So if I want to kill someone because I would feel a lot better if he was dead, this is pretty easily seen to conflict with his desire to do the same to me. If it doesn’t work with this one other person, it’s not going to universalize. Much more simple than going through with the whole universalizability process. (Though, of course, if it seems to pass this first test then it still must pass the universalizability test.)

So before we look at the details of these Kantopias, there is one last thing that Kant could have said in the third formulation of the Categorical Imperative, and didn’t. He could have argued that we should “act in accordance with universal laws for a merely possible kingdom of ends”. Such a formulation would suggest that we should obey the kind of laws the people of such a kingdom would enact. And certainly we should, but it’s central to Kant’s project that we do not merely follow the laws of morality, but we “construct” them or give them to ourselves.

If the first two formulations make it feel like we might be held hostage to universal laws, or the law to treat others as ends, the third formulation makes it clear that we must be in the driver’s seat of morality. Fortunately, this doesn’t mean that anything goes. Rather, the only laws we can fully and freely give to our rational selves are those of morality — those that others could consistently give to themselves and others as well. In addition, the idea that we give *ourselves* laws to follow as opposed to following the laws of nature (Aristotle, Hume, and others) or God (Christianity) makes it plausible that the will is acting freely. To be moral is to be rational is to be free.

But what does a kingdom of rational, moral, free individuals look like?

Figuring out the answer to this question is one of the reasons I went from being a casual admirer of Kantian ethics to an avid supporter. The answer turns out to be that a kingdom of ends is going to look like, well, many different things. The categorical imperative forbids acting on any maxim that cannot be willed to be a universal law. But otherwise, it is completely silent on what ends you should have. All kinds of different “Kantopian” societies are going to be possible. The substance of these societies will be determined by the very different constitutions of the people who make them up and their own particular sets of ends.

Think of a society which, for whatever reason, had a very low tolerance for being in groups. Maybe if they worked really hard, they could be happier in groups, but basically being alone gave them a good amount of pleasure. Such a society could easily be a kingdom of ends as long they all made the categorical imperative their preeminent moral principle. While it would have to have a certain level of altruism, the society would basically be a land of very respectful hermits. A society with different psychological traits, say one that had a very low tolerance for being alone, could also be a kingdom of ends. I would expect such a society to have a much higher level of altruism than the categorical imperative required. A Kantopia could thus also be a place filled with respectful, fun-loving socialites.

In the end there will be many different kinds of kingdoms of ends because the silence of the categorical imperative on many of our ends allows freedom to take many shapes. Different sets of natural or learned inclinations will lead to dramatically different, respectful societies. I haven’t thought too hard about this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if both capitalist and socialist Kantopias were possible. Again, this would depend on the natural levels of self-interest that emerge from people’s natures and upbringings.

So the third formulation seems to lead us naturally to the idea that, for large groups of people, freedom can take many shapes and free societies can have remarkably different structures and sets of social relationships. With the dissonant, disagreeable ends ruled out, the remaining ends people have will have a kind of harmony. That said, the “harmony” of ends shouldn’t be confused with a “union” of ends.

One final thing to note about the contrast between Kantian ethics and other moral theories here is that it’s not altogether clear that certain forms of consequentialism (like hedonistic utilitarianism) will be able to remain silent on what ends people need to have. Certainly, if having unified ends would make a society happier, moving to unify ends might make the society morally better. For Kantopias, the fact that a certain society has more aggregate happiness does not make it morally better. People can pursue hedonistic ends, so long as they do not conflict with others’ ends, but happiness or pleasure is just one end amongst many. So the society of hermits I noted earlier might have much more work to do if utilitarianism is true; but on a Kantian ethic, it can’t really get better morally.

My audience will almost certainly want to ask how this compares to what virtue ethics might prescribe for a society. I don’t think I can answer this without differentiating between many different types of virtue ethics. But while virtue ethics certainly doesn’t seem as possibly prescriptive about ends as consequentialism, I get the impression that perhaps it isn’t quite as silent about them as Kantian ethics has to be. In particular, depending on how “social” a thing virtue is, an ideally virtuous society might be more likely to prescribe certain social ends.

