Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue (Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy) 9780415735209, 9781315819327, 0415735203

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue

“In Anglo-American scholarship, Kant’s educational theory is only beginning to receive the attention it deserves. Surprenant’s book goes a long way to satisfying this lack. In particular, his understanding of the role and scope of education derived from Kant’s historical context and political writings offers us a unique and impressive standpoint from which to see Kant’s importance to educational theory. Highly recommended reading.” —James Scott Johnston, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

In this book, Chris W. Surprenant puts forward an original position concerning Kant’s practical philosophy and the intersection between his moral and political philosophy. Although Kant provides a detailed account of the nature of morality, the nature of human virtue, and how right manifests itself in civil society, he does not explain fully how individuals are able to become virtuous. This book aims to resolve this problem by showing how an individual is able to cultivate virtue, the aim of Kant’s practical philosophy. Through an examination of Kant’s accounts of autonomy, the state, and religion, and their effects on the cultivation of virtue, Surprenant develops a Kantian framework for moral education and ultimately raises the question of whether Kantian virtue is possible in practice. Chris W. Surprenant is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Orleans, Louisiana, where he directs the Alexis de Tocqueville Project in Law, Liberty, and Morality. He is the co-editor of Kant and Education: Interpretations and Commentary.

Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy

1 Naturalization of the Soul Self and Personal Identity in the Eighteenth Century Raymond Martin and John Barresi 2 Hume’s Aesthetic Theory Taste and Sentiment Dabney Townsend 3 Thomas Reid and Scepticism His Reliabilist Response Philip de Bary 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

Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue Chris W. Surprenant

First published 2014 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 © 2014 Taylor & Francis The right of Chris W. Surprenant to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him 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 Surprenant, Chris W., 1982– Kant and the cultivation of virtue / by Chris W. Surprenant. pages cm. — (Routledge studies in eighteenth-century philosophy ; #9) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804. 2. Virtue. 3. Ethics, Modern. I. Title. B2799.V5S87 2014 170.92—dc23 ISBN: 978-0-415-73520-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-81932-7 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Acknowledgments Abbreviations for Primary Texts

vii ix 1

1

The Project of Kant’s Practical Philosophy

2

Freedom and Civil Society

21

3

Autonomy, Coercion, and the Moral Law

48

4

Moral Education and the Cultivation of Virtue

76

5

Making Moral Decisions

108

References Index

127 135

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Acknowledgments

Completion of this work would not have been possible without the assistance of a number of individuals and institutions. They include: Routledge Press and, in particular, editors Margo Irvin, Felisa SalvagoKeyes, and Andrew Weckenmann, for their help and expertise not only in bringing this book to press, but in finding an outstanding set of reviewers who provided invaluable feedback on an earlier version of this work. Boston University, the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University, and the Philosophy Department at Boston University for providing me with financial support during my time in their doctoral program. In particular, I am appreciative of the constant words of encouragement I received during my four years as a graduate student from Manfred Kuehn, David Lyons, Charles Griswold, David Roochnik, Walter Hopp, and Gary Herbert (who, although not on the faculty at Boston University, was considerably helpful as an external member of my dissertation committee). They helped create an environment that allowed me to further develop my interest in philosophy and, in particular, Kant’s moral and political thought. The faculty of Colby College, specifically faculty members in the Departments of Philosophy and Government, for creating an environment that made the development of serious academic interests possible. I am particularly grateful to Mark Brewer, Cheshire Calhoun, Daniel Cohen, Sarah Conly, Jill Gordon, Walter Hatch, Jeffrey Kasser, L. Sandy Maisel, and Joseph Reisert for their time and support during my four years in Waterville. The editors, publishers, and reviewers of Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, Kantian Review, History of Philosophy Quarterly, Educational Philosophy and Theory, and Routledge Press, as well as the students and faculty at Boston University, Loyola University in New Orleans, West Chester University, Mercer University, Sweet Briar College, Colby College, Tulane University, and the University of New Orleans, for their thoughtful questions and comments on earlier versions of positions presented in this book. The Charles Koch Foundation and the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University have provided me with much-appreciated financial support over the last five years. I am particularly thankful for the people

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Acknowledgments

I have worked with at these organizations, especially Nigel Ashford, Brennan Brown, Bill Glod, and Charlie Ruger. Because of their support I have had opportunities that have positively influenced me, both as a scholar and as a person, opportunities I would not have had otherwise. Ralf Bader, Edward Johnson, James Scott Johnston, Paul Formosa, Manfred Kuehn, and a handful of anonymous reviewers for Routledge all provided thoughtful and helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. These comments led me to restructure the argument in the text in a fairly significant way. I am especially grateful for their help. J. P. Messina and Christopher Clark, my graduate research assistants, provided invaluable assistance gathering relevant secondary literature, helping compile many of the notes for the volume, and providing suggestions on the presentation of the text and the arguments contained within each of the chapters. Chris, during the spring and summer of 2013, played a significant role in compiling many of the notes in the earlier chapters and talking through various stages of the argument with me. J. P., during the summer and fall of 2013, was especially helpful in pointing out beneficial secondary literature that I had overlooked, suggesting a number of useful ways to restructure various arguments throughout the text, familiarizing me with the relevant psychological literature on why people behave badly, helping compile a number of the notes on moral psychology, and providing a second set of eyes on the final version of the manuscript. Although I have mentioned their names already, I cannot fully express my appreciation to my graduate advisor, Manfred Kuehn, and my undergraduate advisor, Joseph Reisert. They are both wonderful scholars and even better people. Everyone would be lucky to have one advisor half as good as either Manfred or Joe—and I was fortunate to have been assisted by both. Finally, I am especially grateful for the patience and encouragement of my wife, Diana, and forever appreciative of my parents, Monica and Mark, for everything they have done to support me over the years.

Abbreviations for Primary Texts

Ak An Anth CF CoG CPJ CPr CPu DA DI E Em GM Gr L LE LE2 LF Meno MM NE Obs OP Phy Pol PP R Ref Rel SC ST

Kant, Akademie-Edition of Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften Kant, “M. Immanuel Kant’s announcement of the programme of his lectures for the winter semester 1765–1766” Kant, Anthropology from a Practical Point of View Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties Augustine, City of God Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment Kant, Critique of Practical Reason Kant, Critique of Pure Reason Rousseau, “Discourse on the Sciences and Arts” Rousseau, “Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men” Kant, What Is Enlightenment? Rousseau, Emile Rousseau, Of the Social Contract (Geneva Manuscript) Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals Hobbes, Leviathan Kant, Lectures on Ethics (Heath translation) Kant, Lectures on Ethics (Infield translation) Rousseau, “Letter to Franquières” Plato, Meno Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime Kant, Opus postumum Aristotle, Physics Aristotle, Politics Kant, “Toward Perpetual Peace” Plato, Republic Kant, “Reflexionen 1355” Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason Rousseau, Of the Social Contract Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ

x

Abbreviations for Primary Texts

STG SW TP UH UP

Locke, Second Treatise of Government Rousseau, “The State of War” Kant, “On the Common Saying: That may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice” Kant, “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent” Kant, Über Pädagogik (On Pedagogy)

1

The Project of Kant’s Practical Philosophy

This book examines what I believe to be the most important question raised in Immanuel Kant’s philosophical corpus: How do individuals become virtuous in practice? Although it is possible to fill libraries with the vast amount of text that has been written on various aspects of Kant’s moral philosophy, almost nothing has been written on his account of how virtue is acquired. Why? There are many reasons, including the prejudice against the possibility of engaging in serious discussions about virtue, morality, and the good life; the widely held belief among Kant scholars that Kant’s later practical writings should not be taken seriously, either because Kant himself did not take them seriously or because the positions he presents in those writings are incoherent, inconsistent, or foolish; or simply that Kant himself never presented a complete account of how virtue is acquired before his death in 1804.1 Whereas the first two problems are subjective or matters of perception, it is this last problem that presents the greatest challenge for trying to construct a formal account of how an individual becomes virtuous inside of the Kantian framework. Because Kant himself did not finish this project, and his various comments regarding the cultivation of virtue are spread across his moral, political, educational, anthropological, and religious texts, Kant scholars who focus on explicating his writings have generally steered clear of this discussion. Other scholars who focus more generally on the acquisition of virtue also have paid little attention to Kant, but often for different reasons. Kant argues against perfectionism, or the position that one function of juridical law is to promote public morality, and claims laws passed primarily with this intent are illegitimate. Further, Kant does not associate virtue and its acquisition with God or religious obligations, at least as that concept is commonly understood. Since most contemporary scholars who examine the acquisition of virtue are perfectionists or motivated by religious principles, or both, it is easy to understand why Kant’s writing in this area has received relatively little attention. This book aims not only to explicate Kant’s account of how virtue is acquired in practice—a topic that, for the most part, has been largely avoided by Kant scholars and philosophers in general—but also to examine more generally the process by which individuals are able to become virtuous,

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a discussion to which Kant has much to contribute. For Kant, becoming virtuous is not an end that individuals are able to reach alone, and civil society, through education, culture, and the laws, plays a significant role in this process. But that civil society, or something external to the will of the individual, could play an important role in an individual’s ability to become virtuous raises additional problems. An individual is morally praiseworthy only if he acts correctly as the result of rational deliberation, recognizes that what he is doing is consistent with the moral law, and his motivation for action is that he believes he has a duty to act morally. But it is not clear how civil society or anything else external to the individual could help him become virtuous. While something external to an individual could compel or otherwise manipulate him into performing appropriate actions, nothing external could coerce him into aligning his will with the moral law—one requirement of virtue. So what role can civil society play in helping an individual become virtuous? Something fairly straightforward is knowledge of the nature of morality. Here, as discussed in Chapter 2, 3, and the first part of 4, civil society can play both a negative and positive role—negative in that it makes possible the development of reason, within both individuals and the community as a whole, and positive through moral education. But, as we know from experience, just because an individual knows the right thing to do does not mean he actually does it. Virtue, therefore, requires more than just knowledge. It also requires the strength to overcome, redirect, or otherwise become apathetic to desires that lead to bad behavior. How an individual is able to develop this strength is the focus of the second part of Chapter 4 and Chapter 5. This chapter serves as an introduction to the project by examining the historical context of Kant’s position, as well as the connection between freedom, virtue, and civil society in his practical philosophy. These issues are foundational in nature and from them it is possible to construct Kant’s account (or, where Kant is unclear, a Kantian account) of how individuals become virtuous in practice. Although it may have been more appropriate to label it as “Introduction” instead of “Chapter 1,” the great fear with writing a substantive introduction is that it gets passed over by readers who “want to get to the good stuff.” But some background in the relevant intellectual history and concepts peculiar to Kant’s philosophical theory is necessary to frame this discussion. KANT’S MORAL PHILOSOPHY: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Kant’s practical philosophy draws from and contributes to the historical discussion in the Western intellectual tradition that can be traced back to the ancient Greeks. Although some scholars criticize Kant for what appears to be insufficient engagement with and understanding of the history of

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philosophy, I believe this criticism is mistaken. Not only does Kant contrast his own methodology with the methodology of the ancients (including Zeno, Epicurus, Plato, and Aristotle), he incorporates the insights of each into his own moral philosophy.2 Kant’s moral philosophy has two components. The first, ‘moral metaphysics,’ examines the nature of morality and moral judgment. The second, ‘ethics,’ examines how this theoretical understanding of morality can be applied in practice to the world around us. It is this second component that generates questions such as: What is human virtue? Can virtue be taught or cultivated? If so, what is the role of the state or community in cultivating virtuous persons? Although discussions of virtue normally are located solely within the realm of moral philosophy, for Kant this discussion of how an individual cultivates a virtuous state of character is the central aim of his practical philosophy, a practical philosophy that is deeply informed by its historical context. Consider, for example, how Kant’s theory contributes to the development of the historical discussion connecting reason, autonomy, and morality. One of the first formal investigations into morality and human virtue can be found in the Platonic dialogues. Plato’s concern was not the underlying nature or metaphysics of morality but rather how morality manifests itself in the world through the actions of virtuous people. One of the central questions in Meno, for example, concerns whether virtue can be taught. How we answer this question depends on whether virtue is knowledge. If virtue is knowledge, then virtue is teachable because all knowledge is teachable. But if this conclusion is correct, then it would imply that we would be able to find teachers of virtue, which Socrates suggests we cannot do (Meno 89d–e). Thus, if we cannot find teachers of virtue, then it seems as if virtue would not be knowledge after all. Beyond the question of whether virtue is teachable is the related question of what constitutes virtuous behavior and its relationship to the human good. At the end of Republic, Book I, Socrates concludes that justice is the virtue of the soul and tries to show that the just life is both happiest and best (R 352d). To arrive at this conclusion he begins by asserting that all things have a function and that there is a “virtue for each thing” that allows that thing to perform its function well (R 353bc). Socrates, therefore, closely connects virtue with the function or nature of the object being studied. What is right or just is associated with acting “according to nature,” while what is unjust is associated with that which “is contrary to nature” (R 444d). Since the soul is a thing, it also has a function, and its virtue serves as a measure of whether it has performed its function well or poorly. For Socrates, “justice is the virtue of soul” (R 353e). Therefore, since justice is the virtue of the soul and things that perform their function well are better than things that perform their function poorly, “the just soul and the just man will have a good life, and the unjust man a bad one” (R 353e). Although the Platonic dialogues address these and other relevant issues related to morality and human virtue, Socrates does not provide systematic

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arguments for any of the positions he leads us to. But Aristotle provides such arguments. He begins the Nicomachean Ethics by examining the actions of individuals—not how they should act, but how they do act.3 Similar to Plato’s Socrates, Aristotle associates what is best, or what one ought to do, with one’s function or natural tendencies. His claim is practical and straightforward: when a rational being acts, he does so because, first, he is trying to realize something that he believes to be good and, second, he believes that the particular action being performed will help him realize that good. Simply put, all individuals are trying to live well or attain what they perceive to be the good life, and each person performs actions that he believes will lead him to this goal. Aristotle’s focus is not on the goods that any particular individual may try to obtain, but on the good or goods that all individuals should try to realize in order to live a good life. To identify these goods, he argues that it is necessary to “grasp the characteristic activity of a human being” or what is consistent with our nature. “For just as the good—the doing well—of a flute-player . . . or any practitioner of a skill, or generally whatever has some characteristic activity or action, is thought to lie in its characteristic activity, so the same would seem to be true of a human being, if indeed he has a characteristic activity” (NE 1097b26–9). Aristotle claims that the characteristic activity of human beings is the use of reason. But it is not simply using reason that is important. Reason must be used well or perfected (Phy 246a12), which Aristotle connects to an individual’s ability to live a good life. Just as we can identify the best flute players by the characteristics associated with playing a flute well (e.g., maintaining a good rhythm), we can identify the best persons as those who acquire the characteristics or virtues associated with living well. Thomas Aquinas took this position one step further, directly connecting reason with the underlying principles of our moral judgments. Aquinas’s position developed from that of Augustine, who associated virtue with nature. Augustine claimed “whatever is lacking for a thing’s natural perfection may be called a vice” (De libero arbitrio 3.14, as provided by Aquinas in ST I–II.71.1). Further, like Plato and Aristotle, Augustine also sought to explain the world by appealing to first principles. But his first principle is God, whom Augustine claims is “the maker of all created things, the light by which all things are known, and the good in reference to all things are to be done” (CoG VII.ix). Whereas Augustine appealed to God as the underlying principle that united all good things, Aquinas sought a more specific explanation for these first principles. Unlike Plato and Aristotle, Aquinas does not infer moral principles from speculative principles, empirical facts, metaphysical claims about human nature, or the function of a human being. Instead, he argues that these first principles, natural precepts such as “do no evil” (ST I–II.58.5), are not derived from anything. They are “appointed by reason, just as a proposition is a work of reason” (ST I–II.94.1). Although these principles are “naturally known [and] indemonstrable” (ST I–II.91.3; see also 58.4), this knowledge is not innate. Rather, it becomes evident to the wise and learned (ST I–II.94.2).

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From these natural commands of reason we can derive other principles, such as those related to virtue and vice. For Aquinas, “because the goodness of a thing consists in being well disposed according to the mode of its nature, . . . virtue implies ‘directly’ a disposition whereby the subject is well disposed according to the mode of its nature” (ST I–II.71.1). Each thing “is inclined naturally” to act in a manner that is “suitable to it according to its form (e.g., fire is inclined to give heat)” (ST I–II.94.3; also see 71.1). For human beings, “since the rational soul is the proper form of man, there is in every man a natural inclination to act according to reason: and this is to act according to virtue” (ST I–II.94.3). Consequently, “whatever is contrary to the order of reason is, properly speaking, contrary to the nature of man, as man . . . [H]uman virtue, which makes a man good, and his work good, is in accord with man’s nature, for as much as it accords with his reason: while vice is contrary to man’s nature, in so far as it is contrary to the order of reason” (71.1). Therefore, to determine what is morally correct (i.e., virtuous) or incorrect (i.e., vicious) for human beings we must examine what is consistent or inconsistent with reason. Although Aquinas and Kant are rarely paired together because of what seem to be vastly different positions on faith and reason, their theories share a number of important similarities. Both closely associate virtue and reason (cf. ST I–II.94.3 and Gr 4:396), both argue that what leads an individual away from virtue is weakness of will and being unable to resist his bodily inclinations (cf. ST I–II.109.3 and CPr 5:37), and both postulate the existence of God as a necessary precondition for a significant component of their theoretical position (cf. ST I–II.109.3 and CPr 5:120ff). What separates Kant’s theoretical position from that of Aquinas is the apparent supremacy of reason over faith in Kant’s philosophy, as well as that Kant provides an explanation for morality that does not depend on the necessary existence of God. For Kant, the only prerequisite of morality is freedom, although religion (in a certain sense) plays a role in a human being’s ability to complete the cultivation of virtue. In other words, where morality is concerned, Kant’s only requirement is that a being must be autonomous or free to determine the principles from which he acts. To attain absolute goodness an individual must act in accord with what morality demands. But this requirement is not specific enough. Kant believes that the maxims of actions are of primary importance, not the results of these actions. For Kant, to determine if an individual is morally praiseworthy, it is necessary to examine the maxim or principle from which he acted. He writes, The moral worth of an action does not lie in the effect expected from it and so too does not lie in any principle of action that needs to borrow its motive from this expected effect. . . . Nothing other than the representation of the law in itself, which can of course occur only in a rational being, insofar as it and not the hoped for effect is the determining ground of the will, can constitute the preeminent good we call moral, which is already present in the person himself who acts in

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue accordance with this representation and need not wait upon the effect of his action. . . . When moral worth is at issue, what counts is not actions, which one sees, but those inner principles of actions that one does not see. (Gr 4:401, 4:408)

These inner principles are often the determining ground of an individual’s actions. In the case of morally praiseworthy actions, these inner principles consist in the recognition and respect for the moral law or the appropriate alignment of an individual’s will. In discussing this alignment of the will, Kant distinguishes between two types of willing, virtuous willing and willing consistently with right. Willing consistently with right simply requires an individual to satisfy “the formal condition of outer freedom” (MM 6:380). Contrast this type of willing with a second type—virtuous willing. Although virtuous willing also requires an individual to satisfy these formal conditions of external freedom, it includes an additional requirement that these formal conditions are satisfied out of respect for the moral law itself. Kant’s distinction between these two types of willing allows him to separate actions that are morally praiseworthy from actions that are only legally praiseworthy. If an individual’s action is consistent with external laws, whether juridical law or the principles establishing the condition of external freedom among individuals, then we would say that he is legally praiseworthy, even if the motivation behind his action was not morally praiseworthy. To grasp more fully the requirements that morality imposes upon our maxims, we should briefly consider Kant’s derivation of moral principles. Like Aristotle, Kant believes we should study moral principles in the same way we study natural principles. He writes, “Ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three sciences: physics, ethics, and logic. This division is perfectly suitable to the nature of the subject and there is no need to improve upon it” (Gr 4:387). Like the study of physics and the natural sciences, “moral philosophy can . . . have its empirical part, since [physics] must determine the laws of nature as an object of experience, and [ethics must determine the] laws of the human being’s will insofar as it is affected by nature” (Gr 4:387–8). This comment does not imply that Kant, like Hume, believed moral distinctions are a type of aesthetic or sentimental judgment. Rather, his point here is to identify and distinguish between two components of moral philosophy: moral metaphysics and ethics. The function of moral metaphysics is to identify and examine the purely rational ground for the fundamental principles of morality, principles that would apply to all rational beings. In contrast, ethics examines the relationship between these principles and the wills of human beings, wills that are affected but not determined by heteronomous inclinations. Ethics examines actions, as well as the underlying principle or principles on which an individual acted to produce a particular action. Logic, the third science, which “can have no empirical part,” discovers the principles of physics and ethics. These

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principles “hold for all thinking and . . . must be demonstrated” (Gr 4:387). Kant claims that knowledge of moral principles can be acquired through a correct application of logical reasoning. He describes logic as “formal philosophy,” arguing that it is concerned “only with the form of the understanding and of reason itself and with the universal rules of thinking in general” (Gr 4:387). In contrast, physics and ethics constitute “material philosophy” and are concerned either with the laws of nature (i.e., physics) or with the laws of freedom (i.e., ethics) (Gr 4:387). The relationship between formal and material philosophy, and specifically between logic and ethics, is similar to the relationship between mathematics and applied physics. Just as we use mathematics as a tool to help explain the operations of the natural world, we can use logic and reason to help explain the operations of the moral world. For Kant, moral obligations take the form of commands or imperatives. All imperatives (i.e., “Do x”) “command either hypothetically or categorically. The former represent the practical necessity of a possible action as a means to achieving something else that one wills. . . . The categorical imperative would be that which represented an action as objectively necessary of itself, without reference to an end” (Gr 4:414). If action x in the command “Do x” should be done as a means “to something else [that is good], the imperative is hypothetical.” But if x is “in itself good . . . then [the imperative] is categorical” (Gr 4:414). It may be tempting to try to simplify this position into a statement like the following: in hypothetical imperatives I ought to do x because x leads to y and y is good; in categorical imperatives I ought to do x because x is good in itself. But the practical problem in trying to understand the nature of a categorical imperative in this way is that it suggests that there is some object or action x that is good in itself. In other words, if I ought to do x because x leads to y and y is good, and if I ought to do y because y leads to z and z is good, then it seems as if, eventually, I will get back to this statement: do p because p is good in itself. Although Kant believes that happiness, which he defines as “complete well-being and satisfaction with one’s condition” (Gr 4:393, cf. Aristotle’s account of eudaimonia) is the end that all rational, sensible beings recognize as good by virtue of natural necessity (Gr 4:415), he claims that happiness is not good in itself. Just as Aristotle connects eudaimonia with the virtue of phronesis, Kant connects happiness with “the precept of prudence” (Gr 4:416). He argues that happiness “produces boldness and thereby often arrogance as well unless a good will is present which corrects the influence of these on the mind and, in doing so, also corrects the whole principle of action and brings it into conformity with universal ends” (Gr 4:393). Thus, we cannot work backward to determine what is good in itself because there is nothing (i.e., no thing) that should be pursued in all circumstances. Kant concludes, therefore, that the categorical imperative “has to do not with the matter of the action and what is to result from it, but with the form and principle from which the action itself follows” (Gr 4:416). It is a principle

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of reason and contains “only the necessity that the maxim be in conformity with this law [of reason], while the law contains no condition to which it would be limited, nothing is left with which the maxim of action is to conform but the universality of a law as such; and this conformity alone is what the imperative properly represents as necessary” (Gr 4:421). Kant claims that proper application of logical principles leads individuals to following the fundamental principle of morality, which Kant identifies as the categorical imperative—“act only in accordance with that maxim through which at the same time you can will that it become a universal law” (Gr 4:421). An individual is able to test maxims against the categorical imperative to determine whether they are consistent with the moral law. This imperative “has to do not with the matter of the action and what is to result from it, but with the form and the principle for which the action itself follows; and the essentially good in the action consists in the disposition, let the result be what it may” (Gr 4:416). “Any maxim that does not so qualify [as being consistent with the categorical imperative] is contrary to morals” (MM 6:226). However, while an individual is able to make this determination, Kant claims that he can never be certain that he has identified the actual motivation underlying one of his actions: It is indeed sometimes the case that with the keenest self-examination we find nothing besides the moral ground of duty that could have been powerful enough to move us to this or that good action . . . but from this it cannot be inferred with certainty that no covert impulse of selflove, under the mere pretense of that idea, was not actually the real determining cause of the will . . . since, when moral worth is at issue, what counts is not actions, which ones sees, but those inner principles that one does not see. (Gr 4:407) A human being cannot see into the depths of his own heart so as to be quite certain, in even a single action, of the purity of his moral intention and the sincerity of his disposition, even when he has no doubt about the legality of the action. Very often he mistakes his own weakness, which counsels him against the venture of a misdeed, for virtue. (MM 6:392) An individual, therefore, is presented with a significant obstacle in the task of fully cultivating virtue: although reason provides a test to determine if a maxim is consistent with the moral law, an individual is unable to determine whether he has acted out of respect for the moral law itself or out of heteronomous impulses or inclination. Without this knowledge, the task of fully cultivating virtue, a task required by morality, appears difficult at best. Even if we set aside this problem of being unable to identify with certainty what motivations underlie our actions, cultivating virtue is still a difficult task. Aristotle presents what is considered the traditional view of moral cultivation (NE 1106a15–1107a10 et al.). He argues that moral cultivation is

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the positive acquisition of appropriate character traits, and acquiring these traits requires education, habituation, and time. But Kant has a different understanding of what moral cultivation entails. For Kant, moral cultivation is a negative process and requires an individual to become apathetic to his passions. His understanding of ‘apathy’ is not the same as our modern use of the word, which often is understood as indifference to a particular matter. Rather, Kant understands “moral apathy” as not being affected by heteronomous impulses that cause one to act contrary to what the moral law demands: Since virtue is based on inner freedom it contains a positive command to a human being, namely to bring all his capacities and inclinations under his (reason’s) control and so to rule over himself, which goes beyond forbidding him to let himself be governed by his feelings and inclinations (the duty of apathy); for unless reason holds the reins of government in its own hands, his feelings and inclinations play the master over him. (MM 6:408) The categorical imperative is the practical tool against which an individual can test his maxims to see whether they conform to the moral law. Through the process of testing maxims against a principle of reason, individuals learn not to act on bodily inclinations. In this way the practical testing procedure connected to the categorical imperative assists an individual not only in becoming apathetic to his own inclinations but also in actively governing his life in a manner consistent with morality. Cultivating virtue is not a passive activity, one that can be done by simply ignoring one’s heteronomous inclinations. Rather, this cultivation requires an individual to actively master his own inclinations, using the categorical imperative as a means of making continual progress towards the complete alignment of his will with the moral law. Although the categorical imperative is useful in determining whether particular maxims are consistent with the moral law, it is difficult to apply because it is an abstract principle. Kant brings this principle closer to our understanding in his political philosophy through the presentation of two additional principles: the universal principle of right and the supreme principle of the doctrine of virtue. The universal principle of right is used to determine if an action is consistent with right. It states, “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). The supreme principle of the doctrine of virtue is used to determine whether an action is consistent with virtue. It states, “Act in accordance with a maxim of ends that it can be a universal law for everyone to have” (MM 6:395). These principles allow us to determine whether an individual is morally praiseworthy. An individual is morally praiseworthy when he acts from a subjective

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principle consistent with universal freedom (i.e., acting in accordance with right) and, at the same time, when he is motivated to act in accordance with this maxim by the objective, universal law (i.e., acting in accordance with virtue). These principles also allow us to understand how the establishment of a moral condition (i.e., a cosmopolitan community) is possible through the establishment of a rightful condition occupied by virtuous individuals (i.e., civil society). For Kant the moral law demands that individuals not only act in accordance with right, but also act from moral motives that consider all individuals, including the actor, as ends and not merely as means: “That [an individual] make[s] it [his] maxim to act rightly is a demand that ethics makes . . . and it is not enough that he is not authorized to use either himself or others merely as means (since he could then still be indifferent to them); it is in itself his duty to make the human being as such his end” (MM 6:231, 6:395). Maxims that fail when tested against the categorical imperative fail because they are contradictory (Gr 4:403 and 4:419). But these maxims are not logically contradictory in that they imply both p and not p simultaneously. If they were logically contradictory, then the moral law would be analytic rather than synthetic. In explaining the contradictory nature of maxims that are inconsistent with the moral law, Kant writes, “Some actions are so constituted that their maxim cannot even be thought without contradiction. . . . In the case of others that inner impossibility is indeed not to be found, but it is still impossible to will that their maxim be raised to the universality of a law of nature because such a will would contradict itself” (Gr 4:424). From this passage it seems that Kant thought that these maxims were contradictory in at least two senses: either they generate a “contradiction in conception” or a “contradiction of the will.” In other words, it may not be possible to conceive of the action that comes as a result of universalizing that maxim, or the result of universalizing the maxim somehow is self-defeating.4 FREEDOM, MORALITY, AND KANT’S CONCEPTION OF VIRTUE But why should an individual conform his conduct in this way? Or, put differently, why must an individual be moral?5 Kant’s manner of addressing this question begins with his grounding of human freedom in our capacity to represent the moral law. For Kant, our understanding of the moral law is a “fact of reason because one cannot reason it out from antecedent data of reason” (CPr 5:31). That is, it is the starting point upon which to base all other moral reasoning. As the starting point it “forces itself upon us of itself as a synthetic a priori proposition that is not based on any intuition, either pure or empirical” (CPr 5:31). This requirement to adopt maxims consistent with the moral law is understood by even the most “common human

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reason” (Gr 4:394). Further, it is by conforming our maxims in this way that we become autonomous. For Kant autonomy of the will is the supreme principle of morality (Gr 4:440). Autonomy is connected directly to reason because what separates rational beings from non-rational beings is the ability to formulate the principles on which they act. This type of freedom is realized only when the will (1) is free from external forces and (2) legislates to itself the law on which it acts (i.e., is not anarchic). One of these external forces is desire, and the liberation of the will from desire occurs only when the will acts on laws that it legislates for itself. When acting according to laws it has set for itself, the will is practical reason—it is autonomous. Conversely, heteronomy of the will, which is “the source of all spurious principles of morality,” occurs when the will “does not give itself the law; instead the object, by means of its relation to the will, gives the law to it” (Gr 4:441). In other words, the will is heteronomous when external forces (e.g., desire) determine it. Therefore, Kant argues, “the ground of [moral] obligation . . . must not be sought in the nature of the human being or in the circumstances of the world in which is his placed, but a priori simply in concepts of pure reason” (Gr 4:389; also see Gr 4:411). He considers morality in regard to an autonomous will alone because something whose laws are determined for it (e.g., an animal) cannot adopt maxims, act otherwise, or be morally praiseworthy or blameworthy (MM 6:223). Kant’s understanding of morality may appear to be circular at first, given that moral worth comes from possessing both reason and autonomy but reason and autonomy are both defined in moral terms. Autonomy of the will is connected to acting from maxims consistent with practical reason (i.e., moral maxims), but moral maxims appear to be defined as those maxims that are consistent with the promotion of autonomy. Simply put: to be moral, one must be autonomous; to be autonomous, one must be moral. We can escape this circularity by defining more precisely what Kant means by ‘freedom,’ ‘free will,’ or ‘autonomy,’ a term that he uses with some ambiguity throughout his writing. He identifies two technical meanings of ‘free will’ or ‘freedom’—one he associates with Willkür and another with Wille.6 One of the best ways to distinguish between Wille and Willkür is through a comparison with negative and positive freedom.7 Kant associates Willkür with negative freedom, and an individual possesses negative freedom when he is not prohibited from acting in some way by external barriers. In contrast, an individual possesses positive freedom when he acts to realize some goal that he has set for himself. For Kant this distinction between negative and positive freedom focuses on human choice. He argues that human choice can “be affected but not determined by impulses. . . . Freedom of choice [Willkür] is this independence from being determined by sensible impulses; this is the negative concept of freedom. The positive concept of freedom is that of the ability of pure reason to be of itself practical” (MM 6:213–4).

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In the case of negative freedom, an individual’s actions are affected but not determined by inclination (i.e., are free from being determined). Positive freedom is when Wille takes practical reason as the ground determining choice (i.e., free to determine). The will’s negative freedom allows for the possibility of positive freedom. For Kant, both Willkür and Wille are connected with desire (MM 6:213). Desire is Willkür when it is considered only as the capacity for choice, common to both men and animals. Desire is Wille insofar as we consider only its “ground determining choice to action,” and not to the actions themselves or the objects of choices (e.g., pleasure). Wille is affected but not determined by sensuous impulses and, therefore, not determined necessarily by the moral law either. Reason is Wille when it serves as the determining ground of desire (i.e., free choice of a holy will). When inclinations determine desire, it is animal choice. The human will is a combination of the two. It is affected by sensuous impulses but not determined by them.8 By focusing on this relationship between a ‘free will’ and the willing of maxims that are consistent with the moral law, we can resolve the potential circularity involving morality and autonomy. A ‘free will’ has the power to determine if it adopts moral, immoral, or non-moral maxims, whereas reason is displayed when an individual freely chooses to adopt moral maxims. A being with moral worth, therefore, would be free to adopt immoral maxims, but doing so would be contrary to reason because the maxims could not be followed universally without annulling themselves. While Aquinas turns to religion to explain the fact that we are obligated to pursue moral principles, Kant claims that this obligation is generated by our own capacities as practical reasoners. The primary aim of Kant’s moral philosophy is to examine the underlying structure of morality. In contrast, the primary aim of his practical philosophy, in which ethics and politics play central roles, is to show how individuals can realize these theoretical ideals. Kant closely associates morality with freedom, but, as human beings, we are not entirely free because often we are turned away from morality by our natural inclination towards happiness (e.g., CPr 5:37). That desire can ground the actions of human beings is what separates human nature from divine nature and explains why human beings need to acquire virtue in the first place. The holy will is good by nature, whereas a human will merely has the potential to become good. Here, we can identify three different stages of moral development based on the internal relationship between reason and inclination within each stage. The first is uncultivated virtue, which is possessed by beings who, while having the potential always to act in accordance with the moral law, give in to desire and act according to heteronomous impulses. The second is virtue, which is possessed by beings who, while tempted by desire to act in a manner contrary to morals, always act on maxims that are consistent with the moral law. The third is divine nature, which is possessed by beings who are not capable of acting on a maxim that conflicts with the moral law (CPr 5:32).

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To understand the relationship between these different natures, as well as to understand what Kant means by ‘virtue,’ it is helpful to draw a comparison between Kant’s discussion and a similar discussion of character states in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle identifies four states of character that involve reason: virtue, continence, incontinence, and vice. On virtue and vice, Aristotle writes, “Virtue, then, is (a) a state that decides, (b) [consisting] in a mean, (c) the mean relative to us, (d) which is defined by reference to reason, (e) i.e., to the reason by reference to which the intelligent person would define it. It is a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency” (NE 1106b40–1107a5). Continence and incontinence, while falling between vice and virtue, are each a “different kind” of state (NE 1145b1–2). “The continent person seems to be the same as one who abides by his rational calculation; and the incontinent person seems to be the same as the one who abandons it. The incontinent person knows that his actions are base, but does them because of his feelings, while the continent person knows that his appetites are base, but because of reason does not follow them” (NE 1145b10–15). Although the continent man may seem closer to acquiring virtue than the incontinent because he is able to refrain from giving in to his appetites, part of him still desires to take part in these lower pleasures. The problem for the continent man is not that he acts badly but that he wants to act badly, and so it is difficult to imagine that the continent man could become virtuous just by repeated performance of good actions. It seems like his problem is of a different kind, but let us set this problem aside for a moment and return to it in later chapters when we discuss how an individual comes to possess a virtuous character. What separates Aristotle’s virtuous man from his continent man is that these appetites or inclinations do not move the completely virtuous individual. What separates the continent man from the incontinent man is his actions—the continent man acts appropriately, the incontinent man acts badly, but both have the same desire to satisfy their inclinations. Similar to Aristotle’s virtuous man, Kant’s holy will is never inclined to act in a manner that is inconsistent with the moral law. Although he claims that human beings must make eternal progress towards this goal (CPr 5:122), it seems that holiness is, at best, a theoretical ideal for human beings. The practical ideal, or what Kant identifies as the highest good for individual human beings, is the conjunction of happiness (Glückseligkeit) and virtue (Tugend).9 For Kant the wills of human beings occupy a unique position between animal wills and holy wills. Unlike the animal will, the human will is not determined entirely by bodily desires; unlike a holy will or being of pure reason, it is not entirely unmoved by such desires (CPr 5:32; MM 6:383). Kant writes, The human being is a being with needs, insofar as he belongs to the sensible world, and to this extent his reason certainly has a commission

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue from the side of his sensibility which it cannot refuse, to attend to its interest and to form practical maxims with a view to happiness in this life. . . . But he is nevertheless not so completely an animal as to be indifferent to all that reason says on its own and to use reason merely as a tool for the satisfaction of his needs as a sensible being. (CPr 5:61)

Human beings, therefore, “possess a capacity for choice that can indeed be affected but not determined by [sensual] impulses” (MM 6:213). Although human beings desire happiness, and are naturally inclined to pursue it, it does not determine our actions. That is, we have the power to act in ways that are inconsistent with happiness. Similar to Aristotle’s continent man, a virtuous person often desires to satisfy his natural inclinations, but he possesses the strength (i.e., the virtue) not to be moved by these inclinations and to act in accordance with reason. It is not easy to act in ways that force us to set aside our own happiness for the sake of morality, yet Kant believes that it is within our power to do so (unlike, for example, being happy all the time): “To satisfy the categorical command of morality is within everyone’s power at all times; to satisfy the empirically conditioned precept of happiness is but seldom possible” (CPr 5:37). Kant claims that the true vocation of reason is not in helping us to become happy, but rather to make us worthy of being happy and to produce a will that is good. In other words, while the autonomous individual possesses the self-legislative capacity to adopt maxims of action, morality requires that individual to use his capacity to adopt maxims that can be universalized. Having worked out an answer to the question concerning the nature of morality in his earlier works, Kant in his later works focuses on the question of how an individual can cultivate virtue. What makes providing a clear account of Kant’s understanding of virtue tricky is that at times he talks about virtue generally (Tugend), and at other times he appears to distinguish between different kinds of virtue. For example, at 6:47 of his Religion essay Kant distinguishes between an individual who has the “virtue of legality” (Tugend der Legalität) and an individual who is “virtuous by the intelligible character” (tugendhaft nach dem intelligiblen Charakter). Kant associates Tugend der Legalität with the Latin phrase virtus phaenomenon (i.e., strength of appearance) and tugendhaft nach dem intelligiblen Charakter with the Latin phrase virtus noumenon (i.e., strength of mind, or something that is otherwise connected with nonsensory experience). Throughout his writing Kant uses phaenomenon and noumenon to refer, respectively, to what can and cannot be known to human beings. So what we have here in Religion is not quite two types of virtue, but rather two ways of knowing or accessing virtue: one way that can be known by human beings, or the Tugend der Legalität, and the other way that is unknown to human beings and accessible only by the intelligible character (i.e., God).

