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philosophical topicsvol. 41, no. 1, spring 2013

Being Worthy of Happiness: Towards a Kantian Appreciation of Our Finite Nature

Sabine dring University of Tbingen

eva-maria dringerUniversity of Tbingen

abSTracT. We say of people who act morally that they deserve to be happy, especially when acting morally comes at the price of happiness. We find this thought, especially in a Kantian framework, puzzling. if we define morality and its value independently of happiness, how can it be that we deserve happiness when we act morally? We seek to answer these questions by first looking at Kants discussion of a causal connection of morality and happiness in the highest good, which we do not find explan-atorily satisfying, before examining possible good-makers of happiness that might explain why happiness is, even for a Kantian, a proper reward for moral behaviour.

i. iNTroducTioN

Kant generally does not seem to have a high opinion of happiness. The only thing of absolute value is rational nature, and in order to exert this nature, we must

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more or less disregard happiness. Sometimes we are even required to act in a way that we know will make our happiness impossible. Happiness seems, if anything, a disturbing factor in our truly valuable moral endeavours. it comes as a surprise, therefore, that throughout his writings on practical philosophy Kant equates being moral with being worthy of happiness. What does he mean? Surely, when we are worthy of a thing, this thing must be of high valuebut what sort of value does happiness have? and how can it be that moral behaviour, the very behaviour that is good in itself, makes us worthy of something else? is Kant contradicting his famous claim that morality would shine like a jewel for itself, as something having its full worth in itself (4:394)1 by saying that it needs to be crowned by happiness? These questions pose the starting point to our attempt to understand what it means to be worthy of happiness, and how being moral can make one so. our aim is not to elucidate the role that being worthy of happiness plays in Kants larger system of morality and religion.2 instead, what we are interested in is the fact that Kant put his finger on a familiar phenomenon: we do say of people who regard moral claims on themselves as more pressing than claims of personal hap-piness that they are, oddly enough, worthy and deserving of such happiness. What exactly do we mean when we say this? can we meaningfully say this from within a Kantian framework? in this paper we will try to answer these questions in the following way. First, we will give a literary example that illustrates the general fact that we do think of moral persons as being worthy of happiness. We will then go on to examine pos-sible meanings of the phrase x is worthy of y and apply them to the moral person and happiness. Two aspects will be analysed in detail: does there have to be a causal connection between the good act and that which it makes us worthy of, and what are the good-making properties of moral behaviour on the one hand, and happi-ness on the other? once these analyses are conducted, we will try to come to a final conclusion about the best way to understand the fact that we think of the moral person as being worthy of happiness.

ii. edWard FerrarS aNd WHaT iT meaNS To be WorTHy oF SomeTHiNg

one does not have to look very far in the world of fiction for an example of a hero who, because he has made some great sacrifice for moralitys sake, we think of as especially worthy of happiness. in fact, it is rather a classic storyline: a young man has to prove his moral integrity throughout a series of trials and temptations, and because he is ready to give up his own happiness in the face of moral demands, we want him to end up happy in the end, which he usually does. in Jane austens Sense and Sensibility we meet edward Ferrars, the oldest son of a man who died very rich and who left all of his money at the disposal of his

