfied when they have successfully cognized an object through the synthesis of intuitions and concepts, while the interests of moral judgments are satisfied when the will is determined through a categorical imperative. Kant admits that these kinds of satisfaction may involve some kind or some degree of pleasure; yet he insists that the pleasure we derive from aesthetic judgment is different in kind from the pleasure we derive from cognitive and moral judgments. Kant calls aesthetic pleasure a “free satisfaction,” since “no interest, neither that of the senses nor that of reason, extorts approval.”50 Later, in the second moment of the “Analytic of the Beautiful,” he explains that the free satisfaction of aesthetic pleasure arises from the free play of the imagination and the understanding. He maintains that aesthetic pleasure is the consequence of a state of mind in which the cognitive faculties are “enlivened through mutual agreement,” without determining an object through a concept.51 And though we often treat beauty as if it were “a property of the object that is determined in it in accordance with concepts,” Kant thinks aesthetic pleasure is actually an effect of the free play of our cognitive faculties on “the feeling of the subject.”52 That is why he defends the seemingly perverse thesis that aesthetic judgment actually precedes the feeling of pleasure that we derive from

100 J. Colin McQuillan beautiful objects—it is not the beautiful object that gives rise to feelings of aesthetic pleasure, but the enlivening of the faculties that takes place when we judge something to be beautiful. In his discussion of the disinterestedness of judgments of taste in the first moment as well as his discussion of the free play of faculties in the second moment of the “Analytic of the Beautiful,” Kant is careful to distinguish aesthetic pleasure from the pleasures of sensibility. In the first moment, he makes it clear that the satisfactions of sensation are interested and unfree, because “impressions of the senses . . . determine inclination.”53 Sensation “excites a desire for objects of the same sort, hence the satisfaction presupposes not the mere judgment about it but the relation of its existence to my state insofar as it is affected by such an object.”54 Because the satisfactions of sensation involve an interest not only in the existence of an object, but also in the possession of the object that provides sensible satisfaction, Kant distinguishes the satisfactions of sensations and the free satisfaction of aesthetic pleasure, calling the former “agreeable” and reserving the name “pleasure” for the latter. His reason for insisting on the difference between agreeable sensation and aesthetic pleasure becomes apparent in the second moment, when he considers “whether in the judgment of taste the feeling of pleasure precedes the judging of the object or the latter precedes the former.”55 Kant rejects the possibility that “the pleasure in the given object” comes first, because that would make the pleasure we take in a beautiful object “none other than mere agreeableness in sensation.”56 Two unacceptable consequences follow from the identification of aesthetic pleasure and agreeable sensation. First, aesthetic judgments would not be universally communicable if they were based on agreeable sensations, because the judgment that a sensation is agreeable admits only “private validity” for the one who is sensibly affected.57 Others, who were not so affected, would have no reason to grant the validity of an aesthetic judgment. Second, there could be no a priori principles of aesthetic judgment if aesthetic pleasure were based on agreeable sensation, because its principles could only be “cognized a posteriori and by means of experience itself,” if they derived from sensation.58 Distinguishing aesthetic pleasure and agreeable sensation solves both of these problems. Kant thinks aesthetic judgments will be universally communicable if they are grounded in “the state of mind that is encountered in the relation of the powers of representation to each other,” since “this subjective relation suited to cognition in general must be valid for everyone and consequently universally communicable, just as any determinate cognition is, which still always rests on that relation as its subjective condition.”59 Because the relation that obtains between the faculties in free play is also necessary for the cognition of an object, Kant thinks it can be presupposed in anyone capable of making a cognitive judgment and can therefore ground the universal communicability of aesthetic judgment. The relation between the faculties is also the source of the a priori principles of aesthetic judgment, because the free play of the imagination and the

Outer Sense, Inner Sense, and Feeling 101 understanding exhibits a “merely formal purposiveness,” which “contains a determining ground of the activity of the subject with regard to the animation of its cognitive powers, thus an internal causality (which is purposive) with regard to cognition in general, but without being restricted to a particular cognition.”60 The “formal purposiveness” of the relation between the faculties is sufficient for Kant to conclude that “the correspondence of a representation with these conditions of the power of judgment must be able to be assumed to be valid for everyone a priori,” since it is necessary for cognitive judgments, as well as aesthetic judgments. It can therefore serve as the a priori principle of judgments of taste.61 Debates about Kant’s conception of disinterestedness and his account of the free play of the faculties persist in the scholarly literature. Whether aesthetic judgment should be as sharply distinguished from cognitive and moral judgments as Kant suggests, whether it is possible for aesthetic judgments to be entirely disinterested, and how exactly the free play of the faculties affects our feeling and gives rise to aesthetic pleasure—the answers to these questions remain decidedly unclear.62 Still, the differences between Kant’s pre-critical and critical aesthetics are easy to discern. By the time he publishes the third Critique, Kant no longer believes the feeling of aesthetic pleasure was an effect of sensible affection. He distinguishes agreeable sensation and aesthetic pleasure in order to secure the universal communicability of aesthetic judgments and the a priori principles of judgments of taste. And he comes to see the free play of the faculties as the source of the feeling of aesthetic pleasure. These differences mark an important turning point in the development of Kant’s critical philosophy as well as the history of modern aesthetics.

V. Distinguishing the Pleasures of the Senses and the Feeling of Aesthetic Pleasure In this essay, I have tried to document two very different ways modern philosophers broke with the sensibilism that dominated the critique of taste in Britain as well as German aesthetics during the eighteenth century. Hutcheson breaks with sensibilism because he is perplexed by the diversity of judgments of taste.63 He recognizes that some people derive pleasure from beauty, regularity, and harmony, while others are insensitive to these qualities in at least some cases. He also recognizes that at least some of those who do not appreciate pleasures of beauty, regularity, and harmony can see and hear as well as those who are pleased by them. This leads Hutcheson to reject the possibility that these pleasures derive directly from the external senses. And he postulates the existence of a special internal sense of beauty to explain the difference between the tastes of those who do and do not derive pleasure from beauty, regularity, and harmony. He maintains that this internal sense is universal for theological reasons, because it is a compelling reason to affirm both the existence and the goodness of God, but

102 J. Colin McQuillan he also holds that the internal sense can be cultivated through experience and education, making one person more sensitive to the pleasures of beauty and taste than another. Although Hutcheson initially presented his Inquiry as a defense of Shaftesbury against Mandeville, there is an important way in which his account of the internal sense of beauty differs from the one we find in Shaftesbury. In Shaftesbury, the internal sense is indistinguishable from reason, while Hutcheson makes it clear that the internal sense of beauty is still a sense.64 Not only does Hutcheson follow Locke in affirming that all our ideas originate in the senses, he also makes them the source of the pleasure we find in works of art and natural beauty. The only difference is that pleasure arises from an internal sense, while ideas are derived from the external senses. This is surely a significant difference, but it does not constitute a radical break with sensibilism. It is perhaps better to understand Hutcheson’s contribution to aesthetics as a modified form of sensibilism that still seeks to ground aesthetic pleasure in the physiology and psychology of the senses. Kant rejected Hutcheson’s appeals to an internal sense, but his pre-critical aesthetics is consistent with the sensibilism that other German philosophers of his time adopted from British sources.65 There is evidence that Kant held this view from the early 1770s until late 1787, when his revisions to the second (B) edition of the Critique of Pure Reason and his correspondence with Reinhold indicate an important change was taking place in his views on aesthetics. This change brought his views on aesthetics closer to his views on metaphysics and moral philosophy, which should not be surprising. After all, he tells Reinhold in their correspondence that the systematicity he discovered in his analysis of the human mental faculties in the first and second Critiques led to his discovery of the a priori principles of the feeling of pleasure and displeasure and the a priori principles of aesthetic judgment.66 Recognizing that there are a priori principles of judgments of taste allows Kant to draw a sharp distinction between the pleasures of agreeable sensation and the feeling of aesthetic pleasure for the first time in the Critique of the Power of Judgment.67 In Kant’s critical aesthetics, the distinction between agreeable sensation and the feeling of aesthetic pleasure helps to guarantee the disinterestedness of aesthetic judgment as well as its universal communicability. Since he now holds that the feeling of aesthetic pleasure arises from the free play of the cognitive faculties, rather than sensible affections, Kant can separate aesthetic pleasure from the inclinations associated with the senses as well as the interest we take in the existence of objects of our cognitive judgments. He can also argue that the relations between the understanding and imagination that are involved in producing feelings of aesthetic pleasure can be presupposed in others, grounding a legitimate demand that they recognize the validity of our aesthetic judgments. These presuppositions and expectations are valid, because Kant thinks the same faculties and relations that are involved in free play are also necessary for the cognitive judgments. If

Outer Sense, Inner Sense, and Feeling 103 someone is capable of making cognitive judgments, then they can also make aesthetic judgments, by using the same faculties and relations for different purposes. Why it is that these judgments stand in the relations they do remains unclear, but Kant think it indicates a deeper “purposiveness” in their structure and relations and also thinks this “purposiveness” may be treated as a transcendental principle of judgment. The different ways that Hutcheson and Kant break with sensibilism point to different directions aesthetics can be and, historically, has been developed. Following Hutcheson, philosophers can expand on British sensibilism and empiricism, using it as a tool to explain the physiological and psychological origin of the pleasures of natural and artistic beauty. Although Hutcheson tries to modify this approach to solve some of the problems that seem to follow from grounding aesthetic pleasure in the effect of a particular object on the senses of a particular person, contemporary philosophers are not likely to see his appeal to an internal sense of beauty as a viable solution. Some may follow the path Kant took when he abandoned his pre-critical aesthetics, rejecting sensibilism and empiricism in a search for transcendental principles of aesthetic judgment. The challenges that are involved in identifying and demonstrating the validity of such principles cannot be ignored, but at least they hold out the prospect of a distinctly philosophical conception of aesthetic pleasure, which is not to be found in physiological or psychological aesthetics.

Notes 1. Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator, vol. 3, ed. Donald F. Bond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 537. 2. David Hume, Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller, revised edition (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), 230, 235. 3. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. Paul Guyer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 5–6. See also Koen Vermeir and Michael Funk Deckard, The Science of Sensibility: Reading Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry (Dodrecht: Springer, 2012), 16–19. 4. On the influence of British sensibilism in Germany, see Manfred Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987), 86–102; and Paul Guyer, Knowledge, Reason, and Taste (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 198–254. On the distinctness of the German aesthetic tradition, see Kai Hammermeister, The German Aesthetic Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Frederick Beiser, Diotima’s Children: German Aesthetic Rationalism from Leibniz to Lessing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Stephanie Buchenau, The Founding of Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment: The Art of Invention and the Invention of Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); and J. Colin McQuillan, Early Modern Aesthetics (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 101–34. 5. Alexander G. Baumgarten, Ästhetik/Aesthetica, ed. and trans. Dagmar Mirbach (Hamburg: Meiner Verlag, 2007), §14. 6. Alexander G. Baumgarten, Reflections on Poetry, ed. and trans. Karl Aschenbrenner and William B. Holther (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954), §115–§116; Baumgarten, Ästhetik/Aesthetica, §13.

104 J. Colin McQuillan 7. Moses Mendelssohn, Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans. Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 169–70; Johann G. Herder, Selected Writings on Aesthetics, ed. and trans. Gregory Moore (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 44. 8. Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry in the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (IBV), ed. Wolfgang Leidhold (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004), 19. The Lockean foundations of Hutcheson’s aesthetics are discussed in Dabney Townsend, “Lockean Aesthetics,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49/4 (1991): 350–3. 9. IBV 66–7. 10. IBV 19. 11. IBV 23. 12. IBV 23. 13. IBV 25. 14. On the relationship between Shaftesbury and Hutcheson’s first Inquiry, see IBV xi; and Daniel Carey, “Francis Hutcheson’s Philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment: Reception, Reputation, and Legacy,” in Scottish Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Aaron Garrett and James A. Harris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 38. 15. Anthony A. Cooper (Third Earl of Shaftesbury), Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Lawrence E. Klein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 331. Timothy Costelloe and Paul Guyer also emphasize the relation between inner sense and rational contemplation in Shaftesbury in Timothy Costelloe, The British Aesthetic Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 15–16; and Paul Guyer, A History of Modern Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 42–3. 16. IBV 62. 17. IBV 78. 18. IBV 80. 19. IBV 89–99. 20. On the reception of Hutcheson’s Inquiry, see Peter Kivy, The Seventh Sense: Francis Hutcheson & Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 127–235; and Carey, “Francis Hutcheson’s Philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment,” 36–76. 21. Mendelssohn, Philosophical Writings, 171. 22. Herder, Selected Writings on Aesthetics, 275. 23. Immanuel Kant, Notes and Fragments, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Curtis Bowman, Paul Guyer and Frederick Rauscher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 428 (R 19: 120, Reflexion 6634: “Das princip des Hutcheson ist unphilosophisch, weil es ein neu Gefühl als einen Erklarungsgrund anführet, zweytens in den Gesetzen der Sinnlichkeit obiective Gründe sieht”). Dieter Henrich discusses this remark in relation to Hutcheson’s defense of moral sense theory in Dieter Henrich, “Hutcheson and Kant,” in Kant’s Moral and Legal Philosophy, ed. Karl Ameriks and Ottfried Höffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 39. 24. Immanuel Kant, Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770, ed. and trans. David Walford and Ralf Meerbote (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 297 (LA 2: 311). 25. Georg F. Meier, Excerpt from the Doctrine of Reason, trans. Aaron Bunch (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), §22; Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Logic, ed. and trans. J. Michael Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 30 (LL 24: 43). 26. LL 24: 51. 27. Immanuel Kant, Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Prussian Royal Academy of Sciences, et al. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1900, Akademie Ausgabe), (LL 24: 358).

Outer Sense, Inner Sense, and Feeling 105 28. LL 24: 349, 361. 29. LL 24: 807. 30. Paul Guyer is one of the few scholars to (correctly, in my view) emphasize the emotional dimension of Baumgarten and Meier’s aesthetics in Guyer 2004, Vol. 1, 330–1. 31. Immanuel Kant, Anthropology, History, and Education, ed. Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 23 (FBS 2: 207). 32. LL 24: 31, 44. 33. LL 24: 48. 34. LL 24: 55. 35. LL 24: 55. 36. LL 24: 842. 37. LL 24: 517–18. 38. LL 24: 518. 39. LL 24: 806–7. 40. LL 24: 806–7. 41. LL 24: 806–7. 42. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 156 (CPR A21). 43. CPR B35. 44. Immanuel Kant, Correspondence, ed. and trans. Arnulf Zweig (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 272 (C 10: 514). 45. On the reasons these two were combined, see John Zammito, The Genesis of Kant’s Critique of Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), xxxix–xlvi; and Rachel Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 46. CPJ 5: 203. 47. CPJ 5: 204. 48. CPJ 5: 204. 49. CPJ 5: 204. 50. CPJ 5: 210. 51. CPJ 5: 216–19. 52. CPJ 5: 218. 53. CPJ 5: 206. 54. CPJ 5: 207. 55. CPJ 5: 216. 56. CPJ 5: 217. 57. CPJ 5: 217. 58. CPJ 5: 218, 221–2. 59. CPJ 5: 217–18. 60. CPJ 5: 222. 61. CPJ 5: 283. 62. These concerns are raised in Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 148–62; and Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 85–6. 63. Carolyn Korsmeyer convincingly argues that Hutcheson’s account of the internal sense of beauty is motivated by a desire to refute the relativism that might arise from this diversity in Carolyn W. Korsmeyer, “Relativism and Hutcheson’s Aesthetic Theory,” Journal of the History of Ideas 36/2 (1975): 319–30. 64. Shaftesbury even denies that beauty is an object of sense, and insists that it must be rationally contemplated, in Cooper (Third Earl of Shaftesbury), Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, 330–2.

106 J. Colin McQuillan 65. This is significant, because Kant consistently opposes sensibilism and empiricism in his works on metaphysics and moral philosophy On Kant’s objections to the sensibilism and appeals to common sense in metaphysics and moral philosophy, see Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 167–207. 66. C 10: 514. 67. Paul Guyer argues that Kant fails to distinguish the aesthetic pleasures of feeling from sensible pleasure in Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, 151–5. Rachel Zuckert defends the distinction between feeling and sensation in Rachel Zuckert, “A New Look at Kant’s Theory of Pleasure,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60/3 (2002): 239–52.

References Addison, Joseph and Richard Steele. The Spectator. Edited by Donald F. Bond. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965. Allison, Henry E. Kant’s Theory of Taste. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Baumgarten, Alexander G. Ästhetik/Aesthetica. Edited and translated by Dagmar Mirbach. Hamburg: Meiner Verlag, 2007. Baumgarten, Alexander G. Reflections on Poetry. Edited and translated by Karl Aschenbrenner and William B. Holther. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954. Beiser, Frederick. Diotima’s Children: German Aesthetic Rationalism from Leibniz to Lessing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Buchenau, Stephanie. The Founding of Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment: The Art of Invention and the Invention of Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Edited by Paul Guyer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Carey, Daniel. “Francis Hutcheson’s Philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment: Reception, Reputation, and Legacy.” In Scottish Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Aaron Garrett and James A. Harris, 36–76. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Cooper, Anthony A. (Third Earl of Shaftesbury). Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. Edited by Lawrence E. Klein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Costelloe, Timothy. The British Aesthetic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Guyer, Paul. A History of Modern Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Taste, second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Guyer, Paul. Knowledge, Reason, and Taste. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Hammermeister, Kai. The German Aesthetic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Henrich, Dieter. “Hutcheson and Kant.” In Kant’s Moral and Legal Philosophy, edited by Karl Ameriks and Ottfried Höffe, 29–57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Herder, Johann G. Selected Writings on Aesthetics. Edited and translated by Gregory Moore. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.

Outer Sense, Inner Sense, and Feeling 107 Hume, David. Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, revised edition, Edited by Eugene F. Miller. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987. Hutcheson, Francis. An Inquiry in the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. Edited by Wolfgang Leidhold. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004. Kant, Immanuel. Anthropology, History, and Education. Edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Kant, Immanuel. Correspondence. Edited and translated by Arnulf Zweig. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Kant, Immanuel. Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by the Prussian Royal Academy of Sciences, et al. Akademie Ausgabe. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1900. Kant, Immanuel. Lectures on Logic. Edited and translated by J. Michael Young. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992b. Kant, Immanuel. Notes and Fragments. Edited by Paul Guyer. Translated by Curtis Bowman, Paul Guyer and Frederick Rauscher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Kant, Immanuel. Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770. Edited and translated by David Walford and Ralf Meerbote. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992a. Kivy, Peter. The Seventh Sense: Francis Hutcheson & Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Korsmeyer, Carolyn W. “Relativism and Hutcheson’s Aesthetic Theory.” Journal of the History of Ideas 36/2 (1975): 319–30. Kuehn, Manfred. Scottish Common Sense in Germany. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987. McQuillan, J. Colin. Early Modern Aesthetics. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Meier, Georg F. Excerpt from the Doctrine of Reason. Translated by Aaron Brunch. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. Mendelssohn, Moses. Philosophical Writings. Edited and translated by Daniel O. Dahlstrom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Townsend, Dabney. “Lockean Aesthetics.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49 (1991): 349–61. Vermeir, Koen and Michael Funk Deckard. The Science of Sensibility: Reading Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry. Dodrecht: Springer, 2012. Zammito, John. The Genesis of Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Zuckert, Rachel. Kant on Beauty and Biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Zuckert, Rachel. “A New Look at Kant’s Theory of Pleasure.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60 (2002): 239–52.

6

Taste, Morality, and Common Sense Kant and the Scots Paul Guyer

I. Kant and the Scots No one has done more than Manfred Kuehn to impress upon us the importance of Scottish philosophy for Kant—not only the importance of Hume, which has always been recognized, even if it has been debated whether Hume was important for Kant as an irritant or an influence,1 but also the importance of the “common-sense” philosophers, especially Thomas Reid, and even the much-despised James Beattie. Kuehn’s emphasis on the historical importance of the common-sense philosophers for Kant has been accompanied with an argument for the philosophical importance of the concept of common sense for him.2 In particular, Kuehn emphasized the importance of the concept of common sense in Kant’s aesthetics, although he concluded that Kant ultimately differed from the Scots in conceiving of common sense as a regulative ideal produced by reason rather than as a foundation preceding and independent of reason.3 Here I want to suggest a slightly different approach to the relation between common sense and reason in Kant’s aesthetics: as elsewhere, Kant sees common sense as a necessary and necessarily correct expression of our natural faculty of reason, but he also sees common sense as liable to confusion—a natural dialectic—that needs to be resolved by the philosophical use of reason.4 The “Dialectic of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment” can seem like a section merely tacked on to the body of the “Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment” because of Kant’s unreasonable affection for his architectonic, but in fact the entire structure of Kant’s aesthetics is dialectical, aimed at reconciling views about taste that seem common-sensical but that without philosophical care can conflict with each other. This is obviously the case with the thesis and antithesis of the official antinomy of taste in the Dialectic. Both the thesis, “The judgment of taste is not based on concepts, for otherwise it would be possible to dispute about it (decide by means of proofs),” and the antithesis, “The judgment of taste is based on concepts, for otherwise, despite its variety, it would not even be possible to argue about it (to lay claim to the necessary assent of others to this judgment)” (CPJ 5:338–9),5 represent common-sense views that have to be reconciled with each other. This antinomy is by no means a sudden

Taste, Morality, and Common Sense 109 addition to Kant’s argument, but reprises his earlier exposition of the philosophical problem of taste by the conflict between two “peculiarities,” the first that “The judgment of taste determines its object with regard to satisfaction (as beauty) with a claim to the assent of everyone, as if it were objective” (CPJ 5:281) and the second that “The judgment of taste is not determinable by grounds of proof at all, just as if it were merely subjective” (CPJ 5:284)—the first amounting to the later antithesis, and the second to the later thesis. This analysis of the problem of taste in turn reprises the key claims of the Second and Fourth Moments of the “Analytic of the Beautiful,” so the dialectic present in common sense about taste has been the problem for a philosophy of taste from the start of Kant’s book. There can be little room for doubt that in structuring the entire problem of taste as a dialectic arising from common sense itself Kant must have been influenced by Hume’s essay “Of the Standard of Taste,” published in 1757 and translated into German just two years later.6 Hume famously wrote that on the issue of taste there are two “species” of common sense: one that “All sentiment is right” because “Beauty is no quality in things themselves” and therefore “sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself,” thus any argument about a judgment of taste based on the supposition that there is “a real beauty, or real deformity” in objects that could settle the matter is “fruitless”, but the other is that “whoever would assert an equality of genius and elegance between OGILBY and MILTON, or BUNYAN and ADDISON, would be thought to defend no less an extravagance, than if he had maintained a mole-hill to be as high as TENERIFFE,” thus that there must be intersubjectively valid standards in taste even if judgments of taste cannot be proven by pointing to specific properties of objects that determine their truths or falsehoods.7 Hume’s two species of common sense are clear antecedents for Kant’s second and first peculiarities of taste, in that order, and for the thesis and antithesis of his antinomy of taste, in that order. But what I want to argue is that there is another and in some ways more important dialectic in Kant’s aesthetics beyond this dialectic about the logic and epistemology of judgments of taste, and that this dialectic is anticipated by another Scot—namely, James Beattie—even though in this case we cannot claim direct influence on Kant. The dialectic I have in mind is that between the common sense views that the pleasure in beauty, both natural and artistic, is a pleasure in formal properties that is distinct from moral approbation, and yet that nothing human, neither human products nor human responses, is immune from moral judgment and that to be of enduring value beauty must have moral significance. My suggestion is that this is the dialectic within common sense about taste that Kant most deeply wanted to resolve, and that his resolution of this dialectic is predicated upon his resolution of the first. The philosophical considerations that resolve the second conflict, culminating in the claim within the Dialectic of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment that the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good, which means that beauty is not identical to moral goodness but yet satisfies

110 Paul Guyer our moral condition for enduring interest by gratifying our need as creatures who are both sensible and rational for symbols of the morally good, are made possible by the conception of aesthetic experience that resolves the first conflict. If this is so, then although there are striking parallels between Kant’s resolution of this antinomy and Beattie’s approach to the Horatian saw that poetry, but poetry as a stand-in for the arts in general, must both please and instruct, there is also a philosophical aspect to Kant’s resolution of the conflict of common sense with itself about aesthetics and morality that is missing from Beattie’s account. Even as to the parallels, I use that term rather than anything stronger because there is no evidence that Kant was aware of Beattie’s work on poetry. Kant was of course aware of Beattie’s Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, his attack on Humean skepticism, first published in 1770 and translated into German in 1772.8 But Beattie’s 1762 lectures on poetry and music were published only in the 1776 edition of the Essay,9 thus were not included in the 1772 translation, and do not seem to have been subsequently translated. And while the second volume of Beattie’s Elements of Moral Science contains a reprise a his theory of poetry, that volume was published only in 1793, after the Critique of the Power of Judgment, and in any case the Elements does not appear to have been translated into German.10 So there can be no question of Kant having been directly influenced by Beattie on what we might call the moral rather than epistemological dialectic of taste, yet there are remarkable parallels between their approaches. We might take this to suggest that not only is the dialectic one that arises within common sense but that at least one step toward its resolution is readily available to common sense. However, Kant’s theoretical framework for resolving this dialectic suggests that common sense also needs to be rescued from its own conflicts by philosophical reflection. In what follows, I will expound the parallel that I find between Kant and Beattie and then comment on Kant’s philosophical resolution of the moral dialectic of taste.

II. Poetry Must Please and Instruct The tension about the relation of beauty to morality in Kant’s aesthetics should be obvious. On the one hand, the First Moment starts the Analytic with the claims that “The agreeable, the beautiful, and the good . . . designate three different relations of representations to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure” and that “One can say that among all these three kinds of satisfaction only that of the taste for the beautiful is a disinterested and free satisfaction; for no interest, neither that of the senses nor that of reason, extorts approval,” leading to the conclusion that “Taste is the faculty for judging an object or a kind of representation through a satisfaction or dissatisfaction without any interest” (CPJ 5:210–11). These claims are grounded in what is clearly intended to be the commonsensical intuition that when one

Taste, Morality, and Common Sense 111 is asked whether he finds a palace beautiful, he is not being asked whether he approves of wasting “the sweat of the people on such superfluous things,” that is, whether he approves of the production of the palace from a moral point of view, but “One only wants to know whether the mere representation of the object is accompanied with satisfaction” in the subject, however “indifferent” or not the subject “might be with regard to the existence of the object of this representation” from a moral point of view (CPJ 5:204–5). On the other hand, when Kant gives his account of fine art, in the form of a theory of genius as the source of fine art, he argues that the “spirit” (Geist) of a work of fine art lies in its imaginative presentation of an idea of reason, specifically of moral reason: thus “The poet ventures to make sensible rational ideas of invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed, the kingdom of hell, eternity, etc. . . . death, envy, and all sorts of vices, as well as love, fame, etc.” (CPJ 5:314). And to explain this claim, which might seem quite surprising after his earlier statements that beauty concerns only form, not the matter of representation—in the case of painting, drawing rather than color (CPJ 5:225)—but also not content, not what is represented, Kant argues that even though “in all beautiful art what is essential consists in the form,” thus beauty is logically independent from moral content, nevertheless the mind—that is, the whole person—soon tires of merely formal beauty, and requires moral significance as the condition of enduring pleasure and interest in an object. Kant’s argument comes in the form of an explanation of the importance of mixed art forms, that is, those which combine what might be thought of as separate media: Rhetoric can be combined with a painterly presentation of its subjects as well as objects in a play; poetry with music in song; this, in turn, with a painterly (theatrical) presentation in an opera; the play of sensations in a piece of music with the play of shapes in dance, etc. Further, the presentation of the sublime, so far as it belongs to beautiful art, can be united with beauty in a verse tragedy, a didactic poem, an oratorio; and in these combinations beautiful art is all the more artistic, although whether it is also more beautiful (since so many different kinds of satisfaction are crisscrossed with each other) can be doubted in some of these cases. Yet in all beautiful art what is essential consists in the form, which is purposive for observation and judging, where the pleasure is at the same time culture and disposes the spirit [Geist] to ideas, hence makes it receptive to several sorts of pleasure and entertainment—not in the matter of the sensation (the charm or the emotion), where it is aimed merely at enjoyment, which leaves behind nothing in the idea, and makes the spirit [Geist] dull, the object by and by loathsome, and the mind [Gemüth], because it is aware that its disposition is contrapurposive in the judgment of reason, dissatisfied with itself and moody. If the beautiful arts are not combined, whether closely at a distance, with moral ideas, which alone carry with them a self-sufficient satis-

112 Paul Guyer faction, then the latter is their ultimate fate. They then serve only for diversion, which one increasingly needs the more one uses them to banish the mind’s [Gemüths] dissatisfaction with itself, by which one makes oneself ever more useless and dissatisfied with oneself. (CPJ 5:325–6) Kant’s switch from the term Geist to Gemüth in this passage is telling. The latter is his anthropological or psychological term for the entirety of the human psyche or mental life, including sensations, emotions, and thoughts, rather than for any one faculty or any metaphysical basis for human mentality, such as the soul. So what Kant is arguing is that even though form alone is the proper object for strictly aesthetic judgment and approbation, actual human beings do not respond to form and make judgments of taste in isolation from their other concerns, but respond as psychological wholes. And as whole minds and not just isolated faculties, they ultimately require moral significance in the objects of their approbation if they are not to become tired of them and even loathsome to themselves. This is a matter of psychological reality, not of conceptual analysis. An analytic of the beautiful can and should distinguish pure beauty from other objects of approbation, for reasons of conceptual clarity, and indeed can appeal to common sense in so doing, for example the common-sense distinction between the beauty of a palace and the morality or immorality of its production. But a reasonable anthropology or psychology of human beings recognizes that human beings cannot long tolerate even genuine beauty without some enduring moral significance. This is what is provided by moral content in the case of art or by the symbolization of moral goodness by beauty more generally. And this too is a matter of common sense, or at least of reflective common sense. But it may take some subtle reflection, that is, a philosophical theory of the nature of aesthetic experience, to realize that there is no clash between these two suppositions. That is where something like reason will have to come in to preserve Kant’s two species of common sense. I will come back to that in the next section of this chapter. But now let me point out the remarkable parallel between the Kantian argument we have just considered and James Beattie’s reflection on pleasure and instruction in poetry. Beattie begins his “Essay on Poetry and Music as they Affect the Mind” with a discussion of Horace’s claim that the “end” of poetry is “to instruct, as well as to please.”11 His position is that “pleasure is undoubtedly the immediate aim of all those artifices by which poetry is distinguished from other compositions,—of the harmony, the rhythm, the ornamented language, the compact and diversified fable.”12 This has the ring of a factual claim, although when he continues that a “discourse, containing profitable information” but “in a rude style,” without such ornamentation or we might say formal devices, “partakes no more of the nature of poetry, than language does of melody, or a manuscript of a picture,” then his thesis might sound like an analysis of the concept of poetry. But whether it is a fact or a conceptual necessity that poetry must please through formal features of its language,

Taste, Morality, and Common Sense 113 mutatis mutandis for other artistic media, it remains true that pleasing form will not normally be enduringly satisfying to the whole human being. Pleasing, though uninstructive, poetry may gratify a light mind; and what tends even to corrupt the heart may gratify profligates: but the true poet addresses his work, not to the giddy, nor to the worthless, nor to any party, but to mankind; and, if he means to please the general taste, must often employ instruction as one of the arts that minister to this kind of pleasure.13 Beattie’s concept of the “general taste” of mankind, like Kant’s concept of “subjectively universal validity” or the “universal voice” (CPJ 5:215–16), is a normative concept: it is not a description or summation of how all human beings in fact respond, but a norm for how well-endowed and well brought up individuals respond, thus how all should respond. Normative language is prominent as Beattie continues: “Poetry, therefore, that is uninstructive, or immoral, cannot please those who retain any moral sensibility, or uprightness of judgment; and must consequently displease the greater part of any regular society of rational creatures.”14 “Retaining moral sensibility,” “uprightness, “regular, “and “rational” are all normative terms: the claim is not that it is impossible for any randomly selected member of the biological species homo sapiens to take pleasure in uninstructive or even immoral poetry or art,15 but that members of the species satisfying these norms will not (and the rest of us should not). Instructive poetry is then defined as that which imparts knowledge we had not before; but also which awakens our pity for the sufferings of our fellow-creatures; promotes a taste for the beauties of nature animated or inanimate; makes vices appear the object of indignation or ridicule; inculcates a sense of our dependence on Heaven; fortifies our minds against the evils of life; or promotes the love of virtue or wisdom, either by delineating their native charms, or by setting before us in suitable colours the dreadful consequences of imprudent and immoral conduct.16 Beattie is enumerating effects of instructive poetry rather than the typical contents of aesthetic ideas, as Kant did, but it is not implausible to think that these effects will typically be achieved through contents like those Kant had in mind, and that conversely the kinds of contents Kant had in mind for works of artistic genius will typically produce these sorts of effects. Beattie draws a conclusion from his position that Kant does not make explicit—namely, that while short poems may please us without also being instructive, longer works, which require longer attention, will not allow for lasting pleasure without satisfying our moral interests. As he puts it, It is only by short poems, as songs and pastorals, that these agreeable affections indifferent alike to vice and virtue, are excited, without any

114 Paul Guyer mixture of others. For moral sentiments are so prevalent in the human mind, that no affection can long subsist there, without intermingling with them, and being assimilated to their nature. Nor can a piece of real and pleasing poetry be extended to any great length, without operating, directly or indirectly, either on those affections that are friendly to virtue, or on those sympathies that quicken our moral sensibility, and prepare us for virtuous impressions. In fact, man’s true happiness is derived from the moral part of his constitution; and therefore we cannot suppose, that any thing which affects not his moral part, should be lastingly and generally agreeable.17 This passage claims that normal humans can enjoy purely aesthetic pleasures, that is to say, the formal pleasures in harmony, rhythm, and so on, on their own for short periods but not for long periods; for “lasting” agreeableness such pleasures must be “mixed” with enjoyable moral sentiments. That this is a claim about what people can enjoy only for short periods and what they can enjoy only for longer periods makes it clear that this is a psychological, not a conceptual claim. Kant does not make the same conclusion explicit. But the fact that he makes his own claim about the necessity of moral significance in order for the mind not to become moody and loathsome to itself about kinds of mixed works of art that can only be taken in over an extended period of time—plays, operas, oratorios, and the like—suggests that his position is at least compatible with Beattie’s and may be the same: that is, we can indulge in purely formal pleasures for short periods without turning upon ourselves, but over longer terms our moral interests will out, and we will only be satisfied with works that have moral significance as well as purely aesthetic merit. What is conceptually “essential” in beautiful art is form but what psychologically enables art to avoid the “ultimate fate” of making us moody and dissatisfied is moral content. The basis of Beattie’s position is revealed in the second chapter of the essay on poetry. This is the supposition that although we can distinguish faculties of the human mind, as we can distinguish types of judgment and genres of art that are suitable to them, the faculties of a human mind unavoidably interact; the mind ultimately if not in every instance works as a unity. Beattie writes, Let it be remarked, too, that though we distinguish our internal powers by different names, because otherwise we could not speak of them so as to be understood, they are all but so many energies of the same individual mind; and therefore it is not to be supposed, that what contradicts any one leading faculty should yield permanent delight to the rest. That cannot be agreeable to reason, which conscience disapproves; nor can that gratify imagination, which is repugnant to reason.18 He goes on to argue that consistency with rather than repugnancy to reason requires plausibility in the events of a narrative, or “something which we

Taste, Morality, and Common Sense 115 conceive it possible for a rational being to believe.” We do not have to concern ourselves with that claim. The point here is just that for Beattie it is a fact of human psychology that imagination and reason, aesthetic sentiments, and moral sentiments may be separated for short periods, but must be harmonious over longer periods and, in particular, that long-term enjoyment of aesthetic merits also requires moral comfort rather than discomfort. This is why longer works cannot enjoy the same degree of independence from moral concerns that shorter works can. Kant’s claim in §52 that if beautiful arts are not combined with moral ideas their ultimate fate is to become loathsome is based on the same psychological assumptions even though we have no evidence that he knew of Beattie’s work on poetry. But there is also a difference between them. While Beattie is content to claim as a general methodological principle that “All the doctrines of moral philosophy, including logick, are founded in a careful observation of the human mind,”19 thus to ground his case entirely on the observation that the faculties of the human mind ultimately have to work together rather than in opposition to each other, he is not terribly insistent on the conceptual distinction between aesthetic and moral sentiment or judgment. But Kant starts his theory of taste off with a conceptual distinction, so he has the special task of explaining not only how the faculties of taste on the one hand and moral feeling on the other hand must ultimately work together but also how they can. That is, Kant has a dialectic to resolve that Beattie does not. Let us now consider how Kant rises to that challenge.

III. Kant on the Aesthetic and the Moral As his dialectical conception of common sense about judgments of taste structure Kant’s exposition of his aesthetic theory long before he reaches the officially designated “Dialectic of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment,” so key elements of his solution are also introduced long before that section. The basic dialectic of common sense about taste, again, is that it is common sense on the one hand that judgments of taste, like other judgments, claim to speak with a universal voice, but it is also common sense on the other that such judgments cannot be proven from determinate concepts, that is, by pointing to objective qualities in their objects from which it follows that they are beautiful in the way in which demonstrating that an object satisfies the marks of an ordinary concept like triangle or dog entails that it falls under that concept. The resolution of this antinomy begins with the thesis that our pleasure in beauty is due to a free play between our cognitive powers triggered by the representation of the object. More precisely, in the simplest cases, such as the beauty of natural objects such as flowers or the shells of mollusks, as well as works of human art without content, such as ornamental borders or musical fantasias, the free play is between the cognitive powers of imagination and understanding. Kant characterizes this state by a series of metaphors, such as “animation” (Belebung) (see CPJ 5:219), but the crucial

116 Paul Guyer point for our present purposes is that he supposes it to be a state that is “purposive” in the sense of satisfying the mind’s general interest in unifying its manifolds of representation but does so in a way that is not determined by the subsumption of the object under any determinate concept, a fortiori without any determinate concept of the purpose (and hence perfection) of the object—thus the free play of the cognitive powers is “purposiveness without a purpose.”20 Kant then argues that since a harmonious relation between imagination and understanding is a necessary condition of any cognition at all, the state that is the condition of the experience of beauty must be able to be “assumed with good reason” in all normal human beings, and our experience of beauty can itself be considered a “common sense” (CPJ 5:238–9), although he also suggests that the existence of such a common sense may in the end be only a “regulative principle,” that is that we may be commanded by reason to produce commonality of aesthetic response rather than being guaranteed by epistemology that it already exists (CPJ 5:240). Kuehn has suggested that this is Kant’s ultimate position,21 and that suggestion could be defended on the general ground that the entire Critique of the Power of Judgment concerns only regulative principles of reflecting judgment rather than constitutive principles of determining judgment and on the more particular ground that as we are entitled to demand agreement of taste from others, “as if it were a duty,” only if it can be shown to have some moral significance (CPJ 5:296), so we may even be commanded to achieve commonality of taste if that does have moral significance. This might seem like a natural place to turn my discussion from the epistemological dialectic of common sense about taste to what I am calling the moral dialectic, but I need to make two more points about the first dialectic before I do so. The first is, that after reiterating his statement of the dialectic of common sense about taste in terms of the two “peculiarities” and then resolving it with an official “deduction” of judgments of taste that likewise turns on the claim that the explanation of our pleasure in beauty as due to the free play of our cognitive powers means that this pleasure is due to a “subjective element that one can presuppose in all human beings (as requisite for possible cognitions in general)” (CPJ 5:290), in the resolution of the official dialectic of aesthetic judgment Kant turns from such a psychological resolution to a metaphysical one. That is, here he claims that the resolution of the puzzle that judgments of taste do not depend upon the use of determinate concepts but yet claim “an extension of this kind of judgment, as necessary for everyone,” which would ordinarily require a determinate concept, lies not in the fact that the experience of beauty is a communicable free play of cognitive powers without use of a determinate concept but in the fact that the judgment of taste is grounded in a special kind of concept—namely, “a pure rational concept of the supersensible, which grounds the object (and also the subject) as an object of sense, consequently as an appearance” (CPJ 5:340). It might be suggested that here, not in the addition of a dialectic to the analytic of taste but in the sudden emergence of such a metaphysical

Taste, Morality, and Common Sense 117 resolution of it, Kant is being carried away with his own architectonic, for the appeal to transcendental idealism is a feature of the resolution of the dialectics of the first two critiques and of the following “Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment” (see especially CPJ 5:397). But here it seems unnecessary: if the theory that pleasure in beauty is due to the free play of our cognitive powers and these powers should work the same way in all is sufficient to resolve the dialectic of taste, then the idea that there is a supersensible ground for these faculties does not add anything, and if we do not have adequate grounds at the phenomenal level for positing that the cognitive powers do work the same way in all human beings, then it is not clear how appealing to the supersensible ground of the phenomenon, about which we are supposed to know nothing more than that it exists, will help. To be sure, it is the foundation of Kant’s entire critical philosophy that although we cannot make any theoretical assertion about the noumenal or supersensible ground of phenomenal reality beyond that it exists, we can and must believe as postulates of pure practical reason anything and everything about the noumenal that is a necessary condition of the possibility of our compliance with the demands of morality. Thus the epistemological conditions of the possibility of aesthetic judgment can also not give us theoretical insight into the supersensible, but if there is a sound connection between the aesthetic and the moral and there are sufficient moral grounds for rational belief about the supersensible, then that rational belief might be available to our aesthetic experience, as rational belief rather than theoretical knowledge. That is, aesthetic experience could not give us theoretical insight into the supersensible that morality does not, but morality might give us rational belief that in some way supports aesthetic experience. Let us leave that possibility open for now, and turn to the second point about Kant’s conception of free play as the basis for the solution to the first dialectic of common sense about taste. Then we can turn to the dialectic of common sense about the relation between good taste and morality. This second point is that Kant’s conception of free play as the basis of aesthetic experience precludes concepts from determining our judgments of taste—that is, from dictating that we should take pleasure in objects—but does not preclude the possibility that concepts may be part of the manifold that imagination plays with in aesthetic experience. And this is precisely the possibility that Kant exploits in the development of his aesthetic theory beyond his initial analysis of the simple cases of “pure” or “free” beauty like the beauty of flowers and of music without words. Kant begins his analysis with such cases precisely because they are simple cases, in which the role of the free play of imagination and understanding can be made clear, but then he goes on to discuss more complex cases of aesthetic experience, and those in fact are far more common and characteristic cases of aesthetic experience than the simple kind of case with which Kant begins. All of these cases involve concepts, but in a non-determining role. There are four main cases: what Kant calls “adherent” (anhängende) beauty, in which there is felt to be

118 Paul Guyer harmony or free play between the form of an object and the concept of its intended purpose, but the latter does not fully determine the former (CPJ, §16); what Kant calls the “ideal of beauty,” in which there is felt to be harmony between the outward form of human beings and their moral vocation, which is represented through a concept or more precisely an idea of reason, without the latter determining the former (CPJ, §17); the experience of the sublime, in which the experience of something vast or powerful in nature triggers ideas of the power of our own theoretical and practical reason, without there being any rule that links the former to the latter (CPJ, §§25–8); and finally the case of fine art, in which, as already noted, ideas of reason, chiefly ideas of practical reason, serve as the content of works of art, but these ideas are presented imaginatively, which is to say in a way that results from the free play of the artist’s cognitive powers and stimulates the free play of the audience’s cognitive powers, thus without the concepts that are the content of the art providing rules for either the production or the reception of the art. In the last case, Kant makes explicit that concepts can be part of the content of our aesthetic experience, part of what the imagination plays with, without determining aesthetic response: Now if we add to a concept a representation of the imagination that belongs to its presentation, but which by itself stimulates so much thinking that it can never be grasped in a determinate concept, hence which aesthetically enlarges the concept itself in an unbounded way, then in this case the imagination is creative, and sets the faculty of intellectual ideas (reason) into motion . . . (CPJ 5:315) The imagination is creative, and in this case sets reason rather than the understanding into motion: this is yet another metaphor for the “animation” that constitutes free play. This passage merely makes clear what is presupposed in all of Kant’s more complex cases of aesthetic experience and judgment: what the concept of free play excludes is that concepts fully determine our aesthetic response, not that concepts or ideas are part of what the imagination plays with creatively. What Kant has added to Beattie is thus a theoretical basis for the claim that poetry or other art can be both pleasing and instructive, which is in turn presupposed by the psychological argument that our pleasure in art or aesthetic objects more generally cannot endure if those objects do not have moral significance for us: the explanation of aesthetic pleasure as due to a free play of our mental powers that can include play with concepts without being determined by those concepts is what allows for art or other aesthetic objects to have moral significance and yet still to be aesthetically pleasing. This theoretical innovation is what allows for the resolution of the dialectic between the two commonsensical views that on the one hand beauty is not the same as moral value (when I ask whether you find the palace beautiful

Taste, Morality, and Common Sense 119 I am not asking whether you approve of the exploitation of labor in its construction) and that on the other hand beautiful objects must have moral significance if they are to remain enduringly pleasing to us (indeed, we may not be able to suppress our thought of the exploitation involved in the erection of the palace for very long, and the palace and our own enjoyment of it may indeed become loathsome to us). Thus a philosophical theory is necessary to resolve the dialectic between taste and morality that arises within common sense, although, as Kant himself may suggest (CPJ, §21), this philosophical theory itself has to be consistent with common sense, or even confirmed by it. Just as Kant insists that his formulation of the Moral Law is not a theoretical innovation but only a clarification of common sense that can also be confirmed by common sense, so he may well intend his theory of free play and the role for morally significant concepts that it allows to be not a philosophical innovation but a philosophical clarification of common sense. With the theoretical framework for the resolution of the moral dialectic of taste in place, we can take a last look at Kant’s own version of what can make our enjoyment of beauty lasting rather than loathsome. The premise of his larger argument is simply what is implied by §52: If a failure to combine beautiful arts with moral ideas leads the mind to become dissatisfied with itself, then conversely the combination of beautiful art with moral ideas will lead the mind to be satisfied, which can in turn be understood to mean both that our pleasure in the object will endure rather than being undermined and also that we can take a so to speak second-order pleasure in our own first-order pleasure, that we can take the satisfaction that comes with being morally right-minded (cf. CPrR 5:119) in the very fact of our being enduringly pleased with the art or beauty that is combined with moral ideas. The most obvious reference for the concept of beautiful art combined with moral ideas is, of course, simply the kind of art expressing aesthetic ideas that Kant described in §49. But the idea has other applications as well. For one, Kant states in §51, thus almost immediately following his original exposition of the theory of aesthetic ideas in §49, that Beauty (whether it be beauty of nature or of art) can in general be called the expression of aesthetic ideas: only in beautiful art this idea must be occasioned by a concept of the object, but in beautiful nature the mere reflection on a given intuition, without a concept of what the object ought to be, is sufficient for arousing and communicating the idea of which that object is considered as the expression. (CPJ 5:319, emphases added) This claim comes as a surprise, since Kant had just expounded the theory of aesthetic ideas as a theory of the “spirit” of fine art, and more generally, since he had apparently been so insistent at the outset of “Analytic of the Beautiful” that natural beauty is pure or free beauty, without any conceptual content. But if we keep in mind that Kant’s aesthetic theory is a combination

120 Paul Guyer of a logical analysis of what is claimed or even demanded by a judgment of beauty or taste with an essentially psychological explanation of our experience of beauty that allows it to satisfy the demands of the logical analysis, we may realize that here too we can appeal to human psychology to argue that we have a psychological tendency to read moral significance into natural beauty. Kant had earlier illustrated this tendency when he remarked that the white color of the lily seems to dispose the mind to ideas of innocence, and the seven colors, in their order from red to violet, to the ideas 1) of sublimity, 2) of audacity, 3) of candor, 4) of friendliness, 5) of modesty, 6) of steadfastness, and 7) of tenderness. (CPJ 5:302) Such a tendency—in eighteenth-century terminology, such an association of ideas—is not grounded in logic or concepts, but in human nature, but that is not a problem: it is just a psychological tendency of human nature, after all, that we become moody and dissatisfied with ourselves from an extended experience of beauty without moral significance, and this tendency can be countered with a tendency to associate moral ideas with aesthetic features or forms even if the former are not entailed by the latter. As we have seen, Kant’s basic conception of aesthetic response, that is, his concept of the free play of our cognitive (or we might add to Kant, our cognitive and emotional) powers, is a conception of a non-conceptually-rule-governed mental state. So that we have a psychological tendency to associate moral ideas even with forms of natural beauty that do not have conceptual content in the way that humanly produced utterances or works of art do is not an objection to Kant’s claim that we respond to natural beauty as if it were the expression of aesthetic ideas. Of course, as an empirical claim, that could fall for lack of evidence—but not because it is a conceptual impossibility. Facts about human psychology ground the other claims that Kant makes about the moral significance of aesthetic experience. There are two main claims that we have not yet discussed. The first is Kant’s claim that we take an “intellectual interest” in the existence of natural beauty because it interests reason that the ideas (for which it produces an immediate interest in the moral feeling) also have objective reality, i.e., that nature should at least show some trace or give a sign that it contains in itself some sort of ground for assuming a lawful correspondence of its products with our satisfaction that is independent of all interest. That is, we take an interest in nature being hospitable to our moral aims, and we interpret the existence of natural beauty as a “trace” or “sign” that nature is so hospitable. There is no logical connection between the existence of natural beauty and the hospitality of nature to our moral goals; there is just a psychological tendency on our part to take the existence of natural

Taste, Morality, and Common Sense 121 beauty as such a trace or sign. But such a psychological tendency is all we need to satisfy our own, psychological condition for maintaining our pleasure in beauty. We can say the same about the claim that “the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good” with which Kant concludes the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment (CPJ 5:353). Kant makes this claim not on the basis of any facts about the content of beauty or specific beautiful objects, whether natural or artistic, thus not on the basis of his theory of aesthetic ideas, but on the basis of certain parallels or analogies between the experience and judgment of beauty and morality. Here are the parallels: 1) The beautiful pleases immediately (but only in reflecting intuition, not, like morality, in the concept). 2) It pleases without any interest (the morally good is of course necessarily connected with an interest, but not with one that precedes the judgment on the satisfaction, but rather with one that is thereby first produced). 3) The freedom of the imagination (thus of the sensibility of our faculty) is represented in the judging of the beautiful as in accord with the lawfulness of the understanding (in the moral judgment the freedom of the will is conceived as the agreement of the latter with itself in accordance with universal laws of reason). 4) The subjective principle for judging of the beautiful is represented as universal, i.e., valid for everyone, but not as knowable by any universal concept (the objective principle of morality is also declared to be universal . . .). (CPJ 5:354) It is in virtue of the enumerated features of aesthetic experience that we take its object, the beautiful, as a symbol of the morally good. The features on the aesthetic side of the analogy may be primarily psychological, and those on the moral side not (though it seems to be a psychological fact that the thought of the morally good produces a feeling of pleasure—namely, the [mixed] feeling of respect—Kant claims in the Critique of Practical Reason that this is something that can be known a priori (CPrR 5:73), so he does not quite treat this as an ordinary fact of psychology). But that does not matter; the point is rather that since there is no logical or conceptual necessity that we regard the aesthetic facts on the one side and the moral facts on the other as analogous, it can only be a psychological fact that we do, and a further psychological fact that we transfer the symbolic significance of the aesthetic experience to its object, the beautiful—but this psychologically-grounded interpretation of the moral significance of our aesthetic experience is, and again this is just another psychological fact, enough to satisfy our need for moral significance to keep our pleasure in the beautiful from turning into dissatisfaction with ourselves. Again, that need is psychological, and it is satisfied psychologically by another association of ideas.

122 Paul Guyer

IV. Conclusion I have argued that we should read Kant’s aesthetic theory as resolving two dialectics in common sense about taste, first, the epistemological conflict between two species of common sense raised by Hume’s essay “Of the Standard of Taste,” but second a dialectic between the idea that beauty must be pleasing apart from any interest and the idea that beauty can only be enduringly pleasing if it also has moral significance. The second of these conflicts was noted by James Beattie in his essay on poetry and resolved by him by a distinction between poetic forms that require only brief attention and are not subject to the second horn of the dilemma and those that need prolonged attention and are subject to it. Kant knew and was deeply influenced by Hume’s essay, but there is no reason to believe that he knew Beattie’s essay. But he added to Beattie’s resolution of the second dilemma on the basis of conception of the psychological basis of the conception of aesthetic experience that he used to resolve the first—namely, by exploiting the resources of his idea of the free play of our mental powers as a state in which the imagination can play with conceptual content without being determined by it. This allows him to attribute moral significance to a variety of kinds of artistic and even natural beauty without undercutting his account of the non-conceptually-determined character of the experience of beauty (and sublimity).

Notes 1. Kuehn’s work on this topic includes “Kant’s Conception of Hume’s Problem,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 21 (1983): 175–93. Other important work on this topic includes Lewis White Beck, Essays on Hume and Kant (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978); Günter Gawlick and Lothar Kreimendahl, Hume in der deutschen Aufklärung: Umrisse einer Rezeptionsgeschichte (StuttgartBad Canstatt: Fromann-Holzboog, 1987); and Brian A. Chance, “Metaphysics and the Critical Method: Reevaluting Kant’s Response to Hume” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2009) and “Causal Powers, Hume’s Early German Critics, and Kant’s Response to Hume,” Kant-Studien 104 (2013): 213–36. 2. This has also been a central theme in the work of Karl Ameriks; see, for example, “A Commonsense Kant,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 79 (2005): 19–45, reprinted in his Kant and the Historical Turn: Philosophy as Critical Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), 108–33. 3. See Manfred Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987), ch. IX, especially 200–1. 4. The paradigm for such an approach to philosophy is the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals; see Paul Guyer, “The Strategy of Kant’s Groundwork,” in Philosophie in synthetischer Absicht, ed. Marcelo Stamm (Stuttgart: KlettCotta, 1998), 271–98, reprinted in Paul Guyer, Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 207–31; and Paul Guyer, Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Reader’s Guide (London: Continuum, 2007). 5. Translations from Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment (CPJ), ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge

Taste, Morality, and Common Sense 123

6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

University Press, 2000). The volume and pagination of the Akademie edition, cited throughout, appear in the margins of the Cambridge edition. References to the Critique of Practical Reason (CPrR) are based on Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). David Hume, Vier Abhandlungen, trans. Johanna Dorothea Sysang (Quedlinburg and Leipzig: Biesterfeld, 1759). See David Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste,” in David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller, revised edition (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), 226–49, at 230–1. James Beattie, An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism (Edinburgh: William Creech, 1770); Versuch über die Natur und Unveränderlichkeit der Wahrheit im Gengensatiz der Klügeley und Zweifelsucht (Kopenhagen and Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1772). James Beattie, Essays: On the Nature and Immutability of Truth . . .; On Poetry and Music, as They Affect the Mind; on Laughter, and Ludicrous Composition; On the Utility of Classical Learning (Edinburgh: William Creech, 1776). James Beattie, Elements of Moral Science, 2 vols. (London and Edinburgh: T. Cadell and William Creech, 1790–1793). Beattie, Essays, 353. He refers on p. 367 to Horace, Ars poetica, lines 333–47. Beattie, Essays, 354. Beattie, Essays, 354. Beattie, Essays, 356–7. Beattie argues at length that immorality in poetry or art is not simply a matter of representing immoral characters; on the contrary, the moral message of a work of art may require the representation of immoral characters and their fates. Beattie, Essays, 362. Beattie, Essays, 366. Beattie, Essays, 373. Beattie, Elements, §957, vol. 2, 586. I have discussed what Kant might mean by the metaphor of free play and associated metaphors at much greater length elsewhere, including Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, first edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), and second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), ch. 3; and Paul Guyer, “The Harmony of the Faculties Revisited,” in Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in Aesthetics, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), ch. 3, 77–109, and in Rebecca Kukla, ed., Aesthetics and Cognition in Kant’s Critical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 162–91. Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 200.

References Ameriks, Karl. “A Commonsense Kant.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 79 (2005): 19–45. Repr. in Ameriks, Karl. Kant and the Historical Turn: Philosophy as Critical Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006. Beattie, James. Elements of Moral Science, 2 vols. London: T. Cadell and William Creech, 1790–1793. Beattie, James. An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism. Edinburgh: William Creech, 1770. Beattie, James. Essays: On the Nature and Immutability of Truth . . .; On Poetry and Music, as They Affect the Mind; on Laughter, and Ludicrous Composition; On the Utility of Classical Learning. Edinburgh: William Creech, 1776.

124 Paul Guyer Beattie, James. Versuch über die Natur und Unveränderlichkeit der Wahrheit im Gengensatiz der Klügeley und Zweifelsucht. Kopenhagen and Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1772. Beck, Lewis White. Essays on Hume and Kant. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978. Chance, Brian A. “Causal Powers, Hume’s Early German Critics, and Kant’s Response to Hume.” Kant-Studien 104 (2013): 213–36. Chance, Brian A. “Metaphysics and the Critical Method: Reevaluting Kant’s Response to Hume.” PhD diss., Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2009. Gawlick, Günter and Lothar Kreimendahl. Hume in der deutschen Aufklärung: Umrisse einer Rezeptionsgeschichte. Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Fromann-Holzboog, 1987. Guyer, Paul. “The Harmony of the Faculties Revisited.” In Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in Aesthetics, edited by Paul Guyer, 77–109. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. And in Rebecca Kukla, ed. Aesthetics and Cognition in Kant’s Critical Philosophy, 162–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Taste, first edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. Guyer, Paul. Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Reader’s Guide. London: Continuum, 2007. Guyer, Paul. “The Strategy of Kant’s Groundwork.” In Philosophie in synthetischer Absicht, edited by Marcelo Stamm, 271–98. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1998. Reprinted in Paul Guyer, Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Hume, David. “Of the Standard of Taste.” In David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, revised edition, edited by Eugene F. Miller, 226–49. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987. Hume, David. Vier Abhandlungen. Translated by Johanna Dorothea Sysang. Quedlinburg and Leipzig: Biesterfeld, 1759. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Edited by Paul Guyer. Translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Kant, Immanuel. Practical Philosophy. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Kuehn, Manfred. “Kant’s Conception of Hume’s Problem.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 21 (1983): 175–93. Kuehn, Manfred. Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987.

7

Kant and Hume on Feelings in Moral Philosophy Oliver Sensen

In his moral philosophy, Kant puts forth several ideas that are very popular in our contemporary thought. For instance, the prohibition to use others as mere means, concepts such as dignity and autonomy, or the notion of universal laws that protect all human beings independently of their differences are attractive features of Kant’s moral thought. However, his apparent neglect of our sensible side and in particular the explicit comments about excluding feelings from an action for the sake of duty are a major stumbling block for others to accept Kant’s moral philosophy. His emphasis on reason over feelings has been compared to a captain on a ship overruling the will of the crew.1 Kantians do not have to grant this objection outright, and might respond that Kant does give a central role to feelings in his moral thought. One example is that he says that in terms of our well-being everything depends on feelings of happiness (cf. CPrR 5:612). Inasmuch as we pursue our happiness and have a duty to promote the happiness of others, feelings will be a central factor in determining what to do. Another example is that Kant does seem to give a central role to a feeling even in moral motivation, the feeling of respect.3 Some scholars even argue that Kant refers to feelings in order to cognize what is moral and not.4 However, even if this is right, it does not seem to give quite the right role to feelings and our sensible nature that we would ordinarily like. For even according to those Kantian responses, feelings seem to be supplements rather than taking center stage for their own sakes. In this chapter, I will argue that Kant gives a much more prominent role to our sensitive side than is commonly thought. However, I will argue that we should not seek a greater role for sensibility in moral motivation, as is commonly done, but in the derivation of concrete duties. In order to argue for these claims I will first look at the development of Kant’s views on the proper role of feelings in moral philosophy (Section I), then discuss the issue of sensibility and moral motivation (Section II), before sketching Kant’s views on deriving concrete duties (Section III). I will argue that sensibility counts for at least half in determining what is morally right.

I. Feelings and the Development of Kant’s Ethics Kant’s views on the role of feelings in moral philosophy changed during the course of his career.5 At the beginning, Kant is still under the influence of

126 Oliver Sensen “Hutcheson and others” (I 2:3006), and he gives a central role to feelings (i) in determining what one should do, (ii) in justifying why one should do it, and (iii) in his account of motivation. However, he changes his views on the three questions at different periods in his writings. My claims will be that in the early 1760s Kant already displays his mature views on the content of what is morally right (i), even though he refers to feelings as the moral criterion. Starting in 1770, Kant changes his earlier views by stating that morality is grounded in reason, and not in feelings (ii). But it is only in his mature writings on moral philosophy, from the Groundwork in 1785 onwards, that he reduces the role of feelings in moral motivation (iii). i. In his earliest writings, Kant states the moral principle as “act according to your moral feeling!” (LEH7 27:16). Although he sums up the content of what is morally right with reference to a feeling, he specifies it further in more or less the same way as he does in his mature moral philosophy. He ascribes two parts to this feeling: The first is a ground of universal affection, the second of universal respect, and if this feeling had the greatest perfection in any human heart then this human being would certainly love and value even himself, but only in so far as he is one among all to whom his widespread and noble feeling extends itself. (FBS8 2:217) As in his mature philosophy, Kant divides obligations into duties of love and respect (cf. MM9 6:449f), and the common feature is that one should combat selfishness (cf. CPrR 5:72), and regard oneself as one among all. Regarding the duty of love or beneficence, Kant says that we have a disinterested feeling in the well-being of others: Do I have, not merely a self-interested feeling, but also a disinterested feeling of concern for others? Yes—the weal and woe of another touches us directly: the mere happiness of another pleases us in the telling: even that of fictional persons whose tale we know of, or in distant ages. (LEH 27:3) Morality is centrally concerned with impartiality and universality. One should be concerned with the well-being of all.10 The feeling for others also contains the negative duties of Kant’s mature philosophy, the duty of respect or justice: “The universal affection is a ground for participating in his ill-fortune, but at the same time it is also a ground of justice” (FBS 2:216). Kant further specifies the content of this feeling of justice with examples about lying as well as respecting private property: “truthfulness

Feelings in Moral Philosophy 127 does . . . depend . . . on the sense of justice” (DR11 20:156), and “in society all mine and thine depends on contracts, yet these on keeping one’s word” (DR 20:153). Kant describes the principle of the moral feeling also in a way that reminds us of his mature Categorical Imperative, when he states, “That will must be good which does not cancel itself out if it is taken universally and reciprocally” (DR 20:6712). The mature principle runs: “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), and Kant says that it rules out contradictions if one universalizes one’s maxim (cf. GMM 4:424). Therefore, the content of the moral principle Kant proposes stays very much the same throughout the development of his thought. When he says that it is a principle of moral feeling, the reference to affection refers mainly to the grounding of the principle, which I will discuss next. ii. Around 1770, Kant changed his view on the grounding or justification of the moral principle. His mature view is that the moral principle arises from pure reason: “Pure reason . . . gives (to the human being) a universal law which we call the moral law” (CPrR 5:31). Kant calls this source “autonomy,” which is the “lawgiving of its own on the part of pure and, as such, practical reason” (CPrR 5:33). Moral commands do not arise from our sensitivity, but “reason . . .with complete spontaneity . . . makes its own order according to ideas . . . according to which it even declares actions to be necessary” (CPR13 A548/B576).14 This position marks a shift from his earliest writings on moral philosophy. There he grounds morality in a feeling: “We have a moral feeling, which is (1) universal (2) unequivocal” (LEH 27:4). He specifies this feeling as a pleasure in anticipating an action: “Pleasure in free actions directly is called moral feeling” (LEH 27:4), and further characterizes it as “unanalyzable, basic, the ground of conscience” (LEH 27:5). The feeling is not simply sympathy or compassion, which even then he regarded as “weak and . . . always blind” (FBS 2:215f). Rather it is an immediate approval (or disapproval) out of a feeling of pleasure (or displeasure), which is generated from a universal and higher standpoint (cf. FBS 2:216). Kant contrasts this natural feeling from artificial ones one acquires through education, and he even states that the moral feeling is more reliable than reason: “My reason can err; my moral feeling, only when I uphold custom before natural feeling; but in that case it is merely implicit reason; and my final yardstick still remains moral feeling” (LEH 27:8). The shift came about in 1770, when Kant argues that morality “is only cognized by the pure understanding and itself belongs to pure philosophy” (ID15 2:396). He explains this as meaning that “such concepts . . . are given by the very nature of the understanding” (ID 2:394). The ground of morality lies in reason: “the principle of morality has a ground in the understanding,

128 Oliver Sensen and can be apprehended completely a priori” (LEC16 27:254).17 The considerations that lead to this shift are the arguments that Kant later uses in his mature philosophy: “even if it were possible that we should have a sensation for morality, no rules could be established on this principle” (LEC 27:275) Feelings are relative and contingent, and cannot ground a necessary and universal law, as the moral should be: “The moral law, however, commands categorically; so morality cannot be based on a . . . moral feeling . . . Any feeling has a private validity only” (LEC 27:275f). Only a priori rules can provide the necessity of morality: “All necessary rules must hold good a priori, and hence the principles are intellectual” (LEC 27: 254). Therefore, a moral principle must be grounded in reason: “if it rests on a principle that resides in the understanding, then the injunction is absolute: You are not to lie, whatever the circumstances may be” (LEC 27:254). Morality is grounded in reason, “emanating [fließet] from the ground of our will” (LEC 27:252). iii. By the 1770s, Kant therefore proposed the same content and grounding for the moral principle as he puts forth in his mature writings after 1785. However, it seems that he did not yet propose the mature answer on moral motivation. For in the Collins and Kaehler lecture notes from around 1775 Kant is reported to distinguish between two moral principles: “(1) The principle of appraisal of obligation, and (2) the principle of its performance or execution” (LEC 27:274). The principle of appraisal, the principium diiudicationis, concerns the question: “What is morally good or not?” The principle helps decide what is morally right and wrong. The principle of execution, the principium executionis, refers to the proper moral motive, and answers the question: “What moves me to live according to this law?” (LEC 27:274). It is only in his mature philosophy, starting with the Groundwork, that Kant combines the two principles into one, the formula of autonomy.18 In the Groundwork Kant states that there are two requirements in order to be morally good. One should do the right thing, and do it simply because it is right: “in the case of what is to be morally good it is not enough that it conform with the moral law but it must also be done for the sake of the law” (GMM 4:390). If one merely does the right thing, an action has legality, but not morality (cf. CPrR 5:71f). He combines the two requirements in the Formula of Autonomy, which runs: “act only so that the will could regard itself as at the same time giving universal law through its maxim” (GMM 4:434). Kant introduces the formula “to indicate in the imperative itself the renunciation of all interest, in volition from duty, by means of some determination the imperative contains” (GMM 4:431). Therefore, the Formula of Autonomy incorporates the motivational requirement in the content of what one should do: “just because of the idea of giving universal law it is based on no interest and therefore, among all possible imperatives, can alone be unconditional” (GMM 4:432).

Feelings in Moral Philosophy 129 So, it seems as if the following picture is accurate:19 In his earliest writings on moral philosophy in the 1760s Kant places the moral motivation in the disinterested, impartial moral feeling of the pleasure one takes in witnessing or anticipating a moral action: “categorical necessity of an action does not require so much effort, but merely the application of the matter to the moral feeling” (DR 20:155). During the mid-1770s, it seems, Kant believes that the understanding does have a moving power, but that this is not strong enough to overcome the inclinations: The will is depraved when the motive power of the understanding is outweighed by sensibility. The understanding has no elateres animi, albeit it has the power to move, or motiva; but the latter are not able to outweigh the elateres of sensibility. (LEM20 27:1429) If one’s understanding discovers what is good, either pragmatically or morally, it forms a motive which is strong enough to move an agent: So the causae impulsivae, insofar as they are drawn from the good, come from the understanding, and one who is moved to action by them is necessitated per motiva; but so far as they are drawn from the pleasant, they come from the senses, and one who is moved to action by them is necessitated per stimulus. (LEC 27:257, cf. 267) However, in his earlier writings Kant had argued that motives are not strong enough to overcome inclinations.21 It seems that it is only in his mature philosophy and the introduction of autonomy that pure reason can be practical (cf. CPrR 5:15). I believe that Manfred Kuehn sums it up perfectly when he says that one almost wishes Kant would have stayed with the account he gave in the mid1770s, and gave a more central role to feelings in moral motivation.22 This middle view seems more humane and inclusive of our sensibility. The best option seems to be when the realization of what is morally right is coupled with natural feelings to do the good.23 I will argue that even after 1785, sensibility continues to play an important role in Kant’s moral philosophy.

II. Humean Motivation What should we think about human motivation? It seems to me that there is a curious dissonance in our ordinary beliefs about motivation. In everyday life we believe that reason can motivate, and even overcome desires: “Nothing is more usual,” Hume says, “in common life, than to talk of the combat of passion and reason,” and “to give the preference to reason” (T 2.3.3 SBN 413). However, it seems to me that once we try to imagine why someone

130 Oliver Sensen acted the way he did, we are inclined to agree with Hume: “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions” (T 2.3.3 SBN 415). If you are doing a mathematical calculation, why are you even engaging in the process? It seems that you must have a desire to so, e.g., a “merchant is desirous of knowing the sum total of his accounts . . . the he may learn what sum will have the same effects in paying his debts” (T 2.3.3 SBN 414). When we imagine a thought process, we do seem to agree with Hume that every action needs a desire or passion in order to be motivated. However, what exactly does this claim involve? What is a passion, and how do we know it is always there? Hume defines a passion in this context as “an original existence,” or, a “modification of existence,” and he says that it “contains not any representative quality, which renders it a copy of any other existence or modification” (T 2.3.3 SBN 415). A passion, thus understood, is a raw feeling, an emotional upheaval: “When I am angry, I am actually possest with the passion, and in that emotion have no more a reference to any other object, than when I am thirsty, or sick, or more than five foot high” (T 2.3.3 SBN 415). There are at least two ways of reading this. One way is to suggest that one is not imagining anything at the time of the passion. It would be that one is angry but does not know what one is angry about. However, it does not seem very plausible that one is never picturing anything while having a passion, and some people read the claim that a passion does not involve any further representation “which renders it a copy of any other existence”—i.e., a belief. Understood this way, a passion has a certain direction of fit, the world should fit the passion, but it does not by itself capture the world.24 Nowadays we might call this composite of feeling and representation a “desire.” For now, the claim that is to be examined is that every action needs a passion or feeling in order that one is motivated to perform it. How do we know that every action is caused by a feeling? Do we know this empirically or a priori? Hume seems to give two arguments in response to this question. The first one states that reason is merely a representational faculty that compares “abstract relations of our ideas” or empirical objects in light of demonstration or probability (T 2.3.3 SBN 413). By itself, this assertion just states what needs to be proven. It only gets its plausibility if one cannot imagine that a mathematician would do a calculation without a desire and passion. But could it not be that a thought pops in your head and can motivate you? This certainly seems conceivable too. You might be sitting idly and not desiring to do any sort of calculation, but it might be that an abstract thought occurs to you, and that this leads to your being motivated to share it. The second argument asserts that whenever we do have a feeling, we consequently act: “’Tis obvious, that when we have the prospect of pain or pleasure from any object, we feel a consequent emotion of aversion or propensity, and are carry’d to avoid or embrace what will give us this uneasiness or satisfaction” (T 2.3.3 SBN 414). So, here Hume moves from cases

Feelings in Moral Philosophy 131 where feelings do precede actions to the claim that all actions are motivated by passions. One might object that this at best only shows correlation, not causation, but of course, it satisfies Hume’s account of causality. He has argued at length that our notion of causality does not track a real connection we discover in the world, but merely something in the mind. The only thing we see is a constant conjunction of similar events, for instance, two billiard balls collide and moving in a certain pattern after the impact. The force or necessity of causality is only in the mind, and is the determination to expect the usual attendant after seeing a type of the first event: “Upon the whole, necessity is something, that exists in the mind, not in objects . . . necessity is nothing but that determination of thought to pass from causes to effects . . . according to their experienc’d union” (T 1.3.14 SBN 165f). The correlation plus our expectation is all there is to causality, according to Hume. However, there seem to be at least two problems with his argument. First, it is not clear that the description of our experience is accurate. We do not always seem to act when we anticipate a pleasure. There are cases of weakness of will, for instance. The second problem is more serious. Even if Hume is right about feelings always causing actions, from the fact that one thing a causes another x, it does not follow that only a causes x. Maybe x can be caused by more than one thing. Hume himself seems to admit that we are not always aware of having a feeling before an action. He calls the phenomenon “calm desires and tendencies,” which “produce little emotion in the mind, and are more known by their effects than by the immediate feeling or sensation” (T 2.3.3 SBN 417). To be fair, this reads as if even calm desires do involve some feeling in the mind, and Hume is not committed to the view that always the more intense feeling determines the action. However, I agree with the literature that oftentimes we are not aware of a feeling at all.25 Hume could reply that just because we are not aware of a feeling, it does not mean that it is not there (cf. T 2.3.2 SBN 408). Imagine that you see a child falling in a pool. Your only thought might be: “she needs help.” But even if you jump up immediately to save the child, you would later admit that there was a feeling of panic, although it was not on your mind at the time. So even if we are not aware of a feeling at the time, one could argue that it does not mean that it is not there.26 However, we can turn the same point around: If we are (often) not aware of a feeling before we act, how do we know it is there? The real reason, it seems to me, why we believe that every action is caused by a feeling, is an a priori one. Despite Hume’s views on causation, we implicitly adhere to an animistic conception of causality. We assume without questioning that causation always involves a force whereby the cause has an impact on the effect. Similarly, if our mind should cause an action, there must be some kind of force, and the closest we come to a force of mind is a feeling. This “quasi-hydraulic conception”27 of the mind is of course not available to Hume. As I cited earlier, he does not believe that we ever experience a force,28

132 Oliver Sensen and as far as we know: “Any thing may produce any thing” (T 1.3.15 SBN 173). As long as there is a constant conjunction, the first element could cause the second. However, this seems to allow that a pure thought without any feeling could cause an action. If every time that I realize that something is morally required, I act in this way, then this should count as causation in Hume’s sense. Hume himself seems to allow that this is possible when he describes the inner workings of the mind. He says that our “perceptions . . . are link’d together by the relation of cause and effect” (cf. T 1.4.6 SBN 261; T 1.4.2 SBN 212). This should include pure thoughts as well as feelings. Hume could reply that the claim that every action is caused by a feeling is our best explanation, given that we often do experience feeling and action to be conjoined. But even if it were our best hypothesis, it is not a proof. Nonetheless, something like Hume’s account has become the standard theory in the theory of action. Authors do not follow Hume in saying that every action has to be caused by a feeling though. One difference is that proponents speak of “desires” instead of “passions.” According to the Humean model, an action is explained by a desire an agent has as well as a belief that a certain action will fulfill the desire. A desire differs from a feeling in that a desire can have representational content. A desire can be for something one has in mind. It also does not necessarily have a phenomenological content, such as a feeling. The defining feature is a certain direction of fit: In order to be fulfilled, the world has to fit the content of the desire, while a belief is true when the belief fits the world.29 One could object that even the word “desire” might be too narrow. If you would like to continue watching a movie, but you get up to do the dishes, it seems a stretch to say that you had a desire to do the dishes. Instead, one might talk about “concerns,”30 or an agent’s “subjective motivational set” that can contain a variety of elements such as “dispositions of evaluation, patterns of emotional reaction, personal loyalties, and various projects.”31 We are then not necessarily looking for a feeling that causes an action, but more for a motive in a detective story. However, it seems that a pluralist conception of what can motivate one creates the problem that something that can explain everything, also explains nothing. This is because I could not predict an action. If our motivation always consists of one element—e.g., a feeling—and we know how feelings win out, then we can predict how someone will act. But if the concept of desire includes passions, but also thoughts etc., saying that an agent will act on her desires does not tell us what she will do. It will always be true that agent acted on desire, but this does not provide a useful explanation. Another alternative for “desires” is simply to characterize the element as a disposition an agent has.32 A disposition is characterized by its functional role. If the agent acted in a certain way, he had a disposition to do so, and if he did not act, he was not so disposed (or something intervened). However, there seems to be a problem with this move. This is because a switch to dispositions does not seem to enlarge our understanding very much. For we cannot verify

Feelings in Moral Philosophy 133 it independently of an action. It is not logically independent of the agent. We are not saying more than that the agent acted, or would have acted if the circumstances would be different. We could predict an action of another only based on his past behavior, but we could not verify that the agent has an element right now that will cause an action. A reference to a disposition will again explain everything, but could predict nothing. However, a proponent of the standard theory could reply that action explanations are not meant to be causal, but merely teleological.33 An explanation of an action does not aim to predict or identify a causal nexus, but merely to make a certain behavior understandable. An explanation creates a coherent story, so to speak, and therefore does not need to be logically independent of the action itself. To sum up so far: the standard theory of action changes Hume’s own account in at least two important respects. Instead of arguing that every action has to be caused by a passion, the standard model has a more pluralistic account of desire, and it does not necessarily talk about the cause of an action, but its explanation in terms of ends. This has the advantage that it promises to cover every action, and is at the same time true to the phenomenology of actions that indicate that many different elements can explain an action. The slogan: “every action can be explained by a desire and belief” should therefore not be read as an endorsement of Hume over Kant.34 The standard model does not argue that every action has to be caused by a feeling, and that pure reason cannot be practical. We can now apply these results to Kant. After what we have said, it should be possible to uphold that pure reason can be practical. Imagine that you desire something, but your reason tells you that it (or the action leading to it) is immoral. This insight can frustrate your initial desire. However, this frustration on the sensible side, is at the same time an esteem or respect for morality on the intellectual side. The frustration implies that you value morality. It is your intellectual esteem for morality that has an effect on your feelings (it frustrates your natural desire), but inasmuch as it removes a hindrance to morality (the desire) it is by itself a positive furthering of morality. Something like this seems to be the picture Kant has in mind: First, the moral law determines the will objectively and immediately in the judgment of reason . . . [This] restricts all inclinations . . . to the condition of compliance with its pure law . . . This restriction now has an effect on feeling and produces the feeling of displeasure  .  .  .  It is, however, so far a negative effect . . ., so that the effect of this law on feeling is merely humiliation  .  .  .  humiliation on the sensible side—is an elevation of the moral—that is, practical—esteem for the law itself on the intellectual side . . . For, whatever diminishes the hindrances to an activity is a furthering of this activity itself. Therefore respect for the moral law must be regarded as also a positive though indirect effect of the moral law on feeling. (CPrR 5:78f)

134 Oliver Sensen Passages like these make it possible to read Kant as saying that respect is not by itself a positive feeling at all.35 There is evidence—beyond the one from the Collins notes cited earlier—that Kant believed that reason by itself had a moving force.36 Kant often talks as if a moral feeling just is being moved by a judgment: “moral feeling is a capacity for being affected by moral judgment” and “if this judgment moves me to do the action, that is the moral feeling” (LEM 27:1428). However, this interpretation does not rule out that there is also a positive feeling of awe and respect. Kant sometimes talks this way (cf. MM 436; CPrR 5:88). Kant might have a hybrid view in mind according to which pure reason by itself can motivate, but that there can also be a positive, uplifting feeling of awe for the Moral Law.37 This does not mean, however, that the feeling component does not always have to be there in order for an agent to act morally. What is more, Kant expressively argues that it is not something that an agent can have in mind while acting. If I act a certain way to experience this uplifting feeling of awe and reverence, this would lead to moral enthusiasm and destroy the spirit of morality (cf. CPrR 5:84). This is a further reason why there might be less of a gap between a Kantian and a Humean account of motivation. For even the sentimentalist who holds that every action is caused by a desire would argue that one should not have the desire in mind while one acts.38 This is the main way a sentimentalist can distinguish between an egoistic and an altruistic action. Just because an ocean liner always burns coal on his voyage does not mean that the purpose of the voyage is to burn coal.39 However, if one does not have the desire in mind, one might be oblivious to the existence of a desire. In particular, our phenomenology does not seem to support the claim that there always is a feeling there prior to an action. Of course, this also does not prove that there is not always an (unconscious) desire present. Likewise, it might be that Kant himself believed that there always is a feeling present (cf. GMM 4:460). However, we can ask Kant the same question we asked Hume: If we are not aware that there always is a feeling, how do we know it is there? Do we know it empirically or a priori?

