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Kant's Moral Law: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals ranks with Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Ethics as one of the most important works of moral philosophy ever written. In Moral Law, Kant argues that a human action is only morally good if it is done from a sense of duty, and that a duty is a formal principle based not on self-interest or from a consideration of what results might follow. From this he derived his famous and controversial maxim, the categorical imperative: "Act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature." H. J. Paton's translation remains the standard in English for this work. It retains all of Kant's liveliness of mind, suppressed intellectual excitement, moral earnestness, and pleasure in words. The commentary and detailed analysis that Paton provides is an invaluable and necessary guide for the student and general reader.

Kant maintained that in order for an act to have moral worth it is necessary that it be done from the motive of duty. On the traditional view of Kant, the motive of duty is constituted solely by one’s belief or cognition that some act is one’s duty. Desire must be ruled out as forming partof the moral motive. On this view, if an agent’s act is to have moral worth, then it must be the ease that his belief that he has a duty has, on its own, motivational force.I attempt to argue that this view is mistaken, that for Kant desire does have a place in moral motivation, and that for Kant it is not possible that we can have an obligation, sincerely assert that we have, and at the same time have no desire to perform that obligation.

This paper sketches a Kantian account of forgiveness and argues that it is distinguished by three features. First, Kantian forgiveness is best understood as the revision of the actions one takes toward an offender, rather than a change of feeling toward an offender. Second, Kant’s claim that forgiveness is a duty of virtue tells us that we have two reasons to sometimes be forgiving: forgiveness promotes both our own moral perfection and the happiness of our moral community. Third, we have a duty to withhold forgiveness if with think forgiveness will cause or encourage our offender to wrong us again. This duty to sometimes withhold forgiveness stems from our duty of self-respect, which Kant repeatedly describes as a duty to ourselves to ensure that we are not harmed again.

The first section of the Groundwork begins “It is impossible to imagine anything at all in the world, or even beyond it, that can be called good without qualification— except a good will.”1 Kant’s explanation and defense of this claim is followed by an explanation and defense of another related claim, that only actions performed out of duty have moral worth. He explains that actions performed out of duty are those done from respect for the moral law, and then culminates the first section with a formulation of that law, “I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law”. Kant dubs this fundamental principle of morality “the Categorical Imperative”.

A few pages into the Groundwork Kant claims that only actions from duty have moral worth.ii Even though as an aside he also says that a dutiful action from sympathy or honor, though lacking in moral worth, "deserves praise and encouragement", it is tempting not to take him very seriously. One suspects that he regards this praise as only a poor and morally insignificant cousin of the esteem reserved for actions from duty. In the end, it seems hard to avoid the conclusion that, for him, only dutiful actions from duty deserve any morally significant positive evaluation.iii This conclusion in turn raises a standard objection:iv How can this be squared with the fact that we think highly of actions motivated, not by duty, but by desires to help those we love or those for whom we feel compassion? Of course, if we could ignore our suspicions and take Kant's aside seriously, the conflict would lessen. Contrary to the standard objection, Kant does indeed think that actions motivated by such desires are worthy of praise and encouragement. But the difficulties would not, for then we would then have to answer serious questions about the nature of the "praise" deserved by a dutiful action not performed from duty, what moral significance (if any) a Kantian view can attribute to it, and the relationship it has to moral worth.

A central claim in Kantian ethics is that an agent is properly morally motivated just in case she acts from duty alone. Bernard Williams, Michael Stocker, and Justin Oakley claim that certain emotionally infused actions, such as lending a compassionate helping hand, can only be done from compassion and not from duty. I argue that these critics have overlooked a distinction between an action's manner, how an action is done, and its motive, the agent's reason for acting. Through a range of examples I demonstrate how an emotion can determine an action's manner without also serving as the motive. Thus, it is possible for an agent to act compassionately from duty alone. This distinction between the manner and the motive of an action not only restores a central claim in Kantian ethics but it also allows for an expanded role of emotions in moral action.

Two celebrated passages in Kant center on a problem that is sometimes called the ‘availability’ of motives. One concerns the naturally sympathetic man whose mind becomes “overclouded by sorrows of his own which extinguish all sympathy with the fate of others”. Kant argues that even in this state, when he has no “inclination” to help others, he can do so, since he can act “for the sake of duty alone”.1 The other passage states that the commandment to love our neighbor cannot mean that we must act from “pathological love”, that is, an emotion or feeling of love. Feeling is not under our control. We can, however, perform acts of “practical love”, that is, acts of assistance, and these acts we can perform from the motive of duty.2 One way to combine the conclusions of these two arguments is to say that for Kant the motive of duty is always ‘available’, but motives like sympathy and “pathological love” are not. One question that arises here is whether Kant drew a mistaken conclusion from the second argument. W.D. Ross seemed to think so, because he takes the argument to be completely general.3 That is, he takes Kant to have proved that no motive, including the sense of duty, is always available. Ross’ focus was on obligation-making motives. He took his view about the availability of motives, along with the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, to entail PR.

In thc Foundations, Kant draws a distinction bctwccn action which is in accord with duty and action which is done from the motive of duty. This is 21 famous distinction, of course, and thcrc arc many interesting issues concerning it and its implications for ethical thcory. In this paper, I wish t0 focus on just 0nc noteworthy feature of K2mt’s usc of this distinction. Likc any distinction bctwccn logical compatiblcs, this 0nc yields four logically possible classes of action: (1) actions which are both in accord with duty and from duty; (2) actions which arc neither from duty nor in accord with duty; (3) actions which are in accord with duty but not from duty; and (4) actions which are from duty but not in accord with duty. What intcrcsts mc about these four possibilities is that, to thc best of my knowledge, Kant never considers or even mentions the last 0f these possibilities: action from duty but not in accord with duty. This is perhaps surprising in a philosopher with Kant’s intcrcst in logic and passion for thoroughness. Onc would have thought that hc would mention this logical possibility, cvcn if only in order to discount it as not really possible. Beginning with the idea that there arc cases of action from duty but not in accord with duty, I argue in this paper that Kant could not have admitted that thcrc can be actions of this kind, for their cxistcncc un-.

Kant, Duty and Moral Worth tackles the debate over whether or not Kant said moral actions have worth only if they are carried out from duty or whether actions carried out from mixed motives can be good. Stratton-Lake offers a unique account of acting from duty which utilizes the distinction between primary and secondary motives. He maintains that moral law should not be understood as normative moral reason but as playing a transcendental role. Thus, a Kantian account of moral worth is one where the virtuous agent is one who is responsive to concrete particular considerations while preserving an essential role for universal moral priniciples.

I consider three questions concerning the relation of the good will to the moral worth of actions. (1) Does a good will consist simply in acting from the motive of duty? (2) Does acting from the motive of duty presuppose that one has a good will? (3) Does the fact that one has a good wilI entail that all of one’s duty-fulfilling actions have moral worth, even if they are not (directly) motivated by duty? I argue that while only persons with a good will are capable of acting from the motive of duty, it does not follow either that a good will consists in acting from duty or that if one has a good will, all of one’s dutiful actions will be motivated by duty. Whereas the good will is constituted by the agent’s highest-order maxim (the moral law itself), moral worth is a function of the agent’s first-order maxims.