MATERIALES Y MÉTODOS

While empirical psychology and rational psychology concern themselves with the self as a theoretical object, ethics is concerned with the self as a practical subject. The former consider the self as both an empirical ego and a rational soul (absolute subject). A similar division can be made in the latter. Thus, if we assume that there are two general forms of inquiry (theoretical and practical) and two kinds of material of study (objects and subjects), then an exploration of ethics would complete this study of the sciences of the self. This chapter will concern the practical inquiry into the empirical ego, and will explore in-depth the four kinds of ethical systems that concern that empirical ego. The latter, which concerns the ethical theory addressing the rational soul, will be explored in Chapter Six. I read Kant as saying the

following: All ethical theories before his time fail to actually address the practical subject qua subject, and instead, perhaps against their very intentions, address the self as a practical object instead (a contradiction in terms). Only one ethical theory would thus, in his eyes, consider the subject qua subject: his own. In other words, as we will see, the will that complies with

principles concerned with what is exterior to itself is not free; it is not acting as an autonomous subject as much as it is a reactive object conditioned by the phenomenal world (in Kant

scholarship, whether or not we can so neatly parse the self into a free soul and a determined ego is hotly debated)³⁵⁶. Kant refers to the state in which the self complies with practical principles concerned with that which is external to itself as ‘heteronomy of choice.’

To do justice to an account of heteronomy of choice and its counterpart, autonomy of the will, I will need to start where Kant does in the Critique of Practical Reason: with an account of the faculty of desire. “The faculty of desire is a being’s faculty to be by means of its

356 Iaian P. D. Morrison, Kant and the Role of Pleasure in Moral Action. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008), 18-21, 27.

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representations the cause of the reality of the objects of these representations…Life is the faculty of a being to act in accordance with laws of the faculty of desire.”³⁵⁷ The will of a rational being can be directed by means of two kinds of principles: those that require an object to be attained, and those that merely tell the will what it ought to will without regard for ends (or objects). The former is called heteronomy of choice. A practical principle in such a context can only instruct the will to pursue specific means towards a desired end and amounts to little more than a prudent guideline. These principles are implicitly hypothetical imperatives that suggest the conditions necessary for attaining a conditional end (as opposed to a categorical imperative that obligates an agent to perform it regardless of circumstances). An example of a hypothetical imperative would be ‘If I want a doctorate, then I will write a high quality dissertation.’ In such cases, the desire for the object necessarily precedes the practical principle and determines it.³⁵⁸ I may determine the end but the world determines the means to attain it. Furthermore, whether or not the end is attained is not fully in my control. Even if the object in question is ostensibly an inner state (for example, happiness), it is technically external to the will, seeing that the will cannot will even an inner state of mind such as this the same way it can will to act in a certain way. I may determine pleasure to be the good and a delicious slice of pizza to be a means towards getting it, but the pizza shop may be closed. To achieve a hypothetical end depends rather on a concatenation of conditions outside of the will’s control.

Kant makes the bold claim that all heteronomous principles ultimately seek the same object, pleasure, or, what amounts to the same thing: happiness.

The determining ground of choice is…the representation of an object and that relation of the representation to the subject by which the faculty of desire is determined to realize the object.

Such a relation to the subject, however, is called pleasure in the reality of the object. This would therefore have to be presupposed as a condition of the possibility of the determination of choice.³⁵⁹

357 Kant, Immanuel, “Critique of Practical Reason,” in Practical Philosophy 144.

358 Kant, Immanuel, “Critique of Practical Reason,” in Practical Philosophy 155.

359 Ibid 155.

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Because an object is necessarily external to the will, when the will seeks to attain it, it seeks to attain a particular relationship of the faculty of sensibility to it, which produces pleasure.

“Pleasure is the representation of the agreement of an object or of an action with the subjective conditions of life.”³⁶⁰ Happiness, for Kant, is not qualitatively distinct from pleasure and is but the extension of this agreeable state over the span of a lifetime³⁶¹ (Whether or not there are qualitatively distinct forms of happiness will be addressed in Chapter Six).

Despite the object of desire being affirmed as intrinsically good, Kant seems to imply that the motivation to acquire the object is fundamentally the subjective state resulting from the attainment of the object. This requires some explanation, since it seems counter-intuitive.

Because human beings are both rational souls and sensuous egos, there are two concurrent ways the will can be determined: objectively and subjectively. The objective determining ground is the ‘appraisal of the action,’ which determines what is right and wrong.³⁶² But the objective determining ground is not sufficient to move the agent to act. “Since we are not fully rational, but, rather, partly sensuous, we require a distinct subjective, or motivating, ground that can affect us sensuously” (a maxim, or “subjective principle of volition”).³⁶³ In other words, in order for embodied, rational beings to comply with obligation, some ‘incentive’ must ‘move’ its sensuous nature so that we can comply with obligation and act morally. Morally, that incentive would be respect for the moral law.³⁶⁴ But we are concerned in this chapter with those practical principles that only appear moral, but are really only precepts of prudence. For Kant, the only non-moral incentive that can motivate an embodied, rational being is pleasure, or happiness.

360 Ibid 144. Whether or not there could be forms of pleasure that arise without such an agreement between an object or action with the subjective conditions of life is unclear. For example, is sado-masochism an exception?

361 Ibid 156.

362 Iaian P. D. Morrison, Kant and the Role of Pleasure in Moral Action. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008), 16.

363Iaian P. D. Morrison, Kant and the Role of Pleasure in Moral Action. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008), 16.Italics added.

364 Ibid 16-17.

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Kant’s point here is that if an end, or object, contained in a maxim determines choice, then this determination is contingent upon the empirical fact of whether or not the agent associates pleasure with this end or object. In saying this, Kant implies that it is the anticipation of pleasure that is associated with an end contained in a maxim that determines choice (according to the maxim).

