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Kantian Conceptions of Moral Goodness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

John Campbell
John Campbell*
Affiliation:
La Trobe University
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Extract

There are two general views associated with Kant about the nature of morally good persons and their actions. One view is that one's actions have moral worth only if one is motivated by a sense of duty and not by inclination. The other view is that morally good persons are motivated by reason and not by desire. These two views are not always distinguished. But taken at face value, they do seem distinct. They seem distinct at least in that one might suppose that one of the desires one has is a desire to do one's duty. And so being motivated by a sense of duty would not necessarily imply that one is motivated by something other than one of one's desires.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , December 1983 , pp. 527 - 550
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1983

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References

1 Ross, W.O. The Right and the Good (London: Oxford University Press 1930), 158Google Scholar

2 Nagel, Thomas The Possibility of Altruism (London: Oxford University Press 1970)Google Scholar

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6 Nagel, 16, n.2

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9 McDowell, ‘Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?'

10 McDowell, 21

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12 Cf. Kant, Immanuel Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Beck, L.W. (New York: Bobbs-Merrill 1956), 20-1Google Scholar. It should be noted that although Kant sometimes defends psychological hedonism, he at other times expresses a different view. Thus he writes that to ‘be kind where one can is duty, and there are, moreover, many persons so sympathetically constituted that without any motive of vanity or selfishness they find an inner satisfaction in spreading Joy, and rejoice in the contentment of others which they have made possible’ (Kant, 14).

13 Two good discussions are Gosling, J.C.B. Pleasure and Desire (London: Oxford University Press 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Harman, Gilbert The Nature of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press 1977), 137–151Google Scholar.

14 It is interesting to note that McDowell, who claims that genuinely virtuous behaviour is motivated by reason (i.e., by beliefs about the sensitivities of others, etc.), admits that when we are trying to persuade others to adopt such beliefs, we cannot be guaranteed success ‘in the sense that failure would show irrationality on the part of the audience’ (McDowell, 21-2).

15 The plausibility of this claim would depend in large part on one's theory of truth. For example, suppose truth consists in some relation of correspondence between propositions and the world. Is there any reason to think that we must be able to find out about this correspondence?

16 In his interesting paper ‘Luck, Moral’ (in Mortal Questions, [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1979], 24–38),Google Scholar Thomas Nagel shows that very many of our Judgments of the moral goodness (and badness) of persons already depend upon features of those persons which they are fortunate or unfortunate, lucky or unlucky, to have. It is surprising Just how many of our moral Judgments conflict with the very appealing and plausible idea that moral goodness should be accessible to all and that it should not depend upon features that one might be fortunate to have or unlucky not to have.

17 Watson, Gary ‘Free Agency’, Journal of Philosophy, 72 (1975) 205·20CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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23 Nagel, 5-6

24 McGinn, 89

25 McGinn, 89-90

26 I would like to thank Peter Railton, Gilbert Harman, Michael Stocker and, especially, Thomas Scanlon, for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.