Kant: Moral Psychology

It is clear that Kant's theory of motivation plays a central role in his ethical theory as a whole. Nevertheless, it has been subjected to many interpretations: (i) the 'orthodox' interpretation, (ii) the 'Aristotelian' or 'Humean' interpretation and (iii) the 'rationalist' interpretation. The first part of the thesis aims to provide an interpretation of Kant's theory of rational agency and motivation. I argue that the 'orthodox' and 'Aristotelian' interpretations should be rejected because they are incompatible with Kant's conception of freedom, (...) defending an account of Kant's position that goes along the lines of the rationalist interpretation. I show that Kant's theory of motivation is committed to a form of cognitivism, that is, the cognitive aspects of a motive are always the active factors in motivation. In Kant's terminology, the motives are provided by the agent's maxims, which express the reasons from which the agent acts. This part of the thesis examines Kant's theory of imperatives and his theory of motivation for cases of permissible, moral and immoral action. I conclude that in Kant's system, three levels of moral assessment can be distinguished: (i) rightness, (ii) moral worth, and (iii) virtue. However, my interest in Kant's theory is not merely exegetical; thus, the second aim of the thesis is to place Kant's position within the context of the following contemporary debates in metaethics: (i) debates about the relation between moral judgement and motivation, and (ii) debates about the nature of reasons for action, arguing that the Kantian position still represents an attractive philosophical view today. In relation to (i), I argue that Kant is committed to a form of motivational internalism, reconstruct Kant's argument for this view and reply to some possible externalist objections. In relation to (ii), I claim that since Kant's conception of reasons, based on the concept of maxims, differs from an internal conception of reasons (i.e., a conception that identifies reasons with the agent's desires), and from an external conception of reasons (i.e., a conception of reasons that identifies reasons with facts of the agent's situation), the term volitionism should be reserved to describe Kant's position. (shrink)

In Kant scholarship, the concept of maxims is discussed, for the most part, from the perspective of the universalization procedure of the Categorical Imperative. In fact, however, it has a much wider relevance. As is shown in this contribution, maxims are fundamental to Kant’s theory of action and value. Since the agent expresses her pro-attitudes, i.e., interests, preferences, and life-plans based on maxims, they figure as constitutive elements of her practical identity. After some general and historical considerations on Kant’s concept (...) of maxims, it is shown that their function in the theory of the ‘practical syllogism’ implies that maxims play an important role in considerations on the agent’s ends, goals, and purposes. Additionally, I will discuss the function of maxims in Kant’s action theory. I will defend an interpretation of the Kantian idea according to which practical deliberation can be understood based on a hierarchical order of maxims. Finally, the problem of higher-order maxims and the issue of the unity and inner consistency of maxims is debated. (shrink)

The concept of Triebfeder, commonly translated into English as “incentive,” plays a crucial role in Kant’s moral philosophy. In the Critique of Practical Reason, in which a whole chapter is dedicated to the Triebfedern of pure practical reason, Kant argues that the moral law is not only the objective determining ground of the will but also functions as a Triebfeder, that is, as a subjective determining ground of the will. Kant’s concept of Trieb, by contrast, is much less clearly defined, (...) and its meaning remains in many ways ambivalent. In the second part of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, for instance, Kant refers to Blumenbach’s idea of Bildungstrieb in order to describe the unique formative powers of organic nature. This chapter offers a detailed comparison of the two etymologically related but philosophically distinct conceptions of Triebfeder and Trieb and draws special attention to the shift of focus that occurs in the third Critique. (shrink)

The notion of Trieb, constitutive for Blumenbach’s greatest conceptual intervention, the Bildungstrieb, intentionally separated it from the other Bildungskräfte that had been identified in the physical world. This discrimination proved decisive for Kant. Thus we must endeavor to reconstruct the source and the significance of Blumenbach’s conceptual departure. My argument will be that in his turn to Trieb, Blumenbach drew upon the pioneering work of Hermann Reimarus. Thus, my argument will have three components: first, the conceptualization of Trieb in Reimarus; (...) second, the introduction of that term into Blumenbach’s own theorizing, in the notion Bildungstrieb; and, finally, how that figured in the reception of Blumenbach by Kant. (shrink)

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The Southern Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