III. The Importance of Sensibility So far, it seems as if I have diminished the importance of sensibility in Kant’s ethics even further. If I am right, then feelings are even less important for moral motivation than is often assumed. However, I also believe that sensibility plays a much larger role in Kant’s moral thought than is often attributed to him. Which role is that? I would argue that sensibility is not the grounding of Kant’s concepts of morality (cf. MM 6:399), it is not a sense with which one can discover what is morally right (cf. CPrR 5:76), nor does it motivate a morally good will (see the aforementioned). But this does not exhaust all possibilities. In this section, I will argue that sensibility is crucial for determining what is morally right—i.e., for deriving concrete duties of what one should do.

Feelings in Moral Philosophy 135 There are at least two ways in which sensibility might help discovering what is right. The first way is if we have a feeling (of approval) that indicates the right course of action. Kant seems to reject that idea (cf. also GMM 4:442 note). The second way is if reason has to take our sensibility into account when applying the Categorical Imperative. I believe that our sensible nature is crucial for that process. This claim should not be surprising. Kant explicitly states that it needs anthropology to derive duties (cf. GMM 4:412). Imagine that human beings were indestructible, autarkic, and self-sufficient. In that case, there does not seem to be a duty to help others. However, my claim differs from the standard interpretation of how Kant derives duties. The common interpretation holds that one should take a proposed action, and envision that everyone has the same plan: Could one play tennis at 10am on Sundays?40 Could one decide not to have children, or refuse a bribe? The standard interpretation looks for a contradiction that would occur if everyone had the same plan (cf. GMM 4:424). However, as is well known, there are serious problems with this approach.41 I briefly mention four. (i) It seems that the procedure would rule out too much and produce false negatives. If, for instance, everyone tried to play tennis at 10am on Sundays, or if everyone became a medical doctor, then no one could play because the courts are too crowded, and no one could be a doctor because there would be no one to grow food etc. Harmless or even positive behavior seems to be ruled out by the standard procedure. (ii) On the other hand, the standard test seems to rule out too little and produce false positives. A famous example is Brentano’s question whether one could refuse to take a bribe. If everyone did that, then the whole institution of bribery would vanish, and one could not even state the maxim without contradiction. Nonetheless, we believe bribery to be morally wrong.42 (iii) A third problem with the standard testing procedure that is often ascribed to Kant is that it is not clear why it is a distinctly moral test. There are different interpretations of what rules out a maxim as immoral, but neither of them sounds as if it detects any moral problems. For instance, if not everyone can do the same action at the same time, or if one does not get what one wants, or if a contradiction occurs, neither of these failures seems to be a moral failure. The problem that we often have to take turns seems to be a fact of life and not itself a moral failure. Also, we might not like a situation if we are not getting what we want, but it is a prudential problem, not a moral one. Finally, we might also commit a contradiction on a math or logic test, but this is a failure of rationality, not in itself a moral problem. (iv) An early critique that seems to sum up the previous problems is that the Categorical Imperative is empty and devoid of content.43 I will argue that Kant provides a testing procedure that is different from what is often ascribed to him, and that can handle these objections much more successfully. According to my reading, Kant proposes a procedure during which one should test whether (1) one tries to make an exception for oneself (or this once in cases of duties toward self) and (2) to a rule that is objectively necessary. The first part is the moral form that tries to

136 Oliver Sensen rule out that one is a free rider or behaves unfairly. Against objection (iii), it explains the moral content of the procedure. However, it is incomplete without a matter. The second part of the procedure provides this matter with reference to anthropological knowledge. However, it does not refer to any desire a human being might happen to have, but to ends that are objectively necessary. This last requirement puts this new procedure in a much stronger position against objections (i) and (ii), since neither playing tennis at 10am nor accepting bribes is an objectively necessary rule. What is the textual evidence for my interpretation? First, it seems that Kant agrees that the Categorical Imperative by itself is empty: “Through the law . . . in genere, no rule of dutiful action can then itself be determined, because this belongs to the matter” (LEV44 27:578). In order to derive concrete duties, it needs a form (the Categorical Imperative), and a matter. Regarding the matter, Kant says that morality needs “anthropology for its application” (GMM 4:412). This anthropological knowledge refers to basic and universal ends of mankind. The “rules whereby my actions hold good universally” are “derived from the universal ends of mankind” (LEC 27:258). Such universal ends are, for example, self-preservation, the propagation of the species as well as our sociability (cf. Rel45 6:26). They are necessary by the rule: “Whoever wills the end, also wills . . . the indispensably necessary means” (GMM 4:412). By the instincts of our nature, we want to live safely and in a cultured way. Not being killed or lied to, but helped in need are objectively necessary means to that end. However, by themselves these ends are not yet morally binding: “The only way this maxim can be binding is through its qualification as a universal law” (MM 6:393). In order to make it binding, it needs the formal part, that one should not make an exception to these rules. The formal part demands not to make “an exception to it for ourselves (or just for this once) to the advantage of our inclination.” (GMM 4:424) The “it” refers to laws which are objectively necessary in the sense specified earlier: Consequently, if we weighed all cases from one and the same point of view, namely that of reason, we would find a contradiction in our own will, namely that a certain principle be objectively necessary as a universal law and yet subjectively not hold universally but allow exceptions. (GMM 4:424)46 Kant’s testing procedure therefore asks whether one aims (1) to make an exception for oneself and (2) to an objectively necessary rule. How does this interpretation address the four challenges raised earlier? (iv) The Categorical Imperative by itself is empty and has to be supplemented by anthropologically necessary laws. These laws could change if, for instance, our human nature changes with bioengineering etc. (iii) But the procedure has a recognizably moral content in that it rules out unfairness. Finally, (i–ii) the

Feelings in Moral Philosophy 137 examples that are raised against Kant’s derivation of duties are mostly not examples where someone tries to violate a rule that is deemed to be objectively necessary. It is not necessary to play tennis at 10am on Sundays, but to sustain oneself. It is also not necessary to accept bribes, but to live sociably without corruption and bribery. Much more would have to be said,47 but what is important here is that Kant gives a central role to our sensible nature in the derivation of duties.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have argued that Kant gives a larger role to our sensibility than is commonly assumed. I believe that we should resist the temptation to base human motivation exclusively on feelings, but in the derivation of duties our sensible side is at least half in importance, and more than half in figuring out what we should do. One could say that the Categorical Imperative without matter is empty, and that our sensibility without the normative force of the imperative is morally blind.48

Notes 1. Cf. Simon Blackburn, Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 243–50. 2. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason [CPrR]. Page references cite Volume: Page of the Academy Edition of Kant’s collected works. All translations of Kant’s work are taken from The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, ed. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. 3. Cf. Richard McCarty, “Motivation and Moral Choice in Kant’s Theory of Rational Agency,” Kant-Studien 85 (1994): 15–31; and Ina Goy, “Immanuel Kant über das moralische Gefühl der Achtung,” Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 61 (2007): 337–60. 4. Cf. Dieter Schönecker, “Das gefühlte Faktum der Vernunft. Skizze einer Interpretation und Verteidigung,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 61 (2013): 91–107. 5. For a detailed account of the development of Kant’s views as well as his biography, see Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 6. Kant, Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality [I]. 7. Kant, Lectures on Ethics Herder [LEH]. 8. Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime [FBS]. 9. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals [MM]. 10. See also Patrick Frierson, “Two Concepts of Universality in Kant’s Moral Theory,” in Kant’s Observations and Remarks: A Critical Guide, ed. Susan Shell and Richard Velkley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 57–76. 11. Kant, Remarks on Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime [DR]. 12. Cf. Paul Guyer, “Freedom as the Foundation of Morality: Kant’s Early Efforts,” in Kant’s Observations and Remarks: A Critical Guide, ed. Susan Shell and Richard Velkley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 77–98. 13. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason [CPR].

138 Oliver Sensen 14. For a fuller account of this idea, see Oliver Sensen, “Kant’s Constructivism,” in Constructivism in Ethics, ed. Carla Bagnoli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 63–81. 15. Kant, On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World [ID]. 16. Kant, Lectures on Ethics Collins [LEC]. 17. At this point, around 1775, Kant does not yet distinguish between reason and understanding, cf. Manfred Kuehn, “Collins: Kant’s Proto-Critical Position,” in Kant’s Lectures on Ethics: A Critical Guide, ed. Lara Denis and Oliver Sensen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 61 note. 18. Cf. Kuehn, “Collins,” 64–6. 19. For a fuller defense, see Oliver Sensen, “The Supreme Principle of Morality,” in Reading Kant’s Lectures, ed. Robert Clewis (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 179–99. 20. Kant, Lectures on Ethics Mrongovius I [LEM]. 21. In both, the early 1760s and the mid-1770s, Kant supplements the moral motive with religion and a belief in God, cf. Patrick Frierson, “Herder: Religion and Moral Motivation,” in Kant’s Lectures on Ethics: A Critical Guide, ed. Lara Denis and Oliver Sensen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 34–50; and Kuehn, “Collins,” 51–67. 22. Cf. his, “Einleitung,” in Immanuel Kant: Vorlesung zur Moralphilosophie, ed. Werner Stark, vii–xxxv (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004), xxxv. 23. Cf. Barbara Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 12–15. 24. Cf. Jay Wallace, “How to Argue about Practical Reason,” Mind 99 (1990): 360 note 13. 25. Cf. Michael Smith, “The Humean Theory of Motivation,” Mind 96 (1987): 45–8. 26. Does it make sense to speak of unconscious feelings? It seems more promising to me to search for a cause of feelings in our brain, and examine whether this brain activity causes our actions. One candidate for this is the existence of dopamine in the reward center of the brain. However, it seems that this is not the only mechanism causing the relevant feelings, cf. Kent Berridge, “Pleasures of the Brain,” Brain and Cognition 52 (2003): 106–28. Likewise, the theory of evolution does not seem to put forth only one cause of action, cf. Elliott Sober and David S. Wilson, “Summary of: ‘Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 7 (2000): 185–206. 27. John McDowell, “Non-Cognitivism and Rule Following,” in Wittgenstein: To Follow a Rule, ed. Steven Holtzman and Christopher Leich (London: Routledge, 2010), 155. 28. Hume uses “force” and “necessity” synonymously (cf. T 1.3.14 SBN 157). However, these two might not be the same. One could object that we often experience a causal force, for example, when we are pushed or are pushing something. However, this is different from saying that this happened necessarily, and could not have been otherwise (cf. CPR B3f). 29. Cf. again Smith, “The Humean Theory,” 38–61. 30. Blackburn, Ruling Passions, 123. 31. Bernard Williams, Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 102, 105. 32. Cf. Smith, “The Humean Theory,” 50–4. 33. Cf. Smith, “The Humean Theory,” 43–5. 34. Cf. Michael Smith, “Four Objections to the Standard Theory of Action,” Philosophical Issues 22 (2012), 395–7. 35. Cf. Ralph Walker,“Achtung in the Grundlegung,” in Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. Ein kooperativer Kommentar, ed. Otfried Höffe (Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1993), 98; and Robert Solomon, What Is an Emotion? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 229.

Feelings in Moral Philosophy 139 36. Cf. Melissa Zinkin, “Respect for the Law and the Use of Dynamical Terms in Kant’s Theory of Moral Motivation,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 88 (2006), 33. For an analysis of this idea cf. also Steffi Schadow, Achtung für das Gesetz (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 249–64; and Nora Kassan, “Von den zwei Triebfedern der reinen praktischen Vernunft,” in Natur und Freiheit. Akten des XII. Kant-Kongresses 2015, (Berlin: De Gruyter, forthcoming). 37. Cf. Andrews Reath, Agency and Autonomy in Kant’s Moral Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 8–32; Philip Stratton-Lake, Kant, Duty, and Moral Worth (London: Routledge, 2004), 29–44; and Oliver Sensen, “The Role of Feelings in Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” Studi Kantiani 25 (2012), 45–58. 38. Cf., for instance, Joseph Butler, “Sermon xi (1726),” in The Works of Bishop Butler edited by David E. White, 110–113 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2006). 39. Cf. Joel Feinberg, “Psychological Egoism,” in Reason and Responsibility, ed. Joel Feinberg and Russ Shafer-Landau (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2010), 522f. 40. Cf. Herman, Moral Judgment, 138. 41. For a discussion see Allen Wood, Kantian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 72–4; and Henry Allison, Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 176–203. 42. Cf. Franz Brentano, The Origin of our Knowledge of Right and Wrong trans. Roderick Chisholm and Elizabeth Schneewind (London: Routledge, 1969), 14 note 11. 43. Cf. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), §135. 44. Kant, Lectures on Ethics Vigilantius [LEV]. 45. Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason [Rel]. 46. I believe that in order to work, any contradiction test would have to be adjusted with the inclusion of objectively necessary rules. 47. For a first attempt, see Oliver Sensen, “Universalizing as a Moral Demand,” Estudos Kantianos 2 (2014): 169–84. 48. Cf. Kuehn, “Einleitung,” xxxv; CPR A51/B75.

References Allison, Henry. Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Berridge, Kent. “Pleasures of the Brain.” Brain and Cognition 52 (2003): 106–28. Blackburn, Simon. Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Brentano, Franz. The Origin of our Knowledge of Right and Wrong. Translated by Roderick Chisholm and Elizabeth Schneewind. London: Routledge, 1969. Butler, Joseph. The Works of Bishop Butler. Edited by David White. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2006. Feinberg, Joel. “Psychological Egoism.” In Reason and Responsibility: Readings in Some Basic Problems in Philosophy, edited by Joel Feinberg, Russ Shafer-Landau, 522–34. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2010. Frierson, Patrick. “Herder: Religion and Moral Motivation.” In Kant’s Lectures on Ethics: A Critical Guide, edited by Lara Denis and Oliver Sensen, 34–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Frierson, Patrick. “Two Concepts of Universality in Kant’s Moral Theory.” In Kant’s Observations and Remarks: A Critical Guide, edited by Susan Shell and Richard Velkley, 57–76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

140 Oliver Sensen Goy, Ina. “Immanuel Kant über das moralische Gefühl der Achtung.” Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 61 (2007): 337–60. Guyer, Paul. “Freedom as the Foundation of Morality: Kant’s Early Efforts.” In Kant’s Observations and Remarks: A Critical Guide, edited by Susan Shell and Richard Velkley, 77–98. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Translated by H. B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Herman, Barbara. The Practice of Moral Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. Kant, Immanuel. Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften. Royal Prussian (subsequently German, then Berlin-Brandenburg) Academy of Sciences edition. Berlin: Georg Reimer, subsequently Walter de Gruyter, 1900. Kassan, Nora. “Von den zwei Triebfedern der reinen praktischen Vernunft.” In Natur und Freiheit. Akten des XII. Kant-Kongresses 2015. Berlin: De Gruyter, forthcoming. Kuehn, Manfred. “Collins: Kant’s Proto-Critical Position.” In Kant’s Lectures on Ethics: A Critical Guide, edited by Lara Denis and Oliver Sensen, 51–67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Kuehn, Manfred. “Einleitung.” In Immanuel Kant: Vorlesung zur Moralphilosophie, edited by Werner Stark, vii–xxxv. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004. Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: A Biography. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. McCarty, Richard. “Motivation and Moral Choice in Kant’s Theory of Rational Agency.” Kant-Studien 85 (1994): 15–31. McDowell, John. “Non-Cognitivism and Rule Following.” In Wittgenstein: To Follow a Rule, edited by Steven Holtzman and Christopher Leich, 141–62. London: Routledge, 2010. Reath, Andrews. Agency and Autonomy in Kant’s Moral Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Schadow, Steffi. Achtung für das Gesetz. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013. Schönecker, Dieter. “Das gefühlte Faktum der Vernunft. Skizze einer Interpretation und Verteidigung.” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 61 (2013): 91–107. Sensen, Oliver. “Kant’s Constructivism.” In Constructivism in Ethics, edited by Carla Bagnoli, 63–81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Sensen, Oliver. “The Role of Feelings in Kant’s Moral Philosophy.” Studi Kantiani 25 (2012): 45–58. Sensen, Oliver. “The Supreme Principle of Morality.” In Reading Kant’s Lectures, edited by Robert Clewis, 179–99. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015. Sensen, Oliver. “Universalizing as a Moral Demand.” Estudos Kantianos 2 (2014): 169–84. Smith, Michael. “The Humean Theory of Motivation.” Mind 96 (1987): 45–8. Sober, Elliot and David S. Wilson. “Summary of: ‘Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior.’” Journal of Consciousness Studies 7 (2000): 185–206. Solomon, Robert. What Is an Emotion? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Stratton-Lake, Philip. Kant, Duty, and Moral Worth. London: Routledge, 2004. Walker, Ralph. “Achtung in the Grundlegung.” In Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. Ein kooperativer Kommentar, edited by Otfried Höffe, 97–116. Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1993.

Feelings in Moral Philosophy 141 Wallace, Jay. “How to Argue about Practical Reason.” Mind 99 (1990): 355–85. Williams, Bernard. Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Wood, Allen. Kantian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Zinkin, Melissa. “Respect for the Law and the Use of Dynamical Terms in Kant’s Theory of Moral Motivation.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 88 (2006): 31–53.

8

Hume’s Principle and Kant’s Pure Rational System of Religion Grace, Providence, and the Highest Good Lawrence Pasternack

I. Introduction In “Kant’s Critique of Hume’s Theory of Faith,”1 Manfred Kuehn explores the religious implications of Kant’s reformulation of the Humean principle that we should not “carry the use of reason dogmatically beyond the field of all possible experience” (P 4:360). As Kuehn recognizes, this principle not only informs Kant’s general approach to metaphysics, but it is also salient to his philosophy of religion. However, unlike Hume, Kant maintains that pure practical reason provides us with a “prerogative” through which we can extend our cognition beyond the limits of possible experience. What this prerogative allows for, however, is not always clear. On the one hand, most of Kant’s affirmative discussions of religion focus on the Highest Good and its postulates of God and the immortality of the soul. Yet in contrast to this comparatively minimal set of religious commitments, Religion within the Boundaries of mere Reason develops a far more elaborate philosophical theology with positions taken on the nature of Original Sin, Grace, Miracles, Providence, and so forth. These ventures into Christian theology are, according to many interpreters, incompatible with both the epistemic strictures set by Transcendental Idealism as well as many of the key tenets of Kant’s practical philosophy. Hence, from its initial reception until now, the Religion has been dismissed as a grand philosophical misstep on Kant’s part, a litany of “wobbles” between competing philosophical and religious commitments, a text “riddled with irrationalities,” and even an outright “failure.”2 With the help of Kuehn’s insights into Kant’s appropriation of Hume’s Principle, this chapter will seek to rebut the long-standing criticisms of the Religion by showing how it, both in theme and content, is compatible with the practical and theoretical principles that govern Kant’s Critical Project. In particular, we will explore the relevance of Kant’s doctrine of the Highest Good to the Religion, for even though through it we “carry the use of reason  .  .  .  beyond the field of possible experience,” because it is a “necessary object of pure practical reason” (CPrR 5:135), it makes possible a non-dogmatic extension of our cognition into the supersensible. This extension, as we shall see, directs us not merely to the postulates of God and

Grace, Providence, and the Highest Good 143 immortality but also guides Kant in his construction of what he calls the “Pure Rational System of Religion” (Rel 6:12). We will begin with a brief review of Hume’s critique of the doctrine of Providence before then moving on to how Kant refines and adapts Hume’s Principle3 in light of Transcendental Idealism. We will then turn to the Religion to explore how the Highest Good guides Kant in his account of God’s role in our moral lives, an account that distinguishes his philosophical theology from both the prevailing Augustinianism of Western Christianity as well as Enlightenment Deism.

II. Hume on Providence Hume’s critique of the traditional proofs for God’s existence are, of course, quite well known. He makes short shrift of the Ontological Argument by claiming that since we can conceive of the non-existence of God, God’s existence cannot be proven a priori (DNR 9.189, EHU 12.3 SBN 164). He rejects the Cosmological Argument(s) for various reasons, including: (a) that just because each member in a series of effects has a cause, it does not entail that the series as a whole must have a cause (DNR 9.190); (b) it is possible that the universe as a whole might be self-caused or uncaused (DNR 4.164); and (c) if we posit causes only so powerful as needed for their effects, we cannot presume an eternal or infinite deity (DNR 5.166–7). And perhaps most famously, he rebuts the Design Argument as not only dependent upon a weak analogy, but even if one were to allow the analogy to hold, we still could not posit a cause that is singular, infinite, perfect, incorporeal, etc. (DNR 5.166–169). Behind these objections is what, as noted in the Introduction, Kuehn refers to as Hume’s Principle. For Hume, the testimony of experience serves as sole acceptable basis for claims about matters of fact. Hence, when exploring theological doctrines, we ought to limit ourselves to such testimony, and where we draw inferences from it, we should nonetheless be bound by a principle of parsimony, restricting us to what we—at best—may minimally posit as a cause, given the observed effect. The natural theologian should thus attribute to God as cause nothing beyond what is “precisely adapted to the effect which we examine” (EHU 11 SBN 144). When considering God’s morality, we may observe nature’s testimony “that virtue is attended with more peace of mind than vice, and meets with a more favorable reception from the world” (EHU 11 SBN 140). Yet in light of the fact that the natural order still falls far short of a perfect coordination of morality and happiness, Hume’s Principle would proscribe the natural theologian from concurrently attributing to God both a commitment to ultimate justice and the powers to bring it about. That is, when reasoning from effects to causes, the testimony of experience would direct us to a divinity with either only a partial interest in morality or as lacking the powers to secure anything close to what Kant calls the Highest Good—i.e., an ideal

144 Lawrence Pasternack state of affairs in which happiness is distributed in exact proportion to moral worth (CPR A810/B839, CPrR 5:110, etc.).4 Theologians, however, are typically not comfortable with this consequence. Even natural theologians, who allege to heed Hume’s Principle, tend nevertheless to various dogmas about God’s moral nature, and as a result, forgo the testimony of experience in favor of a more pliant worldview. When confronted with the problem of evil, the dogmatic theologian will, rather than accept its theological consequences, introduce the doctrines of Providence and/or the afterlife in order to preserve God’s assumed moral and causal powers. In the Enquiry’s “Of a Particular Providence and of a Future State,” Hume characterizes this maneuver as a reversal of the natural theologian’s alleged direction of inference, for in positing Providence or the afterlife (i.e., our “Future State”), they begin with an antecedent conception of God as cause, and then infer to His effects—namely, that an ultimate justice will finally be obtained. The natural theologian thus answers the problem of evil by explaining it in light of a higher good that is to eventually be realized. For Hume, however, this is sheer dogma. The testimony of experience indicates at best some “particular degree” of “wisdom and goodness;” (EHU 11 SBN 146) and thus, by his Principle, we should go no farther than attributing to God powers and interests “precisely adapted to the effect which we examine” (EHU 11 SBN 144). But rather than accepting these results, most theologians claim more, not “by any reason or argument,” but through an “indulgence” of “the unbounded license of conjecture” (EHU 11 SBN 144). Insofar as experience alone can serve as the basis for our reasoning about cause and effect, we can never “be authorized to infer or suppose, by any rules of just reasoning” (EHU 11 SBN 144) the doctrines of Providence or the afterlife. Accordingly, Hume’s Principle would seem to lock out all attempts to reconcile the traditional conception of God with the fact of evil, including Kant’s doctrine of the Highest Good as likewise inadmissible. Yet, rather than being a mere dogma, Kant maintains that the Highest Good and the religious postulates that follow from it are justified out of the “needs” of pure practical reason.

III. The Highest Good as Foundation for the Pure Rational System of Religion Although Kant’s arguments for the Highest Good vary over the Critical Period, there are nonetheless a number of common threads that run throughout. One of these is his portrayal of the Highest Good’s architectonic significance as the “unconditioned totality of the object of pure practical reason” (CPrR 5:108). It sets the relationship between the practical and theoretical uses of reason (CPrR 5:119–20); it brings into unity our conflicting interests in morality and happiness (CPrR 5:110); it serves as the ultimate “point of reference for the unification of all ends” (Rel 6:5) and alone it is that which

Grace, Providence, and the Highest Good 145 is adequate to being the “final end of creation” (CPJ 5:454). Second, Kant maintains that there is a moral “need” to affirm this total object. Not only is it a state of affairs that ought to be (CPrR 5:110, Rel 6:5), but it is also how we need to see the world in order to sustain our commitment to the Moral Law (CPR A813/B841, CPrR 5:114, CPJ 5:452, Rel 6:5). Even though after the First Critique Kant presents us as both capable of and prescribed to follow the Moral Law for its own sake, our need for an ultimate justice is one of the “the inescapable limitations of human beings” (Rel 6:7n). Accordingly, Kant presents our belief in the Highest Good as addressing this need, one that otherwise would become “a hindrance to moral resolve” (Rel 6:5). Yet this need is not, for Kant, a variable feature of human psychology, something contingent and subjective. In an important footnote in the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant responds to a challenge by his younger contemporary Thomas Wizenmann, who objects that the Highest Good is really just a form of wishful thinking, no more than a projection of our arbitrary dogmas and desires (CPrR 5:143n). To this Kant responds that this doctrine is not a product of our private psychological preferences, but arises instead from “a need of reason” (CPrR 5:143n). More fully: even though the Highest Good is not strictly derivable from the Moral Law because it depends as well on the various features of our finite agency, it is nonetheless driven by a moral warrant. For if within us there are various hindrances to moral resolve, then we ought to do what we can to mitigate them. Hence, since according to Kant’s moral psychology, we are susceptible to despair if we see our moral efforts as ultimately swamped by “all the evils of poverty, illness and untimely death” (CPJ 5:452), we have moral cause to see the world as advancing towards an ultimate justice.5 The origins of our commitment to this justice, and to the religious postulates which support it, are thus markedly different from how they are portrayed by the theologians targeted by Hume. According to Hume, theologians start with a dogma about God’s nature, and then, in light of that dogma, are led to the claim that there will be an ultimate justice. However, as outlined earlier, Kant’s approach follows a different (and in fact reverse) route: we begin with a need for ultimate justice, and then posit God, an afterlife, and (as we shall see) Providence in order for it to become possible. While this on its own does not immunize Kant against a Humean criticism, insofar as an adequate case can be made for the underlying need that drives the Highest Good, then the doctrine, and what follows from it, would not be just dogma: for rather than the Highest Good arising out of “the unbounded license of conjecture,” it has, Kant maintains, an objective and a priori grounding in our relationship to the Moral Law. What I would now like to do is consider the extent to which Kant’s Highest Good shapes his broader philosophy of religion. Although it is routinely claimed that the contents of Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason depart from both the epistemic strictures of Transcendental Idealism as well as from many of the core principles of Kantian ethics, as we shall see, this is

146 Lawrence Pasternack not the case. For rather than being a litany of “wobbles” or even a “capitulation”6 to Christian doctrine, Kant’s Pure Rational System of Religion, insofar as it flows out of the Highest Good, follows what may be considered a moral corollary to Hume’s Principle—namely, that we should not carry the use of reason dogmatically beyond what must be postulated for practical purposes (hereafter, MHP). In particular, we shall see how Kant, rather than appropriating the dogmas, especially the Augustinian dogmas, that were at the heart of his religious upbringing, instead held fast to Hume’s religious parsimony, offering a philosophical theology that goes no farther than what must be postulated for the sake of our moral needs. Unfortunately, given the legacy of misunderstands that so weigh down the Religion, there will be some work needed to see this. Once we untangle the mess of decades of distortions, we shall see—I think quite luminously—how carefully Kant shapes his Pure Rational System of Religion by way of the Highest Good and in compliance with MHP. In effect, we shall see how his critique of the Augustinian conception of sin and salvation offers not only a test case for his observance of MHP, but insofar as it can be shown that the contents of the Religion sustain this principle, we can respond to the long-standing dual objections that its philosophical theology is neither internally consistent nor compatible with the broader Critical Corpus. This, however, will take some work, so bear with me as we first clean up the interpretative mess.

IV. Kant Contra Augustine: Original Sin and Sanctifying Grace i. Original Sin The most notorious of the Religion’s alleged “wobbles” is what many claim to be its flagitious importation of Augustinian doctrines. In particular, it is extremely common to find in the literature claims linking Part One’s treatment of Moral Depravity with the Augustinian account of Original Sin. Beginning with Karl Barth, and continuing through the works of Philip Quinn, Frederick Beiser, Jacqueline Mariña, and onwards, the literature abounds with repeated statements to the effect that Part One is shaped by an “Augustinian framework,” resounds with “Augustinian echoes,” is built around tenets “fundamental to Augustine,” and rests upon an “Augustinian metaphysic.”7 Yet precisely what this alleged Augustinianism is and how it manifests in the text simply has not been treated with anything beyond mere hand-waiving and oft-repeated vagaries. For rather than attending to the specifics of its account of moral depravity, interpreters have naively assumed on the basis of Kant’s mere mention of a peccatum originarium that he must be sympathetic with if not a follower of the Augustinian tradition. To see, however, how far from being the case this really is, let us begin by gaining some clarity as to what Augustine and his Reformation proponents actually claim. This will take us through a fairly windy path, but as we shall

Grace, Providence, and the Highest Good 147 see, rather than Part One carrying Kant away into Christian dogmas that violate the theological parsimony of Hume’s Principle, it rather shows how carefully he treads when brought to the boundaries of rational religion. To that end, let me offer the following core Augustinian tenets: (1) Our common progenitor, Adam, disobeyed God, committing the “Primal Sin” whose consequences we have inherited. (2) These consequences include both a corruption of our cognitive powers such that we can no longer know the good and a corruption of our volitional powers such that we can no longer will it. (3) Although we are naturally oriented toward the good, due to the corruption of our faculties, we (a) mistake the “lesser” goods of self-interest for the good, and (b) are volitionally incapable of willing other than in accordance with self-interest. (4) Due to (2) and (3), neither can we recognize our moral depravity, nor were we able to recognize it, would we want to overcome it. Hence, neither would we seek divine aid nor choose to accept it if offered.8 Although many interpreters have used Kant’s claim that humanity as a whole is morally corrupt as their basis for linking the Religion to the Augustinian tradition, this is not a claim that Kant sees as specific to either Augustinianism or even to Christianity. Instead, he begins Part One by stating first “[t] hat ‘the world lieth in evil’ is a complaint as old as history” (Rel 6:19), and then continues through the remainder of the paragraph to reference quite disparate traditions, as varied as Hinduism and Hellenistic Mythology, each reflecting the idea that the world and humanity is “fallen.” While at this level of generality there is certainly a point of agreement between Kant and Augustine, each of the aforementioned four tenets are nonetheless considered and rejected. Hence, rather than employing the Pure Rational System of Religion as a philosophical defense or reconstruction of this tradition, it is instead used by Kant as the main foil against which he develops his own view. To see this, let us begin with the first tenet, particularly its claim that evil can be “inherited.” Contemporary readers will likely find this challenge to Augustinian Christianity the least disconcerting, for the notion that procreation can transfer a moral liability is anathema to our scientific worldview. Accordingly, it should be apparent that for Kant the causal order of nature cannot serve as the mechanism through which we acquire our moral status. He thus writes, “Whatever the nature . . . of the origin of moral evil in the human being, of all the ways of representing [it] . . . the most inappropriate is surely to imagine it as having come to us by way of inheritance from our first parents” (Rel 6:40). Where the Augustinian has humanity sharing a common liability because of Adam’s Primal Sin, one that is then forgiven or repaid through the Crucifixion, it is axiomatic for Kant that the acquisition of one’s moral status

148 Lawrence Pasternack must “always be a deed of freedom” (Rel 6:21). Hence, where the Augustinian allows us to be either good or evil through no act of our own, Kant is quite clear that there is no “transmissible liability,” either as a liability inherited from our Progenitor or through our being “relieved” [entschlagen] of it through a “foreign satisfying merit” (Rel 6:118). This, of course, has great bearing on the “Christian Story,” for Original Sin and redemption through the Cross are partner doctrines, the former it seems crafted in service to the latter. So, where the dominant Augustinian version of this Story does not consider the exercise of free will as necessary for our moral status, Kant is unambiguous on the matter. As such, neither can we have our moral condition transmitted to us, nor can we be relieved of it through its transmission to another. The second and third of the tenets can be understood as capturing the essential mechanics of the Augustinian conception of moral depravity. Although there are some differences between how Augustine himself and his followers in the Reformation describe the consequences of the Fall, they all nonetheless subscribe to a privation account of evil, where as a result of Adam’s Primal Sin, human nature is now such that we can neither know the good nor be moved to act on its basis. Where Adam had, according to Augustine’s roughly Platonic worldview, a noetic grasp of the Form of the Good, his violation of God’s will compromised this capacity both for himself and for his progeny. Hence, we are now left having to rely upon our senses for more than what they are capable of offering to us, grasping as a result only distortions and shadows of the true good, most notably the “lesser” goods of corporeal need and subjective interest.9 Similarly, the Fall affected our volitional powers, for where Adam, in his original state, was moved to act by the good, we are now driven only by self-interest. Bodily desire, the ambitions of our ego, lust, pride, and what Kant refers to as our “malignant inclinations” (Rel 6:94) are all that now move us. Hence we have among Luther’s best known works, The Bondage of the Will, where he argues against Erasmus, very much as Augustine argued against Pelagius, that our fallen wills are without the capacity to choose the good. We are thus, according to this tradition, out and out “slaves to sin,” existing, moreover, in a state of “Total Depravity.” For not only are we without any interest in doing the good for its own sake, but we are moved to act by nothing but the “lesser” goods that drive our fallen nature. That is, on Kantian terms, for this tradition, while we may out of self-interest still act in conformity with duty, there is no acting from duty. Readers of the Religion who believe that Kant endorsed the Augustinian account of moral depravity have, quite understandably, dismissed the text as a radical departure from the rest of the Critical Corpus. For while Kant likewise recognizes that moral depravity has both cognitive and volitional characteristics, he by no means thinks that we are either incapable of knowing the good nor unmoved by it.

Grace, Providence, and the Highest Good 149 With regards to our cognition, Kant recognizes that our innate Propensity to Evil disposes us to “[t]hrow dust in our own eyes” (Rel 6:38) so that we can, through one “inner lie” or another rationalize away what morality commands. Yet rather than having here a privation thesis, that our immorality is due to a lack of the cognitive powers needed to know the good, Kant is quite clear that there is no “corruption of the morally legislative reason” (Rel 6:35), no “lost incentive for the good,” for “were we ever to lose it, we would also never be able to regain it” (Rel 6:46). Likewise, instead of our wills being reduced to an arbitrium brutum, such that we are moved by nothing other than desire, Part One of the Religion (esp. Rel 6:24) offers one of the clearest statements of what Henry Allison calls Kant’s “Incorporation Thesis”—i.e., that “an incentive can determine the will to an action only insofar as the individual has incorporated it into his maxim.”10 Hence, while Kant depicts our Propensity to Evil as innate, whether or not we accede to it still depends upon an original “deed” of freedom.11 In fact, where the Augustinian follows a privation account, Kant presents our Propensity to Evil as a “positive principle” (Rel 6:59), an “active and opposing cause” (Rel 6:57) which draws us away from the Moral Law and toward our giving priority to self-interest in our “Supreme Maxim.” Perhaps even more to the point, Kant does not think that once we have given in to this Propensity that we lose or suspend our free will. Although we choose as our “Supreme Maxim” one who gives priority to self-interest over morality, Kant nonetheless maintains that this priority endures only so long as we continue to reaffirm it. On this he writes, “Whatever his previous behavior may have been, whatever the natural causes influencing him, whether they are inside or outside them, his action is yet free and not determined” (Rel 6:41). Likewise, as this condition can only be overcome “through good maxims—something that cannot take place if the subjective supreme ground of all maxims is presupposed to be corrupted,” Kant maintains that “it must equally be possible to overcome this evil, for it is found in the human being as acting freely” (Rel 6:37). Accordingly, quite unlike the Augustinian, not only does Kant explain our moral condition in terms of a “positive principle,” but neither is evil understood in terms of a lost cognitive or volitional capacity. We do not become “slaves to sin” and are not left without the cognitive and volitional powers necessary for choosing the good.12 Part One of the Religion, thus, rather than offering a position even compatible with Augustinianism,13 instead advances an account of moral depravity fundamentally at odds with it. Kant does not here “wobble” or “capitulate,” but rather discusses the Augustinian account of moral depravity and rejects it. ii. Divine Aid and the Change of Heart According to the Augustinian tradition, there is nothing whatsoever we can do to morally better ourselves. We cannot overcome our fallen condition.

150 Lawrence Pasternack We can do nothing to merit divine aid. Nor can we even choose to accept it if offered.14 Although other soteriologies allow for such possibilities, that is not so with Augustine, Calvin, or Luther. What technically marks out a position as Semi-Pelagian is that it claims that we are capable of having a role in our moral restoration, even though divine aid is still necessary for the process. Hence, in contrast to the original Reformers, many further Protestant movements, including Arminianism, Methodism, Lutheran Pietism, Moravianism, and Baptism (as well as contemporary American Evangelicalism), are all technically Semi-Pelagian in that they maintain some form of concursus or “syncretism” whereby we must in one manner or another do our part in order to receive Grace and/or allow it to do its work.15 The unmitigated Augustinian, however, proffers a “monergism” until our powers are restored, and only thereafter a concursus as we work with God to persevere in our transformed state. In accord with this monergism, Augustine, Luther, and Calvin maintained a set of further doctrines that, as we shall see, are not merely rejected by Kant, but are treated with contempt. The first and most essential of these doctrines is typically called the “Passive Reception of Grace.” As we are “slaves to sin,” lacking both the cognitive and volitional powers to choose the good, there is nothing we can do in support of our moral transformation. Hence, as the term indicates, we are completely passive beneficiaries of God’s reshaping of our natures, restoring our lost capacities. Second, we are, in our fallen condition, oriented toward self-interest alone, for not only do we lack the powers to cooperate with Grace, but would actively resist it. Accordingly, Grace is described as “Efficacious,” as it is sufficient to override our resistance. Lastly, the Augustinian tradition maintains the “Mystery of Grace,” for since we have no positive role to play, whether or not we are made to be among the “Elect” is solely a matter of God’s will.16 As should be expected, Kant did not find much in the aforementioned compatible with his Pure Rational System of Religion. Although he employs the Pietist term, the “Change of Heart,” to represent the inner transformation by which we become “well-pleasing to God,” the term is nonetheless repurposed by Kant to represent the “revolution in the disposition of the human being” (Rel 6:47) as opposed to the restoration of capacities lost to us in Original Sin. Likewise, rather than being passive recipients of a transformative Grace, Kant describes the Change of Heart as the restoration of “the purity of the law, as the supreme ground of all our maxims” (Rel 6:46). This restoration, moreover, is not brought about through a “foreign influence” that does the work for us, but rather demands the “exertion” of our own powers (Rel 6:51). We will say more about this shortly, but before moving on, let us briefly look at Part One’s closing comments on Augustinianism, for we find there not just a philosophical critique, but an outright invective against its account of Grace. While the Passive Reception of Grace and its underlying privation account of evil is promoted by Augustinian Christianity under the guise of our need to be

Grace, Providence, and the Highest Good 151 humble before God, it is rather, for Kant, illustrative of the “moral frailty” that earlier in Part One was characterized as one of the three fundamental manifestations of our Propensity to Evil. Pulling no punches, Kant denounces the Augustinian picture as itself a delusion promoted by those who “find moral labor vexing” (Rel 6:51). It replaces “moral religion” with a “religion of rogation (of mere cult)” (Rel 6:51), for if we are incapable of being moral, our relationship to God becomes one of just empty ritual. Hence, to Kant, Augustinianism is driven by our desire to relieve humanity from the “expectation of self-improvement” (Rel 6:51), for “under the pretext of a natural impotence,” it “conjures up . . . all sorts of impure religious ideas” (Rel 6:51).17 iii. Moral Hope and the Limits of Kant’s Philosophical Theology In the Second Edition to the Religion, Kant adds a brief discussion of the function of the “General Remarks” or “parerga” found at the end of each of its four parts. Where the main body of each attends to specific doctrinal issues (Original Sin, Atonement, Providence, Church Rituals) so as to assess the extent to which there is “unity” between the Pure Rational System of Religion and Christianity, their closing “parerga” consider matters of interest to rational religion but that nonetheless exceed what can be adduced from its guiding principles. Hence, we have in Part One an account of moral evil shaped by Kant’s familiar principles, and yet, in light of this account, we are led to a question for which he does not have an answer—namely, whether or not given our moral corruption, we can through our own powers bring about a Change of Heart, or whether divine aid is needed. For rather than defaulting into a Pelagian or Semi-Pelagian view, or coming in the end to accept the Augustinian account of divine aid, Kant acknowledges that the guiding principles which shape the Pure Rational System of Religion are on their own insufficient to yield an answer. Accordingly, we have here a well-framed scenario where we can see Kant’s theological parsimony at work. For rather than carrying the use of reason dogmatically beyond what must be postulated for practical purposes, and so rather than accepting one or another of the traditional dogmas, he instead gives us this parergon. Unfortunately, poor translations and weak scholarship have conspired to obscure this point. For according to most interpreters, Kant does advance a specific view—for some, it is Augustinian, for others, Pelagian, and for many, an unstable combination of the two. As it has often been claimed, Kant’s attempt in the Religion ultimately leaves him with the “Conundrum” that, on the one hand, he seems to follow the Augustinian account of moral depravity while at the same time subscribes to the “Stoic Maxim” that “a person’s moral worth is determined entirely by that person himself.”18 Hence, through much of the past century, starting with Karl Barth and oft repeated by a cadre of Christian philosophers, the Religion’s soteriology is vitiated by a fundamental “internal contradiction.”19

152 Lawrence Pasternack Of course, we have already seen that half of the aforementioned critique is terribly off-base, for Kant does not accept the Augustinian account of moral depravity. Moreover, as we will discuss next, the so-called Conundrumists are also wrong about what they call Kant’s “Stoic Maxim.” But first, let us look at a key passage frequently quoted to establish Kant’s allegedly inconsistent views on the need for divine aid. In German, the passage reads: “Gesetzt, zum Gut-oder Besserwerden sei noch eine übernatürliche Mitwirkung nöthig . . .” (Rel 6:44), and following the earlier Greene/Hudson translation, di Giovanni translates it as “Granted that some supernatural cooperation is also needed . . .” (Rel 6:44). Unfortunately, what is missed here is the subjunctive form of the statement, for rather than a “granting” of divine aid, Kant is offering it—as the issue of this parergon—a conjecture to be pondered. It is thus more aptly translated by Pluhar as “Supposing that, for him to become good or better, a supranatural cooperation were also needed” (Rel 6:44).20 As discussed, Kant’s account of moral evil does not eliminate from us the capacities needed to undergo a Change of Heart, and yet because we have given priority to self-interest over morality, there is a question as to whether or not we still might need God’s help to get ourselves out of this commitment. For as he states, even though our powers remain intact, there is still the question of “how can an evil tree bear good fruit?” (Rel 6:45) Kant’s response to this question, however, will only take us so far. For unlike the Augustinian, Semi-Pelagian, or Pelagian, who each offers their respective answer, Kant instead heeds MHP. Thus, rather than smuggling in or capitulating to a Christian agenda, he stops where he should. To see this fully, let us look at the three key moral principles which inform this parergon. The first and most obvious is ought implies can: for since we ought to undergo the Change of Heart, it must be possible. What is less obvious, however, is what is implied by this possibility. According to the Conundrumists, Kant is committed to the “Stoic Maxim” that . . . “a person’s moral worth is determined entirely by that person himself.” Hence, even if we follow the aforementioned correctives to how Part One is to be read, as neither supporting the Augustinian privation account, nor as “granting” the necessity of divine aid, Kant’s alleged “Stoic Maxim” would still force upon him another dogma, this time, of Pelagianism. While a charge of Pelagianism may be devastating to a Christian theologian, it is without philosophical teeth, for hardly would the philosopher shutter at the thought that they might be taken as a moral optimist. Accordingly, when the Conundrumists sought to take Kant down, they could not simply accuse him of Pelagianism, but rather instead engineered what would be a philosophical objection: namely that of self-contradiction. Hence, they claimed that Kant both “grants” the need for divine aid while at the same time maintains this “Stoic Maxim,” which would seem to bar it. We have already addressed the first half of this alleged “Conundrum” and shown that it is not only based upon a translation error, but also a distortion

Grace, Providence, and the Highest Good 153 of Kant’s views on the nature of moral depravity. As such, we have already seen that our moral restoration may not need divine aid, for unlike the Augustinian, we are not without those powers necessary to bring it about. Nevertheless, if they were correct about this “Stoic Maxim,” it still offers a basis for concern, as it does seem to require that our Change of Heart must be accomplished unaided. However, as we shall see, Kant does not subscribe to the “Stoic Maxim,” at least as portrayed by the Conundrumists, and so is not forced to deny God a role in our moral restoration. Although it quite aptly follows from ought implies can that if we have a duty, we must have the powers necessary to act upon it, it does not follow from this that the receipt of any aid is incompatible with our observance of the duty. Likewise, although we earn moral merit through the use of our powers, again it does not follow that we cannot still earn merit even if our powers are aided. This can be seen quite easily through the following examples. Consider Kant’s use of ought implies can in the Highest Good. There, ought implies can leads us to posit God, for the can, rather than referencing our powers, instead recognizes that without God’s ability to judge our worthiness and secure our moral deserts, the Highest Good would not be possible. Hence, in this familiar use of ought implies can, there is a shared effort between God and Humanity with our role specifically being to earn moral merit. Although the ultimate object of this ought, the realization of the Highest Good, is not possible without God, nonetheless, we still have a role to play, and it is by virtue of this role that we earn moral merit. Nothing here suggests the alleged “Stoic Maxim,” but rather indicates that the pursuit of ends can be aided by God without making moral merit impossible for us. Another example, one that might be even more apt, is as follows. Consider our duty to further our talents. Imagine a young violinist who, in order to pursue this duty, takes lessons, obtains scholarships, and attends the local symphony. She thus receives aid from teachers, from arts organizations or wealthy patrons, and likewise finds inspiration watching accomplished musicians perform. All these aid her in her efforts, and yet, despite that, she still would be deserving of praise, including moral praise, for her dedication, her sacrifices, and her growing prowess. There is, in short, nothing here to suggest that the receipt of aid prevents one from earning moral merit. While in one sense it is correct that “a person’s moral worth is determined entirely by that person himself,” for what moral worth they gain must be due to the employment of their own powers, because there are numerous ways in which aid may facilitate the use of these powers rather than replace them, there is no reason to claim that divine aid is incompatible with moral merit. Not only is this criticism ultimately just an artifact of the Conundrumists’ attempt to find something in Kant to discredit what they regard as a threat to their preferred dogmas, but Kant was savvy enough to himself distinguish between those forms of divine aid that are incompatible with moral merit and those that are not.

154 Lawrence Pasternack There are, in fact, numerous passages in both the Religion and the Conflict of the Faculties where Kant criticizes one form of divine aid in particular which he regards as incompatible with moral merit. He describes this in terms of a “foreign influence” [fremden Einfluß] which enters into our Gesinnung and does the moral work for us. However, because, for Kant, the Change of Heart is the means by which we become “well-pleasing to God,”21 it “must be the effect of our own work” rather than through “a foreign influence to which we remain passive” (Rel 6:118); “what is to be accredited to us as morally good conduct must take place not through foreign influence but only through the use of our own powers” (Rel 6:191). Likewise, in the Conflict of the Faculties, there are two lengthy discussions of this topic where Kant maintains that the Change of Heart “must be represented as issuing from the human beings’ own use of his moral powers, not as an effect [resulting] from the influence of an external, higher cause by whose activity the human being is passively healed” (CF 7:42). He then directly rejects both the Lutheran Pietist and Moravian accounts of Grace because “on their view the effect of this power would not be our deed and could not be imputed to us” (CF 7:59). Yet none of this should be understood as a denial of divine aid überhaupt. What is rejected is specifically the representations of divine aid found in Augustinian and Semi-Pelagian soteriologies. Insofar as both hold (though to different degrees) that we are incapacitated due to Original Sin, they both find need to posit a “foreign influence” responsible for our Change of Heart. However, as Kant maintains that our powers remain intact, divine aid is given a different form, one that instead of doing the moral work for us, rather supports the use of our own powers, be it through (as described at the opening of this parergon) a “diminution of obstacles” (Rel 6:44), the “moral prototype” of Jesus, who serves to inspire us by example (Rel 6:48, 6:63), or some form of “positive assistance” (Rel 6:44). God’s aid for Kant is thus likened to that of a protector, teacher, or patron, rather than, as the Augustinian would have it, a physician restoring the function of failed organs. Finally, a third key principle which shapes this parergon, one that has been taken for granted through the aforementioned, is that our salvation depends upon earning moral merit. Not only is such merit made impossible by the Augustinian, but for additional theological reasons as well, they maintain that Grace is an unmerited gift of God. Kant’s rejection of this should be apparent enough from the aforementioned quotations, as well as from his rejection of Vicarious Atonement. Moreover, in numerous passages Kant rejects the idea of Divine forgiveness or mercy (Rel 6:73, 6:74, 6:76, 6:141, 6:145n, 6:146n), for whatever it is that may be given to us in Grace, must always be “fully in accord with eternal justice” (Rel 6:76). This is not a minor concern for Kant, nor an ad hoc principle. As the Highest Good is the basis upon which “morality inevitably leads to religion” (Rel 6:6, 6:8n), both the broader themes as well as the particular details of the Pure Rational System of Religion flow out of this doctrine. Because the Highest

Grace, Providence, and the Highest Good 155 Good reflects our need for an ultimate distribution of happiness in accordance with moral worth, rational religion in turn offers a soteriology whereby we can, in contrast to Augustinianism, each earn such worth. Hence, whether or not we become “well-pleasing to God,” whether or not we ultimate are rewarded or punished, cannot be determined through an unmerited dispensation, but, as Kant repeatedly states, must fully accord with Divine Justice.22 Where this leaves us when facing the question of this parergon can be understood as follows. First, given ought implies can, the Change of Heart must be possible. Second, Kant does not consider divine aid incompatible with moral merit. Third, it is in light of the Highest Good that Kant’s soteriology is invested in the importance of earned merit. Yet these together still do not for Kant give us the answer, for while we have the cognitive and volitional powers necessary for restoring morality to its rightful priority over self-interest, and while it is through the exercise of these powers we are to earn moral merit, it remains an unknown as to whether or not our powers, although necessary, may nonetheless not be sufficient for the Change of Heart. Hence, Kant recognizes that we might need divine aid, not because we lack the powers to bring it about, but rather because, having committed ourselves to the priority of self-interest over morality, we would not in light of this priority ever choose otherwise. The problem of the Change of Heart is thus, for Kant, not one engendered by the absence of our cognitive or volitional moral capacities, but rather a problem based upon the logic of what we have chosen for our Supreme Maxim: since we have chosen to give priority to self-interest over morality, we would not, in light of this commitment, ever choose the Change of Heart. Yet, as Kant makes quite clear, we continue to recognize, even under the reign of self-interest, that we ought to undergo this change. Likewise, we remain free to will it. We are not trapped by our earlier choices, for not only can we always change our minds on more mundane matters, but Kant as well holds that our Supreme Maxim goes unchanged only so long as we continue to reaffirm it.23 The mystery, then, is what brings us to make this change? “How can an evil tree bear good fruit?” This is the parergon of Part One of the Religion, the limit of what can be offered by the Pure Rational System of Religion. As such, unlike the theological traditions with which Kant’s views have been confused, neither does he “carry the use of reason dogmatically beyond the field of all possible experience” nor carry the use of reason dogmatically beyond what must be postulated for practical purposes. Instead of either affirming or rejecting divine aid, he responds to the worry over what occasions the Change of Heart not by forsaking either his moral or epistemic principles, deferring to one dogmatic solution or another, but through just the far more modest proposal that, given ought implies can, if our powers in the end are not sufficient, then be it through the “diminution of obstacles” or a “positive assistance” (Rel 6:44), God will aid us in the employment of our own powers to bring about the Change of Heart.

156 Lawrence Pasternack Only recently, particularly through the good works of Andrew Chignell, is Kant’s actual attitude toward divine aid starting to be unpacked.24 For while it is through one’s own “decision [that] a human being reverses the supreme ground of his maxims by which he was an evil human being” (Rel 6:48), we are nonetheless unable to determine whether or not we can, unaided, come to make this decision. What Kant then proposes in light of this circumstance is not the a “foreign influence” that does the work on our behalf, nor the Pelagianism that would deny any need for divine aid whatsoever, nor even the Semi-Pelagianism that too assertorically holds that divine aid is necessary. Instead, we are led to a hope, or more precisely, a conditional hope “that what does not like in his powers will be compensated for by cooperation from above” (Rel 6:52 . . . my trans). For in light of what would otherwise become a “hindrance to moral resolve” (Rel 6:5), Kant recognizes a moral need for this quantum of solace.

V. Kant on Miracles and Providence The preceding section has shown how Kant’s examination of Sanctifying Grace not only conforms with his appropriation of Hume’s Principle, but remains thoroughly consistent with his broader critical philosophy. What the preceding has also done is to present us with a God who is active in our lives, helping us if and when aid is needed in our efforts to bring about a Change of Heart. Accordingly, where some have seen in Hume a thoroughgoing denial of miracles and revelation, Kant remains at least open to their possibility. Not only does Transcendental Idealism make possible a non-natural ground for the events of nature, but there is, as we have seen, also a moral basis for introducing divine aid. As such, Kant’s God is hardly the deus otiosus or deus absconditus of the Deistic tradition. Although in his essay “Kant’s Deism” Allen Wood argues that Kant should be read as a “Dryden” Deist, for like the Deistic Tradition, he (supposedly) eschews miracles and revelation, that simply is not so. Not only does Part One of the Religion promote the hope that God will assist us in our individual moral efforts, but Part Three further recognizes God’s activity in our efforts to establish what Kant there calls the “Ethical Community.” In parallel to the arguments of Part One, Kant again recognizes a place for divine aid because “we cannot know whether as a whole it [the Ethical Community] is also in our power” (Rel 6:98). Hence, again we have, in light of the conjunction between ought implies can and the concern that our human relationships are just too twisted by the “malignant inclinations” of “[e]nvy, avarice, and addiction to power” (Rel 6:93), a need for God’s help in establishing “a union which has for its end the prevention of this evil and the promotion of the good in human being” (Rel 6:94). In these pages, Kant worries in particular about the darker elements of what, in his Idea for a Universal History, he calls our “Unsocial Sociability.” For as a result of our social nature, our “Predisposition to Humanity” which

Grace, Providence, and the Highest Good 157 involves “the constant anxiety that others might be striving for ascendancy” and “unjust desire to acquire superiority for oneself” (Rel 6:27), we end up “mutually corrupting each other’s moral disposition and make one another evil” (Rel 6:94). Hence, like the need for our own private moral “revolution,” our pursuit of the Ethical Community also faces a problem that brings Kant to again consider the question of divine aid. In fact, the challenge here is even greater than with the Change of Heart. With regards to our own personal moral revolution, we have the powers that are necessary to bring it about. Yet this does not seem so with the Ethical Community, for while we may have control over our own moral choices, we now not only need the will of others to accord with our own, but also a way for us to be able to recognize one another and work together. Hence, Kant proposes that our pursuit of the Ethical Community is in even greater need of divine aid, and so without the same qualifications found at the end of Part One, he here states that our commitment to this duty calls for “the presupposition of a higher moral being through whose universal organization the forces of single individuals, insufficient on their own, are united for a common effect” (Rel 6:98). God is thus portrayed once again as active in our lives, though now in the larger arena of human affairs. He writes, for example, that miracles and revelation “at a given time and a given place might be very wise and very advantageous to the human race” (Rel 6:155). Moreover, as Kant sees the church as the instrument through which we pursue the Ethical Community, stating that it “cannot be realized (by human organization) except in the form of a church” (Rel 6:100), and that it “can be undertaken by human beings only through religion” (Rel 6:151), we see this reflected in many of his discussions of what form divine aid might take. He writes, for example, that “the historical introduction of the latter [a new religion] may be accompanied as it were adorned by miracles” (Rel 6:84), and that it would be arrogant of us to “deny that the way a church is organized may perhaps also be a special divine dispensation” (Rel 6:105). Of course, Kant still sides with Hume that the testimony of the senses, which speaks to the regularity of nature, yields overwhelming evidence against any claim of a miracle (EHU 10 SBN 109–114). Yet rather than wholly rejecting miracles, Transcendental Idealism not only leaves open the possibility of “supernatural interventions,” but Kant offers as well a positive moral argument. Just as in Part One, we have grave worries that our abiding moral corruption may not be overcome without divine aid; and thus to counter what could otherwise lead us to despair over the futility of even trying, we have a moral incentive to accept a worldview where God is active, both in our individual lives and in human history. Hence, while Kant heeds Hume’s Principle, recommending that with respect to any particular claim of a miracle or revelation, we keep “a respectful distance from it” (Rel 6:191), leaving it “undisturbed” (Rel 6:85), he nonetheless offers for us this moral argument in favor of the doctrine of Providence.25

158 Lawrence Pasternack This moral argument should not, however, be misunderstood as its own form of demonstration, as if either divine aid or even the Highest Good could be deduced from the Moral Law. They are, rather, presented by Kant as “voluntary determinations of our judgement” (CPrR 5:146), morally valued by us because our hope if not faith in them is “conducive” to our moral efforts at redressing what otherwise would be a “hindrance to moral resolve” (Rel 6:5). Kant’s positive religious commitments should, in fact, generally be understood in this light, for while they do not carry the use of reason dogmatically beyond what must be postulated for practical purposes, this is not because what is postulated is somehow proven to be true, but rather is given a moral warrant as needed to sustain us in light of the “inescapable limitations of human beings and of their practical faculty of reason” (Rel 6:7n).

VI. Conclusion For more than two hundred years, Kant’s Religion has been castigated and denounced, both censored as an improper critique of Christianity and yet also condemned as a “capitulation” to Christian orthodoxies. Religious critics of Transcendental Idealism found in this long-scandalized text a great opportunity to dismiss a threat to Christianity by implying that Kant was just out of his depth when trying his hand at philosophical theology. And perhaps the most tragically of all, those who have tried to defend the Religion, more often than not, have just done it more harm. As Kuehn reminds us, reason has a history of its own, and thus it might just have been that the Religion came before its time. Still even today, nearly the entire field of scholarship on the Religion has failed to show how its contents cohere with Transcendental Idealism. From James DiCenso’s abandonment of the text to mere symbolism, our moral ideals in “imaginatively enhanced or pictorial form,” to the occult “Transcendental Platonism” used by Chris Firestone to support his reading of the text as Christian Apologetics, most readers of the Religion implicitly grant that it is a failed philosophical project.26 Yet what is most absurd in all of this is that for more than two hundred years, one and all have missed the obvious: that the Religion is throughout guided by the Highest Good. Even though the original Preface to the text twice states that it is by way of this doctrine that “morality inevitably leads to religion” (Rel 6:6, 6:8n), even though in a letter familiar to most Kant scholars where he states that the Religion was written so as to “complete” his answer to the question “For what may I hope” (C 11:429), the very question that spawned the Highest Good in the First Critique, and even though Kant returns to this doctrine in Part Three as the basis for his ecclesiology, the scholarly community somehow has failed to recognize how the text, both in its contents and agenda are guided by it. Sadly, without this insight, the Religion will continue to make little sense. It will continue to be seen a grand philosophical misstep, one that rather than reflecting Kant’s appropriation of Hume’s Principle, instead falls into a

Grace, Providence, and the Highest Good 159 litany of “wobbles,” a theological flimflam of smuggled dogmas and internal contradictions. But since “just like any other human ability” reason “may improve when properly tended, or . . . deteriorate when it is neglected”27 how its history unfolds is still our doing. Let us philosophers and scholars thus do our small part and take seriously our duty as stewards of reason.

Notes 1. Manfred Kuehn, “Kant’s Critique of Hume’s Theory of Faith,” in Hume and Hume’s Connexions, ed. M. A. Stewart and John P. Wright (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 239–55. 2. These come, respectively, from Gordon E. Michalson, Fallen Freedom: Kant on Radical Evil and Moral Regeneration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 8; Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Conundrums in Kant’s Rational Religion,” in Kant’s Philosophy of Religion Reconsidered, ed. Philip Rossi and Michael Wreen (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 48; and John E. Hare, The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God’s Assistance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 60. 3. Although Kuehn refers to this as “Hume’s Principle,” to avoid any confusion, it should be apparent that this is not the same Hume’s Principle as the one coined by Frege (i.e., the number of Fs is equal to the number of Gs if and only if there is a one-to-one correspondence (a bijection) between the Fs and the Gs). 4. There have been a number of attempts to secularize the Highest Good, both by dissociating it from the postulates of God and immortality as well as rejecting their basis in the need for happiness to be distributed in proportion to moral worth. The former claim is sometimes defended via CPJ 5:450 in the Critique of Judgment where Kant describes the Highest Good as “in the world.” The later comes from a clause in Theory/Practice where Kant does not mention proportionality (TP 8:279). Neither claim, however, can hold up to scholarly analysis. Kant is quite explicit in the Critique of Pure Reason that he uses “world” more expansively than “nature.” Where the latter reflects the domain of possible experience and its causal order, the former is given by Kant a “transcendental sense” referring to the “absolute totality of existing things” (CPR A419/B447). Accordingly, we find throughout the corpus Kant using “world” in this way, and thus he likewise locates the afterlife as “in the world” (e.g., CPR A811/B839, CPrR 5:122, DR 20:298). Further, while in one clause at TP 8:279 Kant does not explicitly depict the Highest Good as a proportional distribution of happiness in accordance with moral worth, but just the two “combined,” he adds a footnote to clarify that he does not mean “happiness absolutely, but only of a proportion between it and the worthiness of a subject” (TP 8:280n). I discuss these passages and the broader divide between the so-called secular versus theological readings of the Highest Good in “Restoring Kant’s Conception of the Highest Good.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 55 (2017): 435–468. See also Chapter 1 of my Kant on Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: An Interpretation and Defense (London: Routledge, 2014). 5. Many interpreters have thought the Highest Good potentially eliminable, or at least something that should not be given as much significance as Kant seems to grant it. Let me suggest that much of the frustration over the Highest Good is because the argument for it is quite different than, say, how one would argue for freedom on the basis of being bound by the Moral Law. The Moral Law doesn’t entail the Highest Good, nor can the duty to promote it be derived in the same way as many of the more familiar Kantian duties. The fact that Kant presents our commitment to this doctrine and its postulates as a “voluntary determination” of the will (CPrR 5:146) indicates as well its distinctive status. For rather

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6. 7.

8.

9. 10. 11.

than a demonstration that the Highest Good will obtain or that it is necessary in light of the Moral Law, our assent is rather presented as “voluntary”—i.e., a matter of Glaube rather than Wissen because it is borne from a moral interest— an assent we morally ought to adopt rather than one that is proven by a theoretical demonstration. I discuss this more fully in “Kant on Faith: Religious Assent and the Limits to Knowledge,” in The Palgrave Kant Handbook, ed. Matthew Altman (New York: Palgrave, forthcoming). Goethe to Herder, June 07, 1793, in Goethes Briefe, vol. 2 (Hamburg: Wegner, 1965), 166. In order, these come from the following. Philip L. Quinn, “In Adam’s Fall, We Sinned All,” Philosophical Topics 16/2 (1988): 117; Jacqueline Mariña, “Kant on Grace: A Reply to His Critics,” Religious Studies 33/4 (1997): 379; Frederick Beiser, “Moral Faith and the Highest Good,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 594; and Chris L. Firestone and Nathan Jacobs, In Defense of Kant’s Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 136. One can find Barth’s assessment of Kant’s soteriology in Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (London: SCM Press, 1972), 252–98 (esp. 289). These tenets can be found both in Augustine’s own works, such as De libero arbitrio and De gratia et libero arbitrio. They are also codified in a number of key Lutheran and Calvinist documents, including the former’s Small Catechism and Book of Concord, and the latter’s Canons of Dort, Westminster Confession, and the essential Calvinist credo, commonly known by the acronym of TULIP. For a recent scholarly examination of Augustine, see Jesse Couenhoven, Stricken by Sin, Cured by Christ: Agency, Necessity, and Culpability in Augustinian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 40. To help address a common confusion, the fact that we have an innate Propensity to Evil is not, on its own, what makes humanity evil. Our moral status instead depends upon how we respond to it. To help make it clearer that we are not evil merely because we bear this Propensity to Evil, consider that for Kant one who has undergone a “Change of Heart” and thus is “well-pleasing to God” still has this Propensity. It is an innate feature of humanity, and as such it is “inextirpable” (Rel 6:51) and “cannot be eradicated” (Rel 6:32). Accordingly, even after the Change of Heart we are still affected by it, keeping us “in incessant danger of relapsing into it” (Rel 6:94). Let me further suggest that his Propensity is easily demystified. It is a feature of human nature that we are self-interested, and quite simply, self-interest would dispose us to giving our interests priority over morality. Self-interest thus can be understood as that “positive principle” that is the “active and opposing cause” through which we choose to subordinate morality. We, of course, must choose to adopt or “incorporate” the related principle, but it should be clear enough that if we are innately self-interested, this would be something we would be naturally disposed to do. Why, however, Kant claims that the whole of humanity makes the same choice cannot here be fully discussed. But once again, given that our moral status is only imputable in light of the use of our free will, it cannot be that we are determined or necessitated to adopt an Evil Gesinnung. We thus have here a claim of universality without necessity—an option that Kant does recognize, calling it “comparative” versus “strict universality” (CPR B4). See Chapter 3 of my Kant on Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: An Interpretation and Defense as well as Patrick R. Frierson, Freedom and Anthropology in Kant’s Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 39.

Grace, Providence, and the Highest Good 161 12. It might be thought that once we have established as our Supreme Maxim one that has given priority to self-interest over morality, so long as it rules, we would never act from duty. But this does not follow. Our prioritization of self-interest has given it veto-power so to speak, but it need not be exercised, such as when there are duties that do not run contrary to self-interest. Hence, even under moral depravity, we may still, at least episodically, be morally praiseworthy. Of course some actions may involve the dual motives of self-interest and morality, but there is nonetheless conceptual space still for actions where self-interest just pays no heed and so may be done from duty alone. 13. Unlike those who hold that Kant simply followed Augustine on the nature of moral depravity, Allen Wood suggests instead that Kant’s account is more aptly seen as just compatible with it. See Allen W. Wood, Kant’s Moral Religion (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970), 246n. 14. While many contemporary forms of Christianity maintain that we must “accept” Grace, giving such an allowance to our wills is technically Semi-Pelagian. According to Augustine, and as all the more fervently presented by Luther and Calvin, neither are we, in our fallen condition, capable of making this choice nor would we, in light of our depravity, want anything but to continue in sin. 15. There is likewise a variety of different views within the Catholic tradition, ranging from the early Semi-Pelagianism of John Cassian and Chrysostom to the Jansenist movement that much more fully aligned itself with the more extreme Augustinianism of the Reformation. Between these is Aquinas, who arguably avoided the Semi-Pelagian heresy by suggesting that while, due to our corrupted natures we cannot positively will the good or even choose to accept Grace, we nonetheless still remain empowered to choose against sin, so as to foster a state of “quiescence” whereby we at least cease to resist God’s aid. 16. As should be apparent, from this we have the well-known Reformation doctrine of Predestination. Although more famously tied to Calvin (as he accepted the consequence that both the condemned and saved are destined by God’s will), Luther too held that it is foreordained by God who is given Grace . . . and thus who is redeemed. 17. We may speculate that this vitriol has its source in the emotional scars left upon Kant from his religious training at the Pietist Collegium Fridericianum. For as Kuehn reports in his biography of Kant, that the “leaden atmosphere of punishment” (Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 52) and “heavy discipline of the fanatics” (Kuehn, Kant, 53) left its mark on Kant, for even decades later, “terror and fear would overcome him as soon as he thought back to the slavery of his youth” (Kuehn, Kant, 45). 18. Wolterstorff, “Conundrums in Kant’s Religion,” 48. See also Hare, The Moral Gap, 60–1. Hare has noted (per personal correspondence) that he longer sees Kant as committed to this “Stoic Maxim.” 19. Wolterstorff, “Conundrums in Kant’s Religion,” 49. 20. Pluhar’s translation moreover reflects the fact that the passage uses the subjunctive sei rather than the indicative ist! This oversight by Greene/Hudson, and later, by di Giovanni, greatly impaired Anglophone scholarship on the Religion. 21. Note that Kant’s account of how we come to merit happiness in the Religion (and other texts of the 1790s) is different from the account given in the Critique of Practical Reason’s discussion of the Postulate of Immortality. There, Kant holds that our moral worthiness is a function of our eternal striving for moral perfection (CPrR 5:123n). However, in the Religion and elsewhere, it is instead tied to whether or not we prioritize morality over self-interest in our Supreme Maxim—i.e., whether or not we have undergone a “Change of Heart.” There are a number of important differences that come as a result of this shift, including Kant’s claim in the 1790s that whether or not we come to deserve happiness

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22.

23.

24.

25.

26. 27.

depends upon just this life, rather than our continued striving in the next. He thus writes, “At the end of life our account must be completely closed, and nobody may hope somehow to make up there for what was neglected here” (Rel 6:71n; see also EAT 8:330). To reprise an earlier point of this chapter, Divine Justice is not for Kant some antecedent doctrinal commitment, but rather as we postulate God for the sake of the Highest Good, we construct our concept of God as a being endowed with the powers necessary and sufficient to bring it about (see: CPR A815/B843, CPrR 5:129, LM 28:1012, etc.). Kant, therefore, must reject the prevailing Christian idea of an unmerited salvation, for there is no “appropriation of a foreign satisfying merit” (Rel 6:118) but rather whatever we are given in Grace, must is always be “fully in accord with eternal justice” (Rel 6:76). Since the choice to bring about this change requires that, in effect, the change has already been accomplished, for being willing to subordinate self-interest to morality would mean that we have already chosen to prioritize morality over self-interest, Kant aptly recognizes the paradox. Yet this paradox should not be misunderstood to claim that we are trapped, for that would treat our wills and its principles too mechanically. The rules of an organization could set up a “Catch-22,” but that doesn’t mean there is no way out of such an impasse. Imagine even a situation where the “Catch-22” is in an organization’s rules for how rules are to be revised. Since we are here considering our “Supreme Maxim,” this would be our analog. How then are the rules of the organization to change? Revolution. Hence Kant writes, “So long as the foundation of the maxims of the human being remains impure, [the Change of Heart] cannot be effected through gradual reform but must rather be effected through a revolution in the disposition of the human being” (Rel 6:47); “so a ‘new man’ can come about only through a kind of rebirth, as it were a new creation” (Rel 6:47); “a revolution is necessary in the mode of thought . . . by a single and unalterable decision a human being reverses the supreme ground of his maxims by which he was an evil human being (and thereby puts on a ‘new man’)” Rel 6:48). See for example, Andrew Chignell, “Rational Hope, Possibility, and Divine Action,” in Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: A Critical Guide, ed. Gordon Michalson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 98–117. In addition to Kant’s discussions of Providence in the Religion, especially its third part, see also the lengthy footnote in Perpetual Peace PP 8:362n where he reviews various forms of Providence. While, in agreement with Hume’s Principle, he writes that “the concept, current in schools, of a divine intervention or collaboration (concursus) towards an effect in the sensible world . . . must be given up,” once we turn from a theoretical use of the doctrine and consider it “from a morally practical point of view,” so that God (if needed) “will make up for the lack of our own righteousness,” there it is “quite appropriate and even necessary.” James DiCenso, Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: A Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 28; and Firestone and Jacobs, In Defense of Kant’s Religion, 157n. Kuehn, “Kant’s Critique of Hume’s Theory of Faith,” 251.

References Allison, Henry E. Kant’s Theory of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Barth, Karl. Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century. London: SCM Press, 1972.

Grace, Providence, and the Highest Good 163 Beiser, Frederick. “Moral Faith and the Highest Good.” In The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy, edited by Paul Guyer, 588–629. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Chignell, Andrew. “Rational Hope, Possibility, and Divine Action.” In Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: A Critical Guide, edited by Gordon Michalson, 98–117. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Couenhoven, Jesse. Stricken by Sin, Cured by Christ: Agency, Necessity, and Culpability in Augustinian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. DiCenso, James. Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: A Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Firestone, Chris L. and Nathan Jacobs. In Defense of Kant’s Religion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. Frierson, Patrick R. Freedom and Anthropology in Kant’s Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Goethe to Herder. June 07, 1793. In Goethes Briefe, vol. 2, 166. Hamburg: Wegner, 1965. Hare, John E. The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God’s Assistance. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Kant, Immanuel. Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften. Royal Prussian (subsequently German, then Berlin-Brandenburg) Academy of Sciences edition. Berlin: Georg Reimer, subsequently Walter de Gruyter, 1900. Kant, Immanuel. Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and Other Writings. edited by Allen W. Wood. Translated by George di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Kant, Immanuel. Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. Translated by Werner Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009. Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Kuehn, Manfred. “Kant’s Critique of Hume’s Theory of Faith.” In Hume and Hume’s Connexions, edited by M. A. Stewart and John P. Wright, 239–55. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. Mariña, Jacqueline. “Kant on Grace: A Reply to His Critics.” Religious Studies 33 (1997): 379–400. Michalson, Gordon E. Fallen Freedom: Kant on Radical Evil and Moral Regeneration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Pasternack, Lawrence. “Kant on Faith: Religious Assent and the Limits to Knowledge.” In The Palgrave Kant Handbook, edited by Matthew Altman. New York: Palgrave, forthcoming. Pasternack, Lawrence. Kant on Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: An Interpretation and Defense. London: Routledge, 2014. Pasternack, Lawrence. “Restoring Kant’s Conception of the Highest Good.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 55 (2017): 435–468. Quinn, Philip L. “In Adam’s Fall, We Sinned All.” Philosophical Topics 16 (1988): 89–118. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. “Conundrums in Kant’s Rational Religion.” In Kant’s Philosophy of Religion Reconsidered, edited by Philip Rossi and Michael Wreen, 40–53. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Wood, Allen W. Kant’s Moral Religion. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970.

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A Writer More Excellent than Cicero Hume’s Influence on Kant’s Anthropology Robert B. Louden And if the man lives who would belittle the study of philosophy, I quite fail to see what in the world he would praise. —Cicero, De Officiis II.ii

As Manfred Kuehn notes in one of his earliest publications, “there is no scarcity of papers which deal with Kant’s relation to Hume.”1 However, nearly all of these papers deal only with the relation of Kant’s theoretical philosophy to Hume,2 and they are hampered by ongoing debates concerning the precise nature of Kant’s “dogmatic slumber” and “remembrance [Erinnerung],” (P 4:260), what exactly it was that woke him from this slumber, and the extent of his own knowledge of and familiarity with Hume’s philosophy.3 For instance, did Hume wake Kant by challenging “the validity of the universal causal principle, that whatever begins to exist must have a cause of existence?”4 Or did he wake Kant by challenging “the causal principle as used within metaphysics, and especially as used to infer the existence of God?”5 Or, as Abraham Anderson has argued more recently, did Hume wake Kant “by challenging the principle of sufficient reason?”6 And was it Hume’s Treatise that woke Kant—a text not translated into German until 1790, long after the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787) and Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783) were published—though some commentators have suggested that Kant (who did not read English) may have become familiar with this work via the 1772 “German translation of Beattie’s Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth” or Hamann’s 1771 “German translation of the last chapter of Book I of Hume’s Treatise?”7 Or was it rather Hume’s Enquiry concerning Human Understanding that woke him—a German translation of which was first published in 1755, and a copy of which was in Kant’s personal library?8 Consensus on these issues has still not been reached. In the present essay I wish to contribute further to the project of viewing Kant and Hume as “engaged in a common project”—of making Hamann’s remark that Kant “certainly deserves the title ‘a Prussian Hume’” sound a bit less strange and showing “that they have much more in common”

A Writer More Excellent than Cicero 165 than traditionally assumed—by examining the influence of Hume on Kant’s anthropology.9 With the sole exception of Rousseau, Kant cites or refers to Hume more often than any other single author (see the index entries under “Rousseau” and “Hume” at ANI 25:1673–74, 1685). And we know that Kant actually read—in German translation—many of Hume’s more popular writings (e.g., the two Enquiries and the Essays Moral, Political, and Literary) because they are all contained in the four-volume Vermischte Schriften anthology of Hume’s writings that was published in 1754–56, a copy of which was in his personal library. We are able to establish the “morein-common” thesis much more readily when we turn our attention to each author’s popular and applied practical philosophy, for we can bypass the interminable debates concerning how exactly Hume interrupted Kant’s dogmatic slumber, and whether or not Kant was actually familiar with Hume’s Treatise. Also, Hume’s influence on Kant’s anthropology—viz., on his applied practical and popular philosophy—is much more straightforwardly positive than it is in the case of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. For regardless of which of the aforementioned hypotheses concerning Hume’s awakening of Kant’s dogmatic slumber one accepts, in each case it is clear that Kant does not simply accept (what he takes to be) Hume’s position in toto. Rather, he is trying to show where Hume went wrong. The “engaged-in-a-common-project” claim is much easier to establish in the case of Kant’s popular philosophy and anthropological work than it is in the case of his theoretical philosophy. Finally, for those of us who are skeptical of “all readings of Hume which privilege the philosophy of the Treatise and insist on understanding the rest of his literary output in terms of that philosophy”10—more generally, for those who believe that both Hume’s and Kant’s popular, applied philosophical writings are an underappreciated side of their writing—the secure and direct path to be pursued in the present essay will also serve to rectify this error.

