WRITING SAMPLE
CAROL SKRENES
Kant’s Theory of Value1
Contemporary interpreters of Kant have been doing what they can to deconstruct
the traditional division of moral theories into deontological and teleological, with Kant
serving as the paradigm case of the former.2 Anyone who reads the opening paragraphs
of the Groundwork innocent of the traditional distinction can hardly miss the fact that
Kant is setting out a theory of value in the context of the ancient question of the highest
good. Kant’s theory is not deontological in the sense of repudiating the line of
questioning that quite naturally leads from wondering what I ought to do, to wondering
about what is good or worthwhile, and from conditional goods to some ultimate good. It
is a theory of value framed by teleological assumptions Kant shares with the larger
European tradition of moral philosophy. In addition to this, contemporary interpretations
of the priority of right in Kant recognize that his critique of pure practical reason is
simultaneously a theory of right and a theory of value. The two fundamental notions
condition each other in his conception of the object of the moral law. (See below.)
It is very unlike Kant to set out seven meanings of good in a flat outline like the
one that follows. But it can be done, and doing so has the merit of suggesting that there is
a theory of value in Kant—a point sometimes overlooked. Doing this preliminary work
will also serve the purposes of the second half of the paper, where an analysis of Kant’s
theory of value is undertaken.
Kant uses the term good in more than seven ways, but the following, in their
distinctions and relations, from the skeletal frame of his theory of value.
1.
The good as the object of natural desires. In his fullest treatment of
moral psychology, (Book 1 of Religion), Kant distinguishes between the biological and
sociobiological predispositions we have as living beings, the specifically human
predispositions we have as rational beings, and what he calls the “predisposition to
personality,” or our “capacity for respect for the moral law as it itself a sufficient
condition of the will.”(R21-23) The first do not require reason, are primarily a matter of
1
I wrote this paper years ago and have not taken the time to change the punctuation to fit current practice.
I still like the ideas.
2
See, e.g., Onora O”Neill, “Kant After Virtue,” in Construction of Reason (Cambridge University Press,
1989) pp. 145-162; Barbara Herman, Leaving Deontology Behind,” in The Practice of Moral Judgment
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) pp. 208-240; and Tom Hill, “Humanity as an End in Itself,”
in Dignity and Practical Reason (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992) pp. 38-57.
2
instinct and acquired habits, and include such things as self-preservation, reproduction,
the care of offspring, and our basic social instinct.(R22) These are said to be good in the
negative sense that they enjoin the observance of the law.(R23) They are also called
“original,” because they condition the possibility of human nature.(R23) We can use our
biological predispositions in a manner contrary to their ends, but we cannot eliminate
them from our nature.(R23) They are explicitly said to be part of the multivariate
“original predisposition to good”(R21) natural to us as human beings.
2.
The good as the object of empirical practical reason. While we cannot
alter our biological predispositions, and while these are understood as predispositions to
good, it is a property of human beings, as not only alive but also rational, that no desire or
inclination, biological or otherwise, can be the determining ground of the will except
insofar as the individual incorporates it into her maxim by her power of free choice.(R17)
“Everything in nature works according to laws. Only a rational being has the power to act
according to this conception of laws, i.e., according to principles, and thereby has he a
will.”(G412) To have a will, for Kant, is to act for reasons. It is to decide to act by taking
certain inclinations, or desired states of affairs, or principles, as reasons to act, out of a
conception of their good-making properties.
The good as object of empirical practical reason is a complex object, constructed
by practical reason from the goods that are objects of natural desires. Kant believes there
is at least one principle analytic of practical reason in this constructive capacity:
rationality requires that whoever wills a particular end wills the necessary and available
means.(G417) It may be true, as Onora O’Neill suggests, that the volitional consistency
Kant has in mind here requires not only that we will all available necessary means to an
intended end, but also that we intend some sufficient means, and all necessary and some
sufficient components of the intended, end, that we seek to make sufficient means
available when they are not, that the foreseeable results of the means we adopt be
consistent with the end, and so on.3 Such consistency in willing is analytic of empirical
practical reason. When human agents fail to live up to it, they choose irrationally.
