Abstract
The aim of the chapter is to examine the idea of a source of moral obligation. Deligiorgi’s aim is not to offer an interpretation of Kant, but rather to see how reading Kant can help us get clear about what we are doing when we consider the question ‘why be moral?’ An ordinary way of posing the question is: why should I do this specific moral thing when I don’t feel like it? This is a motivational psychological question, but the psychological context does not exhaust the question because the conflict expressed as a momentary moral recalcitrance generalizes as a question about the good of morality. There is a good that is associated with doing what one feels like, say desire satisfaction, and there is a larger good that is associated with acting on one’s interests, and there is or at least is thinkable another good that is moral. Abstracted from issues of motivation there is a conceptual issue raised here about the character of these distinctions, which then leads to the question of the nature of the morally good and the force it has/should have in the deliberations/intentions/actions of agents. The focus of Deligiorgi’s paper is on these meta-ethical and meta-normative issues raised by the question ‘why be moral?’
I use ‘Kantian’ in the title to signal the reconstructive and argument-based methodology of the paper. Since my aim is to present core elements of Kant’s position, I consider the paper to be a contribution in the history of philosophy.
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Notes
- 1.
There are usually two versions of the question treated in the relevant literature: ‘why be moral?’, which predominates in the contemporary discussion (see Darwall 1990; Copp 2007), and ‘why should I be moral?’, which is the one Bradley and Prichard use. I prefer the former as my main topic because of its wider reach, which can encompass first-personal versions of the question, as I show in subsequent sections of the paper.
- 2.
Darwall (1990, 257–8) considers more constructive uses of the question, as I do here. Others, notably Korsgaard (1996), interpret it as a core normative question, ‘what justifies the claims that morality makes on us?’ (Korsgaard 1996, 9–10). Following a similar approach, Bagnoli (2012) argues that Kant’s ethics, as interpreted by Stephen Engstrom, has the resources to address skeptical doubts (see esp. Bagnoli 2012, 64–9).
- 3.
Although the terms I use for section-headings come from Kant’s texts, my intention is not to claim that Kant employs them consistently in the sense I do here. I provide textual references and explanation for my choices in each section.
- 4.
As stated, the explanatory demand is deliberately vague, to recognize the explanatory value of non-reductive accounts, such as those that merely contextualize the good in question, accounts that do not cite ultimate facts, natural or supernatural, and those that do not measure success on the basis of the elimination of primitives from the explanation. Though liberal, the demand excludes trivial and circular explanations.
- 5.
By ‘classical’ I mean mainly Aristotelian conceptions of the good that treat it as homogeneous, that is, on such accounts moral goodness, interests, and happiness cohere in a way that they do not for Kant; see Wilkes (1978), Broadie (1991), and Kekes (1992), chaps. 1 and 2. For a broader conception of the classical tradition, see the articles collected in Bloomfield (2008).
- 6.
I say ‘relevant’ conditionals in a nod to pragmatic uses, ‘bravery befits the Spartan’ or ‘wealth is good if you are poor’, which pragmatically limit the explicit content of such antecedents. Kant touches on this when discussing the conditionality of various accepted goods in GW 4:393.
- 7.
At issue is not the truth of the conditionals, nor their fate once the antecedents are denied; the point is purely formal and used to define an alternative sort of good.
- 8.
All references to Kant’s works are given to the volume, indicated by Roman numeral, and page number of the Akademie edition: Kants gesammelte Schriften: herausgegeben von der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften (formerly Königlichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften), in 29 vols. Walter de Gruyter (formerly Georg Reimer): Berlin and Leipzig 1902–. The only exceptions are references to the Critique of Pure Reason, where I follow the convention of referring directly to the A and B editions. References to the English edition of his works, followed by a comma, are given to The Cambridge Edition of The Works of Immanuel Kant, under the general editorship of Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. I give information about the specific volumes used in the Bibliography.
- 9.
The previous paragraph gives an outline reconstruction of the peculiarly ampliative conceptual analysis contained in GW I and II. The interpretation is based on Deligiorgi (2012, 44–62). The focus here is the theoretical argument Kant presents about the nature of moral goodness, which concludes with the universalizability test. The test marks a transition to topics in normative ethics and moral psychology, which are extensively debated in the Kant literature, concerning how the test can be used to define the good and how individuals will anything at all.
- 10.
I use ‘foundation’ to refer to the concept of goodness Kant introduces in the GW to emphasize its role in Kant’s presentation of the moral law, in particular its contribution to the notion of unconditionality. Foundation is to be distinguished from ‘ground [Grund]’ (GW 4:389), which I discuss below.
- 11.
It is important not to confuse unconditional or categorical with ‘overriding’, a tendency that is widespread in contemporary literature, possibly because of Foot’s influential paper (Foot 1958, 181–188). Briefly, ‘overriding’ belongs to moral psychology whereas ‘unconditional’ to meta-ethics, the conceptual architectonic of the ethics; as I argue in the last section, the unconditionality thesis does not entail overridingness.
- 12.