I. “The Easy and Obvious Philosophy” Like many other authors, Kant is a strong admirer of Hume’s prose style, and this is the first and clearest aspect of Hume’s influence on his anthropology. As editor Johann Georg Sulzer remarks in his Vorrede to the German translation of the Hume’s Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Human Understanding, in Hume’s writings “thoroughness and pleasantness seem to fight for priority,” and while Germany “in fact does not lack in great philosophers, in its German garb [Kleid] philosophy does not appear to stand as its inner beauty demands.”11 Similarly, Eugene Miller, in the Introduction to his edition of Hume’s Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, notes that they “are elegant and entertaining in style, but thoroughly philosophical in temper and content.”12 Kant is trying to emulate both the pleasantness and philosophical thoroughness of Hume’s Essays in his own popular philosophy and anthropology writings and lectures, but he also realizes the challenge before

166 Robert B. Louden him. As he remarks in the Prolegomena (shortly after his famous “dogmatic slumbers” passage): “It is not given to everyone to write so subtlely and yet also so alluringly as David Hume.”13 In his anthropological works, Kant also compliments Hume’s writing style. “Hume . . . [has] a writing style like Cicero, and one possibly still more excellent, and one enjoys oneself when one reads . . . [him]” (AMe 25:988; see also AMo 25:1256, 1280, where Kant praises Cicero’s writing style). The comparison to Cicero is certainly intended as a strong compliment, for Kant “had always appreciated Cicero’s style;” indeed, “there are large areas of agreement between Kant and Cicero”—particularly in their respective moral philosophies.14 Ludwig Ernst Borowski, one of Kant’s early biographers, also reports that Kant recommended Hume to his students: During the years in which I was one of his students, Hutcheson and Hume were especially admired by him, the former in the discipline of ethics, the latter in his deep philosophical enquiries. Through Hume especially his power of thinking received an entirely new momentum. [einen ganz neuen Schwung].15 And Hume, who in his Essays refers to Cicero variously as “a genius,” “the most eloquent speaker that had ever appeared in ROME,” and “certainly one of the finest gentlemen of his age” would certainly have been flattered by the comparison to Cicero.16 Additionally, the following confession from Hume’s autobiographical essay The Life of David Hume, Esq. Written by Himself, gives further indication of his own admiration for Cicero: My studious disposition, my sobriety, and my industry; gave my family a notion that the law was a proper profession me; but I found an unsurmountable aversion to every thing but the pursuits of philosophy and general learning; and while they fancied I was poring upon Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors I was secretly devouring.17 In the following passage from the Jäsche logic lectures, Kant points to both Cicero and Hume as two of the most important models of “true popularity:” “To learn true popularity [wahre Popularität] . . . one must read the ancients, for example, Cicero’s philosophical writings, the poets Horace, Virgil, etc., and among the moderns, Hume, Shaftesbury, et. al.” (JL 9:47). As Kuehn notes, “Hume is the model for a truly popular philosopher, and Sulzer hopes the Germans will imitate Hume in this regard.”18 Kant is explicitly trying to do so in his anthropology lectures. As he notes in the Preface to the Menschenkunde transcription: “Our anthropology can be read by everyone, even by women at the dressing table [bei der Toilette], because it has much that is engaging” (AMe 25:856–57; cf. AMo 25:1213)—“our anthropology,” that is, as opposed to the “scholastic” anthropology of Ernst Platner and others (AMe 25:856). In Kant’s explicitly pragmatic anthropology, “one

A Writer More Excellent than Cicero 167 must understand how to apply one’s knowledge always merely popularly [immer nur populär anzuwenden], so that others also understand us, not merely professional scholars” (AMe 25:853). Kant’s early biographer Reinhold Bernard Jachmann also testifies to Kant’s success in engaging a popular audience when he writes, His lectures on anthropology . . . afforded a lighter but extremely engaging instruction, which were also attended most frequently. Here one saw the lofty thinker strolling about in the material world, and the human being and nature illuminated by the torch of original reason. His astute remarks, which carried the stamp of a deep knowledge of human beings and nature, were fitted out in lectures filled with wit and genius, which charmed every listener.19 Kant’s goal—as he states explicitly in the Preface to Anthropology From a Pragmatic Point of View—is to produce “an anthropology written from a pragmatic point of view that is systematically designed and yet popular [systematisch entworfene und doch populär] (through reference to examples which can be found by every reader)” (A 7:121). This kind of writing “yields an advantage for the reading public” (A 7:121) that is not to found in scholastic anthropologies, for the latter “are of no utility to the human being” (AMe 25:853). In striving to produce a truly popular philosophy in his anthropology works, Kant is clearly emulating Hume—himself a great fan of “the easy and obvious philosophy,” in large part because, as he remarks at the beginning of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, this style of philosophy will always, with the generality of mankind, have the preference above the accurate and abstruse; and by many will be recommended, not only as more agreeable, but more useful than the other. It enters more into common life; moulds the heart and affections; and, by touching those principles which actuate men, reforms their conduct, and brings them nearer to that model of perfection which it describes.20 And Kant does succeed on many of these points. In his anthropological works, he too has created a type of philosophy that is more agreeable and more useful than that of Platner & Co., one that enters more into common life. Indeed, in what might be yet another appreciative nod to Hume, at the beginning of the Menschkenkunde transcription Kant explicitly criticizes Platner’s scholastic anthropology for its failure to provide any “enlightenment for common life [Aufklärung fürs gemeine Leben]” (AMe 25:853; see also AMo 25:1209). Alas, Kant’s own prose style never does quite match Hume’s, but (again) “it is not given to everyone to write so subtlely, and yet also so alluringly as David Hume” (P 4:262).

168 Robert B. Louden

II. “Of National Characters” But Kant’s debts to Hume in his anthropological works are not merely stylistic. He also engages with—and sometimes takes issue with—substantive issues in Hume’s writing as well. One topic that crops up repeatedly in different versions of the anthropology lectures concerns a remark Hume makes in his essay “Of National Characters,” first published in 1748.21 For instance, in the Friedländer transcription (1775–1776), we read, People among whom each has a character, cannot harmonize among themselves in one character and unite [as] one universal character. This way each Englishman has [his] own singular character; for this reason the whole nation has no character, and the French nation has a universal character, because no Frenchman has his own character. (AF 25:630) And again, nearly ten years later in Mrongovius (1784–1785): If many characters are found within a people, the entire people has no character. This is a remark that Hume makes about the English.—It is completely correct because if the individuals each have a distinct character, they do not constitute a whole. The people is thus without character because it lacks uniformity. (AMo 25:1398) Similar remarks also occur in Pillau (1777–1778—see APi 25:832) and in an unpublished Reflexion, for which Adickes gives a date of “1777??” (see Refl 1113, R 15:496). The passage from “Of National Characters” to which Kant is referring—a German translation of which is included in volume 4 (pp. 324–350) of the Vermischte Schriften collection of Hume’s writings edited by Sulzer cited earlier—is a remark Hume makes after commenting on the “wonderful mixture of manners and characters” found among the English people and then surmising that England’s mixed form of government (“a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy”) is the chief cause of this mixture of character.22 He then writes, “Hence the ENGLISH, of any people in the universe, have the least of a national character; unless this very singularity may pass for such.”23 In Kant’s allusions to this passage in the earlier-cited anthropology transcriptions, he simply paraphrases it and then quickly endorses Hume’s position (“it is completely correct”—AMo 25:1398). In effect, he offers his audience merely an argument from authority, but one that nevertheless illustrates the high regard that he has for Hume. However, in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798), essentially Kant’s final set of notes for

A Writer More Excellent than Cicero 169 his annual anthropology course (“the present manual for my anthropology course”—A 7:122n.), Kant suddenly takes issue with Hume. Now he writes, Hume thinks that if each individual in a nation is intent on assuming his own peculiar character (as with the English), the nation itself has no character. It seems to me that he is mistaken; for affectation of a character is precisely the general character of the people to which he himself belongs, and it is contempt for all foreigners, particularly because the English believe that they alone can boast of a respectable constitution that combines civil freedom internally with power against outsiders. (A 7:311) In pointing to the English people’s alleged “contempt of all foreigners” as well as their belief in the superiority of their own constitution (attitudes which were on display once again in the recent Brexit vote?), Kant does seem to succeed in identifying a national character trait shared by the English. But here as well, in taking issue with Hume’s claim, he now reveals a different sort of debt. In citing him Kant is still recognizing Hume’s authority in the debate about national character, but in his mature anthropology he also feels ready to challenge him. However, it is odd that Kant does not comment at all on the main thesis of Hume’s essay—viz., that national character—contra Montesquieu24 and others—is not due to “physical” causes such as air, food, or climate, but rather to “moral” causes such as “the nature of government, the revolutions of public affairs, the plenty or penury in which the people live, the situation of the nation with regard to its neighbours, and such like circumstances.”25 For the most part, Kant sidesteps the Enlightenment debate about the causes of national character and instead adopts a pragmatic perspective.26 That is, he simply tries to describe the characters of nations as they exist at present, in the hope that this information will inform readers “what each can expect from the other and how each could use the other to its advantage” (A 7:312). As he remarks in the Preface, when he criticizes Descartes’s and others’ attempts to track the physical causes of memory, all theoretical speculation about this is a pure waste of time.——But if he uses perceptions concerning what has been found to hinder or stimulate memory in order to enlarge it or make it agile, and if he requires knowledge of the human being for this, then this would be a part of anthropology with a pragmatic purpose [pragmatischer Absicht], and this is precisely what concerns us here. (A 7:119) As many other commentators have noted, there is a second passage from Hume’s “Of National Characters” that Kant also refers to in his anthropological

170 Robert B. Louden writings—this time in the early (1764) proto-anthropological work, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime.27 I am referring of course to Kant’s notorious endorsement of Hume’s equally notorious claim that “the negroes” are “naturally inferior to the whites. There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences.”28 In Kant’s version we read, The Negroes of Africa have by nature no feeling that rises above the ridiculous. Mr. Hume challenges anyone to adduce a single example where a Negro has demonstrated talents, and asserts that among the hundreds of thousands of blacks who have been transported elsewhere from their countries, although very many of them have been set free, nevertheless not a single one has ever been found who has accompanied something great in art or science or shown any other praiseworthy quality, while among the whites there are always those who rise up from the lowest rabble and through extraordinary gifts earn respect in the world. So essential is the difference between these two human kinds, and it seem to be just as great with regard to the capacities of mind as it is with respect to color. (FBS 2:253) Here too—and unlike Pauline Kleingeld and others, I do not think it is clear that Kant ever explicitly disavowed his racism—Kant, in appealing to the subtle and alluring Hume (cf. P 4:263), is making an argument from authority.29

III. “Was Ist Der Mensch?”30 But in addition to Kant’s stylistic debts to Hume and his interest in certain specific claims Hume makes in his Essays, there is a third distinct way in which Hume influences Kant in his anthropological and popular philosophical works. This third way is bigger and more substantial, but also more complicated and controversial. Both Hume and Kant place extremely high hopes on “the science of the human being (anthropology)” (AC 25:7). Hume’s most ambitious remarks on this topic occur in his Introduction to A Treatise of Human Nature (the important subtitle of which is often overlooked by commentators: “BEING an ATTEMPT to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning INTO MORAL SUBJECTS”31), where he writes, ’Tis evident, that all of the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature; and that however wide any of them seem to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another. Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some manner depen-

A Writer More Excellent than Cicero 171 dent on the science of MAN; since they lie under the cognizance of men, and are judged of by their powers and faculties.32 As noted earlier, Kant may not have had firsthand acquaintance with Hume’s Treatise. It was not translated into German in its entirety until 1792 by Ludwig Heinrich Jakob, himself a follower of Kant.33 However, in Section I of his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Human Understanding, Hume also stresses the importance of the science of human nature in similar (albeit slightly milder) terms, and as noted earlier, a German translation of the Enquiry comprises volume II of the four-volume Vermischte Schriften collection, a copy of which was present in Kant’s personal library.34 For instance, in the very opening sentence Hume draws attention to “the science of human nature,”35 and later he informs readers that the science of human nature is the most important of all the sciences: “Indulge your passion for science, . . . but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society.”36 Finally, toward the end of Section I, he expresses the hope that “these reasonings about human nature” will add “to our stock of knowledge, in subjects of such unspeakable importance.”37 Just as some of Hume’s contemporaries had recently made great advances in the science of nature, so now we may also expect to see similar advances made in the human or social sciences, once we “discover the secret springs and principles by which the human mind is actuated in its operations.”38 In each of these passages from Section I of the first Enquiry, Hume is echoing earlier claims made in the Introduction to the Treatise, where he advises readers to leave the tedious lingring method, which we have hitherto followed, and instead of taking now and then a castle or village on the frontier, to march up directly to the capital or center of these sciences, to human nature itself.39 But of course Hume was not the only Enlightenment philosopher to sing the praises of the new science of human nature. It was part of the Weltanschauung of the age, and additional declarations concerning the importance of anthropology are not hard to find. For instance, Francis Hutcheson, in the opening sentence of the Preface to his Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), proclaims: “There is no part of philosophy of more importance that a just knowledge of human nature and its various powers and dispositions.”40 This work was translated into German in 1762 as Untersuchung unserer Begriffe von Schönheit und Tugend in zwei Abhandlungen, and Kant had a copy of it in his personal library. And Malebranche, in the Preface to The Search after Truth (1674–1675), writes, “Of all the human sciences, the science of man is the most worthy.”41 In the Treatise, Hume refers to still other philosophers (“Mr. Locke, my Lord Shaftesbury, Dr. Mandeville, Mr. Hutchinson, Dr. Butler, &c.”) “who have begun to put the science of man on a new footing, and have engaged the attention, and

172 Robert B. Louden excited the curiosity of the public.”42 As Harris notes, “this, Hume made it plain, was the project he wanted the Treatise to be read as contributing to.”43 Furthermore, Enlightenment philosophers were not the only ones advocating this “human turn.” Perhaps the most influential comment on the topic comes from the poet Alexander Pope, one of Kant’s favorite modern authors: Know then thyself, presume not God to scan: The proper study of Mankind is Man. (An Essay on Man, 1733–1734, Epistle II) Like many of his contemporaries, Kant was certainly aware of this remark. Indeed, in his early work Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755), he cites Pope’s poem (from Barthold Heinrich Brocke’s German translation) six times (UNH 1:241, 259, 318, 349, 360, 365). The link to Kant in all of this is of course his famous claim that the question, “What is the human being?” is the most fundamental question in philosophy, one that encompasses all others—a claim he repeats in three different texts (JL 9:25, C 11:429, LM 28:533–34). And he concludes that the question “is answered by . . . anthropology” (JL 9:25), since (to borrow from Hume) all of the other questions in philosophy and science are “judged by the cognizance of men, and are judged of by their powers and faculties.”44 As early as 1773, in a letter to former student Marcus Herz in which he describes the new course on anthropology which he had begun teaching only the previous year, Kant expresses extremely high (that is, Humean) hopes for the new science of the human being: This winter for the second time I am giving a lecture course on anthropology, which I intend now to make into a proper academic discipline. . . . The intention that I have is to disclose through it the sources of all sciences [die Quellen aller Wissenschaften]. (C 10:138) This 1773 remark appears to foreshadow the famous “Was ist der Mensch?” argument referred to earlier—an argument that first appears in the Pölitz transcription from 1790–1791. In both sets of texts, Kant is arguing—in a manner quite similar not only to Hume, but also to Hutcheson, Pope, and many other Enlightenment intellectuals—that anthropology, the science of the human being, is the most important science. Since it is the human subject who is the ultimate source of all of the questions, judgments, hypotheses, and conclusions made in the other disciplines, we need to learn more about (again, to borrow from Hume) “the secret springs and principles, by which the human mind is actuated in its operations.”45 As Hume remarks in the Abstract to his Treatise, “it may be safely affirmed, that almost all the sciences are comprehended in the science of human nature, and are dependent on it.”46

A Writer More Excellent than Cicero 173 But no discussion of Kant’s “Was is der Mensch?” passages is complete without reference to the following unpublished Reflexion: it is “not enough to know many different sciences; one needs the self-knowledge of understanding and reason. Anthropologia transcendentalis” (Refl 903 R 15:395). Although Kant uses the phrase “transcendental anthropology” only once (in Latin, in an unpublished note), it has been the focal point of continuous debate, especially on the Continent. Does Kant have a transcendental anthropology, and is this what is implied in his claim that “we could reckon all of [alles rechnen]” philosophy’s questions “as anthropology, because they all “relate to [sich . . . auf . . . beziehen]” the question, “What is the human being?” (JL 9:25)? If Kant’s anthropology is transcendental, this would of course sever its connection to Hume’s anthropology, for Hume insists that “as the science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences, so the only solid foundation we can give to this science itself must be laid on experience and observation.”47 However, my own view is that neither his popular anthropological works nor his theoretical philosophy contains a developed transcendental anthropology. Nowhere in his published writings or lectures does Kant make good on his claim that all of philosophy’s questions will be answered once we answer the question, “What is the human being?” Kantian anthropology is (mostly) empirical.48 In his anthropology work, Kant is trying, as he notes in his 1773 letter to Herz, to create a “very pleasant observation-based doctrine [Beobachtungslehre]” (C 10:138). And he repeatedly stresses the empirical nature of his anthropology in the various lecture transcriptions. In “the science of the human being (anthropology) . . . the grounds of knowledge are taken from observation and experience” (AC 25:7). And “it deserves a special set of lectures, in part because it does not at all belong to metaphysics” (APa 25:244)—i.e., anthropology, unlike metaphysics, is an empirical discipline. Similarly, in the Preamble to Friedländer (1775–1776) Kant asks, “How does anthropology arise? Through the collection of many observations [Beobachtungen] about human beings by those authors who had acute knowledge of human beings” (AF 25:472). And he emphasizes the empirical nature of his anthropology later again in the Busolt transcription (1788–1789): “when this observation [Beobachtung] of human beings (anthropography) is brought to a science, it is called ‘anthropology’” (AB 25:1435; cf. AMe 25:856, AMo 25:1210, A 7:121). It would appear then, that Kant’s own anthropological work is a rather modest empirical affair—it is not an attempt to carry out the ambitious anthropologia transcendentalis project cryptically hinted at in Reflexion 903. As Reinhardt Brandt remarks, in his Kritische Kommentar zu Kants Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, Pragmatic anthropology . . . does not answer the question, What is the human being? . . . Neither the Lectures on Anthropology nor the Anthropology of 1798 refers to the question, “What is the human being?” as its central problem; they do not mention it once.49

174 Robert B. Louden I agree. Nowhere in any of Kant’s anthropological texts does he declare that all of philosophy’s questions will be answered by the information about human nature found therein. Additionally, as I have argued at greater length elsewhere,50 the transcendental investigations of his three Critiques should also not be construed as transcendental anthropology. For the Kantian transcendental concerns more than the merely human. These remarks about the fundamentally empirical nature of Kant’s anthropology are important in the present context because they serve to bring it closer to Hume’s science of man, thus revealing yet another key influence of Hume on Kant’s anthropology. For (again), it is Hume’s position that “the only solid foundation we can give to this science itself must be laid on experience and observation.”51 As Barry Stroud remarks, in summarizing Hume’s philosophical orientation (and showing how different it is from “the view he was thought to share and, although at times perhaps unwittingly, to follow”—viz., “that the only proper task of philosophy is logical or conceptual analysis”):52 [Hume] was interested in human nature, and his interest took the form of seeking extremely general truths about how and why human beings think, feel and act in the ways they do. He did not seek an “analysis” or a “rational reconstruction” of the concepts and procedures employed by his contemporaries in thinking scientifically about the world and themselves; he wanted to answer the more fundamental philosophical questions of how people even come to have a conception of the world, or of themselves, and to think about it scientifically (or morally, or politically, or religiously or aesthetically) at all. These questions were to be answered in the only way possible—by observation and inference from what is observed. Hume saw them as empirical questions. . . .53

IV. Conclusion Contrary to both popular and scholarly misconceptions, Kant’s philosophy is not merely about the a priori. Although in his mature work he adamantly maintains that pure philosophy “must come first” (GMM 4:390), he also holds that “natural as well as moral philosophy each have their empirical part” (GMM 4:387). Throughout his writing and teaching career, Kant displays a strong interest in empirical work as well, particularly empirical work about human nature.54 And he did not write merely for other professional philosophers. He often took a strong interest in, and tried to write, genuinely popular philosophy, though here too he believed that popularity should come after rather than before careful conceptual analysis—“popularity may indeed come with time but can never be there at the start” (P 4:261). Philosophical popularity is indeed a “supremely rare merit” and is “certainly very commendable if the elevation to the principles of pure reason has already happened and been achieved to complete satisfaction” (GMM 4:409).55

A Writer More Excellent than Cicero 175 The thesis that Hume and Kant “have much more in common”56 than received scholarly opinion allows is much easier to establish once we turn to the underappreciated empirical and popular side of Kant’s philosophy. Indeed, it is only correct to view them as being engaged in a common project when we restrict this claim to the more popular, anthropological side of each author’s philosophy. For in their respective theoretical philosophies, the differences clearly outweigh the similarities.57

Notes 1. Manfred Kuehn, “Kant’s Conception of ‘Hume’s Problem’,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 21 (1983): 179. 2. Paul Guyer casts the net more widely than most when he writes, “I will . . . suggest that much of Kant’s philosophy beyond theoretical metaphysics can be read as a response to Hume, specifically that important elements of Kant’s moral philosophy, his aesthetics, and his teleology can also be fruitfully read as responses to Hume,” Paul Guyer, Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant’s Response to Hume (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 7. But he does not, as I intend to do, carry the “response to Hume” thesis over to Kant’s anthropology and popular philosophy writings about human nature. Also, “response to” connotes a different kind of relation between Hume and Kant than I will be defending. In his popular anthropological works Kant is trying to emulate and follow Hume— he is not trying to show where Hume went wrong. 3. Gary Hatfield, “The Prolegomena and the Critiques of Pure Reason,” in Kant und die Berliner Aufklärung: Akten des IX. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, 5 vols, ed. V. Gerhardt, R.-P. Horstmann, and R. Schumacher, 185–208 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1, 2001), 4: 260. 4. Norman Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”, 2nd ed. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1962), xxvi. 5. Hatfield, “The Prolegomena and the Critiques of Pure Reason,” 187f., as cited by Abraham Anderson, “The Objection of David Hume,” in Rethinking Kant, vol. 2, ed. Pablo Muchnik, 81–120 (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010), 83. 6. Anderson, “The Objection of David Hume,” 85. 7. Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”, xxix; cp. Robert P. Wolff, “Kant’s Debt to Hume via Beattie,” Journal of the History of Ideas 21 (1960): 117–23; and Kuehn, “Kant’s Conception of ‘Hume’s Problem,’” 185. 8. In his Preface to the German translation of Hume’s first Enquiry, editor Johann Georg Sulzer expresses the hope that “the publication of this work will interrupt their [viz., German philosophers’] leisurely slumber and give them a new occupation. This is one of the grounds that has moved me to the editing of this work” (Hume 1754–56: vol. 2: 4—note: Sulzer’s Vorrede is not paginated). As Kuehn notes, Kant “clearly alluded to this passage” (Kuehn, “Kant’s Conception of ‘Hume’s Problem’,” 180) in his famous “dogmatic slumber” confession nearly thirty years later in the Prolegomona (see Hatfield, “The Prolegomena and the Critiques of Pure Reason,” 4: 260). 9. Lewis White Beck, “A Prussian Hume and a Scottish Kant,” in McGill Hume Studies, ed. David Fate Norton, Nicholas Capaldi and Wade L. Robison, 63–78 (San Diego: Austin Hill Press, 1979), 64; and Johann Georg Hamann, Hamann Briefwechsel, 8 vols., ed. Walther Ziesemer and Arthur Henkel (Wiesbaden: Insel Verlag, 1955), 4: 293, as cited by Beck, “A Prussian Hume and a Scottish Kant,” 63; and Kuehn, “Kant’s Conception of ‘Hume’s Problem’,” 193.

176 Robert B. Louden 10. James A. Harris, Hume: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 13. Harris is summarizing Duncan Forbes’s position here, but he adds that “Forbes’s work has been a major source of inspiration for the account I give in this book of Hume’s intellectual biography” (Harris, Hume, 13). Paul Russell, in his recent review of Harris’s biography in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2016.06.26), is highly critical of Harris’s account, deeming it “incomplete, unconvincing and, in important respects, seriously flawed and misleading” (1). 11. Hume 1754–56: vol. 2:5. 12. David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), xvii. 13. Hatfield, “The Prolegomena and the Critiques of Pure Reason,” 4: 262. 14. Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 278. 15. Felix Groß, ed. Immanuel Kant: Sein Leben in Darstellungen von Zeitgenossen. Die Biographien von L. E. Borowski, R. B. Jachmann und A. Ch. Wasianski (Berlin: Deutsche Bibliothek, 1912), 78; cp. Kuehn, Kant, 107. Borowski’s claim that Hume gave Kant’s thought einen ganz neuen Schwung is quite similar to Kant’s famous “dogmatic slumber” remark, Hatfield, “The Prolegomena and the Critiques of Pure Reason,” 4: 260. Is the biographer perhaps merely paraphrasing his subject? 16. Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, 43, 98, 128; see also 105, 179n.12, 243. 17. Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, xxxiii. 18. Kuehn, “Kant’s Conception of ‘Hume’s Problem’,” 179. 19. Groß, Immanuel Kant, 134—for related discussion, see Robert B. Louden, Kant’s Impure Ethics: From Rational Beings to Human Beings (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 64–5; and Robert B. Louden, Kant’s Human Being: Essays on His Theory of Human Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 67–8. 20. EHU 1 SBN 6–7. David Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). 21. A second example of Kant’s more critical and substantive engagement with Hume’s Essays—this time from the opening sentence of “Love and Marriage”— is his argument concerning why women “are more annoyed by satires on marriage than by gibes against their sex” (A 7: 309; see also AF 25: 715, APa 25: 458, AMe 25: 1193, AMo 25: 1393, Refl 1283, R 15: 565, Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, 557). For discussion of this example, see Elizabeth Robinson’s contribution to the present volume. 22. Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, 207. 23. Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, 207. Harris comments on this passage as follows: “Whether this meant that the British had no national character, or that this very singularity was what the British character amounted to, Hume left as an open question,” Harris, Hume, 243. But Hume’s previously cited remark concerning the “wonderful mixture of manners and characters” (Harris, Hume, 207) found among the English people clearly indicates that he means the latter. Hume does not leave it as an open question. 24. In The Spirit of the Laws Montesquieu defends the claim that “the temper of the mind and the passions of the heart are extremely different in different climates,” Charles-Louis Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. Thomas Nugent (New York: Hafner, 1949), 221. Harris, in discussing “the suspicion that Hume’s essay might be a kind of reply to the relevant chapters of Montesquieu’s book,”

A Writer More Excellent than Cicero 177

25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

concludes: “The truth, however, is that there is no clear and decisive evidence, internal or external, that Montesquieu’s ideas had anything to do with the writing of ‘Of National Characters’,” Harris, Hume, 243, 244. “No clear and decisive evidence,” perhaps. Nevertheless, I share the widely held suspicion to which Harris is responding. As Paul Chamley notes, in L’Esprit des lois, Montesquieu argues that “different climates tend to divide humanity up into different and even conflicting types of organization. . . . In his Essay on National Characters, Hume categorically rejects the theory of climatic determinism,” Paul E. Chamley, “The Conflict between Montesquieu and Hume: A Study in the Origins of Adam Smith’s Universalism,” in Essays on Adam Smith, ed. Andrew S. Skinner and Thomas Wilson, 274–305 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 274. Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, 198. For the most part, but not entirely. Occasionally, Kant does speculate about the causes of national character. His favorite hypothesis is heredity, and here he departs from both Hume and Montesquieu. For instance, toward the end of the “Character of the Peoples” section in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, he writes, “Anyway, since the question here is about innate, natural [angeborenen, natürlichen] character which, so to speak, lies in the blood mixture of the human being, not characteristics of nations that are acquired and artificial (or spoiled by too much artifice), one must therefore be very cautious in sketching them” (A 7: 319; see also AF 25: 654). In this and related passages, he is referring to something closer to “ethnicity” rather than to what Hume means by “national character.” For related discussion, see Louden, Kant’s Human Being, 150–63. Guyer, in his “Translator’s Introduction,” notes that his work “contains little by way of detailed aesthetic theory, and . . . is really a work in what Kant would later call ‘anthropology from a pragmatic point of view.’” Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, 208n.10. Even in the late (1792) Dohna geography lecture, Kant continues to endorse Hume’s notorious claim that “of the many thousands of Negroes who have gradually been freed, there is no example of one who has distinguished himself with a special skill” (Physische Geographie Dohna, 105. This lecture will be included in Academy volume 26.2, and is currently available online at http:// kant.bbaw.de/base.htm.geo_doh.htm.) This sad statement has led some of us to be skeptical about Kant’s alleged second thoughts on race. Nowhere in any of his published writings or lectures does he explicitly disavow his racism. For related discussion, see Pauline Kleingeld, “Kant’s Second Thoughts on Race,” The Philosophical Quarterly 57 (2007): 573–92; Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment against Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 184; Susan Shell, The Embodiment of Reason: Kant on Spirit, Generation, and Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 387 n.23; Louden, Kant’s Human Being, 131–5; and Robert B. Louden, “The Last Frontier: Exploring Kant’s Geography,” in Reading Kant’s Lectures, ed. Robert R. Clewis, 505–25 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 522–3. This section builds on some points made in Louden, Kant’s Human Being, xvii–viii. T Intro. SBN xi; cp. xvi. David Hume, A Treatise Concerning Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978). T Intro. SBN xv; cp. T 1.4.7 SBN 273. See Kuehn, Kant, 353, 497 n.90. In Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View Kant also refers to a passage from Hume’s Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, which comprises the third volume in Sulzer’s Vermischte Schriften collection. “Hume also says: ‘The drinking companion who never forgets is annoying; the follies of one day must

178 Robert B. Louden

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

56. 57.

be forgotten in order to make room for those of the next’” (A 7: 171; cp. Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, 209). This is Kant’s sole reference to Hume’s second Enquiry. EHU 1 SBN 5. EHU 1 SBN 9. EHU 1 SBN 15, 16. EHU 1 SBN 14. T Intro. SBN xvi. Francis Hutcheson, Philosophical Writings, ed. Robert Silcock Downie (London: Dent, 1994), 3. Nicolas Malebranche, The Search after Truth, ed. and trans. Thomas Lennon and Paul Olscamp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), xxxix. T Intro. SBN xvii. Harris, Hume, 84. T Intro. SBN xv. EHU 1 SBN 14. T Abst. SBN 646. T Intro. SBN xvi. “Mostly” because Kant’s anthropology also contains clear normative and moral dimensions—part of his anthropology is a moral anthropology. And unlike Hume and other naturalists, Kant does not believe that norms can be derived from nature—no “ought” from an “is.” But while the normative and empirical dimensions of Kantian anthropology do not always sit well with each other, this tension within his anthropology does not warrant us to call his anthropology transcendental. For further discussion, see Robert B. Louden, “Kant’s Anthropology: (Mostly) Empirical Not Transcendental,” in Der Zyklop in der Wissenschaft: Kant und die transzendentale Anthropologie, ed. Francesco Tommasi (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). Reinhard Brandt, Kritische Kommentar zu Kants Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1999), 16. see Louden, “Kant’s Anthropology.” T Intro. SBN xvi. Barry Stroud, Hume (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977), 221. Stroud, Hume, 222. For detailed discussion, see Louden, Kant’s Impure Ethics. Zammito thus overstates his case in arguing that “Kant turned away from . . . the path of a popular philosopher,” John H. Zammito, Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 6; cp. 106, 217, 257, 292, 347). True popularity—the attainment of which, in Kant’s view, as we saw earlier, requires reading Hume (JL 9:47)—remained a goal throughout his writing career. But, again, Kant holds that popularity should “never be there at the start,” 4:261, just as he holds that empirical work should come after rather than before nonempirical, conceptual work. However, I do think Zammito is closer to the mark when he observes that “Hume’s impact on Kant ‘the popular philosopher’ was as seminal as Hume’s later impact on Kant the ‘transcendental philosopher’,” Zammito, Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology, 98; cp. 188—with the caveat that Hume’s impact on Kant the popular philosopher lasted throughout Kant’s writing career. Kuehn, “Kant’s Conception of ‘Hume’s Problem,’” 193. The first draft of this essay was written in summer 2016 while I was working as a visiting professor at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in Florianopolis, Brazil. I would like to particularly thank my host, Professor Maria Borges, for making it possible for me to present some of my work to students and faculty in Brazil, and for enabling me to do some writing in such a beautiful part of the world.

A Writer More Excellent than Cicero 179

References Anderson, Abraham. “The Objection of David Hume.” In Rethinking Kant, vol. 2, edited by Pablo Muchnik, 81–120. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010. Beck, Lewis White. “A Prussian Hume and a Scottish Kant.” In McGill Hume Studies, edited by David Fate Norton, Nicholas Capaldi and Wade L. Robison, 63–78. San Diego: Austin Hill Press, 1979. Brandt, Reinhard. Kritische Kommentar zu Kants Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1999. Chamley, Paul E. “The Conflict between Montesquieu and Hume: A Study in the Origins of Adam Smith’s Universalism.” In Essays on Adam Smith, edited by Andrew S. Skinner and Thomas Wilson, 274–305. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Groß, Felix, ed. Immanuel Kant: Sein Leben in Darstellungen von Zeitgenossen. Die Biographien von L. E. Borowski, R. B. Jachmann und A. Ch. Wasianski. Berlin: Deutsche Bibliothek, 1912. Guyer, Paul. Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant’s Response to Hume. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Hamann, Johann Georg. Hamann Briefwechsel, 8 vols. Edited by Walther Ziesemer and Arthur Henkel. Wiesbaden: Insel Verlag, 1955. Harris, James A. Hume: An Intellectual Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Hatfield, Gary. “The Prolegomena and the Critiques of Pure Reason.” In Kant und die Berliner Aufklärung: Akten des IX. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, 5 vols, edited by Volker Gerhardt, Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Ralph Schumacher, 185–208. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001. Hume, David. Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, third edition. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Hume, David. Essays Moral, Political, and Literary. Edited by Eugene F. Miller. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985. Hume, David. A Treatise Concerning Human Nature, second edition. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. Hutcheson, Francis. Philosophical Writings. Edited by Robert SilcockDownie. London: Dent, 1994. Kant, Immanuel. Anthropology, History, and Education. Edited by Robert B. Louden and Günter Zöller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Kemp Smith, Norman. A Commentary to Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” second edition. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1962. Kleingeld, Pauline. “Kant’s Second Thoughts on Race.” The Philosophical Quarterly 57 (2007): 573–92. Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Kuehn, Manfred. “Kant’s Conception of ‘Hume’s Problem.’” Journal of the History of Philosophy 21 (1983): 175–93. Louden, Robert B. “Kant’s Anthropology: (Mostly) Empirical Not Transcendental.” In Der Zyklop in der Wissenschaft: Kant und die transzendentale Anthropologie, edited by Francesco V. Tommasi. Leiden: Brill, forthcoming. Louden, Robert B. Kant’s Human Being: Essays on His Theory of Human Nature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Louden, Robert B. Kant’s Impure Ethics: From Rational Beings to Human Beings. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

180 Robert B. Louden Louden, Robert B. “The Last Frontier: Exploring Kant’s Geography.” In Reading Kant’s Lectures, edited by Robert R. Clewis, 505–25. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015. Malebranche, Nicolas. The Search after Truth. Translated and edited by Thomas Lennon and Paul Olscamp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Montesquieu, Charles-Louis. The Spirit of the Laws. Translated by Thomas Nugent. New York: Hafner, 1949. Muthu, Sankar. Enlightenment against Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Shell, Susan. The Embodiment of Reason: Kant on Spirit, Generation, and Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Stroud, Barry. Hume. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977. Wolff, Robert P. “Kant’s Debt to Hume via Beattie.” Journal of the History of Ideas 21 (1960): 117–23. Zammito, John H. Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

10 Kant and Hume on Marriage Elizabeth Robinson

I. Introduction Hume begins his essay “Of Love and Marriage” with the following words, “I know not whence it proceeds, that women are so apt to take amiss every thing which is said in disparagement of the married state; and always consider a satyr upon matrimony as a satyr upon themselves” (Mil 557).1 In a passage of the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View Kant mentions this question and attempts a response to the concern Hume frames. He writes, “However, skepticism on this topic [marriage] is bound to have bad consequences for the whole feminine sex, because this sex would be degraded to a mere means for satisfying the desire of the other sex . . .” (A 7:309).2 In responding to this claim, Kant makes it evident that his considerations on marriage owe some debt to the Humean picture. This chapter will examine the extent to which Kant’s views on marriage are in concert with and influenced by those of Hume. Scholars have long been interested in the influence of Rousseau on Kant’s account of marriage, but scant attention has been given to the influence of Hume.3 In particular, I will consider how Hume and Kant construe the role of women in society both in and outside of marriage and whether or not Kant’s response to Hume’s question is one that Hume would have accepted.4 It is worth noting at the outset of a consideration of Hume and Kant on marriage that neither Hume nor Kant ever married. There are several conclusions one might draw from this bare piece of information. First, one might conclude that neither man thought particularly highly of the institution. Failure to partake in the rites of marriage might indicate an implicit rejection of its value or fruitfulness. After all, one tends to avoid things one thinks are better off avoided.5 One might conclude that neither author can have much of value to say on the topic of marriage. Lack of participation in the institution of marriage might indicate a lack of interest in it. Moreover, without access to firsthand experience of married life both men might present ill-informed views of the subject. Alternatively, though, one might conclude that there is some advantage to be had in considerations of marriage from the unmarried. Both authors can

182 Elizabeth Robinson take a disinterested look at the subject. Neither is required to present a view of marriage that justifies the particular form his own marriage has taken. Neither author will be unduly biased, for good or ill, in his descriptions or prescriptions of married life by his own particular marriage. Instead, both men are able, in good anthropological fashion, to draw a general picture of marriage from the variety of marriages they have observed without the irresistible temptation to favor their own portraits over others. One might further conclude that discussions of marriage from unmarried authors might focus on marriage as an institution rather than considering only the personal decision of whether, when, and whom to marry. Even if I have firmly committed, on my own part, to never wed, I might still care about marriage as such. The marriage laws and customs of my state might have a significant impact on the well-being of my neighbors and fellow citizens. In much the same way that child rearing affects all of the citizens of a community whether or not they have children, it may be that marriage and marital relations similarly affect even those who opt not to partake. One might reasonably ask, “What affect does the marriage of my neighbors have on me?” or even, “What view of marriage is in the best interest of a healthy, functioning state?”

II. Hume Before we consider the passage that frames this chapter, it will be helpful to give a more general description of Hume’s view of marriage. On Hume’s account, it is not immediately clear why we need marriage at all or what purpose marriage serves. In “Of Polygamy and Divorces” Hume writes that marriage, “has for its end the propagation of the species” (Mil 181). Though this is an answer of sorts to the question of the purpose of marriage, it is not by any means a complete one. First, it is not marriage that propagates the species, but conception and birth. Hume is well aware that one could conceive and rear children without needing marriage. “Of Moral Prejudices,” for example, details the story of a wealthy woman who took a lover for the sole purpose of conceiving a child, one she desired to raise on her own (Mil 542–544). Further, if procreation is the sole purpose of marriage, there seems to be no reason to prevent polygamous marriages where one man has several wives. Women are limited reproductively in the number of children they can carry at a time, but no similar “natural” limits exist on the number of women a man can have impregnated at one time. Given the obvious inadequacy of procreation alone as a rationale for marriage, we should look elsewhere to see if Hume provides hints of a more satisfactory answer. In various places, Hume seems to suggest two reasons for the existence of marriage. One reason is connected to utility and the other is connected to what we might call, following the Enquiry, “natural beauty and amiableness” (EPM 5.1 SBN 214). The utility of marriage is primarily connected to the rearing of children. Hume believes that children

Kant and Hume on Marriage 183 are best raised by their biological parents (T 3.2.12 SBN 570–571, EPM 4 SBN 206–207). The mother’s love for the child is assured by her confidence in her maternity. The father’s love, on the other hand, is secured only by the faithfulness of his wife. He has no other means of assurance that the children are in fact his. The promises of monogamy and fidelity that accompany marriage ensure that children will benefit from the devotion of both parents.6 It is a bit misleading to refer to “natural beauty and amiableness” as one reason for the existence of marriage, as Hume appeals both to the naturalness of marriage and to the pleasure it produces. Beginning with the latter reason, one might think that the purpose of marriage is that it contributes to overall human happiness. Marriage can be a blissful state of mutual friendship, (though Hume admits that this is not always the case (Mil 189)). A world in which people can and do find themselves in happy marriages is a better world than one in which marriage does not exist. With respect to naturalness, Hume also recognizes marriage as a state that already exists. Insofar as it makes good moral sense to conform to the rites and customs of our age, we must accept marriage as a given. Granted, our own particular marital status is not given. One clearly has the capacity to individually choose marriage or singleness as he or she pleases. However, marriage as an institution was firmly established in Hume’s lifetime, with no evidence that this would change in the future. Since marriage exists as a culturally established fact, one can attempt to give an accounting of its historical origin but one cannot give a strict causal account of why history turned out this way and not some other.7 Gladys Bryson’s investigation of eighteenth century Scottish conceptions of man and society gives some credence to the view that Hume would have viewed marriage as firmly socially established if not also a natural and inevitable institution. Many of Hume’s near contemporaries (Hutcheson, Kames, Smith) wrote of marriage in exactly this way.8 Hume’s closest rendering of a reason for marriage’s existence comes in his essay “Of Love and Marriage” in the midst of a playful retelling of Aristophanes’s tale from Plato’s Symposium (Mil 561–562). Here Hume writes that human beings, having been separated by the gods as a form of punishment, display “a prompt disposition in mankind to unite again in their primæval state” (Mil 561). The existence of marriage is the expression of a disposition to unite with another. Hume reaffirms this disposition to unite with one other person in his essay “Of Polygamy and Divorces” (Mil 181).9 If it is difficult to determine why Hume thinks we need marriage, it is even less clear what role Hume thinks women play within their marriages and in larger society. In some places, Hume confirms the general equality of men and women and describes marriage as a union of equals (Mil 184, 189). In other places, Hume confirms the natural superiority of the male sex and suggests that women have a lesser role to play in civic life (EPM dia. SBN 339, T 2.1.9 SBN 309–310, Mil 593).10 Whether Hume ultimately favors patriarchy or equality, it is clear that marriage provides a number of

184 Elizabeth Robinson benefits to women. First, only within marriage are women able to engage in sexual activity without the loss of virtue (T 3.2.12 SBN 571). This standard does not apply to men for whom chastity is a less significant virtue. Second, as previously mentioned, marriage secures the paternity of a woman’s children and ensures financial support from their father. Finally, beyond his responsibility to provide financially for his children, marriage also results in shared property between husband and wife. As Hume describes in the Treatise, “marry’d people in particular mutually lose their property, and are unacquainted with mine and thine” (T 3.2.2 SBN 495). Hume indicates that this loss to one’s spouse is mutual, but since property passes from father to son it is difficult to see what property a woman has to offer. The wife seems to be the clear winner in this exchange. Hume begins his essay “Of Love and Marriage” with a question he does not answer. I KNOW not whence it proceeds, that women are so apt to take amiss every thing which is said in disparagement of the married state; and always consider a satyr upon matrimony as a satyr upon themselves. Do they mean, that they are the parties principally concerned, and that if a backwardness to enter into that state should prevail in the world, they would be the greatest sufferers? Or, are they sensible, that the misfortunes and miscarriages of the married state are owing more to their sex than to ours? I hope they do not intend to confess either of these two particulars, or to give such an advantage to their adversaries, the men, as even to allow them to suspect it. (Mil 557)11 Hume suggests (though does not here endorse) two possible answers to the question of why women so lament the disparagement of marriage. It may be that they are more affected by the state of marriage than men and have more to lose if social opinion of marriage falls into disrepair. Alternatively, it may be that women are sensitive to those who point out flaws in marriage, as they know themselves to share the greater part of the responsibility for these problems. Hume urges women to not admit either answer as the correct one as it will advantage men to know the truth of the matter (Mil 557–558). However, one could read the rest of the essay as an implicit endorsement of the latter response as the correct one. The majority of the essay is devoted to explaining how women could entice men to find marriage less tiresome by removing from the married state the element men find hardest to bear: their wives’ desire to dominate over them (Mil 558). If a woman’s desire for dominion is the primary impediment to a happy union then it would seem that women must take the lion’s share of responsibility for any ill feelings toward the institution. Hume views the primary conflict of marriage as connected to the question of who ultimately holds decision-making authority. How ought we to

Kant and Hume on Marriage 185 resolve conflicts in cases where husband and wife disagree? As Sarah Pearsall points out, this question interested many of the Scottish Enlightenment philosophers, and Hume’s answer to the question largely follows that of Francis Hutcheson.12 Hume rejects the Lockean suggestion that man, as natural leader, should be allowed to dominate. Rather, he suggests that marriage should be a state of equality between husband and wife. Moreover, the natural superiority of the husband with respect to strength and intellect should lead him to defer to his wife in a spirit of generosity rather than press his advantage.13 In cases where a marriage runs as it ought, both partners exist in a state of equality with shared interests. When conflict arises in the home, the husband should take the high road and defer to the wishes of his wife. One way in which things might go badly, however, is if the wife takes advantage of her husband’s solicitousness and presses her will more often then she ought. Thus, the woman’s natural desire to rule is the most likely culprit in unhappy marriages.14 Seeing an opening to take charge, the wife will continually push for increased authority. If she were wise, she would use her power judiciously, recognizing the superior reasoning of her husband in regard to most matters. In a happy marriage, the wife will know that she can insist upon her way, but will use this power rarely.

III. Kant According to Kant, “if a man and a woman want to enjoy each other’s sexual attributes they must necessarily marry, and this is necessary in accordance with pure reason’s laws of right” (MM 6:278–9). Much of the literature on Kant and marriage focuses on Kant’s view that marriage can redeem otherwise objectifying sexual relations.15 This is well and good for explaining why one would oppose a satire of marriage (without it all sex is immoral objectification), but it does nothing to explain why women in particular would find a satire of marriage offensive or why they would find it more offensive than a satire of the female sex. For Kant, all sex outside the bounds of a state recognized marriage runs the risk of being dehumanizing in that one partner can make no further claim upon another. Considered in this way women and men stand to lose equally in a world where marriage ceases to be valued. So much has already been written on Kant’s account of marriage as a solution to the problem (or as a failed solution to the problem) of treating one’s sexual partner as a means rather than an end that I will keep my remarks on the topic as brief as possible. I am in sympathy with those scholars who are confounded by Kant’s suggestion that reciprocal ownership solves the problem of objectification.16 However, I am less convinced that this is the problem Kant is attempting to solve or the solution Kant offers. Kant’s account of marriage does not solve the problem of sex as objectifying. In Kantian terms, sex just is objectifying and there does not seem to be anything we can do about that. As Kant states, “In this act [sexual intercourse] a human being

186 Elizabeth Robinson makes himself into a thing, which conflicts with the right of humanity in his own person” (MM 6:278). What marriage solves is the fear that the objectification of sex, unlike other forms of objectification, will become totalizing, that I will view my sexual partner as merely an object for my sexual gratification and as nothing more.17 What I am calling “totalizing objectification” is particularly harmful because it prevents the person whom I objectify in this manner from having any rights or interests of his or her own. I can entirely subvert the rights and interests of the object of my objectification without doing any harm to myself. The fear of totalizing objectification is less of a concern in the case of other objectifying acts or relations than it is in sexual ones. Donald Wilson, for example, points out that we encourage our own objectification through sexual relations by making ourselves attractive to others.18 We are unlikely to encourage this sort of objectification in other realms. If I buy a loaf of bread at the store, I may treat the salesclerk as a mere means to my end of buying bread. However, the salesclerk is unlikely to embrace “salesclerk” as a complete idea of his identity or encourage it in other areas of his life (at home with his children, for instance). That he is instrumentalized by me in our brief interaction has minimal effect on his general view of himself or the view that others take of him. On the other hand, people might actively encourage their sexual partners to view them as a means to sexual gratification. As a result, I might, at his or her insistence, embrace the view that my sexual partner is simply a means to my own gratification and that I can use him or her as I wish. Without legal protection, and with the consent of my partner, there is nothing but my own sense of duty to prevent me from taking control of my partner’s body, finances, and possessions as though they were my own.19 As a result, sex is permissible only within a legal context that prevents (under threat from an external third party) this totalizing objectification. In marriage, both parties take on joint ownership of all assets. On Kant’s account, “the relation of the partners in a marriage is a relation of equality of possession, equality both in their possession of each other as persons  .  .  .  and also equality in their possession of material goods” (MM 6:278). Thus, my rights and interests become materially linked to those of my spouse. It cannot be in my interest to entirely subvert the rights and interests of my spouse, because to do so would be a subversion of my own rights and interest. In some cases, this is because the interests are material interests. For example, it would not be in my interest to cause destruction to the business of my spouse, as any lost revenue is also a loss in my own financial position. It would not be in my interest to burn down my spouse’s house for similar reasons.20 In other cases, the subversion of my own interests that occurs through subverting the interests of my spouse comes because of the possible damage it would do to our relationship. Insofar as Kant allows for the possibility of divorce on these grounds, it seems that the only fair division of assets in a

Kant and Hume on Marriage 187 divorce would be a 50–50 split.21 In driving my spouse to leave me via my subversion of my spouse’s interests I, in effect, lose half of my assets. One might also think of the harm done to my spouse’s interests as a harm against my possessions, to the extent that I possess my spouse. In the same way that I would not want someone to wreck my car or injure my horse, it devalues my property if I subvert the rights and interest of my spouse. Friendship, then, would not work as an alternate permissible context for sex. Not, as Lina Papadaki suggests, because Kant was too close minded to have considered the possibility of friendships between men and women, but rather because the bonds of friendship are not enforceable by any third party. A true friendship will create a unity of wills among the friends, but even this state of unity would not preclude a change in status down the line that would lead one friend to manipulate the other. If their relationship was also sexual then this objectification could become totalizing. It is not love, trust, care, or honor that protects the parties to a marriage contract; it is the force of law.22 It is clear, then, on Kant’s account, what the purpose of marriage is. Marriage solves the otherwise insolvable dilemma between the moral unacceptability of sex and its necessity for human procreation. Sex, by its very nature, requires treating both myself and the other party as means used for gratification rather than as ends. Considered in this way sex, much like lying or suicide, seems to be the kind of act that can never be morally justified. On the other hand, lying and suicide are not essential for the continuation of the human species. Without sex human life, and human rationality, would cease to exist. Thus, we need some way in which we can make sex morally permissible (if not entirely morally praiseworthy). For Kant, marriage solves this problem. Within the bounds of marriage, two people can engage in sexual activity without thereby entirely treating both themselves and their partner as mere means. The objectifying nature of sexual relations, thus, only serves as a reason for thinking that women in particular are offended by satires of marriage if we think that women in particular are at risk for totalizing objectification. There are any number of reasons we might find this position plausible, and it seems to be the reason that Kant himself endorses. As previously noted Kant writes that outside of marriage, “this sex [female] would be degraded to a mere means for satisfying the desire of the other sex . . .” (A 7:309). On the one hand, we could end our discussion here. Kant himself answers the question driving our inquiry. On the other hand, this answer seems obviously inadequate. Kant’s account of marriage represents both parties as equally at risk for objectification through sexual acts. In interpreting why Kant would give the response he does to Hume’s query we are left with three possible answers. First, Kant might be rejecting any gender-specific import to Hume’s question. Women are no more likely than men to be offended by satires of marriage, and the reason they give for their offense is one that could be given by any person: without marriage, all sex

188 Elizabeth Robinson is degrading. This response seems to be the least plausible given the explicit gendering of Kant’s answer. The second interpretation is that, as suggested earlier, Kant believes women are more at risk from the objectification of sex then their male counterparts. Though this response is more plausible than the first it is not in accord with the gender-neutral way in which Kant presents the problem of sexual objectification. Susan Shell, for example, suggests that if Kant views women as natural manipulators, then the fear of the harmful consequences that may stem from the totalizing objectification of sexual intercourse rests equally on both sexes.23 For women, the fear is that a man will use her body as an object for the satisfaction of his carnal desires and then discard her as a person. She risks financial devastation as a result since she has no property of her own, and natural jealousy would likely prevent another man from wanting her as his wife. For men, the fear is that the manipulative quality natural to women will allow a woman to rule him completely. In several places Kant mentions men who make fools of themselves, in a manner which is sometimes tied to financial ruin, as a result of their devotion to manipulative women (DR 20:163, 174, 176, 186; HM 2:261). A man can circumvent this bad end by making the woman his wife and tying her interests to his. It is further unlikely that Kant believed women to be more at risk for the harms of sexual objectification from sex outside of marriage as a result of his own experiences and observations. Manfred Kuehn considers how the dissolution of the marriage between Johann Konrad Jacobi and Maria Charlotta was important in Kant’s final decision to never marry.24 When Maria Charlotta divorced Jacobi to marry another man, it was not she who was left humiliated, but her former husband. Another friend, Johann Jakob Kanter, “became the laughing stock of Königsberg,” as a result of his wife’s affair.25 Kant’s observations could very well have led him to the conclusion that men have as much to lose as women in a world where marriage is not honored. It is worth noting that Kant’s significant writings on marriage (the Anthropology and the Metaphysics of Morals) were published after these two scandals.26 Third, and most plausibly, Kant’s response might be drawing on other discussions of marriage and additional evidence for thinking that women have more to lose if the institution falls out of favor. If the desire for sexual intercourse makes no separation between men and women, then we must look for some gendered difference between men and women to explain why women have more to lose if marriage is degraded. Holly Wilson suggests that the account of marriage in the Anthropology is a pragmatic one. It is a description of what marriage has been, currently is, and could be.27 On the other hand, the description of marriage in the Metaphysics of Morals is a theoretical one. It is an account of the conditions of the possibility of marriage in general. That Kant addresses Hume’s question in the Anthropology is an indication that the problem of satire is a problem for the current social state of the institution of marriage. If Kant’s position is, as Wilson suggests,

Kant and Hume on Marriage 189 that femininity is a more evolved state of human society that occurs only in civilization, then this might point to the fear of men who make fun of marriage. Their mockery indicates a desire to regress to a time when the feminine was not possible. To insult women is only to say that women possess this or that silly characteristic. To insult marriage is to wish away the very possibility of femininity and feminine power. One can find a similar view about the civilizing and moralizing influence of women expressed in Robert Louden’s work. He writes, According to Kant, women as a group serve as a moralizing force within society. Through interaction with women, men find themselves “brought, if not quite to morality itself, then at least to that which clothes it, ethical behavior [gesitteter Anstand], which is the preparation and recommendation [Vorbereitung und Empfehlung] to it.” (Anth 7:306)28 If women hold the responsibility to act as a moralizing force, and one of the areas in which they are most free to press this issue is marriage, then it works against both the power of women and their “natural” inclination toward encouraging morality to disparage marriage. As Louden points out, women are barred from public life, and, “therefore to work only behind the scenes in private life, exerting their moralizing force in the home and at social gatherings.”29 If love and sex outside of marriage place men and women equally in a position to risk totalizing objectification and the accompanying possibility of financial ruin, then there is no reason to suggest that Hume is correct in his observation that women feel they have more to lose from the institution of marriage falling out of favor. To explain why women have more at stake in the continuation of marriage rites we must appeal to the broader social picture. Within or without marriage, women hold the socially inferior position. They rely on men for physical protection, civic engagement, and financial support. Given that a woman begins her life in a position which is socially inferior to that of her male counterparts, her marriage constitutes a greater portion of her social value, and she has more to lose from a ruinous one. If a man is led to financial ruin by an unsavory woman, he still has his trade and his political standing. A woman ruined by a man has recourse to nothing from which to rebuild her life. Her most valuable asset, her chastity, is already gone. However, in a society where men and women shared equal social, financial, and political positions, this inequitable distribution of risk would disappear.

IV. Marrying the Two Though there is a great deal that could be said about the role of women in society and the function of marriage with respect to the writings of both Hume and Kant, the framing consideration for this chapter is a relatively

190 Elizabeth Robinson narrow one. Why do Hume and Kant both think that women are more offended by satirical accounts of marriage then they are of satirical accounts of women in general? Hume proposes two possible answers to his question, and though he explicitly endorses neither, Hume seems to have selected one suggestion as the correct answer while Kant embraces the other. On Hume’s account, women are offended at satires of marriage because they recognize themselves as sharing the larger portion of the blame for the unhappiness of marriage. Hume conceives of marriage as a natural state, one designed for the promotion of domestic happiness. We human beings are naturally disposed toward one another, and marriage has the possibility to unite two people in true friendship and shared interests. If marriage in its very nature tends to fulfill a preexisting drive and thereby promote happiness, someone must be to blame in situations where the promised happiness fails to materialize. Kant, on the other hand, selects the former suggested answer to Hume’s question. Women are upset about satires of marriage because they have more to lose from the institution of marriage falling into disfavor. Kant’s brief explicit answer to the question, women risk becoming mere objects of sexual gratification, feeds into a stronger argument that can be constructed on his behalf. Women owe their societal position and financial security only to the protections of a good marriage. Women exercise political power only in the influence they have over their husband and sons. Outside of the family connections provided in marriage, a woman has no opportunity for pursuing her interests. Within the bounds of marriage, a woman can be assured that her husband will consider and promote her interests, and she has the capacity to effect political change through the good influence she exercises over her husband and male guests to her home. Beyond the loss of their political influence and expression of their interests, women also risk physical harm in a world without the protections of marriage. Marriage is a mark of civilization and a calming influence on male passions. A world without marriage is one where decisions are likely to be made by recourse to brute strength rather than the dispassionate reason of law. The institution of marriage is a signifier of a world where feminine qualities can flourish. If being a woman means embracing all those things that we consider commensurate with the female sex, then being a woman is only truly possible in a civilized society. Feminist philosophers have generally viewed Hume as far more of a friend to feminist concerns then Kant.30 However, with respect to marriage, Kant turns out to have the more progressive view. Kant, as many commentators have noted, recognizes the problem of sexual objectification. He understands that the precarious social position of women requires that society provide them with legal protections. On Hume’s account, marriage is necessary in large part to ensure the paternity of children. It exists to protect male interests rather than female. Moreover, on Hume’s account women hold primary

Kant and Hume on Marriage 191 responsibility for whatever problems prevent a marriage from being a happy one. This responsibility stems not from the constraints placed on women by their inferior social position, but by their inability to accept the natural superiority of men. Despite these important differences, Kant’s account of marriage is influenced by Hume’s in some important ways. Though most commentators focus exclusively on Rousseau as Kant’s source for thinking about domestic relations, this cannot be the case. Kant inherits from Hume, and the Scottish philosophical tradition more broadly, an understanding of marriage as a “natural” phenomenon. Though Kant provides an extensive account of the moral problem marriage solves, he never questions the rightness of marriage’s existence. Hume’s influence on Kant is found in Kant’s acceptance of the naturalness of marriage and the equality of spouses. For both Kant and Hume the equality of spouses is spelled out in terms of shared interests. Hume writes, nothing is more dangerous than to unite two persons so closely in all their interests and concerns, as man and wife, without rendering the union entire and total. The least possibility of a separate interest must be the source of endless quarrels and suspicions. (Mil. 189) For Kant, this joining of interest must be codified into a contractual agreement, enforceable by law, in order to ensure the protection of both parties (MM 6:278). Kant’s emphasis on the shared interests of spouses seems to be a direct inheritance from Hume. Finally, for both Kant and Hume, marriage requires a constancy that cannot be seen in Rousseau. In the unfinished sequel to Emile, Rousseau’s ideal couple cannot weather the storms of marital temptations that the city brings. Sophie is seduced by another man, and Emile is so despondent at her infidelity that he leaves her. Even if one accepts that the likely ending has Sophie and Emile reuniting once Emile learns that Sophie’s seduction was against her will, their marriage is not the picture of faithfulness. One can easily imagine a Sophie who trusted her husband with the truth, while Emile remained to care for and comfort her. Alternatively, one can also imagine an Emile who, even without knowing Sophie was raped, stays and offers forgiveness for her perceived wrong. If even Rousseau’s idealized pair cannot survive the harsh reality of city life, relationship intact, what hope do the rest of us have? The picture one sees in Kant and Hume is not so grim. For both authors marriage can be a happy state. If in marriage I combine my interests with those of my spouse, it is in my interest to nurture and maintain our relationship. In the face of hardship, one should be constant. Even betrayal and infidelity should be forgiven and repaired if they can.31

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Notes 1. David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, Literary (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987). References to Hume’s Essays will be given using Miller’s pagination. 2. All English translations of Kant’s works are from the Cambridge editions. Please see the references for information concerning the relevant editors, translators and publication information. 3. See Susan Mendus, “Kant: ‘An Honest but Narrow-Minded Bourgeois’?” in Louden, Kant’s Impure Ethics, ed. Howard Williams (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); and Lara Denis, “From Friendship to Marriage: Revising Kant,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (2001): 1–28. 4. Kant and Hume both consider only the possibility of marriage between a man and a woman. Kant at least acknowledges that sexual activity between persons of the same sex is possible, but calls such acts “unnatural” (MM 6: 277). A fair amount has been written about the possibility of same-sex marriage on Kant’s account. See Matthew Altman, “Kant on Sex and Marriage: The Implications for the Same-Sex Marriage Debate,” Kant-Studien 101 (2010): 309–30; and Helga Varden “A Kantian Conception of Rightful Sexual Relations: Sex, (Gay) Marriage, and Prostitution,” Social Philosophy Today 20 (2007): 199–218, among others. I’ve found nothing about the possibility of a Humean account of same-sex marriage. This is an interesting gap in the literature, but one that is beyond the scope of this essay to fill. 5. I would argue that this is the wrong conclusion to draw. Historically wealth and social position have played such a large role in the distribution of mates that it would be unfair to assume that Hume and Kant’s failures to wed serve as a direct indication of their preferences. Kuehn points out that Kant twice came close to marriage, and that in his younger years it would have been financially difficult for Kant to marry. Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 117. It is still true today that the mere desire to obtain a spouse is not a sufficient (or even necessary) condition for having one. 6. Hume repeatedly insists upon the importance of biological family particularly when financial interests are at stake. See, for example EPM 3.2 SBN 195, EPM App. 2 SBN 300, T 2.2.12 SBN 398, T 3.2.2 SBN 486, 510–13. For more on the patriarchal assumptions Hume makes see Annette C. Baier, “Good Men’s Women: Hume on Chastity and Trust,” Hume Studies 5 (1979): 7–8. It should be noted, though, that Baier spends far more time in the essay defending than attacking Hume. She credit Hume with the “exposure a double standard” rather than being “sexist in tone and content,” 9. 7. Sheldon Wein argues that the desire to continue having sex with the same person is what led to the formation of societies. Sheldon Wein, “IUDs, STIs, and DNA: Reconsidering Hume’s Modesty Proposal,” in Sex, Love, and Friendship: Studies of the Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love, 1993–2003, ed. Adrianne Leigh McEvoy (New York, NY: Rodopi, 2011), 217–28. 8. Sarah M. S. Pearsall, “Hume—and Others—on Marriage,” in Impressions of Hume, ed. Marina Frasca-Spada and P. J. E. Kail (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 173–6. Hutcheson was the first of the Scots to suggest the triad of domestic relationships (husband and wife, parents and children, master and servants). Adam Smith uses the same list, as does Kant. 9. One might see further support for the naturalness of marriage in Hume’s generally derisive comments about Monks. See, for example, Hume, Natural History of Religion, With an Introduction by John M. Robertson (London: A. and H. Bradlaugh Bonner, 1889), 37. For a discussion of this passage see Jennifer Herdt, “Superstition and the Timid Sex,” in Feminist Interpretations of David Hume,

Kant and Hume on Marriage 193

10.

11.

12. 13. 14.

15.

16.

17. 18. 19.

ed. Anne Jaap Jacobson (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 288–91. In comparison to Kant, scholars have paid relatively little attention to Hume’s writings on marriage, and the topic could benefit from further discussion. As this is not a chapter about Hume, but about Hume’s influence on Kant, I fear this contribution will do little to fill this gap in the literature. It is worth noting that a variety of scholars want to read Hume’s tone in this essay as something less than straightforwardly sincere. Gladys Bryson claims that Hume writes on marriage in an “urbane and gallant mood he so loved to affect,” and calls his early remarks “facetious.” Glady Bryson, Man and Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945), 181. Vicki Sapp notes that this essay, among others, was written for a female audience and Hume ultimately distances himself from these texts, Vicki J. Sapp, “The Philosopher’s Seduction: Hume and the Fair Sex,” Philosophy and Literature 19 (1995): 1. While I think these considerations of tone and intent are important, I do not think they undermine the examination I will offer. Much of what Hume expresses here is reiterated in his more “masculine” texts. There is clearly something facetious about the question he asks to begin “On Love and Marriage,” but it still stands as an obvious link between Hume and Kant. Pearsall, “Hume—and Others—on Marriage,” 278. For an excellent discussion of this see Pearsall, “Hume—and Others—on Marriage,” 277–9. Astute readers will have noticed that this conclusion does not follow from the given premises. That a wife’s insistence on domination is one possible cause of an unhappy marriage does not thereby make it the most likely. Why is there no consideration of husbands who fail in their duty to be solicitous which might be an equally common problem? Hume could at least provide us with an argument for thinking that husbands who lord their superiority over their wives are less common than wives of deferential husbands who press their advantage. See Donald Wilson, “Kant and the Marriage Right,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 85 (2004): 103–23; Alan Soble, “Sexual Use and What to Do about It: Internalist and Externalist Sexual Ethics,” in The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings, ed. Alan Soble (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 225–58; Allen Wood, Kant’s Ethical Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press: 1999); Allan Beever, “Kant and the Law of Marriage,” Kantian Review 18 (2003): 339–62; Inder S. Marwah, “What Nature Makes of Her: Kant’s Gendered Metaphysics,” Hypatia 28 (2013): 551–67; and Allegra De Laurentis, “Kant’s Shameful Proposition: A Hegel-Inspired Criticism of Kant’s Theory of Domestic Right,” International Philosophical Quarterly 40 (2000): 297–312, among many others. See, for example, Barbara Herman, “Could It Be Worth Thinking about Kant on Sex and Marriage?” in A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity, ed. Louise M. Antony and Charlotte Witt (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 53–72; and De Laurentis, “Kant’s Shameful Proposition,” among others. I was inspired to this thought in part by Donald Wilson’s discussion of Kant’s distinct between principled sexual activity and sexual union in accordance with mere animal nature. Wilson, “Kant and the Marriage Right,” 106. Wilson, “Kant and the Marriage Right,” 110. It is worth noting here that, if my interpretation is correct, Kant seems to assume that sex and love (or at least submission) often go hand in hand. In a world where it is possible for one to engage in casual sex without developing the sort of passions that might lead one to encourage one’s own objectification, it seems that casual affairs could avoid the problem of totalizing objectification in much the same way

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20.

21.

22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

27.

28. 29. 30.

31.

that marriage does. One might view it as an advantage of my interpretation that it keeps intact Kant’s problem without requiring that we admit his solution. What I have argued here is not intended to be in conflict with Elizabeth Brake’s claim that the objectification of sex is a failure of virtue rather than justice. Elizabeth Brake, “Justice and Virtue in Kant’s Account of Marriage,” Kantian Review 9 (2005): 70–4. For an alternate account suggesting that only lack of consent makes sex legally wrong see Varden, “A Kantian Conception of Rightful Sexual Relations.” Kant gives no indication of how a couple’s assets should be divided in a divorce. The protection of interests offered by the force of law must mean, at the very least, that a man cannot divorce his wife without cause and leave her destitute. Some arrangement must be made for ongoing material support, otherwise the legality of the marriage offers no real protection. For an argument that legal marriage is neither necessary not sufficient to protect either party from objectification see Brake, “Justice and Virtue in Kant’s Account of Marriage.” Susan Shell, “Kant’s Political Cosmology: Freedom and Desire in the ‘Remarks’ Concerning Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime,” in Essays on Kant’s Political Philosophy, ed. Howard Williams (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 90–1. Kuehn, Kant, 167–70. Kuehn, Kant, 169. The Collins’s ethics lecture notes are based on lectures also delivered after these scandals. Importantly, though, I would argue that these later writings do not depart significantly from the remarks on women Kant earlier published in the Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime. These scandals cannot be held wholly responsible for Kant’s views on women and marriage. Manfred Kuehn provides a more detailed account of how we ought to understand the term “pragmatic” in the context of the Anthropology in the introduction to the Cambridge edition. Kuehn, Introduction to Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), xxi–xxiii. Robert Louden, Kant’s Impure Ethics: From Rational Beings to Human Beings (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 83. Louden, Kant’s Impure Ethics, 84. Annette Baier is largely responsible for this trend. For rebuttals of Baier’s account see Christine Battersby, “An Enquiry Concerning the Humean Woman,” Philosophy 56 (1981): 303–12; Stephen Burns, “The Humean Female,” Dialogue 15 (1976): 415–24; and Lousie Marcil Lacoste, “The Consistency of Hume’s Position Concerning Women,” Dialogue 15 (1976): 425–40. Battersby in particular argues convincingly that within Hume’s writings, “the evidence for discriminatory sexism seems overwhelming,” 305. Marriage may seem an odd choice of topic for an essay intended as a tribute to Manfred Kuehn, as marriage is hardly a central theme in his work. With this in mind, one might consider this essay more a tribute to Manfred as a person than as a scholar. The example provided by his and Margaret’s marriage played a small but significant role in helping me to decide if marriage was right for me.

References Altman, Matthew. “Kant on Sex and Marriage: The Implications for the Same-Sex Marriage Debate.” Kant-Studien 101 (2010): 309–30.

Kant and Hume on Marriage 195 Baier, Annette C. “Good Men’s Women: Hume on Chastity and Trust.” Hume Studies 5 (1979): 1–19. Baier, Annette C. “Helping Hume to ‘Compleat the Union.’” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 41 (1980): 167–86. Baier, Annette C. “Hume, the Woman’s Moral Theorist.” In Women in Moral Theory, edited by Eva Feder Kittay and Diana T. Meyers, 37–55. Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987. Battersby, Christine. “An Enquiry Concerning the Humean Woman.” Philosophy 56 (1981): 303–12. Beever, Allan. “Kant and the Law of Marriage.” Kantian Review 18 (2003): 339–62. Brake, Elizabeth. “Justice and Virtue in Kant’s Account of Marriage.” Kantian Review 9 (2005): 58–94. Bryson, Gladys. Man and Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945. Burns, Steven. “The Humean Female.” Dialogue 15 (1976): 415–24. De Laurentiis, Allegra. “Kant’s Shameful Proposition: A Hegel-Inspired Criticism of Kant’s Theory of Domestic Right.” International Philosophical Quarterly 40 (2000): 297–312. Denis, Lara. “From Friendship to Marriage: Revising Kant.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (2001): 1–28. Duran, Jane. “Hume on the Gentler Sex.” Philosophia 31 (2004): 487–500. Herdt, Jennifer A. “Superstition and the Timid Sex.” In Feminist Interpretations of David Hume, edited by Anne Jaap Jacobson, 283–307. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. Herman, Barbara. “Could It Be Worth Thinking about Kant on Sex and Marriage?” In A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity, edited by Louise M. Antony and Charlotte Witt, 53–72. Boulder: Westview Press, 1993. Hume, David. Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Hume, David. Essays Moral, Political, Literary. Edited and with a Foreword, Notes, and Glossary by Eugene F. Miller, with an appendix of variant readings from the 1889 edition by T. H. Green and T. H. Grose, revised edition. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987. Retrieved 11/20/2016 from the World Wide Web: http://oll. libertyfund.org/titles/704. Hume, David. The Natural History of Religion. With an Introduction by John M. Robertson. London: A. and H. Bradlaugh Bonner, 1889. Retrieved 11/21/2016 from the World Wide Web: http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/340. Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. Kant, Immanuel. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Edited by Robert B. Louden. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Kant, Immanuel. Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften. Royal Prussian (subsequently German, then Berlin-Brandenburg) Academy of Sciences edition. Berlin: Georg Reimer, subsequently Walter de Gruyter, 1900. Kant, Immanuel. Metaphysics of Morals. Edited by Mary Gregor. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Kleingeld, Pauline. “The Problematic Status of Gender-Neutral Language in the History of Philosophy: The Case of Kant.” The Philosophical Forum 25 (1993): 134–50.

196 Elizabeth Robinson Kneller, Jane. “Kant on Sex and Marriage Right.” In Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy, edited by Paul Guyer, 447–76. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Kuehn, Manfred. Introduction to Kant, Immanuel, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, vii–xxix. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: A Biography. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Lacoste, Lousie Marcil. “The Consistency of Hume’s Position Concerning Women.” Dialogue 15 (1976): 425–40. La Vopa, Anthony J. “Thinking about Marriage: Kant’s Liberalism and the Peculiar Morality of Conjugal Union.” The Journal of Modern History 77 (2005): 1–34. Louden, Robert. Kant’s Impure Ethics: From Rational Beings to Human Beings. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Marwah, Inder S. “What Nature Makes of Her: Kant’s Gendered Metaphysics.” Hypatia 28 (2013): 551–67. Mendus, Susan. “Kant: ‘An Honest but Narrow-Minded Bourgeois?’” In Essays on Kant’s Political Philosophy, edited by Howard Williams, 166–90. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Papadaki, Lina. “Kantian Marriage and Beyond: Why It Is Worth Thinking about Kant on Marriage.” Hypatia 25 (2010): 276–94. Pateman, Carole. The Sexual Contract. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. Pearsall, Sarah M. S. “Hume—and Others—on Marriage.” In Impressions of Hume, edited by Marina Frasca-Spada and P. J. E. Kail, 269–93. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Collected Writings of Rousseau Volume 13, Emile or on Education: Includes Emile and Sophie, or the Solitaries. Edited and translated by Christopher Kelly and Allan Bloom. Hanover: University Press of New England, 2010. Sapp, Vicki J. “The Philosopher’s Seduction: Hume and the Fair Sex.” Philosophy and Literature 19 (1995): 1–15. Shell, Susan. “Kant’s Political Cosmology: Freedom and Desire in the ‘Remarks’ Concerning Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime.” In Essays on Kant’s Political Philosophy, edited by Howard Williams, 81–119. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Soble, Alan. “Sexual Use and What to Do about It: Internalist and Externalist Sexual Ethics.” In The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings, edited by Alan Soble, 225–58. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. Varden, Helga. “A Kantian Conception of Rightful Sexual Relations: Sex, (Gay) Marriage, and Prostitution.” Social Philosophy Today 20 (2007): 199–218. Wein, Sheldon. “IUDs, STIs, and DNA: Reconsidering Hume’s Modesty Proposal.” In Sex, Love, and Friendship: Studies of the Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love, 1993–2003, edited by Adrianne Leigh McEvoy, 217–28. New York: Rodopi, 2011. Wilson, Donald. “Kant and the Marriage Right.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 85 (2004): 103–23. Wilson, Holly. “Kant’s Evolutionary Theory of Marriage.” In Autonomy and Community: Readings in Contemporary Kantian Social Philosophy, edited by Jane Kneller and Sidney Axinn, 283–306. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. Wood, Allen W. Kant’s Ethical Theory. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

11 Hume and Kant on Imagination Thematic and Methodological Differences Frank Schalow

A gulf seems to separate Hume’s and Kant’s treatment of imagination. But the transition between them reveals more than simply a shift from Hume’s extreme empiricist perspective, on the one hand, to Kant’s transcendental idealism, on the other. Indeed, that transition helps reveals that what is unique and innovative in Kant’s account of imagination occurs as much on a methodological as a thematic plane in regard to the role of a specific faculty of the “mind.” Moreover, closer scrutiny reveals that Hume gave greater weight to imagination than might ordinarily be expected, at least if one were already to concede Kant’s revolutionary account of transcendental imagination throughout his critical philosophy. As we will discover throughout this essay, the attempt to mediate Hume’s and Kant’s account of imagination masks other issues which, even if remaining nascent for both, point to presuppositions concerning the role that language plays in underlying our cognitive powers and even the innermost character of our “human nature.” How does the world that we experience itself become “meaningful,” such that we can form “ideas” to speak intelligently to others or express what we know through “judgments” that are universally and necessarily valid for everyone? At the interface of Kant’s reply to Hume’s skepticism is the enigma, in the absence of a direct appeal to what is “given” in perception or an “objective” correlate, is how a complementary discourse can arise to express the a priori predicates definitive of any possible object. The proverbial dispute about the possibility of a “third way” or the “synthetic a priori,” on which Kant’s explanation of the law of causality hinges (CPR A138/B177), has more at stake epistemologically than only the defense of natural science. For hidden in the epistemic issue is the broader metaphysical problem of how pure concepts or predicates can be employed to signify the characteristics of objects, and, thereby connote or engender meanings which, because they precede and do not depend upon the actual givenness of an object, can also indicate (if only on moral, rather than epistemic grounds) the relevance of what is not knowable as well. Just as the issue of language recedes into the background of each thinker’s philosophy, however, so does the concern for time become prominent for explaining how our experience of events in the world, including cause and effect, achieves

198 Frank Schalow a semblance of coherence and order. When viewed in this light, the concern for imagination provides a unique inroad to unraveling the nexus of issues that both divide Hume and Kant, while permitting a meaningful debate to occur between them. My essay proceeds in three stages. First, I consider how a concern for imagination contributes to a narrative by which Hume and Kant seek to untangle the illusions of rational metaphysics, despite a divergence in implementing an empiricist agenda, on the one hand, and a “transcendental” methodology on the other. Second, I will show how a concern for time figures in prominently into Hume’s and Kant’s treatment of imagination within an epistemic context, and how the latter goes a step further to establish a deeper origin of time in the a priori synthesis of transcendental imagination. Third, I will show how the amplification of either “ideas” (for Hume) or “pure concepts” (for Kant), in terms of their relevance for defining experiential events, pose questions about the use of language, expression, and communication. Ultimately, this nagging concern leads Kant to consider a further exercise of imagination in engendering “aesthetic ideas” and its role in providing a further strategic linchpin to “reflect” upon the ground of human subjectivity.