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Here, Kant’s account of virtue is similar to his account of objects that can be known both phenomenally and noumenally. What I know about the apple on my desk is gained through my sensory experience and how that object affects me—its color, shape, size, weight, taste, and so forth. But being affected by these qualities of the apple is not the same as having access to the nature of the apple itself. The same appears to be true for virtue. Human beings cannot help but perceive virtue as Tugend der Legalität, but that is merely how we perceive it, which is not the same as how it would be perceived by a being of pure reason. This distinction is most apparent when looking at Kant’s account of how virtue is acquired. Tugend der Legalität is acquired “little by little, and to some it means a long habituation . . . in virtue of which a human being, through gradual reformation of conduct and consolidation of his maxims, passes from a propensity to vice to its opposite” (Rel 6:47). In contrast, the condition of being tugendhaft nach dem intelligiblen Charakter “cannot be effected through gradual reform but must rather be effected through a revolution in the disposition of the human being (a transition to the maxim of holiness of disposition). And so a ‘new man’ can come about through a kind of rebirth, as it were a new creation . . . and a change of heart” (Rel 6:47). But, again, Tugend der Legalität and tugendhaft nach dem intelligiblen Charakter are not different types of virtue; rather they are different ways that we can approach or understand what it means to be virtuous.10 The difficulty with Kant’s discussion of virtue in Religion is reconciling it with his general understanding of virtue. Again, generally speaking, virtue is a type of strength possessed by individuals who are able to resist their natural inclination towards happiness and act according to maxims consistent with the moral law out of duty. An individual who lacks natural inclinations towards happiness (e.g., the holy will) would be incapable of virtue. What about an individual who is habituated in such a way so that his desires are aligned with the moral law? Can that individual be virtuous even if he does not have to exercise strength to do the right thing? How do we make sense of the person who is tugendhaft nach dem intelligiblen Charakter by this definition, given that, presumably, this character is acquired not little by little but by a revolution or sudden change of heart instead? What sort of strength does this person possess? In examining how an individual cultivates virtue in practice, this book aims to address these questions regarding the nature of Kantian virtue as well. Since Kant does not provide a clear account of virtue in his writings, I suggest that one way to piece together such an account is by looking at how he believes an individual becomes virtuous. Examining that process will give us insight into some of these murky issues surrounding Kant’s account of virtue. The function of ethics, the empirical component of moral philosophy, is to identify the conditions (if any) in which non-self-contradictory maxims remain non-contradictory when willed and acted upon. Identifying these

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conditions requires not only careful observation and the application of sound judgment, but also an understanding of the human condition gained through education, experience, and interaction with other individuals in civil society. This investigation into the nature of Kantian virtue and the process by which an individual is able to become virtuous begins by examining Kant’s account of civil society and the role of civil society in creating the external conditions that make an individual’s cultivation of virtue possible. What is clear from Kant’s discussion is that in order for an individual to make moral progress from the stage where he gives in to his inclinations (i.e., non-virtuous) to one where he has apathy towards them (i.e., virtuous), a progression dictated by the moral law, moral cultivation is required.11 Kant connects moral cultivation with moral education, and Kant’s concern with most contemporary approaches to moral education is that they are positive in nature, directing the student to what he ought to do, often providing external motivation in the form of rewards for good behavior and punishments for bad behavior. The result is that individuals do not develop the appropriate moral disposition and act correctly primarily because of these external motivations. When these external motivations are not significant enough to overwhelm an individual’s natural inclination towards happiness, then that inclination will provide the motivation for action. The result is not only that an individual will almost always fail to act in a morally praiseworthy manner, but also that he often will fail to perform good actions, even when he is aware of what the good action would be.12 But Kant claims that the solution to this problem is a system of moral education (broadly speaking) that is negative, not positive. The remainder of this book aims to explicate Kant’s incomplete account of this system, filling in some missing pieces along the way to show how individuals are able to become virtuous in practice.

NOTES 1. Kant’s extensive commentary on the importance of the practical application of his moral theory continued all the way through his final project, canonically referred to as the Opus postumum, a work that Kant called his “masterpiece” and the keystone of his entire philosophical system. He writes frequently about the process for how a person becomes morally good or bad in practice. For example, although it is necessary for an individual to receive “supernatural cooperation” in order to become virtuous (Rel 6:44) (a point that is the focus of the last chapter), “it is not even in the divine power to make a morally good man (to make him morally good). He must do it himself” (OP 21:83; see also Förster, 2000: 130–4). Eckart Förster’s conclusion is that Kant believed God’s intervention is necessary to bring about the ethical commonwealth (2000: 134). In drawing this conclusion, Förster points to relevant selections from both the Opus postumum and Religion: for example, “if the strictest obedience to the moral laws is to be thought of as the cause of the ushering in of the highest good (as end), then, since human capacity does not suffice to effect

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2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

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happiness in the world proportionate to the worthiness to be happy, an omnipotent moral being must be assumed as ruler of the world, under whose care this would come about, i.e., morality leads inevitably to religion” (Rel 6:7n). One aim of the Opus postumum is to explain in what capacity morality leads inevitably to religion and how God is able to intervene in the establishment of the ethical commonwealth. The role of God and religion in an individual’s cultivation of virtue will be discussed later. Although the writing in the Opus postumum can be dismissed as unpublished notes, Förster, Michael Friedman, and others argue that we must take these writings seriously. Friedman, for example, concludes, “[I]t is no longer possible to take seriously the idea that Kant’s late thought can be dismissed as a product of senility or hopeless confusion, or as a futile attempt to appropriate the emerging reaction to Kantian philosophy within the idealist tradition. On the contrary, Kant’s work in the Opus postumum must rather be seen as a natural organic development within Kantian philosophy itself, responding to problems with which Kant had been occupied throughout his long philosophical career” (2003: 215). Even if we do not find Kant’s own understanding of ancient philosophy to be fully adequate, I agree with Allen Wood when he writes that “grasping it obviously adds a dimension to our understanding of [Kant’s] ethical theory, and places in a new light a number of Kantian arguments and doctrines that might otherwise surprise and puzzle us” (Wood, 2005: 26). See NE 1093b–1094a, especially: “Every skill and every inquiry, and similarly every action and rational choice, is thought to aim at some good” (NE 1094a1). Christine Korsgaard argues that Kant understood immoral maxims as contradictory in three distinct ways—logical, teleological, and practical. Logical contradictions occur when, “if the maxim were universalized, the action or policy that it proposes would be inconceivable.” Teleological contradictions occur when “the maxim is inconsistent with a systematic harmony of purposes, or with the principle that any organ, instinct, or action-type has a natural purpose for which it must be the one best suited.” Practical contradictions occur when the “maxim would be self-defeating if universalized” (1996: 78; see also 101). Kant never provides an argument for why individuals should act morally, nor does he see why such an argument is needed. In considering this question, “Why should I be moral?” Peter Singer argues that this question is different in kind from other questions in moral philosophy that seek ethical reasons for performing or abstaining from particular actions. Singer rightly claims that Kant would reject the discussion of this question for the same reason that we might reject the question, ‘Why should I be rational?’ He argues that we cannot use reason to tell us why we should use reason. Using reason to address this question “is logically improper because in answering it we would be giving reasons for being rational. Thus we would presuppose rationality in our attempt to justify rationality. . . . [Rationality, therefore,] needs no [and can have no rational] justification because it cannot be questioned intelligibly unless it is already presupposed” (Singer, 1993: 316). Given the deep connection in Kant’s philosophy between morality and reason, the question ‘Why should I be moral?’ ends up being the same type of question as ‘Why should I be rational?’ In English translations, a common method of distinguishing between these two terms is by translating Wille as ‘will’ and Willkür as ‘power of choice.’ This distinction is helpful but does not fully capture the difference between these two concepts or how they relate to each other. In differentiating between these two terms, I follow Lewis White Beck, Jeffrie Murphy, John Martin Gillroy, and Henry Allison. Beck writes that a “free, i.e., spontaneous, Willkür, when it is good, is determined by a free, i.e., autonomous

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue Wille, or pure practical reason, which gives it a law. It can obey this law without jeopardy to its freedom. Indeed, it gains in freedom by now being an autonomous as well as spontaneous will” (1996: 198–9). In such a model, Wille is the component of the will that legislates, and Willkür is the component of the will that executes the law in action. Beck argues that for an individual’s ‘power of choice’ to be “spontaneous” it must also be “autonomous,” and, therefore, even an evil ‘power of choice’ must be autonomous in the sense that the person “who does moral evil freely incorporates an incentive into his maxim and makes it (what it is not in itself) a rule in accordance with which he will conduct himself” (1996: 200n73). Even the evil person’s Wille gives his Willkür a law that it “would obey . . . if the Willkür fully realized the potentialities of its purity” (1996: 199). Put differently, it is because the evil person’s Willkür is impure that he does evil, not because his Wille fails to legislate according to moral laws. 8. This position is consistent with each of the distinct positions outlined by Murphy, Gillroy, and Allison in that it does not require me to choose between them or present an alternative. Murphy argues that, for Kant, the value of a rational being is due to his possession of a free Willkür (i.e., negative freedom). Thus, its value is derived not simply from the capacity for free response, “but from his self-legislative capacity to choose any course of action—his freedom to choose his course of action (be it moral, immoral, or non-moral) rather than having it forced upon him by sensuous inclination” (1994: 63–4). Put differently, freedom reflects the fact that the will is practical reason in the sense that it chooses what reason dictates rather than what desire or inclination dictate. For Gillroy, “Negative freedom is the capacity of Wille to operate without overwhelming pressure from the effects of inclination and desire on Willkür. Positive freedom is the full internal operations of Wille and its external manifestations through Willkür. Freedom as an a priori idea of reason is dependent on the will being negatively free before it can legislate as Wille, choose in line with the moral imperative as Willkür, and exercise its full range of internal and external positive freedom” (1992: 494). Allison provides what is, perhaps, the most straightforward summary of the relationship between these two concepts. He writes, “[A]ll formulations [of the categorical imperative] agree in equating Wille, or will in its legislative function, with practical reason. Considered as such, Wille is the source of the laws that confront the human Willkür as imperatives. Although Kant is silent on this point, it seems clear that this must include both the categorical and hypothetical imperatives or, more generally, moral and prudential principles. Both are higher-order rules governing our selection of maxims and both are products of practical reason. Both, therefore, must be attributed to Wille. Correlatively, it is Willkür, or will in its executive function, that can be said to act, that is, to decide, choose, and even wish under the governance of Wille” (1990: 130). 9. Kant distinguishes between the highest good for individuals and the highest good for possible worlds. The highest good for individuals is the conjunction of virtue and happiness, whereas the highest good of any possible world is happiness in exact proportion to morality (CPr 5:110). My discussion of the highest good in this text will focus solely on the highest good for individuals. 10. It is also possible to draw other parallels that may be helpful in explaining the differences between these two ways to approach virtue. Consider Kant’s distinction in his moral and political writing between a person who performs actions that are legally praiseworthy and the person who performs actions that are morally praiseworthy. If an individual’s action is consistent with external laws, then he and his action are legally praiseworthy, even if the

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motivation behind this action is not morally praiseworthy. For example, an individual donates money to an orphanage for the sole purpose of telling others how generous he has been, thereby increasing his esteem in the community. Although we would say that his action, the donation of money to individuals in need, was praiseworthy (legally), we would also say that the motivation behind this action was not praiseworthy (morally). This latter distinction is one of virtue, not right, and Kant examines the reasons behind one’s actions to determine whether an individual is morally praiseworthy. 11. Although Kant commentators frequently substitute the term ‘good will’ for ‘virtue’ when talking about moral cultivation (i.e., “cultivating a good will”), strictly speaking a good will is not something that can be cultivated. When Kant speaks of the good will, he is referring to the principles that an individual adopts, not the condition of the individual adopting them. He recognizes that an individual can possess an understanding of what good maxims would be but lack the virtue to act on those maxims. He writes, “[W]eakness in the use of one’s understanding coupled with the strength of one’s emotions is only a lack of virtue [nur eine Untugend, which is probably better translated as ‘only a vice’] and, as it were, something childish and weak, which can indeed coexist with the best will” (MM 6:408). While an individual cannot cultivate a good will, he is able to cultivate a good temperament (i.e., the sentimental condition that may influence the maxims upon which he acts), a good character (i.e., the disposition to act freely from good principles), and, ultimately, virtue (i.e., the strength of character to act from maxims in conformity with the moral law out of respect for the law itself, even when acting in this manner is contrary to one’s inclination towards happiness). For a further discussion of Kant’s account of virtue and an individual’s obligation to be virtuous, see Guyer (2010). 12. Recent research on this topic conducted by Eric Schwitzgebel has shown that although possessing significant theoretical knowledge of moral principles (e.g., ethicists) predicts having strong and unpopular opinions on some moral issues, it does not predict exhibiting behavior consistent with those opinions at a higher rate than the average non-ethicist or non-philosopher (Schwitzgebel and Rust, 2011). Schwitzgebel provides further evidence suggesting that individuals who have greater knowledge of moral principles are not more likely to act correctly: texts in moral philosophy likely to be of interest only to professional ethicists more frequently “go missing” from university libraries than books in other fields (Schwitzgebel, 2009); and, when considering moral cases, moral philosophers appear to suffer from the same cognitive biases as the rest of the population (Schwitzgebel and Cushman, 2012). Even worse, over the past sixty years an ever-increasing number of psychological studies have shown that the appropriateness of an individual’s actions is more closely correlated with morally irrelevant situational factors than with observable or known character traits. In other words, what these studies suggest is that whether a subject at the moral crossroads makes a good decision appears to be based on chance. For example, individuals were fourteen times more likely to help others in need if immediately preceding this opportunity to help they benefited from a bit of good fortune (e.g., finding a trivially small amount of money) (Isen and Levin, 1972). Other seemingly irrelevant situational factors that appear to affect altruistic behavior include the number of bystanders (Latane and Rodin, 1969), the level of background noise in the room (Mathews and Canon, 1975), room temperature (Schneider, Lesko, and Garrett, 1980), and the presence or absence of a painting depicting “watchful eyes” (Bateson, Nettle, and Roberts, 2006). Additional

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue research suggests that people make moral judgments not by weighing costs and benefits or by engaging in some other sort of rational thought process, but based on quick, intuitive judgments. It appears that rational reflection about what was the morally appropriate thing to do takes place often after the action in question has been performed (Haidt, 2001). Many psychologists and moral philosophers have reasoned from this data that human beings are not rational decision makers with robust characters whose personalities predict their behavior (Ross and Nisbett, 2011; Merritt, 2000; Doris, 2005; Harman, 2003). They argue that even if traditional theories are normatively adequate and uncover the right kinds of ideals, they are descriptively deficient, and this deficiency cannot be ignored. Moral theories have empirical commitments insofar as they make claims about how human beings make decisions and what psychological structures explain their behavior. The empirical commitments of traditional, mainstream moral psychological theories predict that people will exhibit a high degree of intentional, character-bound behavior that will not vary across situations unless the situations themselves vary in morally relevant ways. In short, the problem with most theories of moral personhood is that their reasonableness appears to depend on empirical claims that are inconsistent with the realworld conclusions of our psychological investigations. The challenge for any account of moral cultivation is how to get around these empirical problems. The easy solution is to use this evidence in our favor. We could argue that the reason why seemingly irrelevant situational factors seem to motivate contemporary individuals to either make or not make good moral decisions is that the current scheme of moral education in our society is defective. Given how far our current scheme differs from the type of system Kant outlined, he would likely agree with this conclusion.

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Freedom and Civil Society

Kant’s account of morality focuses on a person’s capacity to be the agent and owner of his own actions, not merely a conduit for social and psychological forces or influences over which he has little or no control. As a result, his practical philosophy focuses primarily on the nature of individual freedom, the external conditions that make its development possible, and its connection to morality. In Groundwork and the second Critique, Kant’s discussion of this connection between morality and freedom centers on autonomy of the will. He identifies autonomy as the supreme principle of morality and defines it as “choos[ing] only in such a way that the maxims of your choice are also included as universal law in the same volition” (Gr 4:440). Because morality is connected with autonomy, and autonomy is connected with an individual’s ability to participate in the process of rational deliberation, it appears as if an individual alone should be the sole determining factor in whether he becomes virtuous. But that is not the case. Minimally, certain preconditions must hold for an individual to have the possibility of becoming virtuous. Individuals must be free, for example, to adopt autonomous maxims for action and not merely act based on heteronomous impulses (e.g., desire). Although this particular precondition is theoretical and Kant resolves it by postulating the existence of human freedom, which “flows from the practically necessary condition of a duration benefitting the complete fulfillment of the moral law” (CPr 5:132), other preconditions are practical and relate specifically to the actual external conditions in which individuals live. One such precondition is liberty. It is not possible for a human being to possess internal freedom (i.e., autonomy) unless he also possesses external freedom or security of his person (i.e., liberty). This relationship between liberty and autonomy produces a few interesting, and perhaps unexpected, consequences. One such consequence is the relationship between virtue and civil society. Given that autonomy is a precondition of morality, liberty is a precondition for autonomy in human beings, and living in civil society is necessary for individuals to secure liberty as it provides protection from libertyinfringing acts performed by other people, living in civil society appears to be required in practice for individuals to be virtuous. As a result, Kant

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claims that individuals are under a moral duty to enter civil society (MM 6:255–6). But it turns out that living in civil society does more than simply provide negative assistance in helping secure the external preconditions that make autonomy possible. Civil society also plays a positive role in this process of moral development by helping an individual refine his talents and reason completely, a necessary component of virtue and one that Kant believes cannot be acquired in isolation. This chapter examines both the negative and positive role played by civil society in an individual’s cultivation of virtue. THE CHARACTER OF CIVIL SOCIETY While Kant’s moral philosophy focuses on the relationship between morality and freedom (understood in terms of autonomy), his practical philosophy focuses on the relationship between freedom (understood in terms of both autonomy and liberty), civil society, and the state. Here, Kant’s position is influenced significantly by the writings of both Hobbes and Rousseau.1 Hobbes is one of the first thinkers to imagine what man would be like in the “natural condition,” having removed the constraints imposed by governments. For Hobbes, the relative equality of all individuals, the natural mistrust individuals have for one another, and a scarcity of desired resources creates a situation of all against all where each individual lives in constant fear of those around him (L xiii.1–9). But even without a scarcity of resources, war would arise without the presence of government because no one can know for certain that someone else is not planning to harm him.2 Without government, the only law governing this natural condition is the law of nature, forbidding each individual “to do which is destructive to his life” (L xiv.3) and granting each a right to defend himself however “he shall think it necessary” (xiv.5). Leaving this natural condition requires each individual to give up his right to execute the law of nature—that is, relinquish the natural, external freedom (i.e., liberty) he possesses in the state of nature. In return for relinquishing his liberty, an individual gains a degree of security that was unavailable in the natural condition. For Hobbes, leaving the state of nature and entering civil society is an act of prudence, so no one would simply renounce this right to execute the law of nature (i.e., give up the right to defend himself) without assurances that he will not be attacked. To do so would not be prudent. Instead of renouncing this right, each individual enters into an agreement by which he transfers this right to a third party (L xiv.8–9). Remaining outside the original contract, this third party (i.e., Hobbes’s sovereign) possesses the power and authority to enforce this agreement and allows each contractor to know what it is not possible to know in the state of nature: others will not attack him because they will be punished if they do, and so he does not need to defend himself preemptively from their attacks. In short, when individuals leave the state

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of nature and enter civil society, they trade liberty for security. For Hobbes, therefore, the motivation to leave the state of nature stems from self-interest, as an individual believes it is in his best interest to make this exchange. Contrary to Hobbes, Rousseau rejects the claim that the calculation of one’s own interests can serve as the foundation for establishing civil society. He argues that self-interested actions corrupt society by creating a tension between private interest and public good (DA 98). For Rousseau, Hobbes went wrong because he misunderstood the fundamental nature of human beings. Instead of working backward to determine the characteristics of human beings before the creation of governments, Rousseau argues that Hobbes’s natural man is nothing other than civilized man, complete with all of his vices, removed from the constraints imposed by government (GM 159). By analytically removing these characteristics (reason, language, imagination, etc.), Rousseau claims to get back to the natural man. He concludes that humans are docile in the state of nature, possess a fellow feeling towards other individuals, and use violence against one another only in situations of self-defense or extreme hunger (DI 135–6). Each individual living in this condition is naturally free because “he is the sole judge of the means proper to preserve himself” (SC 42) and is able to pursue those things that satisfy his desires. These desires, however, are very basic: food, water, avoiding pain, and so forth (SW 168). Contrary to Hobbes’s depiction of the natural man, Rousseau’s natural man does not possess long-range interests or desires or fear about what has not been experienced directly. These fears are acquired via social convention only after joining civil society (LF 279). One such fear is the fear of death, something that can be experienced only indirectly by individuals. Therefore, although an individual will seek to avoid the pains connected to hunger or inadequate shelter, Rousseau argues, contrary to Hobbes, that the constant fear of death cannot provide the motivation to leave the state of nature. For Rousseau, the motivation to leave the state of nature comes from encountering a scarcity of desired resources. As resources become scarcer, invention and cooperation are required for man to satisfy even elementary desires. Individuals, therefore, are compelled by necessity to work together to overcome these common obstacles (SC 49). To work together successfully each individual must relinquish his natural freedom to determine what is in his best interest—his “particular will”—to the community as a whole (SC 50). That is, individuals must relinquish not only their external freedom (i.e., liberty) but also, and more importantly, their internal freedom (i.e., autonomy)—a distinction that Hobbes believed was meaningless (L xxi.2). Although each individual gives up his natural liberty and autonomy upon entering civil society, he receives freedom in return, connected to his voice in the general will. Rousseau identifies this freedom as “conventional freedom” and asserts that each member of the community possesses an equivalent share of conventional freedom because no member has more or less voice in forming the general will (DI 180).

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Conventional freedom has two components: (1) civil freedom, or the liberty to act in a manner consistent with the laws of the state (SC 54); and (2) “moral freedom,” or what Rousseau cryptically identifies as that “which alone makes man truly the master of himself; for the impulsion of mere appetite is slavery, and the obedience to the law one has prescribed to oneself is freedom” (SC 54). For Rousseau, obedience to the law one has prescribed to himself is obedience to the voice of the general will.3 Thus, any member of civil society who decides to follow his particular will and not adhere to the voice of the general will alienates himself from what makes him free as a member of civil society.4 If an individual refuses to obey the general will, Rousseau asserts that he “shall be constrained to do so by the entire body” (SC 50).5 By coercing an individual to obey the voice of the general will, that individual is compelled to act in a manner consistent with his freedom—or, in Rousseau’s words, “[it] means nothing other than that he shall be forced to be free” (SC 50).6 Freedom is central to Kant’s discussion of the transition from the state of nature to civil society as well.7 Kant asserts that freedom, defined as “independence from being constrained by another’s choice,” is an individual’s only innate and natural right, “belonging to every man by virtue of his humanity” (MM 6:237). Although each individual possesses a right to freedom in the state of nature, this right cannot be secured because individuals are not naturally inclined to recognize and respect the rights of others (MM 6:256). Instead of people possessing a natural compassion or ambivalence towards other individuals as Rousseau suggests, Kant believes that there exists “a certain malevolence rooted in human nature” and that individuals are naturally inclined to view others as potential threats to their survival (PP 8:375n). Like Hobbes, Kant claims, “A condition of peace among men living near one another is not a state of nature . . . rather [a state of nature is] a condition of war, that is, it involves the constant threat of an outbreak of hostilities even if this does not always occur” (PP 8:348–9). The state of nature, therefore, is a non-rightful condition because “the relation of human beings among one another . . . [does not contain] the conditions under which everyone is able to enjoy his rights” (MM 6:306). Even if Kant were in agreement with Rousseau concerning the behavior of individuals in the state of nature, it would remain impossible for an individual to enjoy his rights in this pre-civil condition because there is no legitimate mechanism by which fairly common disputes can be resolved.8 Consider the following example: you exercise your right to freedom in the state of nature by picking a bushel of apples, but I come and take those apples from you, claiming that you picked them from the tree that I planted and cultivated. How do we resolve this dispute? In situations like this one involving apparent conflicts of rights in the state of nature, there is no binding manner by which to resolve disputes except through the use of force. It is for this reason that Kant refers to law in the state of nature as “private law” (MM 6:242), but this private law amounts to nothing more than the

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principle of might makes right—a principle that Kant argues is contrary to the dignity of man (Gr 4:435). This use of coercive force is incompatible with man’s dignity because it compels an individual either to submit to the will of another and lose his freedom or not submit and risk losing his life. Kant argues that the first step to resolving this problem of justly securing the necessary preconditions required for freedom is for an individual to leave the state of nature and enter (or establish a condition) in which his rights are recognized and respected.9 Like Hobbes and Rousseau, Kant identifies this rightful condition as civil society. The defining feature of Kant’s civil society is that it contains distributive justice, meaning that those things which belong to an individual are secured by public laws enforced by a magistrate, court, or sovereign, in accordance with just principles (MM 6:302, 305–6, 312). Distributive justice concerns property rights, understood in legal and not moral terms. Although individuals possess an innate and natural right to freedom, freedom is connected directly to property rights, which would be distributed justly in civil society. For Kant, all rights are property rights because one who is autonomous owns and imputes to himself his own actions (Gr 4:433). This position that all rights are property rights can be traced back to Locke’s claim that rights arise from the transformation of a man into a person (STG §25–51). The actions of natural man are owned by him in his capacity of being a person, where representing oneself is a necessary, but insufficient, condition for being a person. In this way, Locke introduces “reflexivity” into Hobbes’s theory of natural right, thereby disagreeing with Cromwell, Rousseau, and others who claim that property rights stem from agreement among individuals, thereby making all rights social. In the second Critique, Kant develops Locke’s discussion of a person by drawing a distinction between man as a being in the sensible world living according to the laws of nature, and man as a being in the intelligible world living according to the laws of freedom (i.e., autonomously) (CPr 5:48, 5:65). This distinction is explained further in The Metaphysics of Morals. Here, Kant identifies a person as “a subject whose actions can be imputed to him. Moral personality is therefore nothing other than the freedom of a rational being under moral laws” (MM 6:223). Imputability is the precondition of moral personality for Kant. An agent who is capable of choice is one who has elevated himself above the linkages of causal determinacy. His actions are his own to determine. He has autonomy and, so, is free to act on a law of reason that he legislates to himself (MM 6:223). If it is the case that an individual is capable of morality and is able to be obligated, then it must be the case that autonomy is a property of his will. That his will can be autonomous makes possible this capacity for morality and his ability to become virtuous. For Kant’s practical philosophy to be successful, he must show that his theoretical principle (i.e., the categorical imperative) is real and that individuals are motivated by it—otherwise, morality remains simply a “chimerical idea without any truth” (Gr 4:445).10 Kant, therefore, needs a transition

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue

from his metaphysics of morals to his critique of practical reason, showing how a law of pure reason is able to apply in practice to the will. This transition centers on the idea of the will, but here Kant is not referring to the good will. Rather, his focus is on an individual’s free will and the concept of human freedom in general. For Kant, a free will achieves both the negative and positive conception of freedom: not only is it not determined by any external influences (i.e., it possesses negative freedom), but also it is the determining ground of its own actions (i.e., it possesses positive freedom) (Gr 4:447). In theory, Kant directs his moral philosophy towards individuals and the steps any particular individual must take in order to cultivate virtue. Practically speaking, however, an individual’s progress towards virtue requires him to enter civil society because moral principles must be applied to the world of appearances. That is, these principles must be applied to other autonomous wills insofar as they are recognized as autonomous and are able to be obligated under the social contract. Claiming that something external to me is mine and that everyone else is obligated to refrain from using it “involves acknowledging that I in turn am under obligation to every other to refrain from using what is externally his; for the obligation here arises from a universal rule having to do with external rightful relations” (MM 6:255). When I claim that something is mine in the state of nature (whether it is my body or a bushel of apples), doing so recognizes that other individuals would have rights as well because they are also able to own and impute to themselves their actions.11 Therefore, civil society is a condition of distributive justice in which the rights of all individual members are recognized and respected as a result of each individual desiring to claim just ownership over that which he believes to be his.12 But there appear to be circumstances under which it is impossible to act from maxims consistent with autonomy, circumstances that an individual can find himself in when he is living outside of civil society.13 Consider the situation for an individual living in Hobbes’s state of nature, a war of all against all where life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (L xiii:9). If an individual constantly fears that he is going to suffer a sudden and violent death, then this fear will affect all of the decisions he makes. Under these circumstances it is impossible for this person to act autonomously, because all of his actions are motivated by this particular fear and not by other maxims chosen by reason. Although it is theoretically possible for an individual to secure his liberty by living in a place that both contains more than enough readily available food, clean water, and natural shelters and lacks other persons or beasts that may be trying to kill him or that otherwise jeopardize his liberty, these places do not exist in reality—life was not this good even for Rousseau’s South Seas Islanders. For an individual to secure his liberty it is not enough merely to leave the state of nature and enter just any social condition. He must enter a condition that possesses specific features. Here, Kant’s discussion focuses on the distinction between civil society and the civil state. Looking back, the state

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of nature was a condition “where there is no court that could judge [a dispute] with rightful force” (PP 8:346). Civil society, which Kant contrasted with the state of nature, is “a rightful condition, under an authority giving laws publicly” (MM 6:255). The civil state, which Kant separates from civil society, is the set of public institutions that seek to uphold and maintain civil society. “A state of nature is not opposed to a social but to a civil condition, since there can certainly be society in a state of nature, but no civil society (which secures what is mine or yours by public laws)” (MM: 6:242). Kant claims, therefore, that a strong, executive authority is necessary to enforce the laws, punish those who break the laws, and deter would-be offenders from violating the rights of other individuals (TP 8:306). Since “no one is bound to refrain from encroaching on what another possesses if the other gives him no equal assurance that he will observe the same restraint towards him” (MM 6:307), the existence of a strong, executive authority provides individuals with the assurance necessary for believing that their external freedom is secure. Once an individual believes that his liberty is secure, he is able to focus on overcoming the barriers to internal freedom or autonomy. Possessing liberty and autonomy, therefore, requires an individual to live in a civil society that recognizes three authorities: “the sovereign authority (sovereignty) in the person of the legislator; the executive authority in the person of the ruler (in conformity to law); and the judicial authority (to award to each what is his in accordance with the law) in the person of the judge [i.e., magistrate]” (MM 6:313). These authorities must not merely exist but must “coordinate with one another as so many moral persons, that is, each complements the others to complete the constitution of the state” (MM 6:316).14 Although an individual’s liberty must be limited in civil society when his actions are constrained by the laws, these limitations are necessary to eliminate the constant fear of death or slavery that an individual would experience outside of civil society or in an otherwise non-rightful condition. Reflecting this point, Kant suggests that securing external freedom is no longer a concern for an individual who has entered civil society, altering his definition of liberty for members of civil society to “the warrant to obey no external laws than those to which I could have given my consent” (PP 8:350n, my emphasis). This position is Kant’s middle ground between the positions presented by Hobbes and Rousseau.15 Although Kant’s moral and political theory differs significantly from these other two positions, it is undeniable that Kant found certain aspects of each appealing. Nowhere is the connection more evident than in his discussion of civil society and how an individual must join this condition to secure his freedom. However, Kant’s solution to the problem of promoting one’s autonomy while securing one’s liberty is uniquely his. Hobbes’s solution was to deny the existence of autonomy, whereas Rousseau’s solution was to deny the existence of liberty for those living in civil society. Believing that Hobbes was correct in his assessment of man’s natural

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inclinations but that Rousseau was correct in identifying internal freedom as what separates civilized man from the irrational animals, Kant proposed a solution to this problem. By leaving the state of nature and entering a civil society maintained by a strong, sovereign power and governed in accordance with republican principles, individuals are able to make manifest their autonomy through the political realization of their liberty, thereby satisfying their natural inclinations as animal beings and moral obligations as rational beings. While civil society plays a negative role in helping an individual secure the external conditions necessary for the possibility of autonomous action, it also plays a positive role in helping individuals align their wills with the moral law, a task necessary for virtue and one Kant claims cannot be completed alone.16 For an individual to align his will with the moral law, he must possess a developed faculty of reason. But Kant claims that it is impossible for an individual to develop this faculty on his own. Human reason “does not operate on instinct, but requires trial, practice and instruction in order gradually to progress from one stage to another” (UH 8:19). Obtaining this type of training is dependent not only on the immediate assistance of one’s fellow community members, but also on the evolution of reason that is passed down from generation to generation. “[In civil society] all man’s talents are gradually developed, his taste is cultured, and through progressive enlightenment he begins to establish a way of thinking that can in time transform the crude natural capacity for moral discrimination into definite practical principles and thus transform a pathologically enforced agreement into a society and, finally, into a moral whole” (UH 8:21). Ultimately, for Kant the creation of a cosmopolitan community is necessary for the full realization of his ethical philosophy, and the first step toward realizing this community is the establishment of civil society. He concludes, “The greatest problem for the human species, whose solution nature compels it to seek, is to achieve a universal civil society administered in accord with right. . . . [S]ince it is only in such a society that nature’s highest objective, namely, the highest attainable development of mankind’s capacities, can be achieved, nature also wills that mankind should itself accomplish this, as well as all the other goals that constitute mankind’s vocation” (UH 8:22). ACTIONS AND PRINCIPLES An individual whose actions are his own to determine is capable of being morally praiseworthy, assuming that he adopts the correct principles or maxims. But how do we know when an individual has adopted these correct maxims, since it seems that we have access only to an individual’s actions and not the principles he adopts? Kant addresses this question in Groundwork: From love of humankind I am willing to admit that most of our actions are conformity with duty; but if we look more closely at the intentions

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and aspirations in them we everywhere come upon the dear self, which is always turning up; and it is on this that their purpose is based, not on the strict command of duty, which would often require self-denial. One need not be an enemy of virtue but only a cool observer . . . to become doubtful at certain moments (especially with increasing years, when experience has made one’s judgment partially more shrewd and partly more acute in observation) whether any true virtue is to be found in the world. (Gr 4:407) So what we are unable to do is to work backward from good actions and determine that they were performed from the appropriate principles, because it could appear as if someone was acting for the right reasons, but, in reality, his motivation to “do the right thing” was simply self-interest. Since good actions cannot point us towards good principles, are actions entirely useless when examining the praiseworthiness of an individual? What about bad actions? It seems as if the same principle would be come into play. If there is no necessary connection between principles and actions, how can we identify someone as morally blameworthy if he acts poorly? Could it be the case that the bad action came from a good principle, and the actor was simply unlucky in that things in the world (which, to some extent, are out of his control) did not go the way he wanted? Although this position may seem reasonable, Kant argues against it at 4:397 of Groundwork. Here, at beginning of his examination of actions done from duty, Kant writes, “I here pass over all actions that are already recognized as contrary to duty, even though they may be useful for this or that purpose; for in their case the question whether they might have been done from duty never arises, since they even conflict with it” (Gr 4:397). Taken by itself, there is nothing terribly bizarre about this statement: if our goal is to identify the characteristics of actions done from duty, since acting in this manner is morally praiseworthy, then we can start by setting aside acts that are obviously bad because a person cannot be morally praiseworthy when he, for example, murders innocent children. But making sense of this passage appears to present a significant challenge from the standpoint of moral responsibility when considered within the framework of Kant’s moral theory, a moral theory that not only places moral worth on maxims and not actions, but also suggests that we cannot work backward and deduce the underlying maxims of actions from the actions themselves. In this passage Kant aims to “explicate the concept of a will that is to be esteemed in itself and that is good apart from any further purpose” (Gr 4:397). In order to realize this goal, “we shall set before ourselves the concept of duty, which contains that of a good will though under certain subjective limitations and hindrances . . . bring [the good will] out by contrast and make it shine forth all the more brightly” (Gr 4:397). And, as Kant notes only a few pages before, “A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes . . . but only because of its volition. . . . Even if, by a special disfavor of fortune . . . this will

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should wholly lack the capacity to carry out its purpose . . . then, like a jewel, it would still shine by itself, as something that has its full worth in itself” (Gr 4:393). From these passages, it appears as if Kant’s position regarding the good will is that what matters is the maxims from which it acts and the motivation for adopting those principles of action, not the actions themselves. For an individual to be morally responsible for his actions he must be able to be praised or blamed based on the maxim that he has adopted or acted from.17 But in both Groundwork (as seen in the previously quoted passage from 4:407) and The Metaphysics of Morals Kant writes that we can never be certain that we have identified correctly the maxim on which we have acted: A human being cannot see into the depths of his own heart so as to be quite certain, in even a single action, of the purity of his moral intention and the sincerity of his disposition, even when he has no doubt about the legality of the action. Very often he mistakes his own weakness, which counsels him against the venture of a misdeed, for virtue. (MM 6:392) One aim of Kant’s practical philosophy is to bring morality to the world of appearances, but if we cannot be certain whether we have correctly identified the maxim behind one of our own actions, then it appears impossible to be certain whether we have identified correctly the maxim behind the actions of someone else. This conclusion is consistent with Kant’s text, especially the passages in which he asserts that it is only God who is able to judge whether an individual has acted from a moral maxim (Rel 6:144; MM 6:438–9). It is for this reason that, as far as moral judgments are concerned, Kant takes the biblical phrase “judge not lest ye be judged” to heart, commenting that we should always assume that others have acted from moral maxims, even if it appears as if they have not done so (LE 27:418). How, then, should we understand the passage at Gr 4:397, which states that certain actions can be contrary to duty, seemingly irrespective of the maxims upon which they are based? To understand this passage we must look more carefully at Gr 4:397 in the context of Kant’s ethics and politics. He writes in that passage that we can “pass over all actions that are already recognized as contrary to duty.” But this comment should be considered in light of one of Kant’s earlier comments in the first Critique: “The very existence of reason depends upon this freedom [of persons], which has no dictatorial authority, but whose claim is never anything more than the agreement of free citizens, each of whom must be able to express his reservations, indeed even his veto, without holding back” (CPu A738–9/B766–7). Here, the character of moral discourse, implied in the formulation and application of moral maxims, becomes explicit through a body politic as predicated upon the principles of

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free exchange, communication, and interaction of a historical community. Taken in context with this passage from the first Critique, we can supplement the previous statement from Gr 4:397 with a clarifying remark: we can “pass over all actions that are already recognized by the community as being wrong or contrary to duty.” Put differently, “Good ends are those which are necessarily approved by everyone and which can be simultaneous ends of everyone” (UP 9:450). Here Kant’s reasoning parallels Aristotle’s. Although Aristotle asserts that “the spheres of what is noble and just . . . admit of a good deal of diversity and variation” (NE 1094b16), there are certain actions that are always brutish, no matter the time, circumstances, or culture. Aristotle provides some examples: “[T]he female human who . . . rips open pregnant women and devours their babies; or the pleasures of some of the savages . . . who are alleged to eat raw flesh, or human flesh, or to lend their children to one another to feast upon; or the story of Phalaris” (NE 1148b20–3). Even though there may be many just actions, and although it is possible for an action to be just in one society but unjust in another, there are some actions that are always wrong because they are inconsistent with reason. Put differently, actions that cannot be performed by a reasonable person who is looking to establish or maintain a civil society. Like Aristotle, Kant is not asserting that what matters is what community members feel is right or wrong, opinions that can be affected by influential members of their community, personal interest, and other arbitrary factors. Rather, he is making a claim about the nature of actions that rational individuals could and would recognize as being contrary to their freedom. Kant’s “Universal Principle of Right” (UPR) is the formal version of this claim. Therefore, Kant’s comment at CPu A738–9/B766–7 should be understood to mean that an individual who vetoes a particular action, declaring it to be inconsistent with the UPR, does so on the grounds that the maxim of that action, the formulation of which subjects it to the evaluation and criticism of others, violates his freedom by preventing him from acting in a manner that in no way inhibits the freedom of any person, including himself. Kant’s reference at Gr 4:397 to an “action . . . already recognized as contrary to duty” (i.e., a bad act) is one that violates the UPR. An action violates the UPR when a free community member vetoes it during the process of deliberation outlined at CPu A738–9/B766–7. Simply put, we determine whether an action is inconsistent with the UPR through deliberation, communication, evaluation, and adjudication, actions that presuppose a society predicated upon the free exchange and communication of its members. Kant’s assertion at Gr 4:397 that we can pass over these bad acts highlights his distinction between good acts and morally praiseworthy individuals. An action is good as long as it does not violate the UPR, and we determine whether an action violates the UPR through the deliberation of free individuals. Although morality is associated with the principles on

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which an individual acts, not whether an action conforms with certain external rules, an individual who violates these rules (i.e., the UPR) acts in a manner that is inconsistent with freedom (i.e., contrary to reason). The only actions that could be generated by an individual who is acting from duty are those that are consistent with the UPR, and whether an individual is morally praiseworthy will depend on the motivation for those acts (i.e., whether they were done from duty). Given that it is not possible to act contrary to the UPR from duty, those actions can be set aside, thereby resolving the potential problem raised by Kant in the passage at Gr 4:397. For Kant, acting appropriately is a necessary but insufficient condition for being morally praiseworthy, where what constitutes an appropriate action is determined through discourse between free and equal members of a community. Because the focus of the passage at Gr 4:397 is on trying to determine whether an action has been done from duty (i.e., whether the person performing the action is virtuous), bad acts can be set aside because they lack a necessary component of actions done from duty (i.e., goodness). THE REASONABLENESS OF KANT’S CIVIL SOCIETY Kant’s discussion of the relationship between bad acts and acts from duty raises important practical questions. One of the most frequent questions I have received when discussing Kant’s account of civil society and its role in his moral and political philosophy is whether his account of this condition is reasonable. Could Kantian civil societies exist in reality? Empirical observation provides us (and would have provided Kant) with numerous examples of an individual’s freedom either not being secured by public laws or being hindered by those laws, as well as just laws protecting freedom being selectively enforced or not enforced at all. While miscarriages of justice will occur in a Kantian civil society as a result of human error or particular corrupt individuals, the existence of such imperfections does not undermine the civility of the condition.18 What undermines the civility of the condition is entrenched injustice. In this way civil society can be compared to a game or team sport. Opposing individuals or teams begin the game with the same objective and an understanding that each will play by a set of pre-established rules. Even though both teams know the rules that govern the game, referees are hired to enforce these rules and to penalize a player or team that violates them. The primary function of the referees is not to prevent overt cheating (although they serve this function as well), but to resolve disputes over whether minor infractions have occurred. If a foul goes unnoticed unintentionally by a referee, the integrity of the game is not undermined. But if it became clear that the referees were ignoring fouls committed by a particular player or team intentionally, then the integrity of the game would be undermined. Similarly, if mistakes are made by law enforcement in their pursuit of criminals or by the courts in their distribution of appropriate punishments,

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the civility of that particular community or society is not undermined. The exception is if these mistakes are not mistakes at all but rather indicative of injustice that is inherent in the society’s governmental system. This observation helps draw our attention to a first potential problem with Kant’s account of civil society. We could imagine or point out realworld examples where a society possessed a legal structure that generally enforces its own laws (including property rules) and has the requisite three governmental functions (i.e., legislation, adjudication, and execution) but lacks distributive justice. For example, consider the situation for black Americans (as compared to white Americans) living in the United States before the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Although both black and white Americans should have enjoyed equal rights and opportunities under the Constitution, segregationist policies prevented a reasonable degree of equality from being achieved. Consider the doctrine of “separate but equal,” upheld by the United States Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and then reversed in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). From 1896 until 1954, no black Americans could have consented to policies that treated them like second-class citizens. But what compelled many black Americans to accept these policies was the same principle as what would compel me to hand my money over to a mugger on the street. Just because I do hand my money over, and just because many black Americans did accept and make the best out of segregationist policies does not mean that these policies are justified.19 What allowed these policies to be maintained was force, and maintaining unjust policies via the use of force is a characteristic of the state of nature, not civil society. Most of the nations that Kant was familiar with excluded large portions of the population (women, men not owning land, etc.) from being able to realize an equal degree of citizenship under the law. For many individuals living during the 1600s and 1700s, such qualifications for citizenship were not new or out of the ordinary. Even with this apparent deficiency, Kant believed generally that the many contemporary European states were civil societies (MM 6:350). Therefore, while a requirement of civil society is that the freedom of each member be recognized and respected, it appears Kant believed that this goal could be met without the robust protections seen in many contemporary nations. Instead of focusing on who counts as a citizen, another option is to ask who is affected by a particular set of laws, regardless of whether all of these individuals meet the requirements for citizenship. Generally speaking, the laws of a nation apply to everyone residing in, visiting, or otherwise inside of the territorial boundary of that nation. That territorial boundaries may be useful in helping to determine who is a member of a particular society (based on whether they are subject to a particular set of laws) does not provide an argument against the claim that these boundaries are artificial. That is, there may be no convincing reason for why the freedom of two individuals, separated by only a few miles of land, is limited to significantly different degrees. Regarding Kant’s account of civil society, what territorial

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boundaries do is provide an empirically recognized standard for where a particular set of laws has jurisdiction. Although there may be theoretical problems with this standard, it is useful for determining whether a particular society, as defined by who is under the jurisdiction of its laws, is civil. To see why this standard is appropriate for Kant’s account of civil society, consider the previous example involving white and black Americans living in the United States before the civil rights movement. Although black Americans living during segregation were considered full citizens under the Constitution, they were treated as second-class citizens in reality. This example is particularly useful because it can be contrasted with the situation faced by black Americans living either during Reconstruction or as slaves in the American South before the Civil War. Black Americans living during either of these periods were not recognized as equal citizens under the Constitution, even though they were under the jurisdiction of the laws of the United States. In other words, the individuals were being compelled to follow a particular set of laws even though those laws failed both to recognize and to respect their freedom. Given that what separates civil society from the state of nature is this condition of coexistent freedom and equal respect under the law, it seems that black Americans living during this period were living in a state of nature condition. But it does not make sense to say that black Americans were living in a state of nature condition but white Americans were living in civil society. The laws applied to these groups of individuals equally (de jure, although perhaps not de facto), and individual members of both groups interacted with each other on a daily basis. Using territorial boundaries and the corresponding jurisdiction of a particular set of laws allows us to realize a more accurate determination of who should be taken into account when considering whether a particular society is civil. Further, using territorial boundaries and the recognized judicial extent of a set of laws allows us to avoid a potential problem that would arise if the only criterion for determining who should be included in a particular society was who is affected by a particular set of laws. We can point to numerous examples where the laws of a particular nation affect the lives of individuals living outside that nation directly. Consider a nation that passes a law requiring smokestacks to be of a certain height to reduce pollution in the immediate vicinity of the factory. The effect of this law is not a reduction in the net amount of pollution but rather that the same amount of pollution is spread over a wider area. We could imagine (or point to) examples where this pollution is spread across the border of one state and into a neighboring state. The citizens of the neighboring state had no say in whether the smokestack law passed, yet they are directly affected by the passage of this law even though they are under no obligation to obey the laws of the neighboring state. In this example, although these individuals were affected by the laws of the neighboring state, there are two distinct societies corresponding with the two distinct sets of laws and the jurisdiction of those laws as defined by the territorial boundaries.

