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I examine Kant’s claim in part one of Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason that moral reform requires both a ‘change of heart’ and gradual reformation of one’s sense (R, 6: 47). I argue that Kant’s conception of moral reform is neither fundamentally obscure nor is it as vulnerable to serious objections as several commentators have suggested. I defend Kant by explaining how he can maintain both that we can choose our moral disposition via an intelligible choice and that we become good through a continuous struggle. I then provide an interpretation of how moral reform occurs in the phenomenal realm.

Summary

This chapter discusses in more detail the conception of action based on maxims from the Groundwork and the Religion, to see where Gesinnung might fit in. Despite the crucial importance of maxims in his account of action and of duty and moral worth, Immanuel Kant introduces them briefly, explaining in a footnote that a maxim is a subjective principle of volition. Kant claims that each person's Gesinnung is chosen, as it must be if we are to be held morally responsible for maxims chosen on its basis, but that it is not chosen at any one particular time. According to Kant's theory, moral responsibility involves a hierarchy of attitudes. Kant's incompatibilism is both a large cost and a large benefit of his account of moral responsibility. A familiar way of understanding the relationship between character and action is that character is a disposition to perform certain kinds of action.

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The Change of Heart, Moral Character and Moral Reform

Chapter 10 - Kant’s religious constructivism

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The Change of Heart, Moral Character and Moral Reform

Chapter 10 - Kant’s religious constructivism

Summary