I. From Images to Productive Imagination Kant’s famous remark in the Preface to the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics that Hume “first interrupted my dogmatic slumber” provides the obvious point of departure for revisiting the historical connection between these two thinkers (P 4:260). Of course, the focus of Kant’s remark centers on his attempt to resolve Hume’s doubt concerning the necessity of the law of cause and effect. Kant first provides the justification for this law in his account of the “Principles of Understanding” in the Critique of Pure Reason. This account follows from his innovative appeal to the transcendental imagination as the key to “schematizing” the pure concepts of the understanding, which, in the specific case of the category of cause and effect, leads to the formulation of that law through the “Second Analogy of Experience.” Thus, the role of transcendental imagination in “schematizing” the pure concept of cause and effect can be considered the linchpin in Kant’s defense of that law, over and against Hume’s skepticism regarding the idea of “necessary connection.”1 When seen in this light, Kant’s appeal to the centrality of imagination can be construed as a microcosm of his reply to Hume’s skepticism, without having to revisit the enormous amount of literature summarizing their debate on the issue of cause and effect. Conversely, making the topic of imagination focal to a comparative study of these great thinkers may cast new light on a familiar terrain, particularly given the disproportional weight that Kant assigns to the imagination in contrast to Hume. But to do so we need to consider first whether there is a parallel problematic that motivates each to address the imagination. In this way, we can secure a point of reference for demonstrating what is at stake, methodologically as well as thematically,

Hume and Kant on Imagination 199 in Kant’s ultimate endeavor to establish separate “jurisdictions” between the sensible and supersensible realms, indeed, without compromising the relevance of the latter (metaphysically, morally, and aesthetically) in order to confine the possibility of knowledge to the former. In describing his slumber as “dogmatic,” Kant echoes a concern held by Hume that the overzealous, presumptuous, and even dangerous impulses of metaphysics to cognize a supersensible reality cannot be overcome without exposing its “subjective” sources. Similar to what Federal Reserve Chairperson, Alan Greenspan, once described as the “irrational exuberance of the stock market” in seeking unattainable heights, so rational metaphysics, propelled by the self-evidence of its own inner logic, soars on the wings of speculation in an effort to prove the existence of God or the immortality of the soul. Both Hume and Kant share a common conviction that we cannot untangle the illusion of metaphysics by deferring to reason alone. Instead, we must take a preliminary, if not radical step, to factor in “the human equation,” if we are to depose rational metaphysics from its pedestal of presumptuousness. For both Kant and Hume, there is an ambiguity concerning the role of imagination, and its relation to our cognitive powers. In a provocative passage from the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant refers to imagination as a “blind but indispensable function of the human soul, without which we would have no knowledge whatsoever” (CPR A78/B103). When anchored in a self-critical, transcendental methodology and developed according to rules, imagination plays a key role in unifying our cognitive powers and transplanting their development upon the subjective ground of human finitude. But in the spurious efforts of rational metaphysics to grasp the unconditioned, confusions in the form of a “transcendental amphiboly” can occur (CPR A270/B326). In such instances objective claims are made about reality as such (or “things-in-themselves”) on the basis of subjective predilections alone, whereby from the “mere play of imagination” can “arise illusory representations to which the objects do not correspond” (CPR A376). Here Kant suggests that imagination, when left to its own caprices, can become a subterfuge for inciting metaphysical speculation, just as easily as becoming a bearer of truth (e.g., as mediating power between sensibility and understanding). Whereas Kant points to the potential for a “delusion of imagination (in dreams)” (CPR A376), Hume emphasizes the “fanciful” character of imagination;2 its occurrence appears to be free-floating, and, at least at the outset, develops at odds with, and even to the detriment of, our other mental powers as a potential harbinger of deception. As a “metaphysical faculty,” imagination misleads “philosophers to infer the existence of ‘extra-mental’ objects from similarities in their own experience.”3 Thus, in the Treatise, Hume distinguishes between science and metaphysics, in which the latter appeals to the fancies and fictions of imagination to construct erroneous systems about a higher, non-sensory reality (e.g., Plato) that may not be logically self-contradictory.4 To quote Hume: “Tis an establish’d maxim in

200 Frank Schalow metaphysics, That whatever the mind clearly conceives includes the idea of possible existence, in other words, that nothing we imagine is absolutely impossible” (T 1.2.2 SBN 32). There is a tendency to seek conventional measures to contrast Kant and Hume concerning the role of imagination: for example, metaphysically in terms of distinguishing what is tangible, perceptual, or “real,” versus a phantasm, or epistemically what is “true” versus what is false or deceptive. Yet, because the attempt to draw a parallel between the two thinkers may seem sketchy at best, we must also consider another alternative: the possible performative character of imagination in distinguishing the interface of other cognitive powers, for example, a quasi-linguistic role of mediating between determinacy and indeterminacy. Imagination is in some sense “image-producing.” Here is where the ambivalence begins to emerge in terms of a parallel between Hume’s and Kant’s treatment of imagination. Is imagination to be defined only by its products, by the flights of fancy engendered thereby and hence by their ultimately indeterminate and vacuous character? In this case, for Hume, the products of imagination, like phantoms, albeit in his terms, “complex ideas”—e.g., a unicorn—are parasitic upon other ideas, and for their significance reduce back to the realm of impressions—either complex or simple. Hume emphasizes this aspect of the imagination, however, derivative, at the outset of the Treatise, when he distinguishes between memory and imagination. In shaping ideas, memory replicates or reproduces impressions as closely as possible to the initial order in which they are given; whereas imagination exhibits a “liberty . . . to transpose and change its ideas” (T 1.1.4 SBN 10). While “fanciful,” and exhibiting “liberty” in the sense of license, imagination is not originally creative (T 1.1.4 SBN 10). Can imagination be defined as a power of creativity in its own right? This is the avenue that Kant will ultimately take, beginning with the A-deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding, and, subsequently, their schematization in the “Transcendental Doctrine of Judgment” (CPR A137/B176). In this regard, Kant shifts the focus of inquiry away from the images themselves to the creative, productive power engendering them, and, indeed, in such a way as to incorporate them within a larger process of the assignment, sketching-out, and determination of significance or meaning. Here we discover the initial divide between Hume’s and Kant’s treatment of imagination: the shift from its deployment derivatively as a whimsical bearer of fancy, to its elevation as an original power (Einbildungskraft) or organizational linchpin connecting adjacent cognitive faculties of understanding and sensibility.

II. The Role of Time When viewed within the wider context of Kant’s reply to Hume, the divergent path on which the former redefines imagination mirrors the methodological breakthrough to answer the latter’s skeptical law of causality. Yet, even if historically the advantage lies with Kant, we err by too quickly jumping to

Hume and Kant on Imagination 201 his solution without also considering the parallel insights that Hume pioneered. In the Inquiry, Hume asks by which powers of the mind we can extrapolate from past events, in order that these can yield a future expectation of a causal link (EHU 7.1 SBN 60–72).5 The concern for the temporal dimension, which allows us to envision the development of future events from the past, emerges as a key (if often times overlooked) consideration for Hume. For him, time is an idea “copied” upon “some perceivable succession of changeable objects” (T 1.2.3 SBN 35). The idea of necessary connection cannot simply be derived from what is perceived—i.e., impressions, as way of confirmation. There is also the subjective concern for developing that idea, such that our minds can seek, recognize, and elicit patterns from the temporal succession. Even if the idea of necessary connection depends upon (the coalescence) of habits of mind, through the principle of association, a further question remains. Specifically, the futural expectation of what the past bears out through repeated occurrences, on the one hand, and, on the other, the ability to preserve the likeness, affinity, and even continuity of the association of previous experience (e.g., through memory), defines a key element of any habit of mind. In describing imagination as “the focal point of Hume’s psychology,” Waxman coins the expression the “associative imagination” to suggest how perception, memory, and understanding can mirror each other in the development of human consciousness.6 Hume seems to acknowledge as much by granting chief importance to time, as well as place, as key factors that define the principle of association. Yet, as much as Hume seems to outline a problem, he also assumes the synergy between imagination and time. Given this synergy, imagination can emerge as a cognitive power capable of anticipating the future as well as recollecting the past, and, by the same token, discover in the present the mirroring of both these temporal dimensions. Perhaps it would not be too anachronistic, and biased in favor of Kant, to invoke his terminology of a “subjective synthesis” to distinguish the precise contribution that imagination makes in order to develop a temporal pattern from the flux of experience. Thus, in the Inquiry, Hume suggests that the imagination provides the capacity for the human mind to envision the ordering nexus of cause and effect, or the “idea of necessary connection.” In his famous reference to the collision of two billiard balls, Hume states, “This connection, therefore, which we feel in the mind, this customary transition of the imagination from one object to its usual attendant, is the sentiment or impression from which we form the idea of power or necessary connection” (EHU 7.2 SBN 75). Yet, by the same token, precisely how that pattern can be adduced, as shaping the mind’s capacity to traverse the flow of experience and establish an understanding (vs. merely a perceptual awareness) thereof—not merely subjectively, but an objective basis for the universality and necessity of the law of cause and effect, remains problematic for Hume.7 In other words, are there other cognitive powers at work in the imagination’s active forming of time that can develop in concert with, and perhaps

202 Frank Schalow even engender determinations, which resonate with organizational patterns of understanding or what Kant called “categories?” Such categorical determinations, however, hold the key to the objective comprehension of perceptual events, or in Kant’s terms, to a priori synthesis that yields a corresponding object (Gegenstand). Thus, there are parallels in how imagination works in a subjective role for both Hume and Kant, even if the latter, as we will see, further investigates the methodological basis for the unification of time through imagination. Accordingly, we also see how introducing the mutual concern for imagination adds a new angle to an otherwise old, if not overly rehashed debate between two thinkers about the necessity of the law of cause and effect. We discover the first instance of Kant’s attempt to consider the methodological side of imagination, most notably, its interconnection with the other cognitive powers of understanding and sensibility, in the “A-version” of the transcendental deduction of the categories. There Kant describes the role of reproductive imagination, as the second part of the “threefold synthesis,” “The Synthesis of Apprehension in Intuition,” “The Synthesis of Reproduction in Imagination,” and the “The Synthesis of Recognition in a Concept” (CPR A103). The intuitive reception of what is perceived, or appearances, presuppose as their a priori condition a form of ordering that reproduces what has been previously given, or “preceding representations,” while “advancing to those that follow” (CPR A102). In this way, reproductive imagination knits together a sense manifold or unifies discrete experiences, in order to establish coherence throughout experience. This reproductive synthesis pre-unifies what we can experience, in order to facilitate a higher unification through (the pure concepts of) understanding; in this further or third synthesis (“recognition in a concept”), categorical determinations are imposed that provide the form of organization for the knowledge of an object (e.g., the “a priori synthesis”) that is universally and necessarily binding on all possible knowers. Because the synthesis of reproductive imagination is a prelude to the a priori synthesis, which establishes the connection between the knower and its object and hence determines the possibility of the latter according to the preconditions of the former, we “therefore entitle this faculty the transcendental faculty of imagination” (CPR A102). By referring to the “transcendental,” Kant (1) distinguishes the power of imagination as more than just a free-floating, mental capacity and (2) introduces the methodological focus that will define the original and radical character of his account of imagination as a cornerstone of his overall “critique of pure reason.” By underscoring the “transcendental” character of reproductive imagination, Kant initiates a paradigm shift of methodology that will bear the namesake of his philosophy and open up a new space of inquiry to resolve Hume’s corundum concerning the law of natural causality. But before we address the meaning of the “transcendental,” let us make a preliminary observation. Specifically, Kant’s treatment of imagination takes a decisive turn by outlining its

Hume and Kant on Imagination 203 procedural role, which can be performed, replicated, and re-enacted, most notably, in the actual schematizing of the pure concepts. Put another way, the development of imagination “procedurally” as the key step in actually implementing the transcendental method, rather than simply describing it rhetorically. By mediating between understanding and sensibility, the transcendental imagination emerges as the strategic linchpin to unravel the riddle of how synthetic a priori judgments are possible. How can we define imagination, or identify its chief elements? First, imagination serves as an intermediary, as a bridge between understanding and sensibility. Second, in this intermediary role imagination harbors a creative power to produce the schema and thereby schematize the pure concepts of the understanding. Third, imagination redefines time through its role in “schematizing”; thus, schematism is a procedure for mapping the pure concepts onto time, configuring this temporal dimension in such a way as to adjust the universality of the pure concept to meet the particularity of the content of sensibility.8 “The procedure [Verfahren] in these schemata we shall entitle the schematism of pure understanding” (CPR A140/B179). Fourth, imagination establishes the thread of commonality, or root of synonymy among the categories, so that each of the pure concepts exhibits or bears an analogous facet or temporal imprint. Thus, the schema of existence entails “presence in (some determinate) time,” the pure concept of substance entails “permanence in time,” and, perhaps most significantly within the context of Kant’s reply to Hume, the pure concept of cause and effect entails “succession in time” (CPR A143–145/B183–184). “The schemata are thus nothing but a priori determinations of time in accordance with rules” (CPR A145/B184). Thus, the principle of “objective succession” arises when sense data or perceptions are brought under a rule (“the schema of causation”).9 Schematism is first and foremost a performative, procedural activity, which comes to light in the verbal form as the “schematizing” of the pure concepts of the understanding. The transcendental power of imagination emerges as the source of this creativity, as the capacity to re-configure the scope of the categories, in order that they can (1) be applied to determine (the constitution, e. g., properties) of empirical objects and (2) thereby serves as predicates to “signify” the generic properties of any possible object of experience. The production of the schemata, then, yields “determinations,” specifically, as exhibiting a common root of ancestry that can be constructively illustrated in a sensory, graphic manner through examples (durch Beispiele) vis-à-vis time (JL 9:39). Kant refers to the “productive imagination,” to distinguish its capacity in generating transcendental determinations of time. As Kant states in the “A-deduction,” “Thus the principle of the necessary unity of pure (productive) synthesis of imagination, prior to apperception, is the ground of the possibility of all knowledge, especially experience” (CPR A118). According to Kant, the forming of time in this primordial way precedes the empirical encounter with the linear character of time as movement in terms of “before” and “after.” Through the productive imagination,

204 Frank Schalow time is reconstituted in an original form, which pre-unifies (via an a priori synthesis) the different temporal modalities of presence, permanence, and succession. By appealing to the a priori synergy between time and the transcendental imagination, and making the methodological role of the later explicit, Kant departs from Hume’s empirical characterization of time in a linear way. Thus, through the schema of relation, time is thereby redefined as the order imposed by a rule of a priori synthesis.10 The creative power of imagination or its “figurative synthesis,” as revealed both through its generation of time and its graphic portrayal of the spectrum of conceptual determination or schemata, comes to light in Kant’s pivotal remark: that schematism “is an art concealed in the depths of the human soul” (ist eine verborgene Kunst in den Tiefen der menschlichen Seele” (CPR A140).11 Finally, as a linchpin or intermediary (between understanding and sensibility), the transcendental imagination replaces a context of “meaning” based exclusively on thought with one encompassing the diversity of all that can be experienced. For Kant, this new context is circumscribed by the “possibility of experience.” Broadly speaking, we can characterize this shift or transposing of the axis of “meaning” as “hermeneutical.” Here hermeneutics pertains to what can be discerned as “meaningful” through a context, or, in Kant’s terms, as comprising a “horizon” (Horizont) (JL 9:42). The schematism serves a further, critical role in restricting the use of the categories to possible experience, on the one hand, and, on the other, securing the laws of natural science (including that of causality) according to a key compromise: the form of legislation presiding over one realm or domain (Gebiet) does not preclude the possibility of another jurisdiction holding over another, adjacent realm beyond the confines of possible experience (CPJ 5:174). Due to this horizontal dimension, “possible experience” defines the realm of all which is knowable in conformity with the universal laws of natural science, including the principle of cause and effect. As a response to Hume’s skepticism, Kant’s attempt to circumscribe this horizon is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the necessity of the law of causality is justified as governing empirical objects, although with the caveat that the ensemble of such object defines the realm of all that is knowable. In this respect, Kant reaffirms Hume’s attack on the dogmatic position of rational metaphysics. But Kant’s apparent agreement with Hume only tells half the story. The circumscribing of such a horizon also serves as a double-edged sword—namely, to offset the empiricist presumption that only “experience” can comprise a legislative realm to the exclusion of any other form of jurisdiction. Thus, in the Prolegomena, Kant allows for the legitimate employment of transcendental ideas, or the ideas of reason (God, freedom, and immortality), in a way that checks the presumption of hegemony of the claim of experience to completeness and opens the way for religious discourse (as well as moral and aesthetic forms of expression). Thus, by circumscribing (Grenzen) of human reason (versus the mere negation of limits [Schranken], Kant leaves room for human aspiration beyond whatever fulfillment can be provided

Hume and Kant on Imagination 205 by the senses; on transcendental grounds, he justifies reason’s self-reflection on its highest ends and destination, despite precluding the possibility of any objective cognition. Here we find a key divergence between Hume and Kant, as Rudolf Makkreel eloquently points out: Kant speaks of Hume as one of those “geographers of human reason” (CPR A760/B788) who chart the earth solely in terms of sensible appearances and leave its horizon indeterminable. Critical philosophy, while also basing knowledge claims on the empirical understanding, must, however, remain open to what might lie beyond the horizon of sense. A critique of reason must, according to Kant, supplement “the limits of my actual knowledge of the earth at any time” with “the boundaries of all possible description of the earth.”12 In accord with precepts of his “critical” enterprise, Kant’s outlining of the boundaries of such a horizon provides a counter check on the empiricist claim as to the completeness of experience in all areas of human concern. In observing these boundaries, reason must exercise a further measure of self-delimitation, striking a balance whereby recognizing the impossibility of proving God’s existence must not lead to the corollary inference that God does not exist. To summarize this point in simple terms, reason’s self-delimitation of its own boundaries does not lead to a stance of atheism within the “theoretical” sphere, but, contrary to Hume, to agnosticism. Why is this the case? Once again, the role of transcendental imagination in schematizing the pure concept of existence proves to be crucial. As schematized, the pure concept of existence entails “presence in time,” and its opposite determination, or non-existence, entails the lack thereof or “absence in time.” Due to the intrinsically temporal character of this determination, the pure concept of existence cannot be hyperextended to designate either that God does or does not exist.

III. Aesthetics and Figurative Expression Though for Kant imagination bears an important affinity to our senses, for Hume imagination remains parasitical upon sense impressions (and their development into ideas). This divergence points to a further difference between the two thinkers as to genesis of “meaning,” its scope, and dependence upon the sensible order to supply a given, a target of ostension, if not an explicit referent as such. We should not overlook the fact that Hume, like Kant, also exhibited a profound interest in human nature and specifically the operations of the human mind. First, at the heart of his skepticism is the phenomenalistic attempt to reduce so-called reality to elemental sense data or impressions, on which depends the subsequent development of all ideas (including the idea of substance). Second, is the recognition that the “meaning” of an idea depends on its breakdown into elemental units or sense data. Third, in a way that may be a crude preview of Kant’s schematism, or at least suggests an analogue, for Hume an idea qualifies as such

206 Frank Schalow because it is singled out by imagination, and, conversely, every such idea can be considered as separate in itself. “Where-ever the imagination perceives a difference among ideas, it can easily produce a separation” (T 1.1.3 SBN 10). On the one hand, Hume identifies the intermediary role of imagination, as pointing to what is meaningful within the sensory realm.13 Thus, in the Inquiry, Hume states, Nothing is more free than the imagination of man, and though it cannot exceed the original stock of ideas furnished by internal and external senses, it has unlimited power of mixing, compounding, separating, and dividing these ideas in all the varieties of fiction and vision. (EHU 5.2 SBN 47) On the other hand, he does not provide a systematic account of this intermediary capacity, or of its specific role as an epistemic linchpin, as it comes to light in Kant’s schematism. Hume neglects to consider how meaning can arise apart from the model of one-to-one correspondence (of the reduction back to the elementary data of our senses). When viewed through this lens, the mutual concern that Hume and Kant have in imagination may also house a complementary problem as to the development of expression and communication, much less the origin of language. Yet, language for Kant, pertains to what can be determined through predicative acts, and, in Hume’s case, more narrowly to what can be equated with a “given” or, in linguistic terms, a potential referent. Yet, in different instances, the exercise of reason’s self-critical powers is “performative.” First, in the activity of schematizing the pure concepts of the understanding, and, secondarily, through the regulative use of the ideas of reason, Kant leaves the door open for a further employment of language as a practice, for example, as exhibited through the exchange and communication among human beings.14 In this way, Kant’s concern for the formation of a horizon creates an opening in which “meanings” can be conveyed indirectly through gestures, figuratively or “analogically” (schema analogon) or even negatively through a contrast with opposites—rather than linearly via a one-on-one-correspondence between words and things.15 The contrast between what is given (empirically) and what cannot be given, as illustrated through the legitimate employment of the transcendental ideas, “is still a cognition which belongs to it [reason] even at this point, and by which it is neither confined within the sensible nor strays beyond the sensible, but only limits itself, as befits the knowledge of a boundary [Grenze], to the relation between what lies beyond it and what is contained within it” (P 4:361). In its role as an intermediary, imagination can join “heterogenous stems” to mark the jointure between phenomena and noumena and thereby sets the precedent for a “regulative unity” of the ideas of reason in the Transcendental Dialectic to complement the constitutive unity of the categories of the understanding in the Transcendental Analytic.16

Hume and Kant on Imagination 207 Within the limited scope of this essay, we can only briefly outline the way in which Kant’s treatment of imagination re-emerges in the Critique of Judgment, and specifically, his concern for the beautiful and the sublime. If the ground of the noumenal remains ultimately unknowable, then perhaps its relation to the phenomenal can be addressed, conveyed, and become “communicable” as an instance of reason’s self-critical demarcation of its own boundaries. But such communication presupposes the development of an intermediary power or the imagination, which, with reference to the sensible, can convey a meaning that points beyond the physical realm. In its interplay with reason, imagination induces an experience of the sublime, a way of surpassing the sensory realm toward the zenith of it non-sensory counterpart, or the noumenal realm. The impetus of going beyond, of striving and surpassing, defines the experience of the sublime. As Kant states, “Thus nature is here called sublime merely because it raises the imagination to the point of presenting those cases in which the mind can make palpable to itself the sublimity of its own vocation even over nature” (CPJ 5:262). But the experience still has a cognitive dimension, and, minus a concept of an object, spawns its own unique mode of representation. In seeking to give expression to the sublime, imagination provides a mirroring, an imagistic reflection of what transcends the physical realm and hence embodies a meaning that can only be conveyed in a figurative manner. The mind feels itself moved in the representation of the sublime in nature. . . . This movement (especially in its inception) may be compared to a vibration—i.e., to a rapidly alternating repulsion from and attraction to one the same object. What is excessive for the imagination (to which it is driven in the apprehension of the intuition) is as it were an abyss, in which it fears to lose itself, yet for reason’s idea of the supersensible to produce such an effort of the imagination is not excessive but lawful, hence it is precisely as attractive as it was repulsive for mere sensibility. Even in this case, however, the judgment itself remains only aesthetic because, without having a determinate concept of the object as its ground, it represents merely the subjective play of the powers of the mind (imagination and reason) as harmonious even in their contrast (CPJ 5:258). Hume also attributes an aesthetic or artistic role to imagination, calling attention to time, as does Kant, as a source of novelty and innovation; imagination develops a new arrangement of ideas, relative to what is stored in memory, in order to envision a futural possibility—e.g., a baseball diamond built on a vacant lot.17 But the connection between the descriptive and evaluative sides of an aesthetic experience remains problematic, for example, the intersubjective basis for the assessment of beauty beyond its merely being in “the eye of the beholder.” By contrast, Kant outlines the universal preconditions for experiencing beautiful works of art, and further, identifies imagination as the source of artistic creativity—that is, the power of genius. Specifically, he appeals to “aesthetic ideas” to distinguish the novelty

208 Frank Schalow of patterns of arrangement or analogies that extend the purview of meaning beyond what is immediately given in sense experience, and thereby grounds the creativity on which the genesis of beautiful art works (and thereby the faculty of “genius”) depends. The innovation that is only implicit in the schematism of pure concepts becomes explicit through the production of aesthetic ideas, which spawn “imaginative figures in the various media of sense and speech that provoke a wealth of thought for which no adequate concept can be found.”18 In its aesthetic role, imagination “schematizes without a concept,” proceeding according to a “free play” to coordinate our cognitive powers and promote their harmonization (CPJ 5:218). A reflective judgment of taste conforms to law, but without imposing the rule of a categorical synthesis of the understanding. Due to the harmonious interplay of imagination and understanding, a common platform is created for all possible subjects to attain a disinterested standpoint. Given the unifying thread of this unbiased standpoint, a universal and necessary claim can be made concerning the beautiful. In a reflective judgment of taste, “Kant assigns the free non-conceptual play of imagination, “in order to promote a “‘universal communicability’ that applies to our felt states of mind.”19 The ground of an aesthetic judgment, or claim of what is beautiful, is the communicability of the experience, the sensus communis, rather than an overriding principle mandating conformity (among all possible subjects via “consciousness in general”) (P 4:305). In terms of the interplay of the cognitive powers, the schematizing of imagination is free, yet harmonious, in order “to be universally communicated” and thereby “valid for everyone” (CPJ 5:218). The schematism of a reflective judgment of taste differs from that of a determinate judgment, for example, the principle of cause and effect within the theoretical domain. For the latter depends upon a pre-established, synthetic rule of the category, the imposing of law from without, rather than through the harmonious interplay of our cognitive faculties from within. By mirroring the communicability of reflective judgment, imagination can spawn a “referential context” of meaning or suggest the synthesis of a whole that, while not constitutive of a supersensible object, can nevertheless direct reason in its search for completeness and the unfolding of its highest, “practical” ends.20 Four important considerations follow. First, in the Critique of Judgment, Kant re-examines the creative power of imagination explicitly in terms of its freedom, although in compliance with law (rather than as an unfettered and fictional source of ideas in Hume’s sense). Second, aesthetic judgment includes a moment of self-reflexivity, of reflecting back upon the origin and harmony of our cognitive powers. Third, within the aesthetic sphere Kant’s further development of imagination goes hand and hand with his emphasis on the communicability of aesthetic experience and its figurative form of expression. Fourth, Kant transposes his inquiry into imagination into a wider methodological discussion of the systematic unity of the Critical enterprise and of philosophy generally (CPJ 5:179). For Hume, on the other

Hume and Kant on Imagination 209 hand, the aesthetic role of imagination does not become a springboard for further methodological considerations. As such, he never considers any further connection that imagination may have to speech, discourse, and expression. Despite parallels in their respective aesthetic treatments, Hume’s and Kant’s interest in imagination diverges once again. When viewed within a broader perspective of Kant’s philosophy as a whole, this divergence brings to light the methodological importance that the imagination has for him. There is a further way in which methodological role of imagination appears in the third Critique in the context of Kant’s attempt to mediate between the divisions of theoretical and practical philosophy (CPJ 5:176– 177). Imagination becomes artistic in this double sense as helping to “craft” the architectonic of pure reason by making its abstraction visible in the image of an edifice, a design, or structure (technê) [τέχνη]. In this way, imagination provides an architectonic linchpin to establish the systematic unity of pure reason, mediate its divisions, and give graphic expression to its wholeness in the figure of the intermediary power of judgment (Urteilskraft).

IV. Conclusion The attempt to trace the transition from Hume’s treatment of imagination to Kant’s sheds considerable light on the relation between these two thinkers and the key divergence of their respective methodologies. For Kant, imagination emerges as the centerpiece in his attempt to reflect upon the unity of human subjectivity, which cannot be rendered “objective” and knowable from a transcendental standpoint, any more than it can from the skeptical vantage point of Hume’s empiricism. From a methodological perspective, Kant’s inquiry into the creativity, enactment and, ultimately, “free play” of imagination is not reserved to any part of his critical philosophy. Indeed, just as a fourth question, “What is man?,” encompasses the three preliminary questions of critical philosophy (“what can I know?”, “what should I do?” and “what may I hope?”) (CPR A805/B833), so does Kant’s account of imagination mark a turning point in his attempt to address human finitude, its basis in the constitution of time, and the forming of a horizon by which reason can map its boundaries and give expression to the “highest ends” of its endeavors. As a further example of his break with Hume, Kant’s account of imagination anticipates the confluence of concerns—both methodologically and thematically—which will form the cornerstone of the subsequent development of philosophy in the nineteenth century and beyond.

Notes 1. Henry E. Allison, Custom and Reason in Hume: A Kantian Reading of the First Book of the Treatise (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 107–8. 2. Gerhard Streminger, “Hume’s Theory of Imagination,” Hume Studies 6/2 (November 1980): 92. 3. Streminger, “Hume’s Theory of Imagination,” 93.

210 Frank Schalow 4. Streminger, “Hume’s Theory of Imagination,” 108. 5. David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, in Ten Great Works of Philosophy, ed. Robert Paul Wolff (New York: Signet, 2002), Section VII, Part I, “The Idea of Necessary Connection.” 6. Wayne Waxman undertakes a post-Kantian reading of Hume to argue that an “associative imagination” induces a belief, a conviction of the mind, as to the “ordering” of perceptions. He thereby suggests that imagination has an active as well as a passive role in coordinating with perception to cultivate an awareness or consciousness of what we experience. Wayne Waxman, Hume’s Psychology of Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 73–7. 7. Allison, Custom and Reason in Hume, 107. 8. Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 187. 9. Allison, Custom and Reason in Hume, 107. 10. Gary Banham, Kant’s Transcendental Imagination (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006), 258. 11. In the “B-version” of the deduction, Kant states: “But the figurative synthesis, if it be directed merely to the original synthetic unity of apperception, that is, to the transcendental unity thought in the categories, must, in order to be distinguished from the merely intellectual combination, be called the transcendental synthesis of imagination” (CPR B151, trans. Smith). 12. Rudolf A. Makkreel, Orientation & Judgment in Hermeneutics (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), 62. 13. Edward G. Ballard, Philosophy at the Crossroads (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973), 94–5. 14. Frank Schalow and Richard Velkley, “Introduction: Situating the Problem of Language in Kant’s Thought,” in The Linguistic Dimension of Kant’s Thought: Historical and Critical Essays, ed. Frank Schalow and Richard Velkely (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2014), 9–26. 15. Bernard Freydberg, “Function of Imagination in Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” in Imagination in Kant’s Critical Philosophy, ed. Michael Thompson (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2013), 218–19; Frank Schalow, “Kant, Heidegger, the Performative Character of Language in the First Critique,” Epoché 8/1 (2003): 175–7. 16. Freydberg, “Function of Imagination in Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” 218–19. 17. Streminger, “Hume’s Theory of Imagination,” 94. 18. Richard Velkley, “The Inexhaustibility of Art and Conditions of Language: Kant and Heidegger,” in The Linguistic Dimension of Kant’s Thought: Historical and Critical Essays, ed. Frank Schalow and Richard Velkley (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2014), 296. 19. Rudolf A. Makkreel, “Recontextualizing Kant’s Theory of Imagination,” in Imagination in Kant’s Critical Philosophy, ed. Michael Thompson (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2013), 209. 20. Makkreel, “Recontextualizing Kant’s Theory of Imagination,” 219; Frank Schalow, “Kant and the Question of Values,” in Value: Sources and Readings on a Key Concept of the Globalized World, ed. Ivo De Gennaro (Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2012), 140–7.

References Allison, Henry E. Custom and Reason in Hume: A Kantian Reading of the First Book of the Treatise. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Allison, Henry E. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.

Hume and Kant on Imagination 211 Ballard, Edward G. Philosophy at the Crossroads. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973. Banham, Gary. Kant’s Transcendental Imagination. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006. Freydberg, Bernard. “Function of Imagination in Kant’s Moral Philosophy.” In Imagination in Kant’s Critical Philosophy, edited by Michael Thompson, 105–21. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013. Hume, David. “An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding.” In Ten Great Works of Philosophy, edited by Robert Paul Wolff. New York: Signet, 2002. Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965. Makkreel, Rudolf A. Imagination and Interpretation in Kant: The Hermeneutic Import of the Critique of Judgment. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990. Makkreel, Rudolf A. Orientation & Judgment in Hermeneutics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015. Makkreel, Rudolf A. “Recontextualizing Kant’s Theory of Imagination.” In Imagination in Kant’s Critical Philosophy, edited by Michael Thompson, 205–20. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013. Schalow, Frank. “Kant, Heidegger, the Performative Character of Language in the First Critique.” Epoché 8 (2003): 165–80. Schalow, Frank. “Kant and the Question of Values.” In Value: Sources and Readings on a Key Concept of the Globalized World, edited by Ivo De Gennaro, 131–47. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2012. Schalow, Frank. “Reinscribing the Logos of Transcendental Logic: Revisiting Kant’s Highest Principle of Synthetic Judgments.” Existentia 19 (2009): 195–205. Schalow, Frank. “The Third Critique and a New Nomenclature of Difference.” Epoché 4 (1996): 71–94. Schalow, Frank and Richard Velkley. “Introduction: Situating the Problem of Language in Kant’s Thought.” In The Linguistic Dimension of Kant’s Thought: Historical and Critical Essays, edited by Frank Schalow and Richard Velkely, 3–26. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2014. Streminger, Gerhard. “Hume’s Theory of Imagination.” Hume Studies 6 (1980): 91–118. Velkley, Richard. “The Inexhaustibility of Art and Conditions of Language: Kant and Heidegger.” In The Linguistic Dimension of Kant’s Thought: Historical and Critical Essays, edited by Frank Schalow and Richard Velkley, 288–309. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2014. Waxman, Wayne. Hume’s Psychology of Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

12 Hume and Kant on Space, Divisibility, and Antinomical Conflict Bryan Hall

Manfred Kuehn argues that Hume diagnoses certain conflicts within the mind that anticipate Kant’s Antinomies of Pure Reason in the Critique of Pure Reason (Critique).1 Although Kuehn believes that both Hume and Kant would agree that these conflicts are inevitable since they derive from the nature of the mind itself, they would disagree as to the possible scope of these conflicts. Kant limits these conflicts to principles of pure reason whereas Hume allows for other principles (e.g., of sense, understanding, and imagination) to come into inevitable conflict as well. I will argue that if we adopt Hume’s broader conception of “antinomy” and endorse a Humean objection to Kant’s Second Antinomy, a new conflict arises for Kant, one that his philosophical system seems ill-equipped to resolve. Although others have argued that Hume’s theory of sensible, extensionless indivisibles from A Treatise of Human Nature (Treatise) offers a neglected alternative to the antithesis of the Second Antinomy from the perspective of pure reason, I will go a step further in claiming this is an alternative that Kant is hard pressed to dismiss by his own lights.2 From Kant’s perspective, a sensible, extensionless indivisible would be an example of a representation that has intensive without extensive magnitude. Although the Transcendental Aesthetic might seem to preclude this possibility for appearances in outer sense, it would seem that Kant cannot reject it within the context of the Second Antinomy without begging the question. According to Kant, the mathematical Antinomies provide an indirect argument for transcendental idealism and so cannot presuppose the conclusions of the Transcendental Aesthetic.3 Kant furthermore embraces the reality of representations that have only intensive (but not extensive) magnitude in the Anticipations of Perception. Precluding these from being appearances in outer sense again seems to presuppose transcendental idealism (i.e., that with regard to their form, all appearances have extensive magnitude). If the antithesis of Kant’s Second Antinomy presupposes transcendental idealism (in order to avoid Hume’s alternative), then the Second Antinomy is no longer simply a conflict between principles of pure reason, but rather a conflict between a principle supported by pure reason (the thesis position) and a principle supported by Kant’s philosophical system (the antithesis

Space, Divisibility, and Antinomical Conflict 213 position). Although this could no longer qualify as a Kantian antinomy, it could still qualify as a Humean one. As Kuehn argues, furthermore, Hume’s own antinomies ultimately drive him to Pyrrhonic skepticism.4 This is a skepticism that the Critique goes to great lengths to avoid. Unfortunately, if transcendental idealism must be presupposed to generate the conflict in the Second Antinomy, it cannot be used to resolve it which leaves reason in conflict with itself. For Hume, such a conflict would be grounds for skepticism, a skepticism for which Kant can now offer no remedy. This chapter is broken into four sections. The first section examines Kuehn’s account of how Hume anticipates Kant’s conception of “antinomy” and offers a detailed description of the latter concept. The second section reconstructs the antithesis to the Second Antinomy and Kant’s resolution of the conflict. The third section discusses Hume’s theory of sensible, extensionless indivisibles in the Treatise and how they create a neglected alternative for the antithesis of the Second Antinomy. The final section argues that Kant can avoid Hume’s alternative without assuming transcendental idealism. If Kant does not need to assume transcendental idealism to generate the conflict in the Second Antinomy, he can use transcendental idealism to resolve it and so offer an alternative to Hume’s Pyrrhonic skepticism.

I. Hume’s “Operations” and Kant’s “Antinomies” In the conclusions to Book I of the Treatise, Hume speaks of “operations” of the human mind that are “directly contrary” to one another but are nonetheless “equally natural and necessary.”5 For example, when we reason from effects to their causes we conclude that our sensible ideas are effects of causes for which we have no proper idea and have no continued and independent existence from our mind.6 At the same time, however, we are convinced by our senses of the continued and independent existence of external objects. Our ideas of these objects, however, are wholly sensible and mind-dependent. Both of these operations (of reason and the senses), according to Hume, are rooted in the imagination, and so is the vivacity (liveliness) of our ideas.7 Put more simply, Kuehn notes that, for Hume, we are compelled by the mind to believe that “we see external objects” while believing that “we cannot see external objects” (since we only see their representations).8 This conflict cannot be resolved by the mind itself since the mind (specifically the imagination) grounds the necessity of both claims by serving as the common ground of sense and imagination. While the senses offer evidence that we do see these objects, reason tells us that we only ever see representations (sensible ideas). According to Kuehn, Hume’s “operations” are central to his own philosophical project insofar as they motivate his skepticism. Although Hume takes himself to have given a naturalistic theory of the human mind, one that is supported by science and inquiry, his examinations have also led him to fundamentally distrust human judgment.9 If we cannot trust our judgment

214 Bryan Hall then we must suspend it (Pyrrhonism). Put differently, insofar as Hume’s philosophical system is really a naturalistic description of the human mind, and the system is in conflict with itself, the mind cannot be trusted from an epistemic standpoint. Although we cannot fail to believe (given the liveliness of certain ideas), we are condemned not to know. In addition to the role that Hume’s “operations” play within his own system, Kuehn claims they also anticipate Kant’s “antinomies.” Kuehn notes three central features of a Kantian antinomy: (1) involves an inevitable contradiction, (2) the inevitable contradiction is symptomatic of a more fundamental contradiction between principles of the mind, and (3) the principles are purely rational.10 Hume’s operations seem to meet conditions (1) and (2). With regard to (1), we cannot accept both that “we see external objects” and that “we cannot see external objects,” though we must accept one of these claims. With regard to (2), Hume cites the principles (both of reason and sense) that lead us to accept these claims and roots both in the imagination (which exposes its self-contradictory nature). The principles are not, however, purely rational and Kuehn admits that if one limits oneself to a conflict between rational principles, there can be no such thing as an “antinomy” in Hume. If one wants to include the kinds of conflicts that Hume has in mind, the scope of “antinomy” must be expanded to include other principles of the mind (e.g., sense, imagination, and understanding).11 Hume’s antinomies are essentially conflicts that the mind has with itself. Although such a conception of “antinomy” would be too expansive for Kant, as I will argue next, he finds himself engaged in a broader form of intellectual conflict occasioned by the counterexample Hume would offer to the Second Antinomy. Before discussing the latter, however, I would like to examine in greater detail Kant’s conception of “antinomy” in general. Doing so will, I believe, help us to better understand the features that Kuehn mentions and ultimately bring into stark relief the depth of Hume’s objections.12 An antinomy for Kant is a “contradiction in the laws of pure reason.”13 Specifically, the antinomies illustrate the conflict that reason has with itself when it tries to complete the series of conditions for something conditioned (whether events in time or substances in space). Although the antinomies do not explicitly take the form of hypothetical syllogisms, the form of reasoning underlies all of them: (1) if a conditioned cognition is given, then the whole series of conditions for it is also given; (2) objects of experience are given as conditioned cognitions; and (3) therefore, the whole series of conditions for them is also given.14 If “given” is interpreted as being the logical maxim that reason is given the task to seek out the unconditioned condition for any conditioned cognition, then there is nothing wrong with the argument. However, the antinomies view the “given” in the conclusion in light of the illegitimate principle that for any conditioned cognition the unconditioned condition is given as something that reason grasps. This equivocation transforms the categories into transcendental ideas understood, in this context,

Space, Divisibility, and Antinomical Conflict 215 as “cosmological ideas” or “world-concepts.”15 They are cosmological ideas since reason is positing the unconditioned (that which assumes no other antecedent condition) that completes the series of conditions within the world. Kant constructs an antinomy for each set of categories. The First Antinomy has to do with the whether the world is finite or infinite in space and time (quantity). The Second Antinomy concerns whether substance is ultimately simple or composite (quality). The Third Antinomy has to do with whether freedom exists or if all causation is in accordance with natural law (relation). The Fourth Antinomy concerns whether or not an absolutely necessary being exists (modality). In order to illustrate the conflict that reason has with itself when it comes to each of these cosmological ideas, Kant constructs a seemingly sound thesis argument (e.g., composite substances have a finite number of parts) as well as a seemingly sound antithesis argument (composite substances have an infinite number of parts). Whereas the thesis argument assumes the conclusion of the antithesis and derives a contradiction (by reductio ad absurdum or indirect proof), the antithesis argument does the same though by assuming the conclusion of the thesis. In either case, however, reason generates a cosmological idea that is incongruent with what the understanding deems to be possible.16 These seemingly contradictory positions will be equally justified from the perspective of reason, which leaves reason in conflict with itself.17 Since reason is the sole source of support for each of the positions, the conflict that reason has with itself is intractable. Kant does not, however, characterize all of the antinomical conflicts in the same way. He calls the first two antinomies mathematical and the last two antinomies dynamical.18 Kant argues that if one accepts transcendental idealism, then though both the thesis and the antithesis of the First and Second Antinomies will be false (mathematical), there is a way in which both the thesis and antithesis of the Third and Fourth Antinomies can be true (dynamical). The main reason why is that in the mathematical antinomies, both thesis and antithesis are operating within the same domain (the world of experience), but rely on the common assumption of transcendental realism (i.e., that the world of experience and the objects within it are things-in-themselves), which when rejected, renders both positions false. In the dynamical antinomies, however, the thesis arguments posit objects that transcend the world of experience while the antithesis arguments operate squarely within it. If one accepts the transcendental idealist distinction between the world as it appears and as it is in itself (an assumption that the transcendental realist does not accept), both the thesis and the antithesis can be true. Consequently, transcendental idealism offers us an escape, not open to transcendental realism, from all four antinomical conflicts, though the escape offered in the dynamical antinomies will be different from the one offered in the mathematical antinomies. When it comes to the mathematical antinomies in particular, Kant argues that they provide an indirect proof for transcendental idealism.19 As

216 Bryan Hall mentioned earlier, since both thesis and antithesis of the mathematical antinomies stay within the world of experience, they cannot both be true. Either reason is left in conflict with itself or both the conclusions of the thesis and the antithesis are false. Since transcendental idealism allows one to avoid the conflict that reason naturally has with itself in the mathematical antinomies, one can also view the latter as offering a proof for transcendental idealism independent of his arguments in the Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic. Although Kant puts the proof in terms of the First Antinomy, what he says would work equally well for the Second Antinomy: (1) [Assume for reductio] Transcendental realism is true. (2) If transcendental realism is true, then composite substances consist either of a finite number or an infinite number of parts. (3) It is not the case that composite substances consist either of a finite number or an infinite number of parts (established by the thesis and antithesis arguments). (4) From (2) and (3), transcendental realism is false (modus tollens). (5) From (1) and (4), contradiction. (6) From (1)—(5), transcendental realism is false—i.e., transcendental idealism is true (indirect proof).20 The key to the proof comes in premise three. If the thesis argument is sound, then composite substances are only finitely divisible and ultimately consist of simple parts. If the antithesis argument is sound, then composite substances are not only infinitely divisible but consist of an infinite number of parts. Transcendental realism provides no reason to prefer one argument to the other and so they seem to undermine one another taking transcendental realism along with them. By Kant’s lights, transcendental idealism provides the only way out of this conflict, since it allows one to say that composite substances are infinitely divisible (contra the thesis) without committing oneself to an infinity of parts (contra the antithesis). According to transcendental idealism, we are not entitled to say that the substance has an infinite number of parts since the parts of the appearance are “given and determined only through the subdivision” where this subdivision is itself an act of the understanding.21 This indirect proof only works if both the thesis and the antithesis arguments rely solely on transcendental realism. If transcendental idealism is surreptitiously introduced into either argument, then transcendental idealism cannot be used to resolve the conflict that reason has with itself since it would, at least in part, generate that conflict. Although commentators have not charged the thesis argument with presupposing transcendental idealism, this is a common complaint about the antithesis argument.22 In order to see this more clearly, the next section will reconstruct the argument for the antithesis position. The third section will go on to explain how this argument can be seen as assuming transcendental idealism.

Space, Divisibility, and Antinomical Conflict 217

II. The Antithesis and Resolution of Kant’s Second Antinomy The antithesis of the Second Antinomy is that no composite substance is made up of simple parts and that simple substances do not exist.23 If no composite substance is made up of simple parts and these substances exist in themselves, then not only would these substances be infinitely divisible, but they would consist of an infinite number of parts. The antithesis of the Second Antinomy starts by assuming the thesis, viz. that composite substances consist of simple parts. If we consider an object in space, such as an apple, every part of that apple is going to occupy a space because anything that occupies space is going to have parts which are external to one another in space. If, as was assumed, the apple is made up of simple parts, then those simple parts will each occupy a space. This is the case because the apple is a composite substance and composition of substances can only happen in space. Anything that occupies space is composite because it has parts that are external to each other. An object (or part of an object) in space is minimally going to have a left and a right hand side which are distinct external parts. For example, imagine three objects: A, B, and C. Objects A and C are separated by B which is adjacent to A on its left and C on its right. Now if B does not have right and left hand sides then A and C would in fact be adjacent. B would not be in space at all if simple! Assuming that an object is made up of simple parts leads to a contradiction. The original assumption would hold that composite substances consist of simple parts that do not have external parts, but now we see that because they are in space these parts must have parts that are external to one another. Therefore, the original assumption that composite substances consist of simple parts must be false. The second part of the antithesis argument tries to show that simple substances do not exist anywhere in the world.24 It begins by inferring from the conclusion of the indirect proof that no composite thing in the world consists of simple parts. Although one can immediately infer from the fact that composite substances do consist of simple parts to the conclusion that nothing exists anywhere except the simple or what is composed of simples in the thesis, one cannot immediately infer from the fact that no composite thing in the world consists of simple parts to the conclusion that simple substances do not exist anywhere in the world in the antithesis. After all, there could be simple substances that are not parts in any composite substance. The second part of the antithesis hinges on the idea that simple substances are not things of which we can have experience. Kant argues in the Axioms of Intuition that every object of experience must be given in empirical intuition and everything given in empirical intuition has extensive magnitude—i.e., consists of parts.25 A simple substance, by definition, does not have an extensive magnitude and so cannot be given in empirical intuition. If it cannot be given in empirical intuition, then it is not an object of experience. The antithesis assumes that the world is just the “sum total of all possible experiences.”26 It follows from this assumption that simple substances are not a part of the

218 Bryan Hall world. Putting together this claim with the conclusion of the first part of the argument, one can finally conclude, “No composite thing in the world consists of simple parts, and nowhere in it does there exist anything simple,” which is the antithesis of the Second Antinomy.27 Kant resolves the Second Antinomy by appealing explicitly to his transcendental idealism. According to the latter, any substance in empirical intuition can be divided to infinity because that substance is an appearance in space (the a priori form of intuition) and space is itself infinitely divisible. As mentioned earlier, in the Axioms of Intuition, all appearances are extensive magnitudes—i.e., they are intuited as aggregates.28 The regress from conditioned (composite substance in empirical intuition) to its conditions (component parts) is infinite.29 Even so, we are not entitled to say that composite substances therefore have an infinite number of parts. Since these substances are appearances, “the parts exist only in the representation of them, hence in the dividing.”30 Whereas both the thesis and antithesis of the Second Antinomy agree that the all of the conditions (parts) of a conditioned thing (composite substance in empirical intuition) are given within the conditioned, the transcendental idealist holds that the conditions are produced through the acts of the understanding by which they are sought. If these composite substances existed in themselves, then the number of constitutive parts would have to be either finite or infinite. If these substances are appearances, as transcendental idealism holds, although the division can go on to infinity, the number of constitutive parts determined through this division never is.31

III. Hume’s Objection to the Antithesis In Book I, Part 2 of the Treatise, Hume argues that there is a limit to the division of our sensible ideas. As he says, “the imagination reaches a minimum, and may raise up to itself an idea, of which it cannot conceive any subdivision.”32 He gives the example of a colored spot viewed at a distance where if we were to move to any further away, the spot would disappear from view. According to Hume, this spot is not distinguishable by the imagination into inferior ideas (considering only the color is still considering the spot if the image is not to be superior) and so is not separable into them. For Hume, sensible ideas like the colored spot are “ideas and images perfectly simple and indivisible.”33 The points he is envisioning are not merely mathematical (since these would be non-entities) nor are they physical (since these would have spatial or external parts). Rather, the points he is considering do not have spatial parts though they are nonetheless real on the basis of their color or solidity (sensible).34 Even though these points do not have parts, they can still be immediately adjacent without collapsing into one another since they are individuated on the basis of their color or solidity. Consider again objects A, B, and C from the previous section. Assume that B is one of these points. For Hume, as long as B has some other sensible quality, it need not have right and left hand sides in order to be distinguished from the objects it

Space, Divisibility, and Antinomical Conflict 219 separates.35 B could lie contiguous with A and C without being penetrated or annihilated by them. Put in Kantian terms, the intensive magnitude of B (e.g., color) is sufficient to distinguish it from A and C even if it lacks any extensive magnitude (as a point). B would be a sensible, extensionless indivisible. Hume is a constructivist about time and space. Whereas the idea of time is copied from our impression of the succession of our perceptions, the idea of space is copied from our impression of colored or tangible points disposed in a certain way. The ideas of space and time, however, are not separate from these objects (the corresponding impressions), but are rather just ways in which the latter exist. As he says: The ideas of space and time are therefore no separate or distinct ideas, but merely those of the manner or order, in which objects exist: Or, in other words, ’tis impossible to conceive either a vacuum and extension without matter, or a time, when there was no succession or change in any real existence.36 Hume’s theory of sensible, extensionless indivisibles (i.e., sensible points) creates a counterexample to the antithesis argument of the Second Antinomy. Hume would likely reject the conditional that if the simple parts of composite substances must each occupy a space and then composite substances ultimately consist of parts that do have external parts. Hume’s sensible points occupy space without filling space (they are extensionless). As already noted, these sensible points need not have right and left hand sides (filling space) to perform the function the antithesis argument seems to assume simples are unable to perform. Occupying space (with intensive magnitude) seems to be sufficient. Kant’s assumption that only extended things can occupy space is, according to Dale Jacquette, “one dogmatic slumber from which Hume’s ‘Academic’ metaphysical skepticism was unable to awaken Kant.”37 Even if Hume’s counterexample were to rouse Kant, he would have difficulty responding to it since (1) Kant affirms the reality of things with intensive magnitude but without extensive magnitude and (2) rejecting the possibility of something occupying space without filling it would seem to require him to beg the question against Hume.38 Kant talks about intensive magnitude specifically in the Anticipations of Perception of the Critique. The B-edition principle claims, “In all appearances the real, which is an object of the sensation, has intensive magnitude, i.e., a degree.”39 In addition to making the intensive magnitude of a sensation the mark of reality in appearance, Kant also claims that such a sensation can exist absent any extensive magnitude.40 Later, in the Paralogisms, Kant uses the distinction between intensive and extensive magnitude when objecting to Mendelssohn’s argument for the immortality of the soul. Kant admits that although a simple soul cannot be gradually destroyed through the loss of spatial parts (extensive magnitude), it could be gradually destroyed though the loss of its conscious reality (intensive magnitude). Kant goes on to make

220 Bryan Hall the general claim that one cannot deny “any other existence” intensive magnitude simply because it lacks extensive magnitude.41 He even gives examples like the “moment of gravity” to illustrate what he might mean.42 At this point, Kant would likely object that it is wrong to focus simply on sensations or Humean sensible ideas (psychological entities) since he is concerned with substances (physical entities) within the context of the Second Antinomy.43 As Jacquette points out, however, the problem with this response is that substances are themselves phenomenal entities for Kant and “as such present themselves to perception within the same subjective psychological limitations which Hume is concerned to emphasize.”44 Even so, phenomenal substances are not simply collections of sensations according to Kant, but are rather collections of appearances. Although sensation is the matter of appearance, space and time are the forms of appearance.45 As mentioned earlier, Kant makes clear in the Axioms of Intuition (which immediately precede the Anticipations of Perception) that “all appearances are, as regards their intuition, extensive magnitudes.”46 Kant’s claim seems to be based on the nature of space as the form of intuition. For Kant, empirical intuition presupposes pure intuition and whatever is true of the latter (e.g., the infinite divisibility of space) is true of the former as well.47 At this point, it may seem as if Kant’s response to Hume (if not the antithesis argument itself!) firmly presupposes the former’s transcendental idealism.48 In short, this view holds that we cannot cognize objects as they might exist in themselves but only insofar as they appear to us spatiotemporally and in accordance with our concepts of them, where not only these concepts but space and time themselves are contributions of the subject to her experience of these objects (e.g., space and time are a priori forms of intuition). Neither the thesis nor the antithesis arguments can assume transcendental idealism, however, if the Second Antinomy is to provide an indirect proof for this position. Prima facie, the antithesis argument does seem to assume transcendental idealism insofar as it takes for granted that substances are nothing but appearances in outer sense, which always possess extensive magnitude given the nature of space as the a priori form of intuition. This is, in turn, what allows Kant to rule out the experience of sensible points in outer sense. If the only way of preserving the apparent validity of the antithesis argument (i.e., avoiding Hume’s counterexample) is by assuming transcendental idealism, then the Second Antinomy as a whole cannot serve as an indirect proof for transcendental idealism. Even if the Kantian were to turn to the First Antinomy for this indirect proof, a more significant problem remains. Transcendental idealism (the purported solution to these conflicts) cannot resolve the conflict that the mind has with itself in the Second Antinomy if the antinomy presupposes transcendental idealism in order to generate the conflict (by underwriting the antithesis argument). Even if it is not reason alone (Kantian antinomy), the mind more generally (Humean antinomy) is still in conflict with itself. Specifically, the Second Antinomy becomes a conflict between a principle supported by pure reason

Space, Divisibility, and Antinomical Conflict 221 (thesis) and one supported by Kant’s philosophical system (antithesis). As mentioned at the outset, this kind of conflict leads Hume to embrace Pyrrhonic skepticism and it is unclear how Kant can avoid such a conclusion if he cannot appeal to transcendental idealism to escape the conflict between thesis and antithesis. Ultimately, much hinges on whether or not the antithesis argument needs to assume transcendental idealism in order to avoid Hume’s counterexample. In the next section, I will argue that there is a valid form of the antithesis argument that does not assume transcendental idealism but still avoids Hume’s counterexample. Focusing just on the Transcendental Aesthetic, I will establish that one need not grant that all Kant’s arguments (that collectively establish transcendental idealism) are sound in order to avoid Hume’s counterexample, but that a subset of these arguments is sufficient to avoid Hume’s criticism. Accepting this subset, however, does not require accepting transcendental idealism and so the Second Antinomy can still perform the function of being an indirect proof for transcendental idealism.

IV. Defending Kant’s Antinomy In the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant presents four “metaphysical” expositions that aim to reveal the nature of space and time. Collectively, the expositions argue that the representations of space and time are singular and immediate a priori representations. The first and second metaphysical expositions go to establish a priority of our representations of space and time, whereas the third and fourth metaphysical expositions of space and time go to establish that space and time are intuitions (singular and immediate) rather than concepts (general and mediate). This all stands in stark contrast to Hume who constructs the representations of space and time a posteriori through arrays of sensible points (space) and the succession of perceptions (time). For Hume, these tangible points or perceptions mediate our representations of space and time. At the end of the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant draws a number of conclusions from these expositions.49 Most importantly, if one accepts his arguments, then space and time do not exist independently of the subject and her cognitive constitution as things-in-themselves (Newton) or relations between them (Leibniz or Hume). To the contrary, space and time are essential cognitive contributions of the subject to her own experience. Not only are they themselves pure intuitions a priori, they also serve as the a priori form of empirical intuition where the content of empirical intuition (sensation) is given a posteriori. This conclusion is central to Kant’s doctrine of transcendental idealism. If space and time are a priori forms of intuition, then subjects can come to know objects only insofar as they appear in space and time and not as they might be in themselves independently of the subject and her cognitive constitution. Hume would most certainly reject the general conclusion of the Transcendental Aesthetic and, in some cases, explicitly challenges the reasoning that

222 Bryan Hall Kant deploys in support of individual metaphysical expositions. For example, in the second metaphysical exposition of space, Kant begins by asserting that one can represent space without representing objects. In conjunction with some other premises (and the conclusion of the first metaphysical exposition of space), Kant concludes that the representation of space is a priori and a necessary condition for the possibility of outer experience. Assuming the truth of his own account, Hume flatly rejects Kant’s opening assertion: If the second part of my system be true, that the idea of space or extension is nothing but the idea of visible or tangible points distributed in a certain order; it follows, that we can form no idea of a vacuum, or space, where there is nothing visible or tangible.50 Even if we were to accept Hume’s response to the second metaphysical exposition, I believe that other metaphysical expositions are sufficient to undermine Hume’s position.51 For Hume, “tis from the disposition of visible and tangible objects we receive the idea of space.”52 What does Hume mean by “disposition” in this context? As I discussed in the previous section, Hume thinks that the sensible points, from which space is constructed, do not penetrate one another even though they do not have external parts. He talks about these points “approaching” one another and lying “contiguous” with one another while still being distinct from one another though their sensible features (e.g., different colors).53 If the relationships of “approach” and “contiguity” are what Hume means when he talks about the “disposition” of the points from which our idea of space is copied, then his view is self-stultifying since it assumes that these points are already spatially related. This is the crux of Kant’s argument against the constructivist view in the first metaphysical exposition of space. In order to represent objects (including sensible points) as related in space, the representation of space is assumed—i.e., it “must already be their ground.”54 When representing one sensible point as contiguous with another (i.e., as spatially related), one must assume the representation of space within which the two points could coexist and have this spatial relation. Without the representation of space, one could neither comprehend the relationship “contiguous” nor could one represent these objects as coexistent (time without space seems insufficient to represent two objects at one time). Since the representation of space is a necessary condition for the representation of spatial relations, Kant would conclude that the representation of space cannot be an empirical concept derived from the a posteriori experience of these spatially related points. Not only does Kant think that the representation of spatially related objects assumes the representation of space, but that this representation of space is itself infinitely divisible. In the fourth metaphysical exposition of space, Kant describes space as an “infinite given magnitude” which contains “an infinite set of representations within itself.”55 All the parts of space are given (immediate representation) in one infinite whole of space. This

Space, Divisibility, and Antinomical Conflict 223 whole is infinitely complex since the pure representation of space is both unbounded and infinitely divisible (think here of the space of pure geometry).56 As mentioned earlier, Kant argues elsewhere that what is true of our representation of pure space (infinite divisibility) is likewise true of our representation of empirical space.57 Hume would flatly reject Kant’s claim that space is infinitely divisible. When dividing any of its ideas (including the representation of space), Hume holds that “the imagination reaches a minimum, and may raise up to itself an idea, of which it cannot conceive any subdivision, and which cannot be diminished without a total annihilation.”58 It is important to remember, however, that Hume’s main argument for why the idea of space (or extension) is not infinitely divisible is that the idea terminates in the disposition of the sensible points from which the idea is derived. As he says, “our ideas of them [space and time] are compounded of parts which are indivisible.”59 Once one rejects Hume’s constructivism about space, however, the foundation for his argument against infinite divisibility is removed.60 If we accept the first and fourth metaphysical expositions, we are entitled to claim that the representations of Hume’s sensible points presuppose the representation of space and since the latter representation is infinitely divisible, the former representations must be as well (i.e., they are not really points after all).61 The first and fourth metaphysical expositions of space and time are insufficient to establish transcendental idealism, however, since the latter requires that space and time are a priori intuitions. Kant would insist that, at a minimum, one must grant all four metaphysical expositions of space and time in order to substantiate the conclusions that he draws at the end of the Transcendental Aesthetic. Although strongly suggestive, the first metaphysical exposition does not establish, on its own, the epistemic status of our representations of space and time (a priori rather than a posteriori).62 Even if one grants the first metaphysical exposition, space and time could still be concepts that correspond to features of reality that exist independently of the human mind.63 In order to show that space and time are intuitions, furthermore, Kant must establish that they are both singular and immediate representations. Whereas the fourth metaphysical exposition argues that they are immediate representations, the third metaphysical exposition is required to establish their singularity. If the first and fourth metaphysical expositions are insufficient to establish transcendental idealism, but can preclude the experience of sensible points, it stands to reason that Kant could construct a version of the Second Antinomy’s antithesis argument that does not presuppose transcendental idealism but still avoids Hume’s counterexample. For example, Kant could hold, within the context of the antithesis argument, that Hume’s sensible “points” actually consist of an infinite number of inferior ideas (these ideas understood as things-in-themselves) since the space they presuppose is itself infinitely divisible.64 Put in terms of the second half of the antithesis’ argument, given the nature of the space, we simply cannot experience the points

224 Bryan Hall that Hume thinks we can experience. Even so, these sensible ideas would not be Kantian appearances (since there would be an infinite number of parts) and the space they presuppose need not be an a priori intuition.65 For example, the representation of space could be an immediate but general representation given a posteriori (though non-constructively). Insofar as this version of the antithesis argument does not rely on the second or third metaphysical expositions of space (or by extension time), Kant can avoid Hume’s counterexample to the antithesis of the Second Antinomy without invoking transcendental idealism. This would restore the Second Antinomy to a conflict between principles of pure reason (Kantian antinomy) rather than a conflict between a principle supported by pure reason and one supported by Kant’s philosophical system (Humean antinomy). If the Second Antinomy does not presuppose transcendental idealism in order to generate the conflict between the thesis and antithesis positions, furthermore, then it can still be used as an indirect argument for transcendental idealism. Although these kinds of conflicts, according to Kuehn, drove Hume to embrace Pyrrhonic skepticism, Kant would again be in a position to offer transcendental idealism as skepticism’s proper remedy.

Notes 1. Manfred Kuehn, “Hume’s Antinomies,” Hume Studies 16/1 (1983): 25–45. 2. See Dale Jacquette,“Kant’s Second Antinomy and Hume’s Theory of Extensionless Indivisibles,” Kant-Studien 84/1 (1993): 38–50. 3. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), A506–7/B534–5. Abbreviated CPR. Whereas I use the A/B edition notion for citations to CPR, all other Kant citations refer to the Akademie edition. 4. Kuehn, “Hume’s Antinomies,” 38. 5. T 1.4.7 SBN 266. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). Abbreviated T. 6. T 1.4.4 SBN 227–8. 7. T 1.4.7 SBN 265. 8. Kuehn, “Hume’s Antinomies,” 33. 9. Kuehn, “Hume’s Antinomies,” 38–9. 10. Kuehn, “Hume’s Antinomies,” 27. 11. Kuehn, “Hume’s Antinomies,” 27–8. 12. When describing Kant’s position in the antinomies (sections one and two) and Transcendental Aesthetic (section four), I have relied on my previously published work: The Arguments of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010), especially Chapters 2 and 16. 13. CPR A407/B434. 14. CPR A498–500/B526–8. There are three kinds of syllogism corresponding to the three judgments of relation: categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive. In the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant associates these syllogistic forms with different branches of metaphysics and shows how they can be used to produce different kinds of fallacious inferences. 15. CPR A408/B434–5. 16. CPR A486/B514.

Space, Divisibility, and Antinomical Conflict 225 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37.

CPR A406–7/B433–4. CPR A528–32/B556–60. CPR A506–7/B534–5. One might wonder if empirical idealism is another option. In the A edition Paralogisms, however, Kant claims that transcendental realism and empirical idealism are two aspects of the same position much as transcendental idealism and empirical realism are two aspects of the contrary position. See CPR A369–72. CPR A526/B554. This is not to say that the thesis argument does not face its own challenges. For example, Paul Guyer claims the argument rests on some problematic assumptions, viz. that ideas of reason can be verified in sensibility and that the results of thought experiments necessarily represent actual states of affairs. See Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 410. Whereas Guyer accuses the argument of having hidden premises, Brigitte Falkenburg criticizes the argument for equivocating between two different senses of “simple,” viz. a mereological atom vs. a logical individual. See Brigitte Falkenburg, Kants Kosmologie: Die wissenschaftliche Revolution der Naturphilosophie im 18. Jahrjundert (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 2000), 232. For responses to these criticisms, see Oscar Schmiege, “What Is Kant’s Second Antinomy about,” Kant-Studien 16/2 (2006): 288–91. See CPR A435–43/B463–71. Jill Buroker notes that this provides an independent line of argument against the claim, already attacked in the Paralogisms, that the soul is a simple substance. See Jill Buroker, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 243. This raises a more general question (one I will not try to answer here) as to whether the Second Antinomy is concerned with substance in general or only substance in space and time. My discussion of the Second Antinomy will rely on the latter (narrower) conception. For more discussion of this issue, see Schmiege, “What Is Kant’s Second Antinomy about,” 276–8; and Michelle Grier, Kant’s Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 194–209. CPR A162/B202. As we will see next, this premise is particularly problematic for those that would claim that the antithesis argument does not assume transcendental idealism. CPR A437/B465. CPR A435/B463. CPR A163/B204. CPR A523–4/B551–2. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, in Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, trans. Gary Hatfield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), P 4: 343. See CPR A505–6/B534–5 and A512–14/B540–2. T 1.2.1 SBN 27. T 1.2.1 SBN 27. T 1.2.4 SBN 40. Here I am applying Hume’s discussion of contiguous red and blue points to the earlier example. As points, they have no extensive magnitude, but they can nonetheless be distinguished (i.e., they do not penetrate or annihilate one another) because of their sensible difference (i.e., color). See T 1.2.4 SBN 41. T 1.2.4 SBN 40. See Jacquette, “Kant’s Second Antinomy,” 49. He does note, however, that it is not surprising that Kant ignored Hume’s views on space and time. Hume’s views on space and time were roundly ignored at the time and very little of

226 Bryan Hall

38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51.

the discussion from the Treatise makes it into the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding with which Kant was familiar. For what there is, see EHU 12.2 SBN 155–60 For a more in depth examination of Hume’s argument against infinite divisibility in the Treatise and how it is different from his argument in the Enquiry, see Vadim Batitsky, “From Inexactness to Certainty: The Change in Hume’s Conception of Geometry,” Journal for the General Philosophy of Science 29 (1998): 1–20. As one might suspect, there are many independent objections to Hume’s theory of sensible, extensionless indivisibles. For example, see Robert Fogelin, “Hume and Berkeley on the Proofs of Infinite Divisibility,” The Philosophical Review 97/1 (1988): 47–69; and James Franklin, “Achievements and Fallacies in Hume’s Account of Infinite Divisibility,” Hume Studies 20/1 (1994): 85–102. This chapter, however, will focus exclusively on how Kant would likely respond to Hume’s counterexample. CPR B207. CPR A166/B208. CPR B414. CPR A168/B210. As noted earlier, there are those that argue the antithesis argument covers not only material substance but immaterial substance (i.e., souls) as well. Focusing on material substance, Kant argues at length against physical monads in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (MFNS 4: 503–5). These monads, if they existed, would have only intensive but not extensive magnitude (MFNS 4: 540) like Hume’s sensible points. Jacquette notes, however, that Kant did not always reject physical monads (e.g., in the Physical Monadology from 1756) and that his conception of a physical monad is importantly different from Hume’s conception of a sensible point in a couple of ways: (1) a physical monad need not be sensible and (2) a sensible point is not only physically indivisible but also spatially indivisible. See Jacquette, “Kant’s Second Antinomy,” 49–50. Jacquette, “Kant’s Second Antinomy,” 45. CPR A20/B34. CPR A162. Emphasis mine. CPR A165/B206. Both P.F. Strawson and Guyer make this charge against the second half of the antithesis argument. See Peter Strawson, The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966), 175; and Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 410. Here I am passing over the transcendental expositions of space and time, which offer an independent line of argument for why space and time are a priori intuitions. They begin by assuming the synthetic a priori character of certain propositions (e.g., of geometry). These are assumptions, however, that Hume would most certainly not grant. Although in the Treatise Hume suggests that geometry is synthetic a posteriori (its claims being contingent and fallible), in the Enquiry he suggests that it is analytic a priori (consisting of relations of ideas). Compare T 1.2.4 SBN 50–1 to EHU 4.1 SBN 25–32. In a similar vein, Fogelin argues that while Hume embraces the demonstrability of geometry in the Enquiry he rejects it in the Treatise. See Fogelin, “Hume and Berkeley,” 56–7. For a detailed account of the differences between Hume’s theory of geometry in the Treatise and the Enquiry, see Batitsky, “From Inexactness to Certainty.” T 1.2.4 SBN 53. Just as Hume’s theory of sensible points faces objections other than the ones that someone like Kant might pose, so too do Kant’s metaphysical expositions face objections other than the ones that someone like Hume might pose. For an overview of some of these objections and how they might be avoided, see Henry Alison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense

Space, Divisibility, and Antinomical Conflict 227

52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57.

58. 59. 60.

61.

62.

63. 64.

(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), Chapter 5. This chapter, however, focuses exclusively on how Hume and Kant would grapple with these issues. T 1.2.3 SBN 35. T 1.2.4 SBN 41. CPR A23/B38. CPR B39–40. Jacquette notes that Kant would likely reject Hume’s theory of sensible, extensionless indivisibles since the latter are inconsistent with Euclidean geometry. See Jacquette, “Kant’s Second Antinomy,” 50. For evidence of this, see CPR A165–6/ B206–7. There remains some question, however, as to how Kant’s conception of infinite divisibility squares with the mathematics of his day. For more on this, see Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 70–2. One might worry that Kant cannot claim that we have a pure representation of space if he cannot prove that it is an a priori representation. Even if one does not grant the second metaphysical exposition of space for Humean reasons, I think one can still view the fourth metaphysical exposition as focusing on the representation of space we are left with at the end of the first metaphysical exposition. T 1.2.1 SBN 27. T 1.2.3 SBN 38. See also T 1.2.4 SBN 44–5. Although Batitsky acknowledges that perceptual minima lie at the foundation of Hume’s argument against infinite divisibility in the Treatise, he also makes a case for how Hume’s (ultimately unsuccessful) argument goes well beyond this foundation. See Batitsky, “From Inexactness to Certainty,” 3–11. Hume would likely respond by invoking his dictum that “whatever appears impossible and contradictory . . . must really be impossible and contradictory” (T 1.2.2 SBN 29). Since it appears impossible to divide a sensible point, it must really be impossible. Franklin notes that this is an instance of the fallacy that if something is not conceivable by the human mind then it cannot be. See Franklin, “Achievement and Fallacies in Hume’s Account,” 93. For example, Sebastian Gardner holds that the second metaphysical exposition is necessary to foreclose a possibility left open by the first, viz. (put in Hume’s terms) that the representation of space and the representation of sensible points disposed in a certain way are mutually conditioning. This would show the representation of space is not a priori. See Sebastian Gardner, Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason (London: Routledge, 1999), 76. Since Hume would clearly reject the second metaphysical exposition (as explained earlier), could he embrace this possibility? It seems unlikely. The mutually conditioning account itself is clearly inconsistent with Hume’s own reductive account of the origin of our idea of space (i.e., it just is the order of sensible points). One should also note that Gardner’s view is controversial. For example, Alison argues that the first two metaphysical expositions are two independent arguments for the same conclusion. See Alison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, 100. Here I am following Georges Dicker, Kant’s Theory of Knowledge: An Analytical Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 39. Even if one rejected Kant’s arguments for infinite divisibility, he would still insist that Hume’s sensible points are not unequivocally simple. Even if they are extensively simple, they are not intensively simple. In the Anticipations of Perception, Kant claims that both extensive as well as intensive magnitudes are continuous—i.e., they can always be diminished (CPR A170/B). Just as extensive magnitudes are infinitely divisible, so too are intensive magnitudes capable of “an infinite gradation of ever lesser degrees” (CPR A172/B214). For example, the brightness of a color seems like it would admit of such an infinite gradation.

228 Bryan Hall 65. Kant notes that (notwithstanding his ideational theory) Hume mistook the objects of experience for things-in-themselves. Since Hume views sensible ideas as things-in-themselves, he is incapable of seeing, for example, how there could be any necessary connection (e.g., causation) between them. See the Critique of Practical Reason, CPrR 5: 53. For further discussion, see Alison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, 26–7. Hume himself admits, furthermore, that “everything capable of being infinitely divided contains an infinite number of parts” (T 1.2.2 SBN 29). Although Hume rejects the infinite divisibility of sensible ideas, his description of infinite divisibility makes clear that he views the parts as things-in-themselves. After all, Kant grants that appearances are infinitely divisible without granting that they consist of an infinite number of parts.

References Alison, Henry. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Batitsky, Vadim. “From Inexactness to Certainty: The Change in Hume’s Conception of Geometry.” Journal for the General Philosophy of Science 29 (1998): 1–20. Buroker, Jill. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Dicker, Georges. Kant’s Theory of Knowledge: An Analytical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Falkenburg, Brigitte. Kants Kosmologie: Die wissenschaftliche Revolution der Naturphilosophie im 18. Jahrjundert. Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 2000. Fogelin, Robert. “Hume and Berkeley on the Proofs of Infinite Divisibility.” The Philosophical Review 97 (1988): 47–69. Franklin, James. “Achievements and Fallacies in Hume’s Account of Infinite Divisibility.” Hume Studies 20 (1994): 85–102. Friedman, Michael. Kant and the Exact Sciences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. Gardner, Sebastian. Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason. London: Routledge, 1999. Grier, Michelle. Kant’s Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Hall, Bryan. The Arguments of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010. Hume, David. Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Eric Steinberg. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993. Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Jacquette, Dale. “Kant’s Second Antinomy and Hume’s Theory of Extensionless Indivisibles.” Kant-Studien 84 (1993): 38–50. Kant, Immanuel. “Critique of Practical Reason.” In Practical Philosophy, edited and translated by Mary Gregor, 133–271. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Kant, Immanuel. “Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science.” In Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, edited by Henry Allison and Peter Heath and translated by Michael Friedman, 171–270. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Space, Divisibility, and Antinomical Conflict 229 Kant, Immanuel. “Physical Monadology.” In Theoretical Philosophy 1755–1770, edited and translated by David Walford and Ralf Meerbote, 47–66. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Kant, Immanuel. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. In Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, edited by Henry Allison and Peter Heath and translated by Gary Hatfield, 29–169. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Kuehn, Manfred. “Hume’s Antinomies.” Hume Studies 16 (1983): 25–45. Schmiege, Oscar. “What Is Kant’s Second Antinomy about.” Kant-Studien 16 (2006): 288–91. Strawson, Peter. The Bounds of Sense. London: Methuen, 1966.

13 Hume and Kant on Identity and Substance Mark Pickering

Kant says that Hume woke him from his “dogmatic slumber” (P 4:260). Kant agrees with Hume that reason cannot give us the concept of cause and effect (P 4:310). Kant’s argument for the apriority of the concept of and effect in his Second Analogy is frequently characterized as Kant’s response to Hume.1 However, Hume’s skepticism went much further than just the concept of cause and effect. As Kant recognized, reason also does not give us the concept of subsistence (P 4:310). Few scholars2 have asked whether Hume’s skepticism about the concepts of identity and substance is adequately answered by Kant’s argument in the First Analogy (CPR A182–189/B224–232). In this chapter, I will argue that since Kant begs two questions against Hume, the argument of the First Analogy would be unacceptable to Hume. The question of whether or not Hume’s skepticism about the concepts of identity and substance is an interesting one because Hume and Kant both agree with regard to various claims they make when attempting to establish that we know or do not know that there is substance. Both philosophers affirm that we perceive a succession of impressions or appearances (T 1.2.3.6 SBN 34; CPR A182/B225) and that this succession of impressions or appearances is distinct from the states of objects (T 1.4.2.14 SBN 193; CPR A182/B225).3 Further, both affirm that time itself cannot be perceived (T 1.2.3.7 SBN 35; CPR B225, A186/B226). Yet the two philosophers reached contrary conclusions. Hume’s conclusion in the Treatise is that neither the senses nor reason give us adequate reason to believe in persisting objects (T 1.4.2.46 SBN 211). Kant’s conclusion in the First Analogy is that we have experience of persisting, external objects (CPR A188/B231). How is this possible? These disagreements stem from two more fundamental disagreements. The first regards the nature of experience. While Kant uses the term to denote a “systematic unity of perceptions” (CPR A183/B226), Hume gives no explicit account of “experience” as Kant uses the term. Hume uses “experience” to denote the daily consciousness of perceptions that we have (T 1.4.2.42 SBN 208; EHU 153). Since Kant’s argument presupposes a thick concept of experience that Hume does not, Hume would never have accepted Kant’s argument.