3
Onora O’Neill, “Consistency in Action,” in Constructions of Reason (Cambridge University Press, 1989)
pp. 90-93.
3
Particular hypothetical imperatives are not analytic of practical rationality,
however. Kant agrees with the traditional view that seeking our own happiness belongs to
our nature. But particular hypothetical imperatives, even such general counsels as
prudence dictates, have only the conditional necessity valid “under a subjectively
contingent condition, viz., whether this or that man counts this or that as belonging to his
happiness.”(G416) The concept of happiness is an indeterminate one, the elements of
which are unexceptionally empirical.(G418) “It is impossible for the most insightful…
being a frame here a determinate concept of what it is that he really wills.”(G418) The
idea of happiness as “an absolute whole, a maximum of well-being in my present and in
every future condition,” is an ideal of the imagination, not of reason.(G418) We can by
choice relinquish as an end on particular occasions.
It is thus an important feature of Kant’s theory of value that no substantive
principles of mean-ends reasoning are accepted as analytic of practical rationality.
Objects of natural inclinations are good in the attenuated sense described above under #1,
but it is not for Kant analytic of practical rationality that their being of an inclination is in
itself a reason to act. Pleasure, for example, even in its higher forms, and happiness itself,
are not intrinsically choice-worthy.
Also missing from Kant’s account of empirical practical rationality are
maximizing principles. It is no secret that principles like “Maximize expected utility over
time” can, depending on one’s preferences, conflict with such categorical moral
imperatives as might exist. This is not the case with the only principle Kant accepts as
analytic of practical rationality, since if any means which the hypothetical imperative
directs me to choose, given a certain end, conflicts with a moral principle, I have the
option of giving up the end.4
3.
The absolute value of the good will. The first section of the Groundwork
begins with the famous sentence, “There is no possibility of thinking of anything at all in
the world, or even out of it, which can be regarded as good without qualification, except a
good will.”(G393) The good will is the only thing that is always good, in itself, without
qualification. All other goods, even those that can be good intrinsically, even the goods of
4
This point is made by Tom Hill in “Kant’s Theory of Practical Reason,” Dignity and Practical Reason.
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992) p. 130.
4
character which the ancients held in such high esteem, are good only under certain
conditions. Talents of the mind, qualities of temperament such as courage and
perseverance, and gifts of fortune such as riches and health, can all become harmful if the
will which makes use of them is not good. Even such qualities as are conducive to the
good will itself (like moderation and self-control) have no intrinsic unconditional worth
apart from it(G393).
This is plainly the key to Kant’s theory of value. He writes the opening passage of
the Groundwork with an eye to ancient Greek philosophy, taking the traditional approach
that the highest good must be the first principle of moral philosophy, and putting the good
will in that highest-good slot. The good will is not good because of its effects.(G400) The
good will is not good because it conduces to happiness.5 It cannot be judged good by
reference to any independently given standard of value. It is the only thing that is always,
unconditionally, good in itself. Its value cannot be put on a scale with the value of other
things good in themselves; it cannot be added to, or summed.
Good willing is said to be a matter of taking the principles of pure
practical reason as grounds for one’s action, and adjusting one’s individual pursuits to the
universal ends theses principles require. So even before we are told what the principles of
pure practical reason might be, we know that the good will and pure practical reason are
together in the highest-good slot. The right is defined by pure practical reason
independently of any pre-rational or empirically rational conception of the good, and the
good will, as the confirmed capacity consistently to take what’s right as the sufficient
ground of one’s action, is the one absolute value.
4.
The good as the fulfillment of permissible ends.6 How do we know what
the principles of pure practical reason are? In the first section of the Groundwork Kant
argues that implicit in our ordinary judgments about the moral worth of actions and the
5
Kant reasons teleologically that happiness cannot have been nature’s purpose in giving us reason and will,
since reason is so unreliably productive of it. Instincts would have served better in that role. The purpose of
reason must be something for which it is a necessary and sufficient condition, namely to produce a good
will. “Indeed happiness can even be reduced to less than nothing, without nature’s failing thereby in her
purpose; for reason recognizes as its highest and practical function the establishment of a good
will.”(G396)
6
In this section in particular I have felt the difficulty of summarizing. While I have not addressed the many
complex issues of interpretation surrounding the categorical imperative in this introductory overview, some
of them will be addressed in section II below.