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The point here is not that other accounts of civil society, as well as alternative accounts of where particular societies begin and end, are implausible, but rather that Kant’s account must be modified to avoid some of these problems. For Kant, different societies could be distinguished from one another by the presence of a different language or different religious beliefs (PP 8:367). But one noticeable change that has occurred in the world over the past 200 years is that nations have become more pluralistic, both in the languages spoken and the religious beliefs held by individuals living within the same community. Defining a society as a group of individuals living together with a shared language or religion, living under a particular set of laws inside of an identifiable geographic boundary, is problematic because it defines a community in terms that are much too narrow. The principles underlying Kant’s account of civil society define a society not just as the individuals who are affected by a particular set of laws, but also as those individuals who are obligated to follow a particular set of laws and who will be punished justly if they fail to do so. These principles are best satisfied by examining geographic boundaries because, practically speaking, the recognized jurisdiction of a particular set of laws coincides with the seemingly artificial geographic boundary of the nation. Therefore, when looking at whether these nations should be considered civil societies, Kant would have considered whether distributive justice was achieved among the people who were included in the association and whether the freedom of those individuals was protected. That the freedom of women, ethnic minorities, the poor, or other groups was not protected was not relevant for determining whether these societies were civil because these individuals were not counted as part of the civil association. Although using generally recognized geographic boundaries of nations solves a number of problems when attempting to apply Kant’s account of civil society to a world composed of more pluralistic nations, this criterion helps bring to our attention additional, significant problems present in his account. But sometimes fulfilling this obligation requires an individual to use reciprocal, coercive force against individuals or existing institutions that sought to maintain a state of nature condition. Practically speaking, however, individuals are born into preexisting societies and, generally speaking, societies cannot be created out of nothing because geographic boundaries have already been established and recognized. If it is the case that an individual’s freedom is not recognized and respected by the existing institutions that should serve to help maintain a civil condition, then his options to secure his freedom are either severely limited or nonexistent. In these circumstances, Kant identifies two options available to an individual to encourage institutional change: using coercive or non-coercive means. Kant argues that the use of non-coercive means (speaking out against injustices, either verbally or through the press) to encourage this type of change is legitimate in all circumstances. But for change to occur through this process, a society must possess safeguards protecting freedom of speech

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and freedom of the press, and Kant was a vehement supporter of these freedoms (E 8:36–8). What Kant ignores, however, is the practical problem encountered by individuals living in a society either where these freedoms are not protected or where state institutions take active steps to eliminate such freedoms and to punish those who speak out in favor of institutional change (and we will take a closer look at this issue in the next chapter). Societies where the freedom of particular individuals, or groups of individuals, was not recognized or respected are often societies that severely restrict an oppressed individual’s ability to speak out against institutional change. So is Kant’s account of civil society plausible? It could be argued that what makes a philosophical position plausible is how well it corresponds to what we observe in the world around us. That is, whether it is accurate descriptively. Using this framework would allow us to determine if Kant’s account of civil society is plausible based on whether it correctly differentiates civil from non-civil societies in real-world situations. It could also be argued that what makes a position plausible is whether it provides a consistent normative position. That is, whether it provides consistent standards for how we should judge something, regardless of how we go about judging that same thing at present. Kant’s account of civil society being plausible implies that we should view most contemporary nations as states of nature because the freedom of all individuals who are directly affected by the law of that geographic territory is not recognized and respected. Such a determination would make no judgment about the characteristics of the people, the power of the governmental institutions, or the nation’s standing in the world. Rather, it would note that the individuals living inside of a particular set of geographic boundaries are unable to secure their freedom. Instead of arguing that plausibility ought to be based on descriptivity or normativity alone, it seems that the better conclusion is that a plausible theory should be both descriptively accurate and normatively consistent. Kant’s account of civil society appears to meet both requirements. By applying the principles underlying his position, we are able to distinguish generally between current nations that we would consider to be civil societies and those we would not. In situations where Kant’s account leads us to a conclusion that is contrary to our normal characterization of a particular nation, we are provided with an opportunity to question our current judgment and determine whether our initial categorization was based on a consistent application of principles or something else. To conclude that Kant’s account is plausible is not to conclude that it is the only plausible account of civil society, nor is it to conclude that it is the correct account. Rather, it is to conclude that his position is reasonable and that it should be taken seriously when investigating these issues.20 The project of Kant’s practical philosophy is to show how his moral theory can be applied in practice. In doing so, it aims to address questions such as: What is the relationship between an individual’s ability to become

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virtuous and the structure of the society in which he lives? What political structure is necessary to make the cultivation of virtue possible? Or, if no particular structure is necessary, are there political structures that inhibit an individual’s ability to become virtuous? And, most important, how does an individual become virtuous? As a result, Kant’s practical philosophy includes more than just the examination of the consequences of actualizing maxims that are not self-contradictory (i.e., ethics). Practical philosophy also includes the examination of the external conditions in which non-self-contradictory maxims can be actualized (i.e., the structure of civil society), as well as what must be done to bring about these external conditions (i.e., politics). Going forward, this discussion will focus on virtue and its acquisition. For an individual to become virtuous Kant argues that (1) certain practical prerequisites relevant to the condition in which an individual lives must be met, (2) he must develop and refine his rational capacity, and then (3) he must receive some sort of ‘supernatural cooperation.’ But our immediate challenge is to examine how Kant’s project even gets off the ground to begin with. While Kant argues that autonomy is required for virtue, he also argues that individuals can be autonomous only after they are able to secure liberty, which, in practice, can occur only for individuals who have joined civil society. The problem, however, is that the institution of civil society is coercive in nature, and so it is necessary to show how coercion and autonomy can be reconciled in a meaningful way. Resolving this problem is the focus of the next chapter.

NOTES 1. Although Hobbes’s positive influence on Kant is rarely acknowledged in the secondary literature, Rousseau’s influence is recognized fairly frequently. Some commentators have gone so far as to assert either that Kant’s positions have been taken from Rousseau entirely or that Kant’s positions should be seen merely as friendly amendments to those of Rousseau. John Rawls, for example, claims that Kant’s understanding of the good will, a topic central to Kant’s moral theory, is not original to Kant but was one of many ideas he borrowed from Rousseau (Rawls, 2000: 160). According to Rawls, other borrowed ideas include “the idea of the moral law as a law we give to ourselves as free and equal persons” (2000: 204) and the idea that vices are “grafted onto [a individual’s] predisposition to do good by the historical development of culture” (293). Frederick Beiser echoes Rawls, asserting that Rousseau’s idea of the general will “inspired [Kant] with ideas that anticipate much of [Kant’s] later moral philosophy” (1992: 30) and that “Rousseau’s contract theory alone . . . seem[s] to express Kant’s new discovery of the autonomy of the will as the source of morality” (33). While Rousseau’s influence on Kant was significant, the assertion that many of Kant’s positions are borrowed from or merely friendly amendments to those of Rousseau appears to be a significant overstatement. On this point I agree with Manfred Kuehn. He writes, “Rousseau may have been the first who ‘discovered’ under the variety of

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue human appearances ‘the deeply hidden nature of humanity and the hidden law whose observance may justify destiny,’ but Kant did not think that Rousseau described this hidden nature correctly” (2001: 132, citing Kant Ak 20:58n). If Kant believed Rousseau’s understanding of human nature was fundamentally misguided, then it would not be reasonable to view Kant’s position on the origins of civil society, a position in which human nature plays a significant role, as a friendly amendment to the position presented by Rousseau. Ultimately, I claim that by understanding Kant’s moral and political philosophy as being situated between the theories presented by Hobbes and Rousseau, both borrowing from and rejecting aspects of each, it is possible to construct a more accurate account of his position. 2. Michael Oakeshott argues that in the state of nature, even without a scarcity of desired resources, war would arise without the presence of government because no one can know for certain that someone else is not planning to harm him (1935; 1975: 34ff). He asserts that the claim that man is a selfish being is the conclusion of Hobbes’s argument and not a foundational premise. For Oakeshott, Hobbes’s main premise is solipsistic: we cannot be certain of anything beyond our own knowledge (1935: 275). He argues that Hobbes operates from the perspective “that each man is unavoidably shut up in the world of his own sensations, and there is no more meaning in speaking of him as ‘selfish’ than there is in speaking of anything else that is monadically conceived as selfish—the universe as a whole, or an electron” (1935: 275). Therefore, Oakeshott concludes, “Hobbes’s theory of law and government has, indeed, no ethical foundation, in the ordinary sense; but it is conceived throughout in purely naturalistic terms, and begins in the theory of language. The creation of language and the establishment of the state are, for Hobbes, inventions of the same character and serve the same end. The necessity of an absolute sovereign in the community arises not from any such subsidiary observation as the misery of mankind without it, but is a necessity exactly paralleled by the necessity of fixing the meanings of names if language is to serve any useful purpose at all. Hobbes’s belief in the necessity of a single decisive authority does not arise from his political fears, and he does not think of his authority as a practical expedient; it is conceived and presented by Hobbes as a logical necessity” (1935: 276). Although it is not obvious that Oakeshott is correct to conclude that the miserable condition of humankind in the state of nature plays no role in Hobbes’s account of the original contract, I think his account of Hobbes’s argument points to something important. In particular, Hobbes gives at least two arguments to ground his theory of law and government. There is a danger in failing to recognize that Hobbes has an argument for entering into the social contract that does not rely on the empirical assumption that life in the state of nature is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”: such a failing may lead thinkers to reject his broader framework simply by rejecting his arguably pessimistic empirical assumption about life absent the state. In fact, one might argue that Rousseau makes precisely this mistake. By recognizing that Hobbes has other arguments that block this empirical challenge, we avoid facile responses to Hobbes’s theory. 3. Joseph Reisert argues that individuals “must cease to see [themselves] as independent men who define [themselves] by [their] differences from (and superiority to) others and instead see [themselves] as citizens and co-legislators working together to forge a life in common under laws that we as citizens will as our general will” (2003: 125). An individual viewing himself in this way instantiates the civic virtue demanded by the social-contract state. Contrasting the social-contract state with bourgeois society, Reisert claims that the

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social-contract state “rests on a more secure foundation” mainly because individuals within a bourgeois society find amour propre and natural self-love to be conflicting forces (2003: 126). He continues, “In the social-contract state, however, every citizen obeys the law for the same reason—everyone sees that the social order established by the laws conduces to the general welfare of the community, which each one cherishes as the foundation of his own happiness. In the hearts of the citizens, moreover, amour-propre reinforces the dictates of self-love: taking pride in their city, the citizens ground their self-esteem on their membership in and dedication to their community, the flourishing of which they also see as constitutive of their own well-being” (2003: 126). He links this discussion to Rousseau’s example of the Swiss peasants, writing, “In the idyllic community of Swiss peasants, whom Rousseau pictures as gathered around an oak tree to settle their affairs amicably, we see the image of a community in which the citizens do not feel the demands of membership to be anything other than a constitutive element of their own well being” (2003: 126). Although Rousseau recognizes that this sort of identification of an individual’s will with the general will is possible in smaller communities, he is less optimistic that it remains possible in larger, more modern societies. As we will later see, Kant, despite being influenced in important respects by Rousseau, has significant problems with his account of the consistency between freedom and government. 4. Frederick Neuhouser asserts that Rousseau has two distinct conceptions of political freedom, one “objective” and one “subjective” (1993: 364). This distinction yields two separate notions about “how citizens whose actions are constrained by the general will are in fact subject only to their own wills and therefore are free in their obedience to the general will” (1993: 363). From here, Neuhouser questions, “In what sense do the dictates of the general will constitute one’s own will as an individual, even when one fails to recognize them as such?” He answers, “Rousseau’s answer consists in the following thought: By restructuring human dependence such that subjection to the will of others ceases to be a virtually inevitable consequence of dependence, the general will brings about the objective social conditions that must be present if individuals are to be able to avoid subjection to a foreign will. The general will, therefore, can be said to be the individual’s own true will, even when she does not consciously recognize it as such, because the general will wills the conditions necessary in order for her freedom (along with the freedom of all others) to be realized. Identifying the general will with the true will of each individual is based on the idea that the individual will, apart from whatever particular ends it may embrace, necessarily, and most fundamentally, wills its own freedom. But in willing a certain end (its freedom) it must also will the conditions that make that end attainable. A will that chooses to act in ways that are inconsistent with what is required for the realization of its own freedom cannot be regarded as ‘doing its own will’ and therefore cannot be considered truly free. Such a will—one which in effect wills its own subjection—is a self-negating, therefore contradictory, will” (1993: 391–2). Neuhouser argues that Rousseau conceived of ‘general will’ in two separate ways: first, as an integral part of the freedom of individual citizens, and second, as a precondition for that freedom. But if we suppose that Rousseau is correct to think that the general will constitutes a precondition of an individual’s freedom in civil society, then it seems to make sense to think that an agent is unfree when he fails to follow the laws that result from it. As we will see, Kant rejects the notion that democratically authored laws provide the only source of principles for an autonomous will. Whereas Kant agrees with Rousseau that subservience to inclination is not freedom, he argues that moral

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue principles, generated by practical reason, provide conditions for actualizing freedom. These principles may well be sufficient for realizing freedom if we did not live in a world with others, but since we do not live in such a world, civil society plays an important role for Kant as well in serving as a precondition for our autonomy. Unlike Rousseau, Kant makes space for the concern that the results of democratic procedures in the actual world may turn out inconsistent with the freedom of all. For Kant, if the precepts of the general will could not be hypothetically agreed to, then there is a sense in which they restrict rather than enhance freedom. This departure from Rousseau allows Kant to accommodate our considered judgment that sometimes the results of democratic processes restrict individual freedom in a way that is not offset by either (1) the consideration that the individuals who disagree with the laws that result from such processes were at the same time the authors of those laws (in some weak sense) or (2) the fact that individuals must be subject to some laws in order to be considered free at all. 5. Underlying an individual’s motivation to relinquish his natural liberty is the understanding that the obstacles he and his fellow man encounter could be overcome best through cooperation, and such cooperation is possible only by relinquishing one’s particular will to the will of the community. It is worth noting that an individual can understand the notion of ‘relinquishing one’s particular will’ in at least two ways. First, your ‘particular will’ might mean those aspects of your will that are peculiar to you: your particular desires that cannot be assumed to be shared with others. To relinquish your particular will in this sense means that you cannot pose an objection to laws based on those desires peculiar to you. That is, you must follow legitimate laws even if they do not allow you to do everything you might want to do. On the other hand, your ‘particular will’ might also include any private judgments concerning the legitimacy of the law, even those that might be made on the basis of ‘public reasons.’ To relinquish your particular will in this sense would mean to stick to the procedural outcomes of what the general will decides, come what may. Kant would accept that an individual’s particular will in the former sense must be relinquished in civil society. Less clear is whether or not Kant also thinks that an individual must relinquish his particular will in the more general sense, where to do so would mean that one would have to relinquish both his private judgments about the law from private grounds and those judgments that are arrived at using public grounds, which are those that remain after abstracting away from one’s peculiar constitution. For a discussion that suggests that Kant would agree with the claim that civil society requires that one relinquish one’s particular will in the former sense, see MM 6:269 and CPJ 5:293–5. 6. This concept of being “forced to be free” deserves further attention. It seems paradoxical. How can an individual be forced to be free? Straightforwardly, it means that the community can force individuals to obey the law. Because all individuals in that community had a hand in making the laws, and an individual is free when following the law that he has prescribed to himself, then being forced to obey the law amounts to being forced to be free (for further discussion, see, for example, Reisert, 2003: 131–3). The implication is that when an individual acts in a manner contrary to the law, he somehow undermines or violates his own freedom. On this point, I agree with Philip Kain. He writes, “Rousseau does not understand freedom simply as being unhindered in the pursuit of one’s inclinations or desires. That is to be a slave to one’s appetites. To be free requires acting from rational and moral principles. Only in that way is one self-determined. Thus, if inclination leads individuals to make exceptions for themselves in violating a law, to force them to obey these laws (as any society would), is to force them . . . to obey the rational and moral laws

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they have given themselves, and thus it makes some sense to say that they are being forced to be free” (1990: 321–2). Even when an individual is forced to follow a law that he has voted against or otherwise did not believe was in the best interest of the community, compelling him to follow that law is still forcing him to be free. Even if this individual is correct from a practical standpoint and following the law in question really would make the community as a whole worse off, the general will need not align with what are the best policies in practice. Rather, underlying the general will is the spirit of social cooperation that provided the motivation to leave the state of nature and enter civil society in the first place. 7. Unlike Thomas Hobbes (L XII) and John Locke (STG §4–15), who considered the state of nature to be a hypothetical condition or thought experiment (Ashcraft, 1968), Kant, like Rousseau (DI 136), believed that individuals could be observed to be living in this condition. He expresses this view directly in his pre-critical writing (Obs: 2:253–5), and it can be inferred from his description of the state of nature in his moral and political theory. 8. On this point, I agree with Allen Rosen. He writes, “There may be plenty of human wickedness in the state of nature . . . but that is not what makes the state of nature unjust. It is unjust for the more basic, more structural reason that justice can exist only when there is some systematic means of protecting individual rights, and insofar as the state of nature contains no mechanism of this kind it is by hypothesis lacking in justice. It follows that even if men were ‘ever so good natured’ the state of nature would still be a condition of injustice; for in the event of a dispute between individuals about their respective rights, no impartial system of adjudication could ensure a non-arbitrary settlement” (1993: 10). Rosen argues that the solution to this “structural deficiency” is civil society because nothing else can ensure the institutional arrangements capable of “impartially protecting individual rights and liberties” (1993: 10). Political society is, therefore, a necessity of justice regardless of the way human beings behave in the state of nature. This point mirrors that made by Locke, whose main argument for the need of government stems from our need to settle on a procedure according to which disputes between even well-meaning people can be settled (see STG §21). 9. John Simmons expresses some concerns about these conclusions drawn by Kant. He writes, “Kant never really seems to explain the crucial inference from justification to legitimacy—from the assertion that the state is necessary for securing rights and freedom to his conclusion that each state has the right to direct and coerce those within the territories over which it claims authority. . . . [He] never explains very clearly, for instance, why I have an obligation to leave the state of nature and live in civil society with others, rather than just a general obligation to respect humanity and the rights persons possess (whether in or out of civil society). Nor does he explain why, if others are already willing members of some secure civil society, my mere refusal of reciprocal membership (without any further wrongdoing) constitutes any kind of injury to those who already have the security they desire. While I may represent some kind of potential threat to members of a secure society (if, say, I do not acknowledge various of their institutional rights as morally binding), I am still nothing like the threat I would be to others in a state of nature, and surely less of a threat to them than are evil fellow members or other sovereign states. If my refusal of membership is public and if I respect the rights those members possess qua persons, any threat I represent will be relatively minor and easy to counter. Indeed, it is not even obvious why Kant thinks a general obligation to enter some civil society entails a special obligation to obey the specific laws of a particular state—namely, that in which I find myself” (1999: 756).

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue Ultimately, Simmons concludes that the Kantian position is fundamentally flawed. He argues for a Lockean alternative, which asserts that, despite the sophistication of political institutions, such institutions are simply a manmade construction and have no natural claims concerning allegiance or compliance (1999: 769). 10. On this point, Christine Korsgaard adds that if the moral law does not affect the wills of individuals, then morality would simply be “a dogma of rationalist metaphysics which does not apply to the world” (1996: 24). But unlike juridical laws, the moral law is internal and not external. Therefore, it does not affect individuals in the same way as an external law. The primary difference between external laws and the moral law is that external laws have content and that content is able to affect or determine a will. When external laws operate in this way, the will is not free because it is being determined by something external to it. In contrast to these external laws, the moral law has no content. It has only the form of law. According to Garrath Williams, “By the ‘mere form of . . . law’ Kant means that there must be some principle, some overall policy or structure, determining what I do—otherwise my actions would be merely random, and hence unintelligible: no-one would be able to follow them (not even me). More than this, no principle is truly law-like unless it abstracts from an agent’s particular motivations and situation, so as to be followable by all. Only then can it be capable of ‘giving universal law’ ” (2013). Therefore, Korsgaard concludes, “the moral law simply describes the position of a free will. When the moral law directs the will’s choices, it expresses its spontaneity. The moral law is the law of spontaneity. The will that is governed by morality is free” (1996: 25). 11. Gary Herbert argues that the Kantian position holds rights to be dependent upon obligation. According to Herbert, unlike for Hobbes and Locke, who hold that an individual “has rights even when nobody acknowledges or respects those rights,” Kant takes rights to “exist only in and through one’s capacity to obligate another” (2002: 319). Further, an individual’s possession of something is evidence of “one’s willingness to enter into civil society, that is, to acknowledge reciprocally the rights of others to their possessions. Having claimed a right to what he possesses, he has, in principle, chosen for himself the maxim that every person has a right to those things he has acquired that have not been the prior possession of somebody else. He cannot recognize this right for himself without recognizing it as well for others, thereby recognizing a willingness to acknowledge—or consent transcendentally to—the property rights of others. This means, I cannot recognize the other person as a person (someone whom I can obligate) without acknowledging my obligation to him, because acknowledging my obligation to him is the act by which I recognize him as a person. Consequently, I cannot claim ownership to anything without giving my transcendental consent to others to do the same” (2002: 158). 12. Recall John Simmons’s concern in a previous note that Kant does not provide a justification for his claim that we are obligated to enter into civil society with others. Simmons thinks that Kant’s considerations concerning property give us conclusive reason to merely refrain from violating the rights of others. I take it that even if Kant does not provide this rationale explicitly, it is possible to reconstruct, from Kantian principles, an argument explaining why an individual’s assertion of a claim to a property right over some object implies a duty both to refrain from violating those rights that others may claim and to enter into civil society with others. If Simmons grants that Herbert’s gloss of Kant’s position above is adequate, then we can provide

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a Kantian argument for why the general recognition of the rights of other individuals implies something over and above the negative duty not to violate those rights. This duty might be generated by the consideration that, absent some mechanism for resolving disputes, it is simply not possible to fully respect the property rights of other individuals. Even if an individual intends to respect these rights, any dispute over property runs the risk of not having this dispute resolved without the intervention of a third party. In light of the potential for irresolvable disputes in the state of nature, there is the risk that an individual might to fail to fully respect the rights of others even if he has the best intentions. The obligation to enter into civil society, then, is generated by the obligation to respect the rights of others. Without the arbitration of a disinterested third party, respecting the rights of other individuals is impossible, and the result is that you fail to treat other human beings in a way that is appropriate to their dignity (see also Ripstein, 2009: 163–5). Whether Simmons would find such an argument compelling is a question I cannot address here. I will only note that there are certain similarities between my reconstruction of Kant’s position above and the Lockean position that Simmons aligns himself with. 13. Joseph Raz claims that such is the condition for his “hounded woman”: “The Hounded Woman. A person finds herself on a small desert island. She shares the island with a fierce carnivorous animal which perpetually hunts for her. Her mental stamina, her intellectual ingenuity, her will power and her physical resources are taxed to their limits by her struggle to remain alive. She never has a chance to do or even to think of anything other than how to escape from the beast” (1988: 374). Raz’s hounded woman is not free, nor is anyone free who lives in a condition like hers. Gary Herbert agrees: “When one’s survival is threatened so severely that one is overwhelmed by fear of sudden and violent death, as might happen in a Hobbesian state of nature, does one remain free to act with ‘motivational independence’ from his sensuous impulses? . . . [Kant’s] answer seems to be, no” (2002: 151). 14. No matter what the structure of the government is (monarchy, oligarchy, democracy, etc.), Kant argues that every legitimate state constitution must be republican (PP 8:349, 372). A republican constitution contains three elements: (1) “freedom of the members of a society,” (2) “dependence of all upon a single common legislation,” and (3) “the law of their [i.e., the members’] equality” (PP 8:349–50; also TP 8:290). A civil society that legislates and enforces laws consistent with a republican constitution promotes a rightful condition, or “that relation of human beings among one another that contains the conditions under which alone everyone is able to enjoy his rights” (MM 6:305–6). Although certain freedoms are limited in a rightful condition for the purpose of each individual being able to enjoy his rights (TP 8:290), what is limited is an individual’s liberty, not his autonomy. Consider the chauvinistic employer whose liberty is limited by the state authority when he is compelled to pay his employees equal pay for equal work. This limitation of liberty is justified because the employer’s practices violated the principles of freedom and equality central to the republican constitution. Although the executive authority limited the employer’s liberty by compelling him to perform actions that might otherwise suggest that he held certain maxims, the employer’s autonomy was not violated because he was, in fact, free to adopt whatever maxims he wished as long as acting in accordance with those maxims yielded certain external results. 15. Hobbes would reject the claim that one no longer has to worry about liberty violations upon entering civil society, while affirming the claim that just laws and just limitations of liberty merely require hypothetical consent (or

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue no consent at all). Rousseau, however, would affirm the former claim while rejecting the latter. Rousseau argues that laws must be authorized by the general will in order for those laws to be just, and so the decision-making mechanisms must be arranged in such a way that allows the general will to be expressed. In contrast to Rousseau, Kant believes that the law may limit the freedom of individuals justly if those individuals could have consented to those laws (i.e., if they are consistent with the principles of a republican constitution). Therefore, I am in agreement with Alexander Kaufman when he writes: “In spite of their shared conception of freedom as autonomous selflegislation, Rousseau and Kant argue for conceptions of legitimacy which differ dramatically. . . . Kant’s criterion of justice substitutes a hypothetical test for Rousseau’s requirement of actual willing. This substitution has profound institutional implications which sharply distinguish Kant’s political theory from that of Rousseau” (1997: 25–6). 16. For Allen Wood, “Kantian ethics is grounded on the dignity of rational nature. It requires not only respect for individual rights and the equal worth of human beings, but also the idea of a cosmopolitan community in which the ends of all rational beings must form a unity to be pursued collectively” (1999: 2). But Wood also identifies the creation of such a community as a source of controversy, mainly because critics believe it leads one to “mindless rule-following,” “irrational inflexibility,” and a lack of concern for the outcomes of one’s actions (2). These critics point to Kant’s comments regarding suicide, the role of women in society, different races of people, and lying to the murderer at the door to support their objections. But Wood defends Kant by examining the nature of ethical inquiry. He writes, “To correct such erroneous images of Kant’s ethical thought, we must begin by asking why we should study the history of ethics at all. Our chief purpose is one that belongs squarely within the Enlightenment tradition: to improve our understanding of ethical issues so that we may justify, criticize and correct our positions about them. . . . To read historical philosophers critically is to read them with intellectual sympathy, but it is never to treat them as oracles whose pronouncements on any subject we should accept blindly on trust. . . . But respecting the unity of Kant’s thought is not only compatible with but even requires distinguishing the teachings that are central to it to those that are peripheral, and separating the conclusions that actually follow from his principles from the conclusions that he may have drawn but do not follow. Such respect is utterly incompatible with treating a philosopher’s thought as a monolith, or using Kant’s deplorable views about race and gender as some sort of hidden key to the ‘real meaning’ of his principle that all beings are possessed of equal dignity” (1999: 3–4). In light of Wood, it appears that the concerns raised by the critics he references are somewhat beside the point. If Kant’s argument is that civil society is a necessary condition of the realization of our freedom, then those conclusions that we take to be inconsistent with the spirit of that argument can be set aside. What we have to work with are Kant’s considered principles, which may diverge from his particular judgments. It is my view that his arguments concerning the role that the state plays in the cultivation of virtue are appealing, even if some of the things he says in the course of defending this position are not. 17. Kant closely associates moral responsibility with punishment and goes so far as to write, “the law of punishment is a categorical imperative, and woe to him who crawls through the windings of eudaimonism in order to discover something that releases the criminal from punishment or even reduces its amount by the advantage it promises” (MM 6:331). Although this claim

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that the law of punishment is a categorical imperative appears to be at odds with his claim in Groundwork that there is only one categorical imperative, it should not be read as challenging this earlier position. Rather, we should understand it to mean that the law of punishment is consistent with, or is another formulation of, the categorical imperative. This law is consistent with the categorical imperative because the categorical imperative requires us to adopt maxims that recognize others as rational beings capable of moral decision making. The only way to recognize others in this manner is by holding them responsible for their actions, and the only way to hold them responsible is through praise, blame, or some neutral recognition of responsibility. This comment at 6:331 of The Metaphysics of Morals suggests that there is a fundamental connection between inflicting displeasure or pain upon a transgressor of the law and acting in accordance with the demands of morality. His remarks in the second Critique confirm this connection: “Thus punishment is a physical harm that, even if it is not connected with moral wickedness as a natural consequence, would still have to be connected with it as a consequence in accordance with the principles of a moral law giving” (CPr 5:37). That Kant believes there is a fundamental connection between punishment and the moral law is clear, but it is not immediately clear what he believes this connection is. A founding principle of civil society is the equality of all of its members, both in regard to the moral law and in regard to each other. In other words, because each individual is subject to the same fundamental law, every citizen is inherently equal to any other (TP 8:291). Although we often think that this equality among citizens primarily applies to the laws of the state, or civic laws, Kant makes it clear that he is referring to the moral law as well. For example, he identifies civil equality as “that of not recognizing among the people any superior with the moral capacity to bind him as a matter of right in a way that he could not in turn bind the other” (MM 6:314). Kant’s understanding of moral equality stems from his position that all rational beings have absolute worth. As a result, each individual has equal moral standing. This point raises the following problem: although all individuals have the same moral worth, we would not consider an individual who possesses a good will to be morally equal with one who possesses a bad will. To solve this problem, Kant sets up a distinction between inner and outer worth. Allen Wood explains, “Kant’s consistent position . . . is that the inner worth of a person, measured solely by comparison to the moral law, may be greater or less according to one’s virtue in fulfilling the law one gives oneself; but the worth of a person never varies in comparison to others, since the good and bad alike possess the dignity of humanity” (1999: 135). When an individual violates the law, that individual declares that he possesses greater moral worth than the other members of civil society. Specifically, by violating the law, an individual makes himself an exception to the rule, acting in a manner that is inconsistent with how he has bound himself to act and thereby declaring himself to be above the others in society. By acting in this manner, that individual has jeopardized the condition of equality that formed the foundation of civil society. In this situation, Kant believes that the only recourse to restoring the condition of equality is through punishment— inflicting pain upon the offending individual to return him to the same level as the rest of the citizenry. Simply put, “We regard the endurance of physical evil as a discharge of the debt that was owed to justice” (LE 27:554). Further, although an individual is harmed by society after he has acted contrary to the demands of the law, this instance of punishment is used to show the transgressor that society recognizes him as a rational being. In the case of a liar, Kant writes, “a single lie of which he had been aware would

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue have had to strike down his pride, but the pain served only as an occasion to raise it when he was aware that he had not incurred it by any wrongful action and thereby made himself deserving of punishment” (CPr 5:60). Generally speaking, Kant is clear on when punishment can and cannot be inflicted: “[Punishment] can never be inflicted merely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for civil society. . . . It must be inflicted upon him only because he has committed a crime. For a human being can never be treated merely as a means to the purposes of another or be put among the objects of rights to things: his innate personality protects him from this, even though he can be condemned to lose his civil personality” (MM 6:331). It is not merely through punishment, but through a punishment that is specifically tailored to one’s transgression, that an individual is treated as a rational being and the condition of equality in society is restored. From a practical point of view, the head magistrate or sovereign must determine what punishment is necessary to restore equality. “But what kind of and what amount of punishment is it that public justice makes its principle and measure? None other than the principle of equality . . . to incline no more to one side than to the other” (MM 6:331). Kant outlines a variety of punishments that fit with various transgressions in The Metaphysics of Morals, but we need not be concerned with such specifics here. Instead, as Gary Herbert writes, “To the extent the Kant sovereign represents the actualization of the original contract, the specific laws he enacts are irrelevant, as are the specific responses of his subjects. What matters is that he sustain the relationship of autonomous will to autonomous will, where the capacity of one to obligate the other is maintained” (2004: 26). But what is of particular concern here is the principle behind why a punishment is determined to be appropriate, not the punishment itself or the specific law that was violated. Returning to Kant’s comments concerning a possible conflict between eudaimonism and punishment, he provides us with more information about the principles underlying appropriate punishment: “Now, becoming a partaker in happiness cannot be combined with the concept of a punishment as such. For, although he who punishes can at the same time have the kindly intention of directing the punishment to this end as well, yet it must first be justified in itself as punishment, that is, as mere harm, so that he who is punished, if it stopped there and he could see no kindness hidden behind this harshness, must himself admit the justice was done to him and what was allotted him was perfectly suited to his conduct. In every punishment as such there must first be justice, and this constitutes what is essential in this concept” (CPr 5:37). It is this connection between justice and punishment that allows us to most clearly see why civil society is necessary to hold individuals responsible for their moral transgressions. When a rational being acts contrary to the moral law, we do not claim that he has willed to be punished. That is, we do not claim that he has willed the consequences of his actions. Kant explains, “No one suffers punishment because he has willed it but because he has willed a punishable action; for it is no punishment if what is done to someone is what he wills, and it is impossible to will to be punished” (MM 6:335). Put differently, whereas we do not claim that an individual has willed his punishment, we would claim that he has willed his action, and this fact requires that we hold him responsible for it. 18. See Persell, 1997: 155–6; and Jennings, 1991: 190ff. 19. See Shklar, 1989: 1145. 20. Although some problems relating to Kant’s account of civil society have been addressed here, this discussion has not touched on a number of

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other problematic issues relating both to his account of civil society and to his political philosophy in general. For example, why is it the case that rights disputes cannot be resolved in the state of nature? Kant assumes that it is impossible for two individuals to settle a dispute about seemingly conflicting rights unless they both reside in civil society. Why is it not possible for them to do so? This position assumes that people cannot come to some mutually acceptable resolution of such a problem without the threat of coercive force being used against them. Some philosophical anarchists would challenge that assumption about society in general, and Kant suggests no reason why they may be wrong. Even if we suppose that Kant’s assumption is generally true, why should we suppose that it is true for every conflict? His solution to this problem could be found through a more thorough investigation of the nature of man (which is discussed at various points throughout the remainder of the book).