Hume and Kant on Identity and Substance 231 The second disagreement regards the nature of time. While Kant holds that time is an a priori form of sensible intuition (CPR A34/B50), Hume holds time to be derived from the succession of our impressions (T 1.2.3.6 SBN 34). Since Kant’s argument presupposes that time cannot be empirically derived, Hume would have rejected Kant’s argument. I will first outline Hume’s argument in the Treatise that we do not have the idea of identity or the idea of substance. Second, I will consider Kantian objections and Humean responses. Third, I will outline Kant’s argument in the First Analogy that there must be substance. Fourth, I will consider Humean rejoinders to Kant’s argument.

I. Hume’s Argument in the Treatise Hume argues that having a succession of impressions does not entitle us to the idea of identity or the idea of substance. In order to understand his arguments, it is necessary to understand the fundamentals of Hume’s concept empiricism and his theory of perception. According to Hume, all true statements are true in virtue of either relations of ideas (a priori) or matters of fact (a posteriori) (EHU 20). Additionally, Hume holds that all ideas have their origin and their justification in impressions (T 1.1.1.1 SBN 1; EHU 13). Hume argues that the ideas of identity and substance are not ideas that come from the senses. Hume argues that the idea of identity must come from either a single object or multiple objects. This is because any idea can only be justified by being derived from either one impression or a series of impressions. Neither can justify the idea of identity. Hume says, “The view of any one object is not sufficient to convey the idea of identity” (T 1.4.2.26 SBN 200). It is meaningless to say that a thing is identical with itself. Then Hume says, “On the other hand, a multiplicity of objects can never convey this idea, however resembling they may be suppos’d” (T 1.4.2.27 SBN 200). If we are talking about a multiplicity of objects, then they are different and not the same. “The mind always pronounces the one not to be the other,” because, if it did not, then we would not be perceiving multiple objects in the first place (T 1.4.2.27 SBN 200). Since there are no other alternatives, we cannot get the idea of identity from the senses (T 1.4.2.28 SBN 200). The supposed idea of identity refers to a multitude of non-identical impressions that justify concluding that an object has changed over time. Thus, the object at one time would, in some sense, be identical with an earlier object (T 1.4.2.29–30 SBN 200–201). Objects do seem to endure through time (T 1.4.2.31 SBN 201). This is due however not to the impressions that we have but rather to us taking similar ideas to be of an identical thing. Hume says the following about similar ideas that we take to be one: “The mind readily passes from one to the other, and perceives not the change without a strict attention, of which, generally speaking, ’tis wholly incapable”

232 Mark Pickering (T 1.4.2.32 SBN 202). It is the imagination that produces the unchanging object: A succession of related objects places the mind in this disposition, and is consider’d with the same smooth and uninterrupted progress of the imagination, as attends the view of the same invariable object. . . . The passage betwixt related ideas is, therefore, so smooth and easy, that it produces little alteration on the mind, and seems like the continuation of the same action . . . ’tis for this reason we attribute sameness to every succession of related objects. The thought slides along the succession with equal facility, as if it consider’d only one object; and therefore confounds succession with identity. (T 1.4.2.34 SBN 203, emphasis added) It is the “smooth and uninterrupted progress of the imagination” which misleads us into thinking that a “succession of ideas” is regarding one object (T 1.4.2.29 SBN 200). Hume says, “The constancy of our perceptions makes us ascribe to them a perfect numerical identity” (T 1.4.2.31 SBN 201) and that the constancy of our perceptions makes us “mistake one idea for another” (T 1.4.2.32 SBN 202). Hume summarizes his argument in the following passage: ’Tis a false opinion that any of our objects, or perceptions, are identically the same after an interruption; and consequently the opinion of their identity can never arise from reason, but must arise from the imagination. The imagination is seduc’d into such an opinion only by means of the resemblance of certain perceptions . . . the fiction of a continu’d existence; since that fiction, as well as the identity, is really false, as is acknowledg’d by all philosophers . . . (T 1.4.2.43 SBN 209) Another mistake is taking one action of the mind (as opposed to an idea) as being identical to another action of the mind when it is not identical. We mistake the action of the mind in perceiving a succession of objects that resemble one another with the action of the mind in perceiving a single object (T 1.4.2.35 SBN 204, n39). As Hume says, “An easy transition or passage of the imagination, along the ideas of these different and interrupted perceptions, is almost the same disposition of mind with that in which we consider one constant and uninterrupted perception. ’Tis therefore very natural for us to mistake the one [disposition of the mind] for the other [disposition of the mind]” (T 1.4.2.35 SBN 204, emphasis added). Talk of acts of perceiving as resembling one another on top of talk of things being perceived resembling each other seems redundant. There can be no ideas without acts of perceiving. What matters is that impressions resemble one another, not that acts of perceiving resemble one another. Cannot acts of perceiving resemble one another even when different impressions

Hume and Kant on Identity and Substance 233 are the content or object of the acts of perceiving? Hume has no answer. It appears to be a distinction without a difference. Perhaps Hume drew the distinction in order to emphasize that his focus was not so much on the content of mental acts as the mental acts themselves. Yet he indicates that either would have done for his fundamental purpose (T 1.4.2.35 SBN 204, n39). In addition to denying that we have the idea of identity, Hume denies that we have the idea of substance. He considers the following definition of substance: “Something which may exist by itself” (T 1.4.5.5 SBN 233, emphasis removed). He then argues that if we accept this definition of substance, all of our perceptions are substances (T 1.4.5.5 SBN 233). Since this is clearly an absurd result, he rejects the definition. Hume argues that we cannot perceive a substance because an impression cannot resemble a substance. “For how can an impression represent a substance, otherwise than by resembling it? And how can an impression resemble a substance, since, according to this philosophy, it is not a substance, and has none of the peculiar qualities or characteristics of a substance?” (T 1.4.5.6 SBN 234). While these are phrased as questions, the following argument makes it clear how Hume would answer those two questions: (1) We have no perfect idea of anything but of a perception. (2) A substance is entirely different from a perception. (3) We have, therefore, no idea of a substance. (T 1.4.5.6 SBN 234) Therefore, our idea of substance does not come from sense. If our belief in substance does not come from our impressions, then it must come from somewhere else. Hume argues that it comes from the imagination. We remember perceptions that resemble each other despite their being interrupted. This resemblance makes us identify them with each other by positing a continuing existence of a substance (T 1.4.2.42 SBN 208). As Hume says, We have a propensity to feign the continu’d existence of all sensible objects; and as this propensity arises from some lively impressions of the memory, it bestows a vivacity on that fiction; or in other words, makes us believe the continu’d existence of body. (T 1.4.2.42 SBN 208) It is our memory and our imagination that are the source of our belief in substance. In other words, we have no idea of substance.

II. Kantian Objections and Humean Responses Though Kant does not respond directly to Hume’s argument, we can see from some of Kant’s related arguments how Kant could respond. Kant would object that we cannot be aware of a mere succession of intuitions. This is because we cannot be aware of any intuitions without

234 Mark Pickering consciousness (CPR B131–132).4 Further, Kant would argue that we cannot have consciousness without synthesizing intuitions (CPR B133). We cannot synthesize intuitions without concepts (CPR B751). We can only synthesize intuitions under the concept of an object (CPR B137), which entails synthesizing intuitions under twelve particular concepts (CPR A80/B106). In other words, Kant would argue that we could not even be aware of a series of intuitions unless they referred to an object.5 Kant makes another argument against the possibility of our perceiving mere intuitions. Kant argues that representations count as mine only if the thought “I think” can accompany them (CPR B131). If that thought cannot accompany a representation, it means that something has been represented that cannot be thought. This would mean either that the representation is impossible for anyone or that the representation is impossible for me (CPR B131–132). Otherwise, Kant says, “I would have a self that was as manysided as I have representations” (CPR B134). Kant seems to be saying that if the thought “I think” could not accompany my representations, I could not make a distinction between myself and my representations. Then I would have no reason to believe that I am different from my representations.6 Kant argues that without synthesis according to a priori concepts, a crowd of intuitions would fill our souls, we would have no cognition of objects, and we would not be able to arrive at universal and necessary laws (CPR A111). Further, we would have intuition without thought, which would be “for us as good as nothing at all” (CPR A111) and “less than a dream” (CPR A112).7 Kant says, “All representations have a necessary relation to a possible empirical consciousness: because if they did not have this, it would be completely impossible for us to be conscious of them” (CPR A117, note). For this reason, “the synthetic proposition that all different empirical consciousness must be combined in a single self-consciousness is simply the first and synthetic fundamental proposition of our thinking in general” (CPR A117, note). For these reasons, Kant would object that a mere succession of intuitions would quite simply not be possible for us. Three responses are open to Hume. First, Hume could respond that all impressions of which we are conscious must only apparently be of an object. This view would be based on introspective psychology: one cannot think of any impressions that are not apparently of an object. For Hume, our impressions of objects are only illusory. We actually have no impressions of objects, but only impressions that we mistakenly take to be of objects. However, while Hume says that we have impressions that we mistake for objects, Hume does not say that all impressions of which we are aware are necessarily those of objects. And it is obvious that some of our impressions are not even apparently of objects. Perhaps I feel a tingling sensation that does not apparently refer to any object. A better response from Hume would be that Kant is begging a variety of questions in the transcendental deduction of the categories. For example,

Hume and Kant on Identity and Substance 235 Hume could deny that consciousness requires synthesis. Hume says throughout the Treatise that we are conscious of this or not conscious of that, but he never says what consciousness is.8 But it seems likely that Hume would say that we passively receive impressions without needing to perform an act of synthesis. Why do we have to pick them out and stick them together in order to be aware of them? However, Hume does hold that the mind is a collection of perceptions that have certain relations to one another. “What we call a mind, is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations, and suppos’d, tho’ falsly, to be endow’d with a perfect simplicity and identity” (T 1.4.2.39 SBN 207). And he describes these relations as being the result of attractive forces between ideas analogous to gravity (T 1.1.4.1 SBN 10). These relations are the result of synthesis, but the synthesis Hume has in mind is mere association and a matter of descriptive psychology.9 The synthesis Kant has in mind is not a matter of mere association or descriptive psychology. Instead, the Kant argues that synthesis of a certain kind is a condition of the possibility of cognition in general, be it of humans or of non-humans (CPR Bxv-xx).10 So Hume should object not to the claim that synthesis is required for consciousness but rather to the claim that synthesis under particular concepts is required for consciousness. It seems likely that Hume would have held that consciousness need be nothing other than a succession of impressions that bear certain relations to each other such as contiguity. This objection may be phrased in another way: we have no reason to believe that we have experience of the kind that Kant says we have. Third, Hume could argue that Kant’s argument against him is too strong. If intuitions without consciousness are nothing to us and are less than a dream, then it seems that we should not have illusions, hallucinations, or dreams.11 Clearly, we do have these pseudo-experiences, so they are not nothing to us. A dream cannot be less than a dream. So Hume could argue that Kant must be wrong in saying that intuitions without consciousness are nothing to us or less than a dream. As we saw in the previous section, Hume argued that experience could never justify belief in an object’s existence in the first place. For Kant, experience entails making judgments about objects that include judgments as to the temporal states of that object as well as its relation in time to other objects. He takes the two to be inseparable for the reasons Kant gives in his argument in the First Analogy.

III. Kant’s Argument in the First Analogy In the transcendental deduction, Kant argued that experience is not possible without the categories (CPR A93/B126). One of those categories is substance (CPR A80/B106). However, Kant does not argue there that any particular category is necessary for experience. Kant argues in three places that there must be substance: in the First Analogy (CPR A182–189/B224–232),

236 Mark Pickering in the Refutation of Idealism (CPR B274–279), and in the General Remark on the System of Principles (CPR B288–294).12 I will focus on the argument of the First Analogy, since its premises are the most similar to views held by Hume. In the following section, I will consider objections on Hume’s behalf that the argument is unsound. I will consider Kant’s argument for the conclusion that substance is required for time determination (CPR A182–184/B224–227). I will not consider Kant’s argument that the quantity of substance cannot increase or decrease (CPR A185–189/B228–232). Kant’s argument is as follows: (1) All appearances are in a single, unchanging, unified time. (CPR B224–225)13 (2) We perceive a succession of appearances. (CPR A182/B225) (3) This succession of appearances is distinct from the states of objects. (CPR A182/B225)14 Therefore, (4) The appearances themselves do not allow us to make determinations regarding the successive or coexistent states of objects unless something remains or endures of which all change and coexistence is a determination. (CPR A182/B225–226) Therefore, (5) Only in the enduring thing [das Beharrliche] are therefore time relations possible; that is, the enduring thing is the substratum of the empirical representation of time itself. (CPR B225, A182–183/B226)15 Therefore, (6) The enduring thing in all appearances is substance. (CPR A183–184/B227) I will argue that Kant’s argument is both invalid and unsound. However, not all criticisms leveled against it are fair. For example, while (1) is sometimes phrased in terms of the permanence of time, it is plain that Kant rejects the notion of time itself having duration. That would require time being nested within another time (CPR A183/B226; A188–189/B231–232).16 Therefore, Guyer’s objection that it is incoherent to refer to the permanence of time is misplaced.17

Hume and Kant on Identity and Substance 237 Graham Bird interprets (1–3) as talking about the succession of everyday experience, not of subjective appearances.18 However, Bird is mistaken. The text is perfectly clear on this matter. Kant says, Our apprehension of the manifold of appearance is always successive, and it is therefore always changing. We can therefore never determine through it alone whether this manifold, as object of experience, is simultaneous or follows another [manifold] if there is not something that underlies them . . . (CPR A182/B225, emphasis added) Here Kant refers to our apprehension of a manifold of appearance, which is necessary but not sufficient for experience. Kant says that we cannot determine whether the manifolds we perceive are simultaneous or successive unless we posit something that underlies them. The main problem with Kant’s argument is that (4) does not follow from (1–3) and (5) does not follow from (1–4). For all Kant has says in (1–3), it still might be the case that appearances allow us to make time determinations without something enduring. This is precisely what empiricists like Hume have in mind when they say we infer time from the succession of our impressions (T 1.2.3.6 SBN 35). It is remarkable that many Kant commentators are not critical of Kant’s inferring (4) and (5).19 Dryer and Melnik make the leap from (1–3) to (4) without blinking.20 Allison does not describe why (4) follows from (1–3) or how (5) follows from (1–4). Allison suggests that he did not think they followed when he says that the object “must somehow embody the unchangeableness or persistence that has already been attributed to time itself.”21 Guyer does not attempt to show how (4) or (5) follow from the preceding premises.22 At first glance, one cannot tell where (4) comes from. Kant does not argue for it, but apparently plucks it out of thin air. What premises must be added in order for (4) to follow from (1–3)? I suggest adding the following premises: (a) We perform time determination. (b) We can perform time determination only by either (i) perceiving time determinations in the appearances themselves or (ii) inferring them based on the states of an object distinct from our appearances. (c) We do not perceive time determinations in the appearances themselves. There is good textual evidence for ascribing assumption (a) to Kant. Kant makes clear throughout the Critique that he begins with the assumption that we have experience (B1).23 Experience entails time determination (CPR A183/B226). Therefore, we perform time determination. Assumptions (b) and (c) are necessary for constructing a valid argument for (4) from (1–3) and (a). I impute (b) and (c) to Kant out of charity. We cannot infer (c) from Kant’s statement that “Time cannot be perceived in itself” (CPR B225, A186/

238 Mark Pickering B226) because perceiving time itself is not self-evidently the same thing as making time determinations. Kant’s assuming (a), (b), and (c) explains why Kant would conclude (4) from (1–3), since (4) follows from (1–3) in conjunction with (a–c). Then (5) does not follow from (1–4). Just because perception of an object is required in order to perform time determinations does not mean that there is such an object or that we perceive it. But if we assume that we do perform time determinations and that we do so by inferring them from the states of an object (as (a-c) say), then (5) follows. While I hope to have shown that Kant’s argument is invalid, Bennett’s criticism that the argument is “unintelligible” goes too far.24 It is easy enough to make sense of it if we add premises (a-c). But validity is of course not enough to make an argument persuasive. How plausible are these premises? Guyer objects that (5) is contradicted by a statement elsewhere in the Critique.25 He objects that that Kant distinguishes between the enduringness of a representation and the enduringness of an object in the B Preface (CPR Bxli, note).26 But even if no representation is enduring, we may still get representations of enduringness by connecting these fleeting representations. Far from showing that Kant’s statement contradicts what Kant says elsewhere, Kant is entirely consistent. Then (c) begs the question of whether we infer time from the succession of appearances. Hume’s view that we perform time determination by perceiving the succession in impressions themselves should not be ruled out without giving a reason for doing so. Kant denies the empiricist view of time in the Transcendental Aesthetic, but his argument is question-begging. Kant states that “Time is . . . not an empirical concept that is derived from an experience. This is because simultaneity or succession would not come in perception if the representation of time did not underlie it a priori” (CPR A30/B46).27 Kant is saying that time cannot be derived from experience if time is not derived from experience. Kant does not even bother to attempt to refute the empiricist view, but instead presupposes that it is false.28 As Lorne Falkenstein says, “The Metaphysical and Transcendental Expositions never address the possibility that space and time might exist independently in their own right or be determinations or relations of independently existing entities.”29 In the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant is only interested in expositing his view that space and time are nothing but forms of intuition. He is not interested in ruling out alternative views of space and time.30 This concludes my discussion of Kant’s argument in the First Analogy. I have argued that it is invalid but that it is not difficult to add premises to make it valid. However, the added premise (c) begs the question of the apriority of time.

IV. Humean Rejoinders A Humean would not find Kant’s argument in the First Analogy to be persuasive because Hume would not accept premises (1), (4), (5), or assumption

Hume and Kant on Identity and Substance 239 (c). I will give textual evidence for my assertion next. First, I will give an overview of Hume’s account of time. This is necessary to show why Hume would have rejected certain of Kant’s premises in that it serves as a counterexample to Kant’s claims. For Hume, time is an abstract idea (T 1.2.3.4–6 SBN 34). Hume says that the idea of time is “deriv’d from the succession of our perceptions of every kind” (T 1.2.3.6 SBN 34).31 His referring to “perceptions of every kind” indicates that the impressions he is thinking of come from any of the five senses. When describing how we get the idea of time, Hume says, “As ’tis from the disposition of visible and tangible objects we receive the idea of space, so from the succession of ideas and impressions we form the idea of time” (T 1.2.3.7 SBN 35). Hume sometimes refers to the succession of objects as giving us the idea of time. For example, he says time “is always discover’d by some perceivable succession of changeable objects” (T 1.2.3.7 SBN 35). The explanation is that Hume uses “object” in two senses in the Treatise. Besides the everyday sense of physical object, Hume also uses the term in the sense of an impression that is the focus of our attention (T 1.4.2.31 SBN 201). That is to say, Hume does not always use “object” to refer to material substance. Sometimes he means an impression. For example, in T 1.2.3.7 SBN 35, the objects Hume refers to are impressions, not material substances. Take the following example of how this reading can be applied to Hume. He argues that we perceive extension, so we must perceive its parts, and those parts are indivisible (T 1.2.3.12–16 SBN 38–39). Hume then states, “The same reasoning will prove, that the indivisible moments of time must be fill’d with some real object or existence, whose succession forms the duration, and makes it be conceivable by the mind” (T 1.2.3.17 SBN 39). Hume stipulates that “duration consists of different parts” and that “these parts are not co-existent” (T 1.2.3.8 SBN 35). Hume says it is not “possible for time alone ever to make its appearance, or be taken notice of by the mind” (T 1.2.3.7 SBN 35). If there is no succession of impressions in someone’s mind, then one will be “insensible of time” (T 1.2.3.7 SBN 35). This happens when one is “in a sound sleep” or when one is “strongly occupy’d with one thought” (T 1.2.3.7 SBN 35). The rate of the succession of ideas determines the appearance of the length of the temporal duration in one’s imagination (T 1.2.3.7 SBN 35). These points raise the question of whether Hume is talking about time or merely our idea of it. How, for example, can we talk of a greater or smaller rate of succession when rate requires time to be understood? It seems that for any succession to be more or less rapid, it must be more or less rapid than some other succession. Also, Hume says, “Wherever we have no successive perceptions, we have no notion of time, even tho’ there be a real succession in the objects” (T 1.2.3.7 SBN 35). If there can be a real succession of objects that we do not perceive, then Hume is plainly distinguishing between one person’s idea of time (derived from the succession of our impressions)

240 Mark Pickering and time apart from one person’s idea of it (derived from the succession of objects themselves). Donald L. M. Baxter argues that, on Hume’s theory, the moments that form a succession in one place coexist with other successions of other moments in a different place.32 In this way, one person’s moment while deep in thought could coexist with another person’s multiple moments while not deep in thought. Baxter explains how an unchanging perception can take up time: Hume must be implicitly allowing for a second way of taking up time in addition to having duration. . . . For Hume there are two ways to take up time: (1) the way a succession does or (2) the way a non-succession does. Only something taking up time the first way, has duration (in Hume’s technical sense of the term).33 According to Baxter’s interpretation of Hume, a non-succession can occupy an interval without having duration because duration is defined as a succession.34 Hume seems to suggest in T 1.2.3.11 SBN 37 that an unchanging object would not produce a succession of impressions in us. Whatever difficulties this view leads to, we must conclude from it that time cannot be single, unchanging, or unified. It cannot be single because one person may have a succession while another person does not. It cannot be unchanging because the rate of succession could speed up or slow down. It cannot be unified because the succession may cease or be interrupted. For example, on Hume’s view I have no idea of time between the time that I fall asleep and the time that I awake for the simple reason that I have no succession of impressions. Yesterday and today do not form a unified time but rather form two separate times. Additionally, Kant’s claim that “all appearances are in time” (CPR A182/ B224) is not one that Hume could have accepted. For Hume, it would make no sense to say that all impressions are in time, since time is abstracted from the succession of impressions. So Hume could not accept (1) from Kant’s argument in the First Analogy. Hume says that we perceive a succession of impressions (T 1.2.3.6 SBN 34), so he would have no problem with accepting (2). It is true that Hume does not mean the same thing by “impression” that Kant does by “appearance,” but I do not think that is significant in this context. Hume accepts (3). Indeed, (3) is a premise of Hume’s argument that we do not have the idea of identity. For example, Hume argues, Philosophy informs us, that every thing, which appears to the mind, is nothing but perception, and is interrupted, and dependent on the mind; whereas the vulgar confound perceptions and objects, and attribute a distinct continu’d existence to the very things they feel or see. This sentiment, then, . . . is entirely unreasonable . . . (T 1.4.2.14 SBN 193)

Hume and Kant on Identity and Substance 241 At first, it seems that Hume would have had no problem with (a), since it seems to follow from two propositions that he accepts. First, Hume holds that we have a succession of impressions. Second, Hume holds that we derive our idea of time from this succession of impressions. It follows from these two propositions that we perform time determinations. However, Kant understood time determination differently. Kant is not referring to temporal inferences about appearances, but rather he is referring to temporal inferences about objects as distinct from appearances. If this is how (a) is understood, then Hume would have rejected it. If we understand time determination in terms of impressions, Hume would have accepted (b). That is to say, he would have affirmed (b)(i) and denied (b)(ii), which also amounts to denying (c). If we understand time determination in terms of objects, Hume would have denied (a) and (b) but affirmed (c). Since Hume would reject (1) and at least one of (a-c) on either understanding of the words “time determination,” he would not agree that (4) followed from the conjunction of (1–3) and (a-c). Hume could accept (4) as true in its own right if he had viewed it as a disjunction whose first disjunct is true. But he certainly would reject the second disjunct which holds that something remains or endures of which all change and coexistence is a determination. Hume would not accept (5) as an inference from (1–4) because he would not have accepted (1) or all of (a-c). Hume might accept (6) as a definition of the term “substance,” but he denies that we have the idea of substance (T 1.4.5.6 SBN 234). So Hume would have rejected (6) as a meaningful statement.

V. Conclusion Any apparent similarity between Kant’s argument in the First Analogy and various statements of Hume’s is insignificant when compared to their disagreements about experience and time. Kant assumes too much of what he has already argued for previously in the Critique for the First Analogy to be a sufficient response to Hume’s skepticism about objects. Despite this, it is worth emphasizing that Kant’s and Hume’s views of the nature of objects are not as different as they might sometimes seem. For example, both view objects as perceptions or collections of perceptions. Hume says that objects or substances are collections of ideas: “The idea of a substance as well as that of a mode, is nothing but a collection of simple ideas, that are united by the imagination” (T 1.1.6.2 SBN 16, emphasis added). For Kant, “what we call outer objects are nothing other than mere representations of our sensibility” (A20/B45, emphasis added). He repeats this view in the Prolegomena: “The sensible world is nothing other than a series of appearances connected according to universal laws” (P 4:354, emphasis added). However, Kant concludes that we know that objects really exist and that Hume concludes that we do not know this. But their view of what the objects are or would be is similar.

242 Mark Pickering According to Hume, substance is a fiction, which we mistakenly believe in as result of our confounding a succession of similar impressions with substance (T 1.4.2.34 SBN 203). Hume argues that there can be no substance because neither unchanging nor changing content of our perceptions would justify belief in substance (T 1.4.2.26–28 SBN 200). So, as it turns out, we have no experience of substance. Therefore, we can have no idea of it. As we have seen, Kant argues there must be substance because otherwise we could perform no time determination (CPR A182–184/B224–227). Further, Kant also argues that our experience is necessarily of an object (CPR B165–166). So, for Kant, the concept of an object is necessarily one we are justified in employing, since our consciousness and time determination requires them. So Hume and Kant’s disagreement as to what experience and time are lead to different conclusions about whether we can know that there are substances.

Notes 1. But see Lorne Falkenstein, Kant’s Intuitionism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 330. 2. For example, Jay Rosenberg, “Identity and Substance in Hume and Kant,” Topoi 19 (2000): 137–45. Rosenberg does not consider whether Hume would have thought Kant’s argument in the First Analogy to be sound. 3. I will assume throughout this chapter that what Hume calls “impressions” are the same things that Kant calls “intuitions.” Strictly speaking, they are not the same. But the meaning of the two terms is close enough for the purposes of comparing Hume’s and Kant’s arguments. 4. Cf. CPR A177/B220. 5. See also CPR B75. 6. Cf. Hume’s arguments that we do not have the idea of personal identity (T 1.4.6 SBN 189). 7. Cf. CPR A120. 8. T 1.2.3.16 SBN 39, 1.3.8.10 SBN 102, 1.3.8.15 SBN 105, 1.3.14.10 SBN 160, 1.3.16.2 SBN 176, passim. 9. T Intro. 4–7 SBN xv–xvi. 10. See CPR B68–69, 145–6. Cf. JL 9: 65 regarding how animal perception falls short of cognition: “Animals are also acquainted with [kennen] objects but do not cognize [erkennen] them.” 11. Lewis White Beck, “Did the Sage of Königsberg Have No Dreams?” in Essays on Kant and Hume, ed. Lewis White Beck (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 38–60. 12. P. F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense (London: Routledge, 1966), 122–3. 13. H. J. Paton, Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, vol. 2 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1936), 199–200. But, as Paton notes at 2:200, note 2, Kant claims in the Refutation of Idealism that “only space determines in an enduring way while time, and therefore everything that is in inner sense, constantly flows” (CPR B291). That is, Kant is suggesting that time is not unchanging or unified. 14. CPR Bxli, note. 15. Kant repeats (5) in the Refutation of Idealism (CPR B275; see also CPR B277– 278) and in the General Remark on the System of Principles (CPR B292).

Hume and Kant on Identity and Substance 243 16. Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 216–20. 17. Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 219. 18. Graham Bird, The Revolutionary Kant (Chicago: Open Court, 2006), 447–8. 19. Paton hints that no argument has been made for it. Paton, Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, 2: 197, 201–2, 204. But see 2: 199. 20. D. P. Dryer, Kant’s Solution for Verification in Metaphysics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966), 353–4; Arthur Melnik, Kant’s Analogies of Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 61–4. I will not discuss the peculiarity of Melnik’s interpretation of the First Analogy as regarding determinations of “time magnitude.” 21. Henry Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, revised edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 239. Emphasis added. 22. Guyer, Kant and the Claims, 216–17. 23. “The [First] Analogy takes for granted that we have to do with objective states of affairs,” Bennett, Kant’s Analytic, 187. 24. Bennett, Kant’s Analytic, 201. 25. Guyer, Kant and the Claims, 219–21. 26. Guyer, Kant and the Claims, 219–20. 27. Cf. CPR A31/B46. 28. Falkenstein says, “Kant should not be begging this important question [as to whether time is derived from sensations] at this stage.” Kant’s Intuitionism, 160. 29. Falkenstein, Kant’s Intuitionism, 147. 30. Falkenstein, Kant’s Intuitionism, 147–8. 31. Cf. T 1.4.2.29 SBN 200. 32. Donald L. M. Baxter, Hume’s Difficulty (New York: Routledge, 2008), 36–7. 33. Donald L. M. Baxter, “A Defense of Hume on Identity through Time,” Hume Studies 13/2 (November 1987): 333. 34. Baxter, “A Defense of Hume on Identity through Time,” 331. Baxter cites T 1.2.3.11 SBN 37 in favor of this claim. There Hume says, “The idea of duration is always deriv’d from a succession of changeable objects.”

References Allison, Henry. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, revised edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Baxter, Donald L. M. “A Defense of Hume on Identity through Time.” Hume Studies 13 (1987): 323–42. Baxter, Donald L. M. Hume’s Difficulty. New York: Routledge, 2008. Beck, Lewis White. “Did the Sage of Königsberg Have No Dreams?” In Essays on Kant and Hume, edited by Lewis White Beck, 38–60. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978. Bennett, Jonathan. Kant’s Analytic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966. Bird, Graham. The Revolutionary Kant. Chicago: Open Court, 2006. Dryer, D. P. Kant’s Solution for Verification in Metaphysics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966. Falkenstein, Lorne. Kant’s Intuitionism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

244 Mark Pickering Kant, Immanuel. Gesammelte Schriften: Akademie-Ausgabe, 23 vols. Charlottesville: InteLex Corporation, 1999. Kant, Immanuel. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1998. Kant, Immanuel. Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können. Köln: Könneman, 1995. McTaggart, John M. E. The Nature of Existence, vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927. Melnik, Arthur. Kant’s Analogies of Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. Paton, H. J. Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, vol. 2. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1936. Rosenberg, Jay. “Identity and Substance in Hume and Kant.” Topoi 19 (2000): 137–45. Strawson, P. F. The Bounds of Sense. London: Routledge, 1966.

14 An Alternative to Heteronomy and Anarchy Kant’s Reformulation of the Social Contract Alexander Schaefer I. Introduction Comparing Immanuel Kant’s impact on philosophy as a whole to his impact on political philosophy in particular, reveals an impressive disparity. True, there has been a recent increase of interest in Kant’s later thought, including his main political work, the Doctrine of Right,1 but his relative lack of influence on political philosophy remains apparent in projects that treat general political topics, rather than Kant in particular. For example, there have been several recent works on the topic of political authority that barely mention Kant.2 Given that most of The Doctrine of Right is devoted to an account of political authority, his virtual absence in these works confirms the weakness of his impact. Perhaps the simplest explanation of this neglect is that Kant’s work on the subject lacks the quality and depth of his work in other areas. Perhaps The Doctrine of Right, as Hannah Arendt once suggested, is “boring and pedantic.”3 In resistance to this conclusion, I propose that the novelty and intrigue of Kant’s political philosophy becomes apparent when the particular tasks it undertakes and the challenges to which it responds are identified and brought to bear on the text. A first step in this direction is to apply one of the classic techniques of Kant scholarship: reading Kant as a response to Hume. David Hume leveled a damning critique against social contract theorizing and presented a distinct account of political obligation based on his sentimentalist moral theory.4 Decades later, in developing his own political theory, Kant uses the argumentative framework of the social contract, but makes some extreme modifications to earlier versions of the social contract theory. Both Kant’s desire to utilize the social contract theory and the particular alterations that he makes to the traditional argument plausibly stem from a desire to avoid the deficiencies observed by Hume, while at the same time avoiding the deficiencies that Kant perceives in Hume’s sentimentalist approach to moral philosophy. Kant’s rejection of the Humean account of political obligation connects to his larger critique of sentimentalist moral philosophy, exemplified by Adam Smith, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Frances Hutchenson, and Hume, and makes apparent the grounding of his account of political obligation in his highly

246 Alexander Schaefer original moral philosophy.5 Just as the heteronomy of the sentimentalists fails to generate categorical moral obligations, so it fails to generate categorical political obligations. At best, the sentimentalists provide a mere instrumentalist account of political obligation, at worst, a mere psychology of obligation. The perceived failure of this approach helps to account for Kant’s desire to utilize the social contract theory, which promises a grounding for political obligation that sentimentalism cannot attain. While taking seriously Hume’s challenge to the traditional social contract argument, Kant develops an innovative account of the social contract—an account which aims to meet the challenges posed by Hume, avoid the deficiencies of a theory based on moral sentimentalism, and preserve much of the appeal of earlier social contract theories. In establishing this claim, I proceed as follows. First, I describe the original social contract view and its appeal. In the third section, I present Hume’s criticism of the view and the positive, sentimentalist account he proposes in its stead. I then enumerate some Kantian criticisms of sentimentalist moral philosophy, clarifying why Kant must reject an account of political obligation such as Hume’s. Finally, I present Kant’s proposed alternative, focusing on the ways in which his modifications of the original contract enable him to satisfy certain desiderata that earlier versions of the social contract and Hume’s account of political obligation fail to satisfy.

II. The Appeal of the Social Contract Theory The standard social contract theory employs a justificatory triad: the state of nature, the voluntary contract, and political society. Life without political organization is undesirable, ranging from apocalyptic (in the case of Hobbes) to inconvenient (in the case of Locke). Different theories posit different sources of the iniquity that prevails without a governmental authority. For Hobbes, it is “competition, diffidence, and glory,”6—that is, a widespread sense of insecurity, fueled by resource scarcity and the existence of the “vainglorious” aggressors who make it rational to strike first. For Locke, discord arises from the lack of an objective judge to settle disputes. Man’s inherent tendency to privilege his own interests, which Locke calls “self-love.” Will make men partial to themselves and their friends: and on the other side, that ill nature, passion and revenge will carry them too far in punishing others; and hence nothing but confusion and disorder will follow.7 Facing difficulties such as those posited by Hobbes and Locke, individuals in a state of nature rationally and voluntarily relinquish certain rights, most notably the right to be the judge and executor of justice in their own case.8 They form a compact—sometimes between themselves, sometimes between themselves and an executive power—that results in the establishment of a political authority. The legitimacy of the ruler is thus grounded in the

An Alternative to Heteronomy and Anarchy 247 consent of the governed. It is the existence, potency, and moral sanction of such a ruler that characterizes political society. In addition to justifying state legitimacy, the social contract theories of Hobbes and Locke also provide an explanation of the existence of the state. In both models, agents are instrumentally rational, seeking merely to improve their situation. The fact that a state is capable of facilitating such an improvement is a good explanation of why nearly all human societies have established such an entity. The contractual account of political authority and obligation has several desirable features, the most obvious is its compatibility with the intuitive value—intuitive, at least, for liberals—of individual freedom. The recognition of this value (or natural right, depending on the theory) accounts for the popularity of the state of nature model, which justifies government only from a baseline “of perfect freedom”9 where individuals are subject to no natural authority. The absence of relations of authority results in a state “where all power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another,”10 and therefore the state of nature also models the value or right of equality. Any deviations from perfect freedom and equality can only be justified, on this view, by a consensual act, and in this way, all justified limitations on our freedom and all justified social hierarchies arise only through the joint exercise of individuals’ freedom and equality. In light of our freedom and equality, the special status of the lawmaker— that is, our asymmetrical obligations toward the lawmaker—calls for a special justification. This brings us to the second major appeal of the social contract theory: its grounding in a clear and credible model of “special” obligation.11 Special obligations are characterized by their asymmetry and particularity, and with few exceptions, they flow from interpersonal transactions. My obligation to pay my mortgage, for example, is grounded in my contractual promise to do so. Social contract theorists apply the exact some model—a model which is familiar and relatively uncontroversial—to account for political obligation. Their approach thus makes clear how the obligations came about, exactly which obligations pertain to citizens, and— most importantly—why such obligations, unlike natural duties, are owed to a particular person or group—namely, the governing body. This last feature, which Simmons has titled “the particularity requirement,” is perhaps the greatest challenge to alternative theories of authority that eschew the social contract model. Indeed, it is this feature of authority that Hume acknowledges to be a strong challenge to his quasi-utilitarian, sentimentalist grounding of political authority.12 The difficulty of meeting the particularity requirement stems from a tension between it and another necessary feature of any account of political obligation: generality. A theory of political obligation that entails that the majority of citizens—or even a sizable minority—owe no obligation to their governments does not qualify as a successful account of political obligation, but rather a qualified rejection of it. An adequate theory of political obligation must therefore explain why citizens in general, not merely some restricted subset thereof, are obligated

248 Alexander Schaefer to obey the political authority figure. According to Simmons’s analysis, natural duties satisfy the generality requirement—they are owed to everyone by everyone—but they fail the particularity requirement in virtue of this generality. For example, if political obligation were grounded in our duty to promote the well-being of others, we would owe similar obligations to all associations that further that end, whether it be a private association or a government, foreign or domestic. This strange result disqualifies such an account as a bona fide theory of political obligation. By contrast, obligations (as opposed to natural duties) may satisfy the particularity requirement since they involve a voluntary action that binds a person to a specific person or persons, but they typically fail the generality requirement since few people voluntarily accept obligations to their governments. As Simmons puts it, “The ‘personal transaction’ feature of obligation-centered accounts is precisely what particularizes the moral requirement in the way necessary for an account of political obligation. And it is this feature that a duty-centered account, by definition, cannot share.”13 The social contract theory therefore possesses a major advantage over other approaches to explaining political authority. It handles one of the most untenable challenges of political authority with graceful ease, presenting it as the result of a prosaic act: a simple promise. Accordingly, I will refer to the standard social contract account of political obligation as the promise model of political obligation. Despite these great advantages, the social contract theory is not without a host of strong objections. Chief among these is David Hume’s forceful broadside on social contract theorizing, considered by many to be a definitive refutation of the view. It is to Hume’s account that we now turn.

III. Hume’s Critique There are two main aspects of Hume’s positive account of political obligation, both of which are closely connected to his critique of the social contract tradition. These aspects are his instrumentalist account of justice and government, based on what he calls natural obligation, and a psychological account of our obligations to obey state authorities, based on what he calls moral obligation.14 Hume’s concept of moral obligation underpins his claim that social contract theorists mischaracterize the empirical facts related to political obligation, while his concept of natural obligation underpins his claim that they espouse a false theory of obligation. Before exploring Hume’s positive account of political obligation, we will examine these two criticisms of the social contract approach. i. Empirical Fallacies in Social Contract Theory According to Hume, the social contract theory involves two empirical falsehoods. The first is historical, while the second is psychological. Of the social contract theorists with whom Hume was acquainted, John Locke is unique in explicitly presenting the social contract theory as an

An Alternative to Heteronomy and Anarchy 249 historical thesis, rather than a model for understanding the justified role and powers of government. Locke is therefore the most likely target of this line of attack. After noting that “government is everywhere antecedent to records,” and so we should not expect a detailed account of founding contract, Locke cites a few examples of purportedly contractual governments, including Rome, Venice, and Peru.15 Against Locke’s historical account, Hume asserts that government did not originate in agreement or contract.16 According to all available records and evidence of the origins of existing governments, they “have been founded originally either on usurpation or conquest or both, without any pretence of a fair consent, or a voluntary subjection of the people.”17 If this is so, and all reliable anthropology seems to support Hume over Locke, then any theory of legitimacy requiring consensual origins of government would delegitimize virtually all existing governments. Yet, even in Locke, the historical thesis is somewhat orthogonal to the central defense of political obligation. The real work in Locke’s account of political obligation is done through his idea of tacit consent. Indeed, as Hume often points out, it is unclear how currently existing citizens could be obligated to obey their governments by the consent of their ancestors, since “this supposes the right of the fathers to bind the children, even to the most remote generations.”18 On Locke’s account, the original contract serves the purpose of putting certain easements or conditions on the possession of property in the domain of one’s government,19 but it is our enjoyment of the benefits of government and use of this land that ultimately plays the crucial role of signaling (tacitly) our consent to abide by the conditions of this use and enjoyment—namely, subjection to the edicts and authority of the government. It is therefore easy to imagine an account of political obligation very similar to Locke’s that eschews the historical claim that governments were originally founded on the consent of the governed, and which places a heavier burden on the concept of tacit consent. Hume responds to the idea of tacit consent in various writings, but one passage in particular is notable for its clarity and eloquence. Though quoted often, it doesn’t tire: Should it be said, that, by living under the dominion of a prince, which one might leave, every individual has given a tacit consent to his authority, and promised him obedience; it may be answered, that such an implied consent can only have place, where a man imagines, that the matter depends on his choice. But where he thinks (as all mankind do who are born under established governments) that by his birth he owes allegiance to a certain prince or certain form of government; it would be absurd to infer a consent or choice, which he expressly, in this case, renounces and disclaims. Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artisan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives from day to day, by the small wages which he acquires? We may as well assert, that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the

250 Alexander Schaefer dominion of the master; though he was carried on board while asleep and must leap into the ocean, and perish, the moment he leaves her.20 Whether the historical account of our consent references the origin of government or the purported tacit consent of current citizens, it misrepresents reality. Neither of these consensual acts occurred. If the social contract argument is premised on meaningful acts of consent having actually occurred, it therefore fails to legitimize political authority or to justify political obligations. The second empirical incongruity that Hume ascribes to the social contract tradition concerns the psychological features of political obligation. If our obligations to obey the government are based on our having given consent, Hume reasons, then surely we must be aware of having given this consent and regard it as grounding our obligations to obey state authority.21 Yet, neither the belief that we have consented to government, nor the belief that without such consent we would be free of all political obligation are generally held. As Hume remarks, Were you to ask the far greatest part of the nation, whether they had ever consented to the authority of their rulers, or promis’d to obey them, they wou’d be inclin’d to think very strangely of you; and wou’d certainly reply, that the affair depended not on their consent, but that they were born to such an obedience.22 Again, Hume’s views on this matter are characteristic of the Scottish Enlightenment, with its emphasis on the psychological and sentimental roots of normative concepts such as obligation.23 Given that obligation is fundamentally connected to our motivations and attitudes, a striking incongruity between the theoretical foundations of our political obligations and our attitudes toward those political obligations undermines the cogency of the theoretical account. ii. Theoretical Mistakes in the Social Contract Theory Not only does the social contract account of political authority rely, according to Hume, on dubious historical and psychological theses, it also rests on an incorrect analysis of obligation. By latching on to the promise as the paradigm of moral obligation, the social contract theorist commits to the idea that our obligation to keep promises is more fundamental than our political obligations. Hume maintains that this places the social contract theorist in a difficult argumentative position: If the reason be asked of that obedience, which we are bound to pay government . . . your answer is, because we should keep our word. But besides that no body, till trained in a philosophical system, can either

An Alternative to Heteronomy and Anarchy 251 comprehend or relish this answer: Besides this, I say, you find yourself embarrassed, when it is asked, why we are bound to keep our word?24 By attempting to cast our political obligations on the model of the promise, the account given by the social contract theorist is not just implausible, but also incomplete in that it offers no reason that promises should be kept. Standing alone, this is an odd criticism. Surely, the promise is one of the most widely accepted and clearest sources of moral obligation that exists. If social contract theorists can show that our political obligations originate in promises, or something very similar to a promise, then much explanatory progress will have been made. Taken in the broader context of Hume’s account of obligation, however, the criticism is more significant. For Hume, the obligation to keep promises and the obligation to obey the government are equally fundamental, and they share the same source—namely, the promotion of personal and public interests. It is important, therefore, to ask the social contract theorist to explain what grounds our obligation to keep promises, since Hume suspects that the social contract theorist is unable to “give any answer, but what would, immediately, without any circuit, have accounted for our obligation to allegiance.”25 If this is true, then there is no advantage to relying on an alleged promise to obey the government, and the promise model needlessly complicates the justification of political obligation. As Hume puts it, Having found that natural, as well as civil justice, derives its origin from human conventions, we shall quickly perceive, how fruitless it is to resolve the one into the other, and seek, in the laws of nature, a stronger foundation for our political duties than interest, and human conventions; while these laws themselves are built on the very same foundation.26 According to Hume, therefore, social contract theorists misunderstand the nature of obligation, thinking that promise-keeping is a more fundamental obligation than our obedience of governmental authority. In fact, both obligations are merely social-psychological phenomena that have arisen in response to certain interests we have in cooperating with one another. The fact that they solve different problems suggests that they are separate obligations, and that one is not nested in the other.27 Having diagnosed this misunderstanding of obligation, Hume presents his account of political obligation as a superior alternative. iii. Rejecting Hume’s Account of Political Obligation In keeping with the spirit of the Scottish Enlightenment, Hume’s account of justice, the state, and political obligation takes the form of an emergent order. Political rules and institutions, both formal and informal, are adapted, but not always designed, to serve the interests of individuals related by social

252 Alexander Schaefer and economic ties. His account of political obligation presents it as the culmination of a series of steps that begins with the recognition that personal interests can be furthered through social cooperation. A brief outline of the process follows: (1) (2) (3) (4)

Society promises massive benefits. Human selfishness and resource scarcity render society unstable. Rules and conventions are established, giving rise to the virtue of justice our sense of justice is insufficient, as society grows larger, to curb the myopic selfishness of human nature, leading to the erection of a formal institution, the state, devoted to enforcing the rules of justice. (5) Our moral obligation to obey the state arises naturally as a result of sympathy and personal interest. Step (5) is most relevant to our inquiry, so we will confine our discussion to this aspect of Hume’s account. When men have observ’d, that tho’ the rules of justice be sufficient to maintain any society, yet ’tis impossible for them, of themselves, to observe those rules, in large and polish’d societies; they establish government, as a new invention to attain their ends, and preserve the old, or procure new advantages, by a more strict execution of justice.28 With the establishment of government comes the moral obligation of obedience. Our obligation to obey the political authority arises from our harsh judgment of disobedient actions on the part of others, and on our self-reflective tendency to apply such judgments to the evaluation of our own actions.29 Just as the sense of justice arises from the observation, judgment, and self-imputation of injustice, so our moral obligation to obey the state arises from applying the same process to disobedience. The benefits of obeying the law are massive; its disobedience is therefore deleterious and must be judged harshly by a distant, uninvolved spectator. When we apply these judgments to our own actions, we acquire an additional sentiment—our moral obligation of obedience—that reinforces our already present, but far too feeble, sense of justice: “Obedience is a new duty which must be invented to support that of justice.”30 Note that on Hume’s account political obligations—and moral obligations, generally—are not extramental, mind-independent facts, but rather a sense of necessity, “the sentiment of right and wrong.”31 Political obligation is a psychological adaptation, rooted in self-interest (and in public interest via sympathy), that works to restrain that very self-interest in which it is rooted. It works to block the influence of self-interest when operating at a more myopic and capricious level. Given Hume’s account of political obligation, it is clear why the social contract theory would be unacceptable from his perspective. Our “natural obligation” of pursuing self-interest through

An Alternative to Heteronomy and Anarchy 253 acquiring material objects explains the various other obligations constructed on top of it: property, contract, promises, and obedience to the state. All of these “moral obligations” share the same source and footing, and are therefore equally fundamental. Thus, Hume’s concept of moral obligation lies at the root of his rejection of the historical and psychological account of the social contract. Similarly, Hume’s concept of natural obligation lies at the root of his rejection of the theory of obligation implicit in the social contract theory. Social contract theorists rely solely on the promise model of obligation, missing the fact that all moral obligations, including fidelity to promises and obedience to the state, are constructed on the foundation of our natural obligation of self-interest.

IV. Kantian Qualms with the Humean Project As we have seen, Hume’s positive account of political obligation is closely connected to his negative critique of the social contract theory. In particular, his analysis of moral obligation as a special sort of sentiment, arising through sympathy and reflection, if accepted as correct, reveals blatant empirical incongruities between the social contract account, and the observed psychological facts. People do not think they are obligated because of a contract; rather, they feel guilt and shame when disobeying the government, perhaps because, as Hume argues, they realize that they would judge others harshly if they saw them doing the same. In addition, Hume’s identification of natural obligation as self-interest and his account of how moral obligations are constructed upon natural obligation—i.e., developed in order to attain our primary interests—results in an instrumentalist understanding of both promises and obedience to authority, with neither being less instrumental nor more fundamental than the other. Conversely, Hume’s negative critique also supports his positive account. If the social contract suffers from historical and theoretical deficiencies, then it cannot adequately explain or justify our political obligations. A different account is needed. Hume believes his account meets the challenge of explaining political obligation while avoiding the empirical and theoretical errors of the social contract theory. The social contract theory, however, does have some advantages. Chief among these are its deep respect for individual freedom, the clarity and credibility that the promise model lends to our political obligations, and its easy handling of the particularity requirement—that special bond that citizens allegedly have to their own governments, but not to other governments or associations. Hume’s thought on autonomy and freedom—bound up as it is with his compatibilist metaphysics—is complex and not particularly salient in his theory of political obligation. Critics of Hume focus instead on the second two advantages of the social contract, claiming that his account neither attains clarity and credibility of obligation, nor satisfies the particularity requirement.

254 Alexander Schaefer In fact, Immanuel Kant’s general critique of sentimentalist moral theory yields conclusions to this effect, setting the context for a political theory that aims to maintain the advantages of the social contract theory, while avoiding these Humean pitfalls. As we’ve seen, Hume’s theory casts all moral obligations—including the obligation to obey the state—as psychological adaptations that allow human beings to better pursue their personal interests in a social setting. This identification of moral principles with the feelings that impel us to act in a specific way is, for many, a bullet too large to bite. Despite its early influence on his thought, Immanuel Kant came to reject the theory of moral sentiments as one more heteronomous morality among others.32 In Kant’s view, rather than an account of political obligation, sentimentalism offers a reductionist rejection of the concept as it is generally understood. Accepting the theory of moral sentiments would require abandoning our commonly held conception of morality as consisting of rules that are universal, necessary, and unconditional. Part of Kant’s critique of the sentimentalist project—exemplified by Hume, Hutchinson, and Smith—it to point out just how far it deviates from common-sense morality.33 In particular, if moral feelings are the basis of morality, then moral laws would be reduced to empirical principles, therefore lacking the characteristics of bona fide moral principles. First, they would fail to be universal, since anyone who lacked the feeling would lack the moral obligation. Furthermore, those with stronger feelings would seem to be more obligated than those with weaker feelings, implying that the tenderhearted have more extensive moral obligations than ruthless egoists.34 Second, they would not be necessary, since empirical facts are contingent.35 In other words, we could imagine a slightly altered human nature that felt no guilt or remorse in senseless torture of the innocent. Under the sentimentalist account, human beings would then lack the moral obligation to not senselessly torture the innocent. Third, moral obligations would be fundamentally conditional; facts of time, place, and disposition would determine the existence and strength of our obligations.36 As an alternative to the sentimentalism of Hume, Smith, and others, Kant constructs a moral theory on the concept of an “autonomous will”—that is, a will that gives laws to itself, rather than one that operates according to natural or psychological laws such as those identified by sentimentalist moral philosophers. Only such a will, Kant thinks, can yield moral principles that accord with our common moral experience, which affirms that moral laws are necessary, universal, and unconditional. Less appreciated than Kant’s response to sentimentalist moral theory, is his response to sentimentalist political theory. As we will see, the self-ascriptive nature of juridical law plays a fundamental a role in Kant’s political theory, just as the self-ascriptive nature of the Moral Law plays a fundamental role in his ethical theory. In both cases, the fact that such law emerges necessarily (“a priori”) from practical deliberation, accounts for its categorical, rather than hypothetical, bindingness. Let us now turn to a more detailed examination of Kant’s account.

An Alternative to Heteronomy and Anarchy 255

V. Kant’s Social Contract Having driven a wedge between the feeling of obligation and the obligation itself, Kant’s critique exposes one of Hume’s main assumptions to criticism— namely, the assumption that there actually exist political obligations. For those who distinguish between the feeling of obligation and the obligation itself, more is needed to establish the existence of obligation than noting that we feel ourselves to be obligated. Thus, philosophical anarchists of all stripes claim that our feeling of obligation is merely a cognitive or emotional illusion.37 Recently, anarchist Michael Huemer devoted an entire chapter of his book on political authority to diagnosing the psychological sources of the widespread belief in political obligations and state legitimacy, concluding, “Standard intuitions about authority are not to be trusted.”38 If there is more to moral obligation than a subjective, psychological state, then clearly there is room for error when we attempt to determine which obligations we are under. From the preceding discussion, we can discern three desiderata that Kant confronts: (1) Preserve the advantages of the social contract theory: its respect for autonomy, the clarity and credibility of its normative force, and its satisfaction of the particularity requirement. (2) Avoid the absurdities of the social contract theory: its dubious historical claims and reliance on tacit consent, its inaccurate psychology, and its theoretical weakness on the topic of obligation. (3) Replace Hume’s sentiment of obligation with a bona fide political obligation, one that will yield a necessary, universal, and unconditional obligation to obey the law, thereby avoiding the anarchist conclusion that no political obligations exist. As with other social contract theories, Kant’s account begins by considering a condition absent of political laws and institutions. Kant’s version of the state of nature, however, is highly distinct. It is fraught—not with practical problems of discord, poverty, and violence—but with a distinctly moral problem: a conflict of rights. In presenting the state of nature, Kant identifies a tension between two moral claims. The first is the claim to freedom, which the philosophical anarchists believe makes the coercive implementation of laws illegitimate, and renders political obligations impossible. Kant calls this “innate right” and describes it as “Freedom (independence from being constrained by another’s choice), insofar as it can coexist with the freedom of every other in accordance with a universal law.”39 The conflicting moral claim is what Kant calls “private right,” which he describes as the right “to have any external object of my choice as mine.”40 The tension between these two moral claims arises as follows: when I acquire an object as mine, I decree a right to exclude others from using it and a duty on their

256 Alexander Schaefer part to refrain from using it without my permission. In doing so, I apply a contingent, external law to their behavior, or as Ripstein puts it, I alter “the normative situation of another.”41 As an individual, I lack the authority to generate such laws and to coercively enforce them; doing so illicitly transfers to me your innate right to self-determination.42 This issue is referred to as “the problem of unilateral choice.”43 Claiming external property seems to generate the worries that cause Huemer, and other anarchists, to reject state authority: what gives me the right to decide what things you can and cannot touch, where you may walk, which objects you may use to pursue your ends? A tension thus arises: we must either renounce private property, or we must allow individuals to unilaterally impose laws on one another. Yet, both of these alternatives seem to limit the scope of human freedom. The possession of external objects is necessary for a great number of undertakings and activities, perhaps for life itself, while the right to determine the course of one’s own life is incompatible with being subject to the arbitrary laws of every other individual within one’s vicinity. Kant’s main point is that individuals in the state of nature maintain a wrongful situation. By being subject only to their unilateral will, they prevent laws from becoming determinate and render all external possessions normatively insecure. In doing so, they arbitrarily limit the scope of rightful freedom. Although the anarchist asserts that our obligation to obey the state is unreal because no act of consent has occurred, Kant would respond that we have a standing obligation not to infringe upon the freedom of others, but that the state of nature entails exactly that. We must acquire property in order to pursue our goals, and we must allow others to acquire property in order to respect their freedom to do the same. Yet, in doing so, we effectively declare laws that lack vindication from the equally authoritative wills of others. Philosophical anarchists oppose state authority and our alleged political obligations on the ground that they interfere with personal freedom. Yet, Kant has offered an argument in opposition to the stateless state of nature on precisely the same grounds. If submitting to state authority can solve the problems of the state of nature that Kant has identified, then the philosophical anarchist must admit an obligation to endorse and obey state laws, rather than unilateral declarations that wrongfully limit the freedom of others. But can the state provide a solution to Kant’s problems? The key claim is that rightful coexistence requires that individuals submit to an “omnilateral will”—“a collective, general (common) and powerful will”44—as opposed to their own private, particular wills. In order to solve the normative defects in the state of nature, individuals must establish (or endorse, if it already exists) some body or organization that surpasses, in some significant way, the moral status of unilateral declarations. That is, to make rightful external possession possible, citizens must authorize an omnilateral will to regulate property, contract, and status. Failing to do so implies that one continues to follow unilaterally declared laws, which, as we have seen, is a normative threat to the external possessions of others.

An Alternative to Heteronomy and Anarchy 257 What is the nature of this omnilateral will and what grants it an elevated moral status? Kant conceives of the omnilateral will as (to borrow a Rawlsian phrase) a kind of overlapping consensus of individual wills.45 Rather than specifying an end that all must serve, the omnilateral will aims only to provide a framework wherein individuals may each pursue their own ends. According to Kant, to take a practical point of view is to commit oneself to choosing only maxims that have the universalizable form of a law. Since we each have ends we wish to pursue, taking the practical point of view with regard to choosing laws would commit us to choosing a legal framework in which all can pursue their personal goals (and restricting pursuits that make it impossible for others to pursue their own ends). Instituting a framework of rules and laws that makes this pursuit possible must therefore enjoy unanimous consent: implicit in every individual’s practical reason is the choice of a framework that makes harmonious goal pursuit possible. In this way, the choices of the omnilateral will are supposedly implicit in the practical reason of each and every individual. Ripstein explains the distinction as follows: “a unilateral will always has some particular end, some matter of choice. The omnilateral will is different, because all that it provides is a form of choice, by providing procedures through which laws can be made applied, and enforced  .  .  . it only acts to preserve the formal conditions through which people can rule themselves.”46 In order to elucidate the notion of an omnilateral will, Kant introduces his version of the social contract: The act by which a people forms itself into a state is the original contract. Properly speaking, the original contract is only the idea of this act, in terms of which alone we can think of the legitimacy of a state.47 The standard represented by the social contract is that the legislator “frame his laws in such a way that they could have been produced by the united will of a whole nation.”48 When a lawgiver is restricted by the idea of the social contract—that is, when the laws made by the lawgiver are only those that could be consistently agreed to by all citizens in a social contract—then they can be viewed as issuing from the will of each and every citizen.49 In this way, a lawgiver that regulates his or her conduct in this way surpasses the mere unilateral will of the individual and acts, instead, as an omnilateral will. The lawgiver, embodying the omnilateral will, must take the form of a state, Kant believes, due to the necessary functions and the special moral status of a lawgiver. Any viable embodiment of an impartial decision maker must possess three things: it must contain a body that decides upon laws (the legislature). It must be able to determine the proper application of laws (the judiciary). And it must solve the assurance problem—i.e., it must be authorized to render external possessions secure (the executive). The reason the omnilateral will must have an elevated moral status, is because mere individuals may not rightfully issue laws to one another.50 Thus, the conditions an

258 Alexander Schaefer organization must meet to solve the problems of the state of nature appear to be sufficient conditions for statehood.51 Since the social contract is what allows us to evaluate the legitimacy of the state and its laws, it constitutes a normative criteria for state activities, one that ensures that the state provides a solution to the problems of the state of nature without trammeling the freedom of citizens. It provides a decision-apparatus that avoids the pitfalls inherent in the unilateral declaration of external right—namely, the lack of reciprocity between equals— while still allowing for the legal existence of external property. Thus, the offices of a state are necessary for solving the problems of the state of nature, and the state avoids lapsing into mere unilateralism by abiding by a normative principle of political justice, the social contract.52 With Kant’s political theory on the table, we can now examine how it fares with respect to our three desiderata. Kant’s revised social contract theory aims to retain much of the appeal of the earlier social contract theories. His account of state legitimacy and our duty to obey its edicts arises directly from a concern with freedom. The state of nature is wrongful in virtue of the relations of domination and subordination that arise when individuals acquire external possessions, or in the overly restrictive prohibitions on acquisition that would be required to prevent this outcome. State edicts are legitimate only insofar as they issue from an omnilateral will, which must regulate itself by means of the standard of the social contract. Thus, the legitimacy of its laws is contingent upon their acceptability by the citizenry. Public laws must be authenticated by reference to the wills of each individual subject to them. Crucially, Kant does not attempt to explain the state, as earlier social contract theorists did, but only to justify it. He is therefore able to maintain the importance of free endorsement of the laws as a normative standard, without needing to maintain that such an endorsement has actually occurred or would occur as the result of instrumentally rational bargaining parties. Kant thus retains the important moral idea of self-rule, without implicating the impossible requirement of actual individual consent. Parties committed to living on terms of equal and reciprocal freedom would endorse the laws as a means to extend the freedom of all. Kant’s theory also fares quite well with respect to the second advantage of the social contract theory: its ability to clearly obligate the citizenry. If it is admitted that individuals have no right to determine the legal rules that other individuals in their proximity must follow, then (barring the abolition of property) the obligation to leave or avoid the state of nature follows quite clearly. Less clear, of course, is the exact nature of the “omnilateral will” and exactly how closely it must be embodied by the state in order to exact a duty of obedience. Kant is notoriously stringent in his consideration of what would justify a revolution.53 This suggests that, in Kant’s view, the approximation can be far less than perfect. This ambiguity opens up a greater possibility for reasonable disagreement than the promise model of the earlier social contract theorists. Nevertheless, it is a great improvement

An Alternative to Heteronomy and Anarchy 259 upon Hume’s obligation to serve “the interests of society,” an obligation which, if it even exists, can ostensibly be discharged in a host of ways that do not involve obedience to a state authority. The last advantage of the social contract account, its satisfaction of the particularity requirement, is handled with admirable ease by Kant’s focus on external relations as the source of our obligation to submit to government. Recall that Simmons’s contention is that without an act of consent, any moral requirement to obey the government will not be adequately particular to one’s own government. That is, it will be a general “duty” instead of a particular “obligation.” What is needed to solve this tension between duty and particularity is an account of our duty to obey the state that particularizes in the right, capturing the special bond between a citizen and his or her government. In Kant’s state of nature, recall, individuals wrong one another in regard to external possessions: in purporting to acquire them, they unilaterally declare enforceable limits on the freedoms of others. And in virtue of their own innate right to freedom, they prevent others from rightfully acquiring external things as well. In Kant’s account, the locus of wrongness lies in possessions, or what he calls “private right.” In the state of nature, we infringe on the private rights of those around us, and they infringe on ours. However, an individual in isolation would neither generate, nor fall victim to such moral wrongness. For this reason, Kant emphasizes spatiality and proximity as a necessary condition of this wrongness. In his admonition that persons form a state to escape this wrongful situation, Kant writes, From private right in the state of nature proceeds the postulate of public right: when you cannot avoid living side by side with all others, you ought to leave the state of nature and proceed with them into a rightful condition, that is, a condition of distributive justice.54 Kant’s qualification, “when you cannot avoid living side by side,” is crucial for meeting Simmons’s particularity requirement. You are bound to those with whom you have external relations: property, contracts, and positional relations (such as being a parent or a spouse).55 The depth and complexity of one’s network of external relations is typically far greater in one’s own country than it is in a foreign country. It is in one’s own country, after all, where one pays taxes, receives benefits, owns property, has family, etc. It is this set of relations to which our obligations of obedience are responsive. When traveling in a foreign nation we, of course, establish certain external relations to the local people and institutions: we use their infrastructure, make property claims in regard to our personal belongings, and occupy space. For this reason, we acquire obligations to obey local laws and customs. But in doing so, we do not repudiate our possessions back home or sever our obligations to our own laws.56 The laws of one’s own country allow one to rightfully possess things in that physical space—that is, to possess things

260 Alexander Schaefer without subjecting others to one’s unilateral will. On this account, the extent to which one abandons property and relations in a country (and stops paying taxes or receiving benefits there) is the extent to which one stops being subject to that country’s laws. This is a sensible conclusion. After all, abandoning such external relations describes both the process of emigration and a process of isolating oneself in the wilderness, both of which seem sufficient to relieve one of political obligations. Kant’s version of the social contract seems carefully crafted to avoid Hume’s criticisms, and thus to meet desiderata (2). The social contract, Kant repeatedly emphasizes, is ahistorical: “The social contract is the rule and not the source of the state constitution”(R 19:503).57 The lack of historical evidence of such a contract is therefore beside the point. Furthermore, Kant need not invoke tacit consent to explain either our obligation to obey the state, or the legitimacy of any particular law. As we have seen, our obligation arises from the wrongfulness of the state of nature and the ability of the state to resolve this wrongness—if and when it conforms to the idea of the social contract. There is therefore no need for an actual act of consent to ground our political obligation. Furthermore, the psychological incongruities that Hume identifies are no longer relevant. Kant’s theory is not, like Hume’s, a descriptive account of how we come to believe ourselves to be obligated, but rather of how certain normative features of the state of nature and of legitimate governments coalesce into a duty to obey the law. Finally, where Hume accuses the social contract theorists of lacking an adequate theory of obligation, Kant can respond with several volumes that present in great detail such a theory. Interestingly, Kant can agree with Hume that the duty to honor our promises and our duty to obey the state share a common source, without conceding that the only such source is heteronomous interest. Rather, for Kant, this source is the lawgiving capacity of the autonomous will.58 This connection between the autonomous will and the authority of law is critical to understanding how Kant seeks to satisfy desiderata (3) by connecting his account of political legitimacy and obligation to his idea of autonomy, “the property which the will has of being law to itself.”59 For Kant, our moral duties are necessary, universal, and unconditional because they are autonomous, or self-imposed, emerging from the subject’s own pure practical reason, not from some contingent, empirical source. Moral standards and restrictions are implicit in the practical point of view of a rational agent, and therefore anyone deliberating about what to do is implicitly committed to these standards and restrictions.60 The bridge between autonomy in morals and in politics—i.e., in internal maxims and in external laws—is represented by the social contract. As Wolfgang Kersting argues, the social contract in Kant’s political philosophy “is the counterpart to the moral imperative, the Categorical Imperative of state power, so to speak.”61 The clearest way to see the connection between Kant’s theory of moral duties and his theory of political obligation is by

An Alternative to Heteronomy and Anarchy 261 considering two versions of his categorical imperative, those that present our moral duties from the perspective of a moral lawmaker. The formulation of autonomy: “Act so that [your] will could regard itself as giving universal law through all its maxims.”62 The formulation of the kingdom of ends: “Act in accordance with the maxims of a member giving universal laws for a merely possible kingdom of ends.”63 In determining our internal constitution—a set of maxims by which we will conduct our lives—we are to conceive of ourselves as co-legislators of moral laws to which all will be subject. Only laws that could be willed on this basis pass as bona fide moral requirements, since only these laws could be willed on a universal scale without self-contradiction. This idea closely resembles Kant’s regulatory standard in the realm of political lawmaking, the social contract, with one crucial difference: politics concerns the external relations between persons—that is, property, contract, and status. It does not regulate the ends, dispositions, or maxims of separate individuals. Accordingly, the social contract seeks consensus between the wills of individuals with respect to the legal framework regulating external relations, rather than a moral framework. We thus get Kant’s presentation of the social contract as a regulatory normative ideal, placing limitations on the legitimate laws that a state can uphold. If the laws accord with the idea of the social contract, then they supersede any unilateral will and can be seen as issuing forth from the “united will of the people”—that is, from each individual’s own practical reason: “.  .  .  only the concurring and united will of all, insofar as each decides the same thing for all and for each, and so only the general united will of the people can be legislative.”64 Thus, for Kant, individual freedom remains intact because the laws that bind each subject emerge, as a condition of practical deliberation, from his or her own practical reason. Our obligation to refrain from impinging upon the freedom of others, then, is discharged by submitting to the omnilateral will, the legislation of a body that acts according to the standard of the social contract. This very same submission, however, is self-imposed. It is autonomous. In virtue of their autonomous source, Kant is able to posit that our political obligations are necessary, universal, and unconditional. They apply, a priori, to any social setting in which laws are to be chosen or obeyed. Desiderata (3) is thus satisfied by connecting the theory of juridical law to Kant’s theory of Moral Law: both emerge from (or are implicit in) the perspective of a rational, deliberating agent. Kant’s new approach to the social contract thus preserves many of our judgments about the nature of political obligation and the importance of individual freedom, while avoiding some of the absurdities of earlier attempts that Hume pointed out.

262 Alexander Schaefer

VI. Conclusion If Kant took seriously Hume’s critique of the social contract and was aware of his positive account, then we might conjecture that Kant’s account takes its particular form in order to satisfy our three desiderata. (1) Kant wanted to maintain the advantages of the social contract theory. Accordingly, his account emphasizes the right of individual freedom as the source of our political obligation, it grounds this obligation in the clear and credible need to avoid subjugation, and it meets the particularity requirement in virtue of its emphasis on our external, interpersonal relationships. (2) Kant desired to avoid the absurdities that Hume identified in the original social contract argument. Accordingly, Kant presents his social contract as a normative criterion and explicitly disavows any reliance on its historical accuracy or on tacit consent, instead grounding political obligation in the moral requirement of reciprocal freedom. (3) Kant works to give political obligation a clear, but nonconsensual grounding. Accordingly, he focuses on the moral wrongfulness of not submitting to a political authority, rather than on the instrumental advantages of doing so. Noting the lacuna between the concept of moral obligation and the feeling of moral obligation, Kant’s theory of political obligation aims to establish a categorical obligation to obey the law, rather than merely describing the goals that obedience might serve or the process by which we came to believe ourselves to be obligated. A deeper understanding of the context in which Kant developed his political theory thus enables one to better appreciate and understand some of its facets and idiosyncrasies. Kant’s account is unique in its dual concern for both individual freedom and the categorical nature of our political obligations. His intriguing solution should interest anyone concerned with reconciling political obligations with individual autonomy.65

Notes 1. This recent surge is exemplified by works such as Mark Timmons, ed., Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Arthur Ripstein, Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009); and Sharon Byrd and Joachim Hruschka, Kant’s Doctrine of Right: A Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 2. John Simmons, Moral Principles and Political Obligations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979); Michael Huemer, The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); David Estlund, Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). 3. Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 7–8. 4. Similarly, Adam Smith develops a theory of political obligation based on his own version of sentimentalist moral philosophy. Kant, who was perhaps familiar with Smith’s account, would have objected to his view for similar reasons as those for which he objected to Hume’s. For a detailed presentation of Smith’s

An Alternative to Heteronomy and Anarchy 263

5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

view, see Elias L. Khalil, “An Anatomy of Authority: Adam Smith as Political Theorist,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 29 (2005): 57–71. The strong influence of moral sentimentalism on Kant’s early thought is well documented, and apparent in some Kantian writings. See “M. Immanuel Kant’s Announcement of the Programme of his Lectures for the Winter Semester 1765–6” (LA 2:311), translated by and quoted in Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 176. See also, Jerome B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 378, 501. Thomas Hobbes, On the Citizen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Chapter 1, Sections 4, 6; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London: Penguin, 1985), Chapter 13, Sections 3, 4. For a convincing reconstruction of Hobbes’s argument that places emphasis on the presence of uncertainty, see Hun Chung, “Hobbes’s State of Nature: A Modern Bayesian Game-Theoretic Analysis,” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (2015): 486–508. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980), Chapter 2, Sections 13, 12. For a view that places great emphasis on the relinquishing of private judgment, see David Gauthier, “Public Reason,” Social Philosophy & Policy 12 (1995): 19–42. Locke, Government, 8. Locke, Government, 8. For a discussion of special versus natural obligations/duties, see Simmons, Political Obligations, 64. See, for example, David Hume, “On the Origin of Government,” in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, edited by Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2014), 481, 486. And for Hume’s sentimentalist solution, see David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896), T 3.2.10 SBN 554–63. Simmons 156. Simmons overstates his point here, since there appears to be one important example of a particularized natural duty: the bidirectional duties between parents and children. If this is a true example of a natural (nontransactional), yet particular, duty, then it cannot be “by definition” that duties are not particular. Instead, Simmons should claim that it is overwhelmingly common of such duties that they are general, rather than particular—so common that we should view any purportedly particular natural duties with great skepticism. T 3.2.9 SBN 259. Locke, Government, 54. Hume joins other Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, most notably Adam Ferguson, in viewing the state as a spontaneously evolved institution. See David Hume, Essays, 39. For Adam Ferguson’s view, which likely influenced Hume, see An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. Fanzia Oz-Salzberger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 119. Hume, Essays, 471. Hume, Essays, 471. Locke, Government, 62. Hume, Essays, 475. T 3.2.8 SBN 546–7. T 3.2.8 SBN 547–8. See also: Hume, Essays, 470. Indeed, Hume is joined by his good friend, Adam Smith, in noticing this incongruity between the theory and the actual attitudes of citizens. Smith highlights this incongruity in his Lectures on Jurisprudence, ed. R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael and P. G. Stein (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982), 402–3. LJ (B) 15. Hume, Essays, 481.

264 Alexander Schaefer 25. Hume, Essays, 481. 26. T 3.2.8 SBN 542. 27. T 3.2.8 SBN 544: “.  .  .  since there is a separate interest in the obedience to government, from that in the performance of promises, we must also allow of a separate obligation.” 28. T 3.2.8 SBN 543. See also: Hume, Essays, 38. 29. T 3.2.8 SBN 544. 30. Hume, Essays, 38. 31. T 3.2.2 SBN 498. 32. For a taxonomy of heteronomous moral theories, see: GMM 4:441–4 and CPrR 5:39–41. Translations given from Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, in Mary Gregor, trans. ed., Practical Philosophy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 89–93; and The Critique of Practical Reason, in Mary Gregor, trans. ed., Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 172, respectively. 33. The other part consists in vindicating the possibility of common sense morality. 34. Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, ed. Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind, trans. Peter Heath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 242, LE 29: 625. 35. GMM 4:442–3. See also LE 29: 625. 36. GMM 4:442. 37. This claim is remarkably salient in the writings of philosophical anarchists. See, for instance, Robert Paul Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 19. Simmons, Political Obligations, 195. 38. Huemer, Political Authority, 134. For a similar, earlier treatment of political obligation as a kind of illusion, see Lester Hunt, “Why the State Needs a Justification,” in Anarchism/Minarchism: Is Government Part of a Free Country?, ed. Roderick T. Long and Tibor R. Machan, 3–14 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2008). 39. MM 6:237. Translation from Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, in Mary Gregor, trans. ed., Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 393. 40. MM 6:250. 41. Ripstein, Force and Freedom, 151. 42. As Kant puts it, “When I declare (by word or deed) I will that something external is to be mine, I thereby declare that everyone is under obligation to refrain from using that object of my choice, an obligation that no one would have were it not for this act of mine to establish a right.” And, of course, “a unilateral will cannot serve as a coercive law to everyone with regard to possession that is external and therefore contingent, since that would infringe upon freedom in accordance with universal laws.” 43. For a detailed account of the problem of unilateral choice, see Bernd Ludwig, “Whence Public Right? The Role of Theoretical and Practical Reasoning in Kant’s Doctrine of Right,” in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals, ed. Mark Timmons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 159–85. For a discussion of the other two problems Kant identifies in the state of nature, the problem of indeterminacy and the problem of assurance, see Ripstein’s illuminating treatment in Force and Freedom, 145–82. 44. MM 6: 256. 45. Kant calls it a “coalition of private will[s].” See TP 8:297. For translation see Immanuel Kant, “On the Common Saying: This May Be True in Theory, But It Is of No Use in Practice,” in Practical Philosophy, ed. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 296. 46. Ripstein, Force and Freedom, 196. 47. MM 6:315. 48. TP 8:297.

An Alternative to Heteronomy and Anarchy 265 49. The unanimous agreement (or “coalition . . . private will[s]”) is not conceived of as the coincidence of individuals’ separate interests. Rather, Kant has in mind a will that is “united not contingently but a priori and therefore necessarily, and because of this is the only will that is lawgiving” (MM 6: 263). Kant explicitly appeals, not to the actual desires of individuals, but to the hypothetical agreement of persons conceived of as rational and moral. See, for example, TP 8:297. 50. MM 6:306–7. 51. This sufficiency claim is open to objection from philosophers such as Michael Huemer who place stricter conditions on the concept of statehood. See Huemer, Authority, 15. 52. See Wolfgang Kersting, “Kant’s Concept of the State,” in Essays on Kant’s Political Philosophy, ed. Howard Williams (Worcester: Billings, 2002), 148–9. 53. MM 6:320. 54. MM 6:307. 55. Indeed, “The concept of right . . . has to do, first, only with the external and indeed practical relation of one person to another, insofar as their actions, as deeds, can have (direct or indirect) influence on each other” (MM 6:230). 56. It is for this reason that what Wolff describes as “the sense of reentering my country . . . my government” is not an illusion as both he and Simmons claim (Wolff, Anarchism, 25). 57. Immanuel Kant, “Reflections on the Philosophy of Right,” in Lectures and Drafts on Political Philosophy, ed. and trans. Frederick Rauscher, trans. Kenneth R. Westphal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) 36. See TP 8:297, where Kant writes, “this contract is a mere idea of reason which has undoubted practical reality.” 58. For a deeper exploration of how the autonomous will connects to the idea of the omnilateral will and the social contract, see Katrin Flikschuh, “Elusive Unity: The General Will in Hobbes and Kant,” Hobbes Studies 25 (2012): 38–9. 59. Wolfgang Kersting, “Kant’s Concept of the State,” in Essays on Kant’s Political Philosophy, ed. Howard Williams (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 149. 60. This standard is given by the categorical imperative, which regulates the choice of maxims. 61. Kersting, State, 149. 62. GMM 4:434. 63. GMM 4:439. 64. MM 6:314. See also: MM 6:315, where Kant writes “in a rightful condition . . . this dependence [upon laws] arises from [the subject’s] own law-giving will.” 65. I would like to thank Chris W. Surprenant for his help and support, especially for the earlier stages of this project. I am also indebted to Matthew Jeffers for his vigilant editing.

