Abstract
This chapter takes Kant’s understanding of our finitude and imperfection as a central theme by examining the main feature of Kant’s philosophical anthropology, namely, Kant’s account of what he calls “unsocial sociability ” or “the propensity to radical evil in human nature ,” which are but two ways to describe our dependency and moral imperfection. First, I examine what Kant has to say about the “unsocial sociability” of human beings. I then turn to Kant’s treatment of radical evil in human nature in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, since that is a work in which Kant more precisely explains the ways in which human nature possesses the animal tendency to easy living and happiness . Next I look closely at Kant’s treatment of the inclinations in the Groundwork and their relation to what he calls “moral worth ,” since critics of Kant often wrongly take this text to commit Kant to a wholesale rejection of sensible/sensuous nature as the cause of moral evil and the obstacle standing in the way of our acting genuinely morally. After providing a correct understanding of the relevant parts of the Groundwork, I then turn to Kant’s account of affects and passions , two particular species of emotion and desire . I conclude the chapter by considering Kant’s view of happiness, which he identifies as the natural end of human beings.
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- 1.
Robert Louden (2000, 68–70) and Allen Wood (2003, 40–42) identify four senses of “pragmatic” in Kant’s use of it to describe his anthropology. According to Louden, “pragmatic” in Kant’s writings can mean (1) skillfulness in interacting with others, (2) prudence in achieving one’s ends, (3) the capacity to act freely in developing one’s character, or (4) being of concern to moral living (as opposed to being of merely theoretical concern).
- 2.
Cf. R 6:21: “let it be noted that by ‘the nature of a human being’ we only understand here the subjective ground—wherever it may lie—of the exercise of the human being’s freedom in general (under objective moral laws) antecedent to every deed that falls within the scope of the senses.” Alix Cohen (2008) develops this theme in Kant’s anthropology by expounding what she calls “man’s praxis.”
- 3.
Nell, the main protagonist in Lily King ’s Euphoria(2014), is an anthropologist studying different cultures in Southeast Asia. At one point her husband, Fen, suggests that the people they are studying are seriously less human than he and Nell, to which she responds, “If I didn’t believe they shared my humanity entirely, I wouldn’t be here….I’m not interested in zoology.” Nell’s contrast between anthropology and zoology seems to me to get at Kant’s point about the way in which his philosophical anthropology is pragmatic rather than physiological insofar as human beings, unlike animals, do not merely act on instinct but are also capable of acting rationally and freely.
- 4.
Cf. Michel de Montaigne (1965, 175): “There is nothing so unsociable and so sociable as man: the one by his vice, the other by his nature.” Accordingly, conceiving of human beings as both sociable and unsocial is not an invention of Kant. J.B. Schneewind (2009, 94–105) gives a history of the two concepts in early modern philosophy and how Kant relates to that history.
- 5.
Onora O’Neill (2008) argues that Kant holds that the notion of human progress at work in “Idea for a Universal History” is a regulative ideal for him. A regulative ideal, according to Kant does not give us theoretical knowledge (CPR A180/B223). Rather, it is an idea that allows us to organize experience for practical purposes (CPrR 5:48). As O’Neill puts it, regulative ideals “are practical principles adopted to regulate any search for scientific or other order in the natural world, and any practical attempt to introduce order into human affairs, for example by constitutional or political change” (531).
- 6.
So, I think Michaele Ferguson (2012) misconstrues unsocial sociability as “plurality,” that is, as due to the fact that there are multiple humans with multiple desires. Ferguson seems to think that antagonism arises merely as a result of there being a multitude of people with a multitude of desires that need to be satisfied, which makes Kant sound much more like Thomas Hobbes (1994). For Kant, however, antagonism is not due to the fact that desire satisfaction is a zero-sum game. Rather, it is due to each person anticipating the same drive to ease and happiness in her fellows, which, as it were, puts each person on the defensive (and the best defense is a good offense).
- 7.
When Kant writes of cultivating and developing our talents and rational capacities, he should not be understood to mean that through practice human beings come to have reason. In fact, Kant explicitly claims the contrary in his discussion of the predispositions to good in human nature (R 6:26–28). In thinking about the sense in which humans cultivate and develop their talents, it is helpful to keep a distinction of Aristotle in mind, namely the distinction between first and second potentiality. First potentiality is the capacity to acquire a capacity that one does not currently have (e.g., the capacity for someone who does not know how to play the piano to learn how to play the piano). Second potentiality is the capacity to exercise some ability one in fact has but is not currently exercising (e.g., the capacity a piano player has to sit down at a piano and play). When I write of developing our rational capacities, I mean this in the sense of second potentiality.
- 8.
Wood (1991, 329) points to the importance of Kant’s “Idea for a Universal History” by noting that it precedes Kant’s publishing of the Groundwork by just one year. Wood argues that the Groundwork should be read as part of an overall project that starts with “Idea for a Universal History” and “What is Enlightenment” (which is published the same year as UH). But Wood (2009, 112) is also careful to acknowledge that “to regard Kant’s main project in Idea for a Universal History as motivated by morality is totally to misunderstand the essay from the ground up.”
- 9.