3

Autonomy, Coercion, and the Moral Law

The previous chapter argued, among other things, that civil society plays a necessary role in an individual’s ability to become virtuous by, negatively, helping secure the external preconditions required for the possibility of virtuous action and, positively, helping develop an individual’s faculty of reason, which would remain undeveloped in the state of nature. This discussion also raised some concerns about how we can reconcile Kant’s moral metaphysics, which places great value on the importance of autonomy and freedom, with the practical claim that becoming autonomous requires some external conditions (e.g., civil society) that appear to be coercive in nature. These concerns are practical, not theoretical. In other words, there is no problem, in theory, of closely associating morality and freedom and then examining the conditions under which a will is and can become free. But, in practice, the problem is how this goal can be accomplished for a human will, one that is suspended between animal and holy will and affected but not determined by inclination. Beyond the practical problem that human beings are inclined by nature always to seek happiness, even when morality and happiness conflict, we encounter an additional practical problem when we live in communities with other human beings. Kant explains this problem in his essay on “Universal History” as follows: “[T]he human being . . . certainly misuses his freedom in regard to others of his kind; and although as a rational creature he wishes a law that sets limits to the freedom of all, his selfish animal inclination still misleads him into excepting himself from it where he may” (UH 8:23). In short, it appears that we are also inclined to try to take advantage of other people by establishing rules of conduct that we believe everyone should abide by, except for ourselves when we believe it is not convenient to abide by these rules. Reason tells us that we need such rules over the long run in order for us all to be better off, but often individuals are willing to violate these rules for short-term gain. That individuals would choose to jeopardize long-term prosperity for immediate (and often trivial) short-term gain is surprising from the standpoint of reason, and it suggests a weakness or defect in our rational abilities. Kant’s solution to this problem is to assert that every human being “needs a master, who breaks his stubborn will and

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necessitates him to obey a universally valid will with which everyone can be free” (UH 8:23). This master can be found in civil society, which Kant defines as a “condition of coercion” (UH 8:22). This chapter aims to reconcile the theoretical component of Kant’s moral philosophy, which focuses on realizing freedom of the will, with the practical component of Kant’s ethics, which considers how this freedom can be achieved fully only by human beings living under coercive law. Once we solve this practical problem, we will see that there are additional obstacles for human beings to become free, problems not faced by beings of pure reason. Reconciling the theoretical and practical aspects of Kant’s philosophy requires a closer examination of the connection between coercion, freedom, and the moral law. Building off of the distinction between morality and virtue discussed at the end of the Chapter 1, we can identify an important difference between morally praiseworthy actions and virtuous persons, and both of these concepts can be separated from the metaphysical discussion of morality that Kant provides in Groundwork and the second Critique. Kant claimed that an individual is virtuous when he does the right thing (i.e., performs a good act) from the appropriate moral motivations, even though he may not be inclined to act in this manner. Virtue, therefore, is a type of strength to overcome desire and do the right thing. As a result, an individual can be virtuous to varying degrees, and we would say that the person who is able to overcome inclination or desire in all cases has cultivated virtue completely. In contrast, we would say that an act is morally praiseworthy when an individual does the right thing from the appropriate motivations. Whether an act is morally praiseworthy is not a matter of degree—it either is or is not. Further, an individual could perform a morally praiseworthy act without having cultivated virtue completely. For example, he might be able to overcome his inclinations and do the right thing in some particular case, while being unable to overcome his inclinations in some other case because of the circumstances. This distinction will be helpful as we examine the connection between coercion, freedom, and the moral law and, in particular, the role of civil society and the state in promoting individual freedom. Whereas the first half of the chapter focuses on the conditions under which an individual can be free when being coerced, the second half examines the conditions under which an individual is able to use coercion legitimately. The primary focus of this discussion is on Kant’s claim that an individual is obligated to leave the state of nature and enter civil society and on the role of coercion in this process. Because civil society is itself a condition of coercion, and also may form as the result of coercion, under what conditions is this type of coercion permissible in that it is consistent with the freedom of the individuals who are the subjects and executors of the coercive acts? This discussion leads into a consideration of Kant’s comments on revolution. If revolution is understood as the use of coercive force against a state, are there conditions under which this sort of action would be justified

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or even obligatory? The standard interpretation of Kant’s moral and political philosophy is that the answer to this question is “no,” but I show that under certain conditions the virtuous person would take coercive action against the state and that Kant’s own position allows for exceptions to his general prohibition on revolution in these particular cases. FREEDOM AND COERCION Thus far we have considered freedom as a theoretical concept. An individual is free when he acts from principles that he has given to himself and not from those that have their origin in something external to his will (e.g., desire). But when Kant talks about what it means for real human beings to be free he goes well beyond this theoretical discussion. He argues that we become free when we “emerge from [our] self-incurred minority, [or the] inability to make use of [our] own understanding without the direction of another” (E 8:35). In other words, one characteristic of a free person is that he possesses self-determination. He is able to make his own decisions about his preferences (i.e., short-term goals) and how he wants to live his life (i.e., long-term goals). Henry Allison identified this concept as ‘motivational independence,’ which he describes as “a capacity for self-determination independently of, and even contrary to, these [bodily] needs. Positively expressed, a will with the property of autonomy is one for which there are (or can be) reasons to act that are logically independent of the agent’s needs as a sensuous being” (1990: 97). If I am the author of both my short- and long-term goals, then I must act rationally and not based on whims, chance, inclination, or the commands of other individuals. To better understand Kant’s position on freedom, self-determination, and morality, consider the following example. Suppose a man is standing on the street corner when another person walks up to him, puts a gun to his head, hands him another gun, and tells him that he has two choices: either he shoots and kills the woman standing next to him, or he will be shot and killed himself. What should he do? What would the virtuous person do? And, perhaps just as important, is any decision that the man makes free in a meaningful way? In the early modern period, Hobbes was one of the first thinkers to address these issues related to the nature of human freedom. In Leviathan he distinguishes between ‘freedom’ and ‘power’ and argues that something is free when its ability to move around is not limited, such as when a man is chained down or when water is constrained by the banks of a river (L xxi). Here, the impediments to motion are external. But when the impediments to motion are internal, such as when a man is sick and lacks the strength to leave his bed, Hobbes claims that the individual is ‘free’ but that he lacks the ‘power’ to move. So, for Hobbes, the man on the street in our example acts freely because he is not being physically forced to pull the trigger on the gun, which would be the case if the man had overpowered

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him, placed the gun into his hand, and forced his finger to move in such a way that caused the gun to fire. This position strikes us as bizarre, and rightly so. Although Hobbes correctly identifies two different ways in which individuals could lack freedom that are external to the will, the possibility of a free will suggests that there could be an unfree will, or a will that has been coerced or otherwise compelled to adopt particular maxims for action. Here, Kant’s theory is especially helpful. For Kant, freedom is a property of wills, and a free will is free both negatively and positively. An individual possesses negative freedom when his will is not determined by influences external to him. In contrast, an individual is free in the positive sense when his will generates and adopts the principles on which it acts. So, for example, if the principle upon which I am acting is that I ought to alleviate suffering when I can, I have adopted this principle because I recognize that it is the right thing to do, and I am not being coerced to adopt it with the threat of punishment or the promise of reward, then it seems that my behavior here is free and has the possibility of being morally praiseworthy. But if I am motivated to help another person because of the rewards I think I will receive, then this behavior is not morally praiseworthy because it is not completely free. What motivated my action was desire, which, while not external to me, is external to my will, and so in this case I would possess negative freedom but lack positive freedom. Returning to our man on the street, if he chooses to shoot the person next to him in order to save his own life, is this action free? There is no question that the man holding the gun to his head is coercing him. But our subject also has a choice. He is able to decide between shooting the person next to him or not. In either case he is willing the consequences (or what he believes will be the consequences) of his action or inaction.1 Like the last example, it seems that this person would possess negative freedom but lack positive freedom. But when considered from the standpoint of virtue there is something especially puzzling about this scenario. What does the virtuous person do in a situation like this? Perhaps we think that virtue requires a degree of self-sacrifice or that there is some sort of moral difference between actively shooting the woman and allowing oneself to be shot.2 Even if we cannot agree on either of these points, it seems that we can agree that the virtuous person has no good option if he finds himself in this situation. That this individual gets to choose between shooting the woman next to him or being shot himself does not make the situation any better than if the man with the gun would have simply walked up to these two individuals on the street, flipped a coin, and decided to shoot the man or the woman standing next to him based on the result. When we think about situations like this one, it seems reasonable to consider what makes freedom valuable. Surely choice is not valued simply for its own sake. There is nothing valuable about the situation faced by our unwilling man on the street, even though he has a choice. His options are bad. That he can choose between two really terrible options

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does not seem important in a morally significant way. In fact, the situation where an individual is put into the position where he must choose between two terrible outcomes seems far worse than that where one or the other outcome simply happens and the individual has no choice in the matter. Think of this connection between morality and freedom in a slightly different way. Bad behavior is far worse when it is freely chosen than when it is performed because an individual has momentarily succumbed to fear or temptation. It is why we view the person holding the gun to the man’s head as being worse than that man himself, even if he chooses to pull the trigger. Just as bad behavior is worse when it is freely chosen, what makes a person morally praiseworthy appears to be when he freely chooses to do what is good. That is, he performs a good action freely, in both the negative and positive sense. Consider the same situation with our man on the street, but this time the person with the gun gives him two different choices: now he must choose between being shot and giving all of the money in his wallet to the orphanage across the street. Assume that he promptly hands his money over to the orphanage. Even if we think that donating money to orphanages generally is praiseworthy, it seems clear that he is not morally praiseworthy for having done so in this situation, even though, in some technical sense, he was free not to give away the money. Although our subject acted in a manner that yielded positive consequences, what seems to disqualify him from being morally praiseworthy is not only that his decision was completely determined by his desire not to be shot, but also that he lacked what Joseph Raz (1988) describes as an adequate range of options from which to choose.3 These options relate not only to important decisions such as what occupation we wish to pursue or who we want to become friends with, but also trivial aspects of our lives such as how we want to style our hair or the clothes we want to wear. The connection between autonomy and having an adequate range of options is important to ensure that we are able to control all relevant aspects of our lives, something required for autonomy and for an individual to be the author of his own life.4 To see how external circumstances affect individual freedom and the moral praiseworthiness of actions, let us change the scenario for our man on the street once again. This time instead of providing him with only two options—be shot or give your money to the orphanage—he is provided with an extensive list of options: be shot or give your money to the orphanage, or put it in the bank, or use it to buy a sandwich, or play three-card monte with the grifter on the corner, or leave it in your pocket, and so forth. In this scenario, our friend’s decision about what to do with the money in his pocket is not affected or determined by the man holding the gun to his head. He could, of course, choose to keep it in his pocket, which would satisfy the demands of our man with the gun. But assume that given all of the available options he chooses to donate the money to the orphanage. Now, unlike in the previous example, it seems that he is a candidate for being morally praiseworthy because he has not only acted correctly, but he has done so freely (in both the

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positive and negative sense): (1) he was not coerced into deciding to give the money to the orphanage (although he was coerced into having to make some decision), (2) he has an adequate range of options from which to choose, and (3) from these options he has chosen to do something good simply because it is good and he believes he ought to act in this way. Although the man with the gun can coerce our subject to perform a morally appropriate or otherwise right action, our subject cannot be coerced into being morally praiseworthy because that requires more than simply doing something good like donating money to the orphanage. It requires him to act correctly after recognizing the goodness of that correct action. That our subject can be morally praiseworthy in this third scenario suggests that he possesses the necessary degree of freedom required for morality. One implication is that there appear to be instances where coercion does not undermine freedom, and so there seems to be a significant difference between the use of coercive force in this third example and how it was used in the previous two.5 In the third scenario, the use of coercion did not undermine the freedom of our subject, but in the first two scenarios it did. Why? It seems that when coercion was used in the third scenario its function was simply to compel our subject to think about what he wants to do with the money in his pocket and not to compel him to make any decision in particular. Put differently, it is being used in a manner that is consistent with the freedom of our subject. For Kant, coercion is legitimate when it is being used to hinder a hindrance to freedom (MM 6:231).6 He separates the use of coercive force into two different types—unilateral coercion and reciprocal coercion—to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate uses of coercion (MM 6:232–4). Unilateral coercion occurs when a coercer uses force in a manner that violates the freedom of another person, as demonstrated fairly clearly by the first two scenarios involving our man on the street, where he was able to choose between only two options. The use of unilateral coercion clearly distinguishes the state of nature from civil society, for by using unilateral coercion the coercer is denying the rights of the coerced individual. In contrast, reciprocal coercion is when an individual coerces another in a manner that is consistent with the “coexistent freedom” of both individuals, a term Kant understands to mean “that relation of human beings among one another that contains the conditions under which everyone is able to enjoy his rights, and the formal condition under which this is possible in accordance with the idea of a will giving laws for everyone” (MM 6:305–6). This use of coercive force is legitimate because it does not undermine the autonomy of the individual being coerced. Now let us modify the scenario again. Assume that before our subject walked down the street that day the person with the gun approached the grifter on the corner, threatened him with the gun, and forced him to leave the area. After doing so this person approached our subject and compelled him to make a decision about what he was going to do with the money in

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his pocket. Assume that our subject has all of the same options available to him as before—he can donate it to the orphanage, use it to buy a sandwich, keep it in his pocket, etc.—with the exception that he can no longer use it to play three-card monte with the grifter, or, at the very least, it has become far more difficult for him to do so as he will need to figure out where he has run off to since he is no longer on the corner. Suppose now that our subject again decides to donate the money to the orphanage. Is his action less free or less praiseworthy because he lacked the option of being swindled out of his money by playing three-card monte with the grifter? That does not seem to be the case.7 Would our conclusion change if the person with the gun was wrong about the character of the person playing three-card monte? Suppose that this man was not a grifter and that he was simply a gambler looking to engage in an honest game of chance. Now the choice to spend money playing this game is not as bad as it may have appeared at first. Is our subject no longer morally praiseworthy or somehow less free because a neutral or good option was removed? For similar reasons as outlined above, the removal of one neutral or good option does not appear to affect the praiseworthiness of our subject given what we know about him and the scenario. His action to donate the money to the orphanage was still good and was performed from the appropriate motivation. But was our subject less free because this option had been removed? This question becomes more complicated if we suppose that our subject enjoys games of chance and would have chosen to spend his money participating in such a game with the man on the corner had the option been available. Even in this situation it does not seem like our subject’s freedom was compromised in any significant way. He is still autonomous, even if the instrumental value of his liberty has been reduced because he has one less option available to pick from. When making any decision an individual is limited by the options available to him. To say that our man was not free when the option to play three-card monte was removed would suggest that individuals could never be free unless they had access to all possible options or, at the very least, to the option that they would have chosen from that range of all possible options. Such a demand is quite clearly unreasonable. But what we can take away from this example is that although autonomous action requires an individual to have access to an adequate range of options, it does not appear to require that he have any option in particular. Assuming that our subject would have decided to do something other than donate the money to the orphanage had more tempting options been available, such as playing three-card monte with the gambler, is his action less praiseworthy under these circumstances? Here, our earlier distinction between morally praiseworthy actions and virtuous persons is particularly relevant. While we could say that his action to donate the money is morally praiseworthy because it was good, it was performed from the correct motivations, and our subject had an adequate range of options from which to choose, we would also say that he had not cultivated virtue completely. Just

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as a person on a diet recognizes that the best thing to do is to avoid temptation and not eat the fresh-baked brownies on the counter, our subject recognizes that donating the money to the orphanage is what the virtuous person would do if placed in his situation. But if he were to give in to his inclination, just as a weak-willed dieter gives in to the temptation of the brownies, the problem would lie not in our subject’s understanding but rather in his will. An individual who has cultivated virtue completely would always possess the strength to resist inclination and would act in a manner consistent with what he recognized as the right thing to do. As a result, our subject’s action was both free and unfree, although different kinds of freedom are in play here. It was free in that our subject was able to determine for himself what he wanted to do with his money, but it was unfree in that he would have given in to his inclination instead of acting from reason. At this point one common way to proceed would be to substitute our person with the gun for the state. Most of us probably believe that this use of coercive force by the person with the gun in the previous examples is illegitimate but that the similar use of coercive force by the state is less problematic.8 What, therefore, makes this sort of behavior legitimate when undertaken by the state but illegitimate when undertaken by the man with the gun? For Kant, there appears to be no difference between the use of coercive force by the state and the use of coercive force by individuals.9 His point is not that the use of coercive force always is illegitimate, but rather that what makes the use of coercive force legitimate would be the same regardless of whether it was being used by the state or by an individual person. This discussion of coercion is particularly relevant because of the relationship between coercion and how civil society is established and maintained. Kant claims that individuals have a moral obligation to leave the state of nature and enter civil society. As discussed last chapter, living in civil society is necessary for an individual to refine his talents and reason completely, a process required by morality. Therefore, the obligation to leave the state of nature and enter civil society is not only practical or prudential in terms of gaining security, but moral as well. Although all individuals are under this moral obligation, it is not the case that everyone is motivated to act in this way. Joining together in civil society requires all individuals within a certain geographic proximity to recognize and respect each other as autonomous beings. But what if someone around me refuses to recognize my autonomy, perhaps preferring to live by the principle of might makes right because he believes he is stronger than I am or otherwise has an advantage over me? Kant believes that the use of coercive force may be necessary to establish and maintain a civil condition and that such a use of force is consistent with right (PP 8:371, 349n; MM 6:231, 312). Although coercion is unjustified when it violates an individual’s autonomy, it can be justified in specific instances when it is used to prevent someone from acting in a manner that violates the autonomy of another individual or himself. But by coercing

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another individual to join civil society, he is compelled to act in such a way that recognizes and respects both his own autonomy and the autonomy of those around him.10 CIVIL SOCIETY, COERCION, AND JUSTIFIED REVOLUTION But what happens if civil society is not established? Consider, for example, a situation of competing rights between individuals living outside of civil society. Since each individual believes that he is entitled to his claim and there is no mechanism of adjudication, if the individuals cannot come to some agreement among themselves, Kant believes that the only way the dispute gets resolved is through the use of force. There appear to be two ways in which we can view such an action. The first is that this use of unilateral force is illegitimate because the freedom of the other individual is being violated. My claim that I have a right to be free and that other people are obligated to recognize and respect this right obligates me to recognize and respect the right to freedom possessed by other individuals. Using force against other individuals in this manner (which Kant identifies as “unilateral”) is illegitimate because it violates their freedom. Contrary to this understanding of the use of force, using force may also be viewed in a second way. Namely, when it is “reciprocal” or when it is used to compel one individual to recognize the rights of the other. Kant believes that every individual in the state of nature has a right to compel others to join into civil society, and, likewise, all individuals are obligated to join civil society (MM 6:255–6). When individuals are compelled to join civil society, sometimes by force, in theory laws are established in a manner that upholds and protects the rights of everyone. Specifically, “every legislator [is bound] to give his laws in such a way that they could have arisen from the united will of a whole people and to regard each subject . . . as if he has joined in voting for such a will” (TP 8:297). But this contract between sovereign and citizen is hypothetical. It is not necessary that a particular law, or group of laws, actually be supported by the citizens. Rather, it is necessary only that the citizens could support the laws. “If it is only possible that a people could agree to [a law], it is a duty to consider the law just, even if the people is at present in such a situation or frame of mind that, if consulted about it, it would probably refuse its consent” (TP 8:297). Kant’s position here implies that there is something more important than whether citizens are content with their government. “What is under discussion here is not the happiness that a subject may expect from the institution or administration of a commonwealth but above all merely the right that is to be secured for each by means of it, which is the supreme principle for which all maxims having to do with a commonwealth must proceed and which is limited by no other principle” (TP 8:298). Once again, Kant returns to the idea that individuals have an obligation to establish civil society, but this obligation does not derive from the

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citizens’ desire for happiness. Consider this excerpt from his essay on theory and practice, which comes immediately after the passage just quoted: The power within a state that gives effect to the law is also unopposable, and there exists no rightful commonwealth that can hold its own without a force of this kind that puts down all internal resistance, since each resistance would take place in conformity with a maxim that, made universal, would annihilate any civil constitution and eradicate the condition in which alone people can be in possession of rights generally. From this it follows that any resistance to the supreme legislative power, any incitement to have the subjects’ dissatisfaction become active, any insurrection that breaks out in rebellion, is the highest and most punishable crime within a commonwealth, because it destroys the foundation. And this prohibition is unconditional, so that even if that power or its agent, the head of state, has gone so far as to violate the original contract and has thereby, according to the subjects’ concept, forfeited the right to be legislator inasmuch as he has empowered the government to proceed quite violently (tyrannically), a subject is still not permitted any resistance by way of counteracting force. (TP 8:299–300) Although Kant believes that individual legislators can make errors in judgment about whether a particular law is prudent, a sovereign cannot err “when he asks himself whether the law also harmonizes with the principle of right; for there he has the idea of the original contract at hand as an infallible standard, and indeed has it a priori” (TP 8:299). Kant concludes, “The people too [has] its inalienable rights against the head of state, although these cannot be coercive rights” (TP 8:303). According to how Kant’s system is usually understood, passages like those just referenced are taken to mean that individuals are never justified in using force against the state. But that is not Kant’s position. Returning to his discussion of the process by which an individual leaves the state of nature and enters civil society, coercion is justified when used reciprocally or in a manner that respects the freedom of both parties (i.e., the coercer and the coerced). Kant asserts that the rights of both parties are respected when any and all rights disputes are resolved by appearing before an appropriate magistrate who would resolve the dispute justly. This judicial authority would respect the autonomy inherent in both claimants by rendering a verdict consistent with the laws. But what if this authority does not respect both parties and continually renders decisions that are obviously unjust? It appears as if this situation would share certain features with the state of nature, specifically, those features that led Kant to conclude that individuals were under an obligation to leave the state of nature and enter civil society. Given that Kant justifies the use of coercive force under these conditions, it seems as if individuals may be justified in taking steps to remedy this situation, including, but not limited to, revolting against the government. Although this view

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that Kant would justify revolutionary action under these circumstances is not widely held, I believe that we can find support for this position in both Kant’s theoretical writings and his historical commentary. For Kant, “[f ]reedom and law (by which freedom is limited) are the two pivots around which civil legislation turns.—But in order for law to be effective and not an empty recommendation, a middle term must be added; namely, force, which, when connected with freedom, secures success for these principles” (Anth 7:330). But what happens when force is used not to secure success for these principles of law and freedom, but to do the opposite and undermine the law and freedom, either for a particular individual, for some minority group, or for the majority of the populace? What steps can an individual take to secure his freedom if he finds himself in this position? If he cannot appeal to the state for relief because it is the state that is using force in a way that undermines freedom, justice, and the rule of law, what can this individual do? Can he revolt? Kant’s answer to these questions and, specifically, his views on revolution are notoriously paradoxical. He appears to condemn all instances of revolution but expresses enthusiasm for the French Revolution and other revolutionary acts. For example, he writes in The Metaphysics of Morals, “There is no right of sedition, much less a right of revolution . . . [and] it is the people’s duty to endure even the most intolerable abuse of supreme authority” (MM 6:320). However, in The Conflict of the Faculties, Kant’s writing suggests a very different view when he considers the French Revolution. In Part II, “An Old Question Raised Again: Is the Human Race Constantly Progressing?,” he writes, “The [French] Revolution, I say . . . finds in the hearts of all spectators . . . a wishful participation which borders on enthusiasm” (CF 7:85). If Kant believed that revolution is always wrong, how can the spectators of the French Revolution, including Kant himself, justify this feeling of enthusiasm? While the standard presentation of Kant on revolution focuses on the bulk of his writing that suggests revolution is always wrong, ignored are the passages in his work that imply, if not directly assert, that some forms of revolution are acceptable at certain times.11 Whereas numerous scholars have attempted to make sense of this apparent inconsistency, Kant’s own solution is fairly straightforward. He writes that the French Revolution was not a revolution in the conventional sense because it did not involve the illegitimate seizure of power from a legitimate sovereign: A powerful ruler [Louis XVI] in our time therefore made a very serious error in judgment when, to extricate himself from the embarrassment of large state debts, he left it to the people to take this burden on itself and distribute it as it saw fit; for then the legislative authority naturally came into the people’s hands, not only with regard to the taxation of subjects but also with regard to the government, namely to prevent it from incurring new debts by extravagance of war. The consequence was that

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the monarch’s sovereignty wholly disappeared (it was not merely suspended) and passed to the people, to whose legislative will the belongings of every subject became subjected. (MM 6:341–2) From this passage it seems that Kant believed Louis XVI illegitimately abdicated his sovereignty by convoking the Estates-General in 1789. Therefore, when Louis XVI was removed from power, he was no longer a legitimate sovereign. Instead, he was simply a strongman who held power over a state of nature condition. If this historical account of pre-revolutionary France was even remotely plausible, then Kant’s enthusiasm for the French Revolution could be seen as enthusiasm towards the removal of an illegitimate sovereign from power. Perhaps one reason why this argument has received relatively little attention in the secondary literature is that Kant’s position as presented suffers from fairly obvious historical inaccuracies.12 For example, the King of France no more abdicated the throne when he convened the Estates-General in 1789 than when he convened them in 1614, the last time the Estates-General had met before 1789. Under the unwritten, precedent-based French constitution, the king’s power to call the Estates, and their right to advise him, was anciently recognized. Thus, convening the Estates in 1789 would not have actually created the situation that Kant suggests. The historical problem of abdication is one of many problems this account seems to face. Therefore, if Kant’s position concerning the historical facts surrounding the French Revolution was actually consistent with the opinion expressed at MM 6:341–2, then Kant would have had to have been very ill-informed about historical events to believe it. But nearly all of our biographical information suggests that Kant was well-informed about current events and constantly sought information about what was happening in the world.13 Thus, it seems reasonable to think that he presented this inaccurate account of these historical events because either he could not reconcile his own thoughts on this issue, believed he could not express his views as a result of the political climate in Prussia during that time, or was attempting to present the historical events surrounding the French Revolution in such a way that they fell in line with his theoretical justification of when and how an illegitimate sovereign could be removed from power. Even as Kant’s position on the French Revolution suffers from obvious historical inaccuracies, it raises a fundamental question that must be addressed concerning revolution and his political philosophy.14 Ultimately, Kant’s problem concerning revolution and his theory appears to stem from his blending of moral autonomy with political conservatism, as these positions seem to require different attitudes within an individual. For Kant, an individual is autonomous when he is responsible for his actions; however, this autonomy is not measured by an individual’s opportunities to initiate his enthusiasm but by the demands of coexistent freedom and coexistent responsibility.15 So how can we reconcile portions of his philosophy that

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explicitly condemn acting against one’s sovereign, even if this sovereign appears to be illegitimate, with Kant’s thoughts supporting revolutionary action under certain conditions? One way to resolve this apparent difficulty is to look more carefully at Kant’s discussion of the distinction between the state of nature and civil society, as well as his distinction between civil society and the civil state. Two features distinguish civil society from the state of nature: in civil society (1) unilateral force or coercion is prohibited, and (2) there exist just institutions that secure the rights of individuals. But Kant does not spend a great deal of time on the transition from the state of nature to civil society, noting primarily that individuals are simply under an obligation to make this transition. In The Metaphysics of Morals this transition centers on individual property rights, which cannot be realized in the state of nature.16 Kant writes, “By being the first to take possession he originally acquires a definite piece of land and resists with right anyone else who would prevent him from making private use of it. Yet since he is in a state of nature, he cannot do so by legal proceedings because there does not exist any public law in this state” (MM 6:250). Kant refers to law in the state of nature as “private law” (MM 6:242), but private law amounts to nothing more than the principle of might makes right. If, for example, you pick a bushel of apples and I come and take those apples from you, claiming that you picked them from my tree, there is no way to settle this dispute other than by using physical force, for there is no magistrate who has the power to adjudicate. In Kant’s eyes, solving a dispute by appealing to force is contrary to the moral law and incompatible with the dignity of man (Gr 4:435), so individuals are under a moral obligation to join together into civil society to settle the dispute properly.17 My interest here is not in defending this position, but in seeing how it should be understood when considering an individual’s moral obligations in regard to both himself and the state. Let us approach this issue from a slightly different angle. Individuals have a duty to leave the state of nature and enter civil society—that much is clear. The defining feature of civil society is that it is a condition of distributive justice in which the mutual rights of all parties involved are recognized and respected. A condition that is not rightful, that is, a condition in which there is no distributive justice, is called a state of nature. What is opposed to a state of nature is not . . . a condition that is social and that could be called an artificial condition, but rather the civil condition, that of a society subject to distributive justice. For in the state of nature, too, there can be societies compatible with rights . . . but no law. (MM 6:306) Transitioning between the state of nature and civil society is an agreement made between the two claimants: they agree to settle current and future disputes in a manner that respects both of their rights. These individuals

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appoint a designated magistrate, establish rules that this magistrate will use to arbitrate disputes, and agree on a system of punishment to be implemented if and when an individual breaks the agreed upon rules. In other words, by joining into civil society together, the two claimants have stated to each other that they will abide by the agreed upon rules now and in the future, and this promise is binding categorically. When Kant argues that revolution is always prima facie wrong, it is because revolution often entails an individual using force to violate this original agreement, thereby breaking a promise (which is always wrong), using unilateral force (which is always wrong as well), and, ultimately, undermining or dissolving the civil condition. While it is true that Kant usually assumes that the civil state maintains a condition of civil society, nowhere does he assume that the civil state is sufficient for civil society. In fact, Kant explains clearly the difference between civil society and the civil state and how a state is able to exist without civil society (MM 6:242). The existence of a civil state, the magisterial authority that arbitrates disputes, is a necessary but insufficient condition for the existence of civil society.18 Another necessary condition concerns how the judicial procedures of civil society are established and maintained. If the magisterial authority continually and unjustly sides with a particular party, or if that authority uses force to compel individuals into submitting to a condition where the rights of all are not fully realized, then that condition is not civil society. This relationship between the civil state and civil society, as well as the relationship between the civil state and the claimants, cannot be ignored when investigating Kant’s understanding of the civil state. If the institutions the civil state has established to settle disputes do not respect the rights of both claimants (i.e., if coexistent freedom is not realized), then the two claimants still must establish civil society but must search for, or create, another civil state to arbitrate the dispute.19 When revolution involves an individual attempting to disrupt or destroy civil society, it is always wrong. But not all revolutionary acts are of this sort. In some cases, revolution involves an individual attempting to disrupt a civil state that is preventing the establishment of a condition of coexistent freedom. A notable example is when the populace attempts to remove an illegitimate monarch from power. Kant suggests that we cannot find fault with this action in certain situations. He writes, “The dethronement of a monarch can still be thought of as if he had voluntarily laid aside the crown and abdicated his authority, giving it back to the people, or as if, without any attack on the highest person, he had relinquished his authority and been reduced to the rank of a private person” (MM 6:320n). Although an individual can never have the right to revolt, where a ‘right’ is understood as an action permitted by the law, Kant believes there are instances in which a monarch may be removed from power legitimately. In these cases, revolutionary action appears to be permissible because removing a monarch from power under these circumstances is on par with that monarch voluntarily

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relinquishing his authority. Since Kant tells us that a sovereign is never justified in abandoning his power and returning individuals to the state of nature, and failing to establish or maintain a condition of coexistent freedom is similar to the monarch abandoning his position, we must view this monarch’s rule as akin to an individual using force to get what he wants in the state of nature. If this passage at MM 6:320–1n was not understood in this way, then Kant would be suggesting that we should view this act of dethronement as legitimate by using analysis that would ultimately show it to be illegitimate, because the sovereign cannot voluntarily abdicate the throne. This explanation makes no sense. But if this sovereign ruled over a non-civil condition, one that was indistinguishable from the state of nature in terms of rights recognition, then the act of dethroning the monarch would not be illegitimate because that individual had no legitimate authority to rule. In other words, using coercive force against the monarch, an act normally considered to be revolutionary in nature and contrary to right, is legitimate under Kant’s theory if the monarch is ruling over a condition that mimics the state of nature. While Kant believes that revolution is always wrong when it entails an act contrary to the unconditional duty of preserving civil society, this position is predicated on the would-be revolutionary having already fulfilled the fundamental unconditional duty—establishing and entering into a condition of civil society. For Kant, the proposition “ ‘You ought to enter this condition,’ holds a priori for these societies, whereas it can be said of a rightful condition that all human beings who could (even involuntarily) come into relations of rights with one another ought to enter this condition” (MM 6:306). Although other individuals within geographic proximity may have entered into a condition of civil society with one another, a condition that is maintained by this monarch, an individual cannot have an obligation to maintain a civil condition that he is not a member of. In this example, the individual still remains in a state of nature condition, even if others around him have been able to establish civil society and have developed civil state institutions. This individual has an unconditional duty to leave this state of nature condition and establish civil society. Here, the distinction between preserving civil society and preserving civil state institutions is critical. A requirement to preserve a civil state when it has failed to preserve or establish civil society is dehumanizing, for these individuals would be compelled to maintain a condition that is inconsistent with their own dignity as human beings. An individual is not part of civil society if he lives under a ruler who uses his power to prevent that individual’s progress towards establishing a condition of coexistent freedom with others. Rulers who operate in this way are illegitimate. Put differently, an illegitimate ruler is one who uses force to inhibit the preconditions of provisional willingness to establish civil society from being met. Individuals subject to this rule are unable to realize their dignity as rational, autonomous beings, and realization of this dignity is a

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main focus of Kant’s moral and political philosophy. Ultimately, the question of whether one is in a condition where he is obligated to revolt is not based on how bad this condition is, or on the quality of life of the individuals living in that condition. Rather, the only test is whether this situation of coexistent freedom exists, and Kant believes that whereas individuals may never do anything to remove themselves from this civil condition, they have an obligation to resist the institutions of a civil state when the de facto holders of power in that state have either returned them to the state of nature or kept them in a state of nature condition. This point, however, should not be understood as justifying any individual who disagrees with his government in taking action against it, claiming that he has been returned to a condition that mimics the state of nature. The standard for Kant is whether a condition of coexistent freedom can persist in the case of the individual who feels wronged after losing in arbitration. This individual may believe he has been wronged by the decision, but simply holding this belief does not mean that the system as a whole is one in which coexistent freedom is not maintained. Even if this individual is right and he was the victim of an incorrect ruling, rebellion is still not justified. To determine whether a civil state is maintaining a condition of coexistent freedom, we must examine the institutions as a whole, for even the most just institutions produce incorrect decisions now and again. Simply put, one individual’s belief that a particular policy is unjust does not undermine the justness of the institution as a whole. Further, in the case of the disgruntled loser, Kant explains that the individual’s dignity and humanity have been respected in two additional regards. First, by allowing this individual to even file a suit, he is respected as an autonomous agent, capable of moral decision making and being held accountable for these actions. Second, by ruling against him and holding him responsible for his actions, the state also demonstrates that it respects his autonomy and humanity—only an autonomous being can be held responsible for its actions. Additionally, if this individual is held responsible by being punished, this punishment further demonstrates that the individual is being respected by the state. On this point I agree with Gary Herbert. He writes, “One protects the humanity of a miscreant, and thereby his freedom and his rights, by acknowledging his (the miscreant’s) responsibility, that is, by punishing him for his transgressions of the law. . . . We must assume the moves of the miscreant were those of a fully rational being. Anything less would justify our removing the miscreant as one would an irritant, much as one removes ants, rodents, etc., who have made pests of themselves” (1995: 68). Kant’s understanding of the historical circumstances surrounding Prussia during the rule of Frederick the Great, pre-revolutionary France, and colonial America reinforces this interpretation of his position on revolution. Although Frederick was an absolute ruler, Kant sees him as being legitimate because he acted as “only the highest servant of the state” and therefore was the “trustee of the right of human beings” (PP 8:352–3, 353n). Kant’s

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historical understanding of the Prussian civil state is that no citizen, including Frederick, received preferential treatment. Thus, every citizen was able to enjoy his rights and public peace was guaranteed (E 8:41). Unlike in Prussia under Frederick the Great, Kant viewed the situation of pre-revolutionary France and America in a much different light. Not only were these states failing to protect the individuals living under them from “being laid to waste by men or wild and predatory beasts” (MM 6:345), thereby not guaranteeing a condition in which individuals were able to realize their liberty fully (and, therefore, their autonomy), but also all individuals were not equal under the law. These civil states were using their power to prevent individuals under their control from obtaining a condition of coexistent freedom, or, in other words, the condition for individuals living under these magisterial authorities mimicked the state of nature. COERCION AND THE CULTIVATION OF VIRTUE For Kant a virtuous person must act from maxims (i.e., principles) consistent with the moral law out of respect for the law itself (i.e., from the appropriate motivations). Virtue, therefore, has two components: the adoption of moral maxims and the disposition from which those maxims are adopted. Thus far, I have argued that leaving the state of nature and entering civil society allows an individual to secure liberty or external freedom, a practical prerequisite of the possibility of realizing autonomy or internal freedom, and we have seen the extent to which an individual is justified in taking steps to enter into this civil condition. But the connection between Kant’s civil society and the cultivation of virtue runs deeper than simply facilitating the refinement of talents by establishing a condition that allows for peaceful coexistence. In addition to providing the external security needed for an individual to be able to perfect these talents, Kant argues that the coercive nature of civil society plays a necessary role in the cultivation of virtue by helping develop the virtuous disposition within individual citizens. He makes this point directly in “Toward Perpetual Peace”: Within each state [a malevolence rooted in human nature] is veiled by the coercion of civil laws, for the citizens’ inclination to violence against one another is powerfully counteracted by a greater force, namely that of the 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.20 (PP 8:375n, my emphasis) There are two ways in which the state could assist an individual in this process: either by taking direct action that compels individuals to act in accordance with the moral law, or through indirect action that seeks to

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remove barriers that prevent individuals from acting morally. Acting in accordance with the moral law is a duty of virtue. Further, duties of virtue cannot be the subject of external lawgiving because “no external lawgiving can bring about someone’s setting an end for himself (because this is an internal act of the mind)” (MM 6:239). Kant is clear, however, that the state may “prescribe external actions that lead to an [individual’s adoption of an] end without the subject making it his end” (MM 6:239). Legislators and state authorities are not justified in passing laws that aim primarily at making individuals virtuous because the ends of those laws are the subjects themselves, rather than the state of the society being governed. So can the state play a more positive role in the process? Although many philosophers before Kant also believed that the state played a fundamental role in cultivating morality, a sufficient explanation for how this process occurs had yet to be formulated. For example, consider the theories of Aristotle and Rousseau. For Aristotle, Legislators should urge people towards virtue and exhort them to aim at what is fine. . . . Someone who is to be good must be finely brought up and habituated, and then must live in decent practices, doing nothing base either willingly or unwillingly. And this will be true if his life follows some sort of understanding and correct order that has influence over him. (NE 1180a5–15) The state, therefore, plays a necessary role in an individual’s progression from incontinence to continence to, ultimately, virtue. An individual’s progression from stage to stage is due to civic law, for it “has the power that compels; and law is the reason that proceeds from a sort of intelligence and understanding” (NE 1180a20–5). Whereas this explanation may provide an account of how an individual moves from incontinence to continence, it does not explain how he becomes virtuous—the highest stage at which he is not enticed by base pleasures. Rousseau provides us with a better account of how juridical law can play a role in moral development. He writes, The mere appearance of order brings [a citizen] to know order and to love it. The public good, which serves others only as a pretext, is a real motive for him alone. He learns to struggle with himself, to conquer himself, to sacrifice his interest to the common interest. It is not true that he draws no profit from the laws. They give him the courage to be just even among wicked men. It is not true that they have not made him free. They have taught him to reign over himself. (Em 473, my emphasis) By protecting the rights of individuals, the state instills a feeling within each citizen that he will be protected from individuals who may try to take advantage of his virtuous character. However, even in a state that provides

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for the protection of rights and upholds order, individuals still act contrary to moral law. Ultimately, for Rousseau, an individual can become completely virtuous only by looking inside himself and acting in accord with what reason and his conscience dictate. He concludes, “[The external laws of nature] are written in the depth of [the wise man’s] heart by conscience and reason. It is to these that he ought to enslave himself in order to be free. . . . Freedom is found in no form of government; it is in the heart of the free man” (Em 473). Unlike Aristotle, who believes that learning and habituation to laws will lead an individual to become virtuous, Rousseau believes that an individual will either acquire or not acquire virtue—the decision is up to him.21 Like Aristotle, Rousseau provides no explanation for how this process occurs. But such an explanation can be found in Kant’s theory. Although Kant argues that the state’s role in an individual’s cultivation of virtue must be negative and not positive, one function of state authorities is to provide for “security, convenience and decency; for, the government’s business of guiding the people by laws is made easier when the feeling of decency, as negative taste, is not deadened by what offends the moral sense” (MM 6:325). By passing laws that promote public decency, the state helps develop the disposition necessary for virtue.22 Kant concludes, A human being’s moral education must begin not with an improvement of mores, but with the transformation of his attitude of mind and the establishment of a character. . . . This predisposition to the good is cultivated in no better way than by just adducing the example of good people (as regards their conformity to law), and by allowing our apprentices in morality to judge the impurity of certain maxims on the basis of the incentives actually behind their actions. And so the predisposition gradually becomes an attitude of mind, so that duty merely for itself begins to acquire in the apprentice’s heart a noticeable importance. (Rel 6:48) The state, therefore, contributes to an individual’s cultivation of virtue in two ways. First, by maintaining civil society, it provides the security necessary for the development of autonomy and refinement of talents. Second, by passing laws that direct the citizens to perform the appropriate actions, the state promotes public decency and provides the populace with examples of what appear to be good people, thereby helping each cultivate the virtuous character state. Although an individual living in the state of nature is able to act in accordance with maxims that are consistent with the moral law, it is impossible for him to cultivate virtue to the fullest extent while living in this condition. Although the state is not justified in enacting laws that aim primarily at the moral cultivation of its citizens, Kant claims laws can be used to assist the state in guiding its citizens and removing potential barriers to morality.