The consensus is that in his 1755 Nova Dilucidatio, Kant endorsed broadly Leibnizian compatibilism, then switched to a strongly incompatibilist position in the early 1760s. I argue for an alternative, incompatibilist reading of the Nova Dilucidatio. On this reading, actions are partly grounded in indeterministic acts of volition, and partly in prior conative or cognitive motivations. Actions resulting from volitions are determined by volitions, but volitions themselves are not fully determined. This move, which was standard in medieval treatments of free (...) choice, explains why Kant is so critical of Crusius’s version of libertarian freedom: Kant understands Crusius as making actions entirely random. In defense of this reading, I offer a new analysis of the version of the principle of sufficient reason that appears in the Nova Dilucidatio. This principle can be read as merely guaranteeing grounds for the existence of things or substances, rather than efficient causes for states and events. As such, the principle need not exclude libertarian freedom. Along the way, I seek to illuminate obscure aspects of Kant’s 1755 views on moral psychology, action theory, and the threat of theological determinism. (shrink)

The chapter examines Kant’s thesis about the ‘radical evil in human nature’ developed in his Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. According to this thesis, the human moral condition is corrupt by default and yet by own deed; and this corruption is the origin (root, radix) of human badness in all its variety, banality, and ubiquity. While Kant clearly takes radical evil to be endemic in human nature, controversy reigns about how to understand this. Some assume this can only (...) be a synthetic a priori claim about the necessity of radical evil (and thus one requiring a transcendental deduction). However, Kant indicates that while radical evil is inevitable it is not, for that, strictly necessary. The best way to understand this is through a teleological approach that explains how we inevitably bring this corruption upon ourselves in the course of our development. The chapter thereby joins other teleological accounts, but distinctively argues that Kant draws on Stoic natural teleology (specifically the doctrine of oikeiōsis), which he knows through Seneca and Cicero. This background allows us to make sense of the structure of Kant’s argument in ways that shed fresh light on the philosophical content of the thesis about radical evil. It also allows us to see that another hotly debated issue — namely, whether radical evil should be understood in ‘psychological’ or ‘social’ terms — is spurious: we see that these are flip sides of one coin, and are better placed to register the broader ethical significance of this result. (shrink)

The idea that virtue can be profitably conceived as a certain sort of skill has a long history. My aim is to examine a neglected episode in this history — one that focuses on the pivotal role that Moses Mendelssohn played in rehabilitating the skill model of virtue for the German rationalist tradition, and Immanuel Kant’s subsequent, yet significantly qualified, endorsement of the idea. Mendelssohn celebrates a certain automatism in the execution of skill, and takes this feature to be instrumental (...) in meeting an objection against perfectionist, agent-based ethics: namely, that a virtuous person would seem to act for the sake of realising his own perfection in everything that he does, thereby taking a morally inappropriate interest in his own character. Kant rejects the automatism featured in Mendelssohn’s account, on grounds that it would make virtue mindless and unreflective. But he does not reject the skill model of virtue wholesale. Rather, he calls for considering how reflection can be embedded in the expression of certain kinds of skill, enabling him to endorse, and arguably adopt, the model on his own terms. (shrink)

It has been insufficiently remarked that Murdoch deems “Kant’s ethical theory” to be “one of the most beautiful and exciting things in the whole of philosophy” in her 1959 essay “The Sublime and the Good”. Murdoch specifically has in mind the connection between Kant’s ethics and his theory of the sublime, which runs via the moral feeling of respect (Achtung). The chapter examines Murdoch’s interest in Kant on this point as a way to tease out the range of issues that (...) complicate Kant’s significance for the development of Murdoch’s distinctive conception of ethics as it is articulated in _The Sovereignty of Good_ and earlier essays. It focuses on her particular concerns about the moral dangers of consolation, and why this led her to propose reworking the Kantian theory of the sublime as a theory of art, and specifically of tragedy. (shrink)

I examine the significance of the Stoic theory of pathē for Kant’s moral psychology, arguing against the received view that systematic differences block the possibility of Kant’s drawing anything more than rhetoric from his Stoic sources. More particularly, I take on the chronically underexamined assumption that Kant is committed to a psychological dualism in the tradition of Plato and Aristotle, positing distinct rational and nonrational elements of human mentality. By contrast, Stoics take the mentality of an adult human being to (...) be rational through and through, while recognising that this rationality is not normally in a state of health or excellence. I show how Kant’s account of affections—chiefly the “affects” and “passions” that he identifies as targets of a duty of apathy—draws substantive lessons from his Stoic sources, and how he accepts on his own terms the monistic principles of Stoic moral psychology. (shrink)