So are Kantopias utopian? Maybe not if one’s criterion for a utopia is that the citizens be blissfully happy. But if mutual respect for each others’ ends–even ends very different than one’s own–is your idea of about as good as a society can get, then you might want to take a closer look at the third formulation of the categorical imperative.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a proper Kant post on the blog here, so let’s get to it. One of the least understood parts of Kant’s *Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals* is the third formulation of the Categorical Imperative, usually known as the “Kingdom of Ends” formulation. This isn’t helped by the fact that Kant doesn’t give one simple bite-sized statement of it where one would think it would be in the Groundwork. But it is there in 4:439 and it states that we should “…act in accordance with the maxims of a member giving universal laws for a merely possible kingdom of ends”. So what kind of guidance is this formulation supposed to give us?

Let’s start with what in the world a “kingdom of ends” is supposed to be, and then move on to what Kant is *not* saying. First, one could be forgiven for hearing a resemblance to the idea of a “kingdom of God”. I’m not a Biblical scholar, so I don’t know the details of what a kingdom of God might consist in, but it’s safe to say (I think) that it is supposed to be something closer to the idea of “paradise” than what we are living in now. In fact, what comes to most people’s minds when Kant mentions the “kingdom of ends” is paradise on earth, or utopia, an “ideal society”.

What Kant says he means by a “kingdom”, though, is a “systematic union of various rational beings [people, for our purposes] through common laws”. We have something like that now. A kingdom of ends, however, is a systematic union in which all the people’s ends (goals, purposes) are in systematic connection. I find it’s much more understandable when Kant describes it as a kingdom in which people’s ends harmonize with each other (4:436). The subject of these posts is to lay out what kind of utopia that would be, if it would be utopian at all.

The third formulation can lead some to think Kant is some variety of consequentialist, utilitarian, or perfectionist. But it is pretty important to see that Kant is not saying that, by our actions, we should try to bring about a kingdom of ends. That’s not how morality works. We don’t act rightly because our actions lead to some better state of affairs for humanity, but because our actions come from the motive of duty. People who who try to bring about paradise may not be infringing on morality, but wanting to bring about paradise (or even taking steps to bring it about!) is not a suitable foundation for morality.

What Kant is trying to say is that we should only act on maxims (principles) that it would be possible for everyone else in the kingdom to act on as well. Thus we get a kind of social dimension to the first formulation of the Categorical Imperative (“act only on that maxim which you can at the same time will to be a universal law of nature”). And what such a social existence will amount to will be what the second formulation suggests (treating everyone as ends in themselves). The only way all of our ends will harmonize is if we only act in ways that permit others to pursue their legitimate ends as well. This is a rough way to get at what Kant calls the “equivalence” of the three formulations. And, of course, it much more clearly rules out things like stealing, lying, killing, and so on than the first formulation does. It’s nice when the foundations of morality can feel somewhat intuitive.

So is this going to be a paradise? What would such a kingdom look like? What do people do with their lives in such a kingdom? I’ll lay out some thoughts on this in part 2.

If you’re a fan of the novel *Dune* by Frank Herbert, you know that the above is the so-called “Bene Gesserit” litany against fear. And if you look at it closely after reading enough Kantian ethics, you can see that it is actually downright Kantian. For Kant, one of the key ideas is that we are caught between two worlds: the rational (or noumenal) world and the material world. Fear is an emotion from the material world–a response we have because we are beings that are held in bondage to natural laws. But our truer and moral leanings are towards the rational world, where we are something other than our fears. Thus, the separation of us from our fears in the litany is terribly Kantian. The little-death is the danger to our more rational side. We cannot avoid fear, because we are part of the material world (unlike, say, angels) but when it confronts us we can let it go past, taking the perspective of the rational part of ourselves. And since fear is in all but the worst situations transient, we can emerge from fear being just our rational selves.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Bene-Gesserit “Gom Jabbar” is pretty Kantian. In Dune, young Paul Atreides is made to put his hand in a box that induces pain, with a poison needle at his neck (the Gom Jabbar) that will kill him if he takes the hand out. As the pain increases, the temptation to remove one’s hand increases. An animal, responding merely on instinct (or in the human case, inclination, for Kant) will recoil from the pain, unable to override its instincts. When Paul outlasts the pain and the poison needle is withdrawn, he is said to be shown to be “human”–capable of overriding instinct for other reasons. It’s almost perfectly Kantian, but it is possible that Paul is merely letting his inclination for long-term happiness override his inclination for short-term inclination to be free from pain. So the Bene Gesserit have a little more work to do before they can “prove” the motive involved is one of a human, but it is an admirable start.