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This chapter has examined the relationship between freedom and coercion, and it has arrived at two conclusions, one theoretical and one practical. From a theoretical standpoint, there is nothing inconsistent between the use of coercion and the promotion of freedom, where freedom is understood in both the internal and external sense. For Kant an individual is free when he acts from maxims consistent with the moral law out of respect for the law itself. From a practical perspective, we have drawn two conclusions. First, we would say that someone is free not only when he is free from external constraints but also when he is able to realize self-determination by being able to make meaningful decisions about his long- and short-term goals. Being able to make such meaningful decisions requires that individual to live within certain external conditions that allows for this type of decision making. That is, he must not only have access to an adequate range of options from which to choose, but he also must possess the external freedom to make reason-based choices between these options. The possibility of autonomous action, therefore, requires a certain set of external conditions that are consistent with the realization of freedom, and frequently these conditions can be attained only through the use of coercive force. Second, beyond the use of coercion to establish this set of external conditions that make possible autonomous action, and thereby morally praiseworthy persons, it seems that the coercive nature of civil society also plays a more direct role in an individual’s moral development. Here, the focus is not on creating external conditions that allow for the possibility of autonomy and the development of morally praiseworthy individuals, but on the more coercive measures that can be taken to help individuals develop this moral personality. Once inside civil society and guided in the appropriate manner, an individual is able to begin the process of moral education and the development of the appropriate disposition. Although the state plays a necessary role in this process, it is the individual himself who must cultivate this virtuous character state. The next chapter examines Kant’s account of moral education and the role it plays as a further external condition of the cultivation of virtue in practice. While moral education is requisite for the healthy moral development of individuals living within the civil state, it, too, is insufficient for the full cultivation of virtue. Moral education, then, does not produce virtuous individuals; it enables them to cultivate virtue themselves. To see what role individuals play in this process, it is necessary first to understand the role that moral education plays in an individual’s moral development. NOTES 1. Whether our subject is blameworthy for having taken the life of another person under these circumstances, as well as whether he should be punished for this action (two different determinations), shares some similarities with Kant’s discussion of the right of necessity, or ius necessitates: The supposed right of

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue necessity concerns cases “where duties, namely an unconditional duty and a (perhaps very important yet) conditional duty, conflict with each other . . . [But] if it is said of someone who, in order to preserve his own life, pushes another survivor of a shipwreck from his plank, that he has a right to do so by his (physical) necessity, that is quite false. For to preserve my life is only a conditional duty (if it can be done without a crime); but not to take the life of another who is committing no offense against me and does not even lead me into the danger of losing my life is an unconditional duty. Yet teachers of general civil right proceed quite consistently in conceding rightful authorization for such extreme measures. For the authorities can connect no punishment with the prohibition, since this punishment would have to be death. But it would be an absurd law to threaten someone with death if he did not voluntarily deliver himself up to death in dangerous circumstances” (TP 8:300n; see also Kant’s discussion at MM 6:235–6, in which he expresses the same idea). 2. For a review of the extensive literature on the difference between doing and allowing harm, as well as a qualified defense of the moral salience of the distinction, see Fiona Woollard’s two-part series “The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing: The Moral Relevance of the Doing/Allowing Distinction” (2012a, 2012b). 3. Although Raz’s (1988) pluralistic or liberal perfectionism is sometimes seen as hostile to Kant’s moral theory and, specifically, to his account of moral autonomy (see, for example, Taylor, 2011), certain aspects of his position are useful in understanding how Kant’s theory may work in practice. Arthur Ripstein, for example, sees important connections between Raz and Kant in their justifications for political authority. For Raz, one condition of a legitimate authority is that subjects are more likely to comply with reasons that apply to them directly by following the directives of the authority than by considering those reasons independently. Ripstein provides a helpful note on this topic: “Kant’s account is consistent with Raz’s analysis so long as the idea of ‘reasons applying’ is understood in the right way. For Kant, the only relevant reasons are duties of right, and the state’s authority extends only to those duties, which cannot be coherently followed except in a rightful condition. All of the acts of a rightful condition, including the state’s entitlement to decide how to achieve various public purposes, can be described as enabling people to ‘do better’ as conforming to their duties of right. It is crucial to Kant’s account that the authority is partly constitutive of the application of the underlying duties of right. Nothing in Raz’s formulation precludes this, although his appeal to an analogy between political authority and technical expertise might be taken to suggest that the relevant reasons must be determinate apart from the exercise of authority, and the authority’s role purely epistemic. The acknowledged role of authority in solving the coordination problems by partially constituting their solution shows that Raz’s account is more accommodating. Raz’s political philosophy is opposed to Kant’s because based on two further claims: that rights are based on interests that can be specified nonrelationally, and that law is a tool for achieving purposes that can be fully specified without reference to law” (2009: 197n24). 4. Raz connects having an adequate range of options to the moral value of selfrealization. “Self-realization consists in the development to their fullest extent of all, or all the valuable capacities a person possesses. The autonomous person is the one who makes his own life and he may choose the path of selfrealization or reject it” (1988: 375). He concludes by claiming that what is needed is not so much a choice between good and bad options as a choice between different types of goods that an individual is able to pursue (1988: 379). Whether an individual possesses such a choice is connected to the external circumstances in which he lives.

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5. According to a commonsense understand of coercion, A coerces B when A interferes with B in a way that restricts his freedom. But what does it mean to restrict another individual’s freedom? In Raz’s view, A restricts B’s freedom when A restricts B’s option set (see Valentini, 2012). But is coercion, so understood, always wrong? For Kant it depends upon what type of coercion is at issue. Recall the distinction between unilateral and reciprocal coercion. We may say that when A unilaterally coerces B, A restricts B’s freedom in a substantive sense. Put differently, under these circumstances A restricts B’s freedom in a way that B could not hypothetically consent to. When A exercises reciprocal coercion over B, on the other hand, we might say that A only nominally restricts B’s freedom. To see the difference more clearly, consider two scenarios. First, consider that A is your neighbor and you are B. Suppose you have cultivated a patch of peppers. Further suppose that while you are at work your neighbor slinks over to your yard and helps himself to this year’s crop of peppers. In such a case, your neighbor has exercised unilateral coercion over you: he has restricted your freedom in a substantial sense by depriving you of something (i.e., some peppers) that you had a right to use (perhaps you were hoping to make a salad). In the second scenario, let A be the police and let B be a rapist. Suppose that one day the police knock on B’s door with a warrant for his arrest. They cuff B, lock him in a cage, and force him to remain in there while he awaits trial for his crime. In this second scenario, unlike the first, the restriction of freedom that results is nominal because the coercion responsible for the restriction is reciprocal. By violating the law, an individual makes himself an exception to the rule, acting in a manner that is inconsistent with how he has bound himself to act and thereby declaring himself to be above the others in society. So even though the rapist’s freedom is restricted in some sense, on a closer look his freedom is actually respected through this restriction. So reciprocal coercion is not morally problematic, even if unilateral coercion is. In this sense, Kant’s notion of coercion is moralized. Given that he has moralized coercion, not all coercive acts will turn out to be wrong, because not all coercive acts will turn out to restrict freedom in the morally relevant sense. For a helpful discussion of the difference between moralized and non-moralized notions of coercion, and some shortcomings of the former, see Michael Rhodes’s paper, “The Nature of Coercion” (2000: 369–81). For our purposes, i.e., to understand Kant’s considered view, it is sufficient to note the way in which Kant seems to be using the concept, all the while admitting that there are significant evaluative issues at stake. 6. Arthur Ripstein argues that there are two senses in which an act can serve as a hindrance to a hindrance of freedom. First, an act is a hindrance to a hindrance of freedom in a “prophylactic sense,” when it prevents an agent A from wrongfully restricting the freedom of another agent B (2009: 82). But an act is a hindrance to a hindrance of freedom also in a “retrospective” sense, when it forces a wrongdoer to provide redress to those that he has wronged (2009: 83). This explains why coercion exercised for the sake of establishing or maintaining civil society is reciprocal, not unilateral. As long as coercion is only used to restrict or provide redress for violations of right, it will be legitimate and serves to enhance, rather than restrict, freedom (despite “restricting” the freedom of the wrongdoer or would-be wrongdoer in the colloquial sense). Ripstein asserts that Kant’s defense of a limited welfare state is also based on its being necessary to maintain a condition of right (2009: 269). One way to understand this claim is to say that taxation for the purpose of ensuring that everyone in civil society is capable of meeting his or her basic needs is legitimate because it hinders a significant hindrance to freedom, namely, destitution.

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue 7. For Raz, “[t]he ideal of autonomy requires only the availability of morally acceptable options. . . . For the most part the opportunities for . . . vice and moral weakness [are] logically inseparable from the conditions of a human life which can have any moral merit. Given their prevalence one cannot object to the elimination of opportunities for evil” (1988: 381). Raz’s position here is not inconsistent with Kant’s position concerning the nature of autonomy or of morally praiseworthy acts. Beyond issues of consistency, it is a helpful way of approaching practical issues related to freedom, coercion, and the various options available to our subject. Although it is true that he is less free in a certain sense after the man with the gun removed the grifter from the corner, this reduction of freedom seems trivial and does not appear to undermine our subject’s ability to act autonomously. The man with the gun simply made it less likely that our subject made an obviously bad choice in how to spend his money—getting conned by the grifter. 8. The already vast but still growing body of literature on political authority frequently assumes that there is an asymmetry between those things that the state can do and those things that individuals can do. The question, then, is what justifies this asymmetry. Contemporary answers attempt to justify the asymmetry on utilitarian grounds or by appeal to some kind of consent. The former claims that treating the state differently than we treat individuals yields the best consequences over all. Consent theory, on the other hand, takes one of two forms. The first (alive, if not well, after Hume) contends that we tacitly consent to institutional arrangements by living under those arrangements, or by accepting the advantages of living under those arrangements, and that this consent justifies state authority. The second contends that coercive institutional arrangements are legitimate insofar as we could consent to them and that the legitimate coercive institutional arrangements have political authority. (Hypothetical consent theories of authority are often rightfully traced back to Kant but have been recently revitalized by Rawls and other contractualists.) In The Problem of Political Authority, Michael Huemer challenges each of these attempts, concluding that neither is successful and, hence, that we are not justified in maintaining our sense that individuals and states are different in a way that establishes that the latter have political authority while the former do not (2013: 137–81). I think it is largely an open question to what extent Kant’s theory of political authority falls within Huemer’s critique. In any case, part of what we need to know to determine whether Kant’s theory of political authority is vulnerable to Huemer’s sweeping critique is what that theory is in the first place, which is the task of the current chapter. For a discussion of the asymmetry in Kant’s conception of freedom see Frierson (2003: 13–30). 9. Although Kant does not argue that coercive force is more or less legitimate when used by the state or a private individual, punishment is an example where this distinction is important. He argues that punishment (for breaking the law) is legitimate only when done by the state inside of civil society because only the sovereign or head magistrate has the authority and responsibility to punish individuals. Kant writes, “The mere idea of a civil constitution among human beings carries with it the concept of punitive justice belonging to the supreme authority” (MM 6:362), and “the right to punish is the right a ruler has against a subject to inflict pain upon him because of his having committed a crime” (6:331). It is important to note that when the sovereign punishes an individual, that individual is being punished not because he has violated a moral law, but rather because he has violated a judicial law. Kant does suggest a connection between moral and juridical laws, but exploring that connection would bring us well beyond the scope of this particular investigation. It suffices to say that while the difference between violating the moral law and

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10.

11.

12.

13.

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judicial law is significant, the point remains the same that through punishment an individual is being held responsible for his actions. Passages like these suggest that Kant thought that civil society, without sovereign or magisterial power, is insufficient for a condition of right. Whether his arguments for this conclusion are compelling is an interesting and important question that simply lies beyond the scope of this manuscript. While an individual can be coerced to act such that he recognizes and respects another individual’s autonomy, he cannot be coerced to adopt maxims rooted in the principle of respecting another individual as an autonomous being. Determining maxims for another individual is impossible. Even if it were not impossible, it would be disrespectful to the individual being coerced (Korsgaard, 1996: 220n36). The function of coercion is to compel an individual to adopt maxims that, when acted upon, produce actions that are consistent with recognizing and respecting the autonomy of all individuals. For example, it would be impossible to coerce a chauvinistic, male employer into believing that men and women deserve equal pay for equal work. However, the use of force or threat of penalty could compel that individual to restrict himself to actions that can be shown to express maxims such that, when acted upon, the consequences of those actions would be equal pay for equal work. In these situations coercion is being used to restrict an individual’s external freedom or liberty, compelling that individual to act in a particular manner, not adopt a particular maxim (although one must adopt a maxim that produces a particular result when acted upon). Both Korsgaard and Dieter Henrich note these apparent inconsistencies in Kant’s position. Korsgaard writes, “If revolution is wrong, how can ‘wishful participation’ in it be right?” (1997: 299). Henrich adds, “Kant was filled with enthusiasm for the French Republic and eagerly awaited all reports about a favorable course of events for it in France and Europe. [His seemingly contradictory views on revolution] are hard to reconcile” (1996: 106). To my knowledge, Heiner Bielefeldt is alone in drawing the connection between this passage (MM 6:341–2) and Kant’s reconciliation of his enthusiasm for the French Revolution with his view of revolution in general (1997). It is surprising that Bielefeldt’s observation of Kant’s comments at MM 6:341–2 have received relatively little attention in the literature surrounding the large discussion of Kant and the French Revolution. Although Kant never left Konigsberg, anecdotes from his contemporaries suggest that he was interested in (and possessed substantial knowledge of) what was happening around Europe. For example, Manfred Kuehn writes of Kant that the politics of the French Revolution “was his favorite topic of conversation” and that he was “so curious about the new developments [regarding the revolution] that ‘he would have walked for miles to get the mail’ ” (2001: 343, citing Jachmann, 1804: 179). Some scholars have attempted to answer this question through historical analysis, asserting that the solution lies entirely outside of Kant’s philosophy. Of these arguments, most focus on the influence of the Prussian censor on Kant’s philosophical writings, since the majority of Kant’s writings in support of revolution can be found in his correspondence. While this type of argument may provide the easiest explanation, it comes up short in fairly obvious ways. First, although the majority of Kant’s comments on revolution appear in his correspondence, similar positions can be found throughout his philosophical writings, albeit with less frequency. Those arguing for a historical explanation cannot find a solution themselves as to how to make sense of these comments when they appear in Kant’s philosophical writings unaccompanied by his own explanation. Further, Kant suggests that in an

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue individual’s scholarly writings, including his own, a scholar speaks freely in his own name (E 8:38). Along these same lines, there is a commonsense argument that opposes the position suggesting that this problem can be solved by examining historical facts alone. Given that the seemingly contradictory writings are found in Kant’s philosophical texts, there is no justification for simply ignoring a portion of these writings because they do not fit the general trend. In a similar vein to those who argue for a historical solution to this problem, other scholars have suggested a solution can be reached by examining Kant’s status as an observer of the revolution, not a participant. This latter position, forwarded most notably by Hannah Arendt (1982: 44–51), warrants particular attention because it attempts to reconcile Kant’s comments concerning revolution with an answer rooted in his philosophical theory. For Arendt, the observer is able to express his sympathy towards the cause of the revolutionaries publicly but without breaking the law and revolting himself. Kant’s enthusiasm for the French Revolution is seen as enthusiasm for the cause of the revolutionaries’ actions, not as enthusiasm for the actions themselves. The philosophical problem for Kant, however, appears to be more significant than simply considering enthusiasm as applied to the spectators of a revolution. The emphasis in his statement concerning the French Revolution is on the feeling of wishful participation held by the spectators, rather than on expressing enthusiasm simply for the cause of their actions. The previously cited passage from The Metaphysics of Morals is further evidence for this interpretation, as this passage provides justification for the actions of the revolutionaries, in addition to justifying the enthusiasm of the observers. 15. Discussion surrounding this issue goes back as far as Gentz and Rehberg, two of Kant’s students, who were also troubled by how to reconcile Kant’s positions on autonomy and human dignity with his politically conservative position condemning revolution in general. Although they were unable to arrive at a solution, they agreed that the problem could not be solved through clever, situational justifications; it required an examination of fundamental principles (Henrich 1996: 112). One thing is clear: Kant shows enthusiasm for revolution in a number of places throughout his philosophical writings, and unless we are to conclude that Kant simply ignored his philosophical doctrine when making these comments, an explanation rooted in his philosophical theory is necessary. 16. For Kant, rights are consistent with universal external freedom and “there is connected with right by the principle of contradiction an authorization to coerce someone who infringes upon it” (MM 6:231). This position comes from Kant’s argument that coercing another individual is unjustified because it hinders that individual’s freedom. If, however, an individual is being coerced to prevent an action that would hinder freedom, then this coercion is justified. In other words, while an individual would not be allowed to coerce others forcibly under normal circumstances, coercion to hinder a hindrance of freedom is consistent with universal freedom and therefore is justified. It follows from this position that rights are enforceable through coercion. Kant notes, however, that in the state of nature rights are merely provisional because there is no magisterial authority to protect these rights. The only way for an individual to ensure that his rights are protected is to coerce others into joining civil society with him, thereby establishing a procedure for adjudicating competing claims. “[One] must also be permitted to constrain everyone else with whom he comes into conflict about whether an external object is his or another’s to enter along with him into a civil constitution” (MM 6:256). Put differently, competing rights claims cannot be adjudicated

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justly in the state of nature. For individuals living in this condition, the only way to ensure a just adjudication is by compelling others, by force if necessary, to join into civil society, establishing an arbitrator to settle the dispute. 17. In addressing this issue, Korsgaard considers the fundamental importance of virtue in Kant’s moral and political theory, and its relationship to revolution. Her argument begins by looking at the internal duties virtue imposes. “Duties of virtue are concerned with our motives and attitudes. They arise from the command that we should not only do certain things, but do them for moral reasons” (1997: 316). All of an individual’s actions are directed towards some end goal, and this end is seen as being good (Gr 4:427). Thus, to act in a certain manner towards some end goal is to act to bring about a particular good. “In the moral case . . . we may simply see our action as expressing respect for humanity as an end in itself. Because morally good actions . . . are purposive, Kant argues that the cultivation of virtue is achieved through the adoption of morally obligatory ends” (Korsgaard, 1997: 316), and the virtue of justice is possessed by the individual who makes the rights of humanity his end (MM 6:390). When addressing Kant and revolution, we are left to wonder how a virtuous individual might be viewed if he revolted against the government. For Korsgaard, “[i]t is by no means obvious that a person who makes the rights of humanity his end would never, under any circumstances, oppose the extant government. If this is correct, nothing in Kant’s theory absolutely commits him to the view that a good person would never revolt. Nor, I believe, is this what he himself thought” (1997: 317). Adopted from one of Kant’s positions in Groundwork, Korsgaard’s argument from virtue is based on the position that, since individuals cannot will evil maxims to be universal laws, a person who acts wrongly is not rejecting the moral law entirely. Instead, that individual is making himself an exception to the rule. Kant writes, “If we now attend to ourselves in any transgression of a duty, we find that we do not really will that our maxim should become a universal law, since that is impossible for us, but that the opposite of our maxim should instead remain a universal law, only we take the liberty of making an exception to it for ourselves (and just this once) to the advantage of our inclination” (Gr 4:424). Korsgaard concludes, “The person with the virtue of justice[,] . . . unable to turn to the actual laws for their enforcement, has nowhere else to turn. She may come to feel that there is nothing for it but for her to take human rights under her own protection[,] . . . [taking] the law into her own hands” (1997: 319). By revolting, the virtuous person has made a difficult choice, as he knows that the foundation for the protection of humanity’s rights is contained within the structure of civil society. For Korsgaard two things set this decision to revolt apart from most of the decisions made inside Kant’s ethical system. First, we cannot apply Kant’s universalizability test to this decision, for the decision about when it is necessary to revolt is a decision of pure judgment. “There is no criterion for deciding when imperfection [of justice] has become perversion [of justice], when things have gone too far. . . . Morality cannot tell you when to leave the moral law behind. . . . [I]n making this kind of decision, you are entirely on your own” (1997: 320). Second, there appears to be some degree of chance that will play a role in the justification of the revolutionary act. While this issue will be mentioned only briefly, it is important to consider how it affects responsibility. Kant appears to distinguish whether the revolutionary is justified in his actions based, to an extent, on whether the revolution was successful. Korsgaard writes, “Success makes the revolutionary, legally, the new voice of the general will, and, morally, one who has promoted the cause of justice on earth. In his own eyes and the eyes of the spectators

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue this [success] will justify him [and his actions]. . . . Failure, on the other hand, means that he has destroyed justice for nothing, that he is guilty of murder and treason, an assailant of the general will, and the enemy of everyone. Revolution may be justified, but only if you win” (1997: 320). When these two considerations are coupled, we get a sense of how it may be possible to justify the revolution of a virtuous individual in the Kantian system. In short, Korsgaard begins by accepting Kant’s initial position that a subject never has the right to resist the sovereign and that the sovereign always has the legitimate authority to punish subjects for acts against the state. She believes that although individuals do not have a right to rebel, they may sometimes be morally justified in rebelling, if the revolution succeeds. If the revolution fails, however, then the revolutionaries are morally responsible for the deaths and societal instability that they caused. But this type of ex post facto justification of revolution is problematic when considering Kant’s moral theory, for the success or failure of any action would not provide a moral justification for the initial action. Further, a fundamental principle of Kant’s moral theory is the importance of universalizing moral actions. Whereas an individual himself must ultimately decide whether to revolt, there is an added component of morality for Kant that is rooted in universalizability. Examining this component of morality is essential to this discussion, for it would show when one would be morally justified in acting against the sovereign. Therefore, Korsgaard’s argument comes up short because it fails to identify this second part of the solution concerning when an individual is justified in revolting, or, in the stronger sense, when coercive action against the state is obligatory. 18. Kant’s comments on oppressive regimes explain why he does not equate the civil state to civil society and how an unjustified magisterial authority is able to exist outside of a condition of coexistent freedom. In Kant’s essay on theory and practice, he explains that the citizens living in states appearing to be tyrannical and oppressive in nature are nevertheless required not to resist their government (TP 8:299–300). But this claim is not supported by all of Kant’s writings. Although he writes in The Metaphysics of Morals that “the presently existing legislative authority ought to be obeyed, regardless of its origin,” closely following this comment he adds, “Even the constitution [of the civil state] cannot contain any article that would make it possible for there to be some authority in a state to resist the supreme command in case he should violate the law of the constitution, and so to limit him. For, someone who is to limit the authority in a state must have even more power than he whom he limits, or at least as much power as he has. . . . In that case, however, the supreme commander in a state is not the supreme commander; instead, it is the one who can resist him, and this is self-contradictory” (MM 6:319). The argument Kant makes here is that what designates the chief magistrate in a civil state is simply the individual who possesses the final say. Thus, it would make no sense if another individual could overrule the individual who is supposed to make the final decision. If it were the case that the designated magistrate was not the ultimate authority, then the claimants would simply appeal to this other individual or authority and not to the designated magistrate. 19. When looking for historical examples of a supposedly civil condition that fails to maintain a situation of coexistent freedom, consider the situation faced by black Americans living in the United States between 1863 and 1954. Gunnar Myrdal summarizes the condition of oppression faced by these individuals during this time as follows: “In the south the Negro’s person and property are practically subject to the whim of any white person who wishes to take advantage of him or to punish him for any reason or fancied wrongdoing or ‘insult.’ A white man can steal from or maltreat a Negro in almost any way

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without fear of reprisal, because the Negro cannot claim the protection of the police or courts and personal vengeance on the part of the Negro usually results in organized retaliation” (1944: 530). It is fairly uncontroversial to say that black Americans living in the United States during this period had no rights against white Americans and so were not part of civil society, at least when looking at civil society in terms of just arbitration of rights disputes. Kant may have seen the condition of the American people during the colonial days as falling into the same category. While the quality of life for the colonials far exceeded what these black Americans experienced, the colonials were in a similar condition regarding the existing British civil state and its institutions. This issue was discussed at greater length in the previous chapter. 20. It is clear from this passage that there exists some connection between the cultivation of virtue, the thrust of Kant’s moral theory, and the formation of civil society, the starting point for Kant’s political theory. I am in agreement with Allen Rosen on this assessment of the connection between Kant’s ethical and political thought. He writes, “Kant believes that political society is a training ground for inner morality. . . . [T]he state makes it easier for the ‘capacities of human beings to develop into an immediate respect for right,’ and even though this is not yet a ‘moral step,’ it is nonetheless a definite step toward morality” (1993: 77). Put differently, while Kant believes that civil society cannot make men moral, living in civil society is necessary in practice for the full moral development of any human being. There are two components of this position. The first is that morality requires a type of training for it to be fully cultivated inside an individual, and the second is that this type of training can be done satisfactorily only while inside civil society. 21. Joseph Reisert (2012) argues that Kant’s portrait of the morally upright person accords closely with Rousseau’s depiction of Emile. He says Rousseau, like Kant, teaches that virtue requires an individual to subordinate his desires to a moral law given by reason, and that such virtue is a necessary but insufficient condition of realizing the highest good for human beings. Reisert claims that Kant’s account of moral education diverges from Rousseau’s in three ways: (1) Kant proposes a program of public instruction, while Rousseau advocates domestic education; (2) Kant proposes that pupils learn morality by studying a moral catechism; Rousseau rejects direct moral instruction as corrupting, insisting that the young discover morality through the (carefully supervised) practice of doing good; (3) Kant holds that moral exemplars reveal only that it is always possible to act uprightly, whatever the circumstances, whereas Rousseau shows that exemplary figures play a crucial role in introducing unphilosophical souls to wisdom. Reisert concludes that these differences stem from a fundamental disagreement about the role of sentiment in the acquisition and exercise of moral knowledge. 22. If a law is passed with the intent of providing for the security, convenience, or decency of the citizens and, by chance, it also assists in the moral development of the citizens, Kant believes it is legitimate. As with his moral theory, the intent of the law is what matters most in determining its legitimacy. State legislators do no wrong if laws produce the effect, albeit not primarily intended, of guiding a nation’s citizens towards the cultivation of their own virtue and the establishment of a rightful condition. On this point I argue with Alexander Kaufman. He writes, “Clearly, Kant does require that right regulates merely external acts and not the choice of ends. Yet there is a meaningful distinction between legislation designed to realize ends and legislation requiring the adoption of ends. Legislation designed to realize particular ends . . . may, in practical terms, merely regulate external acts” (1999: 19–20).

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Moral Education and the Cultivation of Virtue

The focus of the previous chapter was on the external conditions necessary for the possibility of virtue, paying particular attention to the role of civil society and the civil state in helping secure these conditions. But simply securing these external conditions is not sufficient for virtue. Consider what is perhaps a silly, but hopefully helpful, analogy. In many ways becoming virtuous is like baking a cake. To bake a good cake it is not only necessary for the oven to be set to (and able to maintain) the appropriate temperature, but the particular cake to be baked must be composed of the right ingredients in their appropriate quantities. The oven (and the cake pan, perhaps) provide what would be the external conditions necessary for the possibility of a good cake—if you have a malfunctioning oven or cake pan, you will not have a good cake. But like the virtuous person, the cake cannot create itself. The baker must form it by mixing together the necessary ingredients in their appropriate quantities. Just as a baker is needed to bake the cake, a teacher is needed to help form the virtuous student through the process of moral education. But the process of education is not as easy as baking a cake. Where this analogy fails is that human beings have wills; cakes do not. As a result, each human being must play a significant role in his own development as a virtuous person. For Kant, this analogy gets at one of the biggest problems of education: “[H]ow one can unite submission under lawful constraint with the capacity to use one’s freedom” (UP 9:453)? Or how can an individual not only be shaped in an important way by his external conditions but at the same time also shape himself in the manner necessary for virtue? Kant’s solution to this problem focuses on moral education. He claims that any doctrine of education is either physical or moral: Physical education is the education part which the human being has in common with animals, or maintenance. Practical or moral education is the education by which the human being is to be formed so that he can live as a freely acting being. . . . Practical education is education towards personality. . . . Accordingly, practical education consists of: (1) scholastic-mechanical formation with regard to skillfulness, which

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is therefore didactic (the job of the instructor), (2) pragmatic formation with regard to prudence (the task of the tutor), (3) moral formation with regard to ethics. . . . Physical education differs from moral education in that the former is passive for the pupil while the latter is active. He must at all times comprehend the ground of the action and its derivation from the concepts of duty. (UP 9:455, 475) Practical or moral education, and the process of how virtue can be cultivated while retaining the freedom of the subject’s will, is the focus of his “Doctrine of the Method of Ethics” (MM 6:477–93). Kant separates this discussion into two sections, which correspond with the two components of virtue. Section 1, “Teaching Ethics,” focuses on the process by which individuals come to recognize and understand what morality requires. In this first section Kant argues that ethics should be taught via a ‘moral catechism,’ a method of instruction similar to the long and short religious catechisms of Martin Luther.1 Section 2, “Ethical Ascetics,” aims at developing within each individual “a frame of mind that is both valiant and cheerful in fulfilling its duties” (MM 6:484). Put differently, this second section focuses on cultivating an individual’s ability to adopt the correct maxims or principles of action from the appropriate disposition. Kant argues that the moral disposition is developed through the process of ‘ethical gymnastics.’ “Ethical gymnastics . . . consists only in combatting natural impulses sufficiently to be able to master them when a situation comes up in which they threaten morality” (MM 6:485). It conditions an individual’s emotions to work with rather than against reason, helping him to overcome, suppress, or otherwise become apathetic to natural inclinations that prevent him from being able to act from duty. But Kant’s discussion in both sections of the “Doctrine of the Method of Ethics” appears inconsistent with important components of his moral theory. In particular, when discussing the method of moral instruction, Kant argues for a catechistic approach to moral education. But the process of catechistic instruction appears coercive, and so it seems to violate a central tenet of Kantian morality: an individual is morally praiseworthy only if he performs virtuous acts out of recognition that those acts are required of him (i.e., out of respect for the moral law itself), not because he has been habituated to act in that manner. Beyond this difficulty is a further difficulty related to Kant’s discussion of the role of “ethical gymnastics” in an individual’s acquisition of virtue. Although Kant provides a description of the aims of ethical gymnastics, he does not explain what ethical gymnastics is or how the process assists an individual in becoming valiant and cheerful in fulfilling his duties. It is unclear how an individual can train his emotions in the manner that Kant suggests and become valiant and cheerful through habituation while, at the same time, adopting these moral maxims out of duty. This chapter aims to resolve these problems by explicating Kant’s account of how an individual cultivates the virtuous character state

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and how Kant’s writings on moral education and the practical process of cultivating a virtuous disposition provide a significant contribution to the discussion in this area. THE PROCESS OF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT Kant begins the “Doctrine of the Method of Ethics” by examining why virtue must be acquired and why it must be taught.2 He writes, The very concept of virtue already implies that virtue must be acquired (that it is not innate); one need not appeal to anthropological knowledge based on experience to see this. For a human being’s moral capacity would not be virtue were it not produced by the strength of his resolution in conflict with powerful opposing inclinations. Virtue is the product of pure practical reason insofar as it gains ascendancy over such inclinations with consciousness of its supremacy (based on freedom). (MM 6:477) Since individuals are not born with the ability to resist heteronomous impulses, they must cultivate a propensity for virtue (i.e., autonomous action). That a propensity for “virtue can and must be taught already follows from its not being innate” (MM 6:477, my emphasis).3 His reasoning is as follows: (1) Acquiring virtue is a moral duty. (2) Virtue is not innate. (3) Because “ought implies can,” if individuals have a moral duty to become virtuous, then it is possible for them to acquire virtue. (4) That which is not innate but can be acquired must be learned. (5) That which can be learned but is not innate must be taught. (6) Therefore, virtue can and must be taught. According to Kant, the principles of virtue can be taught in one of two ways, “either by lectures [or dogmatically, a position he associates with Aristotle] . . . or else by questions, when the teacher asks the pupil what he wants to teach them [i.e., erotetically]” (MM 6:478). For Aristotle, virtue requires an individual not only to act correctly, but also, like Kant, to perform those good actions from the appropriate disposition: “[F]irst, with knowledge, secondly, from rational choice, and rational choice of the actions for their own sake, and, thirdly, from a firm and unshakable character” (NE 1105a31). Aristotle argues that state laws or cultural norms play an important role in helping an individual develop this appropriate disposition. These rules, backed by threats of punishments or promises of rewards, direct people to perform the appropriate acts, the first step in the process of acquiring the virtuous disposition.4

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But it is not clear how habituation through compulsory action is able to accomplish the goal of developing the appropriate moral disposition in the way that Aristotle requires. For his account of moral education to be successful, he must explain how a person who is habituated to perform good acts can, over time, perform those same acts not as a result of this habituation but as the result of some sort of rational process or recognition that these acts ought to be done. The problem, as discussed in Chapter 3, is that if an individual must be compelled or coerced to perform acts consistent with virtue, we would not consider such an individual to be virtuous. Instead, we would say he has performed acts consistent with those of a virtuous man but not from the appropriate state of character.5 But if dogmatic instruction lies at the foundation of an individual’s moral education, especially when this instruction is reinforced by threats of punishment or promises of reward, then it is hard to see how individuals would learn to act from the appropriate state of character. Instead, it seems that Aristotle’s method of moral education has the mechanism to teach agents how to act in accordance with duty but not from duty. It is largely because Aristotle’s account lacks this mechanism that Kant rejects his approach to moral education. Although Aristotle believed that individuals are able to develop the moral character over time in the way that he described, in drawing this conclusion he appears to appeal to observation, experience, and what we know about human nature rather than to argument.6 If, generally speaking, becoming a better person requires an individual to recognize what “doing the right thing requires,” not because of an association with punishment or reward but because he understands why performing certain acts are either consistent or inconsistent with being able to live a good life, then experience shows us that most people develop in this way over time. Although Kant employs similar reasoning in his discussion of ethical ascetics and how an individual can become apathetic to heteronomous inclinations, he appears to reject this type of instruction serving as the foundation of moral education.7 In contrast to Aristotle, Kant argues that the process of moral education must begin erotetically or Socratically: For Socrates, who called himself the midwife of his listeners’ knowledge, gives in his dialogues . . . examples of how even in the case of old people, one can bring forth a good deal from their own reason. On many matters children do not need to exercise reason. . . . But as soon as duty is concerned, then the reasons in question must be made known to them. However, in general one must see to it that one does not carry rational knowledge into them but rather extracts it from them. The Socratic method should be the rule for the catechistic method. (UP 9:477) The first exercise of [moral education] consists in questioning the pupil about what he already knows of the concepts of duty, and may be called the erotetic method. If he knows [how reason should be exercised in both theory and practice] because he has previously been told it, so

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue that now it is drawn merely from his memory, the method is called the catechistic method proper; but if it is assumed that this [knowledge of how reason should be exercised] is already present naturally in the pupil’s reason and needs only to be developed from it, the method is called that of dialogue (Socratic method). (MM 6:411)

Kant divides this erotetic method of education into two sub-methods— “the method of dialogue and that of catechism”—and claims that these approaches differ, “depending on whether the teacher addresses his questions to the pupil’s reason or just to his memory” (MM 6:478). But Kant rejects the method of dialogue as being able to provide the foundation for an individual’s moral education. Central to this process of dialectical education is that the questions do not come from the teacher (e.g., Socrates) alone; rather all of the participants are able to question the soundness of the arguments or reasonableness of the ideas that have been proposed. To participate in the dialogue an individual must enter the discussion with some preexisting knowledge of the topic being discussed—in this case, the principles of virtue. In the Platonic dialogues, this preexisting understanding of virtue can be traced to the Socratic belief that individuals are born with complete, theoretical knowledge (including knowledge of moral principles) (Meno 81c–d). No matter the specific position on the nature of virtue that we attribute to Socrates or believe that the Platonic dialogues convey, individuals are not taught the principles of virtue through the dialectic. Rather, the process of dialectic allows those individuals participating in the dialogue to refine their understanding of what virtue requires and how these principles should be applied.8 Individuals participating in the dialogue enter either with or without preexisting knowledge of moral principles. If an individual enters the dialogue already possessing this knowledge, then he may learn how best to apply it by participating in the dialectic. But if an individual does not have a preexisting understanding of moral principles when he enters the dialogue, then the dialectic process is unable to function in the appropriate manner, at least when it comes to the first steps of moral education. Kant’s rejection of the dialectic method as the starting point for an individual’s moral education follows from his belief that individuals are not born with an innate understanding of moral principles. “The formal principle of such instruction does not . . . permit Socratic dialogue as the way of teaching for this purpose, since the pupil has no idea what questions to ask; and so the teacher alone does the questioning” (MM 6:479). If it were the case that individuals were born with some innate understanding of these principles, then it could be argued that the dialectical structure is more appropriate to serve as the basis for moral education. But without the ability of all participants to take part in the questioning process, moral discussions that resemble dialogues turn out to be nothing more than instances of dogmatic instruction, which Kant has argued is incapable of providing the foundation for moral education.

