Técnicas e instrumentos de recolección de datos

Clemens Schwaiger mentions how some have claimed there to be the development “from an initial intellectualism through the between-phase of a quasi- empiricism onto a critical, no longer dogmatic variant of rationalism” in Kant’s pre- Critical philosophy (1999, 24). Keith Ward, on the other hard, claims that “Kant’s early development may be divided into four main periods – the early rationalistic period of the Dilucidatio; then an increasingly sceptical period, culminating in the Dreams of 1766; after that, a brief return to a strongly rationalist position, in the Inaugural Dissertation; and finally the development of the Critical view that principles of reason are formal, regulative and heuristic, and have the function of making scientific and moral knowledge possible” (1972, 31). No matter how many periods into which one divides Kant’s pre- Critical development, I agree with Schwaiger that these attempts to categorize Kant’s various phases are “serious simplifications” (1999, 24). Especially with respect to a period where Kant’s thoughts on a number of different issues are constantly changing, it stops being helpful to make statements about his development that are too general. When discussing the development of a thinker’s thought, it is perhaps best to restrict oneself to the development of a thinker’s changing views on a particular topic, for if one is to mark distinct stages wherein one belief is held and not another, how one characterizes a particular stage will likely vary given the particular concept one chooses as one’s focus.

The one division of Kant’s pre-Critical thought that certainly does make sense is the separation of Kant’s thought prior to the “great light” of 1769, and the period

thereafter. The picture I have painted above seems to confirm this well-established claim that Kant’s thinking underwent, at the very least, a significant turn around 1769. Not only this, but it appears that Kuehn is correct to claim that “[t]he origins of Kant’s theoretical thinking are also the origins of his practical philosophy” and that “Kant’s critical

philosophy begins with a revolution in both theoretical and moral contexts” (1995, 374). Kuehn also goes so far as to say that “no matter what else Kant’s great light of 1769

meant, it did mean the end of his doubts about the nature of moral principles” (1995, 374). While it is surely true that after 1769 Kant thinks that moral principles must be intellectual, in particular this means that Kant believes the principle of adjudication must be intellectual, the principle of execution being another matter entirely.

In this chapter I have limited myself to focusing on Kant’s understanding of “moral feeling” in his pre-Critical moral philosophy, and therefore not on his pre-Critical moral philosophy as a whole.74 I am not, therefore, in a position to say anything about the development of Kant’s pre-Critical moral philosophy in general. But I am, I take it, capable of saying something about the development of Kant’s thinking on two particular issues: that of the adjudication of morality and that of the execution of morality.

2.5.1

Adjudication in Kant’s Pre-Critical Ethics

With respect to the adjudication of moral good and evil, one can recognize three stages of Kant’s thinking on this issue. First, beginning from at least around the time of the Prize Essay, it is clear that Kant is interested in determining not only how we are aware of what is morally good and evil, but also in determining how we are aware of what is morally good and evil in itself, i.e. what is unconditionally good and not good simply for a given purpose. Although Kant seems to have never wholeheartedly accepted the idea that human beings possess a moral sense understood as a capacity that makes us capable of distinguishing moral good from evil, in the early to mid 1760s he was at the very least interested in, albeit not fully convinced by, this idea. With his claim in the Prize Essay that “Hutcheson and others have, under the name of moral feeling, provided us with a starting point to develop some excellent observations” (PE 2:300), Kant appears to be saying that the idea of a moral sense is on to something with respect to explaining where our ideas of immediate, i.e. unconditional, goodness come from. The idea of unconditional goodness was important for Kant at this time because in order for certain actions to be unconditionally necessary, we need to first recognize them as

74 _{Such a focus would require, as has been the case in the past, a dissertation or book-length}

project of its own. See, for example, the studies by Schmucker (1961), Ward (1972), Schilpp (1938), and Schwaiger (1999).

unconditionally or in themselves good. Hutcheson and others, therefore, with their way of explaining the immediate goodness of actions, explained an essential element required for explaining unconditional obligation.

This initial interest in moral sense theory paired with some reservations was followed by a second stage where Kant was no longer interested in the idea of the moral sense and came to see the function of the moral sense as the principle of adjudication as problematic. In the late 1760s and into the early 1770s Kant is fairly convinced that distinguishing moral good and evil on the basis of feeling is undesirable. In a reflection dating from around 1772, for example, we find Kant claiming the following:

feeling is the ground of the pleasurable and the displeasurable, of the capacity to be happy or unhappy. If there were a moral feeling, we would expect it to be a means to enjoy ourselves, it would be more a sense to enjoy oneself. … But there is something in morality previous to taste for judgement. This is because taste is something that relates to society … and herein there is nothing permanent. (AA 19:149, R 6755)

Kant is therefore explicit that feeling cannot provide universally valid and necessary judgements of moral good and evil, and for this reason it is not fit to act as the principle of moral judgement. At this stage, however, as Ward rightly notes, Kant “has not yet developed a clear alternative to ‘feeling’” (1972, 32-33). This stage is therefore distinct from a third stage, where Kant both rejects moral feeling as the principle of adjudication, as well as provides an alternative, namely an intellectual principle of adjudication. According to this first attempt at an alternative, actions are cognized to be good and evil in themselves by the understanding (or pure reason, see Kae 27 and 64) and actions are good when performed because they are good in themselves. Moral feeling as a principle of adjudication, therefore, is only briefly considered by Kant and relatively quickly rejected. As discussed throughout this chapter, however, from the early 1760s onwards moral feeling played a role in Kant’s conception of moral motivation as well.