This is a semifinal draft of a forthcoming paper. Kant’s account of the pain of remorse involves a hybrid justification based on self-retribution, but constrained by forward-looking principles which say that we must channel remorse into improvement, and moderate its pain to avoid damaging our rational agency. Kant’s corpus also offers material for a revisionist but textually-grounded alternative account based on wrongdoers’ sympathy for the pain they cause. This account is based on the value of care, and has forward-looking constraints (...) much like Kant’s own account. Drawing on both Kant’s texts and recent work in empirical psychology, I argue that experiences of remorse which conform to the sympathetic account may fulfill Kant’s forward-looking goals better than those conforming to his own account. (shrink)

Kant’s account of “the radical evil in human nature” in the 1793 Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone is typically interpreted as a reworking of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin. But Kant doesn’t talk about Augustine explicitly there, and if he is rehabilitating the doctrine of original sin, the result is not obviously Augustinian. Instead Kant talks about Stoic ethics in a pair of passages on either end of his account of radical evil, and leaves other clues that (...) his argument is a reworking of an old Stoic problem. “Radical evil” refers to the idea that our moral condition is — by default and yet by our own deed — bad or corrupt; and that this corruption is the root (radix) of human badness in all its variety, ubiquity, and sheer ordinariness. Kant takes as his premise a version of the Stoic idea that nature gives us “uncorrupted starting points” (Diogenes Laertius 7.89). What sense can be made of the origin of human badness, given such a premise? Kant’s account of radical evil is an answer to this old Stoic problem, which requires a conception of freedom that is not available in his Stoic sources. (shrink)

Many of us are all too familiar with the experience of taking pleasure in things we feel we ought not, and of finding it frustratingly hard to bring our pleasures into line with our moral judgements. As a value dualist, Kant draws a sharp contrast between the two sources of practical motivation: pleasure in the agreeable and respect for the moral law. His ethics might thus seem to be an unpromising source for help in thinking about how we can bring (...) our agreeable pleasures into line with our moral values. But I argue that a careful reading of Kant’s texts reveals a helpfully realistic view about the extent to which we can modify our agreeable pleasures. On my interpretation, Kant shows us how to hold together two seemingly incompatible ideas: on the one hand, that pleasure in the agreeable is resistant to rational direction, and on the other hand, that we can cultivate these pleasures with a view to ethical self-transformation. (shrink)

In the dissertation, I consider the permissibility of a familiar set of responses to wrongdoing in our interpersonal relationships—those responses that constitute the imposition of some cost upon the wrongdoer. Some of these responses are, I argue, properly considered punishing, and some of these instances of punishing are in turn permissible. Punishment as I understand it is a broad phenomenon, common in and to all human relationships, and not exclusively or even primarily the domain of the state. Personal interactions expressive (...) of wrong-reactive attitudes like disappointment, anger, and guilt will sometimes constitute punishment so understood. I consider childhood punishment, self-punishment, and punishment between friends, concluding that punishment in the context of our personal relationships may sometimes be appropriate where undertaken not for the sake of deterrence nor of retributive justice, but for the sake of the aims constitutive of the relationship in which it occurs. (shrink)