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KANT’S MORAL CATECHISM If the role of moral education is to provide individuals with the principles underlying right and wrong action and to develop their character in such a way that they act correctly from the appropriate motivations (CPr 5:159), then neither Socratic dialectic nor Aristotelian dogmatism alone can provide a complete moral education. The dialectic approach fails because of its content—it assumes that one has already acquired a basic understanding of moral principles. Likewise, the dogmatic approach fails because of its form—it trains individuals to perform actions consistent with virtue but in a way that inhibits them from recognizing, and, ultimately, developing, the correct moral disposition from which to perform these actions.9 Kant’s solution is a catechistic method of moral instruction. By moral catechism, Kant has in mind something similar to the catechisms of Martin Luther, which played an integral role in Kant’s early religious education.10 The function of Luther’s catechisms was to teach individuals the fundamental doctrines and prayers of the church through a series of questions and memorized answers. Unlike a religious catechism, which is developed to instill within individuals particular tenets of a preexisting religious doctrine, Kant believes that a moral catechism can be developed from ordinary human reason. That is, a student educated via a moral catechism is not memorizing answers that he could not have generated himself or did not generate himself.11 In his remark to Section 1 of the “Doctrine of the Method of Ethics,” Kant demonstrates how this method of instruction can be used to question what an individual knows about the concept of duty. For the beginning pupil the first and most essential instrument for teaching the doctrine of virtue is a moral catechism. . . . A pure moral catechism, as the basic teachings of duties of virtue, involves no such scruple or difficulty since (as far as its content is concerned) it can be developed from ordinary human reason, and (as far as its form is concerned) it needs only to be adapted to the rules of teaching suited for the earliest instruction. . . . So the way of teaching by catechism differs from both the dogmatic way (in which only the teacher speaks) and the way of dialogue (in which both the teacher and pupil question and answer each other). (MM 6:479) Catechistic education begins with the teacher eliciting an initial response from the student, or, “should the pupil not know how to answer the question, the teacher, guiding his reason, suggests the answer to him” (MM 6:480). Then, this answer “must be written down and preserved in definite words that cannot easily be altered, and so be committed to the pupil’s memory” (MM 6:479). In the fragment of catechism that Kant provides, the teacher begins by asking the student a question that appears only tangentially related to the

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fundamental principles of morality. The goal of these first few questions is to arrive at the conclusion that the student’s greatest desire in life is to be happy. In Kant’s fragment, the first question the teacher poses is: “Teacher: What is your greatest, in fact your whole, desire in life?” (MM 6:480). To this question, the student remains silent.12 According to Kant’s method of catechistic instruction, when the student is unable to answer a question, the teacher attempts either to guide him towards the answer or to provide an answer to him that can then be committed to memory. In this case, after the student’s silence, the teacher responds that the student’s greatest desire in life is: “That everything should always go the way you would like it to” (MM 6:480). Kant’s teacher, after asking the student whether he knows what this condition is called and encountering silence once again, replies that this condition “is called happiness,” which he defines as “continuous well-being, enjoyment of life, [and] complete satisfaction with one’s condition” (MM 6:480). Although an individual may be silent and initially not recognize that this principle is the determining ground of all of his desires, Kant believes it to be a fact of human nature (CPr 5:25).13 Through the next series of questions and answers in the moral catechism, the student is guided towards not only recognizing this principle, but also recognizing the problems that result when happiness, or what an individual desires, is the determining ground of his will. After assisting the student in understanding that all of his desires are grounded in the principle of personal happiness, the teacher continues this process of preparatory guidance. This guidance is tailored to the student once the teacher understands his character (i.e., whether he possesses natural kindness towards others), whether he is able to temper these natural feelings towards others through the use of his reason, and whether he is able to apply these same reason-tempered feelings when considering what he deserves himself (MM 6:480–1). Additionally, the teacher also guides the student towards understanding the role of reason in motivating his replies. For example, when given the power to make everyone and anyone happy, the student responds that he would not “give a lazy fellow soft cushions so that he could pass his life away in sweet idleness” or “give a violent man audacity and strong fists so that he could crush other people,” even though both of these would allow someone else “to be happy in his own way.” The teacher, guiding the student’s reason through the phrasing of the question, follows up on this response by explaining the principle from which he is acting: “Teacher: You see, then, that even if you had all happiness in your hands and, along with it, the best will, you would still not give it without consideration to anyone who put out his hand for it; instead you would first try to find out to what extent each was worthy of happiness” (MM 6:481). The role of the teacher is to provide the student with preparatory guidance, which Kant believes is necessary for an individual to cultivate his reason to the fullest extent required for virtue. He writes, “It certainly cannot be denied that in order to bring either a mind that is still uncultivated

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or one that is degraded onto the track of the morally good in the first place, some preparatory guidance is needed to attract it” (CPr 5:152). He claims that the moral catechism provides this guidance by helping train the heart and temperament of individuals, leading them to recognize the type of behavior that is consistent with the demands of the moral law. In this way, the student is able to develop into what Kant calls the “man of understanding”: First of all, the understanding develops by using experience to arrive at intuitive judgments, and by their means to attain to concepts. After that, and employing reason, these concepts come to be known in relation to their grounds and consequences. Finally, by means of science, these concepts come to be known as part of a well-ordered whole. This being the case, teaching must follow exactly the same path. The teacher is, therefore, expected to develop in his pupil firstly the man of understanding, then the man of reason, and finally the man of learning. Such a procedure has this advantage: even if, as usually happens, the pupil should never reach the final phase, he will still have benefited from his instruction. (An 2:305–6) Although this passage is directed at education in general, it can be applied to his comments on moral education and the role of the moral catechism in this process. The aim of the moral catechism is not to make the student virtuous, comparable to the ‘man of learning’ in the passage just cited. Rather, the aim is to assist the student in recognizing what virtue requires by helping him recognize the actions that are consistent with those that the virtuous person would perform, the equivalent of the ‘man of understanding.’ But from this explanation of the aims of education and Kant’s discussion of the method of catechistic instruction in the fragment he provided, it is not entirely clear how Kant’s moral education via catechism is significantly different from Aristotle’s moral education via ‘dogmatic instruction.’ Although Aristotle himself provides no account for how he believes this system of instruction would play out in practice, Kant’s characterization of the Aristotelian position as ‘dogmatic’ provides insight into what he assumed Aristotle’s moral education would have looked like. For Kant, the first step in Aristotle’s moral education would be something like the teacher (be it an actual person such as a father or legislator, or some other authoritative entity like the laws) telling the student directly what the principles of morality are and what constitutes good behavior. In language that looks similar to Aristotle’s explanation of ‘dogmatic instruction,’ Kant claims that catechistic instruction begins by “[t]he teacher elicit[ing] from his pupil’s reason, by questioning, what he wants to teach him; and should the pupil not know how to answer the questions, the teacher, guiding his reason, suggests the answer to him” (MM 6:480, my emphasis). But “guiding his reason” is not the same as “suggesting the answer to him.” Consider again

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how this approach plays out immediately below this comment in the dialectical fragment: (1) Teacher: What is your greatest, in fact your whole, desire in life? Pupil: (is silent) Teacher: That everything should always go the way you would like it to. (2) Teacher: What is such a condition called? Pupil: (is silent) Teacher: It is called happiness. (MM 6:480) In this fragment it does not appear as if the student is “guided” to answer these questions but rather that answers to these questions have been provided by the teacher. But that these answers have been provided to get the discussion going does not indicate that Kant favors a dogmatic or positive approach to moral education. What separates these initial questions from the questions we encounter later in the moral catechism is that these initial questions and answers are factual in nature and have no moral content. Once the questions and answers have moral content (question number three and beyond in the fragment Kant provides), then we can see how the teacher is allowing the student to develop along the way. Another way around this problem of explaining how the moral catechism gets off the ground is simply to appeal to commonsense: it seems likely that every student participating in this initial stage of questioning would be able to provide some answer to the question about what his greatest desire in life is, and this answer would be superficial and connected to the satisfaction of natural inclinations (i.e., happiness).14 Assuming that the student is able to reply and does not simply remain silent, it is possible to maneuver around the concerns that Kant’s catechistic instruction is pedagogically similar to Aristotle’s dogmatic approach to education. This understanding of how the catechism operates in moral development is consistent with Kant’s discussion of the process of formative training described in his lecture notes: In formative training, we should try to ensure that [instruction] is merely negative, and that we exclude everything that is contrary to nature. . . . The negative aspect, in both instruction and training of the child, is discipline; the positive aspect, in instruction, is doctrine. Discipline must precede doctrine. By discipline the heart and temperament can be trained, but character is shaped more by doctrine. Discipline amounts to corrective training; but by this the child is not taught anything new; there is merely a restriction in lawless freedom. (LE 27:467) From this passage, it is possible to more clearly identify what Kant seems to perceive as the difference between his catechistic approach to this initial stage of moral education and what he categorizes as Aristotle’s approach via ‘dogmatic instruction.’ If we look back at the fragment of Kant’s

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catechism, the child does not actually learn anything new during this process, at least in terms of content. He responds that his greatest desire in life is to be happy and that if he had the power to make other people happy he would do so, but only if those people were worthy or deserving of happiness. Does satisfying his own desire to give in to his bodily inclinations, like the lazy man who wants pillows, constitute being worthy of happiness? The obvious answer is no. But by being led to consider whether some other individual is worthy of happiness, the student is forced to consider if he is worthy of happiness himself. At this point, it is possible to begin to train the student’s heart and temperament, the next step in moral education. PRACTICING VIRTUE: ETHICAL ASCETICS AND MORAL HABITUATION Section 2 of Kant’s “Doctrine of the Method of Ethics,” entitled “Ethical Ascetics,” aims to present the “rules” or methodology “for practicing virtue.” The first paragraph in this section is especially important, as it outlines the aims of this discussion and roughly sketches his account of how an individual comes to “practice virtue.” He writes, The rules for practicing virtue aim at a frame of mind that is both valiant and cheerful (animus strenuus et hilaris) in fulfilling its duties. For, virtue not only has to muster all its forces to overcome the obstacles it must contend with; it involves sacrificing many of the joys of life, the loss of which can sometimes make one’s mind gloomy and sullen. But what is not done with pleasure but merely as compulsory service has no inner worth for one who attends to his duty in this way and such service is not loved by him; instead, he shirks as much as possible occasions for practicing virtue. (MM 6:484) The ideas expressed in this passage are consistent with a similar claim in the Über Pädagogik that the virtuous person must adhere to a popular Stoic maxim: “Morality is a matter of character. Sustine et abstine is the preparation for a wise moderation. If one wants to form a good character, one must first clear away the passions. In regard to his inclinations the human being must learn not to let his inclinations become passions” (UP 9:486–7). In these passages Kant asserts that the virtuous person must not only do the right things (i.e., fulfill his duties), he must do them while possessing the appropriate temperament or state of soul (i.e., animus strenuus et hilaris, or sustine et abstine).15 This appropriate temperament has two components, which can be attributed to the individual’s will or moral personality: (1) a certain type of strength associated with being able to bear unpleasant things, and (2) a certain state of character associated with being cheerful or possessing pleasant feelings when fulfilling one’s duty.

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The remainder of this passage at MM 6:484 tells us why the virtuous person must possess these two characteristics. Virtue requires strength because it “involves sacrificing many of the joys of life, the loss of which can sometimes make one’s mind gloomy and sullen” (MM 6:484). So, in other words, the virtuous person must possess the strength not to give in to his inclinations or what he desires to do. But developing this strength of character is not enough. The virtuous person must do his duty cheerfully. At first glance, this statement appears to present some sort of paradox: the virtuous person must acquire the strength to prefer duty to happiness, but then he must be cheerful when performing his duty. That is, he must be cheerful to do what can “sometimes make one’s mind gloomy and sullen.” Kant asserts that an individual must be cheerful when performing his duty because “what is not done with pleasure but merely as compulsory service has no inner worth.” In other words, to put it crudely, doing the right thing under these circumstances does not count as far as virtue is concerned. Although the grumpy child derives the benefit of eating vegetables even when he is forced, persuaded, or otherwise compelled to do so, the same is not true for virtue. The virtuous person must not only act correctly; he also must perform these correct actions from the appropriate character state. The practical problem for the person who has not developed this appropriate temperament is that he will “shirk as much as possible occasions for practicing virtue.” Kant’s solution to acquiring this valiant and cheerful disposition is a result of developing what he calls ‘moral apathy.’ His most substantial discussion of moral apathy takes place in Section 16 of the “Introduction to the Doctrine of Virtue” in The Metaphysics of Morals. He regards moral apathy as a type of ‘strength’ and associates this characteristic with the “absence of affects” (MM 6:408). For Kant, an ‘affect’ is a feeling that precedes reflection, insofar as it “makes [reflection] impossible or more difficult” (MM 6:407). It is a “surprise through sensation, by means of which the mind’s composure is suspended. Affect is therefore rash, that is, it quickly grows to a degree of feeling that makes reflection impossible (it is thoughtless)” (Anth 7:252). Affects, such as “fear, anger, or even joy,” cause a human being to become “beside himself (in an ecstasy, if he believes that he is gripped by an intuition which is not of the senses); he has no control over himself, and is temporarily paralyzed, so to speak, in using his outer senses” (Anth 7:166). Kant continues by comparing ‘affect’ and ‘passion’: Affect works like water that breaks through a dam; passion, like a river that digs itself deeper and deeper into its bed. Affect works on our health like an apoplectic fit; passion, like consumption or emaciation. 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 outer physician of the soul, one who nevertheless knows how to prescribe remedies that are for the most part not radical, but almost always merely palliative. . . .

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[N]o human being wishes to have passion. For who wants to have himself put in chains when he can be free? . . . [Therefore,] passions are not, like affects, merely unfortunate states of mind full of many ills, but are without exception evil as well. And the most good-natured desire, even when it aims at what (according to matter) belongs to virtue, for example, beneficence, is still (according to form) not merely pragmatically ruinous but also morally reprehensible, as soon as it turns into passion. (Anth 7:267, 7:252) For Kant, moral apathy is the strength possessed by an individual who is immune to these affects, even those that could be seen as producing beneficial consequences, such as joy, sympathy, or courage. But “courage [and these other beneficial feelings] as affect (consequently belonging in one respect to sensibility) can also be aroused by reason and thus be genuine bravery (strength of virtue)” (Anth 7:257). Kant concludes, “Bravery is courage in conformity with law; the courage, in doing what duty commands, not to shrink even from the loss of life. Fearlessness alone is no consequence; rather, it must be joined with moral irreproachability” (Anth 7:259). “The true strength of virtue,” therefore, “is a tranquil mind with a considered and firm resolution to put the law of virtue into practice. That is the state of health in the moral life, whereas an affect, even one aroused by the thought of what is good, is a momentary, sparkling phenomenon that leaves one exhausted” (MM 6:409).16 One consequence of an individual developing moral apathy is that he is always governed by reason, and his inner sense (i.e., reason) is not paralyzed by his bodily inclinations. Affects prevent rational engagement, which is central to moral decision making. In this way, apathy requires not disengagement or detachment but a type of self-governance associated with an individual determining the principles on which he acts.17 Apathy is “distinguished from indifference because in cases of moral apathy feelings arising from sensible impressions lose their influence on moral feeling only because respect for the law is more powerful than all such feelings together” (MM 6:408). It is a strength that is cultivated or developed and associated with an individual’s disposition. It appears at first as if one way of developing moral apathy would be through habituation. Consider Aristotle’s discussion of how the appropriate moral disposition is cultivated. For Aristotle, virtuous actions are done “in a just or temperate way not merely by having a quality of their own . . . but if the agent acts [from] a certain state [of character]” (NE 1105a28). The agent must understand what he is doing, perform the action for its own sake, and act from a “firm and unshakable character” (NE 1105a31). Habituation plays a central role in Aristotle’s discussion of how individuals acquire the practical virtues like generosity, courage, and beneficence. He argues that we acquire the practical virtues “by first exercising them” (NE 1103a34). “[B]y acting as we do in our dealings with other men, some of us become just,

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others unjust, and by acting as we do in the face of danger, and by becoming habituated to feeling fear or confidence, some of us become courageous, others cowardly” (NE 1103b20). Therefore, Aristotle concludes, “it is not unimportant how we are habituated from our early days; indeed it makes a huge difference—or rather all the difference” (NE 1103b26). Kant’s position on moral apathy appears similar in many ways to the praiseworthy state of character Aristotle describes. Like Aristotle, Kant believes that the virtuous character state associated with becoming apathetic to bodily inclinations must be cultivated. Consider again that passage from Rel 6:47 (examined more thoroughly in Chapter 1) where Kant claims that Tugend der Legalität is acquired “little by little, and to some it means a long habituation.” This idea is made clearer by Kant in his discussion at MM 6:402 of beneficence, a virtue of character that is also one of Aristotle’s practical virtues. Kant writes that an individual has a duty to be beneficent, which means that an individual has a duty not simply to perform beneficent actions but to perform those actions from the appropriate character state. He claims that although “the experimental (technical) means for cultivating virtue is good example,” the practical means for cultivating this appropriate state is through the performance of good acts (MM 6:479). In the case of becoming beneficent, an individual develops the beneficent character state by the performance of beneficent acts. Kant writes, If someone practices [beneficence] often and succeeds in realizing his beneficent intention, he eventually comes actually to love the person he has helped. So the saying “you ought to love your neighbor as yourself” does not mean that you ought immediately (first) to love him and (afterwards) by means of this love do good to him. It means, rather, do good to your fellow human beings, and your beneficence will produce love of them in you (as an aptitude [Fertigkeit18] of the inclination to beneficence in general). (MM 6:402) The last sentence in this passage deserves particular attention. Here, Kant is claiming that an individual who is inclined to perform beneficent acts will become beneficent as a result of performing those acts. That is, the individual appears to become beneficent through habituation.19 Although Kant at times associates the cultivation of a virtuous character state with habituation in that it can lead individuals to perform good acts, he is clear throughout his writings that habituation (at least in the Aristotelian sense) cannot produce a virtuous state of character. In his Anthropology essay, for example, he writes, “[V]irtue is moral strength in adherence to one’s duty, which should never become habit but should always emerge entirely new and original from one’s way of thinking” (Anth 7:147). Habit, he adds, “is a physical inner necessitation to proceed in the same manner that one has proceeded until now. It deprives even good actions of their moral worth because it impairs the freedom of the mind, and, moreover,

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leads to thoughtless repetition of the very same act, and so becomes ridiculous” (Anth 7:149). This position is reinforced at 4:463 of the Über Pädagogik, where he says that habituation is inconsistent with freedom, a necessary component of virtue. He writes, “The more habits someone has, the less he is free and independent. It is the same with the human being as with all other animals: they always retain a certain propensity for that to which they were accustomed early. The child must therefore be prevented from getting accustomed to anything; it must not be allowed to develop any habits” (UP 4:463). Virtue requires an individual to act from the appropriate character state. Thus far, the explanation for how this state develops is this: (1) an individual’s reason is developed via the moral catechism in such a way that he acquires a better understanding of moral principles and what actions are consistent with those principles; (2) examples of exemplary conduct are brought to his attention for the purpose of providing proof that it is possible to perform good acts;20 and (3) through the performance of these good acts an individual begins to cultivate the virtuous disposition. What is missing is some explanation for how an individual is able to become apathetic to the bodily inclinations associated with heteronomous actions—that is, an explanation for how an individual is able to overcome the anguish and discomfort associated with suppressing desires. PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND THE CULTIVATION OF VIRTUE One explanation is that this habituation is not moral habituation in the sense of becoming accustomed to performing good acts, but rather a type of physical habituation whereby an individual becomes apathetic to bodily discomfort. Kant suggests that this habituation, which is essential to an individual developing the moral disposition, can be accomplished via gymnastic exercise or physical education. One of the first discussions of the role of physical education in moral development can be found in Plato’s Republic. Here, Socrates asserts that the city in speech is just because the classes within the city are harmonized appropriately. Citizens are placed into different classes based on the nature of their souls. For Socrates the soul of the individual contains three parts: desire, spirit, and reason. In the souls of the people with the best natures, the rational part of the soul is able to rule both the desiring and spirited part. In Phaedrus (246a–54e), Socrates likens the soul of an individual to a two-horse chariot, associating the rational part of the soul with the charioteer, the spirited part of the soul with one horse of noble descent, and the desiring part of the soul with one horse of ignoble descent. Depending on the nature of the person, the charioteer, noble horse, or ignoble horse could determine the direction of the chariot. In persons with the best natures, the charioteer is able not only to drive the chariot in

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the appropriate direction by using his strength to control both horses, but also to use the power possessed by the noble horse to control the ignoble horse. More simply put, he uses reason to harness the power of spirit to control appetite or desire. Socrates is not clear about whether individuals are naturally predisposed to be motivated by appetite, honor, or reason. But throughout Republic, he highlights the importance of education, especially physical education or gymnastic exercise, in helping to develop the people with the best natures. Socrates begins by associating gymnastic exercise with a “third form of good” that is “drudgery but beneficial to us” and claims we choose to participate in it not for its own sake but because of what it brings about (R 357c–d). While the function of gymnastic exercise is to bring about a sound body, Socrates argues that a sound body does not make a soul good, “but the opposite: a good soul makes the body as good as it can be” (R 376e). Although a sound body does not make a soul good, gymnastic education is established “chiefly for the soul” (R 410c). Simply put, gymnastic education is a necessary prerequisite for the possibility of making a soul good. At 430a–b of Book IV, Socrates draws an analogy between gymnastic education and a colorfast dye in a garment. Pleasure, pain, fear, and desire are then compared to scouring lyes; when encountered by the right and lawful individual, they are unable to change his character because he is able to control his body and use reason to suppress his appetites. The body, therefore, is seen as a “helper for philosophy” (R 498b), which can be trained to conduct fair speeches and learning if the individual is made accordant through gymnastics (R 441e–442a and 504d). Socrates is not alone in discussing the role of physical education in the process of moral education. In Emile, Rousseau spends considerable time discussing the role of physical education in an individual’s moral development, emphasis that should not be surprising given Rousseau’s admiration of Republic as a work on education (Em 40). He argues that a child’s education should be negative and that natural obstacles should be the only ones he encounters. “As long as children find resistance only in things and never in wills, they will become neither rebellious nor irascible and will preserve their health better” (Em 66). For example, a child must be free to “stretch and move its limbs” (Em 43), and so he argues against swaddling clothes and other practices that limit a child’s movement and natural development and in favor of allowing the child to run about freely. The goal, Rousseau argues, is to “[p]repare from afar the reign of his freedom and the use of his forces by leaving natural habit to his body, by putting him in the condition always to be the master of himself and in all things to do his will, as soon as he has one” (Em 63). This preparation begins with physical education and learning natural limitations. “When the child stretches out his hand without saying anything, he believes he will reach the object because he does not estimate the distance.” In these situations, Rousseau claims, the child should be carried “to the object slowly and with small

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steps,” so he learns that what limited his ability to acquire that object was his own physical limitations and not the will of another person. Physical education begins this training and is the first step in an individual’s ability to realize his freedom. “Children, even in the state of nature, enjoy only an imperfect freedom . . . [because they are not] able to do [anything] without [help from] others” (Em 85). But freedom is realized by the individual “who does his own will . . . [and] has no need to put another’s arms at the end of his own. . . . The truly free man wants only what he can do and does what he pleases” (Em 84), and physical education is the necessary first step for an individual to realize this freedom.21 Unlike Plato and Rousseau, neither Aristotle nor Kant is explicit in identifying the role of physical education in moral development. But it appears as if physical education must play a significant role in helping cultivate the appropriate moral disposition central to both of their positions. For Aristotle, “it is an admitted principle that gymnastics should be employed in education” (Pol 1338b40). But he cautions against excessive gymnastics or physical exercise: “[P]arents who devote their children to gymnastics while they neglect their necessary education, in reality make them mechanics” (Pol 1338b32). Not only is excessive physical training, or physical training in place of intellectual pursuits (i.e., the “necessary education” that he refers to), bad, but mixing these two activities also leads to problems. He writes, “Men ought not to labor at the same time with their minds and with their bodies; for the two kinds of labor are opposed to one another; the labor of the body impedes the mind, and the labor of the mind the body” (Pol 1339a8). Although the labor of the body impedes the mind, a healthy body is necessary to maintain a healthy soul. “There seems to be no case in which the soul can act or be acted upon without involving the body. . . . [Even thinking] requires the body as a condition of its existence” (DA 403a5–10). Aristotle concludes, “[I]t is for the sake of the soul that external goods and goods of the body are desirable at all, and all wise men ought to choose them for the sake of the soul” (Pol 1323b19). What leads individuals away from virtue is when they choose external goods for the sake of attaining bodily pleasures, instead of for the benefit of their souls. Like Kant, therefore, Aristotle seems to hold the position that bodily desires lead people away from virtue and that becoming virtuous requires an individual to develop the “firm and unshakable character” that prevents him from giving in to these desires. That this character is developed through, or is assisted by, physical education seems not only consistent with Aristotle’s theory but also supported indirectly by the text. Kant draws similar connections between physical education and moral development, as “[d]iscipline or training changes animal nature into human nature” (UP 9:441). The most significant discussion on this function of physical education takes place in Über Pädagogik. Here, Kant’s approach to child development is similar to Rousseau’s. Like Rousseau, Kant argues that a child’s education must be negative in that the child must be able to develop

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in a manner consistent with nature.22 He argues against swaddling clothes (UP 9:458), leading strings (UP 9:461), and any other devices or practices that “run contrary to the end of nature in an organized, rational being, according to which it must retain the freedom to learn to use its powers” (UP 9:463). Although a child should be able to exercise his limbs freely, he must be accustomed to disciplining his body from an early age. Kant writes, “The child . . . must not be allowed to become accustomed to anything to such an extent that it becomes necessary to it. Even as regards what is good, one must not turn everything into habit through artifice” (UP 9:458). In this passage, again, habit appears to be at odds with the development of reason and virtue. But, generally speaking, Kant claims a child is better off with a ‘hard education,’ which he understands as “the prevention of ease” (UP 9:464). Examples of appropriate practices include giving children cold baths (UP 9:458), having regular times for eating and drinking (UP 9:464), and ignoring children when they cry for something (UP 9:464). His reasoning is that when the child has to endure physical discomfort or otherwise does not get what he wants, it helps later with the training of character. “If children are accustomed to having . . . all of their whims fulfilled in early youth, their heart and their morals are thereby spoiled” (UP 9:460). “As concerns the formation of the mind,” Kant argues, “it should mainly be noted that the discipline not be slavish. Rather, the child must always feel its freedom; in such a way, however, that it not hinder the freedom of others. Therefore it must find resistance” (UP 9:464). Like Rousseau, Kant argues that the only obstacles a child should encounter are natural. It is not necessary to break a child’s will (UP 9:461) or teach him patience by making him wait a long time for something he is expecting to receive (UP 9:460). To help form the appropriate character within children, “it is very important to draw their attention to a certain plan in all things, certain laws, known to them, which they must follow exactly” (UP 9:481). A “second principal feature in the grounding of character in children is truthfulness. It is the fundamental trait and what is essential in a character” (UP 9:484). But children who are disobedient must not be punished, at least in the manner that children are usually punished. “If the child, for example, lies, it must not be punished but rather met with contempt, and it must be told that in the future one will not believe it, and the like” (UP 9:480). Here, Kant’s argument is for natural punishments, “which the human being brings upon himself by his behavior—for example, that the child becomes sick when it eats too much. And these punishments are best, for the human being experiences them throughout his entire life and not only as a child” (UP 9:483). Thus, one function of physical education is to show the child that although he may not be physically restrained, his physical freedom is limited by nature. Although these natural limitations decrease as an individual becomes bigger, faster, stronger, and so on, they never go away. Although the child possesses physical freedom, he lacks moral freedom. “Many people think that the years of their youth were the best and most

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pleasant of their lives. But this is hardly so. They are the most arduous years, because one is under strict discipline, can seldom have a real friend, and even more seldom can have freedom” (UP 9:485). In this passage, Kant is referring not to physical freedom but to moral freedom. Just as physical freedom is limited by the natural world beyond the body, an individual’s moral freedom is limited by the natural world beyond reason. But that ‘world’ is the individual’s body and his sensible inclinations. By decreasing the affects from this world (i.e., the body), an individual is able to realize his moral freedom (i.e., autonomy) to a greater degree. It is for this reason that artificial punishments must be avoided. Kant concludes, “If one wants to ground morality, one must not punish. Morality is something so holy and sublime that one must not degrade it and place it on the same level with discipline” (UP 9:481). While both Aristotle and Kant hold the position that bodily desires lead people away from virtue and that becoming virtuous requires an individual to become apathetic to these desires, neither discusses how an individual is able to develop this moral apathy that leads to a greater realization of internal freedom. It is implausible that it could develop from dialectic, dogmatic, or catechistic moral instruction alone. That an individual has learned that virtue requires him to use his reason to suppress his desires does not imply that he will be able to do so when faced with a situation that tests his resolve. But an individual can develop this strength of will through physical education. Physical education contributes to moral education in two important ways: First, it conditions the body to endure ever-increasing amounts of physical strain before succumbing or otherwise responding negatively to that experience. Second, it conditions the will not to respond to bodily impulses, a central feature of Kant’s ethical gymnastics. Gymnastic exercise provides an individual with the opportunity to condition both his body and will in non-moral situations. This type of training can be compared to the preparation of a professional athlete. An athlete must not only study the relevant principles, strategies, and techniques of his sport, but also must practice employing those principles, strategies, and techniques before the athletic competition if he is going to be successful. Similarly, if a person is going to become virtuous, he must not only study the principles of virtue, but also train his body to respond appropriately when facing moral tests. That physical education is a necessary prerequisite for the possibility of human virtue goes beyond mere application of the moral theories of Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, and Kant.23 This conclusion would apply to any moral theory that recognizes virtue as a cultivated characteristic and has as its essential feature the repression of desires that, if satisfied, are inconsistent with the demands of morality. Physical education trains the body to obey the will. By overcoming pain and discomfort in non-moral situations, an individual prepares himself to respond appropriately in moral situations where responding to his bodily inclinations leads him away from virtue. Although participating in physical education does not make an individual virtuous in and of itself, it conditions an individual to become apathetic to

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heteronomous impulses, a necessary component of moral education and the development of the virtuous character. Through physical education an individual is able to train his will to become apathetic to bodily inclinations. But although there is a similarity between moral and non-moral scenarios, the overlap between the two is not complete. The runner who is tired and wishes to stop yet pushes himself to run one more mile is in a very different situation than the person who is presented with an opportunity to cheat on his spouse with someone he finds physically attractive. Both are experiencing a type of anguish, but the kind of anguish experienced by the runner appears to be different from the kind of anguish experienced by the would-be adulterer. The runner’s anguish seems to come directly from his body and the pain he is experiencing. His bodily desire is to stop running to end this pain. In contrast, the would-be adulterer’s anguish comes from his imagination and in turning down a pleasure that he would be able to experience. His bodily desire is to act on these inclinations so that he can experience a pleasure that he would be unable to experience otherwise. In some cases, morality requires an individual to endure physical suffering like the runner. The most obvious example from Kant’s text is his prohibition on suicide. “Someone feels sick of life because of a series of troubles that has grown to the point of despair,” but no matter how much pain this individual is in, either physical or psychological, he is not justified in ending his life (Gr 4:421–2). A less obvious (but perhaps more interesting) example connecting physical suffering with morality can be found in Kant’s understanding of the Christian doctrine of atonement through the death of Jesus Christ (Rel 6:73–8).24 Whether we consider suicide, the death of Jesus Christ, or a similar situation in which morality requires an individual to endure the type of anguish experienced by the runner, physical education is able to habituate individuals to endure this suffering or become apathetic to these inclinations. But in many cases, morality requires an individual to endure the type of anguish experienced by the would-be adulterer. In these cases it appears that physical education is less useful in helping to develop moral apathy via habituation. Kant appears to recognize this problem and argues that the development of the appropriate disposition in these circumstances can be brought about, in part, via ethical gymnastics (instead of physical gymnastics).25 Kant’s discussion of moral education and an individual’s cultivation of virtue in the “Doctrine of the Method of Ethics” has two components—the first associated with how an individual acquires knowledge of moral principles and what constitutes morally praiseworthy behavior, and the second with developing an appropriate moral disposition. This second component has two parts, as identified by Kant’s account of the moral person’s disposition as being both valiant and cheerful. An individual possesses valiance when he develops, and is able to act from, the strength to resist his inclinations. Kant’s concern is that an individual who develops this strength may

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act appropriately but will do so sullenly. The problem is not that sullen behavior is inconsistent with virtue necessarily; rather, if an individual has not developed a cheerful disposition whereby he derives pleasure from acting in accordance with duty, then he will be fighting with himself constantly as to whether he acts appropriately. In this way Kant provides a practical account for how an individual can acquire virtue and the role of moral education in this process. The function of moral education is not to make individuals virtuous, but instead to teach them the principles of virtue, show how individuals themselves are able to generate these principles, and begin the process of ethical gymnastics by examining how these principles can be applied to practical scenarios—the first component of virtue. We can understand the development of the virtuous character state—the second component of virtue—as being connected to both moral and physical habituation. Although Kant departs from Aristotle in arguing that an individual cannot become virtuous via habituation, he does believe that habituation helps develop a “predisposition to the good.”26 But virtue cannot come about as a result of habituation, as it requires an individual to adopt the correct maxims out of respect for the law itself. That an individual has been habituated to act in a particular way means that he has not performed that action from the appropriate character state. Thus, what remains is to explain what causes an individual to act morally in practice. In other words, only the process that has been described in this chapter, combined with the appropriate external conditions described in Chapter 3, can equip an individual with the tools necessary to make the correct decision when he arrives at a moral crossroads and must decide how to act. The final chapter aims to provide this missing explanation of how individuals take this last step in the acquisition of virtue.

NOTES 1. In his introductory essay “Luther’s Life,” Albrecht Beutel describes the broader social circumstances under which Luther came to write the Large Catechism and Small Catechism. His explanation is clear and useful, so I have provided a substantial section here: “After the disaster of the Peasants’ War, Luther made an appeal to the elector to have visitations in the parishes carried out and to urge his villages to regard the support of schools and churches as at least as important as the maintenance of bridges and roads. Thus in 1527 the first visitation was conducted in Electoral Saxony. Luther contributed mainly in written form: the ‘German Mass,’ a new liturgy for baptism and marriage, a prayer book for children, new editions of hymnals, a series of sermons and of course the two Catechisms. “Both Catechisms, the Large as well as the Small, were Luther’s way of dealing with the depressing visitation results. In view of the alarming lack of biblical and theological knowledge encountered in the pastors—not to mention the

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue congregations—Luther set out to tackle the challenge, whose effort can hardly be overrated, of putting the essence of the Christian faith in basic sentences without trivializing or reducing it excessively. . . . The Large Catechism was born: a handbook for pastors designed to provide them with the necessary tools of the theological trade. “The Large Catechism was published in 1529 and the Small Catechism in the same year. The Small Catechism is first of all nothing more than its superbly phrased short form for domestic use. The one-page format made it possible for the individual pages of the entire catechism to be put up on the wall as an educational tool for memorizing. With unsurpassed proficiency, Luther knew how to summarize the heart of the Christian faith in concrete terms, always keeping his readership in mind so that its translation into the lives of those who would read and memorize the Catechism came alive with each sentence. ‘Your book says it all,’ commented his wife Käthe. And this was exactly how it was meant to be. “Beside the Luther Bible the Small Catechism in particular unfolded an incredible sphere of activity throughout the history of Protestant piety, extending to the dawn of our present time. The scheme of having the question ‘What is it?’ constantly repeated was meant as an encouragement to render account to each other for the mystery of faith on a daily basis.” (2003: 17) Beyond these broader social circumstances, the objectives for Luther’s catechisms are explained clearly by Winston Persaud. He writes, “In his two Catechisms Luther attempted to articulate what is at the heart of Christian faith. It is not exhaustive. Rather, in the Catechisms, he lays out the essentials for the individual Christian and the Christian life-in-community. He is clear about his theological non-negotiable, and he is clear about what is changeable and negotiable. Faith in God is, for him, faith as trust in Jesus Christ worked by the Holy Spirit. The practices of worship and devotion, prayer and caring for the neighbour are all to be centred in this faith in Jesus Christ and are to flow from this faith. Christians are freed in order to live in ways that honour God and seek their neighbour’s good. In these two works, Luther does not present a dichotomy between faith and behaviour. Luther presents the Christian life as one characterised by the daily rhythm of confession and forgiveness” (2007: 358). Both Beutel and Persaud agree that the catechisms’ accessibility constitutes the greatest departure from religious texts, such as the Bible, which were popular before publication of the catechisms. There are several reasons for the catechisms’ relative popularity. First, printing was a challenge prior to their publication. Although the printing press was invented in 1450, presses were not common until around the time Luther wrote the catechisms. The accessibility of the printing press made publication and dissemination of the catechisms relatively simple. Second, many found the small scope of the Small Catechism to be appealing. Unlike earlier religious texts, Luther used the Small Catechism to focus on only a few issues central to Protestant teachings— the Ten Commandments, the Apostle’s Creed, the Eucharist, the Lord’s Prayer, the Office of the Keys and Confession, and the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. This smaller scope made the Small Catechism’s overall message more manageable. Further, the small scope caused the Small Catechism to be more affordable than larger religious texts. Finally, the sophistication of Luther’s pedagogy made acquisition and retention of religious information simple. Luther used the small scope and simple language of the Small Catechism as a way to encourage readers to regularly study and memorize the cornerstones of Protestantism. Encouraging such study and memorization was one of Luther’s primary motivations for writing both catechisms.

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Concerning the widespread readership of Luther’s ideas, Robert Kolb writes, “The publication of Luther’s handbook (enchiridion) for Christian instruction converted the word for that instruction—catechism—into a word for the book itself, and the memorization of Luther’s Small Catechism began its 500-year-long history of shaping basic Christian knowledge for countless boys and girls. . . . Luther’s writings continued to play such a role, even if in a more limited way, after his death. The reprinting of his works found ready markets deep into the seventh century, and even thereafter. Without the printing press there would have been no confessionalization, and without Luther’s continued presence on the booksellers’ lists its shape would have been quite different. Those who could afford it could obtain Luther’s ‘complete’ works and have ready reference to the reformer’s thought always at hand” (2003: 220). Hans Hillerbrand explains the nature and legacy of Luther’s broader theology, as expressed in the Large Catechism and Small Catechism. He writes, “Luther was not a systematic theologian in the sense of having written a systematic exposition of theology. He was what might be called a ‘polemical’ theologian—Karl Barth used the word ‘irregular’ theologian to characterize the likes of Luther. His theology was not expressed in works of a systematic nature and character, but in polemical works, books and treatises written with specific controversial issues in mind (much like those characteristic of St. Augustine), and in biblical commentaries, where specific scriptural passages determined topic and compass exegesis. This fact makes it understandable why there was among Martin Luther’s followers far more disagreement about his teaching than, say, among the followers of John Calvin. Other than in his two catechisms and the Schmalkald Articles, Luther did not offer a coherent exposition of the faith. He wrote on specific topics, usually in the context of a fierce controversy—against the Anabaptists, against John Eck, or Huldrych Zwingli. To be sure, it is possible to systematize Luther’s utterances from various settings—Martin Luther did have a coherent theology—but it is not easy. That some of his followers were able to read one kind of notions into his writings, and others quite different theological notions, becomes understandable” (2003: 230). Although the lack of a single work that articulates the intricacies of the Lutheran faith may initially seem to be a disadvantage, the opposite may in fact be true. Until Luther, popular religious texts were dense and vague, thereby making them practically unattainable and largely irrelevant to the daily religious lives of many Europeans. Luther recognized the demand for an interpretation of Christianity that focused on issues relevant to the daily lives of common Europeans. Indeed, Luther addressed issues that the general population considered to be problematic instead of constructing an encompassing single text. Luther’s concern for the average European is a rather clear departure from Catholic leaders in particular, who had become notorious for their promotion of religious practices that seemed morally problematic and their avoidance of issues important to the daily religious lives of common people. While the absence of a single cohesive text may have made Lutheranism more philosophically and theoretically vulnerable, it came about as a result of Luther’s greater concern for the religious life of the average European. This same concern made the religion an attractive alternative for Europeans who had become frustrated with the Catholic Church’s cumbersomeness. Finally, from a practical standpoint, Luther’s catechisms continued to influence modern Protestant teachings. George Lindbeck, for example, recalls how Luther’s Small Catechism influenced his own religious teachings. He writes, “Among Lutherans, the Catechism had semi-canonical status. They were included in The Book of Concord, the collection of official confessional

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue statements, and most Lutherans for hundreds of years memorized the Small Catechism as part of their confirmation instruction. This was still the practice in Scandinavian-American Lutheranism in which I was reared, and it continues in developing countries (e.g., Namibia, where half of the black population is Lutheran). The Large Catechism was written for pastors as a help in explaining the Small Catechism” (1990: 142). Lindbeck’s experiences reflect how Luther’s approach was rather sophisticated for his time. Indeed, as many contemporary criticisms of religious institutions deal with religion’s irrelevance to daily life, Luther’s concern for simple, attainable religious texts remains relevant today. 2. There has been significant debate about whether virtue is innate, acquired as a function of the environment or social conditions, or some combination of these factors. This debate is between nativists and empiricists. Nativists believe that an individual’s inherent nature includes things like knowledge, morality, and ideas, while empiricists are those who believe such things are acquired primarily through experience. Jerry Samet puts this debate in historical context, writing, “Innateness has been in the philosophical limelight in two periods— each time flaring, and then receding. In the ancient world, it played a pivotal role in Plato’s philosophy, but was excluded from the Aristotelian system that came to dominate subsequent philosophical thinking. In the 17th and 18th century, it was revived. It played an important role in Descartes’s theory of knowledge, Locke mounted a sustained assault against it at the very beginning of his Essay, and Leibniz produced a detailed rebuttal against Locke. But the Lockean Empiricist approach carried the day, and innateness was written off as a backward and discredited view. Nineteenth century Kantianism, although potentially friendlier to innateness, left it on the sidelines as philosophically irrelevant. Recently, however, prompted by Noam Chomsky’s claim that findings in linguistics vindicate Nativism against Empiricism, innateness has made a strong comeback; it is once again the subject of philosophical and scientific controversy” (2008). Contemporary attempts to revive innateness debates have been multidisciplinary, drawing on work from philosophers, psychologists, legal scholars, and neurobiologists among others. Although historically this debate has not made much in the way of progress—Samet himself writes, “A survey of the philosophical career of innateness reveals that although it is an easy doctrine to attack, it is a hard one to kill”—modern multidisciplinary exploration seems to give one more reason to believe that researchers will reach an agreed upon conclusion regarding the origin of qualities like morality. Like Chomsky, other contemporary innateness scholars more often sympathize with the nativist position. Contemporary debates about the innateness of morality in particular can be found in Wilson, 1995; Joyce, 2006; Miller, 2008; Hamlin, Wynn, and Bloom, 2007. 3. In this passage, it appears at first glance as if Kant is using can and must almost interchangeably. In other words, his argument may be: (1) because virtue is not innate, it can be acquired; (2) because it can be acquired, it can be taught; (3) because an individual can learn only what he is taught (whether self-taught or instructed by someone else), virtue must be taught. However, this reading of Kant is problematic and would be similar to, for example, the claim that because a taste for orange juice can be acquired, it, therefore, must be acquired. 4. For Aristotle, “We acquire [virtues] by first exercising them. The same is true with skills, since what we need to learn before doing, we learn by doing. . . . So too we become just by doing just actions, temperate by temperate actions, and courageous by courageous actions. What happens in cities bears this out as well, because legislators make the citizens good by habituating them [through

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the laws], and this is what every legislator intends. . . . If one has not been reared under the right laws it is difficult to obtain from one’s earliest years the correct upbringing for virtue, because the masses . . . do not find it pleasant to live temperately and with endurance. . . . [Therefore,] the person who is to be good must be nobly brought up and habituated, and then spend his life engaged in good pursuits. . . . And this would happen when people lived in accordance with a kind of intellect and a correct system with power over them” (NE 1103a27–b6; 1179b28–1180a15). This point is central to the positions of both Aristotle and Kant; see NE 1144a15 and CPr 5:152. When describing how to identify good actions, Aristotle writes, “[T]he spheres of what is noble and just . . . admit of a good deal of diversity and variation, so that they seem to exist only by convention and not by nature” (NE 1094b16). Since what is good can change relative to each individual and his circumstances, it is impossible to arrive at an understanding of what action would be appropriate through contemplation alone. On this point I agree with R. G. Mulgan: “The man of practical wisdom . . . combines intellectual ability with the character and experience necessary to make wise and sensible decisions in particular human situations” (1987: 10). As a result, “[phronesis] owes its origin and development mainly to teaching, for which reason its attainment requires experience and time” (NE 1103a15). Aristotle, therefore, cautions against having young citizens study political science—the application of practical wisdom inside of the polis (NE 1094b5). A young person, whether “young in years or juvenile in character,” is not fit to study political science “because of his living and engaging in each of his pursuits according to his feelings” (NE 1095a7). Before studying political science, an individual must be educated in what is noble and just for his particular polis, “for each government has a peculiar character which originally formed and which continues to preserve it” (Pol 1337a10–15). Such a system of moral education requires both ethical instruction and habituation in order to cultivate the appropriate disposition for performing virtuous acts. One method of habituation is through obedience to the law. Laws “require us to live in accordance with each single virtue and forbid us to live in accordance with each form of wickedness” (NE 1130b24). By obeying the law, individuals learn not only what constitutes virtuous action but also when it should be performed, as an individual is punished either when he acts inappropriately or when a potentially appropriate action is performed at the wrong time. For Aristotle, the fear of punishment, or the motivation of pleasure and pain, provides the foundation of moral education (NE 1172a20). This problem that Kant identifies in his critique of Aristotle is similar to the problem identified by R. S. Peters’s “paradox of moral education” (1981: 45–60). As explained by Kristján Kristjánsson, this paradox contains two distinct, but interrelated, paradoxes: a psychological paradox and a moral/ political paradox. “The psychological paradox is this: How can it be true at the same time that it is the aim of moral education to develop persons who conduct themselves by their intellects . . . and that can best achieved through inculcating in them from an early age certain ready-made habits of action and feeling? . . . The moral/political paradox, on the other hand, is this: How can it be true at the same time that the aim of moral education is to create individuals who, moved by their own conception of the good, cherish and assiduously apply their own unencumbered autonomy and that this can best be achieved through means that necessarily involve an extrinsic motivation” (2006: 103)? According to Jill Gordon, “In the Meno, we see most clearly what is implicit in all other Platonic dialogues, namely, that the dialectic is the key to turning toward the philosophical life. . . . In the first third of the dialogue, [Meno]

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presents Socrates with a thorny dilemma, posed in such a way that either choice is one that Socrates would not want to make: no man can search either for what he knows or for what he does not know; he cannot search for what he knows, for he knows it and there is no need to search for it; neither can he search for what he does not know, for he does not know what to search for and will not know it when he comes upon it (80d5). Meno’s dilemma says that inquiry and, consequently, learning are impossible. . . . The story of recollection is Socrates’s direct response to Meno’s challenge, and it is reasonable, therefore, to expect that the story will at the very least show that learning is possible—and this it does. In addition, the story of recollection provides an explanation and a paradigm for how learning is possible” (1999: 34). Gordon claims that Socrates resolves Meno’s dilemma by “arguing that it presents a false dichotomy” (1999: 35). That is, an individual does not simply categorize knowledge as ‘known’ or ‘unknown.’ Socrates’s position is that the human soul is immortal and that “we have always already known the truth, and yet have been caused to forget it at birth, learning then becomes an act of re-covery rather than dis-covery” (1999: 35). Recollection, therefore, appears to be the cornerstone of learning. Gordon proceeds to outline four ways in which Socrates argues learning is possible through the dialectic. First, an individual must admit that he does not know, which allows the process of learning to begin. Second, because dialectic learning requires an individual to engage in the process of rigorous self-examination, the student plays the dual role of learner and teacher. In this way the students learns not by being taught per se, but by questioning and being questioned in turn. Third, teaching does not take the form of “telling” but, instead, demands that an individual “submit to question and answer” (1999: 36). For Socrates, the process of questioning affects the mind in a way that allows it to recollect more easily. Finally, authority has no role in the learning process. The presence of authority in the learning process creates a structure of subordination that is problematic for the question-and-answer pedagogy to occur. The student must regard his teacher as an equal for the dialectic process to function appropriately. 9. Otfried Höffe helps clarify the distinction between legality and morality. He writes, “A person’s morality does not consist in mere compliance to duty, which Kant calls legality. For the compliance of an action to duty (its moral correctness) depends on the determining causes for which one fulfills the duty. . . . [The] criterion for morality is met only if one does what is morally correct for no other reason than because it is morally correct. An action is good without qualification only if it fulfills duty for the sake of duty. Only in such cases does Kant speak of morality. Since morality does not consist in mere compliance to duty, it is not situated on the same level as observable behavior and the rules thereof” (1994: 143). Höffe continues by saying that those philosophers who construct moral theories “solely in terms of norms, values, and rules for resolving conflicts” have not created theories “of goodness without qualification with respect to an acting subject” (1994: 143). Such theories “explain legality but not morality” (1994: 143). 10. Manfred Kuehn explains the process of religious instruction that would have been familiar to Kant. He writes, “During the first year of religious instructions, the students had to memorize Luther’s small catechism. They were also told some of the biblical studies in an appropriate form. The second year was devoted to repeating the small catechism, supplemented by parts of Luther’s large catechism, and more Bible stories. Instruction for the third year was described as ‘all the preceding is repeated, and anything necessary added here and there’ (2001: 47).

