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Notes
See the Introduction to this issue for some of the possibilities.
In his “Should We De-Moralize Ethical Theory?” Brian McElwee defends a negative but non-Kantian answer to this question (McElwee 2010).
Roger Crisp articulates some other motivations for it in Chapter 1 of his Reasons and the Good (Crisp 2006).
There is much more to say on this, however, than I have the space to say here. A major concern that I have addressed in some of my other work but will not address here is the (allegedly excessive) value placed in Kantian ethics on acting from duty. I addressed this in Kantian Ethics Almost without Apology (Baron 1995); see Chapter 4 for a response to the worries raised by Michael Stocker and Bernard Williams. More recently I wrote again on the “one thought too many” worry; see “Rethinking ‘One Thought Too Many’” (Baron 2017).
In an earlier paper, “Virtue Ethics, Kantian Ethics, and the ‘One Thought Too Many’ Objection” (Baron 2008), I understood ‘virtue ethics’ as Christine Swanton explained it in her Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (Swanton 2003). Here I use the term more broadly, following common usage and in keeping with the Introduction to this issue.
See, inter alia, Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics: Rethinking Happiness and Duty (Engstrom and Whiting (eds), 1996); Nancy Sherman, Making a Necessity of Virtue: Aristotle and Kant on Virtue (Sherman 1997); Monika Betzler, Kant’s Virtue Ethics (Betzler (ed) 2008); Anne Margaret Baxley, Kant’s Theory of Virtue: The Importance of Autocracy (Baxley 2010); and Perfecting Virtue: New Essays on Kantian Ethics and Virtue Ethics (Jost and Wuerth (eds) 2011).
This is not to deny that there are also in Kant’s ethics more specific duties associated with such roles, as well as familial obligations and duties within friendship.
In a strong sense, rather than as encompassing ‘it would be a good idea for me to do X’. That would be a misleadingly weak rendering of ‘morally ought’.
The affirming is really part of the recognizing; I add it not to indicate that this is something additional, but to bring out that it is part of what one is doing.
For a memorable example, see Critique of Practical Reason (Kant 1788, 5:30).
How much latitude? This is the subject of considerable discussion and disagreement, and some, e.g., Jens Timmermann, would deny that there is as much latitude as I have indicated. For an array of discussions, see (Baron 1995, Chap. 3); Barbara Herman,“The Scope of Moral Requirement” (Herman 2007); Thomas E. Hill, Jr.’s “Kant on Imperfect Duty and Supererogation” (Hill 1992a); and Jens Timmermann’s “Good but Not Required? Assessing the Demands of Kantian Ethics” (Timmermann 2005).
Exactly which condition should be included here is not my concern. Given the scope—and need—for judgment in Kant’s ethics, trying to get straight on exactly which conditions are such that collectively they dictate that one must help, is not called for.
The caveat applies to my commitment to improving my French, too. Maybe my friend and I bought tickets for a trip to France, where part of our plan was that I would brush up on my French so that we could travel the countryside comfortably, engaging in conversations with people we met, and so that I could translate the displays at regional history museums, of particular interest to her. This example serves as well as a reminder that an activity that falls under the heading of developing talents often also falls under the heading of promoting others’ happiness, and vice versa.
Cf. Julia Annas’ “Virtue and Duty: Negotiating between Different Ethical Traditions” (Annas 2015), a paper which to some extent inspired my discussion of constraint. Kant’s ethics provides a different picture from either of the two she describes.
I toyed with such possibilities in “Imperfect Duties and Supererogatory Acts” (Baron 1998); there I framed it as a duty to resist evil (pp. 69–70). Of course, adding on an obligatory end of opposing injustice or specifying a mandatory component of the end of others’ happiness would reduce the latitude in our duty to promote others’ happiness.
There does, however, seem to be some ordering in terms of how much latitude they allow. But this does not translate into one having priority over another. I discuss the comparative latitude in (Baron 1995, Chap. 3).
Some might question my claim that morality is understood broadly in Kant’s ethics. Julia Annas takes the contrast that Kant draws between moral and non-moral incentives to reflect a rather narrow conception of the realm of the moral. See Annas’ “Personal Love and Kantian Ethics in Effi Briest” (Annas 1993b). However, I think that particular contrast colors his picture of what it is to live ethically and what it is to be virtuous far less than is often thought. The distinction between moral and non-moral incentives plays an important role in his project in the first section of the Groundwork to determine what, if there is such a thing as a supreme principle of morality, it is (or would be); but we cannot read off from that discussion that Kant’s conception of morality is narrow. The breadth of his conception of morality is indicated by points above about the imperfect duties, as well as by the range of things that Kant counts as vices, and as virtues.
Relatedly, it does not encourage equating ‘wrong’ with ‘blameworthy’ because the question of wrongness is not fleshed out in terms of whether we deserve to be viewed, or treated, in such-and-such a way by others. This is connected to the point in note 20, below.
I have not gone in for Kant biography so won’t offer an opinion on whether he was, but the impression is understandable given his infamous reply to Maria von Herbert’s letter. See Rae Langton’s trenchant discussion of his reply in her “Duty and Desolation” (Langton 1992). The correspondence between Maria von Herbert and Kant, translated by Arnulf Zweig, can be found in Correspondence (Kant 2007).
