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A Kantian View of Moral Luck

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

A. W. Moore
Affiliation:
St Hugh's College, Oxford

Extract

Some of the most interesting questions about Kant, and more particularly about his moral philosophy, arise when he is placed alongside the giants of antiquity. Where does he come together with Plato? Where with Aristotle? Where does he diverge from each?

He comes together with Plato in a shared conception of Ideas. When he first outlines how he is using the term ‘Idea’ in the Critique of Pure Reason, he insists that he is using it in none other than its original Platonic sense; and he explains away certain discrepancies with the comment:

It is by no means unusual… to find that we understand [an author] better than he has understood himself. As he has not sufficiently determined his concept, he has sometimes spoken… in opposition to his own intention.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1990

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References

1 Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason (hereafter CPuR), translated by Smith, Norman Kemp (London: Macmillan, 1933), A314/B370.Google Scholar The general discussion occupies Bk I, §1 of the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’. Cf. Gadamer, Hans-Georg, ‘The Proofs of Immortality in Plato's Phaedo’, in Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies in Plato, translated by Smith, P. Christopher (Yale University Press, 1980), 38.Google Scholar

2 See e.g. Plato, , Gorgias, 523e525a.Google Scholar For a fascinating suggestion as to how Kant and Plato might be even more closely related, see Walker, Ralph C. S., The Coherence Theory of Truth: Realism, Anti-Realism, Idealism (London: Routledge, 1989), 65.Google Scholar I think the suggestion is ultimately unten able, however.

3 This tendency is reflected to some extent in the structure of Williams's, BernardEthics and the Limits of Philosophy (hereafter ELP) (London: Fontana Press, 1985).Google Scholar Chs 3 and 4 are respectively concerned with an Aristotelian and a Kantian attempt to found ethics; while much of Ch. 5 is concerned with utilitarianism. See also Lear, Jonathan, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand (Cambridge University Press, 1988), 152 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Cf. Cooper, John M., Reason and Human Good in Aristotle (Harvard University Press, 1975), 8788Google Scholar; and the work of McDowell, John, e.g. ‘Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?’, in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supp. Vol. 52 (1978)Google Scholar, in which Kantian and Aristotelian elements are brought together. I am very grateful to Philip Turetzky not only for first suggesting to me how close Kant and Aristotle are but for many valuable conversations on these issues.

5 On the first two points see e.g. Kant, , Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (hereafter Groundwork), trans. Paton, H. J. (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 60 and 7980Google Scholar; and Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics (hereafter NE), 1095a2–13, 1095a30–b13Google Scholar and Bk I, Ch. 7, passim. Cf. Lear, , Aristotle: The Desire to Understand, 193Google Scholar; and Nussbaum, Martha C., The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1986), Ch. 8.Google Scholar On the third point cf. Korsgaard, Christine M., ‘Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value’, in Ethics 96 (19851986).Google Scholar

6 See e.g. the Preface to Kant's Groundwork, esp. 5759Google Scholar (though on 55 he writes, ‘[Moral philosophy] has to formulate its laws… for the will of man so far as affected by nature’). And see Aristotle, NE, Bk I, Ch. 7.

7 For a good discussion of how it is that our ergon might be shared by other, non-human beings (gods, say) see Nagel, Thomas, ‘Aristotle on Eudaimonia’ in Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg (ed.) Essays on Aristotle's Ethics (University of California Press, 1980), 10 ff.Google Scholar

8 Groundwork, 6264.Google Scholar See also Kant's, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (hereafter Religion), trans. Greene, Theodore M. and Hudson, Hoyt H. (New York: Harper & Row, 1960)Google Scholar, Bk One, Ch. I, where he speaks of man's Bestimmung.