References Arendt, Hannah. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Byrd, Sharon and Joachim Hruschka. Kant’s Doctrine of Right: A Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Chung, Hun. “Hobbes’s State of Nature: A Modern Bayesian Game-Theoretic Analysis.” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (2015): 486–508. Estlund, David. Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

266 Alexander Schaefer Ferguson, Adam. An Essay on the History of Civil Society. Edited by Fanzia Oz-Salzberger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Gauthier, David. “Public Reason.” Social Philosophy & Policy 12 (1995): 19–42. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. London: Penguin, 1985. Hobbes, Thomas. On the Citizen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Huemer, Michael. The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Hume, David. “On the Origin of Government.” In Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary. Edited by Eugene F. Miller, 37–41. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2014. Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896. Hunt, Lester H. “Why the State Needs a Justification.” In Anarchism/Minarchism: Is Government Part of a Free Country?, edited by Roderick T. Long and Tibor R. Machan, 3–14. Burlington: Ashgate 2008. Kant, Immanuel. “Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals.” In Practical Philosophy, edited by Mary Gregor, 37–108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996a. Kant, Immanuel. “The Metaphysics of Morals.” In Practical Philosophy, edited by Mary Gregor, 353–604. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996b. Kant, Immanuel. “M. Immanuel Kant’s Announcement of the Programme of His Lectures for the Winter Semester 1765–6.” Kant: A Biography, translated by and quoted in Manfred Kuehn, 176. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Kant, Immanuel. “On the Common Saying: This May Be True in Theory, But It Is of No Use in Practice.” In Practical Philosophy, edited by Mary Gregor, 273–310. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996c. Kersting, Wolfgang. “Kant’s Concept of the State.” In Essays on Kant’s Political Philosophy, edited by Howard Williams, 143–165. Worcester: Billings, 2002. Khalil, Elias L. “An Anatomy of Authority: Adam Smith as Political Theorist.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 29 (2005): 57–71. Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980. Ludwig, Bernd. “Whence Public Right? The Role of Theoretical and Practical Reasoning in Kant’s Doctrine of Right.” In Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals, edited by Mark Timmons, 159–85. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Ripstein, Arthur. Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009. Schneewind, Jerome B. The Invention of Autonomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Simmons, John. Moral Principles and Political Obligations. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. Smith, Adam. Lectures on Jurisprudence. Edited by R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael and P. G. Stein. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982. Timmons, Mark. Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Wolff, Robert Paul. In Defense of Anarchism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

15 Kant, Smith, and the Place of Virtue in Political and Economic Organization1 JP Messina

I. Introduction For Plato, the virtues were necessary, not only for being a good human being, but also for being a good citizen and ruler. Aristotle agreed. For these ancients, a well-ordered polity turned crucially on the realization of virtue. As political theory developed, however, this tight connection between virtue and good politics gradually loosened. The Prince was one of the earliest and most influential works to suggest that political virtues were distinct from religious and other personal virtues. According to Isaiah Berlin, Machiavelli stressed this point in order to draw our attention to different and incommensurable, ways of living well.2 Choosing the life of politics might well mean giving up life of honesty, charity, and temperance. Choosing the latter might mean missing out on the former. Still, both paths present genuine goods. Mandeville went further. For him, private vice conduced best to public virtue. Moreover, because our ideas of virtue were the direct result of pressures applied by self-seeking leaders, thinking of them primarily as constraints on desirable governance was to reverse the order of explanation. These developments raised an important question for enlightenment thinkers. Do effective institutions require virtuously motivated agents? Or can they instead be designed by appealing solely to individual self-interest? On the one hand, virtue in the sense of self-command, acting according to reason, and cultivating traits like temperance, honesty, courage, and justice remained a key component of a well-lived life. Moreover, a civilization made up of the virtuous promised to be free of many of the ills that plague extant societies. On the other hand, virtue is a hard road, and it is utopian in the pejorative sense to rely in one’s institutional design on the idea that most will attain it. But it’s not just that virtue provides a shaky foundation for ordering society. Rather, its partial instantiation may hinder market forces that make everyone better off. So perhaps we do better without it.3 Ambivalence about virtue’s place in the good society may reach its pitch in two of virtue’s great enthusiasts: Immanuel Kant and Adam Smith. Developing Mandeville’s insight concerning the unintended consequences of luxury spending, Smith argued that self-interested action often increases the lot of

268 JP Messina the worst off, as if by an invisible hand. Here, his influence on Kant is fairly certain. But Kant apparently went further: The problem of the just society, he maintained, was perfectly soluble for a nation of devils (PP 8:366). Politics at no point needs to rely on virtuous motivation.4 But there’s a tension between upholding virtue as a crucial component of the good life, and arguing that societies can rely, for their organization, primarily on self-interest. For institutions affect persons, and those that rely on self-interest may corrupt us.5 If virtue really is “our highest practical vocation,” as Kant repeatedly claims (e.g., CPrR 5:87), if it is a key component of the good life, “something uncommonly great and beautiful, which rises far above what is vulgar and ordinary,” as Smith insists6 (TMS I.i.5.6), then there is something morally problematic about structuring society in a way that predictably makes attaining it more difficult. Smith admits as much. Certain institutions, particularly commercial institutions that rely on our vulgar ambitions, present clear challenges for virtuous living. This is a consideration against them.7 Having recognized the problem, Smith developed a solution grounded in a focused program of education aimed at ennobling self-interest, and advocated marking out a clearly delineated sphere of civic activity to make room for the full exercise of virtue.8 By contrast, Kant says little about how to alleviate the similar tension in his own position. Given his awareness of the problem, his silence is puzzling. In what follows, I argue that, while he and Smith understood the problem in a structurally similar way (indeed, possibly owing to Smith’s influence), Kant’s conception of politics (as grounded in human freedom) may have led him to a different understanding of its salience. By sharply distinguishing the subject matter of politics from that of ethics, Kant is able to provide a plausible case for why we must tolerate the virtue-inhibiting effects of our political and economic institutions. Far from showing that any corruption such institutions might generate is beyond moral concern, this duty of toleration simply indicates that such concern is limited in its authority. Thus, ambivalence toward the institutions that structure our lives is roughly fitting. In the conclusion, I suggest that it shouldn’t be otherwise.

II. Kant and Smith: Commercial Ambition and the Pursuit Virtue This section does three things. First, it shows that Kant and Smith each adopt a conception of virtue that affords a central role to self-control, and that this role consists in overcoming the passions and keeping the inclinations within their proper bounds. Second, it demonstrates that Kant, like Smith, admits that commercial society presents challenges for virtue, so understood. Finally, it shows that Kant again, like Smith, nevertheless advocates extending, rather than curtailing, commercial institutions. Thus this section shows that Kant and Smith shared a similar understanding of the

The Place of Virtue 269 problems generated by commercial society, and will position us to see how Kant may have viewed his conception of politics as responsive. Let’s begin. While there is a substantial degree of distance between their broader moral theories, Kant and Smith agree that virtue requires self-control to moderate the passions. For his part, Smith calls self-command the virtue from which “all the other virtues seem to derive their principal lustre” (TMS VI.iii.11) and claims that its chief purpose is to drive our acts and our passions toward what an impartial spectator could countenance (TMS I.i.5.1). For Kant, too, the notion of self-command is crucial.9 While virtue ultimately concerns the state of one’s disposition (the degree to which one pursues happiness only conditional on its consistency with the Moral Law), actual human beings require strength in “resisting and conquering” the powerful forces (i.e., passions) that threaten to lead us astray (virtus phaenomenon) (MM 6:380, 6:390; compare Rel 6:46–7). Kant goes as far as to call possession of the right kind of self-control the state of “health” in moral life (MM 408).10 Now, observe that Kant and Smith also agree that commercial institutions make achieving self-command difficult.11 Smith’s appreciation of this darker side of commerce finds clearest expression in his parable of the poor man’s son, who, under the spell of ambition, “devotes himself for ever to the pursuit of wealth and greatness” (TMS IV.i.8). In doing so, he sacrifices a “real tranquility”—made possible by desires moderated by self-control—for the imagined repose afforded to him by esteem, wealth, and material objects. His tale is a cautionary one. It ends like this. [I]n the languor of disease and the weariness of old age, the pleasures of the vain and empty distinctions of greatness disappear. To one, in this situation, they are no longer capable of recommending those toilsome pursuits in which they had formerly engaged him. In his heart he curses ambition, and vainly regrets the ease and the indolence of youth, pleasures which are fled for ever, and which he has foolishly sacrificed for what, when he has got it, can afford him no real satisfaction. (TMS IV.i.8) Smith thus joins a long tradition of associating the virtuous life with a kind of tranquility. The objects of many of our ambitions are likely to leave us cold, and to lead us away from true happiness and virtue. But these are precisely the ambitions to which commercial institutions appeal. In having increasingly intricate objects before us, we start to see our happiness in them, rather than in the life of self-command and virtue. Commercial society encourages us, by means of our concern to distinguish ourselves from others, to pursue these objects vigorously. In encouraging us to pursue the wrong ends, and through an increasing division of labor, commercial institutions render the human mind “incapable of elevation” (LJ(B) 333). “By having their minds constantly employed on the arts of luxury,” he writes, human beings become “dastardly” under trade (LJ(B) 331). Our inclinations toward luxury goods

270 JP Messina might make us less interested in the pursuit of virtue, or they might simply create and intensify desires for things with which it is not compatible. Either way, they render us less likely to exercise the kind of self-control that gives the virtues their “principal luster.” To the degree that we exercise the virtues, we do so from self-interest, not because doing so is required. Kant’s characterization of the problem is similar, if less dramatic. He writes that increased commercial activity ushers in a spirit of “cowardice” and “base self-interest” (CPJ 5:263). While he isn’t fully explicit, the idea seems to be that, in the comfort of prosperity, people become distracted by meaningless pursuits and are less concerned to improve themselves. Commercial institutions can encourage a kind of avarice, which is a “slavish subjection of oneself to the goods that contribute to happiness, [and] a violation of duty to oneself, since one ought to be their master” (MM 6:434). Encouraged by the prospect of greatness and riches, it is easy to see one’s primary goal as “surpass[ing] others,” rather than recognizing that true worth involves comparison with the Moral Law (MM 6:435). In making it materially easier to satisfy our desires, and in rendering these stronger, complying with the demand to overcome them when the occasion arises becomes more difficult. Because we rely primarily on self-interest in our day-to-day lives, we need not learn well how to what we ought to do for its own sake. In spite of acknowledging the extent to which ambition might lead individuals astray, Kant, like Smith before him, appears to have little problem prescribing institutions that exploit our competitive natures. Thus, Smith writes that, in the end, nature has been wise to plant the seeds of ambition in our breast. [I]t is well that nature imposes upon us in this manner [by making us seek relative greatness and glory]. It is this deception that rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind. (TMS IV.i.10) Here, Kant is a student of Smith.12 Our natural “unsocial” resistance to others “awakens” and invigorates our powers. [T]he desire for honour, power, or property, drives [man] to seek status among his fellows, whom he cannot bear yet cannot bear to leave. Then the first true steps are taken from barbarism to culture, which in fact consists in the social worthiness of man . . . Nature should thus be thanked for fostering social incompatibility, enviously competitive vanity, and insatiable desires for possession or even power. (IUH 8:21) Institutions that make use of and intensify desires for “honour, power or property” affect our civilization. For Kant, as for Smith, then, commercial institutions operate by exploiting desires to find ourselves, not just well off, but better off than others.

The Place of Virtue 271 These competitive desires allow market institutions to capture the power of human industry. Therefore, they may be put in place for good reason (e.g., to provide incentives to make others better off, even to push humanity as a species along the road to perfection). But in the process, Kant and Smith agree that such institutions predictably corrupt. In making it so we do not have to rely, in our daily lives, on anything other than the pursuit of our own self-interest, commercial society leads us to neglect the higher ends of our existence. It is striking, given the high price he places upon these ends (self-command, self-perfection and true beneficence), that Kant says little to address the matter explicitly. In the next section, I argue that, in addition to thinking (for Smithian reasons) that commerce is, in some respects, an inducement (as well as an impediment) to virtue, he holds a conception of politics according to which many costs of commercial activity in terms of virtue are to be conceptualized as regrettable effects of individuals exercising their rights.

III. Kant, Virtue, and the Ends of Politics The previous section might have left off giving the appearance that Kant is willing to trade individual difficulties in attaining virtue for the good of the species. In what follows, I show that this is misleading for two reasons. First, commerce does not only place obstacles in the way of our becoming virtuous; in certain respects, commerce makes it easier. In fact, Kant’s conviction that commercial institutions incentivize peaceful interaction among strangers (and enable a prosperity that reduces our incentives to violate others’ rights) crucially informs his prescription to extend them. Second, Kantian political force is authorized exclusively in the service of protecting the human right to freedom. To the degree that the exercise of that right can have corrupting effects—on net or otherwise—we must tolerate the corruption. We must tolerate it, not for the general welfare, but for the sake of respecting each other’s rights. On the first point, I can be relatively brief. Kant recognizes with Smith and other Scottish thinkers (e.g., Ferguson) that mutually beneficial trade gives individuals and nations from diverse backgrounds and locations reasons to interact peacefully, to relate to one another as independents, to build relationships that (though based on utility) can develop in various non-instrumental directions, and to improve one another’s lot. In Perpetual Peace, Kant writes, It is the spirit of commerce, which cannot coexist with war and which sooner or later takes hold of every nation. In other words, since the power of money may well be the most reliable of all the powers (means) subordinate to that of a state, states find themselves compelled (admittedly not through incentives of morality) to promote honorable peace and, whenever war threatens to break out anywhere in the world, to pre-

272 JP Messina vent it by mediation . . . In this way nature guarantees perpetual peace through the mechanism of human inclinations itself, with an assurance that is admittedly not adequate for predicting its future. (PP 8:368) Commerce gives governments incentives to end war and to relate peacefully to one another.13 This point about nations generalizes to the individual case as well. Although under commercial institutions I may be motivated to aid others because doing so directly serves my interests (think here of Smith’s butcher, baker, and brewer), the prosperity that commerce allows for (and the relationships it forges) drastically reduce my incentives for treating them violently.14 Put differently: though under institutions of free trade, I face more temptations of one kind (new gadgets, new foods, new narcotics, new luxury goods, etc.), I face fewer incentives of another (namely, to violate others’ rights).15 Though he does share Smith’s optimism on this point, however this does not capture the entirety of Kant’s position. For he holds, in addition, that we have an innate right to freedom, and that this authorizes us to engage in a variety of activities that might, through their secondary effects, be lamentably corrupting. Thus, even if commerce’s effects were estimated to be considerably worse, Kant has resources for thinking that this would not be a sufficient reason for indicting it. Therefore, I argue next that Kant’s conception of political freedom explains, in part, why he did not furnish (coercive) resources for ameliorating whatever negative effects commerce might have. In this direction, begin by considering Kant’s division between right (Recht) and ethics (Ethik). Each of these is grounded in laws of freedom, of which there are two types: juridical and ethical. The freedom to which the former [juridical] laws refer can be only freedom in the external use of choice, but the freedom to which the latter [ethical laws] refer is freedom in both the external and the internal use of choice. (MM 6:220) I take freedom in the internal use of choice to refer to internal actions— namely, those involved with motives, adopting maxims, and setting ends. Freedom in the external use of choice, by contrast, concerns external actions—namely, the selection of means for realizing our ends.16 All practical laws, juridical and ethical alike, can serve as grounds for determining an agent’s choice. For example, I can appeal to the Moral Law to rationalize choosing the maxim “do not lie.” When this happens, I exercise freedom in determining my internal power of choice. My internal action involves selecting a maxim because it conforms to the Moral Law I represent.17 But though all laws can function as determining grounds in this way, juridical laws do not themselves constrain the way I exercise my internal

The Place of Virtue 273 powers of choice. For example, consider a traffic law that requires motorists to keep their speed below 50 miles per hour. Here, it does not matter if I comply with the law because it is the law (though I might do so). What matters is that I exercise my external powers of choice such that the means I select (driving my car to work) conform to the relevant norm (if I drive to get to work, I drive within the legal limit). And I can satisfy this requirement even if I’m simply motivated to avoid a fine. Kant thus equates internal lawgiving with a requirement that the determining ground of choice is duty, or the representation of law (MM 6:219). By contrast, juridical law is that which admits of determination by other incentives—e.g., fear of punishment (MM 6:219). But why is juridical law concerned only with the external capacity for choice? The answer, I suggest, turns on recognizing that others have no direct access to the way I determine my capacity for internal choice. My internal actions are unobservable. At best, you can infer them from my external actions (Rel 6:20). But such inferences are fraught (even for me—I might, e.g., be self-deceived). This is important for understanding why juridical duties concern only external actions. For all lawgiving has two elements. The first is a law representing an action as objectively necessary, and the second is an incentive “which connects a ground for determining choice to this action subjectively” in accordance with the representation of law (MM 6:218).18 The reason that ethical laws are not possibly subject to external (juridical) lawgiving consists in the fact that no lawgiver other than myself (i.e., no external lawgiver) could provide incentives for compliance, because no lawgiver other than myself could detect noncompliance. Detecting noncompliance with a norm is a necessary condition of its being sanctioned. Therefore, no external lawgiver could satisfy both constraints on lawgiving with respect to internal actions.19 Thus, no external body can force me to select a certain maxim or end.20 By contrast, there is no problem in providing incentives to external actions, for the latter are observable, and so can be sanctioned.21 Because there is no third type of act, external actions are therefore the only acts that can be detected and sanctioned by others—i.e., externally.22 So far, Kant’s point is conceptual. Given that (i) we have two ways in which we can exercise freedom in the determination of our power of choice, internal and external, and that (ii) certain exercises of freedom can be externally enforced, while others can only be internally enforced, there simply is a distinction concerning two types of lawgiving. Thus, the doctrine of right comprises all duties for which “an external lawgiving is possible” (MM 6:229)—i.e., external, observable actions—while the doctrine of virtue concerns those duties for which such lawgiving is impossible. This is not yet to say anything significant about substantive issues of right. For according to what has been said so far, I might be rightfully restricted from undertaking any external actions (or allowed to perform any external action whatever).

274 JP Messina With the distinction on the table, Kant quickly advances several claims about the content of Right. Most significantly, he introduces the Universal Principle of Right (UPR) as a substantive norm. Any action is right if it can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law, or if on its maxim the freedom of choice of each can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law. (MM 6:230) For Kant, the UPR is a postulate incapable of further proof. He does not, therefore, derive it from the distinction between juridical and ethical law that has come before.23 Still, UPR is a principle that governs our freedom generally and, therefore, our external freedom. It implies that we have a coercive right to any and all rightful exercises of external freedom (thus, it generates our one innate right). To establish that this right is coercive this conclusion, Kant argues as follows. (1) “[R]esistance that counteracts the hindering of an effect promotes this effect and is consistent with it.” (2) Coercion is a “hindrance or resistance to freedom.” (3) Therefore, coercion that hinders a hindrance to freedom, promotes it and is authorized by it. (MM 6:231) This entails that others can be hindered in their attempts to hinder us in our exercise of rightful external freedom. In other words, our right to freedom is coercible, and, indeed, it stands alone as our one Innate Right. Freedom (independence from being constrained by another’s choice), insofar as it can coexist with the freedom of every other in accordance with a universal law, is the only original right belonging to every man by virtue of his humanity. (MM 6:237–238) When your exercise of freedom subjects my external power of choice to yours, your exercise of freedom is not compatible with mine, and is therefore wrongful, and can be rightfully resisted. Now notice that if this is the Kantian picture of Right, then restrictions on commercial activity that do not themselves hinder hindrances to external freedom are wrongful.24 Thus, even if, taken together, our individual exercises of external freedom make us worse by the lights of virtue (and thus by the lights of reason), we must be secure in them nonetheless. Others wrong us in restricting our freedom to offer ourselves as partners in trade to the degree that such trade is compatible with the external freedom of others (MM 352).

The Place of Virtue 275 We have now an explanation for why Kant did not take himself to be entitled (much less required) to limit commercial activity for its potential to corrupt. To so would have been to prescribe limitations on freedom not themselves required by freedom. Anyway, this is what Kant appears to argue. [C]ivil freedom cannot very well be infringed without feeling the disadvantage of it in all trades, especially in commerce, and thereby also the diminution of the powers of the state in its external relationships . . . If one hinders the citizen who is seeking his welfare in any way he pleases, as long as it can subsist along with the freedom of others, then one restrains the vitality of all enterprise and with it, in turn, the powers of the whole. (IUH 8:27–28) The most plausible explanation for Kant’s claim that restrictions on civil freedom hurt trade is that he sees civil and economic freedom as being intimately bound up together.25 On the account considered here, drawing this connection makes sense. For external freedom is freedom in selecting and employing means for our ends. Laws that hinder us in this (to the degree that it is compatible with the like freedom of others) wrong us. Thus civil freedom (understood as freedom under laws) will (to the degree that the laws are legitimate) afford us freedom to alienate the external objects we control as we see fit, and infringing it will have negative effects on commerce. I have been arguing that the fact that we must uphold persons’ right to external freedom straightaway implies that we must tolerate the externalities it might impose (at least to the degree that these are compatible with others’ freedom).26 But this might seem to simply push the problem back. Given that Kant elsewhere appears to care to such a strong degree about positive freedom in the sense of self-command, why should he (much less we) accept losses in terms of positive freedom solely for the sake of maintaining our right to independence?27 One part of this answer has already been provided: commerce is not exclusively bad news for the pursuit of virtue. But this is basically an empirical claim of the sort on which one would not expect Kant to rely. (After all, he elsewhere claims that the basic framework of political right is to be specified a priori). If Kant can’t provide a solid basis for his concern with freedom as independence then, there is reason to be dissatisfied with his account. In the next section, I locate resources in Kant’s moral theory for answering this concern.

IV. Kantian Dignity and the Value of Human Independence The conclusion of the last section raised a good question. But good questions are not decisive objections. What Kant needs is some argument for thinking human independence matters, and matters such that we have an obligation to protect it, even in spite of its costs. But given Kant’s claim that the UPR is

276 JP Messina incapable of further proof, it might seem unlikely that he has any such argument. And though several scholars have offered accounts that motivate the UPR based on the categorical imperative, none has yet succeeded in making it fully clear why Kant interprets political freedom in this way, rather than in some other way.28 This section argues that Kant’s broader moral theory has resources for motivating a concern with external freedom. To understand why Kant might have thought human independence so important, we must understand the special value that human beings have by virtue of their rationality. In the Groundwork, Kant’s discussion of this value, which he calls dignity, is bound up with the second formulation of the categorical imperative: the formula of humanity.29 For Kant, “rational beings are called persons because their nature already marks them out as an end-in-itself, that is as something that cannot be used merely as a means, and hence so far limits choice (and is an object of respect)” (GMM 4:428, emphasis added).30 The claim that persons, as ends in themselves, limit the choice of others is suggestive, and should recall Kant’s characterization of political freedom as independence from another person’s choice. Thus, for humanity to mark us out as ends means (in part) that our existence limits, or constrains the choice of others. But what reason do we have for thinking that we are dignified in this way? For Kant, each and every rational agent attributes this value to herself “on just the same rational ground” (GMM 4:429). He says this ground will be brought to light in the Groundwork’s third section. There, Kant attempts to explain on what basis the Moral Law is binding for us. On his first attempt, we take an interest in acting under moral laws because so acting enables us to think of ourselves as free. In taking ourselves to be free, we “find merely in our own person a worth that can compensate us for the loss of everything [else] that provides a worth to our condition [happiness]” (GMM 4:450). But Kant’s first pass is circular. We take ourselves to be free to ground our commitment to morality, and then this commitment itself serves as grounds for taking ourselves to be free and of special value (GMM 4:450). This “freedom circle” leads Kant to think that what he needs to show is that we have some non-moral reason thinking ourselves free.31 Ultimately, he finds what he is looking for in the distinction between the sensible and intelligible worlds. In the sensible world, we “represent ourselves in terms of our actions as effects that we see before our eyes” (GMM 4:450). In other words, we represent ourselves as appearances, standing under natural laws. But we take a different standpoint when we think of ourselves as causes (GMM 4:450). Then, we think of ourselves, not as appearances, but as that which lies behind them and gives rise to them (GMM 4:451). Of course, since we do not create ourselves, we can learn what we’re like only “through the appearance” of our nature. But “beyond this [we] must necessarily assume something else lying at their [the appearances’] basis, namely [our] ego as it may be constituted in itself” (GMM 4:451). But, for all we know, our pure ego involves pure activity. Moreover, thinking of our ego as

The Place of Virtue 277 active makes good sense of various features of our intellectual agency. Therefore, we count ourselves as belonging to the “intellectual world,” which may well be governed by laws of freedom—i.e., moral laws (GMM 4:451). But if so, we have independent grounds for thinking ourselves free, the circle is removed, and we have independent grounds for concluding that we are ends that constrain others’ choice (compare CPrR 5:86–88). However successful this argument is on its own terms, the point is that Kant may have thought independence important because it upholds our status as ends. As ends under moral laws, we possess an agency that is free from determination by certain causes outside us—be these our own inclinations or the wills of others. Because human beings have this kind of value and agency, their independence must be respected. We cannot (as we have seen) constrain a person’s internal freedom, and they cannot constrain ours. Hence, what’s left is just to ensure that we do not subject one another’s external choice to our own. To do so would be to make their external choice dependent upon ours, and this would be to fail to respect them as free agents. Put simply, therefore, protecting external freedom matters because it is required by respect for persons as ends. Now, one might notice that Kant could have argued this way explicitly. Perhaps the fact that he didn’t suggests that he simply saw no connection between the second formulation of the categorical imperative and the reasons to respect external freedom. But this objection is too hasty. After all, Kant does say several things that motivate positing a connection between the formula of humanity, on the one hand, and external freedom, on the other. First, Kant calls the right to freedom as independence the Innate Right of Humanity (recalling the language in the second formulation of the categorical imperative). Second, in the Doctrine of Right, Kant explicitly says that human beings should be identified with their “humanity,” and its noumenal capacity for freedom, rather than with their phenomenal selves (MM 6:239). Third, Kant claims that duties of right can be explicated from the three Ulpian formulas. The first is of special importance. Rightful honor (honestas iuridica) consists in asserting one’s worth as a human being in relation to others, a duty expressed by the saying, “do not make yourself a mere means for others but be at the same time an end for them.” (MM 6:236–7) In his interpretation of the first Ulpian formula, Kant makes explicit reference to the prohibition on treating humanity as a mere means. Later in the same passage, he tells us that the obligation to assert our worth follows from “the right of humanity” in us. Finally, Kant claims that an innate right is “that which belongs to everyone by nature, independently of any act that would establish a right” (MM 6:239). This recalls Kant’s claim in

278 JP Messina Groundwork II that it is the nature of a human being that marks her out as an end in herself, rather than any act of choice. These textual points strongly suggest that Kant’s specification of freedom in his political thought draws on resources from his moral philosophy.32 Understanding Kant in this way affords a compelling account of why we should care about human independence and external freedom. And if we have that, we have a reason for thinking that commerce—here understood as a name under which so many external actions fall—ought to be unrestricted, when it ought to be unrestricted. For Kant, we are entitled to any exercise of freedom that is compatible with the like freedom of others. To entertain restricting such freedom meets with a high burden of scrutiny. It must be shown that such restrictions hinder hindrances to external freedom. If they do not, they are inconsistent with human beings’ Innate Right. Therefore, even if commerce is quite corrupting, Kant’s account shows us that it must be tolerated. To fail in this duty of toleration is ultimately to fail in one’s moral duties.

V. Conclusion We began with a puzzle. Both Kant and Smith note that one cost of commerce is that it creates challenges for certain aspects of virtuous living. But unlike Smith, Kant appears to provide little guidance on how to understand or address the problem. Earlier, I argued that this appearance is misleading. The problem is to be understood like this. By virtue of our humanity, we are owed independence. Sometimes complying with this demand will involve leaving in place patterns of action that make the virtuous life hard. But to restrict the rightful activity of human beings is to fail to treat them as their dignity demands. Of course, if the exercise of freedom has beneficial effects aside from these (and for Kant—as for Smith—there’s good reason for hope on this score), that is to its credit. But to observe such happy contingencies is not the justification for enshrining external freedom, nor would their failure to eventuate be an objection to its exercise. Kant’s central concern with external freedom is consistent with the importance he places upon virtue because, as human beings, we always have two grounds of action: the pursuit of happiness and the Moral Law. Thus, we are always, in principle, free to act as we morally ought. To do so against the temptations we face is a great challenge, and our social context can facilitate or complicate overcoming those temptations. But it is only if that context violates our rights that we can exercise coercion to make things better. And, importantly, no legal context that violates our right to freedom can properly or fully allow for virtue. For “respect for right,” whereby one “makes the right of humanity, or also the right of human beings, one’s end” is a crucial requirement of virtue (MM 6:391). And this is as it should be. For the value that right is concerned to protect is none other than the central ethical value of humanity, understood as an end in itself.

The Place of Virtue 279 It’s true that, from a certain angle, this story can seem unsatisfying. Though we might recognize that respecting human beings’ right to freedom means respecting their right to pursue their ends as they see fit, we might regret that the result of such respect is to create challenges for cultivating virtue. Here, however, I think it is important to remember that philosophical analysis can be useful not only by providing fully satisfactory solutions to the problems we face, but also by drawing our attention to them and providing a framework for thinking them through. In the end, we should remain concerned about the ways in which our institutions make life hard on we who stand under them. But we should also recognize what can be said in defense of such institutions, not because those defenses totally vindicate our practices, but because they articulate sound constraints on the solutions that are available to us, within the limits of human rights. Here, Kant tells us that any problems for virtue created by political and economic organizations are to be addressed coercively only if they involve violations of our human right to freedom. Otherwise, they might be addressed through increased awareness, reflection, and education. Instead of thinking, therefore, that the answer to the problems we observe is to redesign those institutions that enshrine our freedom and protect our rights, we might take a Kantian attitude of ambivalence toward them, recognizing their virtues, and taking other steps to guard against any tendency they have to lead us into vice.

Notes 1. I am grateful to several scholars who helped make this a better chapter. First, to my advisor, Eric Watkins, who read multiple drafts. As elsewhere, his guidance here has pressed me in the right direction. Second to Mark LeBar whose comments on an early draft of this chapter led me to several important improvements. Third to Ralf Bader for an informal conversation that helped press this chapter forward. Finally, to the participants at UCSD’s History of Philosophy Roundtable (in no particular order: David Wiens, Sam Rickless, Brian Tracz, Claudi Brink, Rosalind Chaplin, Sebastian Speitel, Max Edwards, Leonardo Moauro, Michael Pittman, and Michael Hardimon). If this chapter is better, it is for your help. If not, the failure is my own. 2. Isaiah Berlin, “The Question of Machiavelli,” in The Prince: A Revised Translation, Backgrounds, Interpretations, Marginalia, ed. Robert M. Adams, 206–236 (New York: Norton, 1992). 3. As Lisa Herzog notes, Smith appears at many points sympathetic to Mandeville’s worries about replacing self-love with other-regard. (Here’s Mandeville: with self-interest, we find “the whole Mass a Paradise”, but when “they ask Jupiter for virtue, the economic life of the hive breaks down.” Lisa Herzog, “Higher and Lower Virtues in Commercial Society: Adam Smith and Motivation Crowding Out,” Politics 10 (2011): 380, quoting Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees: Or Private Vices, Publick Benefits: In 2 vols. with a Commentary by F.B. Kaye (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1988). 4. However, see Paul Formosa, “All Politics Must Bend Its Knee before Right: Kant on the Relation of Morals to Politics,” Social Theory and Practice 34 (2008): 1–25.

280 JP Messina 5. The claim that commercial society makes virtue difficult (as against noncommercial social practices) is an empirical claim whose merits are rather uncertain. In light of the controversy surrounding its truth or falsity, this chapter can be read in two different ways. If (with Badhwar and Brennan & Jaworksi) you’re skeptical that commerce corrupts, let yourself be convinced that, nevertheless Kant and Smith were concerned that it does. Then treat the chapter as one of primarily historical interest. On this reading, I show how Kant held a consistent position, despite prescribing a reform program that would extend institutions that he thought made virtue more difficult. See Neera Badhwar, “Friendship and Commercial Societies,” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 7 (2008): 301–26; and Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski, Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests (New York, NY: Routledge, 2016). If, on the other hand, you’re convinced (with Anderson, Satz and Sandel) that commercial life does present unique challenges for cultivating virtue, let this chapter show the historical point. But let it show, beyond this, that, even if commerce corrupts, there might be good reasons for widening its scope. 6. As Calkins and Werhane observe, Smith goes as far as to say that we will “‘strain with every nerve’ to achieve wisdom and virtue, “those ends which it is the purpose of [our] being to advance.” Martin J. Calkins and Patricia H. Werhane, “Adam Smith, Aristotle, and the Virtues of Commerce,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 32 (1998): 47, quoting Smith TMS. 7. Smith’s ambivalence about commerce has generated a small, but very interesting literature. See, for example, Calkins and Werhane, “Adam Smith, Aristotle, and the Virtues of Commerce”; Raymond G. Frey, “Virtue, Commerce, and Self-Love,” Hume Studies 21 (1995): 275–88; Ryan P. Hanley, “Commerce and Corruption: Rousseau’s Diagnosis and Adam Smith’s Cure,” European Journal of Political Theory 7 (2008): 137–58; Herzog, “Higher and Lower Virtues in Commercial Society: Adam Smith and Motivation Crowding Out”; and et al. 8. Hanley, “Commerce and Corruption: Rousseau’s Diagnosis and Adam Smith’s Cure”; Herzog, “Higher and Lower Virtues in Commercial Society: Adam Smith and Motivation Crowding Out.” 9. Eric E. Wilson, “Self-Legislation and Self-Command in Kant’s Ethics,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 96 (2015): 266–72. 10. Self-control, like health more generally, is thus best understood as a conditional good. But it would be a mistake to conclude from this that it has merely instrumental value. Instead, self-control contributes to the “inner worth” of a person (GMM 4: 394). Thanks to Eric Watkins for pressing me to address this point. 11. In contemporary parlance, there are worries about the degree to which commercial institutions (1) create new (and vicious) desires, (2) intensify existing desires to a degree that is incompatible with acting morally, (3) crowd out motivation to engage in various moral activities for their own sake by relying on extrinsic motivation (motivation to engage in some activity for the sake of a reward, or to avoid a sanction), or (4) make us selfish. For a nice review of the current state of the empirical literature on this question (and its normative relevance), see Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski, Markets Without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests (New York, NY: Routledge, 2016), 90–144. Brennan and Jaworski argue, against Kant, Smith and contemporary theorists that concerns about (1)-(4) are overblown. 12. Samuel Fleischacker, “Values behind the market: Kant’s response to the Wealth of Nations,” History of Political Thought 17 (1996): 379–407. 13. The emphasis on peace is crucial, for Kant later says that perpetual peace is the final end of politics. See MM 6:355. 14. It is difficult, in Kant, to disentangle the beneficial effects of commerce from the beneficial effects of civil society more generally. But, crucially, it is respect

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20. 21.

22.

for right (enforced by government) that gives our social circumstances a moral veneer: “Within each state  .  .  .  citizens’ inclination to violence against one another is powerfully counteracted by . . . government, and so not only does this give the whole a moral veneer but also, by its checking the outbreak of unlawful inclinations, the development of the moral predisposition to immediate respect for right is actually greatly facilitated” (PP 8: 375n). Smith perhaps goes further. Though commerce makes the virtues of self-command and benevolence more difficult to exercise properly, it also strongly encourages genuine “bourgeois” virtues like “industry, honesty, thrift, temperance, and prudence.” Hanley, “Commerce and Corruption,” 141. Here, for simplicity, I follow Allen Wood, The Free Development of Each: Studies in Freedom, Right, and Ethics in Classical German Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), chapter 3. For a more detailed analysis of these terms, see my unpublished “Kant on Political Freedom: Independence, External Freedom, and the Place of Public Law”. This reading is supported when Kant spells out for a duty to be in accord with rightful lawgiving. These, he tells us, “can be only external duties, since this lawgiving does not require that the idea of this duty, which is internal, itself be the determining ground of the agent’s choice” (MM 6:219). Kant is clear: the idea of duty, which involves the representation of a law, is internal. This pair of requirements is fairly typical in the natural law tradition. Compare, for example, Pufendorf: “Of every perfect Law there are two Parts: One, [the Precept] whereby it is directed what is to be done or omitted: the other, [the Sanction] wherein is declared what Punishment he shall incur, who neglects to do what is commanded, or attempts that which is prohibited,” Samuel Pufendorf, The Whole Duty of Man, According to the Law of Nature, ed. Ian Hunter and David Saunders, trans. Andrew Tooke (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002), 46. While I cannot argue for this conclusion here, this reading is supported by the examples of supposed exceptions to strict right (the right of necessity, and the right of equity). For Kant’s discussion of these cases, see MM 6:234–6. Kant also holds that external agents simply do not have the kind of control over my internal actions to compel them: “Duties of virtue cannot be subject to external lawgiving simply because they have to do with an end which . . . is also a duty. No external lawgiving can bring about someone’s setting an end for himself (for this is an internal act of the mind), although it may prescribe external actions that lead to an end with out the subject making it his end” (MM 6:239). What if others could interfere with my internal actions, and force me to set ends? Here, the innate right to freedom would deem their doing so inappropriate. For it is a right to freedom (independence from constraint) simpliciter. Again, compare Pufendorf, who writes that, “Human Judicature regards only the external Actions of Man, but can no ways reach the inward thoughts of the Mind which do not discover themselves by any outward Signs or Effects . . . But Moral Divinity does not content itself in regulating only the Exterior Actions; but is more peculiarly intent in forming the Mind, and its internal Motions, agreeable to the good Pleasure of the Divine Being; disallowing those very Actions, which outwardly look well enough, but proceed from an impure and corrupted Mind,” Pufendorf, The Whole Duty of Man, According to the Law of Nature, 20–1. “That ethics is a doctrine of virtue (doctrina officiorum virtutis) follows, however, from the above exposition of virtue when it is connected with the kind of obligation whose distinctive feature was just pointed out.—that is to say, determination to an end is the only determination of choice the very concept of which excludes the possibility of constraint through natural means by the choice of another” (MM 6:381, my emphasis).

282 JP Messina 23. Nor, to the consternation of many scholars, does Kant attempt to derive the UPR from the categorical imperative. On this point, see Marcus Willaschek, “Why the Doctrine of Right Does Not Belong in the Metaphysics of Morals,” Jahrbuch Für Recht Und Ethik 5 (1997): 205–27; Marcus Willaschek,“Right and Coercion: Can Kant’s Conception of Right Be Derived from His Moral Theory?” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 17 (2009): 49–70; Marcus Willaschek, “The Non-Derivability of Kantian Right from the Categorical Imperative: A Response to Nance,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 20 (2012): 557–64; Michael Nance, “Kantian Right and the Categorical Imperative: Response to Willaschek,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 20 (2012): 541–56. For the received view on the UPR’s relationship to the categorical imperative, see Arthur Ripstein, Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 355–89. 24. The obvious corollary is that those restrictions on commercial activity that hinder a hindrance to freedom are right. Thus, the way to understand passages where Kant appears to license restrictions on trade (e.g., TP 8:299n) is plausibly subject to the condition that restrictions do not hinder anyone in an exercise of freedom that is compatible with the freedom of others. Of course, whether there are such permissible restrictions and whether Kant thought there were are different questions. Things become yet more complicated once we consider not merely abstract political principles but also obligations to existing legal orders. Drawing any quick conclusions about the latter based on the former is fraught for reasons I make clear elsewhere. 25. I thus disagree with Pauline Kleingeld, both on her reading of this passage and concerning how she reads Kant on trade more generally. Here is one diagnosis of the disagreement. Kant makes judgments concerning both (1) which particular political institutions are justified and (2) the higher-level principles that are supposed to justify them. Kleingeld’s account places more weight on (1), whereas mine takes more seriously his remarks concerning (2). Once we focus our attention clearly on the UPR and the notion of external freedom with which it is concerned, we can see Kant has only very limited resources for restricting commercial activity, whatever else he says. See Pauline Kleingeld, Kant and Cosmopolitanism: The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 136–48. For a passage where Kant admits rightful limits on commerce, see Kant TP 8:299n. 26. For a helpful discussion on this point, see Ripstein, Force and Freedom, 14–19. 27. On this point, see Katrin Flikschuh, Kant and Modern Political Philospohy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 84–8. 28. The best account on offer (that shares with my own the view that the second section of the Groundwork is crucial here) is provided by Hodgson. See LouisPhillipe Hodgson, “Kant on the right to freedom: A defense.” Ethics, 120(4) (2010): 791–819. 29. I seek to show that the way Kant describes our dignity is isomorphic to the way he describes our Innate Right. In doing so, I take myself to offer further support for what Sensen calls the “contemporary paradigm” of Kantian dignity (against his preferred “traditional” reading). Sensen rejects, where I accept, that Kantian dignity is a value that constrains choice. We agree that Kant’s remarks concerning humanity’s dignity often suggest a purely descriptive claim according to which human beings are elevated above nature by virtue of their freedom. Moreover, we agree that this “does not yet imply anything about human beings should treat each other.” Oliver Sensen, “Kant’s Conception of Human Dignity,” Kant-Studien 100 (2009): 313. But, as will become clear next, Kant argues that the elevation is normatively relevant. It is precisely that elevation which gives us grounds for thinking of ourselves as ends. See esp. my n. 26. For another

The Place of Virtue 283 detailed account of Kantian dignity, see Michael Rosen, Dignity: Its History and Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), chs. 1–2. 30. This coheres well with what Kant says pages later about dignity: “that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself has not merely a relative worth, that is, a price, but an inner worth, that is dignity” (GMM 4: 435). It is true (as Sensen notes) that Kant connects dignity to morality. But it is not the actualization of morality, but our capacity for it, that is relevant for our having dignity. So far as human beings are capable of morality through freedom and self-legislation, all have this inner worth. (Cf. Sensen, “Kant’s Conception of Human Dignity,” 316). 31. Many commentators (e.g., Karl Ameriks, “Kant’s Deduction of Freedom and Morality,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 19 (1981): 53–79) argue that Kant abandoned this aspiration by the time he penned the second Critique. Though I cannot argue for this conclusion here, I think this is mistaken: Kant’s understanding of the relationship between freedom and morality is more developed in the second Critique than in the Groundwork, but the two pictures are broadly consistent. 32. To the degree that this is so, it is clear that Kant did not himself see his liberalism as “free-standing”. On this point, I disagree with Thomas Pogge, “Is Kant’s Rechtslehre a ‘Comprehensive Liberalism’?” in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretative Essays, ed. Mark Timmons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 133–58.

References Ameriks, Karl. “Kant’s Deduction of Freedom and Morality.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 19 (1981): 53–79. Anderson, Elizabeth. Value in Ethics and Economics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Badhwar, Neera. “Friendship and Commercial Societies.” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 7 (2008): 301–26. Berlin, Isaiah. “The Question of Machiavelli.” In The Prince: A Revised Translation, Backgrounds, Interpretations, Marginalia, edited by Robert M. Adams, 206–236. New York: Norton, 1992. Brennan, Jason and Peter Jaworski. Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests. New York: Routledge, 2016. Calkins, Martin J. and Patricia H. Werhane. “Adam Smith, Aristotle, and the Virtues of Commerce.” The Journal of Value Inquiry 32 (1998): 43–60. Ferguson, Adam. Essay on the History of Civil Society, fifth edition. London: T. Cadell, 1782. Fleischacker, Samuel. “Values Behind the Market: Kant’s Response to the Wealth of Nations.” History of Political Thought 17 (1996): 379–407. Flikschuh, Katrin. Kant and Modern Political Philospohy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Formosa, Paul. “All Politics Must Bend Its Knee before Right: Kant on the Relation of Morals to Politics.” Social Theory and Practice 34 (2008): 1–25. Frey, Raymond G. “Virtue, Commerce, and Self-Love.” Hume Studies 21 (1995): 275–88. Guyer, Paul. “The Twofold Morality of Recht: Once More Unto the Breach.” KantStudien 107 (2016): 34–63. Hanley, Ryan P. “Commerce and Corruption: Rousseau’s Diagnosis and Adam Smith’s Cure.” European Journal of Political Theory 7 (2008): 137–58.

284 JP Messina Herzog, Lisa. “Higher and Lower Virtues in Commercial Society: Adam Smith and Motivation Crowding Out.” Politics 10 (2011): 370–95. Hodgson, Louis-Phillipe, “Kant on the right to freedom: A defense.” Ethics, 120/4 (2010): 791–819 Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Edited by Paul Guyer. Translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason. Edited by Mary J. Gregor and Andrews Reath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Mary J Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998a. Kant, Immanuel. “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim.” In Anthropology, History and Education, edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden and translated by Allen W. Wood, 107–20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysics of Morals. Edited by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996a. Kant, Immanuel. “On the Common Saying: ‘That May Be Correct in Theory, But It Is of No Use in Practice.’” In Practical Philosophy, edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor, 273–310. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996b. Kant, Immanuel. Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: And Other Writings. Edited by Allen W. Wood and Giovanni George Di. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998b. Kant, Immanuel. “Toward Perpetual Peace.” In Practical Philosophy, edited by Mary J. Gregor, 311–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996b. Kleingeld, Pauline. Kant and Cosmopolitanism: The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince: A Revised Translation, Backgrounds, Interpretations, Marginalia. Edited by Robert M. Adams. New York: Norton, 1992. Mandeville, Bernard. The Fable of the Bees: Or Private Vices, Publick Benefits: In 2 vols. with a Commentary by F.B. Kaye. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1988. Nance, Michael. “Kantian Right and the Categorical Imperative: Response to Willaschek.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 20 (2012): 541–56. O’Neill, Onora. “Enactable and Enforceable: Kant’s Criteria for Right and Virtue.” Kant-Studien 107 (2016): 111–24. Pogge, Thomas. “Is Kant’s Rechtslehre a ‘Comprehensive Liberalism?’” In Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretative Essays, edited by Mark Timmons, 133–58. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pufendorf, Samuel. The Whole Duty of Man, According to the Law of Nature. Edited by Ian Hunter and David Saunders. Translated by Andrew Tooke. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002. Ripstein, Arthur. Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Rosen, Michael. Dignity: Its History and Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. Sandel, Michael. What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012. Satz, Debra. Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

The Place of Virtue 285 Sensen, Oliver. “Kant’s Conception of Human Dignity.” Kant-Studien 100 (2009): 309–31. Smith, Adam. Lectures on Jurisprudence. Edited by R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael and P. G. Stein. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Press, 1982. Smith, Adam. Theory of Moral Sentiments. Edited by Knud Haakonssen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Willaschek, Marcus. “The Non-Derivability of Kantian Right from the Categorical Imperative: A Response to Nance.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 20 (2012): 557–64. Willaschek, Marcus. “Right and Coercion: Can Kant’s Conception of Right Be Derived from His Moral Theory?” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 17 (2009): 49–70. Willaschek, Marcus. “Why the Doctrine of Right Does Not Belong in the Metaphysics of Morals.” Jahrbuch Für Recht Und Ethik 5 (1997): 205–27. Wilson, Eric E. “Self-Legislation and Self-Command in Kant’s Ethics.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 96 (2015): 256–78. Wood, Allen. The Free Development of Each: Studies in Freedom, Right, and Ethics in Classical German Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

16 Adam Smith’s Kantian Phenomenology of Moral Motivation John McHugh

In the last few decades, much interesting work has been done on the philosophical relationship between Kant and Adam Smith. Echoing Markus Herz’s report that Smith was Kant’s “liebling,” some of this work has emphasized similarities.1 Other work has emphasized differences.2 The sheer existence of work of either kind implies that treating Kant and Smith as interlocutors is a philosophically fruitful thing to do. The present chapter does the same by focusing on a heretofore undiscussed point of philosophical contact between the two thinkers: the phenomenology of moral motivation. The chapter argues that unlike Kant’s other sentimentalist predecessors, Smith employs a sentimentalist moral psychology that approximates not just the phenomenology of acting from reason, but the specifically Kantian phenomenology of acting from reason. In this respect, the chapter contributes to the list of reasons why Kant might have seen Smith as his “liebling,” though to the extent that it does so, it does so in a necessarily speculative sense. I hope, however, that in developing this feature of Smith’s view, the chapter at least suggests something about what kinds of sentimentalist moral psychologies even can capture the particular aspect of moral experience to which Kantian moral phenomenology calls attention. The chapter begins by trying to solve an interpretive puzzle in Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS), which arises from Smith’s use of rationalistic language that conflicts with his apparently anti-rationalistic position on moral motivation. As we shall see, any attempt to make sense of this language is complicated by the fact that Smith employs it in the process of apparently criticizing Hutcheson and Hume. By investigating the role that Smith thinks reason actually does play in moral life, the second section entertains and rules out a few straightforward readings of his reference to reason’s ability to motivate. The third section adopts the different strategy of using the more transparent features of the passage in which the puzzle arises—its references to the love of self-approval—to make sense of its still-opaque reference to reason. I conclude that the mutual-sympathy-based nature of Smith’s conception of self-approval suggests a phenomenological reading of his reference to reason’s ability to motivate. The fourth section further develops this reading and calls attention to the particularly Kant-like

Phenomenology of Moral Motivation 287 aspect of the view it attributes to Smith. It also suggests that Smith’s account of the experience of moral motivation comes as close to Kant’s as sentimentalism per se can get.

I. The Puzzling Passage According to Smith, moral philosophy ultimately deals with two questions: (1) “Wherein does virtue consist?” and (2) “By what power or faculty in the mind is it, that this character, whatever it be, is recommended to us?” (TMS VII.i.1).3 His own answer to the second question puts him in the same camp with Hutcheson and Hume, who argued that sentiment rather than reason is the “principle of approbation” (TMS VII.iii.3). Like Hutcheson and Hume, Smith thought that rationalistic answers to the second question cannot account for the fact that virtue is both “agreeable” and “desirable for its own sake”; all three found it impossible to understand how reason alone could make us like or want something as we do virtue (TMS VII.ii.2.7–8). Thus, it is strange for Smith also to observe that the “strongest impulses of self-love” can only be counteracted by “reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct” (TMS III.3.4; emphases added). If reason cannot make something agreeable or desirable, how can it provide a “more forcible motive” than self-love (TMS III.3.4)? This rationalistic-sounding claim becomes even more provocative when considered in relation to the context in which it occurs. Smith makes the claim in the context of a thought experiment he uses to explain how we overcome selfishness in cases where “the happiness or misery of others depends in any respect upon our conduct” (TMS III.3.5). He asks us to “suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake.” Then, he asks us to “consider how a man of humanity in Europe” would feel upon hearing the news of this “dreadful calamity.” Smith’s description of this man’s reaction is worth quoting in full: He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorry for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquility, as if no such accident had happened. (TMS III.3.5)

288 John McHugh In other words, while the “man of humanity” would “express” sorrow in words, he would not really care about the victims of the earthquake. As Smith puts it, .  .  .  if he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own. (TMS III.3.5) However, the man’s reaction would change if he were asked whether he would “be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren” in order to prevent “this paltry misfortune to himself.” With striking conviction, Smith states, “Human nature startles with horror at the thought, and the world, in its greatest depravity and corruption, never produced such a villain as could be capable of entertaining it.” This observation leads to him to ask, “What makes this difference? When our passive feelings are so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble?” (TMS III.3.4). The crucial line quoted earlier constitutes Smith’s answer, “Reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct” (TMS III.3.4). Smith’s point seems to be that truly other-preferring, self-sacrificial moral action is not motivated by other-directed care, such as that exemplified by the “feeble spark of benevolence” or the “soft power of humanity” (TMS III.3.4). As the TMS’ editors point out, by using these phrases, Smith is likely attacking Hutcheson and Hume.4 The first phrase probably refers to Hutcheson, who argued that we have an innate moral sense that approves only of benevolence. Thus, one of Smith’s goals in this passage must be to show that Hutcheson’s moral psychology cannot fully explain self-sacrificial, other-preferring moral action because it must either claim, implausibly, that benevolence alone generates such action, or identify an additional motive for it and thereby claim, also implausibly, that this motive would win no moral approval (cf. TMS VII.ii.3, VII.iii.3.14). The second phrase probably refers to Hume who, in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, declared that the sentiment of “humanity” is “originally the same” with the “sentiment of morals” (EPM 6.1 SBN 235–6).5 Any criticism Smith is leveling at Hume here is too complex for the concise summation that sufficed regarding the probable criticism of Hutcheson.6 In denying that the sentiment of humanity is behind our “active principles,” Smith seems to agree with at least one possible reading of Hume. This sentiment, Hume argued, grounds our general other-things-being-equal preference for seeing people helped and pleased instead of harmed and pained; this preference then grounds our positive evaluations of character traits that help and

Phenomenology of Moral Motivation 289 please their bearers or the people around them. Hume was willing to admit, however, that despite being the source of moral judgment, the general feeling of humane concern for others might not do much in the way of motivating action (e.g., EPM 9.1 SBN 271; cf. T 3.3.1.23 SBN 586).7 Thus, Smith appears to be endorsing a Humean position. Yet Smith’s tone is rather non-Humean. As I read the passage, he uses the term “humanity” and its cognate, “humane,” almost sarcastically to describe the European man’s superficial but “fairly expressed” concern for his distant “brethren” (TMS IV.3.4). The mild vitriol in this description of the eloquent “man of humanity” seems foreign to Hume’s moral theory, which—again, on one possible reading—explicitly limits itself to explaining the moral “discourse” we use to serve “all our purposes in company, in the pulpit, on the theatre, and in the schools” (EPM 5.2 SBN 229; cf. T 3.3.1.23 SBN 586–7). Thus, unlike Smith, on this reading, Hume seems to have doubted that moral sentiments have much direct impact on our practice. So while Smith agrees with Hume’s observations regarding humanity’s general inability to motivate, he also, for this very reason, criticizes Hume’s willingness to ground moral sentiment in it.8 The trouble with the reading of Hume upon which this reading of Smith is based is that it overlooks the fact that Hume actually can provide a relatively robust conception of moral motivation, albeit one grounded not in humanity but in moral self-love and self-hatred; we see this in Hume’s answer to the sensible knaves who want to know why they should not pursue a policy of disguised vice and dishonesty: you will hate yourselves (EPM 9.2 SBN 282–4; cf. T 3.2.1.8 SBN 479).9 In claiming that the “sentiment of morals and that of humanity . . . are originally the same,” Hume means that the sentiment of humanity makes the sentiment of morals possible, not that the two are synonyms (EPM 6.1 SBN 235–6). Thus, Humean moral motivation is derived more directly from humanity-based, self-directed moral evaluation than from humanity itself. It is certainly possible that Smith’s criticism of Hume’s conception of moral motivation is simply off the mark. There are two reasons, however, why we should not be so quick to draw this conclusion. The first is that Smith could just be making the point that regardless of whether Hume’s moral psychology allows for a conception of moral motivation, it does so clumsily or only as a secondary aim.10 A second, more philosophically substantive reason is that Smith might mean that the moral self-evaluation involved in Hume’s account of moral motivation is problematically reducible to the sentiment of humanity. After all, since Humean moral approval is ultimately rooted in the sentiment of humanity, Humean agents seeking their own moral approval must do so in some sense because of the sentiment of humanity. Of course, if this is what Smith has in mind, he needs to indicate the sense of “because” involved in Hume’s account and show exactly why this sense causes philosophical trouble. In any case, putting aside the question of whether Smith’s criticisms of Hume and, for that matter, Hutcheson are any good, we now must consider

290 John McHugh what Smith offers as an alternative to the positions he criticizes. If neither benevolence nor humanity nor humanity-influenced love of self-approval generates other-preferring, self-sacrificial moral action, what does? In other words, what does Smith mean by, “reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct” (TMS III.3.4)? At least the last four components of the list must refer to the famous impartial spectator theory of conscience11 Smith lays out in the preceding two chapters of the TMS. Thus, similarly to Hume, Smith here is at least partly grounding moral motivation in love of one’s own moral approval, as delivered by one’s conscience; in keeping with this parallel, Smith explicitly criticizes Hutcheson but not Hume for denying that “a regard to the pleasure of self-approbation, to the comfortable applause of our own consciences” is a morally legitimate motive (TMS VII.ii.3.13).12 Given this similarity to Hume, if Smith’s criticism of Hume is even to identify a position that is nonHumean, it must offer a non-Humean account of the sentimental roots of the love of self-approval. Another question obviously arises about the first two components of the list, “reason” and “principle.” By employing these terms in the context of criticizing the two most significant sentimentalists of the day, Smith must be doing something that is more than just rhetorically significant. Maybe he really is saying that reason takes over as a motive when sentiment fails, perhaps as a boost to the love of self-approval. The editors of the TMS call our attention to an even more specific reason to take this possibility seriously: it is hard not to see the thought experiment Smith employs as an explicit contradiction of Hume’s famous summary statement of sentimentalism, ‘‘Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger” (T 2.3.3–6 SBN 416).13 I now turn to tackling these two questions, beginning with the second one, that of what role Smith thinks reason plays in moral life. Perhaps Smith’s explicit account of this can provide us with a straightforward explanation of his puzzling reference to it in our passage.

II. Smith on Reason’s Role in Morality It is worth noting that while critical, Smith’s attitude toward moral rationalism is not entirely negative. He interprets the modern version of this position as a response to Thomas Hobbes’s egoistic and anti-realist answer to the second question with which moral philosophy is concerned. For Hobbes, we approve of some behaviors and traits and disapprove of others because we reflect upon their conduciveness or hostility to our own interests, which include that in peace. This interest almost always recommends “obedience . . . to the supreme magistrate” and thereby suggests that the magistrate’s laws “ought to be regarded as the sole ultimate standards” of morality (TMS VII.iii.2.1). According to Smith, rationalists like Ralph Cudworth argued

Phenomenology of Moral Motivation 291 that “since the mind . . . [has] a notion of [moral] distinctions antecedent to all [positive] law,” these distinctions cannot be the product of such laws. They concluded that these distinctions must be “derived . . . from reason, which [points] out the difference between right and wrong, in the same manner in which it [does] that between truth and falsehood” (TMS VII.iii.2.2). Smith thought that the modern rationalists were right to conclude that moral distinctions are pre-legal and thus, in some sense, “natural” (TMS. iii.2.1). He also thought that they were right to assign some role to reason in the process by which we make these distinctions. But he believed that moral distinctions ultimately cannot “arise from reason”; rather, they must be “founded upon immediate sense and feeling,” for this is the only way to explain the agreeableness and desirableness of virtue (TMS VII.iii.2.9; emphasis added). Reason’s role in this context can only be to help us form inductive “general maxims” on the basis of what “pleases or displeases” our non-rational “moral faculties” (TMS VII.iii.2.6). So on pain of contradicting this view, Smith cannot mean in our passage that “reason” and “principle” motivate action directly in the sense that the modern rationalists implied that they could. But maybe he is just employing his own conception of reason-based inductive rules.14 This reading seems plausible. The practical function of these inductive rules is to combat “the violence and injustice of [the] selfish passions” that often arise in the heat of a moment and can lead us to act in ways that we would earlier and later recognize as wrong (TMS III.4.2). Respect for such rules might be exactly what allows a man to refuse to sacrifice the lives of a hundred million strangers about whom he does not really care in order to save a little finger about which he cares deeply. Furthermore, since this man refuses to harm others or allow them to be harmed for his own benefit,15 his choice derives specifically from a consideration of justice and thus serves as a paradigmatic example of a case in which, according to Smith, we should act out of respect for general moral rules (TMS III.6.8–11). One problem with this reading of our passage, however, is that Smith does not mention reverence for general moral rules in it. Throughout the thought experiment, it is “the man within” who reminds our “man of humanity” that “he is no better than his neighbor” (TMS III.3.6). Smith brings up general moral rules in the next chapter in order to explain how we can deal with a different kind of moral problem, that of preventing our momentarily violent passions from “pervert[ing]” the judgment of “the man within” (TMS III.4.1; emphasis added). He has in mind instances like those when “furious resentment” convinces us the targets of our wrath deserve punishment or when selfishness convinces us that others are not really harmed by our actions (TMS III.4.12; III.6.10). Such self-deceit does not play a role in the little finger example, which Smith appears to be using only to explain how conscience works in the first place. Furthermore, even if respect for general moral rules does play a role in the little finger example, Smith’s overall moral psychology demands a sentiment-based explanation for such “reverence”;

292 John McHugh thus, bringing in Smith’s account of general moral rules unhelpfully rearticulates our interpretive problem as one about how Smithian agents can be motivated by respect for moral rules (TMS III.5.12). Next, I grapple with this version of the problem; for now, let’s continue to deal with it in its present, more general form. Surprisingly, we can move toward figuring out what Smith means by “reason” and “principle” in the little finger passage by noticing that this language is puzzling not only with respect to how it relates to the rest of Smith’s moral psychology but also with respect to other features of the passage itself. Right after he uses this language, Smith restates his point as follows: It is not the love of our neighbour, it is not the love of mankind [that accounts for the choice in question]. It is a stronger love, a more powerful affection, which generally takes place upon such occasions; the love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters. (TMS III.3.4; emphases added) This language makes it quite clear that there must be an affection ultimately motivating our “man of humanity.” Thus, Smith’s references to “reason” and “principle” must ultimately be to a sentiment. But which one? An answer presents itself when we shift our attention to the second part of his statement of his positive doctrine, his reference to “conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct” (TMS III.3.4). As mentioned earlier, this language suggests that the love of self-approval is what motivates the “man of humanity,” a suggestion furthered by the immediately subsequent reference to “the love of . . . the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters.” If both Smith’s overall moral psychology and the little finger passage itself suggest that the references to “reason” and “principle” be understood in terms of a sentiment, and the predominant sentiment in the passage is the love of self-approval, then it seems that these references should be understand in terms of the love of self-approval. Thus, I turn now to Smith’s account of the love of self-approval. This account still must be distinguished from Hume’s in order to reveal the positive position Smith is even defending in this passage. As we shall see, doing so will also help us make better sense of his reference to reason’s ability to motivate.

III. Revisiting the Puzzling Passage Smith’s conception of the love of self-approval rests upon his belief that we desire what he calls “mutual sympathy.” For Smith, “nothing pleases us more than to observe” agreement between our own sentiments and those of another person; “nor are we ever so much shocked,” he claims, “as by the appearance of the contrary” (TMS I.i.2.1). He argues that this pleasure/pain

Phenomenology of Moral Motivation 293 not only constitutes approval/disapproval of others (TMS I.i.3.1), but also, when brought on by the imagination of another person trying to sympathize with us, approval/disapproval of ourselves (TMS III.1.2). Thus, for Smith, self-directed moral judgment always involves an attempt to win the sympathy of an imaginary spectator (TMS IV.2.12; VI.ii.4.11).16 Smith’s conception of self-directed moral judgment must differ from Hume’s for the same reason that his conception of other-directed moral judgment does: Hume explicitly rejects Smith’s claim that “all kinds of sympathy are necessarily agreeable,” and thus rejects Smith’s belief that sympathy is constitutive of the pleasing sentiment of approval.17 Hume’s moral psychology consists of self-directed affections, other-directed affections, an affectively neutral transfer mechanism called “sympathy” that passes affections and concerns between people, and sentiments of approval and disapproval that depend mainly upon our other-directed affections. The Smithian love of concord falls into none of these categories.18 It is neither a self-directed feeling, nor an other-directed feeling, but a sui generis feeling of what Samuel Fleischacker calls “solidarity.”19 Now we are ready to draw a conclusion about the distinct positive position Smith must be espousing in our passage. He must be claiming, at least in part, that his mutual-sympathy-based conception of the love of self-approval can explain moral self-sacrifice without making any implausible claims about our ability to care more about others’ interests than our own (though, of course, Smith’s argument demands that we find plausible the position that we care more about mutual sympathy than about the interest we take in things like our little fingers).20 And, if we assume that he is not fundamentally misreading Hume, we can conclude that Smith must think that his mutual-sympathy-based conception of the love of self-approval somehow does a better job at this than does Hume’s conception of the love of self-approval. This account of Smith’s positive position can help us understand his references to “reason” and “principle.” In the previous section, we tried to interpret these references straightforwardly in terms of what Smith explicitly says about reason’s role in moral agency, but this strategy proved unfruitful. Directly preceding as they do his references to “conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct,” as well as his references to “the love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters,” perhaps Smith’s references to “reason” and “principle” should be lumped in more closely with them and thus read as alternative descriptions of the same phenomena they describe, the love of self-approval. If we go this road, then we can read the passage as also claiming (or at least indicating) that the mutual-sympathy-based conception of self-approval somehow resembles rationalistic motivation. The best candidate for the kind of resemblance he has in mind here would be a phenomenological one. It would not be odd for there to be such a point of agreement between Smith and the rationalists. As we saw earlier, he agrees with the rationalists

294 John McHugh in their rejection of Hobbesian voluntarism. He also thinks that the rationalists’ account of virtue is more or less correct. He argues that while the rationalists underestimated the importance of a character trait’s “tendency” to affect other people, they were right to conclude that virtue essentially “consists in propriety; or in the suitableness of the affection from which we act, to the cause or object which excites it” (TMS VII.ii.3.21). Smith’s agreement with this conception of virtue is especially pronounced with regard to Samuel Clarke, who located moral rectitude not in benevolence, like Hutcheson, or utility, like Hume, but in acting in accordance with certain relations of “fitness or suitableness.”21,22 While he tends to be elusive on questions of this kind, Smith seemed not to share Clarke’s metaethical view that these relations are written into the objective fabric of reality, prior even to God’s decrees. His main criticism of the rationalists in this context is that they provided no “precise or distinct measure by which . . . the fitness or propriety of affection can be ascertained or judged of”; he argues that we get such a measure by thinking in terms of the “sympathetic feelings of the impartial and well-informed spectator,” but he does not state whether this spectator’s sentiments constitute or pick out propriety (TMS VII.ii.1.49). The metaethical depth of Smith’s agreement with the rationalists on virtue depends upon what he means here.23,24 But even if he means, as it appears likely that he does, that propriety is constituted by human moral sentiments, he indisputably agrees at least with the basic rationalist conception of virtue. However, the reality of this agreement does not on its own show that Smith agrees with the rationalistic phenomenology of moral motivation. Is there any reason for believing this, beyond that fact that such an agreement would help us make sense of an isolated puzzling passage? One major reason has to do with the fact that the desire for mutual sympathy makes moral approval and moral motivation two sides of the same coin. Since the desire for mutual sympathy, or sentimental concord, has a two-sided, symmetrical nature, it can both constitute moral approval and serve as a motive. No matter what side it is observed from, concord is still concord; thus, Smith’s use of the phrase “sense of propriety” can univocally refer to something possessed and enacted by the spectator, by the agent, or by both (cf. TMS IV.2.8).25 Insofar as it identifies the sentiment that grounds moral approval with the sentiment that grounds dutiful motivation, Smith’s moral psychology phenomenologically echoes the rationalistic view that moral obligations are intrinsically compelling as soon as they are recognized. This kind of symmetry between approval and motivation is not present in either Hutcheson or Hume, who both tend to think of moral approval in sensory, aesthetic terms and thereby conceptually and phenomenologically separate approval from motivation.26 This feature of Smith’s moral psychology lends plausibility to the phenomenological reading of his reference to reason’s ability to motivate. But to be fully developed, the reading needs to say more about the particular phenomenology that emerges from the details of the mutual-sympathy-based

Phenomenology of Moral Motivation 295 conception of self-approval and thus moral motivation to which Smith’s moral psychology gives rise, rather than just the general phenomenology of mutual sympathy. And to speak to one of the main goals of this chapter—the revelation of a point of philosophical contact between Smith and Kant—this reading needs to say more about how Smith’s rationalistic phenomenology of moral motivation is not just rationalistic in general but specifically Kantian. These are the two tasks of the next section.

IV. Smith’s Kantian Phenomenology of Moral Motivation Strictly speaking, it seems that for Smith the attempt to bring one’s own sentiments into concord with those of others only becomes moral when we think of these others as possessing certain qualifications. For Smith, to act on the basis of moral considerations is to act from the desire for sympathy with a “cool,” “candid,” “[self-]consistent” (TMS VII.ii.4.10), “equitable” (TMS II.iii.3.6), “well-informed,” and “impartial” (TMS III.2.32) spectator. One could object that this reading of Smith’s account of moral motivation is too limited because it overlooks his aforementioned account of acting on the basis of general rules, which he explicitly describes as our lone recourse for combating “the violence and injustice of our own selfish passions” when they threaten “to induce the man within the breast to make a report very different from what the real circumstances of the case are capable of endorsing” (TMS III.4.1). However, as pointed out earlier, we need a way to understand in terms of Smith’s sentimentalist moral psychology what it means to act on the basis of general moral rules. It seems that the best option is to treat the general rules as reports of what we take to be the impartial spectator’s sentiments when we are most confident that our conception of those sentiments is not perverted by our selfish biases. Thus, we might notice that the impartial spectator always disapproves of a certain kind of action that we have never been tempted to perform; this experience generates for us a general rule against performing this kind of action (TMS III.4.7–8). When we are tempted to do so, we (ideally) act out of respect for this general rule, which really just means that we act out of desire for sympathy with a spectator that really is cool, candid, self-consistent, well-informed, and impartial, rather than one that, in the heat of the moment, our selfishness leads us falsely to paint as such. Thus, respect for general rules and desire for sympathy with the right kind of spectator are the same motivation described two different ways. The origin and nature of the normativity of this imaginary spectator’s commands are matters of some debate. In their recent books on Smith, Ryan Hanley, and Fonna Forman have suggested that Smith might have been of two minds on these issues.27 In earlier editions of the TMS, Smith seems to lean toward a naturalistic, Humean account, according to which the repeated frustration of our natural love of concord with each other leads us to start regulating our sentiments in terms of those belonging to a well-informed

296 John McHugh and impartial arbiter between us.28 But in the 1790, 6th Edition of the TMS, Smith seems to adopt a more theologically-laden, perfectionist line, according to which the impartial “man within the breast” is a divinely-implanted, semi-ideal “demigod” that is presumably awakened and cultivated but not created through experience and education (TMS III.2.32).29,30 There is no need to settle this matter here.31 The important point for the present discussion is that, for Smith, conscientious motivation of the kind he describes in the little finger passage rests on the desire for concord with the right kind of spectator or, as Smith once describes him, a “man in general” (TMS III.2.31, ed. note, pp. 12932). Isolated though it may be, this description is important to the Smith-Kant conversation for two reasons. The first is that it indicates the extent to which Smith thinks about the aspect of moral motivation involving considerations of objectivity much differently from how his rationalist predecessors did. These thinkers tended to be rationalists of the Platonic (or proto-Moorean) stripe in that they thought of moral motivation as a response to the perception of a particular kind of extra-human fact. Whether he was any kind of realist or not, Smith, on the other hand, thinks of moral motivation as a response to the perception of or judgment about how a properly situated human being would react to something. Broadly speaking, the presence of this kind of thought in Smithian moral motivation clearly brings it in line with Kant’s understanding of objectivity in terms of a reference to “what holds for everyone” (GMM 4:413).33 For Kant, sensible talk of objectivity must, at bottom, refer to the conditions of a rational being’s possible experience. Thus, neither Smith nor Kant think of objective moral judgment and motivation in terms of perception and a response thereto. The second reason why Smith’s account of conscience, as summed up in the phrase a “man in general,” is important for highlighting the Kantfriendly aspects of his phenomenology of moral motivation has to do with its understanding of what makes a human being properly situated to be a moral judge. In being thus “general,” the Smithian impartial spectator represents the perspective that everyone can adopt and thus represents the height of achievable sentimental harmony among human beings.34 This perspective filters out any personal idiosyncrasies that inhibit sympathy, leaving only what human feeling per se would dictate. Thus, Smith gives what is traditionally conceived as an intrinsically rational aim—that of matching one’s evaluations up with those that would be made from an impersonal perspective—an affective basis. That the move to prioritize this aim is particularly Kant-friendly is obvious from the first formulation of the categorical imperative, which demands that we ensure that the maxims on which we are about to act could be willed as universal laws. Of course there are serious differences between Smith and Kant on the normative level, the most important of which being that for Smith the demands of morality are contingent upon our having a desire for a certain kind of sympathy, while for Kant morality is rationally necessary. More pressing

Phenomenology of Moral Motivation 297 for the present study, however, are the phenomenological differences that seem to follow from this normative one. For Smith, moral motivation is a desire aimed at maximal mutual sympathy. Since it seems that, for Kant, moral motivation cannot be a desire, it must be something else; he seems to think that “consciousness of one’s duty” simply is “identical” with “respect for the law,” though it manifests itself “in its subjective aspect” as “moral feeling” (MM 6:464).35 We do not have to get totally clear on what Kant means by this in order to see that he does not think of moral motivation in exactly the same way Smith does; the experience of desiring maximal sentimental harmony must differ from the experience of the rational respect that Kant is talking about. Thus, we should be careful not to overstate even the phenomenological parallels between how Smith and Kant think of moral motivation. Insofar as the desire-based model of moral motivation I am attributing to Smith and the rational-respect-based model of moral motivation Kant claims for himself are indicative of their, respectively, most basic sentimentalist and rationalist commitments, we have reached the very limit of the similarities between them on the topic of moral motivation. Reflection upon how we got to this limit reveals that Smith’s version of sentimentalism might bring him as close to Kant’s view as a sentimentalist can get. The desire for mutual sympathy, which serves as the bedrock for Smithian moral motivation is a desire for correspondence of sentiment. Smith believes that as social creatures, we are presented with an array of evaluative perspectives that all inevitably have some influence upon us and thus are capable of pulling us in several different directions. Our love of concord intrinsically drives us to bring harmony to this potentially confusing array that occurs both within ourselves and between ourselves and our neighbors.36 Another way to put this point is that we are drawn to consistency or coherence, both values traditionally classified as intrinsically rational but here given an affect-based explanation. (Thus, the man who values the lives of millions of strangers about whom he cares little, over a little finger about which he cares much demonstrates an intrinsic desire to render his sentiments consistent and coherent with those of pretty much anyone who is not him.) The affect that does the work is not care for one’s own or another’s well-being but care for agreement per se. As just pointed out, this special kind of affect is a desire we just so happen to have and thus lacks the rational necessity of Kantian respect for the Moral Law. But insofar as that respect is respect for a law that all rational beings can see as binding upon them, it is Smithian in spirit. That this respect is also respect for a law that all rational beings must see as binding upon them is mainly what distinguishes Kant from Smith. But the fact remains that the effect upon which Smith builds approximates the Kantian picture more closely than do alternatives like benevolence, humanity, or moral vanity, straightforwardly understood. These sentiments aim not at agreement per se but other states of affairs, like the well-being of others or the superiority of oneself (understood not in the Smithian, mutual-sympathy-based way). In

298 John McHugh this regard, we have been presented with an additional possible reason why Markus Herz reports hearing that Smith is Kant’s “liebling.”

V. Conclusion In this chapter, I have argued that Smith’s puzzling reference to reason’s ability to motivate can be understood strictly in terms of his preference for his own mutual-sympathy-based account of moral sentiment over the accounts offered by his sentimentalist predecessors Hutcheson and Hume. This reading not only allows us to make sense of Smith’s uncharacteristic, isolated use of rationalistic language in one passage in his account of moral motivation. This reading also reveals a similarity between Smith’s and Kant’s ways of thinking about the experience of moral motivation, albeit a similarity limited by other fundamental differences between the two thinkers. In revealing this similarity, the chapter also suggests that Smith offers perhaps the most Kantian view of the phenomenology of moral motivation that a sentimentalist can offer. As a result, the chapter suggests a new particular reason why Kant was attracted to Smith’s work.37

Notes 1. Quoting the Herz letter, Sam Fleischacker has examined historical evidence that Smith was a direct influence on Kant; Fleischacker has also exposed deep philosophical affinities between each’s view on the problem of self-deceit and between each’s conception of judgment. See “Philosophy in Moral Practice: Kant and Adam Smith,” Kant-Studien, 82/3 (1991): 249–69, 250; and A Third Concept of Liberty: Judgment and Freedom in Kant and Adam Smith (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). Stephen Darwall has drawn from Smith’s moral theory a Kantian-style emphasis on the equal dignity of persons. See “Sympathetic Liberalism: Recent Work on Adam Smith,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 28/2 (1999): 152–4; and “Equal Dignity in Smith,” in The Adam Smith Review, vol. 1, ed. Vivienne Brown (New York: Routledge, 2004), 129–34. 2. Remy Debes has developed a Smithian conception of dignity by distinguishing it from the Kantian one. See “Adam Smith on Dignity and Equality,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 20/1 (2012): 109–40. Kate Abramson has sorted out the Kantian and non-Kantian aspects of Smith’s account of the role dutiful motivation plays in the concerns of the virtuous agent. See “Tugendideale in Smiths Theorie der moralischen Gefühle,” in Adam Smith als Moral Philosoph, ed. Christel Fricke and Hans-Peter Shütte (Berlin: De Grueter, 2005): 214–50. [Thanks to Abramson for providing me with an English copy of this paper, “Ideals of Virtue in Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments.”] 3. Throughout, I cite paragraph numbers of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1982). 4. See editorial note 7 at TMS III.3.4. 5. I cite paragraph and page numbers Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, rev. P. H. Nidditch (London: Oxford University Press, 1975). 6. Possible references to Hume in the immediately preceding paragraphs, which concern his account of the “general point of view” from which we feel moral sentiments, are equally complex. See TMS III.3.1–3.