I devote a chapter to each of these topics in Deligiorgi (2012, 63–141). While I attempt to do justice to the complex variations and ramifications of the contemporary debate, I conclude that it is on the whole distracting from Kant’s own views. A better way into the psychological assumptions guiding Kant’s moral philosophy is by attending to his model of mind, especially the role he gives to the faculty of desire (see e.g. MM 6:211; for discussion, see Frierson 2005; McCarty 2009; Deligiorgi 2017), to his account of human nature, in particular his theory of dispositions (see e.g. CpracR 5:151; for discussion see Varden 2017), and his empirical psychology, prominent in his anthropological and educational writings (see Cohen 2014).
- 13.
Usually Kant employs ‘source’ in the context of faculties or to distinguish empirical and non-empirical provenance of ideas or principles (see e.g. CpracR 5:47 and 5:53). As used here, sourcehood is a limited claim about practicality. For more ambitious claims on behalf of the practical involvements of moral life, see the discussion of ground in Darwall (2006) and neo-Strawsonian accounts of responsibility such as Wallace (1994).
- 14.
The counterpart of idealization is Kant’s substantive treatment of interpersonal practical relations as a temporally extended fact under the general term of ‘cultivation’, which ties with the temporality of the development of human moral capacities and sensibilities (see CpracR 5:157–163 and CJ 5:430).
- 15.
Kant uses the notion of ground (Grund) quite consistently in the sense I discuss it here; see GW 4:389. For an overview of contemporary uses of ‘ground’, see the essays collected in Correia and Benjamin (2012).
- 16.
The point made by the library example can be illustrated with the Euthyphro dilemma, which can be resolved if ‘the action is good because it is loved by the gods’ is understood as a statement about moral authority and ‘the gods love the action because it is good’ is understood as a statement regarding moral goodness.
- 17.
In Deligiorgi (2012, chaps. 2 and 4), I argue that these other functions include the a priori justification of the principle that expresses the moral law (the a priori touchstone, see CprR 5:14; also 5:46 passim) and the conceivability of the existence of a single principle for morality. Section 2.1 touched on justification when treating the topic of the objectivity of the form of moral goodness and of the moral requirements that express it.
- 18.
Kant makes the general point that it is vain ‘to prove by reason that there is no reason’ (CpracR 5:12). However, in that context he is not discussing deontic ground but rather the objectivity of moral principles, and thus the rational justification of moral principles. The model of constitutive a priori from which I draw here is the one defended in Friedman (2001). Friedman argues that transition from one set of locally constitutive principles to the next can be described in ways that allow us to rationally make sense of the change. This matters in the context in which Friedman is making his argument, because it matters to show that scientific practices are shaped by rationally accessible framework rules. Friedman is careful not to present the constitutive a priori and its mode of revision as a general model for all scientific practices, let alone all practices. I touch briefly on Christine Korsgaard’s conception of rational constitutivism in note 20 below.
- 19.
An alternative conception is given in Korsgaard’s rationalist constitutivism. Korsgaard does not tie authority to a value but to the status of being an agent. In Korsgaard (1996) and more clearly in Korsgaard (2009), she defends a normative conception of agency, where to be an agent is to conform to certain standards. These standards that have authority for agents, qua constitutive of their agency, spell out a value that is more or less realized, the value of agency. Because the full account of the value of agency is presented in terms of rational agency and the value of a conception of rationality, Korsgaard’s account of rationality carries ultimately the probative weight for the authority of rational agency. Therefore, for the purposes of the present discussion, it falls in the broad category considered here.
- 20.
Not only is the connection of ought and good important if the ought is to be credibly moral but also when it comes to seeking guidance in particular cases, it is this connection that makes it possible to trust that we find out what is good as an end of the will through submitting to the law (CpracR 5:62). I return to this topic at the end of this section.
- 21.
Kant examines in detail the form and scope of teleological arguments in the Critique of the Power of Judgement, and uses the argument from function to show its limitations when applied to human beings. He argues that a different approach is needed to accommodate the fact that human beings are capable of setting their own ends (CJ 5:431). For the recent revival of interest in the explanatory notion of function, see Ariew et al. (2002).
- 22.
Prichard’s remedy is effectively an empirical enquiry and like other empirical enquiries it must be true to the particulars it investigates. This means that it can only yield pro tanto results. If, having particularized to answer the question, the strategy then adds a generalizing step to assert a thesis about the conditional nature of moral obligations, then it would be over-reaching.
- 23.
- 24.
See esp. CpR A 547/B 575. Although the context of the discussion of the ‘ought’ in the cited passage indicates that Kant means to narrow down to the moral ‘ought’, what he says is tenable for ‘ought’ as such; the distinguishing characteristic of the moral ‘ought’ is that it alone is objective in the demanding sense of unconditionally valid.
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Deligiorgi, K. (2021). ‘Why be moral?’: How to Take the Question Seriously (and Why) from a Kantian Perspective. In: Lyssy, A., Yeomans, C. (eds) Kant on Morality, Humanity, and Legality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54050-0_2
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