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wife. When still a teenager, edward has the misfortune to fall prey to his own youthful naivety and the charms of pretty lucy Steele, who, unbeknownst to him, is a rather cunning and selfish girl. They get engaged secretly, because lucy is of a comparatively poor family and would most certainly not meet with the approval of edwards mother. a few years later he has not only realised that he has made a mistake, but he also falls in love with elinor dashwood, a woman of sense, warmth, and virtue. When some time later his engagement with lucy becomes accidentally known to his mother, edward is faced with a decision: his mother demands that he ends his engagement, or else he will not receive any more financial support from her and his brother robert will become the heir to their fathers fortune. Knowing that marrying lucy now means unhappiness in more than one respect, edward takes it to be his duty to honour his promise to her. and so he does. of a person like edward, that is, of a person who acts against his inclinations and sacrifices all chance of happiness for the sake of doing his duty, we want to say that he is worthy of happiness. He deserves to be happy, more so perhaps than others who are, from a moral perspective, luckier in life. What poses an interesting question now, at least from a Kantian perspective, is how doing ones duty can have anything to do with the relation in which one stands to ones happiness. The truly moral act, Kant tells us more than once, is the one that is done from duty and not just in conformity with it (see, e.g., 5:81). We are asked to disregard all inclinations, all thoughts of what might make us happy, and act in strict accordance with the demands of the moral lawout of respect for it, not because we think it might have good consequences. How can it be that such actions, seemingly purified from all connections to happiness, are the ones that make us worthy of happiness? To begin our attempt at answering this question, let us look at how we ordi-narily use the terms worthy and worthy of . We say of people that they are worthy winners of a competition, of actions that they are praiseworthy, of causes that they are worthy. in each case we acknowledge something valuable: the worthy win-ner has, perhaps, trained in a very disciplined way, has never taken performance- enhancing drugs, and has so far proved himself to be a person of moral integrity. Praiseworthy actions tend to be helpful in some way, and worthy causes tend to promote the welfare of someone. The things that a person or an action can be wor-thy of need not always have a positive valuepatterns of behaviour or particular actions can be cringeworthy, for example. Here we have a social reaction associ-ated with cringing, something negative, which particularly embarrassing actions can deserve. a first thing to become clear about is that we can use the adjective worthy in a nonrelational way or in a relational way. When we use it in a nonrelational way, as we do when we speak of worthy causes, we seem simply to want to acknowledge the value of the cause. Perhaps these are mostly moral values, as worthy causes tend to have morally good consequences and worthy people morally good char-acter traits. When we use worthy in a relational way, we relate a valuable person

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or action to something else that is valuable and that we think the valuable person or action deserves. The helpful action deserves praise, the embarrassing action deserves cringes, and edward Ferrars deserves happiness. Sometimes we find causal connections between that which is good and the good which it deserves: helpful actions can directly cause praise by those who observe it and embarrassing behaviour can directly cause those who observe it to cringe. Perhaps one could even understand praiseworthiness and cringeworthiness as dispositions to cause the relevant response under certain conditions. it is more difficult, however, to think of a causal connection between moral behaviour and happiness. could the worthiness to be happy also be a disposition to cause hap-piness under suitable circumstances, and it is just edward Ferrarss bad luck that the suitable circumstances are not in place, at least not in this world? interestingly, Kant seems to think that there is a necessary causal connection between moral behaviour and that which it makes us worthy ofnamely, happiness. We will look at Kants reasons in detail in the next section and try to refute them. a causal connection, whether necessary or not, is certainly not all that there is to a worthiness relation. a further observation is that both relata are valuable, be this negative or positive. in some cases it seems that that which we make our-selves worthy of is at least slightly more valuable than our worthy character trait or action. To use another example from Jane austen, we find mr. bennett, once he has understood that mr. darcy is not the arrogant and unscrupulous fellow he had supposed him to be, but instead a virtuous landlord and kind man, saying to lizzy, if this be the case, he deserves you. i could not have parted with you, my lizzy, for anyone less worthy. even though worthy is used in the nonrelational sense here, we can easily see that mr. bennett does not merely want to acknowledge mr. darcys moral integrity, but praise him as deserving his daughter, as being worthy of her. To mr. bennett, whose opinion and estimation of his daughter couldnt be higher, this means that mr. darcy has climbed in his opinion to a position some-where near his daughters, but probably not above. We might even be able to gen-eralise this point to some extent: very often, to be worthy of something a person or an action has to be almost as good as that thing.3 if the person or action is in fact better, then it is rather the object that is worthy of them. in other words, if mr. bennett came to see that mr. darcy is in fact even more virtuous, kind, and witty than his daughter, then he should rather say that lizzy is worthy of mr. darcy than the other way round. So far, then, we have a possible causal relation between the worthy object and that of which it is worthy, and the observation that both must be valuablethat of which the subject is worthy possibly slightly more so than the worthy subject. These characteristics do not yet seem sufficient, however, fully to account for the meaning of worthy of . What is missing is an explanation of why it is so fitting that these two valuable objects should be united. is it just aesthetically pleasing that two similarly valuable objects should be joined together? This seems too weak. Somehow we think of it as just, or fair, that one should have the other. What one is