Cf. Wood (2010, 162): “Another Kantian name, therefore, for the radical evil in human nature is ‘unsocial sociability’—the sociable need that human beings have as rational beings for society with others, which, however, is also the unsociable need to gain superiority over them in honor, power, and wealth.” Also cf. Wood (2009, 125). Jeanine Grenberg ( 2005, 2010) takes issue with Wood’s emphasis on the social nature of evil and what she takes to be the way in which his account cannot accommodate Kant’s conception of transcendentally free acts.
- 10.
Cf. UH 8:19: “Nature has willed that the human being should produce everything that goes beyond the mechanical arrangement of his animal existence entirely out of himself, and participate in no other happiness or perfection than that which he has procured for himself free from instinct through his own reason.”
- 11.
When Kant writes of “radical evil” in this context, the sense of radical has to do with the way in which this evil “corrupts the ground of all maxims” (R 6:37).
- 12.
- 13.
Cf. CPrR 5:73: “All the inclinations together (which can be brought into a tolerable system and the satisfaction of which is then called one’s own happiness) constitute regard for oneself (solipsismus). This is either the self-regard of love for oneself, a predominant benevolence toward oneself (Philautia), or that of satisfaction with oneself (Arrogantia). The former is called, in particular, self-love; the latter, self-conceit. Pure practical reason merely infringes on self-love, inasmuch as it only restricts it, as natural and active in us even prior to the moral law, to the condition of agreement with this law, and then it is called rational self-love.” Cf. TP 8:278–279; MM 6:432–434.
- 14.
This sense of “humanity” is different from the one operative in Kant’s second formulation of the categorical imperative, namely, “always act in such a way so that you treat humanity, whether in yourself or another, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means” (G 4:429). This second, full, sense of “humanity” is more correctly associated with what in the Religion Kant calls “personality”: “the idea of the moral law alone, together with the respect that is inseparable from it…is personality itself (the idea of humanity considered wholly intellectually)” (R 6:28).
- 15.
I will have more to say about these vices in Sect. 3.2.3, where I will discuss Kant’s account of what he calls “the acquired passions.”
- 16.
Notice that Kant’s way of putting this does not commit him to the view that humans always respect the law, nor does it commit him to the view that humans possess personality only insofar as they respect the law; having personality is a function of being susceptible to respecting the moral law, and this susceptibility is grounded in the capacity human beings have for practical reasoning.
- 17.
Kant takes mortifications of the flesh to be certain practices of discipline designed to eliminate our susceptibility to bodily pleasure.
- 18.
Some critics take Kant’s discussion of radical evil in human nature as an illicit and not very successful attempt to smuggle a theological account of evil into his purportedly non-theologically grounded ethics. For a discussion of these criticisms and a response to them, see G. Felicitas Munzel (1999, 133–183). For a more general discussion of and response to general criticisms of Kant’s account of radical evil, see Robert Louden (2010).
- 19.
According to Wood (1970, 216), we should understand Kant’s definition of a propensity to mean the following: “the property of the human will which makes it possible for this will to invert, in accordance with a rule or maxim, the rational and moral order of its incentives, to prefer the incentives of inclination to those of duty, and hence to do evil.”
- 20.
Cf. Baxley (2010, 68): “the real obstacle we finite imperfect rational beings must strive to overcome in our efforts to lead morally good lives in accordance with the dictates of pure practical reason is a volitional tendency to treat inclinations as sufficient reasons for action.”
- 21.
Cf. CPr R 5:25: “The direct opposite of the principle of morality is the principle of one’s own happiness made the determining ground of the will.”
- 22.
For someone critical of Kant on evil, see Claudia Card (2010).
- 23.
For an example of such a reading of Kant, see David Cartwright (1987).
- 24.
Up to this point I have written of “emotions” rather than “feelings.” This is to distinguish emotions from the feelings that are sensations (e.g., a tickle or a toothache) and the feelings that are perceptions (e.g., feeling the rough stone of the patio or the smooth silk of my sweater). I resort to using “feeling” within my discussion of sensible nature in general in order to be consistent with the texts of Kant that I quote. “Feeling” in this context should be taken as a synonym for “emotion”.
- 25.
On the basis of this passage, some commentators have interpreted Kant’s moral psychology of sensible nature as hedonistic. For a recent defense of Kant’s hedonism, see Morrison (2008). The classic paper on Kant’s hedonism is by Andrews Reath (1989), who challenges the hedonistic reading of Kant. For someone who takes issue with Reath’s approach see Herman (2007, Chapter 8). Herman defends Kant’s hedonism as playing an important methodological role, namely to show the limits of subjective theories of value and the need for a Kantian account of dignity to correct these limitations.
- 26.
Ido Geiger’s (2011) reading of Kant on emotions seems mistakenly to assume that they are disclosive of goodness.
- 27.
I think some critics of Kant erroneously read the foregoing passage as implying that Kant reduced all pathological emotions to sensations. See, for example, John Sabini and Maury Silver (1988). For a response to Sabini and Silver, see Maria de Lourdes Borges (2004), and for another defense of Kant’s account of emotions, see Kelly Sorensen (2002).