A little more after the break about the Dune series.

Wherein I declare that I am a snob: Dune is a great book. Even, I think, a kind of masterpiece of science fiction. The mythology is compelling and deep. So deep, in fact, I don’t think Frank Herbert really knew what he had. After I read it, I eagerly picked up the other six novels in the series. Now I am somewhat picky, but the truth is that the other six are nothing like the genius of the first one. Not even pale shadows, actually. It’s as if Herbert either didn’t write the first book or chose someone else to write the rest. I’m not saying people can’t or shouldn’t like the rest, but the sequel to Dune is really bad and the rest are mediocre imitations of what the first book was. It’s sad, because of how good Dune was. I won’t even start about the Dune books that weren’t written by Frank Herbert, but rather his son. I’ve picked them up from time to time in a bookstore to see if they were any good. And really, these new Dune books are just pure dreck. Awful, amateur dreck even. It’s touching that his son wants to continue his work, but with Frank Herbert not even able to understand the potential inherent in the first book, Herbert the second didn’t really have much of a chance. Still, I recommend the first book to anyone who likes science fiction and philosophy.

> Duty is the necessity of an action out of respect for law.

Kant has two things he wants to tell us about this proposition that reveal a great deal about his moral theory. The first is that while we can have respect for law, we cannot have respect for any kind of inclination, whether it be in ourselves or in others. It’s important to put ourselves in not-so-present-day shoes in order to see what Kant is getting at here. One of the most alluring incentives to do what one is supposed to do is that one will be punished if one shirks one’s “duty”. There are various punishments that one could have in mind: the corporeal punishment of a parent, the retribution of an army commander, or the divine wrath of God. But all of these forms of punishment motivate behavior not by duty but by making use of our very basic inclination to avoid pain and suffering–in other words, fear. But morality is not about fear, for Kant. We’re not responsible for our proclivity to fear or not to fear. We are responsible for what we decide to do for our own reasons, and acting from duty is importantly different than acting from fear. What the slave-driver creates is not duty, but pain to which we (as animals) know how to respond. More after the break.

So acting from fear is acting from inclination and has no intrinsic moral worth. But the other side of the condition is true as well. We cannot have respect for anything but the law. I’d go into this more, because it may not be intuitively obvious, but I want to save that for another post devoted solely to the topic. Suffice it to say for now that respect is a key feeling because it is a result of the law acting as one’s motivation. But now we’re at the idea that since moral worth cannot come from inclination, the purpose we hold for an action, or the effects (actual or expected) of an action, the only thing left is conformity to the law as such. As Kant says:

> Hence there is nothing left which can [morally] determine the will except objectively the law and subjectively pure respect for this practical law.

The second thing Kant wants to tell us about this proposition is that it is the only way that an action *could* have moral worth because all the effects of the action *could* have come about by some other means other than the good will. If you remember, the good will was previously declared by Kant to be the only thing that was good in and of itself. But the effects of one’s actions could be created in some other way. For instance, say that I hear a drowning child was saved from a watery death yesterday. This could be the result of someone’s jumping in to save the drowning child. But it could also be because, as the child was drowning, a huge wave swelled up underneath him that carried the child to shore. Thus the mere saving of the child was not in itself the moral worth of the situation (though it might seem so to the child). That action could have come about in different ways. The problem is that one could trace itself back to something with intrinsic worth (a good will), but the other could only trace itself back to a freak weather pattern. Thus, the commonality between effects of actions, purposes for actions, and inclinations in general is that they do not trace themselves back to something truly valuable. Thus, they are not necessarily good.