How do we care well for a human being: ourselves or another? Non-Kantian scholars rarely identify the philosophy of Kant as a particularly useful resource with which to understand the full complexity of human care. Kant’s philosophy is often taken to presuppose that a philosophical analysis of good human life needs to attend only to how autonomous, rational agents—sprung up like mushrooms out of nowhere, without a childhood, never sick, always independent—ought to act respectfully, and how they can be forced (...) to interact rightfully. Questions involving aspects of human life captured by what Eva Kittay aptly phrased “the fact of dependency” (1999) —such as our vulnerable, fragile, and embodied social natures, asymmetrical care relations, and deep systemic injustices—are therefore commonly thought to be beyond the grasp of Kant and of Kantian philosophy. Against this historically prominent understanding of Kant’s practical philosophy, below I engage and draw upon recent Kant scholarship which shows both the inadequacy of such rationalist readings and the fruitfulness of using Kant’s practical philosophy to enhance our understanding of human care relations. After situating my approach in the existing, relevant secondary literature on Kant’s human agent, I explore key features of Kant’s accounts of human nature and the highest good. I pay special attention to his proposal that our human nature comprises reflective and unreflective aspects and patterns that we (ought to) strive to develop, transform, and integrate in wise ways through our faculty of desire. In addition, I emphasize the dangers that our ineradicable propensity to do bad things (evil) poses for our projects of self- and other- care. I proceed by outlining how Kant’s account of moral (ethical and legal) responsibility for self and others is developed through his theories of freedom, that is, through his theory of virtue (virtuous internal freedom with its account of perfect and imperfect duties) and his theory of right (rightful external freedom with its account of innate, private, and public right). On the conception I am advancing, we are pretty messy, fragile, and vulnerable beings whose projects of caring are difficult, ongoing, and complex. On the one hand, we (should) strive to care for ourselves (by striving to manage and heal badly functioning parts and by developing, transforming, and integrating immature or distinct parts of ourselves into good wholes) and for others (assisting them in their projects of management and healing and of developing, transforming, and integrating themselves into good wholes) in ways that are both respectful and attentive to the particular people we are—people with lives of our own to live—and the kinds of relationships we share. On the other hand, we should, and can, be forced to interact rightfully, meaning interaction consistent with one another’s basic (innate, private, and public) rights and, hence, contribute to reform projects that improve our inherited, imperfect legal-political systems with regard to care relations. Bringing Kant’s philosophy into dialogue with care theorists, I conclude, advances the insights of both traditions by showing one way to arrive at a multifaceted, yet unified account of human care relations where our embodied, social as well as our rational natures are given due consideration. (shrink)

Es ist ein verbreitetes Phänomen unserer moralischen Urteilspraxis, dass wir herausragende moralische Handlungen bisweilen als moralisch wertvoll und dennoch nicht als moralisch geboten beurteilen, d.i. als supererogatorisch. Für die kantische Ethik stellt diese Beobachtung eine Herausforderung dar. Nicht nur verfügt sie nicht über eine Kategorie der Supererogation, vielmehr scheinen die wenigen Stellen, an denen sich Kant explizit mit moralisch herausragendem Handeln befasst, auf den ersten Blick dafür zu sprechen, dass eine solche Urteilspraxis schlicht als fehlerhaft zurückzuweisen ist. Dagegen arbeitet die (...) Studie heraus, dass die kantische Ethik einen theoretischen Rahmen für eine nuancierte moralpsychologische Analyse dieser Praxis bietet: Moralisch herausragende Handlungen als supererogatorisch zu betrachten erweist sich demnach einerseits als vielschichtige Gefährdung der eigenen Moralität, andererseits vermag das gute Exempel anderer unter bestimmten Bedingungen durchaus zur Beförderung der eigenen Moralität beizutragen. Die Studie trägt zu einem differenzierteren Verständnis der kantischen Ethik bei und weist eine genuin kantische Perspektive auf Supererogation als systematisch anschlussfähig an aktuelle Debatten aus. (shrink)

Commentators disagree about Kant’s view on the proper treatment of emotions. In contrast to a tendency in this literature to treat them uniformly, I argue that, according to Kant, feelings (but not affects) require cultivation, and inclinations – although they can and perhaps may be cultivated – generally require discipline. The appropriate treatment for emotions depends on their susceptibility to rational constraint and on the threat they pose to rational deliberation. Although I read Kant as recommending that we cultivate certain (...) emotions, I argue that my reading is not vulnerable to Thomason’s recent pertinent objections to such readings. (shrink)

Sex, Love, and Gender is the first volume to present a comprehensive philosophical theory that brings together all of Kant's practical philosophy — found across his works on ethics, justice, anthropology, history, and religion — and provide a critique of emotionally healthy and morally permissible sexual, loving, gendered being. By rethinking Kant's work on human nature and making space for sex, love, and gender within his moral accounts of freedom, the book shows how, despite his austere and even anti-sex, cisist, (...) sexist, and heterosexist reputation, Kant's writings on happiness and virtue (Part I) and right (Part II) in fact yield fertile philosophical ground on which we can explore specific contemporary issues such as abortion, sexual orientation, sexual or gendered identity, marriage, trade in sexual services, and sex- or gender-based oppression. Indeed, Kant's philosophy provides us with resources to appreciate and value the diversity of human ways of loving and the existential importance of our embodied, social selves. Structured on a thematic basis, with introductions to assist those new to Kant's philosophy, this book will be a valuable resource for anyone who cares about these issues and wants to make sense of them. (shrink)