5
character they express is a recognition of the moral law as independent of our
inclinations.(G403-404) We all recognize, Kant believes, the special moral worth of
actions performed precisely because they are the right thing to do, whether or not we
have other interests in doing them.(G397-399) We also recognize that the special moral
worth of such action depends, “not on the realization of the object of the action, but
merely on the principle of volition according to which, without regard to any objects of
the faculty of desire, the action has been done.”(G400) The pre-eminent good can only be
found in the will of a rational being, where a representation of the moral law is the
determining ground of the will.(G401) “But what sort of law can that be, the thought of
which must determine the will without reference to any expected effect, so that the will
can be called absolutely good without qualification/ since I have deprived the will of
every impulse that might arise for it from obeying any particular law, there is nothing left
to serve the will as principle except the universal conformity of its actions to law as such,
i.e., I should never act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should
become a universal law.”(G402)7
There is only one categorical imperative, then; it requires the conformity of our
maxims to the principle of universal law-giving. The person of good will, faced with a
situation in which some action is morally obligatory acts out of her interest in the moral
law as such. (Other interests may be present, but her interest in the morality of what she
does is sufficient motive to act.8 The categorical imperative also serves in a regulatory
role, when we routinely consider the moral permissibility of our ordinary maxims and the
ends we want to pursue.9 When the maxim of a possible action does not conform to the
moral law, the person of good will gives up the intended action, rejecting the particular
desire or inclination it would satisfy as sufficient ground of action. In this way the moral
law establishes a range within which permissible ends must fall, and sets limits on the
means that can be used in pursuit of these ends. These limits are the basis for duties of
justice. The categorical imperative also establishes certain ends as obligatory, setting
duties of virtue.
7
Kant believes the ordinary moral judgments of people everywhere conform with this principle, whether or
not they have an explicit conception of it in mind.(G402-4)
8
See Barbara Herman, “On the Value of Acting from the Motive of Duty,” in The Practice of Moral
judgment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) p. 12.
9
Ibid., pp. 13-17.
6
So there is another important meaning of good for Kant: the good as the
(inclusive) object of good willing. This falls into two parts: the good as the fulfillment of
permissible ends (#4,) and the good as the object of the moral law (#5 below). Once the
good as fulfillment of permissible ends is in view, it becomes clear that the object of
empirical practical reason (#2 above) is only conditionally choiceworthy. What is rational
in the limited context of the pursuit of individual happiness is only fully rational and
good if it conforms to universal ends.
5.
The good as the object of the moral law. What precisely is our end when
we choose to do a morally obligatory act, for the sake of duty, in the absence of
corroborating non-moral interests? We might evade the question, appealing to the
“priority of right” in Kant’s thought, except that Kant believes all action is for an end.
What is our end in doing the morally required thing because it is morally required?
In G436, where he is explaining that the 3 formulations of the categorical
imperatives are fundamentally the same law, Kant says, “all maxims have 1) a form,
which consists in universality:….maxims must be so chosen as if they were to hold as
universal laws of nature, 2) a matter, viz., and end: and here the formula says that a
rational being inasmuch as he is by his verify nature an end and hence an end in himself,
must serve in every maxim as a condition limiting all merely relative and arbitrary ends,
and 3) a complete determination of all maxims by the formula that all maxims proceeding
from his own legislation ought to harmonize with a possible kingdom of ends as a
kingdom of nature.”(G436) Kant introduces beings with a rational nature as ends-inthemselves in this and other passages because, in addition to setting limits to our pursuit
of empirical ends, the moral law must set ends of its own. Rational nature as an end-initself fulfills this role in Kant’s system. The kingdom-of-ends is a more complete
determination of the final end of good-willing: it is the ideal of a possible system of such
end-in-themselves and their ends.