Now it certainly makes sense to argue here that while it’s true that all effects *could* come about from other sources than a good will, that some effects do in fact come about from the actions of a good will. I think this is an important question to pose to Kant at this point. He doesn’t give anything like an answer. (However, he can be read as giving something like an answer with the idea that one need not be successful at producing good effects to do something good.) Even if Kant can’t be re-read in this way, it may make sense for a Kantian-type ethical theory to allow the results of some actions to have moral worth. But the reason Kant does not seem so concerned to make the argument here is that it is not what he is doing to account for all instances of moral worth. Rather, he is doing “groundwork” or a foundation for the idea of a more specific moral theory. Thus, in a way all he is trying to establish is what would be absolutely necessary for something to have moral worth. And since effects could come about by some other means than as products of a good will, they are not absolutely necessary for something to be good. Unfortunately, the *Groundwork* isn’t meant to catalog everything that could be moral–that task is saved for the actual *Metaphysics of Morals*. Rather, it is the foundation on which a moral theory has to be built. And I tend to find this particular foundation plausible.

> Kant’s second proposition: an action from duty has its moral worth not in the purpose to be attained by it, but in the maxim in accordance with which it is decided upon, and thus does not depend upon the realization of the object of the action, but merely upon the principle of volition in accordance within which the action is done without regard for any object of the faculty of desire.

This is a bit of a difficult principle to parse. At first, it looks like a simple declaration that the results of one’s actions don’t matter as much as our intentions, or why we do something. This would be what someone reading Kant as a non-utilitarian might focus on. But that’s not quite right. Kant isn’t yet talking about the effects of our actions (which are the main interest of a utilitarian). Rather, he’s talking about those effects considered as ends. So he’s saying that even the effects we *intend* to bring about don’t give our actions moral worth. This can seem very odd at first, because so many of the things we do are focused on bringing about certain effects in the near or far future. I read the book because I want to see what happens at the end. I comfort my grieving friend because I want him to feel better. In fact, life is dominated by these kinds of motivators for actions. Again, there is nothing *wrong* about acting on such motives. They’re simply non-moral actions done from non-moral reasons. What Kant is suggesting is that there is another kind of entity in decision-making, namely a maxim or a principle, and it is only acting from a principle that gives an action moral worth.

It’s probably good to start then by asking why in the world Kant would be arguing that even our *intentions* don’t matter. But really this is fairly simple. Our intentions are usually based upon our inclinations, which Kant (as I’ve tried to show in earlier posts) has good reason to suppose don’t have moral worth. Look at the intentions I listed above: “I comfort my grieving friend because I want him to feel better”. This need not be my fault at all, and thus may not be the product of Kant’s source of unconditional worth: the good will. It may just be that nature, via my parents, has made me into a sympathetic guy. This is the kind of purpose Kant intends to show having no moral worth. The good will is an altogether different kind of law than the laws of nature, and it’s mine. As Kant says later in the paragraph explaining the proposition:

> For, the will stands between its a priori principle, which is formal, and its a posteriori incentive, which is material, as at a crossroads…

The good will, then is uniquely situated in human beings with their ties to the natural world. A “holy will”, as Kant calls it later, would be one that was not at all pulled by subjective desires, but only by something else. Being caught in between the two worlds also is what makes us feel morality as *normative* or something we *ought* to do as opposed to something we simply do. God, or the holy will, on Kant’s theory, would have not feel tempted by worldly desire to do the wrong thing.

So take out the reference to purposes and we have Kant’s positive proposition about wherein moral worth lies:

> Kant’s simplified second proposition: an action done from duty has its moral worth in the maxim in accordance with which it is decided upon.

or, without referring to maxims,

> An action done from duty has its moral worth in virtue of the principle of volition in accordance with which the action is done.

I think it’s easiest to think of maxims in terms of principles. So when mere principle moves the will, then an action has moral worth. I think this is important to note, because many people (including past versions of myself) get it wrong about what a maxim contains. A maxim isn’t a statement of the form: “I will do x in order to bring about y” but rather, “When I am in y circumstances, I will do x.” Instead of “I comfort my grieving friend because I want him to feel better”, a morally worthy maxim would be “When friends are grieving, I should comfort them” or, more simply, “One comforts grieving friends”.

Now my way of explicating Kant here does run into some minor problems with his suicide example later on, but I think that can be explained by noting that Kant is still somewhat ambiguous here between the concepts of “lacking moral worth” and “having a wrongful principle”. This also spotlights one thing that Kant doesn’t talk enough about here: bad principles. What really matters here, though, is that maxims (or principles) are importantly different than inclinations. As Kant will later say, they are subjective counterparts of the moral law.

