The Unimportance of Kant's Highest Good

The Unimportance of Kant's Highest Good THOMAS AUXTER ONE OF THE MOSTCONTROVERSIALISSUESin the interpretation of Kant's ethics concerns his conception of the highest good as the union of virtue and happiness. Can it function as an ideal that we are obligated to promote? Is it an intrinsic element of Kant's ethical theory? Or, is it merely an extramoral addition to Kant's theory, that is, one designed primarily to serve religious purposes the fulfillment of which are irrelevant to the actual operation of practical judgment and the choice of a course of conduct? The issue is complicated by the fact that although Kant insists that the duty to promote the highest good is central to his system, the fomulations of the categorical imperative he offers and the examples of duties he cites do not appear to be related to this duty. Those who have recently argued that there is such a duty central to Kant's view of morality have attempted to "fill in" the arguments Kant neglected to make, while those who see this duty as irrelevant to the critical ethic have usually been content to show how one can proceed without reference to it. In a series of articles written over a period of fifteen years John Silber has developed an interpretation that has come to be regarded as the definitive statement of the view that for Kant duty is essentially, and above all, a matter of apportioning happiness in accordance with virtue.' Whereas most of those who disagree with Silber have simply discussed their various conceptions of duty without mentioning the highest good, two commentators--Lewis White Beck and Jeffrie G. Murphy--have directly examined elements of Silber's position and have raised objections that do, I believe, rule out the highest good as a moral ideal, that is, as an ideal that can be effectively employed in making moral decisions. Beck holds that only "a moral governor of the universe" could apportion happiness in accordance with desert and that finite human beings can do nothing more than follow the injunctions of the categorical imperative (which contain no reference to the highest good)." Murphy points An early versionof this paper was presented at the PacificDivisionmeetingof the AmericanPhilosophical Associationin March1977. I am gratefulto Paul Dietrichson,WolfgangSchwarz,and Thomas E. Hill, Jr. for helpfulcommentson earlier drafts. ' "Kant's Conceptionofthe HighestGoodas Immanentand Transcendent," Philosophical Review 68 (1959):469-92; "The Importanceof the Highest Good in Kant's Ethics," Ethics 73 (1962-63):179-97; "The Copernican Revolutionin Ethics: The Good Re-examined,"Kant-Studien 51 (1959-60):85-101; "Der Schematismus der praktischen Vernunft," Kant-Studien 56 (1966):253-73; and "Procedural Formalismin Kant's Ethics," Review of Metaphysics 28 (1974):197-236.Defensesofthis positioncan be found in Mary-BarbaraZeldin, "The SummumBonum, the Moral Law, and the Existenceof God," Kant-Studien 62 (1971):43-54, and in John Beversluis, "Kant on Moral Striving," Kant-Studien 65 (1974):67-77. A Commentary on Kant "s Critique of Practical Reason (Chicago:The Universityof ChicagoPress, 1960), pp. 244--45. [121] 122 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY out that virtue is not a property of actions, which are phenomenal, but of dispositions , which are noumenal, and argues that on the basis of Kant's own epistemology we cannot know about virtue and therefore cannot be liable for an obligation to reward it. 3 Both Beck and Murphy begin with the Kantian assumption that "impossibility implies no obligability'" and offer reasons why Kant must rule out (as impossible ) any distinct or special duty to promote the highest good. I will adopt the same basic strategy. However, in what follows I will focus on the passages in which Kant most explicitly discusses the nature of the moral ideal that governs practice,5 and I will argue that Kant's own explanation of how a moral ideal is constructed and of how practical judgments are made precludes an appeal to the highest good as a standard for conduct. In other words, I will argue that the case against using the highest good as a moral standard becomes even more convincing when we examine Kant's account of the process by which practical reasoning takes place. 1...