9 NE, Bk X, Chs 7 and 8.

10 See e.g. Critique of Practical Reason (hereafter CPrR), translated by Beck, Lewis White (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1956)Google Scholar, Pt I, Bk II, Ch. II, §III. See also The Critique of Judgement (hereafter CJ), translated by Meredith, James Creed (Oxford University Press, 1978), beginning of §86. (Korsgaard, incidentally, whose focus in ‘Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value’ is in fact this difference between them, thereby sees Kant as the one with the greater humanistic strain. She may well be right.)Google Scholar

11 Aristotle: The Desire to Understand, 155Google Scholar, his emphasis. The discus sion as a whole is on 154 ff.

12 The whole question of the role of luck in morality has been the focus of much recent discussion. See especially Nussbaum's The Fragility of Good ness and the articles by Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel, both entitled ‘Moral Luck’, originally published together but now recast and appearing respectively in Moral Luck (Cambridge University Press, 1981)Google Scholar and Mortal Questions (Cambridge University Press, 1979).Google Scholar See also Andre, Judith, ‘Nagel, Williams and Moral Luck’, in Analysis 43 (1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lewis, David, ‘The Punishment That Leaves Something to Chance’, in Philosophy & Public Affairs 18 (1989)Google Scholar; and Richards, Norvin, ‘Luck and Desert’, in Mind 95 (1986).Google Scholar I am grateful to Stephen Everson and Sabina Lovibond for helpful discussions on this, and to the former for directing me to a number of references.

13 CPuR, ‘Transcendental Doctrine of Method’, Ch. II, §2. (On the idea that virtue is its own reward see Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by Pears, D. F. and McGuinness, B. F. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), 6.422.)Google Scholar

14 At least in NE. There may be important differences between NE and other ethical works of his: see Cooper, John M., ‘Aristotle on the Goods of Fortune’ in The Philosophical Review 94 (1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar The main Aristotelian references are in note 15 below.

15 See e.g. NE 1095b33–1096a2; Bk I, Ch. 10; Bk II, Chs 1, 2 and 4; and Bk X, Chs 8 and 9. But Cooper, in Reason and Human Good in Aristotle, Ch. II, §2, argues that Aristotle can be interpreted in a much more Kantian way; cf. his ‘Aristotle on the Goods of Fortune’, 196. And contrast Nussbaum's exegesis in The Fragility of Goodness, Chs 11 and 12. See also on this issue Irwin, T. H., ‘Permanent Happiness: Aristotle and Solon’, in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 3 (1985)Google Scholar, and Kenny, Anthony, ‘Aristotle on Moral Luck’ in Human Agency: Language, Duty and Value, Dancy, Jonathan, Moravcsik, J. M. E. and Taylor, C. C. W. (eds) (Stanford University Press, 1988).Google Scholar One of the bones of contention is the extent to which our own ‘most fundamental’ goodness is at the mercy of education (which is certainly beyond our control). For a somewhat Socratic view of education, as activating latent dispositions, see Kant's, The Doctrine of Virtue, translated by Gregor, Mary J. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964)Google Scholar, ‘The Ethical Doctrine of Method’, §11. However, in Lectures on Ethics, translated by Infield, Louis (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 4647Google Scholar, we find something more Aristotelian. Finally, for an indication of where Plato stands on these issues—somewhat closer to Kant than to Aristotle—see Euthydemus 278e—282d and Meno 87d—89a.

16 ‘Moral Luck’, 22, 39 and note 11. (And see 38 for the point about ubiquity.)

17 Cf. Adams, Robert M., ‘Involuntary Sins’, in The Philosophical Review 94 (1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 See e.g. Nagel, , ‘Moral Luck’, 29Google Scholar; and Andre, , ‘Nagel, Williams and Moral Luck’, 205.Google Scholar

19 For these distinctions, and for discussion of them, see Nagel, , ‘Moral Luck’Google Scholar, and Williams, , ‘Moral Luck’.Google Scholar

20 Cf. Andre, , ‘Nagel, Williams and Moral Luck’, 203Google Scholar, and Richards, , ‘Luck and Desert’.Google Scholar

21 Cf. in this connection Strawson, P. F., ‘Freedom and Resentment’, in Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays (London: Methuen, 1974).Google Scholar Cf. also Kant, CPuR, A554–555/B582–583. Nagel, , in ‘Moral Luck’, 26Google Scholar, explicitly rejects this kind of move.