A little while back, Chris had noted in a comment, that Kant’s ethics seemed to deal with other people in a particularly cold manner. The essence of his objection (I hope I get this right) was that what Kant believes is the proper moral motivation (respect for the law) is quite cold, especially compared to motives that involve actual people and/or one’s affection for them. I tried to answer him at the time by questioning what is really responsible for our inclinations. But it’s worth noting that Korsgaard has a different take:

> …the person who acts from duty is envisioned as someone who does not really have the happiness of others as his end. This is simply a mistake. Duty is not a different purpose, but a different ground for the adoption of a purpose. So Kant’s idea here is captured better by saying that the sympathetic person’s motive is *shallower* than the morally worthy person’s: both want to help, but there is a available a *further* stretch of motivating thought about helping which the merely sympathetic person has not engaged in. This further stretch of thought concerns the sort of world this would be if no one helped–or better–if no one perceived the need for help as a *reason* to help, or a *claim* on help. Such a world would be unacceptable because we regard our own needs as reasons why *we* should be helped. Regarding my needs as normative for others, or, as Kant puts it, making myself an end for others, I must regard the needs of others as normative for me… So the morally worthy person helps because she believes that the needs of others make a claim on her and so that there is a normative demand, or a law, that she ought to help.

More below the break.

What Korsgaard is suggesting here, I think, is that there is a tradeoff to basing moral motivation on our emotional states. That tradeoff is that someone’s needs won’t be a reason for everyone to help them. Rather, it will only be a reason for those who are sympathetically inclined to help them. You either have the emotional disposition to help them or you don’t, and of course plenty of people in a large, modern, liberal society are fairly good at guarding how much they feel for other people (see Kitty Genovese. Thus, someone’s being in need of help (in itself) is not enough to make moral claims on people. Rather, it needs to be met halfway with sympathy of some kind.

Kant’s ethics, by basing moral motivation on something all rational people share (reason, and hence duty), makes the case that someone’s being in need is a reason (felt normatively) for all people to help out. Now this does require that helping those in need is part of the categorical imperative for Kant, but that’s another post. Thus there’s a sense in which being needy is all Kant requires for morality to take hold. And, of course, we see that for non-rational beings (like animals, babies, etc) there is no pull to help those who are plainly in need. We also do not blame them for it.

Finally, the response to this that I’m sure fans of emotional motivation are thinking of is that these theories *do* require you to cultivate these emotional states towards other beings. That may very well be, but it then passes the question up to a higher level. What is our obligation to cultivate these states based on? If it is based on a Humean kind of fondness for feeling good for others, then again we have the problem of this fondness not being found in all rational beings. Perhaps then it is based on a type of perfectionism, then. If it’s a personal form of perfectionism, though, then we’re back to the coldness objection, for one is really cultivating one’s sympathy towards others as a form of perfecting oneself. The other option would seem to be that it is a kind of societal, cultural, global, or group perfectionism of some kind. I’m not terribly fond of that response because I’m attached to a more individualistic moral theory, but I can’t say that I see too much wrong with it (other than that with any option but global perfectionism, you have people outside of your group whose neediness isn’t reason-generating). I can’t think of every other response, but they would seem to me to run the risk of being exactly what Kant is trying to ground morality in: duty.

I don’t think Kant and Korsgaard have the whole answer here, since it seems to me that it’s also possible for us to decide, from a rational perspective, that we have a duty to cultivate certain emotions. These then become emotional states which are “filtered” through rationality rather than simply given us by the world. I don’t think we need to reason through every moral situation in order to be doing the morally right thing. But this post has gone on long enough and I have this paragraph’s topic as a future post.

First, it’s not that happiness is not part of a good life. Rather, I think that Kant believes happiness (as a goal) is not part of the moral part of a good life in and of itself. There’s a lot more to a human life than one’s moral life. But second, Kant also believes, and states at G 399 (Groundwork, I’m switching reference modes), that we in fact have a duty to secure ourselves some kind of happiness. The reason Kant gives for this is that if we deprive ourselves of too much, it will become impossible to do our duty. It’s this thought, that I want to examine in this post.