Thus, for Kant, the end in which we are interested is associated with pleasure, and this association is not broken when the end is incorporated into a maxim. Maxims are not merely cognitive principles. Instead, they represent the meeting ground of our rationality and our pathology.³⁶⁵

That being the case, the kind of object desired is irrelevant, since all ‘material practical

principles’ have the same subjective determining ground, pleasure, and with it, the lower faculty of desire.³⁶⁶

Kant derives an architectonic of material practical principles based on a two-fold classification of objects that Kant takes to be comprehensive. There are objects of outer sense and objects of inner sense. These objects, in turn, are either subjective or objective. All subjective objects are empirical objects, while all objective objects are rational objects.³⁶⁷ Objective objects entail the concept of perfection, either “as a characteristic of the human being”

(such as an individual’s moral character, talent, or skill) or “the supreme perfection in substance”

(God).³⁶⁸ Ultimately though, all material principles are empirical, including objective material principles conceived in thought, since “perfection in the practical sense is the fitness or adequacy of a thing” for an end, and ends are objects sought for the subsequent agreeable state they

permit.³⁶⁹ One may criticize this conclusion by pointing out that the object could be pursued for its own sake and may not be motivated by a pleasurable outcome at all, but even if this were the case, the circumstantial nature of achieving success would make the moral nature of the act contingent.

Kant uses this architectonic to categorize all competing kinds of moral theories, typically including a contemporary exemplar for each sub-variety. Below is the table containing these

365 Ibid 118.

366 Kant Critique of Practical Reason 156.

367 Ibid 172.

368 Ibid 173.

369 Ibid 172-3.

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moral theories, which he provides in the Critique of Practical Reason. In the next section, I will include a detailed exposition of each moral theory indicated and why it is classified as it is.

Practical Material Determining Grounds in the Principle of Morality³⁷⁰

We must understand Kant’s general criticism of these moral theories in context to freedom. As noted, these theories propose principles that bind us to the caprice of circumstance rather than self-determination. This parallels a Stoic distinction Epictetus makes in the Manual of Epictetus:

Of all existing things some are in our power, and others are not in our power. In our power are thought, impulse, will to get and will to avoid; and, in a word, everything which is our own doing.

Things not in our power include the body, property, reputation, office, and, in a word, everything which is not our own doing. Things in our power are by nature free, unhindered, untrammeled;

things not in our power are weak, servile, subject to hindrance, dependent on others…There is but one way to freedom – to despise what is not in our power.”³⁷¹

For Kant, we can control the manner in which we will, or put otherwise, the determining grounds for our practical principles. The proper province of morality is the will rather than the world.

And just like with the Stoics, to determine one’s will in accordance with something out of its control (in this case, an object) means to become unfree. This occurs in two ways: pragmatically

370 Ibid 172.

371 Epictetus, “The Manual of Epictetus” in Greek and Roman Philosophy After Aristotle, ed. Jason Saunders (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 133, 137.

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and metaphysically. Pragmatically, a will that seeks an object is not sufficient unto itself and can only comply with a heteronomous principle if it has both the power and physical ability to “make the desired object real.”³⁷² If circumstances do not cooperate with the will’s aspirations, the principle cannot be satisfied. Thus, success and failure are not completely determined by the will alone but also by the world. Metaphysically, to pursue an object of desire shackles the self to the world of sense, and with it, the unbreakable chain of cause and effect. Desires,

inclinations, and all other subjectively determining causes belong to feeling and thus the faculty of sensibility.³⁷³ The faculty of sensibility is in turn a part of the world of sense, which is the order of appearances.³⁷⁴ As Kant outlines in the Second Analogy of Experience in the First Critique, “All alterations occur in accordance with the law of the connection of cause and

effect.”³⁷⁵ Therefore, all appearances, of which all sensible desires and inclinations are included, are bound up in a chain of cause and effect that does not allow for freedom.

And while Kant is not concerned here with ataraxia (to which he gives little moral regard), nor a fortiori with those lifestyles that can best secure it, he is concerned with those practical principles that are counterposed to freedom. Morality, if it is indeed to secure freedom for the self, must secure two kinds of freedom: negative and positive. The former, negative freedom, is freedom from the natural order of cause and effect; while the latter, positive freedom, entails the moral principles that explicitly legislate free actions.³⁷⁶

I contend that Kant’s Table of Heteronomy is an architectonic for all manners in which the will can be controlled, largely because 1) control can be conceived of as the influence of an object upon a will which undermines its self-determination, and 2) Kant has provided an

372 Ibid 170.

373 Kant, Immanuel, “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals,” in Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J.

Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 103 – 4 [4:457-4:458].

374 Ibid 103-4.

375 Kant Critique of Pure Reason B232.

376 Kant Critique of Practical Reason 166.

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architectonic of all kinds of objects, which, when rendered the determining ground of the will (or motivating end), undermine its self-determination. I will use this table to organize Foucault’s analyses of power into a four-fold system in Chapter Four. Such an application is all the more legitimized by the fact that these four forms of heteronomy are also four kinds of desire, four kinds of imperative that incite the subject to seek its own subjection, just as power does for Foucault.

Thus it is crucial to familiarize ourselves with the intricacies of this table, for the sake of accomplishing three tasks: 1) to provide an account of the practical science of the empirical ego (heteronomous ethics), 2) to better understand Kant’s position on how the will’s freedom may be undermined, and 3) to employ this classification more globally to see Foucault’s work in a different light. In this spirit I will be explicating each moral theory Kant mentions in the Table, starting with the ‘subjective-external’ moral theories of Michel de Montaigne and Bernard Mandeville.