6.
The complete good10. It is a consistent theme of Kant’s writings, from the
first Critique to Religion that good willing is not reliably conducive to happiness, that
10
Kant’s terminology is fluid. The complete fulfillment of virtue and happiness is called the complete good
in the first Critique, and the highest good in the second Critique. But in the Groundwork Kant uses the
highest good for the goodwill (“while such a will may not indeed be the sole and complete good, it must
nevertheless be the highest good and the condition of all the rest.”(G396)
7
two such incommensurate ends as happiness and the moral law can only be reconciled by
the complete subordination of the one to the other, and that “without a god and without a
word invisible to us now but hoped for, the glorious ideas of morality are indeed objects
of approval and admiration, but not springs of purpose and action.”11 Neither mere
happiness, nor mere worthiness to be happy is the complete good.12 “To .make the good
complete, he who behaves in such a manner as not to be unworthy of happiness must be
able to hope that he will participate in happiness.”13
In the Dialectic Kant describes the struggle of the ancient Greek schools to assert
an analytic connection between virtue and happiness, seeking in thought what cannot be
found in life. “The Stoic asserted virtue to be the entire highest good, and happiness was
only the consciousness of this possession as belonging to the state of the subject. The
Epicurean stated that happiness was the entire highest good and that virtue was only the
form of the maxim by which it could be procured through the rational use of means to it.
But it is clear…that the maxims of virtue and those of one’s own happiness are wholly
heterogeneous…and that even though they belong to a highest good, which they jointly
make possible, they strongly limit and check each other in the same subject.”14
Kant has no illusions: “No necessary connection, sufficient to the highest good,
between happiness and virtue in the world can be expected from the most meticulous
observance of the moral law.”15 In the second Critique this fact is seen as a threat to the
moral law itself. “Since the furthering of the highest good, which contains this connection
in its concept, is an a priori necessary object of our will and is inseparably related to the
moral law, the impossibility of the highest good must provide the falsity of the moral law
also. If the highest good is impossible according to practical rules, then the moral law
which commands that it be furthered must be…directed to empty imaginary ends, and
consequently inherently false.”16
11
Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Norman Kemp Smith, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965) p. 640.
Ibid
13
Ibid.
14
Critique of Practical Reason. tr. Lewis White Beck, (New York: Macmillan, 1993) p. 119.
15
Ibid., p. 120.
16
Ibid.
12
8
While the complete good is the complete object of pure practical reason, the
moral law alone is the motive of the pure will.17 “The moral law alone must be seen as the
ground for making the highest good and its realization or promotion the objective of the
pure will.’18 Otherwise, if we assume this object, conceived as the complete good, as the
motive of the will prior to the moral law, and derive our practical principles from it, we
fall into heteronomy.19
7.
The supreme original good. In the first Critique Kant refers to the
complete good, the fulfillment of both virtue and happiness, as the “supreme derivative
good,” and God as the “supreme original good.”20 “It is only in the ideal of the supreme
original good that pure reason can find the ground of this connection, which is necessary
from the practical point of view, between the two elements of the supreme derivative
good.”21 In the Dialectic, Kant elaborates on the idea of God as a postulate of pure
practical reason. As we cannot conceive of any other way in which the complete good
that is the object of the moral law can be fulfilled except as the work of God, we will not
be able to sustain our commitment to the moral law through our entire life apart from a
practical belief in God.
II.
We have distinguished 7 meanings of the term good in Kant, as follows:
17
1.
The good as the object of natural desires
2.
The good as the object of empirical practical reason
3.
The absolute value of the good will
4.
The good as the fulfillment of permissible ends
5.
The good as the object of the moral law
6.
The complete good
7.
The supreme original good
Ibid., p. 115.
Ibid.
19
Ibid., pp. 115-116.
20
Critique of Pure Reason, p. 639.
21
Ibid.
18
9
Since both #4 and #5 are the objects of good-willing, we might think of these
meanings of the term good as arranged like this:
1.
