"Understanding, wit, judgment, and whatever else the talents of the mind may be called, or confidence, resolve, and persistency of intent, as qualities of temperament, are no doubt in many respects good and desirable; but they can also be extremely evil and harmful if the will that is to make use of these gifts of nature . . . is not good." (393)
My first problem with Kant's ethics is that he provides no analysis of good and evil.
My second problem is that here he calls these virtues good and desirable. But good in what way? Good on what basis? An obvious answer is that virtues are good because of their good consequences.
Consider what Kant says here:
"To be beneficent where one can is one's duty, and besides there are many souls so attuned to compassion that, even without another motivating ground of vanity, or self-interest, they find an inner gratification in spreading joy around them, and can relish the contentment of others, in so far as it is their work. But I assert that in such a case an action of this kind – however much it conforms with duty, however amiable it may be – still has no true moral worth, but stands on the same footing as other inclinations, e.g. the inclination to honor, which if it fortunately lights upon what is in fact in the general interest and in conformity with duty, and hence honorable, deserves praise and encouragement, but not high esteem; for the maxim lacks moral content, namely to do such actions not from inclination, but from duty."
For some context, Kant says we perform actions out of three possible motivations: from duty (respect for law), from immediate inclination (feeling or desire), or from a means to an end.
Kant gives the example of a shopkeeper, which we can adapt to show these three motivations:
1) The shopkeeper who does the right thing, treating his customers fairly, purely for the sake of business. This is doing the right thing but for a reason that's not morally praiseworthy.
2) The shopkeeper who does the right thing because he wills the good of the customer and he delights in their flourishing. That sounds like having a good will, and Kant would say from the outside it's indiscernible from having a good will, but technically this motivation is without any moral value on Kant's view. The reason why is because in this case the shopkeeper is doing what comes naturally to them; they are acting on inclination or desire. They happen to desire something good. But had this person desired differently, they would have acted differently, and so there is no guarantee they would have done the right thing. There is nothing praiseworthy in doing what it was you wanted to do in the first place. (Obviously, this is not true. Clearly there is something praiseworthy about having a good desire, because what kind of a person has good desires? A good person.)
3) The shopkeeper who does the right thing not out of a means to an end or out of inclination, but out of respect for law. He does the right thing for the right reason, which is what it means to have a good will. Doing the right thing because it profits you, or because it satisfies a desire or staves off a discomfort is doing the right thing for a selfish reason (which can be evil or morally neutral). It's only when you do the right thing out of duty that you do something morally praiseworthy.
In all three cases, the shopkeeper acts in conformity with duty, but only in the third case does he act from duty, and it's only this action that has any moral value whatsoever.
So if all that is true, then again, on what basis is it true that "an action of this kind . . . deserves praise and encouragement, but not high esteem . . ." It sounds like Kant is saying these good actions deserve moral praise, and yet deserve no moral praise. Which is it? If the only source of moral value is a good will, and virtues, happiness, and good inclinations all come apart from a good will, then in what way are these things morally good? Would Kant say something can be good and yet not morally good? But in what way is a good action good if not morally good?
Again, it seems obvious to me that actions from good inclinations (but not respect for law) are good because of their good consequences.
So Kant,
1) Fails to analyze good and evil;
2) Calls virtues, happiness, and actions from good inclinations good and deserving of praise, and yet has no basis to call these good.
3) But the problems do not stop there. My third problem is that Kant says an action from an inclination has no moral value even if that inclination is good. But I think this is clearly false, again because a good person is the kind of person to have good inclinations.
4) My fourth problem is the problem of inclination itself and how it relates to respect for the law. Respect for the law is supposed to be a special inclination, but what makes it an exception to the rule? Doing something to satisfy a desire apparently has no moral value, unless that desire happens to be to do the right thing, to do your duty. But it seems to me impossible to avoid the idea that all human motivation is ultimately grounded in the pursuit of happiness and the avoidance of pain. Even the person who acts with the special inclination of respect for the law, and does the right thing for the right reason, must have the desire to maximize their happiness, and acting from duty does this either in the delight of one's identity as a good person (the happiness of self-admiration), or in the avoidance of the discomfort of conscience.
Wouldn't Kant have to say, to maintain his position, that the person who acts from duty does so without any feeling whatsoever of the avoidance of the discomfort of thinking of oneself as a moral failure? I think that it's psychologically impossible for humans to act in any other way except to satisfy inclinations. (When we act against an inclination, really we are just servicing an opposing and yet stronger inclination.) It seems obvious to me that even the person acting from duty is acting to satisfy an inclination.
But if that's right, then there's nothing morally wrong with acting to satisfy an inclination as long as it's a praiseworthy inclination, and if my objection 3 goes through then we must admit of morally praiseworthy inclinations anyway. The other option would be to say that all actions are inherently selfish (trying to pursue happiness or avoid discomfort) and thus have no moral value. But that's clearly a mistake, because what kind of inclination a person has clearly says something about their character. The better the inclination, the better the character. If it would bother you to not do the right thing, then good! That shows that you are the right kind of person. In fact, it is exactly this inclination of feeling bothered by wrongness that we point to as one of the prime indicators of a good character.
More problems are to come, and if given the chance I will show just how completely and deeply my moral system departs from Kant's.
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