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11. Some Kant scholars, including Allen Wood, argue that Kant’s moral catechism does not play a significant role in his moral philosophy. Wood writes, “In teaching ethics, [Kant] opposes the ‘catechistic’ method, which tests only the pupil’s memory, and favors the ‘erotetic’ (Socratic) method, which develops the pupil’s own reason” (1999: 151). If Wood is correct, then the apparent difficulty concerning the coercive techniques of catechistic education can be set aside, as this method of moral instruction would not play as significant a role as we may have initially believed. But Wood’s position is inconsistent with numerous passages from Kant’s texts addressing the importance of the catechistic method of moral education, passages that come from a variety of writings and spanning the course of Kant’s entire academic life (CPr 5:151– 61; MM 6:411, 478–9, 483–4; An 2:303–6). The passages at MM 6:478 and 6:411 address Wood’s comments directly. In these passages, Kant considers both the catechistic method and the dialectic method to be types of the erotetic method, rather than equating the erotetic and dialectic methods and viewing the catechistic method as opposed to the two. Educating through catechism and through dialogue is similar in that each consists in questioning the student instead of teaching moral principles dogmatically. The difference between the two approaches, as Kant notes, depends on whether the teacher is questioning the pupil’s memory or reason. 12. Thomas Fuhr argues that Kant’s student is quiet because the question is too complex. He writes, “I am not surprised that the student keeps silent. I asked myself whether I could answer Kant’s first question. I still think I could not. I do not know what my ‘whole desire in life’ is” (2000: 104). Against Fuhr, though, it is unclear why anyone, even a child possessing no understanding of moral principles, would be unable or unwilling to answer this question. Even if an individual could not answer the question with an intelligent reply, it is not unreasonable to expect a shallow reply relevant to the age and interests of that particular student—a reply that could be reduced to happiness or the satisfaction of bodily desires. 13. It is not surprising that Fuhr finds this exchange to be unsatisfying as well. He comments that although he does not know what his greatest desire in life would be, “I do know that I do not desire to live in a world where everything would always go according to my wishes. I rather tend to think that it enriches my life to live in a world in which my wishes are not always fulfilled” (2000: 104). This criticism, however, focuses on Kant’s definition of happiness, one that is also expressed elsewhere throughout his work (Gr 4:393; CPr 5:124; et al.), and not on the position that everyone’s greatest desire in life is to be happy. For the purposes of our discussion, it is irrelevant whether we accept Kant’s particular understanding of happiness. But what is relevant is that in this first stage of the catechism the student recognizes that the principle of happiness, no matter how we define it, underlies everything he desires. “To be happy is necessarily the demand of every rational but finite being and therefore an unavoidable determining ground of its faculty of desire” (CPr 5:25). 14. Previously, on this point, I have argued, “Through the silence of the student, Kant implies either that a shallow response is the equivalent of silence where moral development is concerned, or that the catechistic education can be successful even if the student cannot answer even the most basic questions concerning the principles that underlie his particular desires” (Surprenant, 2010: 170). I no longer believe this position to be correct. If the student cannot answer the most basic questions concerning what he desires, then the catechism (or any system of education) cannot proceed. But even a very simplistic reply—for example, a child replying that he wishes to eat ice cream

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for dinner—would be good enough because it is possible to move from that comment to a more general position on why the child desires what he desires, under what conditions is it problematic to satisfy these desires, etc. In that example, the discussion would likely go as follows: Teacher: “What is your greatest desire in life?” Student: “To eat ice cream every night for dinner.” Teacher: “Why would you want to do that?” Student: “Because I like it, a lot!” Teacher: “Why do you like it?” Student: “Because it makes me happy.” 15. The description of this temperament in the German reads “wackeren und fröhlichen,” which frequently is translated as “valiant and cheerful.” Kant supplements the German text with Latin, “animus strenuus et hilaris,” which translates as “a strong and cheerful spirit [or soul or disposition].” Although the translation of “valiant and cheerful” is consistent with the text, it is important to stress that in this passage Kant is referring to a state of the soul that can and must be cultivated. 16. Paul Formosa’s discussion of this topic is particularly helpful: “What Kant is morally concerned with is virtue and noble character. This is why apathy is not about ‘lack of feeling’ or ‘subjective indifference with respect to objects of choice,’ but about a rational engagement with value. As such, apathy is different ‘from indifference because in cases of moral apathy feelings arising from sensible impressions lose their influence on moral feeling only because respect for the law is more powerful than all such feelings together.’ Moral feelings are indicative of ‘taking an interest’ (or disinterest) in an action or its effects because it is morally demanded (or forbidden). Moral feelings are therefore based on sensitivity to a particular sort of value, namely moral value, including the absolute worth of persons. A person with properly cultivated moral feelings will not feel (or feel strongly) the force of her emotions when they prompt her to do something that is morally forbidden because she will be more emotionally sensitive to the higher worth to which her moral feelings are appropriate responses. The duty of apathy is therefore a duty that aims at preventing very powerful subjective states from making us insensitive to things we judge rationally to be of most value. The person who is sensitive to what is of most value does not get carried away about the worth of any one good in isolation from other goods. . . . [An individual becomes aware of what is valuable] by cultivating [his] moral feelings, habituating [himself] to have emotions and desires which are in accordance with [his] rational judgments, and controlling and limiting (where possible) strong feelings and inclinations” (2011: 107). Formosa’s observations in this passage are consistent with previously cited passages from Kant, as well as other passages from Kant’s moral, political, and historical writings. Consider, for example, this passage from his Anthropology text, which expresses ideas similar to those that have been cited previously but touch on other issues as raised by Formosa: “The principle of apathy—namely, that the wise man must never be in a state of affect, not even in that compassion with the misfortune of his best friend, is an entirely correct and sublime moral principle of the Stoic school; for affect makes us (more or less) blind.—Nevertheless, the wisdom of nature has planted in us the predisposition to compassion in order to handle the reins provisionally, until reason has achieved the necessary strength; that is to say, for the purpose of enlivening us, nature has added the incentive of pathological (sensible) impulse to the moral incentives for the good, as a temporary surrogate of reason” (Anth 7:253). 17. Patricia Greenspan argues that emotions are not always inconsistent with reason. She writes, “Because of their motivational force, I shall argue, the emotions may often be useful to us—may play an essential role, for instance, in social communication—as long as we can control their behavioral

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consequences” (1980: 225). Referencing Spinoza’s discussion of the “general connection between imitation and ambivalence,” she concludes, “I think we may grant that ambivalence is at least compatible with what I shall call ‘basic’ rationality. It is certainly not unreasonable, that is, even if it falls short of some higher rational ideal, like Spinoza’s ideal of complete freedom from external emotional influence; for it need not involve any abnormal breakdown in reasoning” (1980: 226–7). 18. Mary Gregor translates Fertigkeit as ‘aptitude,’ but it may be more appropriate to translate it as ‘skill’ or to denote that someone is ready or prepared to take on a task. Fertigkeit is associated with acquired characteristics that are perfected by education and habituation (just like Aristotle’s virtues of character). In this way Fertigkeit differs from Fähigkeit, which would be associated with abilities or denote that someone has the capacity to do something. 19. For Kant, the role of habituation in helping develop this virtuous character state is not restricted to interaction with other human beings. An individual’s kindness towards animals, for example, has a similar influence. Kant writes, “[W]e have duties towards the animals because thus we cultivate the corresponding duties towards human beings. . . . If he is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals. . . . Tender feelings towards dumb animals develop humane feelings towards mankind” (LE2 27:459). (This particular passage is found on pages 239–41 of the Infield translation. Georg Ludwig Collins transcribed these remarks during Kant’s lectures on Baumgarten during the 1784–5 winter semester. Heath provides a slightly different translation of this passage, which, although more faithful to the German text, does not convey the sentiment as clearly in English. Heath’s translation reads, “Since animals are an analogue of humanity, we observe duties to mankind when we observe them as analogues to this, and thus cultivate our duties to humanity. . . . Lest he extinguish such [kind and humane] qualities [in himself], he must already practice a similar kindliness towards animals; for a person who always displays such cruelty to animals is also no less hard towards men. We can already know the human heart, even in regard to animals. . . . It upsets a man to destroy such a creature [i.e., a non-human animal] for no reason, and this tenderness is subsequently transferred to man” [LE 27:459].) Focusing on this discussion of habituation via an individual’s treatment towards non-human animals, Allen Wood provides an accurate account of how an individual is able to develop the virtuous state of character: “When Kant argues that kindness and gratitude towards animals promote similar dispositions to behave toward human beings, he is apparently assuming that it does so by a mechanism of habituation. That is . . . we acquire a certain morally relevant trait of character by performing actions that exhibit that trait. . . . [But] if that is the assumption, then our behaviour towards animals is reasonably taken as reinforcing kindness and gratitude towards human beings only if we take it as already exhibiting the very same trait we are trying to reinforce by habituation” (1998: 201–2). Habituation, therefore, merely reinforces or further develops the state of character that already exists within that individual, which was developed via the moral catechism. On this point, Formosa draws a similar conclusion as Wood, writing, “By acting to benefit others you can gradually habituate yourself to have feelings of love for them” (2011: 99). He arrives at this conclusion by considering both this passage and those at Anth 7:282 and MM 6:473, which suggest that polite social interaction also helps cultivate this moral character state

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via habituation. Formosa concludes, “[T]hrough becoming accustomed to treating people with respect and love in polite social intercourse you can gradually habituate yourself to feel respect and love for others. In this way you can cultivate yourself to have the feelings appropriate to your duties to other persons” (2011: 99). 20. Paul Guyer argues that “Kant was notoriously critical of the use of examples in moral theorizing” but that certain types of examples play an important role in helping develop moral understanding (2012: 124). He claims that Kant’s conception of the role of examples in moral education is founded on the premise that our knowledge of the content of the moral law and of our freedom to fulfill it is a priori but latent, as much (synthetic) a priori knowledge is. Children must bring this knowledge from latency to consciousness by means of examples. Guyer writes that for Kant hypothetical examples or thought-experiments may suffice to bring children to consciousness of the moral law itself, along with the distinction between mere happiness and the worthiness to be happy. The contents of particular duties, particularly the imperfect duties, may also need to be taught by example, because all the ways in which human dignity could be injured or conversely promoted could never be fully enumerated. But he concludes that when it comes to our freedom to live up to the demands of morality, only historical and not hypothetical examples will do, or at least they are what will be most persuasive for the growing child, since it is our real freedom and not just the logical possibility of freedom about which we must become clear. This position is consistent with Kant’s comments in Religion on the role of examples in moral education: “A human being’s moral education must begin not with an improvement of mores, but with the transformation of his attitude of mind and the establishment of a character. . . . This predisposition to the good is cultivated in no better way than by just adducing the example of good people (as regards their conformity to law), and by allowing our apprentices in morality to judge the impurity of certain maxims on the basis of the incentives actually behind their actions. And so the predisposition gradually becomes an attitude of mind, so that duty merely for itself begins to acquire in the apprentice’s heart a noticeable importance” (Rel 6:48). 21. For further discussion of the similarities between Rousseau’s comments on physical education in Emile and Kant’s understanding of the role of physical education in an individual’s development, see Johnston 2013: 215–17. 22. Most contemporary approaches to education are positive in that they aim to provide knowledge to the student directly. Moral education is positive when a student learns moral principles much in the same way that principles of science, rules of grammar, or tenets of a religious doctrine are taught in our schools. Many religious doctrines, for example, provide individuals with a positive moral education by teaching identifying principles of right and wrong behavior, as well as identifying what actions are praiseworthy and blameworthy under different circumstances. But negative education takes a different approach to instruction. Instead of communicating knowledge of principles directly, the student is left to develop his faculties on his own, aided but not instructed by society and other individuals. A negative moral education appears as if it could succeed where positive moral education failed. Even if a positive approach is successful in instilling within a student a correct and adequate knowledge of moral principles, it seems either to rob him of the possibility of acting on those principles from the appropriate disposition (as the ground of the good action becomes habituation or external motivation via punishment or reward), or it creates a situation where whether a person

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acts in a morally praiseworthy manner is determined by morally irrelevant situational factors (as the research in contemporary psychology suggests). Particularly relevant is Kant’s praise of a negative approach to education, specifically at the early stages where “one should not add some new provision to that of nature, but merely leave nature undisturbed” (UP 9:459). But there are a number of important differences. For example, although both Kant and Rousseau claim “[t]he human being is capable of, and in need of, an education in both instruction and training (discipline),” for Kant “the question here is (with or against Rousseau) whether the character of the human species, with respect to its natural predisposition, fares better in the crudity of its nature than with the arts of culture, where there is no end in sight” (Anth 7:323–4). Unlike Rousseau, who argues that man is by nature good and becomes corrupted by society, Kant argues that individuals “are neither [good nor bad by nature] because by nature he is not a moral being at all; he only becomes one when his reason raises itself to the concepts of duty and law” (UP 9:492). He provides similar comments in Religion: “If it is said, The human being is created good, this can only mean nothing more than: He has been created for good and the original predisposition in him is good; the human being is not thereby good as such, but he brings it about that he becomes either good or evil, according as he either incorporates or does not incorporate into his maxims the incentives contained in that predisposition (and this must be left entirely to his free choice)” (Rel 6:44). Keeping in mind that we recognize individuals as being ‘good’ or ‘bad’ based on their ability to rationally adopt certain maxims and then willing the consequences of actions performed from those maxims, if the development of reason is a product of society, then it is impossible for individuals to be good or bad by nature. Here, Kant appears to side with Locke: “The human being can only become human through education. He is nothing except what education makes out of him” (UP 9:443). But Kant goes further in Anthropology in discussing the relationship between human beings, civil society, and moral development. It is not simply that individuals are able to develop their reason if they choose to leave the state of nature and enter civil society, but rather that “[t]he human being is destined by reason to live in a society with human beings and in it to cultivate himself, to civilize himself, and to moralize himself by means of the arts and sciences” (Anth 7:324–5). Kant continues, “[T]he tendency toward an envisaged civil constitution, which is to be based on the principle of freedom but at the same time on the principle of constraint in accordance with law: the human being expects these only from Providence; that is, from a wisdom that is not his, but which is still (through his own fault) an impotent idea of his own reason” (Anth 7:328). This “wisdom that is not his” is not God; rather it is the shared wisdom of civil society and the community of individuals to which he belongs, wisdom that has developed over successive generations. In this way Kant sees human beings as “striving among obstacles to rise out of evil in constant progress toward the good. In this [their] volition is generally good, but achievement is difficult because one cannot expect to reach the goal by the free agreement of individuals, but only by a progressive organization of citizens of the earth into and toward the species as a system that is cosmopolitically united” (Anth 7:333). Kant discusses the nature of this “species as a system that is cosmopolitically united” elsewhere in his writings. In the third Critique, for example, he argues, “The formal condition under which alone nature can attain this its final aim is that constitution in the relations of human beings with one

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue another in which the abuse of reciprocally conflicting freedom is opposed by lawful power in a whole, which is called civil society; for only in this can the greatest development of the natural predispositions occur” (CPJ 5:432). In an earlier passage in that same section, “On the ultimate end of nature as a teleological system,” Kant discusses and identifies that end or final aim of nature: “In the preceding we have shown that we have sufficient cause to judge the human being not merely, like any organized being, as a natural end, but also at the ultimate end of nature here on earth, in relation to which all other natural things constitute a system of ends in accordance with fundamental principles of reason, not, to be sure, for the determining power of judgment, yet for the reflecting power of judgment. Now if that which is to be promoted as an end through the human being’s connection to nature is to be found within the human being himself, then it must be either the kind of end that can be satisfied by the beneficence of nature itself, or it is the aptitude and skill for all sorts of ends for which he can use nature (external and internal). The first end of nature would be the happiness, the second the culture of the human being” (CPJ 5:249). Although these predispositions develop as a result of living in civil society, it is not juridical law, and the corresponding system of punishments and rewards, that aids in this development. Rather it is developed through culture, which Kant describes as the duty that a person has in relation to himself (i.e., to perfect himself) (MM 6:392), the completion of which is possible through metaphysics (CPu A816/B844). Culture consists “particularly in the exercise of one’s mental powers”; therefore, Kant concludes, “parents must give their children opportunity for such exercise” (UP 4:466). Such exercise allows individuals to develop their faculty of judgment, which allows them to “discern whether something is an instance of the rule or not” (Anth 7:199), particularly important in making moral decisions. Although the natural development of this faculty can be “enriched through instruction with many concepts and furnished with rules,” its perfection cannot come about through instruction, but only negatively through its exercise (Anth 7:199). Much has been written about Kant’s use of ‘culture.’ For example, consider this account of Kant’s understanding of ‘culture’ as presented by Nathan Rotenstreich: “For Kant culture is the deliberate approach to reason, the concern for it, in its positive character, along with awareness of its limitations. As perfection or completion related to human reason, culture is the positive component of the shaping of reason in the direction of exploring its position and function, as well as in being aware of not overstepping the boundaries of reason. We may wonder whether culture connotes here human activity in the sense that philosophy would be cultura as human activity. It is the self-awareness of reason, and, as such, it makes manifest the intrinsic relation between the essence and status of reason, its possible achievement, and eventual boundaries; self-awareness implies both directions, the negative and the positive” (1989: 303). Beyond the discussion of Kant’s account of ‘culture’ in the academic literature, in more popular literature Allan Bloom devotes a chapter to a discussion of this topic in his The Closing of the American Mind. He begins this discussion with a reference to Kant, writing, “ ‘Culture’ in the modern sense was first used by Immanuel Kant, who was thinking of Rousseau when he employed it, particularly about what Rousseau said of the bourgeois. The bourgeois is selfish, but without the purity and simplicity of natural selfishness. He makes contacts hoping to get the better of those with whom he contacts. His faithfulness to others and his obedience to law are founded on expectation of gain: ‘Honesty is the best policy.’ Thus he corrupts morality,

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the essence of which is to exist for its own sake. The bourgeois satisfies neither extreme, nature or morality. The moral demand is merely an abstract ideal if it asks for what nature cannot give. Brutish selfishness would be preferable to sham morality” (1987: 185). Although it seems as if physical education could play an important role in developing the appropriate moral personality, Kant is clear in noting that physical and moral goods ought to be kept separate. He writes, “The two kinds of goods, the physical and the moral, cannot be mixed together; for then they would neutralize themselves and not work at all toward the end of true happiness. Rather, inclination to good living and virtue conflict with each other, and the limitations of the principle of the former through the latter constitute, in their collision, the entire end of the well-behaved human being, a being who is partly sensible but partly moral and intellectual” (Anth 7:277). Although Christ was not obligated in the usual understanding of that term to suffer and die for the sins of humanity, there exists a connection between this suffering and morality. On this point I agree with Philip Rossi: “Kant reinterprets the Christian doctrine of the atonement through the death of Jesus Christ. He rejects the view of ‘vicarious atonement’—that Christ takes away the guilt of previous evil conduct by standing as a substitute for all of us—in favor of an ‘exemplary’ one. Christ thus provides a model in which we recognize steadfast adherence in both word and action to the principle of moral rightness which we already possess in the categorical imperative as the principle for the exercise of our practical reason. . . . Such adherence to the principle of moral rightness is fundamental to what Kant considers to be the ‘religion of reason’ ” (2013). Through contemplating, we are supposed to recognize Christ’s suffering as an example by which to guide our own moral behavior. Neither physical pain nor the privation of pleasure is to be taken as a sufficient reason to shirk our moral responsibilities. Robert Louden makes some helpful observations concerning the objective of ethical gymnastics: “The Bestimmungsgrund of moral choice must be reason, not feeling. But an integral part of moral discipline, or what Kant calls ‘ethical gymnastics,’ is training the emotions so that they work with rather than against reason. Acts in which empirical inclinations of any sort are the Bestimmungsgrund lack moral worth, but it doesn’t follow that a harmonizing sentiment must cancel all moral worth. On the contrary, Kant insists that it is a good thing” (2011: 14). To demonstrate this point, Louden references a well-known example from philosopher Philippa Foot, which proves the most morally “praiseworthy acts are often those which agents truly want to perform” (2011: 12). “Kant would agree with Foot’s claim that the agent who does not even want to run away shows more courage than the one who wants to run away but does not, provided that the ‘want’ in question is a rational want with which the agents’ desires are trained to be in harmony” (2011: 15). Generally speaking, Louden argues, fulfillment of Kantian virtue demands that an individual train his emotions through reason so that he genuinely and automatically desires the same outcome that would occur if he allowed reason alone to determine his behavior. For more on Kant’s comments concerning education and predispositions, see Wilson, 2006: 86–92.

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The concluding section of Kant’s “Doctrine of the Method of Ethics” is subtitled “Religion as the doctrine of duties to God lies beyond the bounds of pure moral philosophy.” The placement of a discussion of religion at the end of a section focusing on how individuals can become virtuous in practice suggests that Kant believes religion plays a role in this process. That Kant might think morality and religion to be closely connected is no surprise. As we work our way through Kant’s discussion in this section, we encounter what appears to be an unfamiliar, practical relationship between morality and religion. He claims, for example, that although the “formal aspect of all religion . . . belongs to philosophical morals . . . this does not yet make a duty of religion into a duty to God” (MM 6:487). The idea of God appears to serve a practical function, as “we cannot very well make obligation . . . intuitive for ourselves without thereby thinking of another’s will, namely God’s. . . . But this duty with regard to God . . . is a duty of a human being to himself” (MM 6:487). Kant’s claim that God and religion serve a practical function in the acquisition of virtue is not unique to this section of the “Doctrine of the Method of Ethics.” For example, in his discussion of the postulates of pure practical reason and justification of rational faith in the second Critique (CPr 5:122–5), faith in the existence of God and the immortality of the soul is thought to be rational because their existence is necessary for a human being to realize the highest good. Kant makes similar comments relating to God and acquisition of the highest good elsewhere in his writing, including in Religion, where he writes, “[I]f the strictest observance of the moral law is to be thought of as the cause of the ushering in of the highest good (as end), then . . . an omnipotent moral being must be assumed as ruler of the world, under whose care this would come about, i.e., morality leads inevitably to religion” (Rel 6:7n), which he defines as “the law in us, in so far as it receives emphasis from a lawgiver and judge above us; it is morals applied to the knowledge of God” (UP 9:494).1 Although the connection between Kant’s moral and religious writings has been discussed at length, this chapter does not aim to contribute to the ongoing discussions in Kant scholarship such as whether Kant believed in God, whether he reduces religion to morality, or other topics familiar

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to Kant scholars working on his religious writings.2 Instead, my aim is to examine Kant’s discussion of the practical role God and religion play in the acquisition of virtue, paying particular attention to Kant’s claim that “supernatural cooperation” is necessary to complete this process. I claim that although this “supernatural cooperation” does no heavy lifting in an individual’s progress towards complete virtue, Kant’s discussion points us towards a solution to the problem of how best to cultivate individuals who, when at the moral crossroads, more frequently act correctly for the right reasons. This solution, which centers on the cultivation of an appropriate sense of moral shame within individuals, points us in a better direction for future considerations about moral education. VIRTUE AND “SUPERNATURAL COOPERATION” The discussion thus far has examined both the external conditions necessary for the possibility of virtue, including the role of civil society in this process, and an approach to moral education that makes it more likely for an individual to act appropriately for the right reasons. But even if individuals proceed through the system of moral education that has been described here, Kant seems to acknowledge that there is no guarantee an individual will act correctly for the right reasons. What, then, gets an individual to act appropriately when he is at the proverbial moral crossroads and must decide what to do? It Religion, Kant claims that God, or something else “supernatural” (übernatürliche), can play a role in this process through its “cooperation” (Mitwirkung). He writes, “[S]ome supernatural cooperation [übernatürliche Mitwirkung] is also needed to [an individual’s] becoming good or better, whether this cooperation only consist in the diminution of obstacles or be also a positive assistance, the human being must nonetheless make himself antecedently worthy of receiving it; and he must accept this help” (Rel 6:44). It is tempting to see Kant’s position as similar to the Christian idea of grace, generally understood as the undeserved love and mercy given by God to human beings by which we are able to enter heaven and receive salvation. There are two kinds of grace in Christian theology: ‘sanctifying grace’ and ‘actual grace.’ Sanctifying grace is a characteristic of the soul, making it holy and pleasing to God. In contrast, actual grace is external assistance from God that helps to strengthen the will or soul of the individual. In this context, one way to interpret the passage above is to conclude Kant believes that grace is necessary for an individual to become virtuous but appears unsure (or otherwise undecided) if the “supernatural cooperation” (i.e., grace) is actual grace (i.e., positive assistance) or sanctifying grace (which seems similar to the negative assistance described in the passage). But understanding that passage in this way seems inconsistent with the complete idea expressed in this section of Religion. Whereas Kant’s comment relating to supernatural cooperation occurs at 6:44, the discussion

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that helps to make sense of this comment runs through 6:48. Consider this passage from that discussion: If 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”), he is to this extent, by principle and attitude of mind, a subject receptive to the good; but he is a good human being only in incessant laboring and becoming; i.e. he can hope . . . to find himself upon the good (though narrow) path of constant progress from bad to better. For him who penetrates to the intelligible ground of the heart . . . for him to whom this endless progress is a unity, i.e. for God, this is the same as actually being a good human being (pleasing to him); and to this extent the change can be considered a revolution. For the judgment of human beings, however, who can assess themselves and the strength of their maxims only by the upper hand they gain over the senses in time, the change is to be regarded only as ever-continuing striving for the better, hence as a gradual reformation of the propensity to evil, of the perverted attitude of mind. (Rel 6:48) There are a few things going on in this passage, but all connect to that discussion of virtue from Chapter 1 where we distinguished Kant’s general use of ‘virtue’ (Tugend) from specific kinds or approaches to virtue, Tugend der Legalität and tugendhaft nach dem intelligiblen Charakter. The first few sentences refer to the idea of the virtuous individual undergoing a revolution of mores, which Kant associated with tugendhaft nach dem intelligiblen Charakter, as well as to a virtuous person making continual progress from bad to better, which Kant associates with Tugend der Legalität. His comments halfway through this passage, beginning with “for him to whom this endless progress is a unity,” provide the solution to the unresolved problem in Chapter 1 of how two seemingly different concepts of virtue are not, in fact, two different conceptions but are simply two ways to approach the same concept. His claim is that from the standpoint of human beings, becoming virtuous requires that we improve ourselves over time by doing the right thing for the right reasons more frequently, thereby gradually progressing from worse to better. If we are concerned with the complete cultivation of virtue, and if complete virtue is a component of the highest good, then mere progress from better to worse is not good enough. It must be possible for an individual to reach this end point in his moral development. Kant claims that this end point can be reached with supernatural cooperation, that is, when this “endless progress” towards virtue is seen as a “unity” from the vantage point of God. Although Kant does not describe how this supernatural cooperation takes place, a reasonable way to think about it is similar to how we address the issue of an infinite series via mathematical analysis. Consider Zeno’s dichotomy paradox, represented by the mathematical series ½ + ¼ +

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¹⁄8 + ¹⁄16 . . . , approached from two different perspectives: (1) as the person who is continually walking halfway between each intermediate point and the end, and (2) as someone outside of the temporal scheme in which the walker operates. From the standpoint of (1), he is making constant progress towards his final destination (e.g., the complete cultivation of virtue), but from the standpoint of (2) he can be seen as reaching the end just as ½ + ¼ + ¹⁄8 + ¹⁄16 . . . = 1, which is what Kant means by viewing this endless progress as a unity. This explanation helps make sense of the difference between Tugend der Legalität and tugendhaft nach dem intelligiblen Charakter, as well as how they are merely two different ways of approaching the same concept— virtue—not two different concepts or accounts of virtue. But in this explanation ‘supernatural cooperation’ does no heavy lifting in helping individuals do the right thing when they know what they ought to do yet are inclined to do something else, because this cooperation entails merely looking at the series from the vantage point of God. And so instead of forwarding a position that is religious in the traditional sense, it seems that Kant is presenting his own version of religious rationalism, trying to combine concepts of religious Pietism that would have been familiar to him and his contemporaries with concepts from rationalist philosophy.3 Although these terms are religious in nature, they carry almost no religious significance for Kant, at least how ‘religion’ is understood in the traditional sense. As a result, this ‘supernatural cooperation’ does not operate in the same way as grace, either positively in that it provides the final push in getting an individual to act correctly for the right reasons or negatively in that it removes obstacles to virtue. Although Kant’s concept of supernatural cooperation does no heavy lifting, this discussion does point us towards a similar discussion in The Metaphysics of Morals that may give additional insight into what makes it more likely for an individual to satisfy his duties. At MM 6:419, Kant identifies two principles of duty to oneself: the first “lies in the dictum ‘live in conformity with nature’ . . . that is, preserve yourself in the perfection of your nature; the second, in the saying, ‘make yourself more perfect than mere nature has made you [mache dich vollkommner, als die blosse Natur dich schuf ]’ ” (MM 6:419). The idea expressed in this second principle is consistent with the idea expressed by übernatürliche in Kant’s discussion of ‘supernatural cooperation.’ The idea he conveys in both passages is that our duty requires us to do more than simply live in conformity with our natural faculties. We must go further by developing and perfecting our capacities, thereby becoming übernatürliche and making ourselves more perfect than nature has made us.4 Based on the discussion in the previous chapters, the obvious response is that an individual is able to become übernatürliche by developing himself inside of civil society so that he does not give in to his natural inclinations. Reaching this point requires an individual not only to develop his reason

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to a significant extent, but also to undergo the combination of moral catechistics and ethical gymnastics that helped develop within each individual the valiance and cheerfulness necessary for moral praiseworthiness. Kant claimed that this combination “must gradually produce a certain interest in reason’s law itself and hence in morally good actions. For, we finally come to like something the contemplation of which lets us feel a more extended use of our cognitive powers” (CPr 5:159). This point is echoed in The Metaphysics of Morals, where Kant writes that the advantage of ethical gymnastics “lies especially in the fact that it is natural for a human being to love a subject which he has, by his own handling, brought to a science (in which he is now proficient); and so, by this sort of practice, the pupil is drawn without noticing it to an interest in morality” (MM 6:483–4). One problem with Kant’s account of ethical gymnastics at the end of the “Doctrine of the Method of Ethics” is that it seemed more academic than practical. Like the catechism, it trained the student to identify what the appropriate responses were in various situations but appeared to give him no practice in actually making those decisions. What seemed to produce positive results, at least from the standpoint of action, was moral habituation. But moral habituation not only failed to develop the appropriate disposition within an individual; it also placed the habituated subject in a position where he could never develop this appropriate disposition. Perhaps there is a middle ground between these two approaches? Elsewhere in Anthropology, Kant suggests an approach to moral education that appears to unify the theoretical training provided by moral catechistics and ethical gymnastics with the practical training provided by the practice through repetition that came with habituation. In this passage he associates this progress not with educating or habituating the subject but with civilizing him. Kant writes, On the whole, the more civilized human beings are, the more they are actors. They adopt the illusion of affection, of respect for others, of modesty, and of unselfishness without deceiving anyone at all, because it is understood by everyone that nothing is meant sincerely by this. And it is also very good that this happens in the world. For when human beings play these roles, eventually the virtues, whose illusion they have merely affected for a considerable length of time, will gradually really be aroused and merge into the disposition. (Anth 7:151) What is important in this description of civilizing the subject is the effect on his disposition. Here, instead of habituating an individual to perform actions that are consistent with the actions performed by the virtuous person, the process of civilizing causes the virtues to become merged into his disposition. This process appears to complete the task of helping our subject

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make himself more perfect than nature has made him, which was the aim of one type of ‘supernatural cooperation’ that Kant described. But the same element is missing from Kant’s discussion in Anthropology that was missing from the previous discussions from the “Doctrine of the Method of Ethics” and his other writings on moral education. We know that merely possessing knowledge of what constitutes moral behavior is not enough for individuals to act correctly. Now, would the combination of this knowledge plus ethical gymnastics be more successful? Kant provides us with no reason why it might be. There appears to be no necessary or practical connection between being able to reason through the nature of morality and which maxims are consistent with the moral law, as well as what individuals should do when encountering different moral scenarios, and actually doing the right thing for the right reason when the opportunity arises. Although physical education can help develop the strength similar to what an individual needs to act morally when his inclinations lead him in the opposite direction, there also seems to be a difference between the strength needed to run one more mile on aching legs and what is needed to tell the truth under difficult circumstances. What, then, is necessary for individuals to do the right thing if knowledge and strength of will are not enough? The next section argues that the missing piece to this puzzle is the development of an appropriate sense of shame within an individual. MORAL SHAME AND THE REWARD OF VIRTUE So what gets an individual to make moral decisions? And how can we overcome the observable fact that individuals frequently fail to make such decisions, even when they know what morality requires? One answer is that individuals who fail to act morally when they know what they ought to do lack an appropriate sense of shame. But while shame played an important role in cultivating character in ancient Greece,5 and still plays the same role in many contemporary non-Western cultures, it has fallen out of favor in Western societies over the last 200 or so years. Some moral psychologists, theologians, and anthropologists have argued that shame has not so much fallen out of favor as it has been replaced by guilt.6 They claim that the difference between shame and guilt is that shame is connected with the judgment of other individuals and our perception of what we believe they believe we ought to do. In contrast, guilt has moral value because it is generated by the will of the actor and is connected to his own understanding of what he ought to do. I do not find the linguistic distinction between “shame” and “guilt” to be particularly helpful in drawing our attention to the important theoretical distinction between these two concepts. Instead, let us state that shame can come in two forms: social and moral. Social shame is what we are most

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familiar with. It is what an individual experiences when he acts contrary to established social norms or customs. These practices can be seen as necessary in order to maintaining a properly functioning society (e.g., prohibitions on lying) or seemingly arbitrary and consistent with what has been recognized historically as good manners (e.g., not eating with your elbows on the table). But whereas social shame can be a useful tool to make people conform their actions to what is generally regarded as right behavior,7 actions motivated by social shame seem to have no moral worth, at least in the Kantian sense. That an individual holds the door open for someone else, not because he sees it as something he should do out of respect for the other person but because he believes it to be shameful to be viewed as someone who is inconsiderate of others (and worries that not holding the door open would lead to him to be viewed in this way), is not indicative of a good, moral character. In this case, the motivation for what we would identify as good behavior has come from a source external to his will. In contrast to actions performed as a result of social shame, actions performed as a result of moral shame can have moral worth. Unlike social shame, where our motivation to act is to avoid being viewed by others as the type of person who has done something wrong, moral shame is connected to our desire to be a certain type of person and the disappointment that comes when we have acted in a manner that suggests we have failed to live up to this standard. Thus, what separates moral from social shame is not that moral shame deals with “real” offenses and social shame deals with trivial things like keeping your elbows off the table when eating. Rather, what separates these two types of shame is where we locate the feeling of disappointment that is associated with our shameful acts—either it is internal (i.e., I am disappointed with myself) or it is external (i.e., others are disappointed with me and I seek their approval). Certain behavior can lend itself to both moral and social shame. Take lying, for example. An individual may be ashamed of telling a lie either because he has disappointed himself (i.e., “I do not want to be the type of person who lies”) or because he is worried about disappointing other individuals around him (i.e., “I do not want to be perceived by others as the type of person who lies”). If my motivation not to lie is that I do not want to be the type of person who lies and it would be shameful for me not to live up to this standard that I have set for myself, then my motivation not to lie is consistent with autonomy and it appears that my decision not to lie is morally praiseworthy. But if my motivation not to lie is because I am worried about how other people will view me, then my motivation is not consistent with autonomy and would not be morally praiseworthy. Turning to Kant, although Kant scholars generally have argued that shame undermines or is inconsistent with the basic tenets of his moral theory, their focus has been primarily on what I have identified here as social shame. A different story emerges when we examine moral shame. Looking back at Kant’s discussion of the moral catechism in the “Doctrine of the Method of