Working out a Kantian theory of moral responsibility for animals2 requires the untying of two philosophical and interpretive knots: i.) How to interpret Kant’s claim in the important “episodic” section of the Doctrine of Virtue that we do not have duties “to” animals, since such duties are only “with regard to” animals and “directly to” ourselves; and ii.) How to explain why animals don’t have rights, while human beings who (currently or permanently) don’t have sufficient reason for moral responsibility do (...) have rights. At the heart of the problem lies the philosophical challenge of whether a Kantian account of moral responsibility for animals can take the animals themselves into account in the right way, that is, without utilizing arguments that (wrongly) presuppose that non-human animals are moral agents or can be morally responsible for their actions. The task of untying these two knots is the aim of this chapter. I start by defending Kant’s general claim that our duties regarding animals are not “to” them, but rather “with regard to” them. Relations between human and other animals are not relations between two kinds of moral beings, since animals are not capable of the kind of consciousness, in particular the reflective self-consciousness moral being requires. Instead the more complex human-animal relations are affectionate, social relations to which humans can and sometimes should relate morally. This is why these moral duties are “direct” only to ourselves; we are the only ones in the relations that can be morally responsible for them. Correspondingly, respect (in Kant’s precise sense of the word) is a distinctly reflective, moral emotion internal to the specific normative orientation we have only to beings that can be truly free (reflectively self-conscious), and so, to human beings; morality and respect single out how we regard ourselves and other human beings capable of freedom. As we will see, Kant has a consistent and not counter-intuitive account of why we have the moral attitudes we do about animals and of how it is that these attitudes have the appearance of being about the animals themselves. In addition, Kant can explain why it doesn’t follow from this that these moral attitudes arise from attributing moral rights to the animals themselves. Central to this interpretation is Kant’s Religion, as it contains an account of human nature that adequately explains why we have the positive attitudes we do towards animals; similarly, the Religion contains an account of human evil that explains why we consider other occasions of attitudes towards animals as genuine examples of moral failure. Hence, the Religion is central to understanding why Kant’s approach to animals is neither internally inconsistent nor counter-intuitive. (shrink)

Kant’s comments on sexuality are commonly found to be at best perplexing and at worst extraordinarily unenlightened and morally offensive. In this paper, I start by reconstructing what seems to be Kant’s view on sexuality as well as providing an overview of the main, existing Kantian philosophical responses and alternative proposals to this account. In the last part of the paper, I outline a new Kantian approach to sexuality that overcomes the shortcomings of both Kant’s own and the existing Kantian (...) accounts. (shrink)

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Autonomy is one of the central concepts of contemporary moral thought, and Kant is often credited with being the inventor of individual moral autonomy. But how and why did Kant develop this notion? The Emergence of Autonomy in Kant's Moral Philosophy is the first essay collection exclusively devoted to this topic. It traces the emergence of autonomy from Kant's earliest writings to the changes that he made to the concept in his mature works. The essays offer a close historical and (...) philosophical analysis of what prompted Kant to develop his conception of autonomy, charting the historical background which prompted his search, and thoroughly analysing different stages of his writings in order to see which element of autonomy was introduced at which point. The resulting volume will be of interest to both scholars and students of Kantian moral philosophy, as well as to anyone interested in the subject of autonomy. (shrink)

According to Kant, the moral worth of an action depends on its maxim. As he explains, particularly in the Groundwork, moral worth accrues to an action when the action rests on a maxim selected for its accordance with the moral law. With respect to Religion, however, Kant modifies his understanding of the moral worth of actions. He now expresses the view that an agent acts morally worthy only if he possesses a moral Gesinnung as a character trait. According to this (...) opinion, only such persons can act in a manner that has moral worth who own a good Gesinnung and seek to express it in their actions. But to be in possession of a good Gesinnung depends, according to Kant, on strict conditions that ordinary actors will not realistically be able to fulfil. This accords with Kant's verdict that moral progress has not yet taken place because the conversion in Gesinnung that it would require is still outstanding. (shrink)

Many Kantians dismiss Kant’s claim that we have a duty to promote the highest good – an ideal world that combines complete virtue with complete happiness – as incompatible with the core of his moral philosophy. This dismissal, I argue, raises doubts about Kant’s ability to justify the moral law, yet it is a mistake. A duty to promote the highest good plays an important role in the justificatory strategy of the Critique of Practical Reason. Moreover, its analysis leads to (...) a new perspective on Kant’s conception of moral objectivity. (shrink)