The good as the object of natural desire
2.
The good as the object of empirical practical reason
3.
The good as the object of good-willing (This includes #4 and #5 above.)
4.
The value of the good with itself
5.
The complete good
6.
The supreme original good
The first thing to notice is the complexity of the conception of the good in Kant.
The meanings for good seem to separate into kinds. In three cases (1, 2, & 3 in the second
list) the good is understood as the object of one or another of our human capacities. We
recognize here a traditional teleological shape: the good is that which we desire or the
good as the actualizing of a potency. But hidden in the traditional teleological frame is a
radical understanding of the relationship between our rational and biological natures. Our
orientations toward the objects of natural desires are not in themselves reasons for action
according to Kant. We can have an inclination and not act on it, even if there are no
competing inclinations and no prior reasons not to act on it. Rational action is action done
for reasons, but practical rationality itself creates the reasons, as follows: In a typical
situation I have several possible courses of action, each satisfying some inclination(s). I
freely take one such action-satisfaction pair as sufficient ground of my willing, out of
some conception of the goodness of doing so. If I choose an alternative actionsatisfaction pair, that different inclination will play an explanatory role with regard to the
different action, but only because I freely choose to take the different action-satisfaction
pair as the ground of my willing. Choosing makes it the case that one inclination is
partially explanatory of the action I choose, but inclinations cannot explain the choosing.
To understand the choosing, I will have to pay attention to the principles of practical
reason and to my conceptions of the good-making properties of what I am considering
doing.
10
So while there are three meanings of good in the list that are correlated with the
objects of three kinds of orientation in us, these goods do not have any naturally-given
order that exists prior to practical reason. There is not a natural hierarchy, with “higherlevel goods” supervening on ”lower-level goods.” The goodness of an object of empirical
practical reason never simply supervenes on a goodness attributed to objects of empirical
desires. The same is pre-eminently true, for Kant, of the relationship of the moral law to
happiness (goods #3 and #2).
Only one meaning of good on the list refers to the value of a predisposition or
capacity, rather than to its object. This of course is the absolute value of the good will.
Why is the value of empirical practical reason not an explicit theme in Kant’s writings?
Perhaps the reasons are polemical rather than systematic. Kant’s main worry is
empiricism in ethics. He is convinced that the pursuit of individual happiness using
empirical practical reason is not ultimately order-producing in a community of rational
natures, and this for him is weighty evidence that happiness cannot be the highest end of
practical reason. He wants to insist that the moral law not only regulates our rational
pursuit of happiness, but set ends for rational natures that are independent of their
empirical inclinations altogether. The right is defined by pure practical reason
independently of empirical rationality’s conception of the good, and the good will, as the
confirmed capacity to take what is right as the sufficient ground of one’s action, is an
absolute value that does not belong to the natural world.
In spite of this, we should not skip too lightly over the immense significance for
Kant’s moral constructivism of the creativity of empirical practical reason. All actual
human goods, for Kant, are constructions. The whole human world of families and
societies, products, services, institutions and practices is largely the product of empirical
practical reason. In every making and doing, practical reason creates a new local order
among events in the natural world. Empirical practical reason is not capable of providing
the highest systematic unity of ends in a realm of rational natures who are ends in
themselves—that is the object of pure practical reason. But in the realm of pre-moral
goods, empirical practical reason covers the planet with a human world, a fabric of local
domains created and ordered by mini “laws of nature” we conceive ourselves. A woman
plans the menu for a dinner party, a store manager at Vons receives a new way to
11
encourage egg-carton recycling, a teenager constructs his end of a phone conversation—
in each case new principles order new patterns of events. Down to their very roots,
human goods are constructed objects. This means that there are no pre-rational moral
facts to anchor our moral deliberations. Both the moral law and pre-moral goods are
mediated by human rationality. Objectivity in morals cannot for Kant be the result of any
form of naturalism.
In our function as practical reasoners we construct all the goods of the human
world. We do this for reasons of which we ourselves are the ultimate source. 22 I create an
ordered pattern of events, deciding, say, to bring one combination of friends together for
dinner rather than another, for reasons of my own. I initiate new causal chains in nature.