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Ethics,” Kant seems to believe that the development of an appropriate sense of moral shame within individuals is an important component of moral education. Moral shame tips the scales in favor of an individual making correct moral decisions from the appropriate motivations more frequently. One role of moral education, therefore, is to help develop an appropriate sense of shame by making the student aware of the shamefulness of bad behavior. For Kant, “it is the shamefulness [Schändlichkeit] of vice, not the harmfulness . . . that must be emphasized above all” (MM 6:483). In other words, and where moral theories like utilitarianism go wrong, bad behavior is bad not because it is harmful (although it often is harmful), but because it is shameful and inconsistent with the dignity of the person acting in that way. Just as an individual’s conception of God can serve a practical function in that he can understand morality as adopting and acting on principles that are consistent with God’s will (i.e., serving God), shame can serve a similar practical function in providing the internal motivation to override one inclination (i.e., happiness) with another (i.e., self-respect). Consider, again, Kant’s discussion of lying as presented in both the “Doctrine of Right” and the “Doctrine of Virtue,” where he distinguishes between “external” and “internal” lies (MM 6:429). An “external lie” makes individuals “object[s] of contempt in the eyes of others” and is blameworthy because it violates the rights of another person—it harms him. But Kant claims that an “internal lie,” even though it is harmless in that it does not violate the rights of another person, is worse than an “external lie” because the liar “makes himself contemptible in his own eyes and violates the dignity of humanity in his own person. . . . [He] throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity” (MM 6:429). By lying, whether internally or externally, an individual “adopt[s] principles that are directly contrary to his character as a moral being . . . that is, to inner freedom, the innate dignity of a human being, which is tantamount to saying that they make it one’s basic principle to have no basic principle and hence no character, that is, to throw oneself away and make oneself an object of contempt [Verachtung]” (MM 6:420). In the second Critique, Kant connects this feeling of contempt, which he identifies as “intellectual contempt” [intellectuelle Verachtung] or “humiliation” [Demüthigung], with the “feeling of a rational subject affected by inclinations” (CPr 5:75). It is a rational being’s recognition of his own weakness in this regard that leads him to feeling humiliated or contemptuous of himself. What it is not, however, is indication that this person has failed to take seriously what is important or that his moral education has failed to develop him in an appropriate way. In fact, the contrary seems true, at least up to a point. The individual who fails to act correctly when his inclinations pull him in the opposite direction and then is ashamed of this weakness has the appropriate foundation from which to develop virtue. For Kant, “when a human being dreads nothing more than to find, on selfexamination, that he is worthless and contemptible [verwerflich] in his own eyes, then every good moral disposition can be grafted onto it, because this

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is the best, and indeed the sole, guard to prevent ignoble and corrupting impulses from breaking into the mind” (CPr 5:161, my emphasis). It is this internal motivation to be a certain type a person (or, conversely, not to be a certain type of person)—having respect for oneself—that Kant believes provides the greatest incentive for an individual to become virtuous.8 We can see this connection between respect and the moral law, as well as an emphasis on the importance of self-respect, throughout Kant’s theory. When it comes to Kant’s account of self-respect, what is most memorable is his discussion of self-respect in relation to how we present ourselves to other people. Consider the passage at MM 6:437, for example, which Kant concludes with the remark, “One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him.” These and similar discussions of self-respect are practical in that they provide reasonably good advice about why I should represent myself to others in a certain way if I do not want to be treated badly. But our interest in self-respect is moral. It is concerned not with the relationship between ourselves and other individuals, but with the goals we set for ourselves and how we regard ourselves when we fall short of these goals. Discussion of this type of self-respect can be found in various places throughout Groundwork and the second Critique. At CPr 5:74, for example, Kant talks about the relationship between this type of self-respect and the moral law. He writes, “The moral law unavoidably humiliates every human being when he compares with it the sensible properties of his nature.” And, in the very next sentence, “If something represented as a determining ground of our will humiliates us in our selfconsciousness, it awakens respect for itself insofar as it is positive and a determining ground. Therefore the moral law is even subjectively a ground of respect” (CPr 5:74). Kant continues by noting that this respect is “a tribute that we cannot refuse to pay to merit, whether we want to or not” and that “we may indeed withhold it outwardly but we still cannot help feeling it inwardly” (CPr 5:77). Based on these comments it seems this feeling of respect would develop naturally along with an individual’s faculty of reason. Further, if we connect this discussion with Kant’s account moral education, it appears that one function of moral education would be to ensure that this natural feeling is able to develop appropriately. But this natural development could be stunted by a corrupt or otherwise defective moral education. Such a defective approach need not be malicious. In fact, it could be well intentioned. Consider a system of education that goes to great lengths to prevent children (who are in the initial stages of their moral development) from behaving badly—the moral equivalent of what we seem to be doing with our children’s physical development (e.g., construct playgrounds that minimize the chances of children hurting themselves in even minor ways). That this “safety first” approach to moral education, where we go to great lengths to prevent children from performing anything even remotely resembling a bad or harmful act, could be problematic seems counterintuitive—is not the

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point of moral education to prevent bad behavior and to assist an individual in developing an appropriate moral character? The problem is that, in practice, it seems that the best way for an individual to develop an appropriate moral character is by learning from his mistakes. What he is learning comes from experiencing the natural consequences of bad behavior, that is, the shame, contempt, or humiliation individuals experience as the result of recognizing their own moral failings. But that means that he has to make mistakes first in order to learn from them. Further, this process of development requires us not only to put individuals (especially children) in a position where they are able to learn from their mistakes, but also to force individuals to recognize and confront their inclinations and vices directly. Having certain inclinations is not shameful. What is shameful is to act on those inclinations. For example, when discussing sexual lust and how individuals are able to combat it, Kant argues that “this lust . . . must not be concealed from [an individual] . . . [but] must be placed before him in all its atrocity” (UP 9:497). Setting aside the claim that sexual lust is “atrocious,” what is important to take away from this passage is that becoming virtuous requires us first to acknowledge the inclinations that we will need to suppress and second to become aware (and further develop) the strength needed not to give in. For Kant most contemporary approaches to moral education (contemporary both to us and to Kant) fail, in part, because they teach that what makes vicious behavior bad is its harmfulness, not its shamefulness: “In our schools something is almost universally lacking, something which would nevertheless greatly promote the formation of uprightness in children, namely a catechism of right” (UP 9:490). When an individual learns that vicious behavior is bad because of the harms that it causes (either to others or to himself), then it is easy to justify this bad behavior—all he must do is convince himself (or others) that the bad behavior is not actually harmful, or at least that it is less harmful than alternative courses of action. Such utilitarian accounts of morality and of moral decision making require us to consider the interests of all of the various entities with moral standing that may be affected by the subject’s action. This approach to the process of making moral judgments is defective not only because it would never allow the subject to know if he has acted appropriately (or what the appropriate course of action is), but also because he always is able to excuse whatever action he wants to perform.9 When actions are considered in this way no behavior is actually good or bad. Goodness and badness are merely subjective, and the subject always is able to provide some excuse to explain this behavior. But Kant’s account of morality and moral decision making does not allow an individual to make such excuses. For the person who is raised correctly, acting contrary to morality is shameful because it is an obvious moral failing. Although the individual may not be able to control his inclinations, he is able to control whether he will give in to those inclinations. No matter what excuse or explanation this

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individual may provide to other people, he cannot lie to or deceive himself. He knows that he was in a position to do the right thing, and he simply failed to do it. One failure is disappointing; repeated failures lead him to become worthless and contemptible in his own eyes. The other feature separating the Kantian account of moral education from most contemporary approaches to education (and here I refer not just to moral education but to education in general) is the ability to learn from moral failures. Generally, when we think about learning from our mistakes, we think about how best to avoid the bad consequences that we experienced. If I was caught stealing, for example, I might think about how can I improve my behavior in the future such that I do not get caught when I steal next time. But that way of approaching how we should learn from our mistakes is defective from the standpoint of virtue. An individual who behaves badly and then recognizes and is ashamed of his own moral failure can learn from this experience in a manner that is fundamentally different from the person who merely looks to avoid negative, external consequences. The virtuous person does not care about how he can avoid getting caught or found out by other people (which, in this example, is irrelevant since it is not the source of his shame); rather he cares about becoming a certain type of person—a standard that he knows he has failed to live up to. It is this recognition of moral failure and the knowledge that he has no one to blame but himself that provides the motivation for the virtuous person to act correctly going forward. But without cultivating this sense of shame in our subject, whether he acts correctly is left up to chance. Even an individual armed with the knowledge of what is appropriate and the physical strength to resist inclination frequently will fail to act appropriately if he does not recognize the goodness of virtue and the wickedness of vice. Not only does this recognition lead him to abhor vice because he does not want to be “worthless and contemptible in his own eyes,” but, positively, it leads him to desire virtue for its own sake: “[T]here is a subjective principle of ethical reward, that is, a receptivity to being rewarded in accordance with laws of virtue: the reward, namely, of a moral pleasure that goes beyond mere contentment with oneself and which is celebrated in the saying that, through consciousness of this pleasure, virtue is its own reward” (MM 6:391). VIRTUE, HAPPINESS, AND THE HIGHEST GOOD Moral shame provides the last piece of the puzzle in Kant’s account of how individuals are able to become virtuous in practice or, at the very least, how they are able to progress from worse to better. The problem with virtue is that it is unlikely anyone could cultivate it completely in practice, in the sense that we could find someone who always is able to resist his inclination towards happiness in any and all circumstances. We know from our own experience that we are able to resist certain temptations now that we were

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unable to resist at a previous point in our lives—we have made moral progress. But we also know from experience that there are other temptations we have failed to resist while, looking back, knowing that we should have been able to resist them. Whether we are able to act appropriately when tempted by these same things in the future is unknown and cannot be known until we have the opportunity to act again. Kant agrees with this assessment (Anth 7:324; CPu A315/B372; et al.), noting that “it is a human being’s duty to strive for this perfection, but not to reach it (in this life), and his compliance with duty can, accordingly, consist only in continual progress” (MM 6:446). In this way virtue and its acquisition present unique challenges different from those we encounter when we think about the nature of morality or the process of becoming morally praiseworthy. Recall the previous discussion of the holy will and why it is possible for a being of pure reason to be moral but not virtuous. Morality requires the alignment of our will with the moral law, or that we adopt maxims consistent with the moral law out of respect for the moral law itself. While virtue requires a similar alignment of the will, it also requires the additional element of that individual being moved by his inclinations to act contrary to the demands of the moral law. An individual who lacks inclinations, or whose inclinations have been conditioned in such a way that he is interested only in adopting maxims consistent with the moral law, can be morally praiseworthy but not virtuous. If the ideal end of moral education is to look out and see people who are both good and happy, then Rousseau has it right: the best scheme of moral education would be the one that develops people whose inclinations are aligned with morality. In his scheme, individuals are not habituated to perform right actions in a way that robbed those actions of any moral worth, but rather their inclinations are molded in such a way that they desire (in the sense of bringing pleasure) to do what is right. Kant seems to have been persuaded by this position as well, and it is why he was captivated by Rousseau’s discussion of moral education in Emile. But the practical problem with Rousseau’s position, a problem Rousseau himself acknowledges, is that the scheme of education outlined in Emile cannot be replicated on any significant scale (or even replicated at all). Remember that the tutor’s entire life is devoted to shaping the character of this one boy, and it seems unlikely that he would have been successful taking on even one more student, never mind any significant number of additional students. Beyond this particular challenge, Rousseau’s approach to moral education in Emile works only if instruction can begin at a very early age and if the child can be brought up in an external environment that is not corrupting in the way all societies seem to be. In other words, whether an individual is able to develop the disposition in which his inclinations are aligned with the moral law is not just beyond his control, at least to a great extent, but it is also practically impossible for reasons beyond simply finding tutors who are willing to devote a significant portion of their lives to the education of one individual.

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Rousseau’s theory, therefore, presents an idealized conception of moral development, even if he does start off with an “ordinary boy.” But real moral development must begin with corrupt individuals, or individuals whose inclinations are otherwise not aligned with the moral law. Although it may be the case that some of these inclinations can be redirected or realigned over time, every person will always possess some inclination or inclinations that are misaligned in this way. Virtue—the strength to resist these inclinations that are not aligned with the moral law—must become the focal point of moral development. Complete virtue, which would be realized by an individual who always is able to resist such misaligned inclinations and makes an individual worthy of happiness (CPr 5:110), becomes the highest moral good that we can realize in practice, although it is impossible to know for certain whether any particular individual has ever reached this end. What, then, is the highest good for human beings? Looking back, for Kant the highest good was the conjunction of virtue (Tugend) and happiness (Glückseligkeit), where virtue is taken in its complete form (as just described) and happiness is nothing more than getting what you want. But these two elements of Kant’s highest good necessarily are in tension given his position. Being virtuous requires an individual not to give in to his inclinations when doing so would conflict with the demands of the moral law. But whereas it is possible for an individual to be both morally praiseworthy and happy at the same because (1) his inclinations could be aligned with the moral law and (2) he acts in a manner consistent with those inclinations because he recognizes that it is the right thing to do (although there exists no necessary connection between these two ideals), it is not possible to be both happy and virtuous at the same time. In short, since happiness is always getting what you want and virtue comes into play only when what you want conflicts with the moral law, virtue and happiness conflict necessarily. Kant’s introduction of moral shame may provide a convenient solution for how to reconcile the problem presented by this conflict between virtue and happiness. Perhaps the happiness an individual receives when he satisfies his inclinations could be outweighed by something else, namely a stronger version of something like happiness he receives when he does something right and avoids feeling moral shame? Aristotle provides some guidance in this direction. Consider his distinction between pleasure and eudaimonia. Eudaimonia is not a higher or lower form of happiness; eudaimonia and happiness are two separate feelings—the former associated with “complete well-being” and the latter associated with the satisfaction of bodily desires. Kant draws a similar distinction between “happiness” and “true satisfaction.”10 Similar to the distinction between pleasure and eudaimonia, “true satisfaction” is not a higher or lower form of “happiness,” but rather these two terms refer to two distinct feelings. Consider, for example, Kant’s comment at Gr 4:395. He writes, “[W]e find that the more a cultivated reason purposely occupies itself with the enjoyment of life and with happiness

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[Glückseligkeit], so much the further does one get away from true satisfaction [wahren Zufriedenheit].” A few sentences later he associates this satisfaction with “fulfilling an end which in turn only reason determines, even if this should be combined with many infringements upon the ends of inclination” (Gr 4:396). He makes a similar point in the second Critique. There, he associates “contentment with oneself [Selbstzufriedenheit]” and “the consciousness of freedom as an underlying ability to follow the moral law with an unyielding disposition” (CPr 5:117). But in this passage Kant tells us that this Selbstzufriedenheit is not happiness or positive satisfaction but only a “negative satisfaction with one’s existence.” Looking back, Selbstzufriedenheit played a role in Kant’s discussion of moral shame. The reason we feel shame when we act wrongly is that we expect to be the type of person who is strongwilled and does the right thing for the right reasons, and we feel ashamed when we fail to live up to these expectations. When doing the right thing is expected, living up to this expectation is not cause for celebration in the way that failing to live up to this expectation is cause for feeling shame or disappointment. Consider the person who sees an object for sale that he wants but cannot afford, resists the urge to steal it, and then is happy (in the positive satisfaction sense) because he did not give in to the inclination to be a thief. This type of behavior seems a bit bizarre. On some level this person is justified in being pleased with himself and his behavior—he was tempted to do something bad and he resisted this inclination. But it is not (should not be) the same as the positive satisfaction Kant describes when talking about the highest good. Thus, the problem connected to realizing Kant’s highest good remains. One solution is to abandon Kant’s concept of the highest good in its entirety. When it comes to the discussion in his moral theory, Kant’s inclusion of happiness is a bit mystifying. If what matters is rationality and the alignment of maxims with the moral law, then it does not appear that happiness should enter the picture. When we move from Kant’s moral theory to his practical philosophy, it does not seem that happiness should play any significant role there either, except as an identifiable obstacle to good behavior. Human beings are not able to align their wills with the moral law completely, and virtue comes into the picture only as the result of trying to overcome this necessary misalignment. If virtue is the strength not to give in to these misaligned inclinations, thereby allowing an individual to do the right thing because he recognizes it is the right thing to do (i.e., to set aside happiness for the sake of morality), then it appears that an individual cannot exercise virtue and be happy at the same time. Although Kant recognizes throughout his writing that there is no necessary connection between happiness and the moral law, it does not seem to have occurred to him that virtue and happiness are opposed in such a fundamental way. Perhaps a better solution is not to abandon the concept of the highest good altogether, but to modify it in light of the discussion of moral shame

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and his distinction between happiness and contentment or satisfaction with oneself. It seems that the best an individual can work towards is not the conjunction of virtue and happiness but the conjunction of virtue and this negative satisfaction with his existence. That does not mean this individual is unable to be worthy of happiness when he experiences it; rather it is often factors beyond his control (his education, the customs of his society, etc.) that determine the instances in which his inclinations and the moral law align. It is for this reason that education and civil society play such an important role in the moral development of individuals. By the time an individual has developed his faculty of reason to the point where it is able to help him form who he is as a person, his inclinations and desires have firmly taken root. While some of these inclinations can be redirected, many cannot, and becoming apathetic to them—not allowing them to affect us—is the best we can do. Thus, Kant’s practical philosophy focuses on the acquisition of virtue and how this strength can be developed within individuals. What I hope to have shown is that virtue plays a significant role in the practical application of the principles central to Kant’s moral philosophy. The most common criticism of Kant’s moral theory is that it is overly rigorous or that it would be impossible to apply in practice. Generally, I believe this criticism is misplaced. When examining Kant’s moral philosophy, it is important to recognize that Kant aims to answer at least three distinct, but related, questions at the same time: (1) What is the nature of morality? (2) What does it mean for a human being to make moral progress? (3) What are the conditions, both internal and external, that make moral progress possible? The difficulties Kant has in answering questions two and three, difficulties that I have tried to smooth out in this text, come directly from human nature. That Kant believes human nature provides the greatest stumbling block in our ability to make moral progress should come as no surprise, given that he famously proclaimed “out of such crooked wood as the human being is made, nothing entirely straight can be fabricated” (UH 8:23). But while we may not be able to modify our nature into something that is entirely straight, thereby aligning our wills with the moral law completely, we are able to make progress towards this goal. In instances where reaching this goal is not possible, where our inclinations are too deeply rooted to be realigned, virtue allows us to be masters of ourselves, strengthening our resolve to choose goodness over happiness. NOTES 1. Here, it is important to understand religion broadly. In the historical literature, Hume categorized religion as a type of superstition, and Stevie Wonder tells us what it means to be superstitious—“when you believe in things that you don’t understand.” But not all superstitious beliefs are religious. Believing that black cats bring bad luck, for example, is not a religious belief. What separates religious beliefs from other types of superstition is that religion claims

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to provide a coherent picture of the world that can explain why things are the way they are, and it does so, often, without appeal to reason or experience. Nearly all of us are religious in some way—we believe certain things about the ordering of the world that we do not fully understand or have good reason to believe. And, more often than not, these beliefs are not trivial. They fundamentally shape our understanding of what we value, the goals we pursue, and how we should live our lives. But we do not need to look beyond ourselves to question whether the particular worldview we hold at any particular moment is correct. We know from experience that our own worldviews have evolved significantly over time. What I now believe to be a perfectly reasonable way to live my life I may not have endorsed days, months, or years ago. Further, although many people hold religious beliefs about God or other divine entities, religion need not be associated with what is divine in the traditional sense. ‘Science,’ for example, can be the source of religious belief. Some individuals believe that ‘science’ provides a coherent picture of the world while, at the same time, they possess no understanding of scientific principles or lack the intellectual capacity to understand these principles completely. Since they are unable to verify the accuracy of these scientific claims themselves, they can only appeal to the expertise of individuals whom other people have recognized as authorities in the scientific community. For these devotees of ‘science’ as a religion, it seems that there would be little difference between, for example, believing that the object falls to the ground because of gravity (i.e., a force that this individual can neither see nor understand conceptually) and believing that God caused the object to fall (i.e., another force that this individual can neither see nor understand conceptually). The point here is not that religion and science are the same type of thing, but rather that what separates science from religion can be lost depending on how the believers approach the issue being investigated. 2. There has been fairly significant debate on this topic of whether Kant reduces religion to morality. Ernst Cassirer, for example, argues that “the Kantian system does not in general recognize the philosophy of religion as a fully independent member of the system, as a way of looking at things that is idiosyncratic and rests on autonomous and independent assumptions. . . . [Instead,] the substance of his philosophy of religion comprises for him only a confirmation of and a corollary of the substance of his ethics. Religion ‘within the limits of reason alone’ . . . has no essential content other than that of pure morality. The conversion of pure rational religion into pure ethics is required” (1981: 381–2, 385). C.C.J. Webb expresses the same position as Cassirer more straightforwardly when he identifies Kant’s religious philosophy as “an appendix to Ethics” (1926: 62). But others, including Ronald Green (1978, 1988), Stephen Palmquist (1992), and John Hare (1997), have argued that this view of Kant’s account of religion is defective, with Palmquist going so far as to claim that “morality clearly is for Kant the pure (and hence, necessary) core of all true religion. But as we have seen time and time again, he does this because he recognizes that only if morality is raised to the status of religion will it be able to fulfill its own goals” (1992: 147–8). In this chapter I make no determination as to whether Kant reduces religion to morality or believes that morality must be raised up to the level of religion, or some other point relevant to this discussion. But it is important to be aware that this discussion is taking place and how it influences how some have approached Kant’s moral and religious writings. 3. Kant’s parents were Pietist Lutherans and he was educated in the Collegium Fridericianum, a school established by F. A. Schultz, a Pietist pastor and Prussian theologian (Rossi, 2013). Schultz, along with Martin Knutzen, attempted

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5. 6.

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Kant and the Cultivation of Virtue to reconcile the Pietist doctrine of spiritual rebirth through the pursuit of inner grace with the religious rationalism of Christian Wolff (Erdman, 1876; Hollmann, 1899; Malter, 1975). Kant’s account of ‘supernatural cooperation’ and its incorporation into his discussion of virtue, for example, seems to be his way of approaching this problem in a manner similar to F. A. Schultz. The result was the possibility of a metaphysical system that was able to function as a moral religion, an approach that appeared to be quite appealing to Kant (Hunter, 2004: 273). There appears to be an ambiguity concerning Kant’s claim that we are dutybound to make ourselves more perfect than nature has made us. In Kant’s account, we have a duty not only to perfect ourselves morally (i.e., to become virtuous) but also to perfect our talents—as Robert Johnson puts it, we have a moral duty to strive after non-moral “self-improvement” (2011: 1–2). Thus, the principle that we are to make ourselves more perfect than nature has made us can refer to either moral perfection or self-improvement. Since Kant views the principle of self-perfection as one underlying all of our self-regarding duties (of which perfecting our non-moral talents is only one), it makes the most sense to read the principle along the former lines, and I will do so in what follows. At the same time, I acknowledge that there is a clear sense in which we can make ourselves more perfect than nature has made us by perfecting our non-moral talents (i.e., those that render us fit to pursue what Kant calls our merely “discretionary ends”). For a further discussion of Kant on the duty for individuals to make themselves more perfect than nature has made them, see Bellantoni, 2000: 26ff; Surprenant, 2006; Banham, 2007; and Castillo, 2010. For a discussion of the role of shame in ancient Greece, see Dodds, 1951; Winkler, 1989; Fisher, 1992; Gérard, 1993; Carins, 1993; and Konstan, 2003. The terms “guilt culture” and “shame culture” were first introduced by Ruth Benedict (1946) to explain what she believed was the fundamental difference between Japanese and American culture. Since then a significant amount of work has examined the differences between shame and guilt, the connection between these two feelings and morality, their effect on individuals, and so forth. For a thorough discussion of the work done in this area over the last sixty years, see Wong and Tsai, 2007. Consider what is perhaps the most familiar example of social shame in the history of moral philosophy—Socrates’s shaming of Thrasymachus in Book I of Republic. After Thrasymachus declares that justice is the advantage of the stronger (R 336b), Socrates shames him into relinquishing this position (R 350d) through the use of rhetorical trickery (R 336b–350d). Thrasymachus’s position is straightforward: there is nothing just or unjust in nature, but we call things just or unjust based on whether they violate certain laws or social rules. These laws come from particular individuals who have the power to create and enforce such rules (i.e., they possess social or physical power), and they create rules that they believe will be to their advantage. Socrates’s position is also fairly straightforward: people living together in a community cannot believe that justice is disconnected from nature in this way if that community is going to thrive and allow individuals to live good lives. In short, Thrasymachus cannot actually believe what he claims to believe about justice—he is like that student in the introductory ethics class who wants to argue for a bizarre position that he does not believe to be true but knows it is difficult (or impossible) to refute. Socrates’s method of refuting Thrasymachus’s position is similar to how we would refute that student—get him to keep talking until he says something that can be turned in such a way so that it appears as if he is contradicting himself, thereby embarrassing him in front of his classmates. Here, I follow

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Stanley Rosen’s account of this discussion between Socrates and Thrasymachus (2008: 38–59). From a rhetorical standpoint, Thrasymachus’s problem begins when Socrates presses him on what makes the stronger better than the weak. Instead of Thrasymachus saying that the stronger are better simply because they are strong, Socrates leads him to claim that the stronger are better because they possess some sort of superior knowledge (i.e., knowing what is consistent or inconsistent with their own advantage) (R 339ff)—notice, here, that it is Polemarchus and Cleitophon who move the discussion forward, not Thrasymachus. While Thrasymachus accepts Socrates’s relation of ruling to arts and crafts (i.e., ruling is a type of technical or craft knowledge), this analogy is problematic because craft knowledge entails knowing how to produce something, not knowing how to use that thing to your advantage. At this point Socrates gets Thrasymachus to shift his position again. Now, instead of defending that justice is the advantage of the stronger and that this strength is a type of technical knowledge (i.e., the art of ruling), Thrasymachus moves to a praise of injustice (R 343b–e). His position, ultimately, is shown to be defective when he insists that (1) art never errs and (2) ruling is the flawless application of technical knowledge. Once Socrates gets him to agree to these two points, Thrasymachus is forced to admit that the person who possesses technical knowledge is stronger than the person who lacks this knowledge. That is, the just person is stronger and better off than the unjust person. Since Thrasymachus has associated strength with goodness, Socrates concludes, “the just man has revealed himself to us as good and wise, and the unjust man as learned and bad” (R 350c). Thus, Thrasymachus’s praise of injustice has been shown to be foolish, and he blushes out of shame as a result. But, of course, this position is not the same as his original claim about justice being the advantage of the stronger, yet he has been shamed into giving up this original position even though it has not been shown to be defective. 8. David Velleman argues that our aspiration towards unified personhood explains the authority of our moral obligations. He claims that one of the defining features of being a person is acting from reasons. He claims that we may “be tempted to make [the above] point by saying that you are a unified, persisting person, and hence that you do approach practical questions from a point of view framed by constant reasons. But this way of making the point wouldn’t explain why you feel compelled to act for reasons; it would simply locate acting for reasons in a broader context, as part of what makes you a person. One of Kant’s greatest insights, however, is that a unified, persisting person is something you are because it is something that you aspire to be” (2005: 22). Realizing this aspiration is possible only by attempting to take a universal perspective from which we are capable of considering whether the reasons we wish to act from at a certain time could hold for all practical reasoners at any time. This approach constitutes our way of testing whether a particular reason could be adopted consistently over time (i.e., whether it could be incorporated into our unified self). If the answer to this question is “no,” then it appears that the particular reason does not have the kind of authority we are looking for when we endeavor to act on the basis of reasons in general. For example, my hitting the snooze button when I have resolved to get up and go for a jog because I do not feel like jogging does not have authority as a reason, because if it did, I would rarely jog (because I rarely feel like it), and my acting on the basis of such a reason would imply its authority not just now but going forward as well. (I may, for example, feel tempted the next time I wake up not feeling like jogging to count that as a reason not to jog just because I had previously treated it as such.) When we act on the basis of reasons that do not pass this universalizing

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test, we make an exception for ourselves against our better judgment. We feel shame when we act upon such reasons because our so acting compromises our sense of personhood: we have resolved to act in a certain way (consciously or otherwise), and we recognize that we have fallen short. Velleman would say that our having fallen short in this way consists in our having treated a reason as if it has some property (universalizability) that it lacks. We might imply through action that a reason (my not feeling like jogging) is authoritative at some particular time but not treat it as authoritative at some other time. Treating our reasons in this way appears to be at odds with our sense of self because a person who had achieved unified selfhood would see a reason as holding generally or not at all. When we act on the basis of reasons the authority of which we only sometimes recognize, we appear to ourselves fragmented rather than unified (Velleman, 2005: 31). Later, Velleman connects the idea of shame more explicitly to the ideas of privacy and self-control. On Velleman’s account, our ability to control ourselves, to resist our inclinations to act, gives us the ability to create space between our “inner and outer selves” (2005: 52). He continues: “[O]ur capacity to resist desires enables us to choose which desires our behavior will express” (52), and he argues that “[m]any of our moral failings [that occasion shame] consist in impulsive or compulsive behavior in which we fail to keep some untoward impulse to ourselves” (59). As I discuss below, a point on which Velleman and I agree, our moral failings consist not in having certain inclinations (which is a matter that lies beyond our control) but in acting upon them. Acting upon inclinations the authority of which we do not recognize compromises our sense of self. In these cases, we quite literally fail to be the kinds of persons we are striving to become. We allow a private, momentary impulse to serve as an expression of our will, and we do this despite our recognition, in cool moments of reflection, that doing so would occasion selfcontempt. While such actions are moral failings, they are not complete moral failings because failings that occasion self-contempt reveal the extent to which we recognize our moral agency and the extent to which we recognize the kinds of considerations that are relevant to making moral decisions. When we feel moral shame, we recognize that we acted in a way that, by our own lights, was wrong, and this appears to be just what the Kantian account of virtue requires. 9. Roger Scruton provides thoughtful insight into these failures of a utilitarian approach to moral decision making. He writes, “If the right moral judgement is arrived at only by consulting all the interests that might be affected by my decision, then not only can I never really know whether I am acting rightly or wrongly, but I also have a permanent and irrebuttable excuse for whatever I do. If I give my money to Oxfam in order to help people in the developing world, then this is justified, because some of the money, I believe, will get through to someone who will benefit. But equally, if I don’t give a penny to Oxfam and actively campaign against its work, on the grounds that the money will merely encourage the political systems that maintain people in poverty, then this too excuses me. One or the other of those views may be false (possibly both are). But how can I know? And how can I know in time to make the decision? The self-satisfied smile that is worn by Singer’s prose reflects that he has chased from his philosophy every moral absolute, and therefore every ground for allocating blame. But blame is what morality is about” (2001). 10. Victoria Wike offers a thoughtful discussion of Kant’s distinction between happiness (Glückseligkeit) and true satisfaction (wahren Zufriedenheit) (1994: 16–19). For the most part, my account of these two terms follows Wike’s, and my position benefited from revisions in light of Wike’s remarks.

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Index

affects 86 – 7, 93, 102 Allison, Henry 17 – 18, 50 amour-propre 39 Anabaptists 97 analytic 10, 23 apathy 9, 16, 86 – 8, 93 – 4, 102 a priori 10 – 11, 18, 57, 62, 104 aptitude (Fertigkeit) 88, 103, 106 Aquinas, Thomas 4 – 5, 12 Arendt, Hannah 72 Aristotle 3 – 8, 13 – 14, 31, 65 – 6, 78 – 9, 83 – 4, 87 – 8, 91 – 9, 103, 120 ascetics 77, 79, 85 Augustine 4, 97 autonomy 3, 11 – 12, 21 – 8, 37, 40, 43, 48, 50, 52 – 3, 55 – 7, 59, 63 – 4, 66, 67, 70 – 2, 93, 99, 114 Barth, Karl 97 Beck, Lewis White 17 – 18 Beiser, Frederick 37 Beutel, Albrecht 95 – 6 Bible 96, 100 Bielefeldt, Heiner 71 Bloom, Allan 106 Calvin, John 97 Cassirer, Ernst 123 categorical imperative 7 – 10, 18, 25, 44 – 5, 107 Chomsky, Noam 98 Christianity 94, 96 – 7, 107, 109, 124 civil constitution 27, 43, 57, 70, 72, 74, 105 civil society 2, 10, 16, 22 – 8, 32 – 50, 53, 55 – 7, 60 – 2, 64, 66 – 7, 69 – 75, 76, 104 – 6, 109, 111, 122 coercion 24 – 5, 35, 37, 47, 48 – 57, 60, 62, 64 – 75, 77, 101

Collins, Georg Ludwig 103 cosmopolitan community 10, 28, 44 Cromwell, Oliver 25 Descartes, Rene 98 desire 2, 11 – 15, 18, 21 – 3, 40 – 1, 49 – 52, 75, 82, 84 – 94, 101 – 2, 107, 114, 118 – 22, 126 dialectic 78 – 81, 93, 99 – 101 dignity 25, 43 – 5, 60 – 3, 72, 104, 115, divine nature see “holy will” “Doctrine of the Method of Ethics” 77 – 8, 81, 85, 94, 108, 112 – 15 Eck, John 97 Epicurus 3 Estates-General 59 ethics 3, 6 – 7, 10, 12 – 13, 15, 30, 37, 44, 49, 77, 101, 123 eudaimonia 7, 120 faith 5, 96 – 7, 103, 106, 108 Frederick the Great of Prussia 63 – 4 freedom, external see liberty freedom, internal see autonomy freedom, positive and negative 11 – 12, 18, 26, 51 French Revolution 58 – 9, 71 – 2 Friedman, Michael 17 Foot, Philippa 107 Formosa, Paul 102 – 4 Förster, Eckart 16 – 17 Fuhr, Thomas 101 general will 23 – 4, 37 – 41, 44, 73 – 4 Gillroy, John Martin 17 – 18 God 1, 4 – 5, 14, 16 – 17, 30, 96, 105, 108 – 11, 115, 123 Gordon, Jill 99 – 100

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Index

grace 109, 111, 124 Green, Ronald 123 Greenspan, Patricia 102 Gregor, Mary 103 guilt 74, 107, 113, 124 Guyer, Paul 19, 104 habituation 9, 15, 66, 77, 79, 85, 87 – 9, 94 – 5, 99, 103 – 4, 112 happiness 7, 12 – 19, 39, 46, 48, 56 – 7, 82, 84 – 6, 101, 104, 106 – 7, 115, 118, 120 – 2, 126 Hare, John 123 Henrich, Dieter 71 – 2 Herbert, Gary 42 – 3, 46, 63 heteronomy 6, 8 – 9, 11 – 12, 78 – 9, 89, 94 highest good 13, 16, 18, 28, 57, 61, 63, 65, 75, 108, 110, 118, 120, 121 Hillerbrand, Hans 97 Hobbes, Thomas 22 – 7, 37 – 8, 41 – 3, 50 – 1 Höffe, Otfried 100 holy will 12 – 13, 15, 48, 119 Huemer, Michael 70 Hume, David 6, 70, 122 inclination 2, 6, 8 – 9, 12 – 19, 28, 39 – 40, 48 – 50, 55, 64, 73, 77 – 9, 84 – 9, 93 – 4, 102, 107, 111, 113, 115, 117 – 22, 126 Jesus Christ 94, 96, 107 justice 3, 32 – 3, 41, 44 – 6, 58, 70, 73 – 4, 124 – 5 justice, distributive 25 – 6, 35, 60 Kain, Philip 40 Kaufman, Alexander 44, 75 Knutzen, Martin Kolb, Robert 97 Korsgaard, Christine 17, 42, 71, 73 – 4 Kristjánsson, Kristján 99 Kuehn, Manfred 37, 71, 100 law, moral 2, 5 – 13, 15 – 16, 18 – 19, 21 – 2, 24 – 5, 27 – 8, 37, 42, 45, 48 – 9, 53, 64 – 7, 73, 75, 77, 83, 87, 92, 95, 102, 104 – 5, 108, 112 – 13, 116, 118 – 22 law, state 1 – 2, 24 – 5, 27, 32 – 6, 38 – 46, 49, 56 – 8, 60, 63 – 6, 68 – 75, 78, 99, 106, 124 law of nature 22, 25, 66

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 98, 130 liberty 21 – 8, 37, 40, 43, 54, 64, 71, 73, 129 Lindbeck, George 97 – 8 Locke, John 25, 41 – 3, 98, 105 Louden, Robert 107 Louis XVI of France 58 – 9 Luther, Martin 77, 81, 95 – 100, 123 moral catechistics 77 – 84, 93, 101, 112 moral cultivation 5, 8 – 9, 16 – 17, 19 – 20, 64 – 7, 73, 75, 88, 94, 109 – 11 moral education 2, 9, 16, 20, 66 – 7, 75, 76 – 85, 93 – 5, 99, 101, 104, 109, 112 – 18 moral metaphysics 3, 6, 26, 48 moral progress 9, 13, 16, 26, 65, 105, 109 – 11, 118 – 19, 122 Mulgan, R. G. 99 Murphy, Jeffrie 17 – 18 Myrdal, Gunnar 74 natural rights 24 – 5 Neuhouser, Frederick 39 Oakeschott, Michael 38 Palmquist, Stephen 123 perfectionism 1, 68 Persaud, Winston 96 Peters, R. S. 99 phronesis 7, 99 physical education 76 – 7, 89 – 95 Plato 3 – 4, 14, 28, 43 – 4, 71, 80, 87, 89, 91, 93, 98 – 100, 124, 127, 130 practical philosophy 2 – 3, 12, 22, 25, 30, 36 – 7, 121 – 2 practical reason 11 – 12, 18, 21, 26, 40, 78, 107 praiseworthy, legally 6, 18 – 19 praiseworthy, morally 2, 5 – 6, 9, 11, 16, 18 – 19, 28 – 9, 31 – 2, 49, 51 – 4, 67, 70, 77, 94, 105, 107, 114, 119 – 20 property 25, 33, 42–3, 50–1, 60, 74, 126 punishment 16, 32, 44 – 6, 51, 61, 63, 68, 70, 78 – 9, 92 – 3, 99, 104, 106 Rawls, John 37, 44, 70 Raz, Joseph 43, 52, 68 – 70 Reisert, Joseph 38, 40, 75 religion 5, 12, 14 – 17, 35, 97 – 8, 104 – 5, 108 – 9, 111, 122 – 4

Index respect, moral law 6, 8, 19, 64, 67, 77, 87, 95, 102, 119 respect, other individuals 24, 26, 33 – 6, 41 – 3, 55 – 7, 60 – 1, 63, 69, 71, 73, 104, 112, 114 respect, self 115 – 16 Rhodes, Michael 69 Ripstein, Arthur 68 – 9 Rosen, Allen 41, 75 Rosen, Stanley 125 Rossi, Philip 107 Rotenstreich, Nathan 106 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 23 – 8, 37 – 41, 44, 65 – 6, 75, 90 – 3, 104 – 6, 119 – 20 Samet, Jerry 98 Schultz, F.A. 123 – 4 Schwitzgebel, Eric 19 Scruton, Roger 126 self-determination 50, 67 shame 109, 113 – 15, 117 – 18, 120 – 1, 124 – 6 Simmons, John 41 – 3 Singer, Peter 17, 126 social contract 22, 26, 37 – 9, 46, 56 – 7, 70 Socrates 3, 4, 79 – 80, 89 – 90, 100, 124 – 5 state of nature 23 – 8, 33 – 6, 38, 41, 43, 47, 48 – 9, 53, 55 – 7, 59 – 60, 62 – 4, 66, 72 – 3, 91, 105

137

Stoicism 85, 102 supernatural cooperation 16, 37, 109 – 11, 113, 124 supreme principle of the doctrine of virtue 9 synthetic 10, 104 Thrasymachus 124 – 5 United States Supreme Court 33 universal principle of right 9, 31 – 2 Velleman, David 125 – 6 vice 4 – 5, 13, 15, 19, 23, 37, 70, 85 – 6, 92, 115 – 18 virtue (Tugend) 13 – 15, 19, 88, 110 – 11, 120, 128 Webb, C.C.J. 123 Wike, Victoria 126 Wille 11 – 12, 15, 17 – 18, 46, 55, 121 Williams, Garrath 42 Willkür 11 – 12, 17 – 18 Wolff, Christian 124 Wonder, Stevie 122 Wood, Allen 17, 44 – 5, 101, 103, 122 Woollard, Fiona 68 Zeno 3, 110 Zwingli, Huldrych 97