Kant’s idea seems to suggest he believes in a principle something like this one:

> Easing the Way: If one is unlikely to be motivated by duty unless one has X, then one also has a duty to get/do X.

I like this because it suggests that it’s not only nice to get a good night’s sleep, but I can claim it’s my duty!

Two things, though, jump out at me about this twist in Kant’s ethics. First, it subtly makes the argument that you need to prepare yourself to fulfill your duties when they come about. When a tough ethical decision comes along, many people aren’t ready for it. But that’s not an excuse for Kant, since you have a duty to keep morally “fit”, so to speak. To the extent that one has abrogated one’s duties to prepare oneself to do one’s duty, perhaps one is even incapable of doing one’s duty. But that doesn’t get you off the hook. This might seem like a violation of “ought implies can”, but it really suggests there’s an important temporal aspect to “ought implies can”. That principle is not “ought implies can right now”.

Also, it shows how the rest of life in the non-moral realm integrates with life in the moral realm for Kant. It is much the way one keeps physically fit. By doing the things that are required for being likely to do our duty, we end up with a life that most reasonable people would enjoy. So the complicated life that responds to moral duties does have a deeply satisfying feel. We can’t, of course, have this feel as the goal according to Kant, but much as Plato before him, we see that reason ruling over our inclinations isn’t pounding them into submission so much as arranging them in the right way.

It even lends itself nicely to a slogan:

> Kantian morality: You get the good life for free.

> In order for an action to have moral worth, it must be done from the motive of duty.

This must be one of the single most misunderstood parts of Kantian ethics, so I want to examine it in this post.

The alternative to acting from duty for Kant is acting from what he calls “inclination”. Inclination can be seen as doing what one likes to do or is inclined to do. But one has to be careful here. Kant is not saying that doing what you like is morally wrong, or even that doing what you like has no moral worth. Rather, he is saying that doing what you like *because it is what you like* has no moral worth. It isn’t necessarily wrong it’s just not an action that is part of the moral realm (though figuring out what Kant thinks is wrong as opposed to amoral is a huge headache). After all, it is certainly possible that one could do something that one enjoys *because* it is one’s duty. What we like and what it is our duty to do may very well coincide.

Kant’s example to show this is preserving one’s own life. Most of us do this without even thinking about it, out of an immediate inclination. I think Kant agrees with common sense in saying that this normal preservation of one’s life isn’t something morally good or bad. It’s just something we do. But there may come a time when our inclinations change. Due to great personal hardship that can come about (such as the death of a partner, child, or other loved one), we can find ourselves without this immediate inclination. Our inclination may switch to letting ourselves whither away. Here, Kant isn’t necessarily saying such a thing would be wrong — it would simply fail to have any moral worth whatsoever unless it was contrary to our duty. But if, even feeling the inclination to slip away, we keep ourselves alive out a motive of duty (perhaps we have other promises to keep), then the action becomes worth something morally.

The same would go for actions that many of us would consider moral because they are altruistic. Some people may be naturally disposed to give of themselves and contribute to the happiness of others. And it is not that Kant doesn’t want to celebrate these people, but in this system they do not get *moral* credit for enjoying being beneficent. In order for a particular action to be in the moral realm and to be truly *morally* praiseworthy, it must be done from duty. Since those who act in such a beneficent way normally are acting from their own inclinations, which are installed and pulled on by only natural law, the best we can do is celebrate that they were born with such magnificent dispositions.

Let me take a stab at defending this.

What is uncomfortable about what Kant is saying to the present-day ear is that one does not own or is not responsible for one’s pleasant disposition, thus one really gets no credit for it. But do these pleasantly disposed people deserve the credit for this, themselves? A Kantian would argue that nature deserves the credit for it. There are two responses available to oppose present-day critics. First, I don’t think we should be worried about people who don’t want credit for their beneficent acts. This, in a way, shows the purity of their dispositions. We may want to reexamine the attitudes of people who celebrate them after their deaths as leading lives of struggle against evil, for they didn’t struggle. We also may want to reexamine our advice to others to be more like these people, for frequently that is not possible. For those who are not so pre-disposed, this would be acting them to act from a motive of duty, which is not what those pre-disposed were doing. Second, those who do want credit for their beneficent acts, even if they feel they come naturally, may actually be acting from the motive of duty more than they realize. One generally wants credit for what one experiences as a struggle. So perhaps these people do deserve credit, and even more than those who are naturally pre-disposed.