22 ‘On a Supposed Right to Lie From Altruistic Motives’, in Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy, Beck, Lewis White (ed. and trans.) (The University of Chicago Press, 1949).Google Scholar

23 I can point already to Religion, 35, and CPuR, A551/B579, footnote.

24 See the passage from Kant's The Metaphysical Elements of Justice, translated by Ladd, J. (Indianapolis: TheBobbs-Merrill Co., 1965)Google Scholar, quoted by Nussbaum on 31 of The Fragility of Goodness. Kant effectively equates the ‘ought’ of moral obligation with the ‘ought’ of practical deliberation. See Williams, , ELP, 174 ff.Google Scholar

25 See Williams, , ‘Moral Luck’, 20.Google Scholar

26 Cf. my ‘Aspects of the Infinite in Kant’, in Mind 97 (1988), 220.Google Scholar

27 Thus the moral law is to ‘act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law’ (Groundwork, 88).Google Scholar

28 See e.g. Notebooks: 1914–1916, von Wright, G. H. and Anscombe, G. E. M. (eds) and translated by Anscombe, G. E. M. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), 7677 and 81.Google Scholar

29 E.g. Plato, , Protagoras, 330c ff.Google Scholar

30 I am indebted here to Williams, , ELP, 174ff.Google Scholar I hope that what I say in this essay does something towards answering the (semi-rhetorical) question that Williams poses in note 2 of that discussion (221).

31 See Groundwork, 107Google Scholar and CPrR, 69.Google Scholar

32 I am grateful to members of the Stapleton Society at Liverpool University for drawing my attention to this point.

33 Williams, Bernard urges (non-Kantian) scepticism about whether it is, in ‘Ethical Consistency’, in Problems of the Self (Cambridge University Press, 1973), 179CrossRefGoogle Scholar. At first blush it seems easy to construct examples to support Williams's view; there is his own example on p. 180 of ELP. But in fact it is not at all clear what ice this example cuts. As Williams says, ‘to make the example realistic, one should put in more detail’. (Did you actually promise to visit your friend whatever might crop up? If so, why? Was that not rash?).

34 I am using the New English Bible translation (Oxford University & Cambridge University Presses, 1970)Google Scholar. I shall use this translation for all subsequent quotations from the Bible.

35 Returning again to the caveat at the end of section I, it is here that the question of a gap between what is Kantian and what is in Kant is most delicate. Such a radical conception of freedom is, so far as I know, nowhere explicitly embraced by Kant, though arguably it is implicit in CPuR; A538–541/B566–569; in CPuR, ‘Transcendental Doctrine of Method’, Ch. II, §1; at the beginning and end of Ch. III of Groundwork; at the beginning of the Introduction to CPrR, and in the discussion of ‘Problem II’ on 28–30 of CPrR. Still, all that Kant strictly commits himself to is that a free will is a will subject to (its own) rational laws; it does not follow that for the will to be exercised freely is for it to be exercised in accordance with those laws. Indeed elsewhere in CPrR, on 32Google Scholar, Kant clearly moves in the other direction and insists that an irrational act, though ‘pathologically affected’, is not ‘pathologically determined’ and is still free. (The Willkür/Wille distinction, which is often invoked in discussions of this, is especially prominent in Religion. But there is much greater emphasis on it in the introductory essay, ‘The Ethical Significance of Kant's Religion’, by John R. Silber, than there is in Kant himself. Some of the issues that arise here—not all of them, by any means—are purely verbal.) Cf. in this connection Sidgwick, Henry, The Methods of Ethics (London: Macmillan, 1907)Google Scholar, Bk I, Ch. V, §1, and Allison, Henry E., ‘Morality and Freedom: Kant's Reciprocity Thesis’, in The Philosophical Review 95 (1986), esp. §VICrossRefGoogle Scholar. In his discussion of ‘Theorem II’ on 20ffGoogle Scholar. of CPrR, Kant suggests that an irrational act is one where self-love has got the better of the agent. Religion, Bk. One, §III is very revealing in this respect. The suggestion that to succumb to temptation is to lose control of oneself, which is what we see here, is famously ridiculed by Austin, J. L., in ‘A Plea For Excuses’, in Philosophical Papers, Urmson, J. O. and Warnock, G. J. (eds) (Oxford University Press, 1970), 198Google Scholar, footnote. But Austin does not take due account of the fact that there are myriad ways of losing control of oneself. It is interesting to compare all of this with Aristotle's discussion of akrasia, and related issues, in NE, Bk III, Chs 1 and 5 and Bk VII, Chs 3 and 4: Aristotle recoils from the idea that acting wrongly means acting involuntarily.