Christine Korsgaard points out that whereas in “the theories of Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith, the approval and disapproval of others is the fundamental moral phenomenon, from which all our moral ideas spring,“ in Kant’s ethics, “moral thought is seen as arising from the perspective of the agent who is deciding what to do” (Korsgaard 1996, p. 189).
He immediately adds, “but it is open to me to refuse many things that they think will make them happy but that I do not, as long as they have no right to demand them from me as what is theirs” (Kant 1797, 6:388).
For an extended discussion, see Thomas E. Hill, Jr., “Kant’s Anti-Moralistic Strain” (Hill 1992b).
Although his parentheses may indicate uncertainty, this seems to be what John Skorupski is suggesting when he writes, “Kant holds that each of us has a duty, on the one hand to promote the (deserved) happiness of others, and on the other to pursue his or her own perfection (MM, 6:386)” (Skorupski 2018, p. 404).
It is worth noting as well that there is no reason to assume that if one judges (correctly) that S has acted wrongly, one appropriately blames S. Blame is a further matter, for at least two reasons. First, blameworthiness hinges on the absence of excusing conditions. That S acted wrongly is perfectly compatible with there being excusing conditions. (Likewise, I can correctly judge that S acted wrongly without considering whether any excusing conditions apply.) Moreover, S might be blameworthy without it being appropriate for me to blame him. I say a little more about this in “Culpability, Excuse and the ‘Ill Will’ Condition” (Baron 2014). For an extended discussion (though focused on “active blaming”), see Angela M. Smith, “On Being Responsible and Holding Responsible,“ esp. Section 4 (Smith 2007).
It is important to remember that insofar as the Categorical Imperative is a test of anything, it tests our maxims, not our actions. I say more about this in “Kantian Ethics” (Baron 1997).
This is spelled out in the same sentence as a duty to adopt the ideal “in their disposition towards each other” of “each participating and sharing sympathetically in the other’s well-being through the morally good will that unites them.” In the following sentence he says that because the ideal is unattainable in practice (though practically necessary), the duty is to strive for friendship.
I can imagine a response along the lines of, ‘Wait, that sounds like enjoining us to perform certain actions.‘ I believe, however, that it is far more apt to understand this to be directing us to live in a certain way, to take certain things seriously and shape our pursuits accordingly.
Karen E. Stohr (Stohr 2003) observes that contemporary virtue theorists “typically subscribe to the thesis that an agent’s feelings and inclinations should be in harmony with her considered judgments about what is good or right to do.” She dubs this the “harmony thesis” and argues against it. See also Stark 2001 and Schuster 2020. See Schroeder 2015 for a defense of the harmony thesis in response to Stohr 2003.
See also Annas 2015, p. 610, and Annas 1993a, pp. 53–54. After the sentence I quoted, Annas adds, “(At least interfering factors from his own ethical personality. It may be that the virtuous person feels difficulty in acting virtuously if the circumstances make it difficult.)” (Annas 2015, pp. 616 − 17).
See Baron 2009.
I thank Tyler Paytas for this suggestion.
But cf. Jens Timmermann, who after firmly endorsing a rigorist reading of Kant’s imperfect duties (i.e. one that allows no latitude in how much one does or how often) brings up the following as a way of addressing Williams’ worry: “Failing to help may, in one sense, be the wrong thing to do; but in another it is not wrong because no one is wronged, and in that sense it is permissible. Other things being equal, we do not even owe someone in need an explanation if, for good reasons or bad, we decide not to help (though it may be unkind not to offer one). But the fact that an act cannot be demanded of me by others does not mean that I cannot demand it of myself. So, if I do help, I do so voluntarily and of my own accord” (Timmermann 2018, p. 387). In championing a rigorist reading of the duty of beneficence, Timmermann holds that the “gaps left open by laws of perfect duty…are filled in by cases falling under rules of imperfect duty in just the way Williams envisages” (Timmermann 2018, p. 386), but he tries to show that this is not problematic.
But it may be unsatisfying for another reason. Some may prefer that such activities be valued and viewed simply as sources of happiness, and not as having any kind of moral value (even when ‘moral’ is understood broadly?). As an anonymous reviewer put it, reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, learning to play the piano, or hiking the Appalachian Trail are things that I do “for the sake of my happiness, not because I’m in any way obligated to do such things.” I cannot do justice to the objection here, but it seems to me that they are sources of happiness because I value them. Value them how? Perhaps this is the locus of the disagreement: whether ‘moral’ should be understood narrowly, so that the answer cannot be ‘value them morally’.
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Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to the organizers of the excellent ACU-Rome workshop (2019) for inviting me to the workshop and providing so excellent a venue for discussion. Thanks too to all the discussants. Special thanks to Tyler Paytas for the insightful comment he presented at the workshop on my paper, and his subsequent suggestions on a later version. Thanks also to Levi Tenen and Kyle Stroh for their helpful comments on a semi-final draft, and to Kyle Stroh for his excellent editorial assistance, as well.
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Baron, M. Does Ethics Really Need to be “De-Moralized”? Some Kantian Reflections. Ethic Theory Moral Prac (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-022-10296-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-022-10296-7