Phenomenology of Moral Motivation 299 7. I, respectively, cite paragraph and page numbers from A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007); and A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, rev. P. H. Nidditch (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978). Since I do not wish to enter here into the debate about the relationship between the moral theory of the Treatise and the moral theory of the second Enquiry, let alone defend a stance on which text was more important for Smith, I treat the explicitly humanity-centered latter as primary and merely refer secondarily to similar-sounding passages in the explicitly sympathy-centered former. Sorting out such matters requires projects distinct from the present one. 8. This is not the only place where Smith criticizes Hume’s humanity-based account of moral sentiment for inadequately accounting for moral motivation. In the midst of attacking Hume’s utility-and therefore humanity-based account of moral approbation, Smith tacitly slides from concern with the perspective of the approving spectator to concern with reflections that are “capable of supporting the agent” in the face of great temptation; once he has made this move, Smith immediately initiates a criticism of the “exquisite” but inactive and feminine—“humanity is the virtue of a woman,” he tells us—virtue of “humanity” (TMS IV.2.8). 9. For a much more robust discussion of agency in Hume’s moral psychology, see Kate Abramson, “Two Portraits of the Humean Moral Agent,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 83/4 (2002): 301–34. 10. Such a reading would be broadly in line with Gilbert Harman’s account of the main difference between Smith and both Hume and Hutcheson. See “Moral Agent and Impartial Spectator,” in Explaining Value and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 181–95. 11. As we shall see next, the imaginary “spectator” that serves as the Smithian conscience is more than just impartial. In keeping with common practice, however, I use the phrase, “impartial spectator” as a shorthand name for the theory. 12. With apparent approval, Smith also claims that “in the common judgments of mankind . . . regard to the approbation of our own minds” is not just morally relevant but “is rather looked upon as the sole motive which deserves the appellation of virtuous”; accordingly, Smith also explicitly states that “no action can properly be called virtuous which is not accompanied with the sentiment of self-approbation” (TMS VII.ii.3.13, emphasis added; III.6.13). This last comment supports the aforementioned suggestion that Smith is at least criticizing Hume for not realizing the importance of conscience. It is hard to imagine Hume entertaining the idea that conscious moral self-approbation is a necessary condition for virtue. 13. See editorial note 6 at TMS III.3.4. 14. Thank you to Chris Pines for reminding me of the importance in this context of Smith’s discussion of general moral rules. 15. Smith is unclear here on what he means regarding this distinction. 16. Also see Ernest Campbell Mossner and Ian Simpson Ross, eds., Letter 40, Correspondence of Adam Smith, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987). 17. Mossner and Ross, Letter 36, Correspondence of Adam Smith. 18. While I cannot work through the details here, it is worth noting that Hume’s Treatise discussion of the “love of relations” seriously complicates, though without removing, this disagreement (T 2.2.4 SBN 351–7). 19. See Samuel Fleischacker, “David Hume and Adam Smith on Sympathy: A Contrast, Critique and Reconstruction,” in Intersubjectivity in Adam Smith and Edmund Husserl, ed. Dagfinn Føllesdal (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2012), 302. 20. Given the social structure of his conception of moral self-approval, his secondary point might be that he can do so while avoiding some of Hutcheson’s worries about the selfishness of self-approbation.

300 John McHugh 21. Samuel Clarke, “A Discourse of Natural Religion,” in British Moralists: 1650– 1800, vol. 1, ed. D. D. Raphael (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991), 192. 22. Smith does eventually classify Hume as a propriety theorist, but this has more to do with Hume’s un-Hutchesonian willingness to recognize virtues other than benevolence than it does with the very nature of these virtues. Smith still thinks that Hume, like Hutcheson, paid too much attention to the “effects” and the “tendency of affections” and not enough “to the relation which they stand in to the cause which excites them” (TMS I.i.3.8; cf. TMS IV.2). Smith believed that this mistake is more serious than the rationalists’ inverse one because he believed that propriety is a necessary condition of all virtue; he bluntly states, “There is no virtue without propriety” (TMS VII.ii.1.50). 23. For a discussion of the complexity of this kind of metaethical debate in the early modern period, see Manfred Kuehn and David Fate Norton, “The Foundations of Morality,” The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, vol. 2, ed. Knud Haakonssen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 939–86. 24. In the little finger passage, the phrase, “What is honourable and noble,” as well as the language of “real littleness of ourselves” and “natural misrepresentations of self-love” that must be “corrected” suggests Smith might agree with the metaethically realist components of moral rationalism (TMS III.3.4). If Smith agrees with the rationalistic view that there are moral facts and obligations written into the objective fabric of nature itself, even if he disagrees with the rationalistic account of the faculties that allow us to discover them, his use of the words “reason” and “principle” might flag this particular agreement. The problem with this reading is that Smith offers no extended, precise treatment of the question of whether our sentiments give rise to moral distinctions or just reveal them to us in the way the rationalist means. While I cannot adequately defend this claim here, it seems to me that Smith was intellectually conservative enough to be satisfied that revealing morality’s real foundation in human nature was enough to disprove Hobbesian voluntarism; thus, I think that insofar as it is so metaphysically committal, rationalistic moral realism clashes as harshly if not more so with the spirit of his moral theory than rationalistic accounts of moral approval and motivation do. And regardless, it would be strange for Smith to use a thought experiment about motivation to make this kind of metaethical point. 25. This paragraph oversimplifies an analysis of the love and desire for mutual sympathy that receives a much more extensive discussion in John McHugh, “Ways of Desiring Mutual Sympathy in Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 24/4 (2016): 614–34. 26. Cf. Harman, “Moral Agent and Impartial Spectator.” 27. See Ryan Patrick Hanley, Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); and Fonna Forman-Barzilai, Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy: Cosmopolitanism and Moral Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 28. This reading of Smith is also elaborated in James Otteson’s Adam Smith’s Marketplace of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 29. As the editors of the TMS point out, Smith also leans towards this view in older passages in which he seems to express belief in the existence of a naturally hierarchical soul (TMS III.5.6). 30. Hanley and Forman-Barzilai disagree regarding which aspect of Smith’s view should take precedence. Generally speaking, Hanley, Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue, esp. 82–99 emphasizes the perfectionist Smith, while Forman-Barzilai, Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy, esp. 73–134 emphasizes the naturalist Smith. For a succinct discussion of their disagreement, albeit from Forman’s perspective alone, see her “Smith: Perfectionist or Practical Moralist?” The Art of Theory, , 14 Jan. 2012.

Phenomenology of Moral Motivation 301 31. For a more detailed map of the logical space of possible readings of Smith on both the origins and normativity of the impartial spectator, see John McHugh, “On the Origins and Normative Status of the Impartial Spectator,” Econ Journal Watch, , May 2016. 32. Here I refer to text Smith removed and/or reworked for the 6th edition of the TMS but included by the editors in notes that, in this case, spans several pages. 33. The full passage I cite: “Practical good, however, is that which determines the will by means of representations of reason, hence not by subjective causes but objectively, that is, from grounds that are valid for every rational being as such. It is distinguished from the agreeable, as that which influences the will only by means of feeling from merely subjective causes, which hold only for the senses of this or that one, and not as a principle of reason, which holds for everyone” (GMM 4: 413 first and third emphases added). See Immanuel Kant, “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals,” in Practical Philosophy, ed. And trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 67. 34. Smith’s way of explaining what looks like the motivational or practical power of reason in terms of a desire for harmony among the evaluative perspectives that necessarily influence us can be further illuminated by considering the conception of theoretical reasoning he puts forth in his essay on the history of astronomy. There, Smith explains our desire for “truth” in terms of our desire for a kind of internal harmony. In a broadly Humean vein, he argues that philosophy is “one of those arts which address themselves to the imagination” so as to “restore it . . . to that [agreeable] tone of tranquility and composure,” which is upset by “the chaos of jarring and discordant appearances” generated by a natural world that “seems to abound with events which appear solitary and incoherent with all that go before them,” HA II.12; p. 45–6. I refer to paragraph numbers in “History of Astronomy,” in Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. W. P. D. Wightman and John C. Bryce (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1982). Thus, Smith thinks that both in our interaction with the natural world and in our interaction with the social one, we are driven by an affective desire for harmony and an aversion to discord. For further discussion on this theme in Smith, see Charles Griswold, “Imagination: Morals, Science, and Arts,” in The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith, ed. Knud Haakonssen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 22–56. 35. See Immanuel Kant, “The Metaphysics of Morals,” Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 580. Cf. GMM 4: 402 note. 36. In this regard, Smith may be offering a sympathetic alternative to the Platonic conception of virtue as integrity (Cf. TMS VII.ii.1.11). 37. Thanks to audiences at the conference, “Sentiment and Reason in Early Modern Ethics” (SUNY-Buffalo, March 2014) and at the annual meeting of the Ohio Philosophical Association (Cleveland State University, March 2012) for insightful questions and comments regarding earlier versions of this chapter; Chris Pines’s comments at the latter were particularly helpful. Thanks to Liz Van Ness for editing assistance. And thanks to Manfred Kuehn, whose teaching and guidance has shaped all of my work in ways he’ll never fully be able to know.

References Abramson, Kate. “Tugendideale in Smiths Theorie der moralischen Gefühle.” In Adam Smith als Moral Philosoph, edited by Christel Fricke and Hans-Peter Shütte, 214–50. Berlin: De Grueter, 2005. Abramson, Kate. “Two Portraits of the Humean Moral Agent.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 83 (2002): 301–34.

302 John McHugh Clarke, Samuel. “A Discourse of Natural Religion.” In British Moralists: 1650–1800, vol. 1, edited by D. D. Raphael, 224–61. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991. Darwall, Stephen. “Equal Dignity in Smith.” In The Adam Smith Review, vol. 1, edited by Vivienne Brown, 129–34. New York: Routledge, 2004. Darwall, Stephen. “Sympathetic Liberalism: Recent Work on Adam Smith.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 28 (1999): 139–64. Debes, Remy. “Adam Smith on Dignity and Equality.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 20 (2012): 109–40. Fleischacker, Samuel. “David Hume and Adam Smith on Sympathy: A Contrast, Critique and Reconstruction.” In Intersubjectivity in Adam Smith and Edmund Husserl, edited by Dagfinn Føllesdal, 273–311. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2012. Fleischacker, Samuel. “Philosophy in Moral Practice: Kant and Adam Smith.” Kant-Studien 82 (1991): 249–69. Fleischacker, Samuel. A Third Concept of Liberty: Judgment and Freedom in Kant and Adam Smith. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Forman-Barzilai, Fonna. Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy: Cosmopolitanism and Moral Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Forman-Barzilai, Fonna. “Smith: Perfectionist or Practical Moralist?” The Art of Theory. Retrieved from: www.artoftheory.com/ Griswold, Charles. “Imagination: Morals, Science, and Arts.” In The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith, edited by Knud Haakonssen, 22–56. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Hanley, Ryan Patrick. Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Harman, Gilbert. “Moral Agent and Impartial Spectator.” In Explaining Value and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy, 181–95. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Hume, David. Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and the Principles of Morals. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge. Revised by P. H. Nidditch. London: Oxford University Press, 1975. Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Edited by Tom L. Beauchamp. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by David F. Norton and Mary J. Norton. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007. Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge. Revised by P. H. Nidditch. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Kant, Immanuel. “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.” In Practical Philosophy, edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor, 37–108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996a. Kant, Immanuel. “The Metaphysics of Morals.” In Practical Philosophy, edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor, 353–604. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996b. Kuehn, Manfred and David Fate Norton. “The Foundations of Morality.” In The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, vol. 2, edited by Knud Haakonssen, 939–86. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. McHugh, John. “On the Origins and Normative Status of the Impartial Spectator.” Econ Journal Watch, last modified May 2016. Retrieved from: www.econjwatch.org/ McHugh, John. “Ways of Desiring Mutual Sympathy in Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 24 (2016): 614–34.

Phenomenology of Moral Motivation 303 Mossner, Ernest Campbell and Ian Simpson Ross, eds. Correspondence of Adam Smith. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987. Otteson, James. Adam Smith’s Marketplace of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Smith, Adam. “History of Astronomy.” In Essays on Philosophical Subjects, edited by W. P. D. Wightman and John C. Bryce, 33–105. Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1982a. Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Edited by D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie. Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1982b.

17 Kant and Smith on Imagination, Reason, and Personhood Jack Russell Weinstein

My intention in this essay is to contrast Kant and Adam Smith’s radically different notions of understanding and reason, and to illustrate how they lead to differing conceptions of personhood and self-agency. This is largely a comparative and context-building discussion, not an interpretive one. For the most part, I rely on middle-of-the-road interpretations of both thinkers, and given the nature of this volume, I presume a basic familiarity with Kant’s writing that I do not assume with Smith’s. This essay will be divided into five sections, Smith’s influence on Kant, the imagination, reason, practical reason and morality, and personhood. These topics, in this order, represent the progression and growth of the human intellect, according to Smith. People begin with the imagination, it refines the human capacity for reason which, combined with the sentiments, leads to moral judgment. Only after this maturation process does someone acknowledge another’s moral personhood. This may seem confused to the Kantian who sees reason as primary and personhood as a brute fact independent of acknowledgment. My aim, then, is to show that this progression makes sense, from Smith’s point of view, and to describe an imagination-based understanding of human reasoning. I will use the Kantian framework as the benchmark for each of these topics then show how Smith’s approach varies. I do not mean to suggest that either is superior; if I devote disproportionate time to Smith at certain moments, it is simply because I think he requires more introduction and explication. My hope is that a contrast between the two will help clarify some of the more subtle differences that have been heretofore unnoticed.

I. Smith’s Influence on Kant We know that Kant was both deeply impressed by and influenced by Smith. He references The Wealth of Nations in The Doctrine of Justice and the Anthropology, and he references the impartial spectator in the Reflexionen, the second Critique, and in the Metaphysics of Morals; Herz claims that “das Engländer Smith” was Kant’s “liebling.”1 Samuel Fleischacker outlines both the hard textual evidence for Smith’s influence and the more subtle case for his impact.2 But not surprisingly,

Imagination, Reason, and Personhood 305 with the single exception of a paragraph on reason in the first Critique, his discussion is entirely about Smith’s moral philosophy. Given this approach, one might think that no other comparison is possible.3 Fleischacker’s approach is consistent with the extant body of literature. In general, any intellectual debt to Smith is out of the mainstream of Kant scholarship. Consider, for example, Manfred Kuehn’s comparison of Hume’s two great works in his otherwise excellent biography of Kant. During a discussion of the German philosopher’s early wrestling with Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and the moral sense, Kuehn quotes Kant on the application of moral theory: “What is the role of their [adjudicative rules] application . . . to an objection of adjudication (sympathy of others and an impartial spectator? 3. What transforms moral conditions into motiva—i.e., on what is their vis movens and thus their application to the subject based? (Refl 6628 R 19:117).”4 Kuehn then explains that “these passages reveal Kant’s continuing debt to Hume’s account of moral approval in terms of ‘the particular structure of the mind’ of a judicious spectator and . . . [his] account of morality in terms of generalized maxims.”5 Kuehn performs an impressive (and perhaps inadvertent) sleight of hand. He quotes Kant as using the phrase “impartial spectator” but discusses the “judicious spectator” instead. The former phrase is Smith’s but the latter is Hume’s, and in reality, is only used once, at Treatise 3.3.1.14 SBN 581, to give voice to a hypothetical objection. Smith, on the other hand, references the impartial spectator throughout his Theory of Moral Sentiments; the term represents the very core of his normative theory. Judiciousness and impartiality are different. To be judicious is to be of sound judgment, and to be wise, discriminating, and sensible in practical matters. But impartiality, a technical term, for Smith, is a complex product of the imagination that involves removing oneself from one’s circumstances; cultivating reason and sympathy; looking carefully at the causes of the moral sentiments, not just their visible emotional expression; considering the reaction of others to an act’s effects; and, balancing the action with the precise rules of justice and the general rules of conduct (TMS VII.iii.3.16).6 Neither is the term judicious specifically Hume’s; Smith uses it twenty-three times in his published works. Sometimes it is a moniker of respect, but most of the time, it indicates the virtue of prudence. Smith defines this virtue in the following way: “wise and judicious conduct, when directed to greater and nobler purposes than the care of the health, the fortune, the rank and reputation of the individual, is frequently and very properly called prudence” (TMS VI.1.16). For another author, the distinction between judiciousness and impartiality might be minor, but not for Smith. Impartiality lies at the core of his normative theory and has significant emotional content. It is not Archimedean, but a moral agent’s imperfect aspiration. Smith would reject Kant’s comment on the sublime nature of enthusiasm that “human nature does not of itself harmonize with that good; it can be made to harmonize with it only through

306 Jack Russell Weinstein the dominance that reason exerts over sensibility” (CPJ 5:271).7 For Smith, it is specifically our nature to find the good through emotive and rational capacities. Further, unlike Kant, for whom “an affect is an agitation of the mind that makes it unable to engage in free deliberation about principles with the aim of determining itself according to them,” Smith sees affect as both the beginning and end of moral deliberation (CPJ 5:272). I will return to this later. Kuehn makes matters worse, however, when he writes, Hume thought he could account for moral judgment in terms of a ‘pleasing sentiment of approbation’ by an unbiased and disinterested spectator. Kant develops the idea of a completely rational observer of himself, or perhaps better, of an agent split in two, namely a non-rational actor and a rational observer of these actions.8 The process he describes is not developed from Hume. It is Smith who argues that we “divide  .  .  ., as it were, into two persons” and that the impartial spectator is exact in his or her judgment—the final arbiter of propriety (TMS III.1.6, I.i.5.4). It is also Smith who writes that an actor is deemed appropriate “when the heart of every impartial spectator entirely sympathizes with them, when every indifferent by-stander entirely enters into, and goes along with them” (TMS II.i.2.2). Finally, it is Smith who concludes that such a spectator “allows no word, no gesture, to escape it beyond what this more equitable sentiment would dictate” (TMS I.i.5.4). It is not so much that onehalf of the division is non-rational and the other is not, but rather that one-half is immersed in the spectator’s context and the other is predicated on the actor’s. The two are then triangulated with the community’s perspective, creating the opportunity for balancing specific and general needs. Smith’s self-division and impartial spectator are major advancements on Hume’s moral theory. It brings to Hume’s foundation an empiricist conception of conscience that matures through education and personal experience, though it does not meet Kant’s transcendental standards. Impartiality denotes neither Kantian autonomy nor the Archimedean judgment of the categorical imperative. Neither are Smith’s reference to the “the abstract and ideal spectator” actually ideal. The spectator is the product of the imagination and its impartiality is limited by the capacities of the person who imagines it (TMS III.3.38).9 Nevertheless, it does advance the conversation, and Smith should get the requisite credit, especially since, as we have seen, Kant knew Smith so well. In Kuehn’s defense, it can be difficult to compare Kant and Smith. Kant divides his analyses of moral philosophy and epistemology in a way that Smith would not have understood. This complexity gets ramped up when we focus on the imagination, Kuehn’s topic in those selections, although he may not realize it. For Kant, the imagination is largely the purview of the first and third Critiques, while reason as the foundation of the morality

Imagination, Reason, and Personhood 307 is predominantly outlined in the second Critique and his works on moral philosophy. Kant does mention the imagination elsewhere, including in The Metaphysics of Morals, but there, for example, he does so only to describe how wasteful sympathy is when there are no practical consequences. For Kant, “insofar as we sympathize with suffering that we can do nothing about, our feelings are useless. In fact, they are positively hurtful.”10 Or as he puts it, “when another suffers and, although I cannot help him, I let myself be infected by his pain, (though my imagination), then two of us suffer though the trouble really (in nature) affects only one” (MM 6:457). For Smith, in contrast, the imaginative suffering is productive in itself because “we sympathetically share the resentment that they feel toward their oppressors, endorsing such feelings as warranted, and acknowledging those who feel them deserve better treatment.”11 Unlike Kant, for Smith, morality and epistemology are necessarily intertwined, with the imagination holding pride of place. This means, of course, that the categorical imperative is designed to overcome the very particularity that Smith embraces. By overcoming the hypothetical, it remains above contingency and, by extension, is not concerned with gathering the same sorts of facts about the world that Smith’s imaginative moral deliberation requires. Smith embraces the hypothetical and its ability to lead to general rules of conduct. If he were to seek categorical ethical rules instead, it would undermine not only his morality, but his conception of human nature that sees agents as experimental individuals who are their own best advisors. Ultimately, I would suggest that Kuehn’s disregard for Smith represents a missed opportunity to compare and contrast Kant’s notion of the imagination from his early influences. But, it is an opportunity he takes advantage of a few years later, during in an essay introducing the Anthropology. There, Kuehn emphasizes how much Kant struggled with empirical evidence throughout his career.12 I do not have the space to rehearse the details. Suffice it to say, there is a clear pattern of Kant testing the empirical waters, pulling back, then testing them again and pulling back. This suggests that Kant had doubts about the application of a transcendental morality as distinct from its justificatory role. It is useful, I believe, to see this as his struggling with Smith’s legacy as well as Hume’s and others.

II. Imagination There is an inherent difficulty in comparing Kant and Smith’s theories of imagination. Kant spends a great deal of time writing about it structurally— its purpose and how it functions—while spending much less time offering concrete examples of the imagination at work in particular cases. Smith does just the opposite. He offers an expansive account of the imagination in very specific moral, scientific, and rhetorical contexts, but expends virtually no effort on describing the apparatus itself. For Kant, we understand the

308 Jack Russell Weinstein imagination as a part of the mind, but for Smith, we understand it as part of character and social life. Kant might label the former constitutive and the latter regulative. For Kant, the imagination is a precondition for synthesis. Its most basic function is to represent an object that is not present in the intuition (CPR B151). It can produce and reproduce sensible objects, unify a physical object seen from multiple perspectives, and in accordance with the appropriate categories, assert the temporal aspects of objects in such a way as to create object permanence and constancy. The imagination and it’s “schemata of the concepts of pure understanding are the true and sole conditions for providing them with a relation to objects, thus with significance” (CPR A145–6/ B185).13 In short, Kant argues that the imagination bridges the sensibility and the understanding, unifying people’s consciousness and making them internally whole.14 It allows for self-awareness, not in a Delphic sense, but in a Cartesian one. It permits subjects to be aware of their own subjectivity even if, famously, they can only know themselves as an appearance, not as a thing-in-itself. In contrast, for Smith, the imagination is a precondition for bridging physically discrete people. It is the faculty that allows an agent to enter into the perspective of another, to reconstruct the circumstances behind the expression of their sentiments, and to evaluate their propriety. It utilizes “sympathy,” a notion akin to contemporary empathy, to create fellow-feeling between spectators and moral actors. As we have seen, Kant acknowledges that such sympathy exists, but does not regard it as a good in itself. For Smith, in contrast, sympathy is essential to the human experience (TMS III.1–4, III.2.6). It is pleasurable and is the tool by which individuals satisfy their natural desire to be both praised and praiseworthy. It also motivates people to cultivate and protect stable societies (TMS II.i.5.10). Kant and Smith share a common set of concerns. Smithian sympathy also allows for self-knowledge, but this time specifically in the Delphic sense. For Smith, to know oneself imaginatively is to be aware of one’s own character, and to create, after significant moral learning, an idealized imagined judge who is the final arbiter of moral success. The actor creates a virtual mirror allowing him or herself to act as a self-spectator, and, eventually, after one reaches moral maturity, constructs an “impartial spectator” to act as a conscience and bulwark against inappropriate social expectations. Smith’s empiricism and theoretical foundations are inherited from Hume, as is his vocabulary, so we can assume that his and Hume’s basic conceptions of the imagination are similar. Like Hume, Smith understands mental images as derived from experience, he recognizes the imagination’s ability to break apart and recombine parts of objects, he understands the imagination as central to abstract ideas, and recognizes that impressions are significantly fainter than the objects upon which they are based. Also for Smith, as for

Imagination, Reason, and Personhood 309 Hume, reason, sympathy, and association are all also the purview of the imagination. These aspects will be addressed later in more detail The great risk for Kant’s imagination is that it is unacceptably psychological. If the imagination is not transcendental—if it is contingent and empirical—then it cannot play its role in the unity of apperception. It cannot undergird the universal reasoning necessary for normative rational judgment. For Smith, however, judgment cannot be transcendental. It is contextual and, often, ad hoc. It is necessarily psychological and thus subject to both perversion and lack of cultivation. According to Smith, the imagination can fail, not simply in its judgments, but in its role as a faculty. Some actors simply can’t imagine well enough. This last point is essential. The Smith scholar looks at Kant’s theory of the imagination and asks, how does it get better? If the imagination is part of the faculty of the manifold, if it creates a transcendental reality, then the capabilities of the imagination which Kant describes cannot be altered through education. Or to use a ham-fisted analogy, if we think of the imagination as a muscle, Kant has shown us how it works and what it does, but not how to make it bigger, stronger, and healthier. Smith, on the other hand, always peppers his discussion of the imagination with allusions to education. His account is developmental, assuming that one of the most fundamental roles of the imagination is to bring individuals to moral, intellectual, rational, and social maturity, a job Kant seems to relegate to generations in his works on history. Smith writes that that the ability to see is partially founded on “some difference in the original configuration of their eyes,” but also “frequently” develops because of the “different customs and habits which their respective occupations have led them to contract” (ES 52). He cites, “men of letters” and compares them to mariners to show how the “precision” by which a sailor can see objects in the distance “astonishes a land-man” (ES 52). The faculties are affected by learning, for Smith, but this too is motivated by sentiment. In his History of Astronomy, Smith claims that if we experience something new that “stands alone in the imagination,” we experience wonder and are motivated to learn more about it (HA II.3). In fact, for Smith, the very purpose of philosophy is to “allay the tumult of the imagination” (HA II.12) or, as he puts it elsewhere, to restore the “repose and tranquility of the imagination” (HA IV.13).15 In short, the imagination for Smith is not a structural faculty that services other aspects of the mind. It is a profound constitutive and regulative presence in our day-to-day life, one that cannot be regarded passively. I do not mean to suggest that people cannot learn under Kant’s schema; that would be absurd. But, just as the Kantian would argue that Smith never offers a true morality because his conclusions are not categorical, the Smithian would argue that an imagination that is not an object for personal betterment—an imagination that can neither be improved nor improve the imaginer—simply cannot play the role it is supposed to.

310 Jack Russell Weinstein

III. Reason Not surprisingly, and echoing our discussion of the imagination, a contrast between Kant’s and Smith’s writings on reason would also revolve around the tension between universality and particularity. However, such a comparison must also overcome the fact that Kant’s critical project includes within it an investigation into the viability of metaphysics, a topic that the Scottish philosopher largely ignores. Smith is notoriously silent on metaphysics and almost every metaphysical conclusion that comes out of his work is implied by the texts rather than stated outright. Kant tends to answer questions Smith never asks. Furthermore, Kant is responding holistically to Hume’s claims about the limits of knowledge, with special attention to cause and effect. The category of causation makes his answer to Hume a subtopic of the discussion of the manifold itself. But Smith is only slightly more forthcoming about Hume’s causation than he is about metaphysics in general. While Hume’s specter hangs over Smith as much as it does Kant, Smith’s most explicit comment about causation is in his History of Astronomy, not in his major books. He writes, [w]hen two objects, however unlike, have often been observed to follow each other, and have constantly presented themselves to the senses in that order, they come to be so connected together in the fancy, that the idea of the one seems, of its own accord, to call up and introduce that of the other (HA II.7) He then follows this up in TMS by discussing our tendency to see cultural association of objects as causally related (TMS V.1.2). One would think, then, that Kant and Smith would be as far apart on reason as they are on the imagination; they are not. Both Kant and Smith see reason as essential, not only to the understanding, but to the explanatory structures of scientific theories, the organizational scheme by which one explains the world: the regulative employment of reason amounts, therefore, to the construction of scientific theories with hypothetico-deductive form. . . . Reason is given its due by being allowed to set up unconditional totality as a target from the understanding: the formation of a system of empirical knowledge takes the place of cognition of transcendental objects and the transcendental ideas are shown not to be inherently faulty.16 Kant recognizes that there is an inconsistency with the mind’s epistemological focus on appearances and the practical need for natural philosophy. We must be able to make some determinations about physical laws if we are to acquire scientific knowledge, and we have to do this using reason. Reason

Imagination, Reason, and Personhood 311 alone can coherently abduct, because, as Hume famously inspired Kant to acknowledge, empiricism cannot tells us that the future must be like the past, nor that things must be as they are. Natural philosophy then necessitates the development of a scientific theory, for Kant, “an unconditional totality” that supplants objects as the object of our concern. We no longer consider objects in isolation, but as part of a system. This moves the scientific analysis away from the particular to the transcendental, while still recognizing its uncertain relationship to the world in itself. In the face of theory, reason shifts from its constitutive to its regulative role creating viable and defensible systems that are internally consistent with a person’s transcendental conception of the world. For Kant, scientific judgment is focused on how pieces fit into a whole; the truth of a theory is a question of coherence not correspondence. Reason is structured organizationally, dividing knowledge into three different principles: genera, specification, and affinity. “Together they constitute the idea of a completely adequate system of scientific knowledge.”17 Adequacy is the key benchmark. As Eric Watkins summarizes, Kant’s “rather strict” notion of science in the Metaphysical Foundations: A body of knowledge must satisfy in order to be considered science proper. (1) It must not consist in empirical principles, must be obtained solely from pure, a priori principles; (2) It must be apodictically certain; (3) It must be a systematically ordered whole (which means that its various propositions must be related as, for example, antecedents and consequents).18 Here, Kant is once again grounding knowledge on a priori principles and apodictic certainty; a demand that will separate him yet again from Smith. Yet, unlike in their discussion of the imagination, the two were engaged in the same project: justifying Newtonian science. In his History of Astronomy, Smith writes that Newton’s system now prevails over all opposition, and has advanced to the acquisition of the most universal empire that was ever established in philosophy. His principles, it must be acknowledged, have a degree of firmness and solidity that we should in vain look for in any other system. (HA 76) Smith agrees with Kant that scientific knowledge must be systematic. Yet, in place of the a priori certainty that Kant demands, Smith relies upon aesthetics.19 He argues that the human interest in science is an outgrowth of the sentiments, as is the interest in morality, and that beauty, ultimately, is what engenders our scientific loyalties. People wonder at “all extraordinary and uncommon objects,” are surprised at unexpected turns of events, and admire the beauty of it all. When those three sentiments—wonder, surprise,

312 Jack Russell Weinstein and admiration—work in tandem, inquirers are inspired to seek scientific systematic explanations (HA 1–6). “It gives us a pleasure to see the phaenomena which we reckoned the most unaccountable all deduced from some principle (commonly a well known one) and all united in one chain” (LRBL ii.133–34). Sentiments are most soothed when systems are presented whole, without any gaps or contradictions (LRBL ii.36). Parallel to Kant, in History of Astronomy, Smith is concerned with the subjectivity of science. The natural tendency toward systematic explanations comes from the mind’s search for “resemblances”—similarity and organization (HA II.1, cf. TMS IV.I.11). It naturally sorts events and objects by commonality and uses their continuity as a form of explanation. Here, Smith is discussing the constitutive structure of reason. His comments are obviously related to my earlier remarks on cause and effect. The habitual identification of events in a chain allows a spectator’s mind to move easily from one fact to another. Recognizing this relationship simply motivates individuals to learn more: There is no connection with which we are so much interested as this of cause and effect; we are not satisfied when we have a fact told us which we are at a loss to conceive what it was that brought it about. (LRBL ii.32) Any interruption of this chain of events is unpleasant and necessitates further action to soothe the imagination: “The very notion of a gap makes us uneasy for what should have happened in that time” (LRBL ii.37). And, “if this customary connection be interrupted,  .  .  .  the imagination no longer feels the usual facility of passing from the event which goes before to that which comes after” (HA II.8). The purpose of History of Astronomy is twofold. It expresses the human motivation to learn and do philosophy, and it illustrates why one system of thought replaces a previous one. It is both an articulation of the standards of scientific theorizing and a treatise against complexity. The history of astronomy illustrates that the more intricate systems become, the less believable they are. As systems advance, their complexity decreases, just as better machines are also simpler ones (LRBL i.v.34). Simple systems are more believable because a system is “an imaginary machine invented to connect together in the fancy those different movements and effects which are already in reality performed” (HA IV.19). Thus, like Kant, Smith is concerned with the adequacy of a scientific theory, although he uses believability for the standard rather than Kantian coherence. Neither uses truth. Reason for Smith is both aesthetic and rhetorical. It responds to simplicity because it responds to clarity; complexity obfuscates connections and interferes with understanding. It also interferes with the imagination. Clear machines and systems are easier to conceptualize, to describe, and to explain. Complexity interferes with explication

Imagination, Reason, and Personhood 313 Ultimately, the difference between Kant and Smith on scientific theorizing is that for the former, nature is not the benchmark of acceptable reason, but for the latter it is, at least in part. Such theories must be transcendental for Kant; his “Copernican turn is that no correspondence of reason to reality be presumed.”20 For Smith, though, the reliability of systematic knowledge comes from a sentimental foundation that is derived from nature, history, culture, and personal experience. Or, to put it yet another way, whereas Kant responds to Hume’s empiricist skepticism with his three Critiques, Smith responds to it with the very fact of human progress.

IV. Practical Reason and Morality We have, up to this point, been discussing the constitutive nature of both the imagination and reason, emphasizing that even Smith’s constitutive comments seem more like Kant’s remarks on regulative reason. Reason for Smith, looks like rationality for Kant. This makes sense. Smith himself tends to equivocate reason and rationality, although he never actually uses the latter term. He employs reason to mean everything from the capacity itself to individual reasons in arguments. He also pairs reason with other terms, among them, “the faculties of reason and speech,” “dictates of reason and humanity,” “the doctrine of reason and philosophy,” “reason and experience,” and “reason and nature.” These couplings are indications of those faculties and activities that both rely on and improve reason.21 To respond to the objection that I have been comparing dissimilar notions of reasons, then, I would suggest that one has to compare theoretical and practical reason if one is to engage Smith and Kant. For Smith, there simply is no reason in the transcendental sense; he regards practical reason as reason in its entirety. For Kant, practical reason is derived from the Moral Law and interpreted by agents through maxims. It builds on the will, inspiring individuals to develop good intentions and to act only on those maxims that can be legislated universally. Kant is committed to the Platonic notion that the will can control emotions—that agents can craft their intentions, and that desires somehow corrupt the moral purity of reason-based adjudication. His moral agents are not simply rule followers, they are bulwarks against contingency, prioritizing the noumenal nature of moral reason over the phenomenal accident of moral fact. In other words, the Categorical Imperative establishes an idea that Kant expects people to achieve. Because morality is universal in scope, an act which is not in accordance with the proper legislation, not only falls short, but is simply not moral. There is no partial morality for Kant. There is an irony here. Kant has established an ideal that demands complete compliance while simultaneously recognizing that “one could cite no safe examples of the disposition to act from pure duty . . . it always remains doubtful whether it is really done from duty and thus has a moral worth” (GMM 4:406). The moral nature of one’s actions is always in doubt.

314 Jack Russell Weinstein For Smith, however, it is otherwise. He sets up an aspirational ideal that he frequently recognizes cannot be achieved, going so far as to condemn those who demand purity of virtue: “it is the great fallacy  .  .  .  to represent every person as wholly vicious, which is so in any degree and in any direction” (TMS VII.2.4.12). Under his approach, it is easier to determine whether one has actually met the moral requirements than whether or not the requirements one has met are correct. In the end, they may not be. For Smith morality is, at most, “best practices.”22 Thus, for Kant, one knows the law, and is capable and obligated to follow it, but is always in the dark as to whether or not he or she has succeeded with pure good will. For Smith, one aspires to be praiseworthy and often falls short in the attempt, but never knows for certain that the principles he or she is aiming for are, in fact, morally right. Smith does not seek good will without qualification. For him, every act has multiple motivations. Some may be self-oriented while others may be other-focused. The former is not always vicious and the latter is not always virtuous. Excess, vanity, and posturing are often more about playing to an audience than about oneself. The wealthy, Smith is explicit, often become vicious because they pay too much attention to how laudable the masses regard them to be. To illustrate the difference, consider Kant and Smith on truth-telling. For Kant, telling the truth is a perfect duty and, as he famously writes, one should not even lie to a murderer at the door because “to be truthful . . . in all declarations is therefore a sacred command of reason prescribing unconditionally” (RL 8:427). There are no exceptions. Smith disagrees. In the very last chapter of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, after establishing his own theory, and categorizing and critiquing those that came before him, he offers what he calls a “trite” question: should we keep a promise to a “highwayman” (a robber) who has let us go because we gave him assurances that if he did, we would pay him in the future? (TMS VII.iv.9) His answer is anything but trite. He first observes that if we did not pay the ransom, the robber could claim no injury from a broken contract, since it was exerted by force. Nevertheless, he elaborates, “if we consider the matter according to the common sentiments of mankind,” we recognize that there is some expectation to pay the ransom, although “it is impossible to determine how much, by any general rule that will apply to all cases without exception” (TMS VII.ix.12). Smith observes that people do not approve of the character of a person who makes easy promises and disregards them, so if the amount were small, then there would be some expectation to pay. However, if the amount were significant, whether it would “ruin the family of the promiser” or not, paying the highwayman back would “appear to the common sense of mankind, absurd and extravagant to the highest degree” (TMS VII.ix.12).

Imagination, Reason, and Personhood 315 The upshot of Smith’s discussion is two conclusions that are in obvious tension with one another, both of which stand in interesting contrast to Kant. First he argues, To fix . . . by any precise rule, what degree of regard ought to be paid to it, or what might be the greatest sum which could be due from it, is evidently impossible. This would vary according to the characters of the persons, according to their circumstances, according to the solemnity of the promise. (TMS VII.iv.13) He then counters his own suggestion by observing that breaking a promise always adds “some degree of dishonour to the person.” It is “at least a departure from the highest and noblest maxims of magnanimity and honour” (TMS VII.iv.13). In short, a person who breaks such a promise would not be condemned, but would, nevertheless, be tainted by the lack of follow through. As Kant recognizes, there is something special about promises that anytime we break one, for whatever reason, we always face some dishonor and condemnation. It is no accident that Smith uses the term “maxim” to describe the universal disapproval of broken commitments. Smith recognizes the impossibility of abiding by universal rules, but acknowledges that character judgments are often based on their influence. He sees categorical claims as ideals toward which all humanity strives, but recognizes that human activity is always imperfect. As I have argued in Adam Smith’s Pluralism, this is true in virtually all of Smith’s spheres of interest. There is an ideal progress that history ought to follow, but an actual history that departs from it. There is an ideal impartiality that spectators should strive for, but an understandably limited ability to step outside of one’s perspective. There is even an ideal “natural price” for goods and services, but actual exchange is built on a less-perfect market price instead.23 There are, Smith is insistent, “general rules of conduct” that all people should regard as the “foundation” of all conduct, but these are a posteriori, the product of long-standing trial and error (TMS III.4.7). They are, he writes, channeling Hume, “fixed in our mind by habitual reflection [and] are of great use in correcting the misinterpretations of self-love concerning what is fit and proper to be done in particular situations” (TMS III.4.10). And, anticipating Kant, Smith argues that assigning justified moral blame and punishment requires that we “disapprove of the motives of the agent.” If there is no “impropriety” in the motives, no matter “how fatal” the consequences, he suggests, the impartial spectator will determine that no punishment is deserved (TMS II.i.4.3). Intent is the first consideration in praise and blame, for Smith (TMSII.iii.intro.1). He recognizes that all moral actions are legitimated by their guiding maxims and intentions. We are always disappointed

316 Jack Russell Weinstein when we cannot achieve perfect morality, and we strive to judge people for their good or bad will before we consider the consequences of their actions. Where then is the great disconnect? Why do Smith and Kant part ways in their approach to universality? The answer is found at the end of the highwayman discussion. According to Smith, “our imagination . . . attaches the idea of shame to all violations of faith, in every circumstance and in every situation” (VII.iv.13). For Kant, morality is the product of reason, but for Smith it is the consequence of the imagination. The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a moral psychology “not concerning a matter of right . . . but concerning a matter of fact.” Smith is not interested in “what principles a perfect being would approve of the punishment of bad action, but upon what principles so weak and imperfect a creature as man actually and in fact approves of.” As a result, and of the utmost importance to our discussion, the Author of nature has not entrusted it to [human] reason to find out that a certain application of punishments is the proper means of attainting this end, but has endowed him with an immediate and instinctive approbation of the very application which is most proper to attain it. (TMS II.1.5.10) To summarize, the central difference between the two philosophers is not the scope or consequences of their morality, but the means by which we judge. Reason, Kant argues, frees us from contingency and allows us to deduce the Moral Law. For him, only reason can free us from our sentiments and offer the assurance that whatever the consequence, we have acted morally. Kantian freedom is the liberation from historical accident. In contrast, reason cannot in itself determine morality for Smith. It must work hand in hand with the sentiments and create the ability to enter into the circumstance of the other. Thus, reason and understanding are founded upon the imagination. Our moral freedom in Smith’s sense lies in the ability to imagine an impartial spectator, experience in some sense the circumstances of those whom we judge, and come to a judgment that, while centered on the moral actor we are considering, is the product of our own capacities. Someone who is not mature enough to create a reliable impartial spectator is not morally free.

V. Personhood I wish to conclude this discussion by showing how Smith’s account of personhood is representative of his ascribing morality to the imagination, rather than reason, and that Kant’s notion of personhood is the reverse. I do not mean to suggest that morality for Smith is irrational. Quite the contrary, Smith’s rejects the bifurcation of reason and emotion, and sees rhetoric as bridging the two. Sympathy and the moral sentiments are themselves rational: “Senses can be refined through practice and learning. The parts

Imagination, Reason, and Personhood 317 of sympathy that are outgrowths of the moral sense can also be similarly refined.”24 This presumes clear communication of one’s circumstance, experiences, attitudes, and perspective. Recognizing someone’s personhood is, to borrow a contemporary term, to encounter them, to care enough to consider their context and imaginatively enter into their perspective. This difference plays an important role in Kant and Smith’s political philosophies and philosophies of history. Kant has, in the words of Hans Reiss, “mapped out a theory of politics independent of experience.” It is “inevitably a part of his metaphysics of morals” and since laws must be universal in nature, “a philosophy of law is thus all that a metaphysics of politics can ever amount to.” In other words, Kant is not concerned with delineating the content of relations between individuals (i.e., the ends which they desire or ought to desire) but only with the form. What matters is the arrangement which establishes that the free actions of one individual can be reconciled with the freedom of the other in accordance with a universal law.25 For Kant, politics is an extension of the categorical imperative and as such, its rules are only discoverable through reason. For Smith, on the other hand, imagination is the centerpiece of political life. Two principles govern the political human: people’s desire to better their own condition (TMS I.iii.2.1, WN I.viii.44, WN II.iii.28), and “the great purpose of life . . . to be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency, and approbation” (TMS I.iii.2.1). For Smith, bettering one’s own condition is to be understood in its widest sense, incorporating all human needs from the economic, social, and moral, to the emotional and physical. Thus, for Smith, the “liberty of every individual” depends upon the “impartial administration of justice” (WN V.i.b.25) and, every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men. (WN IV.ix.51) Impartiality unifies the moral and the political for Smith, just as universality does for Kant. Justice, the umbrella virtue for society, is complex for Smith. “Upon most occasions” it is a negative virtue. It entails refraining from harming others and can be realized by sitting still and doing nothing (TMS II.ii.1.9). But, he argues, that the citizenry also regards justice as positive treatment of others and that in one sense, we do not do justice to our neighbour unless we conceive for him all that love, respect, and esteem, which his character, his situation, and his

318 Jack Russell Weinstein connexion with ourselves, render suitable and proper for us to feel, and unless we act accordingly. (TMS VII.ii.1.10) As with his moral theory, Smith’s political language is the language of the imagination. We must imagine what a better condition ought to be and what kind of acknowledgment we want from each other. We must decide for ourselves what our own personal (not universal) ends are and determine how to pursue them, because neither the sovereign nor our neighbor is under any legal expectation to help us. We can be just by simply not doing anything— like Kant, he recognizes that this is the notion of justice that reason alone gets us—but if we want to meet the more robust conception of justice that most people expect, we must show proper esteem, reward and punish appropriately, and abstain from all harm, not just physical or property based. We must complement reason with the imagination much like, for Kant, we must complement the perfect duties with the imperfect. These political assumptions govern historical progress as well. Both Kant and Smith are at their most Enlightenment selves when they express their faith in the promise of successive generations. Both suggest guiding principles that move humanity forward, although, as I argued earlier, for Smith these principles are more ideal than actual.26 For Kant, human progress is the slow realization of reason. It is “a steadily advancing but slow development of man’s original capacities,” and “the history of the human race as a whole can be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about an internally—and for this purpose externally—perfect combination as the only possible state within which all natural capacities of mankind can be accepted completely” (IUH 8:27).27 History is famously the human progress toward enlightenment, “man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another” (E 8:35).28 Kant’s notion of autonomy as articulated in this selection is famously problematic. Smith himself would reject Kant’s picture out of hand, claiming that no moral judgments are possible in isolation and that the impartiality Kant strives for is unrealistic (TMS III.i.3–4). But this is well-trodden ground; I need not discuss it here. What is more important for our purposes is that Kant and Smith represent two different strands of enlightenment political philosophies, what Amartya Sen terms “the contractarian and the comparative.” The first “concentrated on identifying perfectly just social arrangements, and took the characteristics of ‘just institutions’ to be the principal—and often the only identified—task of the theory of justice. [It was] woven in different ways around the idea of a hypothetical ‘social contract.’” The second, “took a variety of approaches that shared a common interest in making comparisons between different ways in which people’s lives may be led, influenced by institutions but also by people’s actual behaviour, social interactions and other significant determinants.”29

Imagination, Reason, and Personhood 319 Kant falls squarely in the first group. His social contract is hypothetical but normative, derivable through reason in the same way as his other moral principles. Smith falls squarely in the second. He eschews the social contract, rejects even the analytic use of considering human beings outside of society, and builds his progressive philosophy of history on specific stages of social organizations, with governments defined by the means of production. Kant is focused on the ideal and the universal transcendental laws that frame the human political project. Smith is concerned with asking the practical question of whether actual people’s real conditions are in fact better. One cannot do this from a transcendental point of view. Consider Smith’s view on slavery. Kant is opposed to slavery for several reasons. He forbids inequality and demands self-agency, arguing that since agency is inalienable, one cannot contract away one’s own freedom. But Smith takes a different approach. He too opposes slavery vociferously and attacks it anthropologically by exposing the causes of the human motivation to dominate others. He then compares the treatment of different slaves at different times to argue that economic conditions help determine the treatment of slaves by their masters, concluding that the more successful people are and the freer they become, the more they abuse their slaves (cf: (LJ(A) iii.109–10). Social conditions are important for Smith because the more distance a master has from the slaves, the less he or she can sympathize with them, and the more cruelly a master treats a slave, the more distance he or she wants. This is a vicious cycle of psychological self-protection; any attempt to sympathize would only lead the master to self-hatred. As a result, masters work very hard not to sympathize with the slaves at all. Smith’s moral argument against slavery requires interpretation and reconstruction.30 Ultimately, though, for Smith, normativity is established by the standards set forth by sympathy and an impartial spectator. Once the master steps outside his or her own perspective and sympathizes with the profound and inhuman suffering of the slave—once he or she becomes impartial—the brute obviousness of the immorality of slavery becomes clear. The task is to get the master to sympathize at all. This is not a solution that Kant would accept. He would argue that it substitutes the discovery of the immorality of slavery for the normative condemnation, yet another result of Kant relying on reason as the final normative arbiter and Smith seeing rationality as informed by the imagination. Smith anticipates this and presents a second argument against slavery, an economic one, to cater to those whose self-interest can overcome their refusal to encounter others. Smith’s method foreshadows Rawls’s overlapping consensus. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith shows that the perceived economic advantages of slavery are chimeras. While the slave owner is motivated to work diligently to increase production, the slave, “who can acquire nothing but his maintenance, consults his own ease by making the land produce as

320 Jack Russell Weinstein little as possible over and above that maintenance” (WN III.ii.12). Smith shows quite convincingly that hired labor is always cheaper than slave labor. Kant may have this is mind when he remarks, as an aside, in Perpetual Peace, that the Sugar Islands, that stronghold of the cruelest and most calculated slavery, do not yield any real profit; they serve only the indirect (and not entirely laudable) purpose of training sailors for warships, thereby aiding the prosecution of wars in Europe. (PP 8:359)31 For Kant, all individuals have personhood by definition. They always ought to be treated as such: as ends, not means, and autonomous self-legislators. The political system within which they live must recognize and support these facts, while itself striving for the most universal of laws. Ultimately, although I have not discussed it here, for Kant, this universality extends itself internationally. Persons can only be supported by nations which are themselves supported by a global kingdom of ends. All of this is derivable from reason and allows no exceptions. For Smith, all individuals are also persons by definition, and ought to be treated as such: sentimental strivers who seek to better their own conditions, including improving their own moral judgment and character. They are, in a sense, self-legislators, too. Smith is explicit that they are the best qualified to make decisions for themselves. No other person can fully enter into their perspective because imaginations are imperfect. Each person is “recommended to his own care,” is “fitter and abler to take care of himself than of any other person,” and “every man feels his own pleasures and his own pains more sensibly than those of other people” (TMS VI.ii.1.1). The political system within which Smith’s moral actors live must also recognize and support these facts. The best governance is the one that allows for the maximum liberty that is compatible with justice, and is therefore open to how experience and history recommends changes that improve its own laws. Ultimately, although I have not discussed it here, for Smith, liberty is supported by free trade and a cosmopolitan worldview. Persons can only be supported by nations which are themselves supported by a peaceful global and commercial community. All of this may be established by reason but is only confirmable through experience and fellow-feeling. The ideal that reason describes is not, in fact, achievable; moral life often requires judgment in the face of imperfection—in the face of facts. In short, Smith and Kant, while philosophically far apart in a myriad of ways, come to roughly the same conclusion about personhood and the conditions that cultivate it, just as they come to similar conclusions about scientific theorizing. This is no small matter and is, ultimately, the ground for considering them both part of the liberal tradition.

Imagination, Reason, and Personhood 321

VI. Conclusion Kuehn reports that Christian Jacob Krauss, “perhaps Kant’s most talented student in the seventies” was very close to Kant. They looked like brothers, shared long walks, and lived together for a time. Krauss thought Kant “the greatest master of his time,” but was ultimately unsatisfied with his philosophy. He thought, “Philosophy needed to be applied to real life. He was the practical philosopher, interested in economics and law. So in his course on moral philosophy he taught in accordance with David Hume and Adam Smith.” Ultimately, it was Krauss who Kuehn credits for bringing Smith to Germany.32 Ian Simpson Ross, Smith’s biographer, reports that the second German translation of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1791) contained within in it, a review of Kant’s work written by Smith’s translator, Ludwig Theobul Kosegarten. “It made Kant ask the question ‘where in Germany is the man who can write so well about the moral character?’”33 These anecdotes underscore my earlier attention to Kant’s appreciation of Smith. Are these just instances analogous to the athlete celebrating a competitor for his or her skills? At first glance, it may seem so. There is simply no denying that their philosophical benchmarks were incommensurable. Kant would have dismissed any non-transcendental morality as psychological, not normative, and Smith would have regarded a purely reason-based morality as missing the point. Smith makes precisely such a claim at the end of TMS. Anticipating some of Kant’s motivations, he acknowledges that a morality based on reason would be a likely response to an “odious” doctrine like Hobbes’s. He even appears to agree with Kant when he writes, “that virtue consists in conformity to reason, is true in some respects, . . . It is by reason that we discover those general rules of justice by which we ought to regulate our actions . . .” (TMS VII.iii.2.6). But he changes his tune immediately after, arguing that “the general maxims of morality” are formed from both induction and experience. In turn, it would be “absurd and unintelligible to suppose that the first perceptions of right and wrong can be derived from reason, even in those particular cases upon the experience of which the general rules are formed” (TMS VII.ii.2.7). Smith’s anticipatory rejection of Kant is that reason may be the standard of right and wrong, but it is not that which either informs or motivates agents to follow the Moral Law. Kant, Smith is charging, is doing the justificatory metaphysics, but not the epistemology, political economy, and anthropology necessary to actually improve society. It is not entirely clear that Kant would disagree. Kant, on the other hand has a rejoinder to Smith. Echoing his claim that virtue cannot be wholly good because it can increase villains’ success, he writes, Ethics explained by a doctrine of virtue is good inasmuch as virtue belongs solely to the inner tribunal; but since virtue entails not just

322 Jack Russell Weinstein morally good actions but at the same time the possibility of the opposite, and thus incorporates an inner struggle, this is therefore too narrow a concept . . . (LEH 27:13) Smith would most certainly take issue with the claim that the “tribunal” that negotiates virtue is solely an inner one—he sees moral determination as inherently social—but this is beside the point. We have reached an impasse, but as I remarked earlier, it is an impasse Kant struggled with throughout his life. There are elements of Smith’s system in Kant’s, not just in his more popular works, but in his critical philosophy. There are anticipations of Kant in Smith’s as well. In the end, the two disagreed. They just never quite abandoned each other.34

Notes 1. Samuel Fleischacker, “Philosophy in Moral Practice: Kant and Adam Smith,” in Adam Smith, ed. Knud Haakonssen, 3–24 (Aldershot Hants, England and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1998), 3–4. 2. Fleischacker, “Philosophy in Moral Practice: Kant and Adam Smith.” 3. Fleischacker, “Philosophy in Moral Practice: Kant and Adam Smith,” 22. 4. Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 202. 5. Kuehn, Kant, 202. 6. All Smith citations advert to the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondences of Adam Smith,: ES: “Of the External Senses,” in Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. John C. Bryce and W. P. D. Wightman, 135–168 (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982); HA: “The Principles Which Lead and Direct Philosophical Enquires; Illustrated by the History of Astronomy,” in Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. John C. Bryce and W. P. D. Wightman (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982), 31–105; LJ(A): The 1763–1764 lectures in Lectures on Jurisprudence (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982); LRBL: Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985); TMS: The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2009); WN: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Roy H. Campbell and Andrew S. Skinner (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981). 7. Translation from Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987), 132. 8. Kuehn, Kant, 202. 9. Jack Russell Weinstein, Adam Smith’s Pluralism: Rationality, Education, and the Moral Sentiments (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 71–2. 10. Michael L. Frazier, The Enlightenment of Sympathy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 126. 11. Frazier, The Enlightenment of Sympathy, 127. 12. Manfred Kuehn, “Introduction,” in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, ed. Robert B. Louden (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), vii–xxix. 13. In this paragraph, I follow Samantha Matherne, “Kant’s Theory of the Imagination,” in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, ed. Amy Kind, 55–68 (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 56–60.

Imagination, Reason, and Personhood 323 14. Sarah L. Gibbons, Kant’s Theory of Imagination: Bridging Gaps in Judgement and Experience (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1994), 29. 15. John Harrison suggests that Smith’s History of Astronomy provides the core articulation of Smith’s account of the epistemological imagination. See: John R. Harrison, “Imagination and Aesthetics in Adam Smith’s Epistemology and Moral Philosophy,” Contributions to Political Economy 14 (1995): 91–112. 16. Sebastian Gardner, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 222–3. 17. Thomas E. Wartenberg, “Reason and the Practice of Science,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer, 228–48 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 233 emphasis in original. 18. Eric Watkins, “The Argumentative Structure of Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 36/4 (October 1998), 567–8. 19. The attraction of a beautiful system is so compelling that Smith aggressively warns against “the man of system” who values the craft of the creation more than the veracity of the claims. He provides two examples of such overreach: the “artificial system” of Ptolemy, which relied on epicycles so absurd that each revision of it “rendered it still more embarrassing” (HA IV.8, 25), and the person who “is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it” (TMS VI.ii.2.17). 20. Onora O’Neill, “Vindicating Reason,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer, 280–308 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 282. 21. Here I follow: Weinstein, Adam Smith’s Pluralism, 115–17. 22. Weinstein, Adam Smith’s Pluralism, 268. 23. Weinstein, Adam Smith’s Pluralism, 18. 24. Weinstein, Adam Smith’s Pluralism, 116. 25. Immanuel Kant, “Introduction,” in Kant: Political Writings, ed. Hans Siegbert Reiss, 1–40 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 11, 20, 22. 26. Weinstein, Adam Smith’s Pluralism, chap. 10. 27. Immanuel Kant, “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose,” in Kant: Political Writings, ed. Hans Siegbert Reiss, 41–53 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 41, 53. 28. Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Questions ‘What Is Enlightenment?’,” in Kant: Political Writings, ed. Hans Siegbert Reiss, 54–60 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 54. 29. Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice, reprinted edition (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2011), xvi–xvii. 30. Weinstein, Adam Smith’s Pluralism, 86–91. 31. Immanuel Kant, “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” in Kant: Political Writings, ed. Hans Siegbert Reiss, 93–130 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 107. 32. Kuehn, Kant, xiii, 324. 33. Ian Simpson Ross, The Life of Adam Smith, second edition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 207–8. 34. I would like to thank Elizabeth Robinson and Chris Suprenant for the invitation to be included in this volume and their thoughtful responses to an earlier draft of this essay. Additional thanks go out to Lawrence Pasternak and to Samantha Matherne for responding to an unsolicited email request about Kant’s often oblique discussion of the imagination. I could not have navigated this topic without all of their help.

324 Jack Russell Weinstein

References Fleischacker, Samuel. “Philosophy in Moral Practice: Kant and Adam Smith.” In Adam Smith, edited by Knud Haakonssen, 3–24. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998. Frazier, Michael. The Enlightenment of Sympathy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Gardner, Sebastian. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason. London: Routledge, 1999. Gibbons, Sarah L. Kant’s Theory of Imagination: Bridging Gaps in Judgement and Experience. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Harrison, John R. “Imagination and Aesthetics in Adam Smith’s Epistemology and Moral Philosophy.” Contributions to Political Economy 14 (1995): 91–112. Kant, Immanuel. “An Answer to the Questions ‘What Is Enlightenment?’.” In Kant: Political Writings, edited by Hans Siegbert Reiss, 54–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991a. Kant, Immanuel. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Edited by Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgement. Translated by Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987. Kant, Immanuel. “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose.” In Kant: Political Writings, edited by Hans Siegbert Reiss, 41–53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991b. Kant, Immanuel. “Introduction.” In Kant: Political Writings, edited by Hans Siegbert Reiss, 1–40. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991c. Kant, Immanuel. “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch.” In Kant: Political Writings, edited by Hans Siegbert Reiss, 93–130. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991d. Kuehn, Manfred. “Introduction.” In Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, edited by Robert B. Louden, vii–xxix. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Matherne, Samantha. “Kant’s Theory of the Imagination.” In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, edited by Amy Kind, 55–68. London: Routledge, 2016. O’Neill, Onara. “Vindicating Reason.” In The Cambridge Companion to Kant, edited by Paul Guyer, 280–308. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Ross, Ian Simpson. The Life of Adam Smith, second edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Sen, Amartya. The Idea of Justice, reprint edition. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2011. Smith, Adam. “Of the External Senses.” In Essays on Philosophical Subjects, edited by John C. Bryce and W. P. D. Wightman, 135–168. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982b. Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Edited by Roy H. Campbell and Andrew S. Skinner. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981. Smith, Adam. Lectures on Jurisprudence. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982a. Smith, Adam. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985.

Imagination, Reason, and Personhood 325 Smith, Adam. “The Principles Which Lead and Direct Philosophical Enquires; Illustrated by the History of Astronomy.” In Essays on Philosophical Subjects, edited by J. C. Bryce and W. P. D. Wightman, 31–105. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982c. Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Edited by D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2009. Wartenberg, Thomas E. “Reason and the Practice of Science.” In The Cambridge Companion to Kant, edited by Paul Guyer, 228–48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Watkins, Eric. “The Argumentative Structure of Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 36/4 (October 1998): 567–93. Weinstein, Jack Russell. Adam Smith’s Pluralism: Rationality, Education, and the Moral Sentiments. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.

18 Seeing a Flower in the Garden Common Sense, Transcendental Idealism Scott Stapleford

You know what it’s like to look at a flower in the garden. Suppose I’m in those perceptual circumstances right now. What justifies me in believing that a flower is there? The answer given by Johann Nicolaus Tetens (1736–1807) is this: I see it there. Sound a bit thin? I want to argue that this answer, combined with Tetens’s acknowledgment of the skeptical threat as real and pressing, has at least one thing going for it: in a couple of key respects, it marks a halfway point between the common-sense perspective of Reid and the “critical” response of Kant. Getting clear on where Tetens sits with respect to Reid and Kant on the issue of justification might prove instructive, particularly when it comes to understanding their divergent reactions to skepticism. So I hope to make it clear. In order to display the contrast that interests me here, I’ll need to paint a fairly broad picture, just assuming that Kant’s Refutation of Idealism and Reid’s appeals to common sense are familiar to the reader. I believe the point I want to make is original; perhaps that will compensate for the lack of scholarly detail. I jump right into preliminaries to give some context for my thesis.

I. Preliminaries The argument I’ll present allows for some sloppiness regarding certain distinctions: between beliefs, propositions, and judgments; between knowledge, justification, and reasonable assertability (etc.); and between general propositions, such as “There are external objects,” and instances, such as “There is a flower” or “There is a tree.” Those distinctions won’t matter here. If someone wants to object that Kant, for instance, talks about judgments rather than beliefs, it’s no trouble for me: reformulate everything I say about beliefs in terms of judgments. Nothing rides on the terminology. I do want to insist on a distinction that has come to be associated with William Alston, however (though I’m betting that Alston himself hit on the distinction through his study of Reid).1 We need an example to get things rolling: let “P” stand for the perceptual belief (or proposition) “There is a flower before me.” The focus of this

Seeing a Flower in the Garden 327 chapter is the distinction between perceptual beliefs (or propositions) of the following two forms: (1) P. (2) I am justified in believing that P. Call perceptual beliefs of the first form simple perceptual beliefs and perceptual beliefs of the second form higher-level perceptual beliefs. I am going to argue that, in the right perceptual circumstances, simple perceptual beliefs and higher-level perceptual beliefs are both justified for Reid without being based on any reason or argument (Section II); that beliefs of the first, but not the second, type are justified for Tetens without reason or argument (Section III); and that neither are justified without reason or argument according to Kant (Section IV). I’ll raise an objection at the end of each section and respond. Then I’ll wrap things up (Section V). My reading thus places Reid, Tetens, and Kant at different points along the internalist—externalist spectrum. A common way of drawing the distinction between internalist and externalist theories of knowledge and justification is in terms of cognitive access. Internalists require that all of S’s justifiers be cognitively accessible to S. Externalists allow that some of S’s justifiers may be cognitively inaccessible to S. Strong forms of internalism require that we have access to reasons conferring justification on our justifiers. In other words, strong forms of internalism say that, in order to be justified in believing that P on the basis of evidence E, I must justifiably believe that I am justified in believing P on the basis of E:2 I must be able to produce arguments—or to state reasons— resembling “I am justified in believing that P because x, y, z,” where x, y, and z constitute evidence for P. Externalists move away from this requirement. Strong externalists place no access requirements on justification. They typically allow that I can be justified in believing that P without evidence and without justifiably believing that I am justified in believing that P. Given my claims about (1) and (2) earlier, this makes Reid a moderate externalist, Kant a strong internalist and Tetens an externalist with internalist leanings—call him a “weak externalist.” That’s my thesis. The assumption is that classifying the views this way will give us a new angle on the great chasm separating Reid from Kant, and a sense for at least one of the ways in which Tetens forms a bridge.3

II. Reid: Moderate Externalism That simple perceptual beliefs such as (1) can be immediately justified for Reid is plain as day. It is a principle of common sense that those things which I perceive distinctly in my immediate environment do really exist and are, more or less, what I take them to be. There is no call for reason or argument.

328 Scott Stapleford My nature is such that in the appropriate perceptual circumstances I will form the belief that such-and-such an object exists outside me: When I perceive a tree before me, my faculty of seeing gives me not only a notion or simple apprehension of the tree, but a belief of its existence, and of its figure, distance, and magnitude; and this judgment or belief is not got by comparing ideas, it is included in the very nature of the perception. (IHM VII, Conclusion: 215)4 The “constitution” of my nature leads me to believe that a tree exists “without being able to give a reason” for it (IHM II.vi: 33). When I perceive a tree, or flower, before me, “there is no comparing of ideas, no perception of agreements or disagreements, [needed] to produce this belief” (IHM II.vii: 38). It arises spontaneously and without inference: Let a man press his hand against the table: he feels it hard. But what is the meaning of this? The meaning undoubtedly is, that he hath a certain feeling of touch, from which he concludes, without any reasoning, or comparing ideas, that there is something external really existing, whose parts stick so firmly together, that they cannot be displaced without considerable force. (IHM V.v: 64) Seeing a table and feeling its hardness inform me that a table is there. The seeing and the feeling are my justifiers.5 It’s common sense plain and simple: But philosophers, pitying the credulity of the vulgar, resolve to have no faith but what is founded upon reason. They apply to philosophy to furnish them with reasons for the belief of those things which all mankind have believed, without being able to give any reason for it . . . let my soul dwell with common sense. (IHM I.iii: 18) The “faith” that Reid has in mind here is nothing other than the justified tendency to rely on principles of common sense. Simple perceptual beliefs like “There is a flower before me” are, in the modern phrase, properly basic: Their justification includes no other beliefs.6 One of the mistakes Reid is most concerned to correct is the Cartesian idea that “the existence of body, or of any of its qualities, is not to be taken as a first principle; and that we ought to admit nothing concerning it, but what, by just reasoning, can be deduced from our sensations” (IHM VII, Conclusion: 209). On the contrary, we may “admit the existence of what we see and feel as a first principle” (IHM VII, Conclusion: 210). The immediate testimony of our senses is all the evidence we need.7

Seeing a Flower in the Garden 329 But what about higher-level perceptual beliefs—propositions of the form “I am justified in believing that P (on the basis of sensory evidence E)?” I may have been justified in believing that a flower is there on the basis of E until a skeptic bobbed up and tried to undercut8 my evidence with her skeptical alternatives: maybe my idea of the flower was induced artificially by a neurologist or a naughty demon. How do I know that there really is a flower behind my idea of the flower? It might be tempting to think that Reid is engaged in the same sort of anti-skeptical reasoning as his celebrated contemporaries and that propositions of the form (2) are therefore not justified without reason or argumentation. He certainly seems to be arguing against the skeptic and giving us reasons for thinking that perceptual evidence is good. But I don’t think that’s what he’s doing. What makes Reid unique among early modern philosophers—what makes him seem so relevant and up-to-date—is the thought that higher-level perceptual beliefs are no less immediately justified than simple perceptual beliefs. There are clear signs of this view in the Inquiry. The skeptic wants to convince us that our simple perceptual beliefs are not supported by our evidence. She wants to convince us that even under seemingly optimal conditions for sensory perception we have no good reason to think that we are justified, say, in believing that a flower is there. We have no good reason to accept proposition (2), in other words. Reid disagrees: Let scholastic sophisters intangle themselves in their own cobwebs; I am resolved to take my own existence, and the existence of other things, upon trust; and to believe that snow is cold, and honey sweet, whatever they may say to the contrary. He must be either a fool, or want to make a fool of me, that would reason me out of my reason and senses. I confess I know not what a sceptic can answer to this, nor by what good argument he can plead even for a hearing . . . (IHM I.viii: 24) We can trust the evidence we have, Reid seems to be saying, for our own existence and the existence of other things, and no skeptic can convince us otherwise. The evidence of reason and the senses may be relied upon. That’s a higher-order claim about the epistemic status of propositions like (1) and the quality of evidence behind them. I have no reason to question my evidence for (1), so I have no reason to question (2). For Reid, this is enough to justify the higher-order perceptual belief that I am justified in believing that a flower is there on the basis of my perception. It’s enough to justify (2). That Reid is making claims about quality of evidence and the reasonableness of taking ourselves to be justified on the basis of our evidence is suggested by the following passage as well: The evidence of sense, the evidence of memory, and the evidence of the necessary relations of things, are all distinct and original kinds of

330 Scott Stapleford evidence, equally grounded on our constitution: none of them depends upon, or can be resolved into another. To reason against any of these kinds of evidence, is absurd; nay, to reason for them, is absurd. They are first principles; and such fall not within the province of Reason, but of Common Sense. (IHM II.v: 32—emphasis added) Reid isn’t just claiming that it’s absurd to argue that a flower is before me when I find myself in the appropriate perceptual circumstances. It is also absurd to argue on behalf of the evidence of sense. It is a first principle that my evidence is good. I am justified in taking myself to be justified in believing (1). Once again, therefore, I am justified in believing (2). So long as there are no grounds for doubting the evidence of sense, Reid thinks we are justified in taking such evidence to be reliable without giving or having a reason or argument. And, significantly, there are no grounds for doubt, since the skeptical system that tries to undercut the evidence “leans its whole weight upon” the way of ideas (Reid’s term for representationalism), the hypothesis that “nothing is perceived but what is in the mind which perceives it” (IHM Dedication: 4). But that hypothesis is scandalous and false (IHM II.iii: 28, V.vii: 70–71). Any philosophy giving no “credit . . . to our senses” is “justly ridiculous” (IHM I.v: 21). It would be a mistake to take it seriously or bother with trying to refute it. That the senses deserve “credit” is properly basic. Reid’s commitment to a moderate form of externalism is evidenced unmistakably in the Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785). Beyond reaffirming his view that first principles are self-evident truths the denials of which are absurd and worthy of ridicule (EIP VI.iv: 259), Reid formulates two first principles—numbers 5 and 7 in his list—of which (1) and (2) are clearly instances. He also adds that it is “highly unreasonable” to suppose that we are mistaken in trusting our faculties when there is no known “cause of error” (EIP VI.iv: 264). Were a cause of error identified, Reid acknowledges, “it ought to have its due weight.” But in the absence of any reason to distrust our faculties, it is reasonable to trust them. The default is to accept as true what appears to be true. The first principle of which (1) is an instance is this (call it “(SP)” for “sensory perception”): (SP): That those things do really exist which we distinctly perceive by our senses, and are what we perceive them to be. (EIP VI.v: 272) Reid’s “defense” of this principle consists, once more, in insisting that the arguments produced by philosophers against it are based on a falsehood, viz., representationalism. The skeptical philosopher thinks I need a reason for believing that a material world exists, since all I perceive are my own

Seeing a Flower in the Garden 331 ideas. For the same reason, she thinks I need a reason for believing (1)— that there is a flower in front of me. But she does not require me to state or possess a reason for believing that I perceive an idea. That is something immediately apparent, according to the skeptic. Reid turns this around: the skeptic’s attempt to undermine my evidence for P fails, since she is operating on a faulty theory of perception. I would need some good reason to think that what I perceive is an idea rather than an external object, and no good reason has been offered. If we remove the representation as mediating entity between me and the external object, then I have the very same reason for believing that there is a flower as the skeptic thinks she has for believing that there is an idea of a flower: I perceive it (EIP VI.v: 273). The only evidence I need for (1) is that I see a flower and have no reason to distrust my senses. (SP) is just a generalization from claims like (1). Additional support for (1) or (SP) would be required only if I had reason to doubt that things are pretty much the way I perceive them to be. But I don’t, so the burden of proof is on the skeptic. The first principle of which (2) is an instance is this (call it “(NF)” for “natural faculties”): (NF): That the natural faculties, by which we distinguish truth from error, are not fallacious. (EIP VI.v: 275)9 That the natural faculties Reid has in mind include sensory perception—not just reasoning and judgment, as de Bary maintains—is clear from the examples of such faculties that Reid lists in this very section: the senses, reason, memory and consciousness.10 If the natural faculties are not fallacious, then I am justified in believing, for instance, that sensory perception of a flower provides adequate justification for believing that there is a flower. In other words, assuming that the faculties are reliable, I am justified in believing (2)—that ‘I am justified in believing that P’—whenever I find myself situated appropriately. Do I need any reason for believing that the faculties are reliable, or non-fallacious, as confirmation of my natural inclination to trust them? One reason to doubt that Reid requires any argument on behalf of the faculties is that he recognizes the circularity involved in supplying one: “Every kind of reasoning for the veracity of our faculties, amounts to no more than taking their own testimony for their veracity.” This is fallacious, and “evidently a begging of the question” (EIP VI.v: 276). Maybe not: couldn’t one legitimately use reason to argue for the reliability of sensory perception? No deal, says Reid, since the privileging of one faculty above another is inconsistent: For, if our faculties be fallacious, why may they not deceive us in this reasoning [for the reliability of the faculties] as well as in others? And,

332 Scott Stapleford if they are not to be trusted in this instance without a voucher [when it comes to sensory perception, memory, etc.], why not in others [including this very reasoning]? (EIP VI.v: 276) Why trust the faculty of reasoning but not the faculty of sensory perception? We have no more reason to doubt the one than the other, according to Reid. If we are to rely on the testimony of our senses—as Reid thinks we should— then we do so without any reason. To provide a reason for trusting the senses is to privilege reason without reason. We may rely on all of our faculties equally until we have reason to suspect them (and none has been made out). Beyond this, a really solid reason for thinking that (2) requires no propositional justification for Reid is that the non-fallaciousness of the faculties is a first principle and first principles are by definition self-evident. As he puts it later: We cannot give a reason . . . why we trust any of our natural faculties. We say, it must be so, it cannot be otherwise. This expresses only a strong belief, which is indeed the voice of nature, and which therefore in vain we attempt to resist. But if, in spite of nature, we resolve to go deeper, and not to trust our faculties, without a reason to shew that they cannot be fallacious, I am afraid, that, seeking to become wise, and to be as gods, we shall become foolish . . . (EIP VI.vi: 289—emphasis added) To attempt to satisfy the skeptic by providing a reason for thinking that I can trust my senses when I see a flower is to become foolish. We should not engage with the skeptic even at this meta-level. And there’s no need for it anyway, since the trustworthiness of the senses is self-evident. Reid recognizes that people generally just accept the deliverances of the senses—and justifiably so—without ever reflecting on the epistemic credentials of their simple perceptual beliefs: We may here take notice of a property of the principle under consideration . . . that in most men it produces its effect without ever being attended to, or made an object of thought. No man ever thinks of this principle, unless when he considers the grounds of scepticism . . . When a man in the common course of life gives credit to the testimony of his senses . . . he does not put the question to himself, whether these faculties may deceive him . . . (EIP VI.v: 277) That there is a flower before me, that there is a stone or a tree—we take such things as given. That I may “trust [my] senses in particular instances” (EIP VI.v: 277), that I am justified in believing that there is a flower in the

Seeing a Flower in the Garden 333 garden—a second-order claim about the justificatory status of my first-order belief—never even occurs to most people. If the skeptic causes us to reflect on this proposition, Reid holds that we are justified in accepting it without reason as well, since it is an instance of a self-evident first principle. The skeptic provokes a shift in perspective, but since her arguments are impotent, one may continue relying on the faculties without reason and, moreover, may reasonably regard oneself as being justified in doing so. Access to a justifier is unnecessary. An advantage of this interpretation is that it breaks the back of the dilemma de Bary poses for those who read (NF) as a metaprinciple ranging over first-order principles such as (SP): [E]ither the [first-order] first principles [such as (SP)] without the metaprinciple are sufficient foundations for knowledge or they are not. If they are sufficient, then principle 7 [what I’m calling “(NF)”] is superfluous; if they are not sufficient, then the addition of the metaprinciple opens the way to a regress.11 To simplify things, let’s apply de Bary’s point to particular instances of first principles: (1) is an instance of (SP) and (2) is an instance of (NF). What de Bary is getting at, then, is this: if (1) is justified for me in the right perceptual circumstances without drawing support from (2), then there is no work for (2) to do—it becomes superfluous—and Reid’s inclusion of its generalization, (NF), in his list of first principles is unaccountable. If (1) is not justified for me independently of (2), then first principles need support from above, and so the generalization of (2)—as a first principle—arguably needs support from a meta-metaprinciple conferring justification on it (and the meta-metaprinciple will need support from a meta-meta-metaprinciple, and so on upwards). If my reading is correct, however, then (NF) is not a metaprinciple conferring justification on first-order principles such as (SP). It is rather a higher-order principle articulating a view about the justificatory status of lower-order principles. It doesn’t send any justification downstairs. Its inclusion in the list of first principles is simply an indication of its justificatory status: like the first-order principles themselves, claims about the justificatory status of first-order principles are self-evident. I am justified in believing that P (an instance of (SP)) on the basis of the relevant sensory perceptions, and I am justified in believing that I am justified in believing that P (an instance of (NF)) on the basis of the relevant sensory perceptions, both without reason. The claims are independent: the fact that “P” is justified for me does not imply that “I am justified in believing that P” is justified for me. The same holds for generalizations on these. (NF) is not superfluous, therefore, since it applies to propositions of a different order than the propositions covered by (SP). The absence of defeaters is all the justification I need for principles, or instances, of either form.

334 Scott Stapleford A possible worry for this interpretation is that Reid talks an awful lot about skepticism. I have been suggesting that the justifiers for (NF) and its instances do not include any other beliefs. But then what are we to make of Reid’s many comments on skepticism and the way of ideas? Do they not, taken together or individually, constitute an argument against skepticism? If so, then I’ve got a problem: since arguing against the external world skeptic is equivalent to arguing for (NF) and its instances, my contention that higher-order perceptual beliefs are justified without reason or argument— that (NF) and (2) are properly basic—must be mistaken. If you’re convinced by this objection, I’d say you’ve misunderstood Reid. The whole tenor of his discussion is mocking and dismissive: the skeptic’s view is ridiculous and absurd—a kind of “metaphysical lunacy” (IHM VII, Conclusion: 216), warranting only ridicule. It is “like a hobby-horse, which a man in bad health may ride in his closet, without hurting his reputation.” Let him take it abroad, however, and “his heir would immediately call a jury, and seize his estate” (IHM: II.vi: 36). Rather than trying to reason with the skeptic, we should give him a ribbing. Refutation by argument is not even a question. The scraps of argument we do find in Reid have a different purpose. I take them in the following spirit: Reid is not arguing against the skeptic. He’s arguing that it’s a mistake to argue against the skeptic. Coming out against skepticism would be necessary only if the skeptic had managed to undercut our sensory evidence. But she hasn’t, since everything she says proceeds upon the false supposition of representationalism. The skeptical defeater just doesn’t exist. It’s a fiction of philosophers. Far from arguing against the skeptic, therefore, Reid is criticizing philosophers who waste their time arguing against the skeptic.

