Kantian Moral Motivation and the Feeling of Respect

Kantian Moral Motivation and the Feeling of Respect RICHARD MCCARTY RESPECT FOR LAW is a unique, moral feeling which can be known a priori, according to Kant.' He also thought we have an obligation to cultivate our capacity for moral feeling.' These are perplexing claims, even for Kantian sympathizers. How can a feeling be known a priori? What could be the point of a moral obligation to cultivate a capacity for such a feeling, especially in Kantian ethics, which seems to deny feelings any moral significance? A common line of interpretation assumes Kant's enigmatic claims about moral feeling merely reflect a lingering attachment to the sentimentalism of the British moralists he favored in his pre-critical moral reflections. Although he eventually rejected sentimentalist ethical theories for their undue emphasis on pleasant feelings, Kant appears to have once endorsed at least the basic framework of Francis Hutcheson's moral-sense theory.s Commentators have also attributed Kant's puzzling remarks on moral feeling to the historically pervasive , Aristotelian psychology of action, which he may have inherited uncritically from Hume. Even throughout his more mature ethical writings we find Kant making occasional remarks on feeling which seem to reflect Hume's empiricist motivational psychology: a view which traces the causal stream of every action up to its necessary original spring in some feeling of pleasure or pain.4 Attributing Kant's claims about moral feeling to these suspicious, historical influences, many commentators have felt justified in discounting them, espe- ' See Critique of Practical Reason, trans. L. W. Beck(Indianapolis, 1956), 76/Ak V 73; subsequently abbreviated 2C. ' See Metaphysical Principles of Virtut, trans. J. Ellington (Indianapolis, 1964),58/Ak VI 399; subsequentlyabbreviated MPV. sCf. Keith Ward, The Development of Kant's View of Ethics (Oxford, 1972), 26f. 4Cf. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. P. I-l.Nidditch (Oxford, a978),574.Commentators frequently cite Aristotle as a source for this view,especiallyhis comment that, "Intellect itself movesnothing..." (Nicomachean Ethics 1t39a36). [421] 422 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 31:3 JULY I993 cially when they seem at odds with the rationalistic psychology of action his own ethical theory seems to require. Some assume he would not have made such remarks had he only noticed their implications for moral motivation. Others, comfortable with a dualistic picture of Kantian moral agency, have understood Kant's remarks on moral feeling as relevant to the merely phenomenal side of moral action. Yet the former explanation assumes that for many years Kant rather casually overlooked gross inconsistencies in his theory of moral motivation. And the dualistic presupposition of the latter interpretation encounters even more serious problems in its implications for freedom and moral responsibility.s In what follows I attempt to elucidate Kant's understanding of the peculiar feeling of respect or reverence for the moral law, concentrating on its role in moral motivation. I shall thus be offering an alternative to the view of many recent commentators and critics, who are united in denying that feelings can play any role at all in Kantian moral motivation. After clarifying the central interpretive dispute and citing some of the more relevant texts, I go on to explain the necessary role of moral feeling in Kantian moral motivation. I then turn to the question of freedom, showing that the role of moral feeling in Kantian moral motivation does not, as many have assumed, preclude freedom of choice or responsibility for moral failure. I conclude with some brief comments about feeling in Kant's philosophy, addressing some remaining mysteries about the unique, moral feeling of respect. 1. THE INTERPRETIVE DISPUTE In justifying his fundamental moral principle, the categorical imperative, Kant assumed actions are morally worthy just when motivated by respect for the moral law alone. But if the moral law is adequately represented only by a categorical imperative, then it must be binding on moral agents regardless of any of their contingent or empirical motivational resources. Accordingly, we must assume respect for the moral law is capable of motivating obedience to the law independently of the typical, "pathological" motivational resources of human agency. Many commentators and critics have also assumed this means that respect for the moral law...