Beginning with this Kantian theory of rational action, we know there are at least two
kinds of value: the goods of the human world that we create in each making and doing,
and we ourselves as originators of value. As originators of value, who create value
according to reasons grounded in ourselves, we are ultimate ends.
What are the conditions of rational willing for a plurality of such originators of
value? On can argue that one such condition of rationality is that we do our constructing
of human goods in a way that recognizes each member of the plurality as an originator of
reasons and of value, and therefore as an end in herself. That is, we can proceed from an
acknowledgement of the value of practical reason to and elucidation of its principles.
If we take Kant at his word that he is explicating the presuppositions actually
implicit in everyone’s ordinary moral judgments and evaluations of character, we must
view his moral theory as leading to a kind of self-knowledge. In this self-knowledge we
recognize the value not only of the objects to which we find ourselves oriented by our
natural capacities, but also of these capacities themselves and of their principles. In
particular, we recognize practical reason and its principles as originating (and thus
ultimate) values that will play a key role in any adequate theory.
The third section of the Groundwork begins with this passage:
Will is a kind of causality belonging to living beings so far as they are rational.
Freedom would then be the property this causality has of being able to work
independently of determination by alien causes…the above definition of freedom
22
This is the “negative” aspect of Kant’s notion of freedom.
12
is negative and consequently unfruitful as a way of grasping its essence; but there
springs from it a more positive concept, which, as positive, is richer and more
fruitful. The concept of causality carries with it that of laws in accordance with
which, because of something we call a cause, something else—namely, its
effect—must be posited. Hence freedom of the will, although it is not the property
of conforming to laws of nature, is not for this reason lawless.: it must rather be a
causality conforming to immutable laws, though of a special kind; for otherwise a
free will would be self-contradictory. … What else then can freedom of the will
be but autonomy—this is, the property which the will has of being a law to itself?
The proposition ‘Will is in all its actions a law to itself? The proposition ‘Will is
in all its actions a law to itself’ expresses, however only the principle of acting on
no maxim other than one which can have for its object itself as at the same time a
universal law. This is precisely the formula of the Categorical Imperative and the
principle of morality. Thus a free will and a will under moral laws are one and the
same.(G446-7)
This is Kant’s famous argument that the moral law is an inescapable feature of the
rational agency of any negatively free will. Our concern is not with whether this claim
can be defended against the moral skeptic, but with the fact that Kant proceeds from a
claim about the freedom of the will to a derivation of its principles. He argues that
practical rationality, as an originating value and therefore as free in the negative sense, is
a law unto itself. Practical rationality has its own reasons that are independent of
inclinations, because it is its own reason. It is a final end, and thus a ground of action for
the will.
So beginning with the creativity of empirical practical reason, we have arrived at
an idea of rational natures as ends in themselves, who are objects of the moral law (good
#5 in the first list). Kant believes that the second formulation of the categorical
imperative, “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in
the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a
means”(G429) is equivalent to the injunction never to act except in such a way that you
can also will that your maxim should become a universal law.(G402) In the following
passage Kant suggests that the latter injunction, to act only according to principles that
could be universally adopted by all members of the human community, follows from the
first. “If there is to be supreme practical principle…it must be such that from the
conception of what is necessarily an end for everyone, because this end is an end in itself,
it constitutes an objective principle of the will and can hence serve as a practical
13
law.”(G428) It is as ultimate ends that rational natures introduce principles of moral
obligation.
It remains to consider what Kant’s moral theory implies about the value of the
non-human world. Deontological theories are supposed to be able to work directly from
moral obligation, without addr3essing questions of value. We have seen that Kant’s
moral theory is not deontological in this sense. In Kant’s thought, practical rationality is
both a regulative norm and an ultimate value. The primary meanings of good in Kant’s
thought are 1) the good as possible object of rational willing and 2) the good of rational
willing itself, the good will.23 The second grounds the moral law. The first should be
understood as a second-order definition of value in general.