2.5.2

Kant’s Pre-Critical Conception of Motivation

Although at first moral feeling was a term that stood in for a positive force or principle that drives us to morally good action, after 1770 we have Kant thinking about how such a subjective principle can be compatible or agree with the intellectual

moral feeling simply needs to drive us towards and away from the same things the “understanding” judges to be morally good and evil respectively. In other words, our intellectual understanding of the good and our sensitive and subjective motives to the good simply need to be consistent. At the same time, Kant recognized even at this point in time that the moral disposition is pure and involves performing actions because they are in themselves good. In a reflection dating from the late 1760s Kant states the following:

We must pull out the moral motivations from the mixture of all the other (and from the agreeableness of the skill in execution); it has a pure and heavenly origin; we find ourselves right away ennobled when we notice it within us and see happiness only as a consequence of it. (AA 19:111, R 6615, translation from Kuehn 1995, 384)

On the basis of this reflection, Kuehn states that although Kant “still had a long way to go,” with respect to his conception of moral motivation “the beginning was made in 1769” (1995, 384). In a similar direction, Klemme states that Kant’s critical conception of moral motivation is first presented in the Groundwork (see Klemme 2006, 122), and therefore that “Kant seems to have first achieved final clarity concerning his ‘critical’ conception of moral motivation very late” (Klemme 2006, 123). According to Klemme, Kant’s Critical conception of motivation is inseparable from three claims: 1. Pure reason is practical on its own, 2. Pure reason effects a feeling of respect which is the incentive of moral action, and 3. The morality of action is calculated by the quality of will involved in action, i.e. an action is moral if respect is the motive of action (see ibid.). As we can see from the above reflection, and which is seen in the Kaehler notes as well (see Kae 74ff. and 79ff., for example), in the 1770s Kant had indeed become convinced that it was the quality of one’s will that was decisive for calling an action morally good, and that the moral disposition involves performing actions simply because they are good in

themselves. Kant had therefore already started to formulate Klemme’s third point in the 1770s.

At the same time, in the reflections and lecture notes from this decade we do not see mention of pure reason being practical. Rather, as I have shown, we do not see talk of reason, but of the understanding supplying moral judgements and then our moral feeling being in accordance with these judgements when acting morally. Not only had Kant not

arrived at the idea of reason being practical on its own, but he also had not yet arrived at the idea that pure reason accomplishes this by effecting the moral feeling of respect [Achtung] in us. In other words, the first and second core elements of Kant’s mature conception of motivation are nowhere to be found in the 1770s, and for this reason his position on motivation during the 1770s is still unrefined.

As I have shown above, Kant identifies moral feeling as the incentive of action, and claims this subjective ground is needed in addition to the objective ground if action is to be performed and not merely judged as morally good. The problem of motivation is getting from judgement to action. This is “the philosopher’s stone” in the Kaehler lecture notes and, as I show in the next chapter, this is the form this problem takes over the course of Kant’s Critical period as well.75 That moral feeling is needed as an incentive in order for action and not merely judgement to occur, however, is a position present in the 1770s and, as I argue in the next chapter, remains constant in the Critical period as well. What is different, however, is that in the 1770s Kant believes one simply cultivates moral feeling separately so that it is in accord with the “understanding’s” judgements of moral good and evil, whereas in the Critical doctrine pure reason on its own effects this feeling. Although Kant may not have solved the problem of explaining how this happens, only after the 1770s did Kant come to think that it happened and that this needed to be an essential part of his moral theory. If it is the case, for example, that a moral feeling is needed in addition to moral judgement in order for action in accordance with this

judgement to take place, this creates the problem that moral judgement is not essential in itself, and that the decisive step towards becoming a virtuous person simply involves training moral feeling to become habituated into approving and being averse to actions that are in themselves morally good and evil. To be sure, gaining the correct principles plays a part and is the first thing one must do (see Kae 357), but his view implies that the role of the intellect (at this point represented by the understanding) is demoted, to a

75 _{As I discuss in the next chapter, in the ‘Incentives’ chapter of the second Critique, for example,}

Kant states that “how a law can be of itself an immediately a determining ground of the will … is for human reason an insoluble problem … What we shall have to show a priori is, therefore, not the ground from which the moral law in itself supplies an incentive but rather what it effects (or, to put it better, must effect) in the mind insofar as it is an incentive” (KpV 5:72).

certain extent, and even makes its judgement superfluous. If Kant wants to claim both that moral judgements are essentially a priori and that it is not simply habit but a recognition of the moral law that is decisive when one is becoming a better person, he will need to find a way to make the recognition of the moral law a central and indeed a necessary element in motivation as well. We will see in the next chapter that this is accomplished by his mature moral theory.