36 Kant's own discussion of original sin occurs in Religion, Bk One, §III. His views about overcoming it (extricating oneself from the trap) do, interestingly, reveal the importance to his thinking of the diachronic; see further below. Cf. CPuR, A316–317/B373–374. Cf. also in this connection the Aristotelian thought that one can become a morally bad person by repeatedly doing what is morally bad and getting into a habit; hence the importance of education (see NE, Bk II, Ch. 1).

37 For discussion see my ‘Aspects of the Infinite in Kant’.

38 ‘The Disappearing “We”’, in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supp. Vol. 58 (1984), 223.Google Scholar

39 Cf. St. Paul's letter to the Romans, Ch. VII, vv. 14–25, to which we shall return. Cf. also Adams, , ‘Involuntary Sins’Google Scholar, where, on 4, we find the examples of unjust anger, hatred, contempt for others and lack of hearty concern for their welfare; Nagel, , ‘Moral Luck’, 3233Google Scholar; and Schlossberger, Eugene, ‘Why We Are Responsible for Our Emotions’, in Mind 95 (1986)Google Scholar. Aristotle's contrasting view comes out in NE, Bk II, Ch. 5.

40 Cf. Williams, , ELF, 177178 and 194Google Scholar. Much of this essay is meant as a response to Williams's critique.

41 Cf. Nagel, , ‘Moral Luck’, 25Google Scholar, and Williams, , ‘Moral Luck’, 21.Google Scholar

42 It is only right to point out that some of the parts omitted from this quotation make Kant's own position look somewhat further removed from the Kantian position being presented in this essay; see also, in this connection, the crucial disclaimer at A551/B579, footnote. The Kantian position is, however, adopted by Adams, , in ‘Involuntary Sins’. See esp. 25.Google Scholar

43 Cf. McDowell, , ‘Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?’Google Scholar

44 This is where the three dots of ellipsis come in the quotation above; the emphasis is mine. Cf. again CPuR, A551/B579, footnote.Google Scholar

46 I try to say a little more about how hope fits in The Infinite (London: Routledge, 1990), 232233.Google Scholar

47 Cf. above, section I. Kant discusses the regulative use of our Ideas in e.g. CPuR, ‘Transcendental Dialectic’, Bk II, Ch. II, §8.

48 ‘Aspects of the Infinite in Kant’.

49 Cf. Williams, , ELP, 195.Google Scholar

50 Kant, comments on this passage in Religion, 2425Google Scholar. Earlier, vv. 7–11 provide a fascinating critique of how the law of sin is able to get the upper hand in me; cf. Genesis, Ch. II, vv. 15–17 and Ch. III, vv. 1–7. Later in Paul's letter, Ch. VIII, vv. 18–25, we see how important hope is for him too. R. M. Hare makes much of the quoted passage in his discussion of ‘backsliding’ in Freedom and Reason (Oxford University Press, 1963)Google Scholar, §5.1. Paul's psychological model is famously rejected by Davidson, Donald in Part I of ‘How is Weakness of the Will Possible?’, in Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

51 Letter to the Romans, Ch. VIII, vv. 1–2, my emphasis.

52 For further discussion of the tension between Kant's position and orthodox Christianity see Vossenkuhl, Wilhelm, ‘The Paradox in Kant's Rational Religion’, in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 88 (19871988).Google Scholar