With the exception of #7, non-human value does not appear on the list of
meanings for good except as objects of human capacities. Does this mean that apart from
human beings there is no value in the universe? One answer to this question might be that
from a Kantian point of view all that exists is the object of the rational will of the
supreme original good. But the idea of God functions as a postulate of practical reason
for Kant and this is a speculative question.
Suppose there is an old sycamore tree on a man’s lot that drops most of its leaves
on his neighbor’s lawn. The neighbor proposes cutting the tree down. The owner is
indifferent, but some other people in the town oppose it because, they say, they like the
old tree. When pressed about their reasons, they resort to language about the tree’s
intrinsic value.
What does Kant’s theory imply for the question of the intrinsic value of the nonhuman world/ One suggestion has been that by locating unconditioned goodness in the
good will Kant introduces distinctive assumptions about value that are quite restrictive.
“The domain of ‘the good’ is rational activity and agency: that is, willing. Objects and
events are not possible bearers of value. They can be thought of as good only insofar as
they are possible ends of rational willing. They are judged good just in case the
determination to act for them (here and in this way and for this purpose) is good. …The
activity of rational willing brings value into a world that, absent rational beings, could
23
Completely rational willing for Kant is good-willing. (Kant does not employ the distinction between
“rational” and “reasonable” that Rawls uses.)
14
have none.”24 If the last sentence read “the activity of rational willing brings a kind of
value into the world that, absent rational beings, it would lack,” this would be a truism for
Kant. But as stated it seems to imply the much stronger claim that without rational beings
the world has no value. Of course if is called into question.25 How can they be judged
good in certain cases? The claim that objects and events can only be thought of as good
insofar as they are possible ends of rational willing can be interpreted broadly to include
the goodness of anything rational beings could will to exist. This weaker claim is
immediately narrowed by the next sentence, however, where something is said to be good
if the determination to act for it (in a particular situation, etc.,) is good. This would deny
value to all but one member of any set of non-compossible objects of a single decision to
act.
I suggest we back up a step and look again at the statement that with reference to nonmoral value, the good is the possible object of rational willing. This may not be a
statement about the world, i.e. that there is no pre-human value, but rather a statement
about the indirect, discursive, ultimately political manner in which human reason assesses
value.26 What is the value of the old sycamore? The answer is not empirical. Value is not
an immediate object of experience. And there is no such thing as direct rational intuition
of value, for Kant. We have no value radar. Our general notion of non-moral value must
be a second order definition, which directs us to the ongoing discursive, social process of
human moral evaluation. Kant’s theory provides no short-cuts on this question.
III.
It is in the spirit of Kant’s critical philosophy to recognize that the central account
of good for rational natures will be grounded in a self-consciousness that understands the
24
Barbara Herman, “Leaving Deontology Behind,” The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1993) pp. 213-214.
25
The complex question of objectivity cannot be dealt with here. For the view that Kant’s theory of the
rationality of the will is intellectualist rather than voluntarist, see Tom Hill, “Kant’s Theory of Practical
Reason,” Dignity and Practical Reason (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992) p. 140.
26
For an eloquent essay on this theme see Onora O’Neill, “Reason and Politics in the Kantian Enterprise.”
Constructions of Reason (Cambridge University Press, 1989) pp. 3-27.
15
role of the moral law in the unity of reason.27 The good for human beings is the object of
practical reason. This entails a constructivist account of both moral and non-moral value.
Kant begins his moral theory with our concepts of obligation and duty, not
because he has no theory of value, but because they lead to the idea of the good will and
its object, which forms its centerpiece. The principles of right set limits on our pursuit of
particular conceptions of the good. But they also set ends that orient us toward the final
good of rational natures and their highest possible unity in a system of ends.
27
As Rawls puts it, Kant has a constructivist conception of practical reason and a coherentist account of its
authentication. For a description of the history of Kant’s changing strategies on the justification question
see John Rawls, “Themes in Kant’s Moral Philosophy” in Kant’s Transcendental Deduction. Ed. Eckart
Foerster (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989) pp. 102-108.