Our proper moral ranking of the beneficent people should thus be that the one who acted from duty is the only one who is morally praiseworthy. The other is praiseworthy for being a fine creation of nature, not him or herself. It might sound uncomfortable at first to think of acting from duty as being something one deserves credit for (since the modern concept of duty usually involves following orders), but for Kant duty is actually the purest expression of self, as it is the only thing that frees us from the laws of nature. That theme will come up again and again in the Groundwork and the rest of Kant’s ethical writing.

All this said, a neo-Kantian like myself thinks Kant is a little too restrictive here. I believe that in addition to inclinations we have installed in us from nature and childhood, that one can use a dutiful life to develop additional inclinations. Acting from inclinations which one was motivated from duty to “install” in oneself seems to provide a way in which acting from inclination may have moral worth. They may also be the only desires we can really own. But more on this in a future post.

When I’d read this argument in the text before I was a little embarrassed about it, thinking Kant was simply making an argument that we are perfectly adapted beings, and since we have reason, it must be good for us in some way. I now think there is a lot more going on than that and that it actually serves as a definitive statement of what kind of beings Kant’s ethics really apply to.

I’m summing it up like this:

1. In a being that is constituted purposively for life, we will find only instruments that are best adapted and appropriate to that end and no instruments for some other end.
2. Reason is not an instrument best adapted and appropriate to preservation of life.
3. Instinct is an instrument best adapted and appropriate to the preservation of life.
4. Thus a being that has both instinct and reason and is constituted to preserve its life, reason could serve at best as something to contemplate one’s fortunate possession of instinct.
5. Such a being would be constituted in such a way that reason had no practical use.
6. Reason would not only have been barred from producing preservation, but nature would have also elected for instinct to be the route to happiness.
7. But we find that reason does have a practical use, and in fact can be misleadingly used to try to further happiness (see definition above).
8. Thus, we are not beings only constituted purposively for life and must have a different purpose.

Kant’s idea of our purpose is, as he writes at 4:396, to produce a good will, that is, to live a life of morality.

So the argument above, which I had always take to be an anti-Darwinian claim about the adaptedness of certain parts and faculties, really only insists that true perfect adaptedness would be true of beings only constituted solely for preserving their lives. Reproduction is left out of this equation, which means that it might not be all that unreasonable of an argument for beings of the kind Kant is describing: beings streamlined for just life. Not that there are any such beings, but it’s not unreasonable to think some kind of selection could streamline a being in such a case. At any rate, whether Kant is compatible with natural selection is somewhat beside the point. This argument is actually about the purpose of human living. Even though we can live just to preserve our lives or just for happiness, this is selling ourselves short, and makes us see reason as an encumbrance. We have one too many talents to quest only after happiness, the way a fancy gas range with all the bells and whistles would be a bit much just to boil water for pasta (even if you really liked pasta).

Kant goes on to argue that not only do we find ourselves with reason that has a practical use, but that using it to try to ensure one’s happiness often lands one in a degree of “misology” or hatred of reason. I don’t know exactly what to say about this latter point. It certainly seems true that beings with reason could be better suited for planning and thus in a better position to take care of their long-term interests, which could translate into greater happiness in the future.

We are beings that adapt, though, and reaching a certain level of happiness is often only the invitation to setting some yet higher standard (dial-up internet made some of us very happy until broadband came along). So maybe Kant is right, but just for beings with any sense of drive and progress. In fact, perhaps this could be seen as one of his fundamental assumptions: that he is only talking about people with relatively complex psychologies who are not satisfied with a small, fixed set of desires. This ties into his definition of happiness, for if we do keep our set of desires fixed and small, it would be—in principle—possible for us to be completely happy.

Behind the scenes, then, Kant appears to be offering us a choice: happiness if you want to be simple (more or less a well adapted animal), or morality through pure practical reason if you want to enjoy all that humanity has to offer. But complete satisfaction of desires using reason is only a fool’s errand if you want to lead a life of even moderate complexity. People who attempt such a combination will come to hate reason and long for a simpler life which they may not have the nature to achieve.

Luckily, the more complex life has a supreme purpose all its own.