In the Groundwork Kant dismisses theistic principles, along with all other competitors to his Categorical Imperative, claiming that they are heteronomous. By contrast, he asserts, the fundamental moral principle must be a principle of autonomy. I argue that the best case for this Kantian conclusion conflates our access to the reasons for our commitments with an ability to state these reasons such that they could figure in an argument. This conflation, in turn, results from a certain Kantian conception of inclination, (...) and its role in our moral psychology. These are views that we ought to reject. Having done so we will see that a theistic ethics based on desire or love for God would not face a distinctive problem of heteronomy. (shrink)

Kant’s claim that virtue has nothing to do with the content of our desires, but depends only on the strength of will needed to manage our desires, depends on an unattractive conception of inclination that he inherits from Hume. Kantians can replace this with a better view of desire without giving up what is most attractive about the Kantian approach: the claim that reason can motivate, and the associated illuminating account of practical freedom.

Kant on sex gives most philosophers the following associations: a lifelong celibate philosopher; a natural teleological view of sexuality; a strange incorporation of this natural teleological account within his freedom-based moral theory; and a stark ethical condemnation of most sexual activity. Although this paper provides an interpretation of Kant’s view on sexuality, it neither defends nor offers an apology for everything Kant says about sexuality. Rather, it aims to show that a reconsidered Kant-based account can utilize his many worthwhile insights (...) and that making Kant’s account of sexuality more consistent with his own basic philosophical commitments results in a compelling approach to the complex and complicated phenomena of sexual love, sexual identity, and sexual orientation. (shrink)

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Kant’s deontology is often seen as a rival to virtue ethics. This chapter argues, however, that while there may be differences between Kant’s and Aristotle’s conceptions virtue (for instance, a virtuous person, in Kant’s view, may be destitute and unhappy, fail to cultivate certain emotions and sentiments, etc.), virtue is central to Kant’s ethics. The key problem is whether there is a Kantian account of virtue compatible with Kant’s view of free will. Kant held that having virtue means having a (...) will that is both good and stable. So to cultivate virtue means to cultivate a stable will. But the idea of character cultivation seems to run counter to Kant’s view of freedom, since for Kant, people are always free to choose how to act. This chapter puts forth a novel proposal for solving this problem, one which has to do with the limits on self-knowledge. (shrink)

Mention of the name of Friedrich Schiller among both critics and defenders of Kant's moral philosophy has most often been with reference to the well known quip:“Gladly I serve my friends, but alas I do it with pleasure.Hence I am plagued with doubt that I am not a virtuous person.““Sure, your only resource is to try to despise them entirely,And then with aversion to do what your duty enjoins you.''This attention, however, has served to obscure the fact that Schiller truly (...) intended his remark as a joke, representing a serious, if understandable, misinterpretation of Kantian morality. Though Schiller's various attempts to articulate a theory of moral motivation include important divergences from Kant's account, they represent a response to a set of problems that arise in the context of Kantian moral theory. As such, they may be of greatest interest to moralists who are working within the Kantian tradition. In this paper, I clarify certain points of Schiller's critique of Kant's account of moral motivation and place them in the context of his broader project of reconciling Kantianism and an ethics of virtue. (shrink)

After examining the ethical and political writings of Immanuel Kant, one finds an apparent paradox in his philosophy as his perfectionist moral teachings appear to be linked to his anti-perfectionist political theory. Specifically, he writes that the perfection of moral character can only take place for an individual who is inside of civil society, a condition where no laws may legitimately be implemented expressly for the purpose of trying to make individuals moral. Kant believes that living in civil society is (...) a necessary condition for an individual to refine his talents and reason completely, a process required by morality. I believe, however, that the connection between his moral and political theory runs much deeper than simply facilitating the refinement of talents. Kant's moral theory focuses on an individual's cultivation of virtue, but this cultivation cannot be most satisfactorily completed unless that individual is a member of civil society. Put differently, civil society plays a necessary role in cultivating an individual's character so that he is able to act from maxims consistent with the moral law, out of the respect for the law itself. However, because he believes that civic laws primarily intended to encourage moral cultivation cannot be implemented legitimately, it seems curious that this condition should play such a significant role in Kant's moral philosophy. Through this examination of Kant's moral and political theory, it will be shown that Kant's political society establishes a condition necessary for an individual's complete cultivation of virtue, not by implementing laws that make men moral but by weakening the forces of heteronomy, thereby removing barriers to moral action. (shrink)