III. Tetens: Weak Externalism My comments on Tetens will be brief, since I’ve covered this ground before and all I want here is a contrast.12 I’ll just explain why I classify Tetens as a weak externalist and push my earlier work for the evidence. There are two points to make. First, I claim that simple perceptual beliefs are properly basic for Tetens. The clearest indication of this is found in Tetens’s account of our judgments concerning the “subjective” and “objective”—he means “internal” and “external”—existence of things. The mind divides the sensory field into two great spheres: the inner and the outer. When the general classification is once established, it [the mind] judges in particular cases [that] the sensed thing is either in itself, or in its body, in this or that part of it, or outside of itself. According to which general laws of thought is it determined in these judgements? (Tetens 1979/1777, 379)13

Seeing a Flower in the Garden 335 Incoming sensory elements are automatically distributed to suitable locations in the sensory field, after which the ‘power of thinking’ kicks in and makes spontaneous judgments about the inner and outer existence of various objects. Such judgments are guided pre-reflectively by the location of sensations—or clusters of sensations—in one sphere or the other. It is a ‘rule’ of the mind that we judge objects and their properties to exist in precisely that location where we perceive them: This rule is as follows: “We posit every sensation in that thing, in the simultaneous sensation of which it is contained like a part in a whole.” In short, “every sensation is posited there where we sense it. For it is sensed there and in that thing, where and in the sensation of which it is itself comprehended.” (Tetens 1979/1777, 415–16) I judge (and so believe) that a flower exists in the garden outside me just because I see it there.14 Inference does not come into it at all, and no other propositions are included in the grounds of my belief that P. I posit this characteristic cluster of “flowery” colors and shapes out there in the garden where I see them. And that’s all the justification I need, according to Tetens.15 As for my second point, concerning beliefs such as (2), it is abundantly clear that Tetens regards them as undercut by skeptical defeaters and thus as standing in need of propositional justification. Indeed, his chief contention with Reid was that he didn’t take the skeptical challenge seriously enough. Reid’s answer is “correct” but “unphilosophical” (Tetens 1979/1777, 393). Reid is correct that “judgements about the objective reality of things” are “instinct-like effects of the understanding, of which no further ground can be given” (Tetens 1979/1777, 382). He’s right that they are properly basic. But he disappoints in not proving it. Tetens offers an elaborate argument to the effect that, despite the truth of representationalism—which he endorses warmly16—we can reasonably take ourselves to be justified in believing in external objects on the basis of sensory perception. It’s a sophisticated line of reasoning substantiating higher-order perceptual beliefs such as (2), which prefigures—and evidently influenced—Kant’s more famous refutation.17 The need for explicit anti-skeptical reasoning in defense of higher-order perceptual beliefs explains my insistence that Tetens is a weak, rather than a moderate, externalist.18 I cannot trust that my sensory evidence is good without leaning on an argument. The belief that (2) is non-basic. I expect a little pushback on this point: isn’t Reid doing the very same thing? Doesn’t his rejection of representationalism constitute a justifying reason for thinking that I am justified in believing that P? Why all the discussion if none is necessary? There might be something in this worry, but I’m not sure that it reflects the best understanding of Reid. It’s one thing to argue against the skeptic. Tetens goes in for that. It’s another to explain why engaging with the skeptic is pointless. Now you’re getting Reid. I’ll try

336 Scott Stapleford to cough up an analogy to illustrate the difference I see between Tetens and Reid on the question of what is required for justified belief in (2). Suppose I come home and hear the floor creaking upstairs. On the basis of this perception—and certain background assumptions—I come to believe that my girlfriend is home. Then I see her note: “I bought a cat.” This undercuts my evidence, since it could have been the cat, rather than her, who made the floor creak. The note corresponds to the skeptical challenge posed by the way of ideas: it undercuts the evidence I had for “My girlfriend is home,” just as the representationalist hypothesis undercuts the evidence I had—or thought I had—for “There is a flower.” A parallel to Tetens’s response to the skeptic would be something like me realizing, or being told, that a cat isn’t heavy enough to make the floor creak upstairs. This stabilizes the evidence I have for, “My girlfriend is home.” It defeats the defeater by showing that it has no power to undercut my sensory evidence. The evidence is still good in spite of the undercutter. Things are a shade or two different for Reid: a parallel to his response would be something like my discovering a second note reading, “Just kidding. I didn’t buy a cat.” This doesn’t neutralize the defeater so much as show that there was no defeater to start with. It informs me that my evidence was never under threat. Similarly, the ‘man of common sense’ needs no defeater of the skeptical defeater, since he never believed the skeptic anyway. He never accepted the skeptic’s claim that what he directly perceives is an idea of a flower rather than a flower. Only the philosopher is fool enough to embrace the way of ideas. So the common-sense person— Reid’s sole concern—is justified in believing (2) without appeal to any anti-skeptical argument. We can accept first principles (and their instances) as true so long as there is no reason to doubt them.19 The skeptic thought she was giving us such a reason, but the defeater she presented was a dummy.20

IV. Kant: Strong Internalism My argument that Kant is an internalist on both counts is simple. It’s based more on general considerations about what Kant is doing than on heavy textual analysis. The case is easier to make with respect to proposition (2) than it is with respect to proposition (1), so we’ll start there. Ask yourself how Kantian it sounds to say that we can be justified in believing that our sensations constitute good evidence for the existence of external objects—and thus that a person can be justified in believing (2)—without reason or argument. It sounds distinctly un-Kantian to me. (2)  is a higher-order claim about the epistemic standing of a lower-order claim. It’s a level up from the level of objects. Questions at this level are “transcendental”—considering not objects, but the possibility of knowing objects (see CPR A11–12/B25).21 Transcendental propositions are never justified without argument. As scientific claims about knowledge, they require “strict proof from sure principles a priori” (CPR Bxxxv). The external world skeptic is a “benefactor of human reason” insofar as she “challenges the

Seeing a Flower in the Garden 337 ground of our assertion and denounces as insufficiently justified our conviction of the existence of matter, which we thought to base on immediate perception” (CPR A377). A head-on response is needed: [I]t still remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the existence of things outside us . . . must be accepted merely on faith, and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof. (CPR Bxl, note) I need propositional evidence, not faith, that sensations indicate the presence of external objects. Kant inserts a formal refutation of idealism into the second edition of the first Critique in order to satisfy this very demand. My justifiers for (2) thus include a strict philosophical proof that I “have experience, and not merely imagination of outer things” (CPR B275). There can be little doubt of Kant’s internalist attitude regarding (2). It’s not as obvious that (1) is non-basic for Kant. Perception of a flower out there in the garden, you might suppose, is my total body of evidence. I can be justified in believing that a flower is there without appeal to any other beliefs or arguments, according to Kant, just because I see it. Not so fast. I think this reading is mistaken. Here is my argument: prior to the Copernican revolution—prior to our acceptance of it—we believe that the objects we see are really out there, that they are transcendentally external, ontologically distinct things.22 But they’re not. They are outer appearances, which are only empirically, or phenomenologically, distinct.23 And we are not justified in believing that ontologically distinct sensible objects exist. A fortiori, we are not justified in believing this without reason or argument. Skeptical worries “compel us to view the outer objects . . . not as things in themselves, but only as representations, of which, as of every other representation, we can become immediately conscious” (CPR A378). I am not justified in my simple perceptual beliefs until I’ve made this shift in perspective. My justification for (1) thus depends in part on the belief that I am viewing a mere appearance. There’s no way that (1) is basic. Someone’s going to throw me a curveball: the whole point of the Refutation, it will be said, is that we have immediate experience of external objects, that “consciousness of my existence is at the same time an immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside me” (CPR B276). Transcendental idealism “removes all difficulty in the way of accepting the existence of matter on the unaided testimony of our mere self-consciousness” (CPR A370). Game over? Well, no. As plausible as this objection sounds, it overlooks a key feature of Kant’s position—the feature I’ve just been discussing. Not even simple perceptual beliefs are justified by sensation alone, since simple perceptual beliefs contain a fundamental error: people naturally take themselves to be perceiving numerically distinct objects. But the evidence of

338 Scott Stapleford sense does not support belief in the existence of numerically distinct objects. My justification for (1) depends on an explicit recognition that the objects of perception are appearances only, not things-in-themselves. This is no (merely enabling) background assumption; it’s an essential, justifying reason.24 Let’s kick this idea around. Suppose I’m watching the sun go down. What justifies me in believing that the earth (the part of it I’m on) is turning away from the sun? Seeing the sun cross the horizon is certainly part of it. But I must also believe that the sun is at rest (in our system anyway). The belief that the sun is a fixed point in the sky factors into my justification. Think about it: it looks like the sun is moving. So if I didn’t believe that the sun stands still, observing that motion above me would not justify my belief that the earth is rotating away: what I perceive could be motion in the sun. Similarly, I see sensible objects in my vicinity. They look like things-in-themselves. So if I didn’t both see them and regard them as appearances, my beliefs would not be justified: what I perceive could be an illusion. True, no inference is required if I regard sensible objects as appearances. I don’t need to formulate an argument every time I look at a flower in order to be justified in believing a flower is there. But I do need the accompanying belief that what I am seeing is just an appearance. For: If we treat outer objects as things in themselves, it is quite impossible to understand how we could arrive at a knowledge of their reality outside us. (CPR A378) But, Empirical [skeptical] idealism, and its mistaken questionings as to the objective reality of our outer perceptions, is already sufficiently refuted, when it has been shown that outer perception yields immediate proof of something actual in space. (CPR A376–77—emphasis added) The idea seems to be that simple perceptual beliefs are justified by virtue of the fact that we regard objects as mere appearances. That’s the whole nub of the thing. Of course, I do need an argument to show that I am justified in treating sensible objects as appearances. That argument justifies my belief in (2). I need a transcendental proof that the objects I perceive are in fact appearances. For that we must appeal to transcendental principles. So neither (1) nor (2) is justified without reason. At least one other belief is involved in the justification of (1), and an elaborate series of arguments supply the justification for (2). Hang this right beside Tetens: there is no error of orientation to correct, in his view. People naturally take their perceptions to indicate the presence

Seeing a Flower in the Garden 339 of ontologically distinct objects. Tetens offers an argument to show that they are right to do so—despite the truth of representationalism. It is an anti-skeptical argument supporting (2), not (1). Even that much is unnecessary for Reid, since representationalism is false: there is no need to argue in favor of (2), according to Reid, and we need no reason to hold it. As a principle of common sense, it’s basic.25

V. Conclusion Tetens’s presentation is a flop: the writing is awful; the arguments are flimsy. He spins his wheels and never gets going. But the middle road I think he wants to take is the right one. Reid requires less for justification and Kant requires more. Extremes are often untenable. That’s what we’re finding here. If you’ll just consider my father for a minute, I think you’ll see that I’m right. Untouched by philosophy, this was a man of common sense: reflection was out of the question. And yet, glancing at the garden and spotting a flower, was he not justified in believing that a flower was there? Of course he was. Had a skeptic appeared and challenged the grounds of his belief—in fact, one did—would his incessant, “I see it there!,” have been enough? Don’t kid yourself: seeing a flower in the garden is not, all on its own, a justification for believing that the grounds of one’s belief are good. At the very least, some sort of higher-order reflection—presumably involving the identification of reasons for thinking that one’s grounds are good—is needed. Alston is supreme on this.26 Reid and Kant are abler philosophers overall than Tetens. But Tetens stumbled on the better view with this weaker strain of externalism. Common sense? Transcendental idealism? Both wrong. The contrast here should help you see it.

Notes 1. See William Alston, “Thomas Reid on Epistemic Principles,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 2/4 (1985): 435–52; William Alston, “Levels Confusions in Epistemology,” in Epistemic Justification: Essays in the Theory of Knowledge, ed. William Alston (Syracuse: Cornell University Press, 1989), 153–71. 2. To avoid clutter, I suppress the phrase ‘on the basis of E’ in my formulation of (2)  earlier and throughout. It should always be assumed. See Keith Korcz, “Recent Work on the Basing Relation,” American Philosophical Quarterly 34/2 (1997): 171–91 on the basing relation. 3. For more on the bridging question, see Manfred Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987), especially Chapter 7. Also relevant are Scott Stapleford, “Reid, Tetens and Kant on the External World,” Idealistic Studies 37/2 (2007): 87–104; Scott Stapleford, “A Refutation of Idealism from 1777,” Idealistic Studies 40/1–2 (2010): 139–46; and Scott Stapleford, “Tetens’ Refutation of Idealism and Properly Basic Belief,” in Johann Nikolaus Tetens (1736–1807): Philosophie in der Tradition des Europäischen Empirismus, ed. G. Stiening and U. Thiel (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 147–68.

340 Scott Stapleford 4. I will cite Reid’s Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense as IHM, followed by chapter, section and page number of the Penn State edition. I cite his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man as EIP, followed by essay, chapter and page number of the Hackett edition. 5. That’s why I call Reid a “moderate” rather than a “strong” externalist. Classic externalist reliabilists require only that a belief be produced by a cognitive process that is generally reliable in order to be justified. Alvin Goldman, “What Is Justified Belief?” in Justification and Knowledge, ed. George Pappas, 1–23 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1979) is the seminal paper. 6. For an influential account of perceptual beliefs as properly basic, see Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), especially 93–8 and 183–5. 7. An excellent source on Reid and externalism is James Van Cleve, Problems from Reid (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 337–43. I don’t know whether Van Cleve would accept the views I express here, but I certainly accept this as an interpretation of Reid: “In order for someone to be justified in believing that there is a tree over there, she need only have a perception as of a tree being over there. Nothing else is necessary. In particular, it is not necessary that the subject know anything about the reliability of sense perception” (Van Cleve, Problems from Reid, 341). 8. See John Pollock, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1986), 37–9, for an account of undercutters. Roughly, an undercutter gives me a reason for no longer believing P on the basis of E. 9. It doesn’t matter for my purposes whether we talk about non-fallaciousness, reliability, reasonableness or justification. 10. Philip de Bary, Thomas Reid and Scepticism: His Reliabilist Response (New York: Routledge, 2002), 80. 11. de Bary, Thomas Reid and Sceptism, 77. 12. The comments stem from my 2014, which may be consulted for details. 13. Translations from Tetens are my own. 14. Tetens’s own flower in the garden example occurs on page 418. 15. I refer again to my 2014 for the bulk of the evidence. 16. Representationalism is the “fundamental principle of philosophy,” according to Tetens, Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwickelung, 2 Bde (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1979), 403. 17. I argue for the influence on Kant in my 2007. See also Manfred Kuehn, “Hume and Tetens,” Hume Studies 15/2 (1989): 366. 18. I could also live with “weak internalist.” I’m not sure which label is preferable. 19. “[T]o suppose a general deviation from truth among mankind in things self-evident, of which no cause can be assigned, is highly unreasonable” (EIP VI.iv: 264). 20. It might be worth observing that Reid is free to offer arguments in favour of first principles consistently with his denial that any are required. This is a point made nicely by Bary, Thomas Reid and Scepticism, 134, who suspects that Reid entertains certain indirect arguments for the truth of first principles. 21. As usual, “A” and “B” refer to the first and second editions of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, followed by page numbers. 22. An object is “transcendentally external” if it is really distinct from us, existing as a thing-in-itself (A 373). “Ontological distinctness” is Paul Guyer’s term for this. It implies numerical distinctness from the perceiving subject. See Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 280. 23. “Empirically external” is Kant’s term (A 373); “phenomenologically external” is Guyer’s (Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 280–1). I won’t try to explain what an appearance is. It’s enough to know that it is not ontologically distinct from the subject.

Seeing a Flower in the Garden 341 24. Something Van Cleve says about Crispin Wright applies to Kant: “He would deny Reid’s liberal assumption that certain experiences of perceiving  .  .  .  are all it takes to give one justified beliefs about the external world” (Van Cleve, Problems from Reid, 345). 25. Note that the absence of a reason to doubt a principle of common sense is not itself a reason to believe it. You don’t need to believe that representationalism is false; you just need to lack the belief that it’s true. 26. William Alston, “Levels Confusions in Epistemology,” in Epistemic Justification: Essays in the Theory of Knowledge, ed. William Alston (Syracuse: Cornell University Press, 1989), 158–9.

References Alston, William. “Levels Confusions in Epistemology.” In Epistemic Justification: Essays in the Theory of Knowledge, edited by William Alston, 153–71. Syracuse: Cornell University Press, 1989. Alston, William. “Thomas Reid on Epistemic Principles.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 2 (1985): 435–52. Bary, Philip de. Thomas Reid and Scepticism: His Reliabilist Response. New York: Routledge, 2002. Goldman, Alvin. “What Is Justified Belief?” In Justification and Knowledge, edited by George Pappas, 1–23. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1979. Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan, 1929. Korcz, Keith. “Recent Work on the Basing Relation.” American Philosophical Quarterly 34/2 (1997): 171–91. Kuehn, Manfred. “Hume and Tetens.” Hume Studies 15/2 (1989): 365–75. Kuehn, Manfred. Scottish Common Sense in Germany: 1768–1800. Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1987. Plantinga, Alvin. Warrant and Proper Function. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Pollock, John. Contemporary Theories of Knowledge. Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1986. Reid, Thomas. “Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man.” In Inquiry and Essays, edited by Ronald E. Beanblossom and Keith Lehrer, 127–295. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983. Reid, Thomas. An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. Edited by Derek Brookes. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2000. Stapleford, Scott. “Reid, Tetens and Kant on the External World.” Idealistic Studies 37/2 (2007): 87–104. Stapleford, Scott. “A Refutation of Idealism from 1777.” Idealistic Studies 40/1–2 (2010): 139–46. Stapleford, Scott. “Tetens’ Refutation of Idealism and Properly Basic Belief.” In Johann Nikolaus Tetens (1736–1807): Philosophie in der Tradition des Europäischen Empirismus, edited by Gideon Stiening and Udo Thiel, 147–68. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014. Tetens, Johann Nicolaus. Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwickelung, 2 Bde. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1979. Van Cleve, James. Problems from Reid. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

19 Kant’s Heuristic Methods Feeling and Common Sense in Orientation and Taste Brigitte Sassen

In this chapter, I explore the role feeling and common sense play in some parts of the critical philosophy. The motivation for this project springs from a surprising reference to feeling in Kant’s 1786 “orientation” essay.1 Feeling is there said to be essential for orientation (finding one’s way) in the sensible and supersensible realms.2 As is well known, feeling is also of central importance in a judgment of taste. The two contexts in which feeling emerges and the two types of feeling are distinct: the orientation essay is part of the theoretical philosophy whereas taste belongs to the aesthetics. The first case of feeling has to do with determining direction, the other is essential in finding beauty. In spite of these differences, however, I will here demonstrate that the cases of feeling are similar to the extent that both are cases in which feeling replaces the transcendental conditions of experience that afford knowledge according to the theoretical philosophy. In the process of setting out these alternative ways of making sense of our intuitive multiplicity, it will become clear that in both cases subjects feel themselves, although not quite in the same way. In one case (the one instrumental in identifying direction), subjects feel their embodiment, and in the other (the one involved in a judgment of taste) subjects feel their mental activity. To demonstrate that this is so, I will first discuss Kant’s “orientation” essay and then turn to the “Analytic of the Beautiful” in the Critique of Judgment.3 I will end my reflections with a discussion of the common sense that I claim facilitates the communication of both types of feeling. Admittedly, a comprehensive account of feeling in the critical philosophy should also consider feeling in ethics, but this is taken up by other chapters in this volume.

I. Orientation Kant’s “orientation” essay is generally regarded as his (perhaps reluctant) contribution to the “pantheism” controversy.4 This was a rather vehemently contested dispute between Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819), Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) and their respective supporters. It concerned the rationalist ability to know God (and to mount a proof for God’s existence) and was likely initiated when Jacobi reported that Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Kant’s Heuristic Methods 343 (1729–1781), a rationalist dramatist and philosopher, had admitted to Spinozist sympathies. Spinozism was then generally equated with pantheism, which was in turn linked to atheism, so the charge constituted an attack on reason. If the enlightenment belief in reason, such as Spinoza’s and Lessing’s, could and perhaps necessarily did endorse atheism, then a different stance needed to be adopted to facilitate faith. Mendelssohn, a rationalist philosopher who considered himself to be one of Lessing’s friends, was particularly troubled by this charge and mounted an argument for God’s existence centered on the notion of orientation. One might think that this is what finally brought Kant into the debate since his contribution also involved an appeal to the notion, though he took his account of orientation to be, as he put it, “more widely and more precisely determined” (OT 8:134) than Mendelssohn’s.5 Since Mendelssohn recounted a dream while Kant provided a philosophical argument, this is likely true. As noted, the chief aim of the “orientation” essay was to develop an argument for God’s existence. This was a difficult matter for Kant, since as he had argued in the Critique of Pure Reason, the supersensible (God, for example) cannot be known. To be legitimate, knowledge has to have intuitive as well as conceptual elements and the supersensible is not intuitive. To mount an argument for God within the context of the critical philosophy nonetheless, Kant had to develop a different approach, one that did not need to appeal to intuitions or the conditions of their possibility (space and time). Kant seems to have thought that orientation afforded such an approach. Orientation means finding one’s way and if it is to serve in an argument for God, this means finding one’s way in the supersensible realm or as he came to designate it, finding one’s way in thought. I am not here interested in the argument for God Kant developed or the chief concern that led him to articulate it. My concern, rather, focuses on the first two pages of this fifteen-page essay. Having introduced the issue under consideration in the essay, Kant presented an analogous case of orientation, presumably to make the matter of orientation in the supersensible realm more easily accessible. This analogous case is orientation in the sensible realm and this is my focus in this part of the chapter. Kant presented two cases of orientation in the sensible realm: geographical and mathematical orientation. They are, respectively, orientation in a region (geographical) and in space (mathematical). Both represent cases requiring what Kant came to identify as finding one’s way or orientation. These are required because the critical means of establishing order in the manifold of intuitions are insufficient here. In the critical philosophy, the sensible world (the world as it appears to the human knower) is generated through judgments governed by the transcendental conditions of knowledge. Space and time are the conditions of intuition specifying that sensory data are received and represented in certain orders (they must be represented as one after the other in time and as one beside the other in space). The categories are forms of thought that set out the myriad ways in which a spatiotemporal

344 Brigitte Sassen multiplicity is further ordered. They specify, for instance, that intuitions represent substance as something that persists though time, and causality as constituting a certain temporal order of events. The problem at hand is that neither on its own (or even in combination with the other) serves in orientation. They do not help us to “find our way.” Intuition may tell us where we are, but it does not tell us which direction to take to reach a desired location, especially if the “where” is not further internally differentiated. Nor is this a discursive matter. The universality of concepts does not allow for the specification of direction in particular cases. Even were we to have access to some sort of global positioning device, we would have to be able to relate general directions to our particular location and determine what we would have to do to implement general rules in the specific case under consideration. In treating the two cases of sensible orientation, he considered (orientation in a region and in space), Kant proposed the same cure for the problem: the feeling of right and left. Since the cases are similar, my remarks here shall be limited to the consideration of geographical orientation. Consider: Geographical orientation is required when one needs to find one’s way from one region of space (there are four of them in line with the four directions) into another, from ship to shore for instance, or from one area of forest to another. Suppose our sensory experience reveals that we are on a boat or ship in a body of water. Past experience/empirical concepts tells us that bodies of water have shores, even if they cannot actually be seen in a specific case. To determine direction, however—that is, to determine which direction to take to get from the body of water to shore, or alternatively, to determine direction in an old European city like Prague—something in addition to sight is required. Here Kant specified a dual requirement: a reference point and a feeling. A reference point is a permanent object with respect to which one could orient oneself. Suitable examples are a tall building of some sort such as the CN Tower, or and this is more appropriate to my water example, the sun during the day (and the polestar at night). The requirement that we also need feeling to effect orientation is curious, however, especially if we recall that the transcendental philosophy links knowledge to concepts and intuitions working in combination, but not to feeling. Feeling is essential, however, for the first requirement, the reference point, to function. We are to orient ourselves with respect to whatever is to function as a reference point in order to “find our way.” As Kant put matters, If I see the sun in the sky and know it is noon, then I am able to find south, west, north and east. For this purpose I require the feeling of a difference in my own subject, namely the right and left hand. (OT 8:134)6 Setting aside the question of how the position of the sun at noon allows us to determine the four directions,7 consider why the differentiation between the right and left sides is a matter of feeling. To understand why this must

Kant’s Heuristic Methods 345 be so, recall Kant’s 1768 discussion of incongruent counterparts and orientation in space, the “regions” essay.8 Incongruent counterparts are the right and left components of an otherwise identical pair. They are components that are and are not the same. Although the case of incongruents and finding one’s way in a region are subtly different, they are not unrelated. In both cases, there is a need to appeal to left/right differentiation, which is, as I noted, a matter of feeling. In the case of incongruents, I may be able to determine by intuition that the two components of a pair of such counterparts (for instance hands or gloves) are different, but determining difference is not sufficient to determine which component belongs where. To find which goes where (a glove on the left or right hand for example), I need to perform a process either by trial and error or in thought by imagination, which envisions what would happen if I were to place one of the components here or there. This is not a matter merely of intuition, but as I noted, a process either by trial and error or by imagination. The “orientation” essay is interesting in this context because Kant here reiterated an idea that he first introduced in the “regions” essay—namely, that the differentiation between right and left is, most basically, a matter of feeling. As he put it with regard to finding one’s way given a reference point, we require a “feeling of a difference in my own subject—namely, that of the right and left hand” (OT 8:134). In view of this sort of feeling we can presumably assign the incongruent counterparts their appropriate places with regard to ourselves. In this regard, Kant also made a telling remark regarding astronomy, claiming that if in matters of orientation the astronomer were to pay attention only to what he sees and not at the same time to what he feels, he would be unable to orient himself. But the feeling of the right and left hand, given naturally but honed through much practice, comes to his assistance; . . . (OT 8:135) When it comes to determining just what our sidedness has to contribute to astronomy, consider the differentiation between a constellation and its mirror image. It would be impossible to tell the difference here if we did not have the feeling of right and left. We have here one instance confirming Kant’s claim that the feeling or right and left is essential in astronomy. The reference to orientation in astronomy is particularly appropriate were someone to say that he or she could accomplish orientation by “reading the sky.” Kant’s answer would likely be that this would be possible only in virtue of the more basic ability to differentiate between right and left or differently put, having a sense of direction. It is noteworthy that this ability often goes ignored. Kant did not tell us much about why this is a feeling except to note that “these two sides [do not show] a notable difference in outer intuition”

346 Brigitte Sassen (OT 8:135). The differentiation between the right and the left is not conceptual, just as that between incongruent counterparts is not. It can also not be a matter of outer intuition. To be sure, we might think we recognize the difference between right and left in others by sight, but this can only be the case because we are sensitive to it on the basis of our acquaintance with it in our own bodies. Accordingly, it can only be a function of inner intuition, in other words, something we sense or feel in us. Kant claimed that our ability to differentiate between left and right is a natural given, and while improved through practice (why?), it is not learned or processed in another way. It is something we are able to do, an absolute given that cannot be further explained. In the literature on this essay, commentators may be found to point to embodiment, and this does confirm Kant’s 1768 claim that this ability emerges as a function of being a body: “Since the respective feeling of the right and left side is of such great necessity in the judgment of regions, nature has connected it to the mechanical constitution of the human body” (DS 2:380). By implication, in matters of orientation, one feels one’s body.9 Since the body is a universal in the sense that all human knowers have or are one, we can assume that Kant thought that this feeling is universal also. A feeling of sidedness is something everyone has and it can thus be universally presupposed. In view of recent observations in the field of psychology about the difficulties a significant portion of the (adult) population has with the differentiation between left and right, Kant might have been a bit cavalier about this supposedly naturally given ability to differentiate between right and left (albeit one improved by practice!).10 One wonders then whether Kant was merely confused and whether the ability to differentiate between our two sides is more complex than he seemed to have realized. Let’s suppose that we have the sense of different areas or regions as a result of our embodiment because that gives us an immediate awareness of our sidedness. Even if this is so, a question emerges: how can the sense of right and left be both immediate and improved with practice? The immediacy springs from the feeling which we have as a consequence of being bodies that can be bifurcated into two sides. Arguably, what can be improved with practice is not the mere sense of sidedness, but the designation of our sides as right and left, respectively. Identifying the sides of our body in this way is surely conventional. Even though the feeling may well be immediate and also universal, accordingly, the conceptual identification is something that has to be learned. Concepts, accordingly, are here more a hindrance than a help. It is noteworthy that the human manner of right/left differentiation is very much tied to the human embodiment. A different creature, say a starfish, does this differently.11 Many creatures have sensors to effect orientation, but starfish (which are not bilateral) are differently equipped. Starfish orientation is “chemosensory.”12 I introduce this only to highlight the uniquely human manner of orientation. The distinctive element of this discussion is

Kant’s Heuristic Methods 347 that the feeling that emerges as a consequence of embodiment has its own distinctive kind of necessity that might be on a par with the necessity of the transcendental conditions. The categories describe how thought operates so that, according to Kant at least, any thinking being necessarily thinks along the lines indicated there. A creature that is not discursive, in other words, does not think in conceptual terms (does not think?) and thus does not need the categories. Similarly, a creature that does not have the human type of body does not determine direction by way of a feeling of right and left. Since it emerges by way of the universal human body, this feeling carries a sense of necessity. Other sorts of feeling, such as the feeling of temperature, do not.13 Most feelings other than those that emerge from a physical structure such as a body that is intimately linked to a specific person are not universal. Still the question remains of how we become universally aware of such a feeling. This question takes us to the next section of the chapter where I discuss the feeling that emerges in connection with the judgment of taste (beauty). Here it will emerge that feeling is sensed, and this sense is common. This brief discussion has served to reveal something quite astounding. In addition to the transcendental conditions of experience Kant identified in the first Critique, there are also other means by which we might order an intuitive multiplicity. As emerges from his discussion of orientation in the sensible realm, an intuitive multiplicity might be ordered in view of the feeling of right and left (in other words, the feeling of our sidedness). That there may be non-transcendental means governing the ordering of the intuitive manifold is confirmed in connection with Kant’s discussion of beauty, the subject matter of the next section of this chapter.

II. Beauty In the course of determining direction, embodied subjects reveal something about themselves: their sidedness. This sidedness was always there, of course, a natural given according to Kant, but it remains hidden in its familiarity, unless, of course, we are mistaken in labeling something right or left. In the case of the judgment of taste, something is revealed about the subject as well. As I will show, the encounter with beauty motivates sociality (the judgment of taste is said to be universally communicable and to hinge on “common sense”). This is also taken for granted, so much so that we tend to think quite otherwise. Indeed, as emerges from the Antinomy of Taste, taste has a curious duality. The thesis asserts that since it is not determined by concepts, the judgment of taste is personal and subjective much like the merely pleasurable is. This entails that everyone does have their own taste (CPJ 5:338). The contrasting position of the Antithesis, of course, asserts the opposite position: judgments of taste do rest on concepts since “otherwise it would not even be possible to argue about them” (CPJ 5:338–9).14 Kant endorsed this duality. On the one hand, matters of beauty are subjective and individual. By implication, there cannot be anything right or wrong with

348 Brigitte Sassen how we individually experience beauty. Nor, on this thesis, does it have an obvious relation to how we connect with other people. On the other hand, Kant maintained that judgments of taste are universal and necessary in spite of their subjectivity. In effect, then, he both endorsed and disputed claims about the ostensive subjectivity of judgments of taste and related it further to the feeling of pleasure (or displeasure) associated with such judgments. It will now have to be determined how the subject’s feeling of pleasure (or displeasure) is connected with the ostensive beauty (or lack thereof) and with the judgment’s universality. In addition, it will have to be determined how the two types of feeling, the feeling of pleasure and the feeling of sidedness, differ (if they do). In the “Analytic of the Beautiful,”15 Kant set out the characteristics of the Judgment of Taste. At the outset, he described the central features of such judgments as follows: In order to decide whether something is beautiful or not, we do not relate the representation through understanding to the object for cognition, rather [we relate it] through the imagination (perhaps combined with the understanding) to the subject and its feeling of pleasure or displeasure. (CPJ 5:203) The parameters are set. Although judgments in the critical philosophy are thus treated as such,16 judgments of taste differ radically from those of cognition.17 The latter are fully immersed in the transcendental framework. Here a sensory multiplicity is received in space and time (forms of intuition) and further processed or unified by the (schematized) concepts or forms of thought (both empirical and pure). This ensures, in turn, that everyone receives sensations and thinks in largely the same ways. Cognitive judgments are universal and necessary given the transcendental structures (conditions of knowledge) in which they are immersed and which we all share as human knowers. This entails that all other things being equal, we do not have to repeat the judgments others have made. The intuitive and conceptual framework guarantees them. An empirical multiplicity represents a cat given the (schematized) category of substance and the empirical concept “cat,” so long, of course, as the multiplicity can be so processed. This is not the case for judgments of taste. Although sensations are presumably received in space and time, they are not processed in the same way the sensations in cognitive judgments are. Imagination and understanding are involved, but their tasks are not cognitive. Judgments of taste are not conceptual. Even though they attribute beauty, they are not governed by an either empirical or pure concept of beauty.18 By implication, imagination does not schematize,19 and the unifying activity of understanding, if it does unify, is not conceptual. What they, respectively, do instead is not initially clear. All Kant says in this regard is that they are engaged in play. These basic

Kant’s Heuristic Methods 349 features have a number of consequences: Not being conceptual, judgments of taste are not about objects. They do not identify an intuitive manifold as representing a certain kind of thing. Nor do they identify anything as having the property “beauty.” Moreover, they are particular. We do not say that all things of a certain kind, say roses, are beautiful, but only that this particular multiplicity is.20 Similarly, that this multiplicity represents a rose is not what renders it beautiful. Rather than treat the item under consideration in a cognitive fashion, in the encounter with an object or event thereby deemed beautiful the subject has an experience (Erlebnis)21 which typically involves the feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Given these basic differences, one might think that judgments of taste should not be treated in the context of the critical philosophy. Yet Kant did so. He claimed that the encounter with something deemed beautiful involves a judgment, although a reflective, not a determinate one, and that such judgments are universal in the sense that they hold for everyone making such a judgment22 and necessary in the sense that they have an admittedly merely exemplary necessity. The universality and necessity of such judgments represent two particularities of judgments of taste Kant identified in connection with the deduction (CPJ 5:281–5). Both bring to light the seeming impossibility of such judgments (as characterized by Kant) in relation to the critical philosophy as a whole. The combination of individuality/subjectivity with universality/ necessity Kant attributed to judgments of taste can simply not be squared with the details of the critical philosophy. Here universality/necessity is possible only in virtue of transcendental conditions not applicable to taste (beauty is not a category as substance and causality are). By implication, an alternative account of judgment has to be provided to establish that those of taste can in fact be legitimately both individually subjective and universal/ necessary. Needless to say, Kant struggled with this task, and this struggle is evident in the “Analytic of the Beautiful.” Consider universality. In the theoretical philosophy, judgments are universal because they are conceptual and cover a number of instances. But taste is particular, accounting for only one instance of beauty at a time. Moreover, since it is not conceptual, its universality cannot be objective. Instead, it is a subjective universality, entailing the improbable claim that all those making a judgment of taste with respect to some one thing or event must find beauty. What governs such universality? In the second moment of the “Analytic of the Beautiful” (quantity), Kant attributed the judgment’s universality, which he here designated as a universal communicability (CPJ 5:216), to the outcome of the first moment—namely, that the judgment is disinterested (CPJ 5:211).23 Disinterest does not mean lack of interest; rather it means lack of personal or private interest. One does not find something beautiful because it is useful or satisfies some need or desire. Presumably, since private interests are excluded from these judgments, they are in principle common or speak with a “universal voice” (CPJ 5:216), as he put it and this in spite of the fact that they are not governed by the universal conditions.

350 Brigitte Sassen But this will not do. To be sure, disinterest may well be a necessary requirement for the posited universality, but that everyone judge without determination by personal preferences or prejudices is a requirement for any claim positing universality. The difference between disinterest in taste and that in other judgments legitimately claiming universality is that in the latter case, universality is generated by the laws of thought not applicable in judgments of taste (because these are aesthetic rather than logical). The problem is that merely claiming that the judgment’s universality is a function of their disinterest does not tell us how disinterest and thus universality can actually be possible in the case of taste. Differently put, linking universality to the presumed disinterest of a judgment of taste does not tell us just what renders such judgments disinterested and hence universal in the first place. If such judgments are universal in spite of the absence of conceptual determination, there has to be something else making them so. An answer to the question of what that something else might be may might be found in §9, which Kant designated as providing the “key to the critique of taste” (CPJ 5:216). Initially, however, this supposed key disappoints. The question to be answered here is “whether in a judgment of taste the feeling of pleasure precedes the judgment or the judgment precedes the pleasure” (CPJ 5:216). It is hard to see the answer to this question as the “key” to the critique of taste. Surely, the feeling of pleasure cannot precede the judgment, as this would make the judgment equivalent to that of the merely pleasurable, which cannot be anything other than subjective. Kant confirmed this to be the case in the second paragraph of §9 (CPJ 5:216–7).24 Given that this is hardly a controversial point, one wonders why Kant thought this was the “key to the critique of taste.” Differently put, if the answer to this question is not the desired key, what is? Each of the distinct deliberations in this section (the universal communicability in the third and fifth paragraphs of this section, and the harmonious play of the cognitive capacities in the fourth and sixth) leads to the same concept: the state of mind [Gemüthszustand] emerging from the free play. This might well be where the desired key lies. Consider the following: a judgment of taste involves the free play of the cognitive capacities. As indicated, this play is free because it is not governed by concepts and because the intuitive manifold does not prescribe order. Since it is free in this sense, no one can be expected to play quite like the next person might play, even if we are dealing with the same intuitive multiplicity. Nonetheless, the free play presumably generates a state of mind [Gemüthszustand]. This is a feeling of pleasure in case the item under consideration is found beautiful and displeasure if, perhaps contrary to initial expectations, it is not found to be so.25 When Kant says that the judgment of taste is universally communicable, he really says that what is universally communicable here is the “state of mind found in the relation of the cognitive capacities to one another insofar as they relate a given representation to cognition in general” (CPJ 5:217). Of course, this is not without problems. For reasons that should be clear given

Kant’s Heuristic Methods 351 everything that has been said so far, anything private (subjective) cannot be expected of others and therefore cannot be universally communicated. As merely subjective, it is not governed by universal concepts. Kant confirmed this point when he said, “The only thing that is universally communicable is cognition and representation insofar as it belongs to cognition” (CPJ 5:217). Since the judgment of taste is neither, we have to wonder what Kant thought makes it universally communicable. Let me make a suggestion here. According to the account given so far, the judgment of taste involves the free play of the cognitive capacities, itself a powerful and private experience (Erlebnis) that everyone making a judgment of taste is said to have (in their own way). The individual play is not the same across the board, but what is the same is that the object or event thereby deemed beautiful must be engaged in play rather than in the pursuit of knowledge. Personal and private play is a requirement for beauty; it is the only way in which beauty can be experienced (erlebt). Since it is not conceptual, there are no criteria of beauty and any attempt to identify such criteria, perhaps on the basis of items that have customarily been found beautiful, would be limiting and, even worse, would prevent the very mental operation (play) required for finding (or constituting) things or events beautiful. At the same time, the judgment of taste is said to be universally communicable, although without concepts. Rather than facilitated by concepts, the universal communicability of the judgment of taste rests on the state of mind (pleasure or displeasure) that is generated by the play of the cognitive capacities. The judgment of taste is universally communicable in the sense that everyone who engages the item (or event) under consideration in a free play will generate an analogous state of mind or will thereby generate a likewise state of mind. That the judgment involves the production of a pleasurable state of mind would be the case for all subjects engaged in such a play. Paradoxically then, a private and personal experience or Erlebnis (the free play of the cognitive capacities) can be universally communicable in the sense that we can legitimately expect that if something is engaged in this manner, it universally generates a (pleasurable) state of mind. The play may be private and personal, but the state of mind, although generated individually, can be universally supposed among all those making a judgment of taste finding beauty. True, if the judgment were governed by private interests (if it were not disinterested), then it could not be universal, but this is the case because it would then be governed by concepts and would prevent the free play. Commentators have traditionally suggested that the universality of a judgment of taste is a function of the sameness of the cognitive capacities involved, thus moving the work of the categories to the capacities operating freely in a judgment of taste, but I don’t think that this can be quite sufficient. On my account, these judgments are universal not merely in virtue of the sameness of the capacities but in virtue of an analogous activity of these capacities generating a state of mind. We are all on the same page, as it were, because whatever is deemed beautiful is found so in the sense that the

352 Brigitte Sassen subject’s engagement with it generates a state of mind that can be universally felt upon the encounter of something thereby deemed beautiful. The claim that the harmony of the cognitive capacities and by implication the state of mind generated thereby is felt, not known, is confirmed by the answer to the “lesser” question of §9 (CPJ 5:218). Here Kant asked how we are conscious of the harmony of the cognitive capacities in a judgment of taste, whether this happens “aesthetically through mere inner sense and feeling [Empfindung] or intellectually by way of the consciousness of our intentional activity through which we place them into play” (CPJ 5:218). Since the latter involves concepts, and could thus not be a judgment of taste, Kant came down on the aesthetic side, inner sense, and feeling. What emerges from this is that communicated in a judgment of taste is that an experience (Erlebnis) like the one I may have had upon encountering something I thereby find beautiful can be had by others making a judgment of taste, and should they proceed to do so, as Kant would expect them to, they generate a similar state of mind that can only be felt. We do not know in an uninvolved fashion that things are beautiful; rather, we experience (erleben) their beauty. By implication, what is communicated is the state of mind, since a similar state of mind is generated by all people making a judgment of taste regarding the intuitive manifold I may have found beautiful. Communication cannot be external in terms of concepts; rather like the judgment of taste, it can only be accomplished insofar as the judgment is made. It is not yet clear what would entitle me to make such a claim, why this feeling can be supposed to be universally had by others. This is a matter that will be clarified in the upcoming discussion of the fourth moment of the “Analytic of the Beautiful.” In the fourth moment (modality), Kant provided a closer analysis of the second particularity of judgments of taste, their necessity. The account of aesthetic necessity is just as paradoxical as that of universality is, but confirms many of the claims I have already made and indeed explains how it is possible that private and personal judgments (of taste) can be universal (or universally communicable). Just as the judgment of taste is said to be universal without benefit of concepts, so it is said to be necessary without following rules. Although the beautiful “does have a necessary connection to pleasure” (CPJ 5:236), this necessity is “of a special kind” (CPJ 5:236). Aesthetic necessity is “exemplary” (exemplarisch) (CPJ 5:237). This means that it must be viewed as a “necessity to everyone’s agreement with a judgment, which makes it an example of a universal rule that cannot be identified” (CPJ 5:237). A judgment regarding what has already been found beautiful by others is legitimately expected to generate a pleasurable state of mind so long as it is a judgment of taste. Presumably that is a judgment in which non-identifiable universal rules are followed. One wonders just how useful such a notion might be. What is one to say about a rule if it cannot be identified? Recall here that a judgment of taste hinges on it being made—beauty must be experienced (erlebt), it cannot be

Kant’s Heuristic Methods 353 known conceptually. By implication, the rule governing such judgments cannot be known. Since such judgments are subjective (yet universally and necessarily so), they likely hinge on something special about the subject. In this context, recall the discussion of sidedness in the first section of this chapter. There it emerged that though we do not know right and left conceptually, we do “know” it as a function of our embodiment. We do not follow a rule here, though it might look like we do. Having a sense of the difference between our two sides is immediate. We feel it.26 In the theoretical sphere, following rules guarantees the outcome (all other things being equal). Since aesthetic judgments are not governed by the concepts or rules that make an outcome necessary, they cannot have that sort of necessity. But even an exemplary necessity must have some sort of ground. I suspect that this ground is in some measure analogous to the ground facilitating the sense of sidedness. By implication, while on the account given earlier, our sense of sidedness is a function of our embodiment (sense of physical self), the judgment of taste must also involve a sense of self. In judgments of taste, subjects might not feel their embodiment. Instead, they feel their mental activity. The cases are similar, in other words, because in both subjects feel themselves. The unidentifiable rules at the base of the exemplary necessity of judgment of taste, by implication, are not rules as understood in the theoretical philosophy. In tune with his account of aesthetics so far, they refer to something subjective: in this case the subject’s feeling of self. That subjects feel themselves in judgments of taste makes sense in view of Kant’s further connection of judgments of taste to common sense (Gemeinsinn). Tellingly, Kant now claimed that “it is only under the presupposition that there is a common sense . . . that a judgment of taste can be made” (CPJ 5:238). This suggests that in judgments of taste (as in judgments determining direction), common sense plays a role analogous to the transcendental conditions of thought. But the notion of common sense is not without problems. Above all, its meaning is not clear. In the German philosophical community among Kant’s contemporaries, common sense tended to refer to healthy understanding. This might have been influenced by Reid’s common-sense philosophy, which, as indicated earlier, had a significant influence on German philosophy at the end of the eighteenth Century.27 But it cannot be Kant’s meaning of the term. By the time the Critique of Judgment appeared, Kant had made at least two negative references to common sense. The first appeared in the famous “dogmatic slumber” passage in the Introduction to the Prolegomena (P 4:259–60). Here Kant compared what he took to be Reid’s common-sense philosophy unfavorably to Hume’s skeptical empiricism. Regarding the common-sense philosophers he noted that rather than undertake an in-depth analysis of reason, they took the, to him, more comfortable route of appealing to common sense (gemeiner Menschenverstand). Kant regarded this as nothing other than an “appeal to an oracle” (P 4:259).28 The second comment occurred in connection

354 Brigitte Sassen with Mendelssohn’s notion of orientation. In a dream he claims to have had, Mendelssohn attributed orientation to a young rustic he called common sense. The rustic is described as simply being certain of the direction that would take him to a desired goal.29 For Mendelssohn this added up to a recommendation that we follow our common sense, especially in matters of experience (Erfahrung), though he hoped that it would ultimately be applied to supersensible matters as well.30 Kant was not positively impressed by this recommendation. In his view, any appeal to common sense with regard to the supersensible would quickly reduce to enthusiasm and enthusiasm does not afford knowledge.31 By rejecting both Mendelssohn’s and what he took to be Reid’s version of common sense, it appears that Kant rejected common sense as another avenue as providing insight into sensible and supersensible matters. Yet taste cannot do without common sense, as is already clear from his reference to common sense as essential for a judgment of taste. Kant confirmed this is §40 (“Taste as a Form of Sensus Communis”). Here he also confirmed many of the things he had thus far stated about common sense. He clarified (in a footnote) that the common sense at work in a judgment of taste is “sensus communis aestheticus” (CPJ 5:295f.).32 As such it signifies just what the term implies: it is a sense, not some form of understanding, and it is common or communal. Since most senses are not common, this cannot be just any sense. This is a point Kant had by this time made a number of times. In §20, for instance, he specified that (aesthetic) common sense is “not understood as an outer sense, but as the effect of the free play of our cognitive capacities” (CPJ 5:238). An outer sense would be an immediate (and subjectively personal) reaction to some sensory stimulus and as such would function in the judgment of the merely pleasurable, if indeed it can be considered a judgment. This kind of sense is inherently individual (subjective). Social similarities might generate a certain degree of commonality (for example, use of the organs of sense might train them to like or dislike certain kinds of taste), but this would be accidental and not necessary. Matters are otherwise with the sense involved in the judgment of taste. Here the sense is inner, or as Kant said, it is the “effect of the free play of the cognitive capacities” (CPJ 5:238). In effect, in virtue of common sense, subjects sense themselves, or more specifically, they sense their mental activity and its outcome. This is the free play of the cognitive capacities which has already been said to generate a certain state of mind. Granted, outer sense cannot be common, but why should inner sense be so? So far, the answer seems to be that the one (outer sense) is of the subject’s sensations that are in each case variously received. But while outer sense cannot claim commonality, at first glance inner sense does not fare any better. Surely, inner sense is private and personal (much as outer sense is). And yet there is this important difference between the two types of sense. Whereas the one (outer sense) involves the private reaction to some external stimulus, the other (inner sense) is of the outcome of the play of the cognitive

Kant’s Heuristic Methods 355 capacities. In other words, it is the outcome of a mental activity. Granted, something is given here as well thus prompting the free play, but the judgment is not of the given. And while the play differs from one person to the next (since it is not governed by concepts, commonality cannot be expected), the important point here, as already noted, is not the content of the play but that it happen. It is only the play that can generate a feeling and it is such a feeling that is sensed (via common sense). Toward the end of the “Analytic of the Beautiful,” Kant raised two additional points. He asked, first, whether the posited common sense could be legitimately presupposed (§21). This is a legitimate question and given the posited importance of aesthetic common sense for judgments of taste, it is not surprising that Kant answered this question in the affirmative. Still, it is difficult to see how its legitimacy might be established. In view of Kant’s arguments as a whole, one might expect Kant to mount a transcendental argument, much as he did in the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. There the categories are demonstrated to be necessary because they are essential for something Kant believed we do have: universal and necessary knowledge of experience. The demonstration of the legitimacy of (aesthetic) common sense does indeed proceed along similar lines. That is to say, common sense is said to be legitimate because it must be presupposed for the universal communicability of the judgment of taste. Since he believed judgments of taste are actually made and are universally communicable, the legitimacy of common sense is assured. This argument can be questioned as any transcendental argument may be questioned. It is not my intent to do so here. But notice that this argument led him to emphasize, again, the special nature of a judgment of taste. Any judgment, whether governed by concepts or not, requires the harmony of the cognitive capacities. Any cognition requires the communicability of the harmony of the cognitive capacities essential to it. Kant identified this as an attunement (Stimmung) of the cognitive capacities to each other and clearly, if they were not properly attuned, there could not be knowledge. Now, in the theoretical philosophy, such attunement is a function of the concepts governing judgments. The interesting point about judgments of taste is that in the case of something fond beautiful thereby, the attunement is both not governed by concepts and yet extraordinarily harmonious. Since it is not governed by concepts, it cannot be known but only felt. But it is felt not merely by an individual subject but by everyone making a judgment of taste finding beauty. This is its universal communicability, which, in turn, requires common sense. So if there are judgments of taste, there must be common sense and it can thus be legitimately presupposed. Is this argument compelling? I have to admit, I find it so. Clearly, Kant wanted to get at something very special about the experience (Erlebnis) of beauty and while he presented it in the excessively technical language of the critical philosophy, his effort to do so is very much in tune with the attempt of eighteenth century philosophy to account for beauty.33

356 Brigitte Sassen The second point appeared in the final section of this portion of the book (§22), where he claimed that the judgment of taste is “represented as objective under the presupposition of common sense” (CPJ 5:230). To suppose that a judgment that has a merely exemplary necessity should be objective so long as we presuppose a common sense is quite an outlandish claim. However, note that Kant did not ascribe objectivity to such judgments. He claimed that given common sense, such judgments are represented as objective. In other words, Kant is not here making an unjustified turn from subjectivity to objectivity. Instead, the claim is that common sense renders something that we otherwise think pertains only to subjects as instead communal. Presumably, such a judgment is represented as objective in the sense that it has an exemplary necessity. Common sense, it turns out, is a communal feeling generated by a judgment of a certain sort: judgments of taste.

III. Heuristic Methods? These discussions have revealed something possibly unexpected about the critical philosophy—namely, that the empirical world is not constituted merely in virtue of transcendental conditions, as Kant had argued in the Critique of Pure Reason. As has been demonstrated with regard to both orientation in the sensible realm and the judgment of taste (beauty), there are certain aspects of experience that cannot be so accounted for. There must therefore be legitimate non-transcendental means by which human subjects experience some aspects of the empirical world. In this context it is of particular interest that at the outset of the “orientation” essay, Kant introduced the possibility of heuristic methods of thought and it might well be that this is where the non-transcendental means may be found (OT 8:133), especially given Kant’s suggestion that “there may lie hidden many a heuristic method . . . in experience, and, if we were able to carefully draw these methods out of experience, philosophy would be enriched by many a useful maxim . . .” (OT 8:133). Toward the end of the first Critique, Kant introduced “heuristic principles” (CPR A668/B691), “heuristic concepts” (CPR A671/B699) and “heuristic fictions” (CPR A771/B799). In each case, they are envisaged as means to branch into the supersensible. My interest, as indicated earlier, has not been in those extensions but in the perhaps inadvertent suggestion that heuristic methods may also be involved in the sensible realm. Admittedly, these are not methods of thought, but on the account given here, they nevertheless afford non-transcendental yet also universal access to some aspects of the empirical world. It may seem a stretch to extend the possibility of heuristic methods of thought to the matters discussed in this essay, especially since neither in beauty nor in orientation are we dealing with conceptual methods and thus methods of thought. Nevertheless, there is reason to think that the proposed extension is not as outrageous as it may appear. Kant introduced the role of feeling with respect to orientation in the sensible realm. He did this not to

Kant’s Heuristic Methods 357 make a claim about the experience of the sensible realm but to as an illustration of the feeling in the supersensible. Still, whatever his purpose might have been, the role of feeling in the sensible realm seems to be assured, especially insofar as orientation and the judgment of taste are concerned. Whether there are further heuristic methods in the sensible realm will have to be considered in separate careful examinations of the kind Kant recommended.

Notes 1. “Was heiẞt: Sichim Denken orientieren?” OT 8: 131–47. Tr. H. B. Nisbet, “What Is Orientation in Thinking?” in Political Writings, ed. Immanuel Kant (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 232–49. The translation of this and other texts in this chapter are my own. 2. Kant initially introduced these realms as standing in an analogous relation so that insight into the one could be extended to the other (OT 8: 136). The account of orientation in the sensible realm involves an appeal to feeling, as will be demonstrated in what follows, but Kant came to recognize that reason, which is responsible for orientation in the supersensible realm or orientation in thought, “does not feel” (OT 8: 139f.). The extent of the analogy thereby becomes questionable. 3. A recent translation renders The Kritik der Urtheilskraft as the Critique of the Power of Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). I am reluctant to follow this new convention because it seems to me a needlessly literal translation. 4. For a history of this controversy, see Frederick C. Beiser, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), Chapter 2. 5. Beiser attributes Kant’s entry into the debate more specifically to an essay Thomas Wizenmann published about it in May 1786. See Beiser, Fate of Reason, 109–15. 6. The same sort of account applies to mathematical orientation. Whereas geographical orientation is finding one’s way in a region, mathematical orientation is orientation in space. Here Kant imagined finding particular objects in the dark in an otherwise familiar space. Since it is dark, we’d have to find our way by touch and here too the feeling of sidedness assists. 7. As regards the first concern, we should note that Kant did have access to an additional unacknowledged indicator, which should help with the problem of identifying the four directions. Recall that Kant did not live at the equator, where the sun’s overhead position on its own would make it impossible to determine anything regarding direction, but in Königsberg, located 54 degrees north. The further north one is located, the greater the angle of the sun, as people in seafaring nations know well. Accordingly, if they were to observe the sun high in the sky at noon in Königsberg, sailors would know that they were looking south, and from there, using their yet to be explained ability to differentiate between our left and right sides, they would be able to find the other three regions or directions. Alternatively, observing the sun’s ascent or descent (motion) would allow us to identify east and west, respectively, and again using our ability to differentiate between our right and left sides, we would be able to identify the remaining directions 8. “Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterchiedes der Gegenden im Raume,” DS 2: 375–84. Trans. in James Van Cleve and Robert E. Frederick, eds., The Philosophy of Right and Left (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), 27–33.

358 Brigitte Sassen 9. On this matter, see Angelica Nuzzo, Ideal Embodiment: Kant’s Theory of Sensibility (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 21–44. 10. Left/right confusion has long been material for slapstick humor (the Three Stooges, for example), but it has also become a matter of interest to psychology and neuroscience. Experiments reveal that a significant portion of the population can either not tell the difference or not tell it with any speed or accuracy. One wonders why this is of course, a subject matter for the indicated sciences. If nothing else, however, it does demonstrate that the distinction cannot simply reveal a natural ability, even if it is one improved through practice. Those interested in their own facility with the concepts might like to perform the test, available at: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/java/hands1.html 11. Thanks to Lorne Falkenstein for raising the question of starfish orientation. 12. See Jonathan Dale, “Chemosensory Search Behavior in the Starfish Asterias Forbesi,” Biological Bulletin 193 (1997), 210–2. 13. The feeling of temperature is merely subjective because it is an immediate reaction to some external stimulus and since that reaction is a function of the personal location and situation of the affected subject, it cannot be expected of anyone else. Accordingly, the judgment of such a subjective feeling is identified by Kant as “merely subjective.” The feeling instrumental in orientation cannot be like this. To be sure, subjects feel themselves here, but this feeling is of the body and that is something shared by all subjects who have the human type of body. As a consequence, even though this is a subjective feeling, it has universal (though not objective) implications. 14. The ability to enter into arguments entails a presumed necessity. If judgments were merely individually subjective, if beauty were merely “in the eye of the beholder” as one says, we would simply have to accept a personal and private assessment. 15. The “Analytic of the Beautiful” (CPJ 5: 203–46) has been widely discussed in the literature. I do not offer a comprehensive account here. Rather, I discuss only those aspects of the text that speak to the particular concern of this part of the chapter: feeling and common sense in the judgment of taste. For a comprehensive account see, for instance, Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 16. In the first footnote to the “Analytic of the Beautiful,” Kant defined taste as the “capacity to judge the beautiful” (CPJ 5: 203f.). He continued his account of beauty in terms of the analysis of the judgment of taste and this analysis, in turn, is set out in line with the parameters of the Critique of Pure Reason. As a result, judgments of taste are analyzed according to their quality, quantity, relation, and modality in sections he called “moments” (Momente). In the following, I focus on the second and fourth moments (the quality and modality of judgments of taste). 17. One of the ways in which this difference is described is as one between determinate and reflective judgments. In the Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, Kant described this distinction as one between the capacity to reflect, which is the ability to reflect about a given representation with view to finding the universal (CPJ 5: 179) or the capacity to subsume what is given under already existing universal law (CPJ 5: 179). Since judgments of taste are said not to involve already existing concepts or laws, they involve a reflective activity, even though concepts are not sought here. 18. Kant did not say that there is no concept of beauty. He did assert that it is not a category, in other words, that it is not a form of order we employ as human knowers. And while we might abstract a concept of beauty on the basis of instances of things or events we have found beautiful, such a concept could not be determining in a judgment of taste.

Kant’s Heuristic Methods 359 19. Kant says that in judgments of taste imagination schematizes without concepts (CPJ 5: 287). 20. To be sure, we can say that roses are beautiful, but this is not a judgment of taste. The judgment of taste requires the engagement with something specific. 21. Kant did not use the term “Erlebnis.” I am using it here instead of “experience” in order to highlight both that the experience of beauty is not understood in the critical sense of the term and to follow up on a suggestion Kant made at the outset of the “Analytic of the Beautiful”—namely, that the judgment of beauty involves a feeling of life (CPJ 5: 204). 22. The universality is subjective; it is not the universality of objects. 23. By the time it made its appearance in the Critique of Judgment, the notion of disinterestedness had a long history. It was first introduced by Shaftesbury (1671– 1713) and adopted by Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746). For an account of aesthetics in the eighteenth century prior to Kant. see Paul Guyer, Values of Beauty: Historical Essays on Aesthetics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), section I. For the influence Scottish common sense in particular had on German philosophy, see Manfred Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800 (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987), passim. 24. He states there that “[a pleasure that precedes] would be nothing other than the mere pleasure of sense and would therefore, as prescribed by its nature, have only private validity, . . .” 25. For a paper on displeasure and hence the “ugly”, see, for instance, Paul Guyer, “Kant on the Purity of the Ugly,” in Values of Beauty: Historical Essays on Aesthetics, ed. Paul Guyer (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 141–62. 26. We feel our two sides, though as indicated earlier, their identification as right and left, respectively, is a different matter. 27. This influence might have been facilitated by Mendelssohn. See Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense, passim. 28. Hume, by contrast, is praised because his philosophy had woken Kant from his dogmatic slumber. As he put it: “David Hume’s reminiscence (Erinnerung) was precisely what first broke my dogmatic slumber many years ago and sent my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy into an entirely new direction” (P 4: 260). 29. The allegorical dream appeared in Moses Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden oder Vorlesungen über das Dasen Gottes (Berlin: Bey Christian Voẞ und Sohn, 1789), 161–3. Trans. Daniel O. Dahlstrom and Corey Dyck, Morning Hours Lecture on God’s Existence (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), 59. 30. Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden, 164–5. 31. OT 8: 133–4, 137f. 32. Common human understanding, by contrast, is called “sensus communis logicus” (CPJ 5: 295f.). 33. For an account of eighteenth century aesthetics prior to Kant in continental Europe as well as England and Scotland, see Guyer, Values of Beauty, Section I.

References Allison, Henry E. Kant’s Theory of Taste. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Beiser, Frederick C. The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. Dale, Jonathan. “Chemosensory Search Behavior in the Starfish Asterias Forbesi.” Biological Bulletin 193 (1997): 210–2.

360 Brigitte Sassen Guyer, Paul. “Kant on the Purity of the Ugly.” In Values of Beauty: Historical Essays on Aesthetics, edited by Paul Guyer, 141–62. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Guyer, Paul. Values of Beauty: Historical Essays on Aesthetics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Kant, Immanuel. “Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterchiedes der Gegenden im Raume.” In The Philosophy of Right and Left, edited and translated by James Van Cleve and Robert E. Frederick, 27–33. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. Kuehn, Manfred. Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800. Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1987. Mendelssohn, Moses. Morgenstunden oder Vorlesungen über das Dasen Gottes. Berlin: Bey Christian Voss und Sohn, 1789. Mendelssohn, Moses. Morning Hours Lecture on God’s Existence. Translated by Daniel O. Dahlstram and Corey Dyck. Dordrecht: Springer, 2011. Nisbet, H. B. “What Is Orientation in Thinking?” In Political Writing, edited by Immanuel Kant, 232–49. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Nuzzo, Angelica. Ideal Embodiment: Kant’s Theory of Sensibility. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.

Contributors

Wiebke Deimling is an assistant professor in the Philosophy Department at Clark University. She writes on modern philosophy and the philosophy of art with a special focus on emotions. Aaron Garrett is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. He is the author of Meaning in Spinoza’s Method (CUP 2003) and Berkeley’s Three Dialogues: A Reader’s Guide (Bloomsbury 2008), and editor of The Routledge Companion to Eighteenth Century Philosophy (Routledge 2014); Scottish Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century (OUP 2015); Millar’s The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks; and Hutchison’s An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections (Liberty Fund 2006), with Illumination on the Moral Sense (Liberty Fund 2002). Paul Guyer is the Jonathan Nelson Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at Brown University. He is active in the Cogut Humanities Center as well as in the Philosophy Department. He is the author of nine books on Kant, including Kant and the Claims of Taste (1979), Kant and the Claims of Knowledge (1987), Kant (2006), Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (2007), and Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant’s Response to Hume (2008). He is the editor of six anthologies of work on Kant, including three Cambridge Companions, and is co-editor of a volume on the work of his teacher Stanley Cavell. He is also the co-translator of the Critique of Pure Reason, the Critique of the Power of Judgment, and Kant’s Notes and Fragments, all in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, of which he is general co-editor. Bryan Hall is Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies at St. John’s University. He is the author of two books on Kant: The Post-Critical Kant (Routledge, 2014) and The Arguments of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (Lexington Books, 2010). He has also published several articles on Kant’s theoretical philosophy that have appeared in journals such as the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Kantian Review, and Kant-Studien. Robert B. Louden is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern Maine. His publications include Kant’s Human Being

362 Contributors (Oxford University Press, 2011), The World We Want (OUP, 2007), Kant’s Impure Ethics (OUP, 2000), and Morality and Moral Theory (OUP, 1992). A former president of the North American Kant Society (NAKS), Louden is also co-editor and translator of two volumes in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. John McHugh is Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Denison University. He writes primarily on early modern moral theory, with a particular focus on Adam Smith, David Hume, and Francis Hutcheson. J. Colin McQuillan is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas. He is the co-editor of The Bloomsbury Anthology of Aesthetics (Bloomsbury, 2012) and the author of Early Modern Aesthetics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015) and Immanuel Kant: The Very Idea of a Critique of Pure Reason (Northwestern, 2016). He has published articles about Kant, the history of modern European philosophy, and the history of aesthetics in the Journal of the History of Ideas, Philosophy Compass, Idealistic Studies, Epoché, Philosophica, and Symposium. JP Messina is a PhD student at the University of California, San Diego. He has broad interests in the history of ethics and the moral foundations of liberalism. His most recent published work concerns the place of norms of deservingness in thinking about distributive justice, while his dissertation aims to better understand Kant’s notion of political freedom and its implications. Lawrence Pasternack is Professor of Philosophy at Oklahoma State University. His work on Kant appears in the Journal of the History of Philosophy, Kant-Studien, Faith and Philosophy, and numerous other prominent outlets. He authored the entry on Kant’s philosophy of religion for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, co-edits the Kant’s Sources in Translation series published by Bloomsbury, and his first monograph, a commentary on Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, was published by Routledge in 2014. Mark Pickering is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida. His article “The Idea of the Systematic Unity of Nature as a Transcendental Illusion” was published in Kantian Review, and his forthcoming article “Kant’s Theoretical Reasons for Belief in Things in Themselves” has been accepted for publication in Kant-Studien. Elizabeth Robinson was an assistant professor of philosophy in Rochester, New York. Her research primarily considers the history of modern philosophy, particularly Kant and Hume. Brigitte Sassen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at McMaster University. She is translator and editor of Kant’s Early Critics: The Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy (New York: Cambridge, 2000) and author of several articles on Kant in context.

Contributors 363 Alexander Schaefer is Philosophy Politics Economics and Law (PPEL) fellow and PhD student at the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom at the University of Arizona. He specializes in the philosophy of economics and political authority. Frank Schalow is Professor of Philosophy and University Research Professor at the University of New Orleans. He has written several books, including Departures: At the Crossroads between Heidegger and Kant (2013) and The Renewal of the Heidegger-Kant Dialogue: Action, Thought, and Responsibility (1992). He co-edited (with Richard Velkley) The Linguistic Dimension of Kant’s Thought: Historical and Critical Essays (2014) and has served as co-editor of the international journal Heidegger Studies since 2010. Oliver Sensen is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Philosophy at Tulane University. He is the author of Kant on Human Dignity (de Gruyter 2011), the editor of Kant on Moral Autonomy (Cambridge 2012), and the co-editor of Kant’s “Tugendlehre” (de Gruyter 2013) and Kant’s Lectures on Ethics: A Critical Guide (Cambridge 2015). Scott Stapleford is Professor of Philosophy at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick. He is the author of various papers in epistemology and early modern philosophy, the author of Kant’s Transcendental Arguments: Disciplining Pure Reason (2008), and coauthor of Berkeley’s Principles: Expanded and Explained (2016). Chris W. Surprenant is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Project in Law, Liberty, and Morality at the University of New Orleans. He is the author of Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue (Routledge 2014), co-editor of Kant and Education: Interpretations and Commentary (Routledge 2011), and numerous articles on various aspects of Kant’s moral and political philosophy. Michael Walschots is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) postdoctoral fellow at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. In the past, he has been a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) graduate research grant holder at the Kant Research Centre at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz, Germany as well as a Wiedemann Scholarship holder at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Research in European Enlightenment Studies (IZEA) at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg. His research focuses on eighteenth century British and German practical philosophy, especially that of Hutcheson, Smith, and Kant. He is currently working on a project dealing with the concept of moral obligation in Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment. Jack Russell Weinstein is Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and the director of the Institute for Philosophy in Public Life at the University of North Dakota. He is the author of three books, most recently Adam Smith’s Pluralism: Rationality, Education, and the Moral

364 Contributors Sentiments (Yale UP, 2013) and has edited five collections. He is also the host of public radio’s Why? Philosophical Discussions About Everyday Life (www.whyradioshow.org). Reed Winegar is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. His research on Kant and other figures has appeared in venues such as the Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Hegel Bulletin, Kantian Review, and Journal of Scottish Philosophy.

Index

Abicht, Johann Heinrich 13 Addison, Joseph 90, 103, 109 Allison, Henry 87, 105, 139, 149, 160, 209–10, 237, 243, 358 analytic 12, 98, 110, 112, 116, 119, 206, 216, 319, 342, 348 Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View 61, 64–6, 167, 169, 181, 187–9, 307 a posteriori 100, 221, 222–4, 226, 231 a priori 3–4, 45, 80, 98, 100–2, 121, 128, 130–1, 143, 145, 174, 197–8, 202–4, 218, 220–4, 226–7, 231, 234, 238, 254, 261, 265, 275, 311, 336 Aristotle 267, 280 Augustine, Saint 146–8, 150, 160–1 Barth, Karl 15, 146, 151, 160 Bary, Philip de 331, 333, 340 Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb 29–30, 90–1, 95–7, 103, 105 Baxter, Donald L. M. 240 Beattie, James 2, 4–5, 8, 11, 13–15, 108–10, 112–15, 118, 122–3, 164, 175 Beck, Lewis White 8, 14, 16, 122, 175, 242 Beiser, Frederick 103, 146, 160, 357 Berkeley, George 1–2, 11, 226 Berlin, Isaiah 267, 279 Bird, Graham 237, 243 Böhme, Jakob 1 Borowski, Ludwig Ernst 37, 50, 166, 176 Brandt, Reinhardt 173, 178 Brentano, Franz 135, 139 Brocke, Barthold Heinrich 172 Bryson, Gladys 183, 193 Buhle, Johann Gottlieb 15 Burke, Edmund 31, 90, 103

Calvin, John 150, 160–1 Carmichael, Gershom 19, 25 categorical imperative 99, 127, 135–7, 260–1, 276–7, 296, 306–7, 313, 317 Cicero 19, 21, 59, 164–7, 169, 171, 173, 175, 177, 179 Clarke, Samuel 294, 300 Conflict of the Faculties, The 154 critical philosophy 11, 13–17, 80, 98–103, 117, 156, 197, 205, 209, 310, 322, 326, 342–3, 348–9, 355–6 Critique of Practical Reason 46, 48, 119, 121, 125–9, 133–4, 142, 144–5, 158, 268, 277 Critique of Pure Reason 77–9, 127, 144–5, 197, 199–200, 202–5, 209, 214–18, 219–24, 230–42, 308, 336–8, 356 Critique of the Power of Judgment 47, 76, 80–5, 98–101, 108–22, 145, 204, 207–9, 270, 306, 347–56 Crusius, Christian August 37 Cudworth, Ralph 290 Cumberland, Richard 20, 23–4, 27, 31–2 Cuneo, Terence 15 Deimling, Wiebke 50 Descartes, René 1, 8–9, 20, 169 Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion 143 Dryer, D. P. 237 Eberhard, Johann August 11 Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, An 143–4, 157, 171, 201, 206, 230–1 Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, An 182–3, 288–9 Epicurus 45

366 Index Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections: With Illustrations on the Moral Sense, An 38, 56–9, 63 Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man 9, 330–2 Fable of the Bees 21–2 Feder, Johann Georg Heinrich 11 Ferguson, Adam 2, 36, 263, 271 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb xiii, 1, 12, 357 Firestone, Chris 158, 160, 162 Fleischacker, Samuel 280, 293, 298, 304–5, 322 Forman, Fonna 295, 300 Garrett, Aaron 50, 69 Gellert, Christian Fürchtegott 36 Greenspan, Alan 199 Grote, Simon 23 Grotius, Hugo 19–21 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals 46–8, 127–8, 134–6, 174, 276–7, 296, 313 Guyer, Paul 108, 236–8, 361 Haldane, John 15 Hall, Bryan 212, 361 Hamann, Johann Georg 11, 14, 162, 164 Hamilton, Alexander 5, 7 Hamilton, Sir William 9 Hanley, Ryan 295 Hegel, G. W. F 1–8, 12, 14 Henrich, Dieter 29, 41, 46 Herder, Johann Gottfried 11, 14, 44, 91, 94 Herz, Markus 172, 173, 284, 298, 304 Highest Good 72, 80–1, 85, 142–6, 153–5, 158 Hobbes, Thomas 20, 56, 246–7, 290, 294, 321 Huemer, Michael 255–6 imagination 60, 64, 84, 90, 99, 100, 102, 114–18, 121–2, 197–209, 212–14, 218, 223, 232–3, 239, 241, 293, 304–13, 316–20, 337, 345, 348 Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, An 328–30, 334 Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, An 317, 320 Inquiry Into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, An 38–49, 56–7, 60, 73–5, 92–4

intuition 96, 97, 99, 110, 119, 121, 202, 207, 217–18, 220–1, 223–4, 231, 233–5, 238, 308, 343–6, 348 Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich 1, 11, 14, 342 Jacobi, Johann Konrad 188 Jacobi, Maria Charlotta 188 Jacquette, Dale 219 Jakob, Ludwig Heinrich 171 Kanter, Johann Jakob 188 Kemp Smith, Norman 7–8 Kivy, Peter 73 Kleingeld, Pauline 170 Kosegarten, Ludwig Theobul 321 Krause, Karl Christian Friedrich 8 Krauss, Christian Jacob 321 Kuehn, Manfred xiii–xiv, 1, 36, 45, 71, 72, 85, 108, 116, 129, 142, 143, 158, 164, 166, 188, 212–14, 224, 305–6, 307, 321 Lehrer, Keith 15 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 1, 3, 10, 20, 26, 91, 221 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 36, 342, 343 Locke, John 3, 5, 8, 10, 20–3, 25, 36, 91–2, 102, 171, 185, 246–9 Lossius, Christian 11 Louden, Robert 164, 189, 361 Luther, Martin 148, 150 Machiavelli, Niccolò 267 McHugh, John 287, 362 Malebranche, Nicolas 58, 171 Mandeville, Bernard 21–3, 28, 56, 93, 102, 171, 267 McQuillan, J. Colin 90, 362 Mariña, Jacqueline 146 Maurer, Christian 58–9 Meier, Georg Friedrich 95–6 Meiners, Christoph 11 Melnik, Arthur 237 Mendelssohn, Moses 11, 36, 91, 94, 219, 342–3, 354 Menzer, Paul 41 Messina, JP 267, 362 Metaphysics of Morals 63–4, 134, 136, 185–6, 191, 255–9, 269–74, 277–8, 297, 307 Molesworth, Robert Viscount 19 Newton, Isaac 20–1, 25–9, 221, 311 Nichols, Ryan 15 Noumena 117, 206–7, 277, 313

Index 367 Oswald, James 2, 4, 5, 11 Papadaki, Lina 187 Pasternack, Lawrence 142, 362 Paton, H. J. 7–8 Pearsall, Sarah M. S. 185 phenomena 27, 117, 206–7, 220, 251, 277, 293, 313 Pickering, Mark 230, 362 Platner, Ernst 166–7 Plato 21, 148, 158, 183, 199, 267, 296, 313 Pope, Alexander 172 Priestley, Joseph 4 Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics 4, 13, 142, 164, 167, 170, 174, 198, 206, 208, 230, 241, 353 Pufendorf, Samuel 19–20, 23–7, 29, 31–2, 56, 281 Quinn, Philip 146, 160 Rationalism 9, 11, 20, 91, 95, 300 Rawls, John 319 reason 5, 13, 21, 27, 74, 77, 79, 80, 81, 93, 97, 99, 102, 108, 110–18, 120–2, 125–36, 142, 144, 145, 146, 149, 151, 155, 158, 159, 167, 173, 199, 204–9, 213–16, 220, 230, 232, 267, 286–8, 290–3, 294, 298, 304–6, 309, 310–14, 316–21, 329, 330–2, 337, 343, 353; practical 55, 63, 65, 80–1, 117–18, 127, 142, 144, 257, 260, 261, 304, 313; principle of sufficient 20, 164; pure 77, 79, 127, 129, 133–4, 174, 185, 202, 209, 212, 214, 220, 224; theoretical 76, 80 Reid, Thomas i, ix, 2–15, 19, 28, 87, 108, 326–36, 339–41, 353–4 Reinhold, Carl Leonhard 98, 102 Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason 143–58, 269, 273 Ripstein, Arthur 256–7, 282 Rixner, Thaddä Anselm 3 Ross, Ian Simpson 321, 323 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 30, 165, 181, 191, 280 Rowe, William 15

Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 1, 12 Schmucker, Joseph 37, 50 Search, Edward 2 Seiler, Georg Friedrich 13 sensibility 42, 45, 47, 95–7, 98, 100, 113–14, 121, 125, 129, 134–7, 199, 200, 202–4, 207, 241, 306, 308 Seth, Andrew 5–7, 13 Shaftesbury, Third Earl of 19–23, 29, 31–2, 36–7, 44–5, 50, 86, 93, 102, 104–5, 166, 171, 245, 305, 359 Shell, Susan Meld 188, 294 Simmons, John 247–8, 259, 262–3, 265 Skepticism 1–2, 5–6, 11–12, 181, 197–8, 204–5, 213, 219, 221, 224, 230, 241, 263, 313, 326, 334 Spinoza, Baruch 343 Stewart, Dugald 2, 5 Stroud, Barry 174 Sulzer, Johann Georg 165–6, 168, 175, 177 sympathy 43, 55, 60–1, 63–7, 127, 185, 252–3, 286, 292–8, 305, 307–9, 316–17, 319 synthetic 197, 203, 208, 234 Tennemann, Wilhelm Gottlieb 2–3 Tetens, Johann Nicolaus 11–12, 326–7, 334–9 Theory of Moral Sentiments 268–70, 286–96, 305–8, 310, 312, 314–18, 320–1 Treatise of Human Nature, A 129–32, 170–3, 183–4, 200–1, 206, 213, 218–23, 230–42, 247–52, 289–90, 305 Tucker, Abraham 2 Walsh, W. H. 14 Waxman, Wayne 201, 210 Wieland, Christoph Martin 36, 50 Wizenmann, Thomas 145, 357 Wolff, Christian 1, 9–10, 16, 29, 37, 41–2, 91, 264–5 Wolterstorff, Nicholas 15, 161 Wood, Allen 139, 156, 161, 281 Woudenberg, René van 15 Zammito, John 71, 178