- 28.
Most of what Kant says about pathological feelings regarding their lack of moral worth applies mutatis mutandis to pathological desires, since Kant believes that all inclination (which is habituated sensible desire) and “every sensible impulse is based on feeling” (CPrR 5:72). The one notable difference is that pathological feelings indicate a passive power, whereas pathological desires indicate an active (though sensuous) power.
- 29.
The feeling of respect as the sole moral motive in Kant’s ethics is the subject of much debate in the scholarship. Although I will have some things to say about respect in the next chapter within the context of discussing Kant’s account of our duties to others, entering into that debate within the context of this book would take me too far afield. For a summary of some of the main interpretations of Kantian respect, see Iain Morrisson (2008, Chapter 5).
- 30.
Cf. Baxley (2010, 32): “Kant distinguishes between an action accompanied by inclination (mit Neigung) and an action motivated from inclination (aus Neigung). This means that morally worthy action can be accompanied by inclination and that a person with a good will can act beneficently from duty with sympathy and love—she need not do her duty in the absence of sympathy, or in the face of indifference, in order to have a good will.” Baxley disagrees with Wood, who reads Kant as holding that authentic moral worth only applies to actions done from duty, where ‘done from duty’ requires that one act in the face of temptation or adversity. As Wood puts it, ‘The action with authentic moral worth is the one where the agent faced with adversity rises to the occasion and does the dutiful thing in spite of adverse circumstances’ (Wood 2008, 29). For Wood’s reading, also see Wood (2006, 35–36, notes 1 &2). Such interpretive disagreements aside, the main point is that Kant does not reduce all moral value to what he calls “moral worth.” If he did, that would be a reason to think that the Anscombian reading is right to accuse Kant of promoting a moral rigorism.
- 31.
- 32.
The account that follows is indebted to Baxley (2010).
- 33.
The literature on Kant’s example of the sympathetic philanthropist is vast. For a thorough and well-respected treatment of the issues pertaining to this example, see Baron (1995, 111–226).
- 34.
Cf. CPrR 5:72: “All the inclinations together (which can be brought into a tolerable system and the satisfaction of which is then called one’s own happiness) constitute regard for oneself (solipsismus). This is either the self-regard of love for oneself, a predominant benevolence toward oneself (Philautia), or that of satisfaction with oneself (Arrogantia). The former is called, in particular, self-love; the latter, self-conceit” (CPrR, 5:73). This passage speaks only of inclinations, but it is worth recalling that Kant believes that “all inclination and every sensible impulse is based on feeling…” (CPrR 5:72).
- 35.
- 36.
Kant does not think that our capacity to feel renders us causally determined and, therefore, completely unfree to act. Rather, the impairment of freedom due to pathological feelings is akin to the kind of impairment drinking too much alcohol has on one’s ability to choose.
- 37.
Cf. Rolf Löchel (2006) who examines the way in which Kant thinks that affects are characteristic of women while passions are more characteristic of men.
- 38.
Cf. MM 6:407–408: “an affect is called precipitate or rash (animus praeceps), and reason says, through the concept of virtue, that one should get hold of oneself.”
- 39.
Curiously, Kant does not provide an analysis of sexual instinct in his Anthropology.
- 40.
Sometimes, for example, Kant writes as though happiness is the sum total of the satisfaction of all of one’s inclinations (G 4:393). At other times he writes as though happiness is the satisfaction one takes in knowing that all of one’s inclinations have been satisfied (CPrR 5:22). Victoria Wike (1994) gives a systematic treatment of the concept of happiness as it functions in Kant’s ethics.
- 41.
Cf. CPJ 5:430; G 4:418.
- 42.
Kant identifies hypothetical imperatives whose end is happiness as “assertoric imperatives” or “precepts of prudence” (G 4:415–416). Wood (1999, 65–70) gives a helpful exposition of Kant’s account of assertoric imperatives and how they relate to other kinds of imperatives.
- 43.
There is a sense in which for Kant human beings are condemned to have happiness as their natural end. It is exactly the same sense in which he writes of human beings as “dependent beings” and identifies this dependency (which takes the form of needs and wants) as the source of our imperfection, morally-speaking: “To be happy is necessarily the demand of every rational but finite being and therefore an unavoidable determining ground of its faculty of desire. For, satisfaction with one’s whole existence is not, as it were, an original possession and a beatitude…but is instead a problem imposed upon him by his finite nature itself, because he is needy and this need is directed to the matter of his faculty of desire…” (CPrR 5:25). Cf. Grenberg (2005, 26–28).
- 44.
The essay actually contains three separate responses by Kant to three people with whom he disagrees: Garve, Thomas Hobbes, and Moses Mendelssohn. But only his response to Garve is relevant to my purposes.
- 45.
Kant famously claims that when, for example, a prince asks a subject to give false testimony on pain of execution, if these are the only two options, the moral thing for the subject to do would be not to lie (CPrR 5:30).
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Arroyo, C. (2017). Such Crooked Timber: Kant’s Philosophical Anthropology. In: Kant’s Ethics and the Same-Sex Marriage Debate - An Introduction . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55733-5_3
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