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worthy of one deserves, and to get what one deserves is fair. but it does not seem to be the ordinary sense of fairness that we mean here. ordinarily, when something is fair it works according to rules that secure equal opportunities, say. Something is unfair if these rules are not obeyed. but edward is not in a position to say that his state of unhappiness is unfair in that senseno rules have been broken, no one can be blamed, and justice cannot easily be restored but remains a matter of luck. it is like a lottery: you cant complain when you dont win, even though you can think that when you do, as perhaps the poorest and most honest player, you deserve it. you think that this is fair in the sense that a good balance is restored, a balance between endured hardships and the often-sour fulfilment of ones duty on the one hand, and the sweet delights of pleasure on the other. its a balance to which we do not have a right, but which, however, we think of as ultimately rightas an ideal. When we say that a is worthy of b, then we think both a and b are valu-able, b perhaps slightly more so than a. We think that it is fitting that a should have b because, in an ideal world, this would be so. it creates a balance that we think should obtain, even though it is not a balance that can always obtain in this worldthis is why we called it an ideal balance. When we say that a is worthy of b and a has b, then this is perfect according to the ideal balance. if a is worthy of b and does not have b, then we think he should have b, even though it is not a should that carries with it any normative force that can be exercised on anyone, but rather a should that is expressive of a wish. Kant seems to think that this perfect balance between hardships and fulfilled duties on the one side and happiness on the other side is the highest goodthe goal that we ultimately strive for. as such, this balance is not an ideal, but rather something that we should actively strive for and that we must believe is possible for us to reach. Why this is so, how Kant thinks we can reach it, and why he should ultimately step back from such claims, we will discuss in the next section.

iii. cauSal coNNecTioNS

in the dialectic of the Critique of Practical Reason Kant begins to develop the idea of a highest good of practical reason by claiming that even though moral behaviour is the condition of everything that is good, moral behaviour is not the only thing that is good. His reason seems to be this:

For, to need happiness, to be also worthy of it, and yet not to participate in it cannot be consistent with the perfect volition of a rational being that would at the same time have all power. (5:110)

Kant recognises at various points that human beings cannot but want to be happy. Happiness is, he says in the Groundwork, our natural end (see, e.g., 4:430). Human beings are thus potentially torn in their strivings: on the one hand they are rational

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creatures, and as such they want to determine their actions by a law they give themselves, which is ultimately the moral law; on the other hand, however, they cannot deny their physical make-up and all the inclinations and desires that come with it. a perfectly rational and powerful will, we are told in the quote above, can-not at the same time recognise these two human goals, morality and happiness, and choose only one goalnamely, moralityto be realised. instead, the perfectly rational and powerful will chooses the realisation of the highest good, which is happiness distributed in exact proportion to morality (5:110). Kant then asks how this unity of happiness and morality is to be thought of. Two possibilities emerge: either the unity is analytic and we think of happiness and morality as identical, or the unity is synthetic, and we think of happiness and morality as causally related. as candidates for the first option, i.e., an analytic connection between happiness and morality, Kant identifies Stoic and epicurean concepts of the highest good and refutes them. Neither is a mind that is conscious of its moral strivings thereby happy, nor is a mind that is conscious of its striv-ings for happiness thereby virtuous. instead, Kant points out that happiness and morality, though united in the highest good, are so far from coinciding that they greatly restrict and infringe upon each other in the same subject (5:112). and we can easily see how this is so, we just have to look back at poor edward Ferrars. Kant concludes, rightfully we think, that striving for happiness and striving for morality are not one and the same thing but that they, if they are to meet in the highest good, must have a synthetic connection. This synthetic connection must, according to Kant, be thought of as the connection of cause and effect, because it concerns a practical good, that is, one that is possible through action (5:113). Now we encounter a problem: just as happiness and morality are not identical, the striving for one does not tend to bring about the other. Kant is clear about thatits the antinomy of pure practical reason. The resolution of this antinomy involves recourse to the distinction between intelligible and the sensible worlds and consists in the claim that, even though according to the laws of nature, which govern the sensible world, being moral does not necessarily causally entail being happy,

it is not impossible that morality of disposition should have a connec-tion, and indeed a necessary connection, as cause with happiness as effect in the sensible world, if not immediately yet mediately (by means of an intelligible author of nature), a connection which, in a nature that is merely an object of the senses, can never occur except contingently and cannot suffice for the highest good. (5:115)

Kant here lays the foundation for a justified hope in gods existence, for only through his mediation can a causal connection between a moral disposition and happiness be thought of. it is difficult, however, to understand how we are to think of this mediation. Happiness and morality are here not linked by the natural causal laws that we observe as governing the sensible world, and even if there is a causal link between them beyond the natural laws, we can only experience this as

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a contingent link. This does not make it impossible for us, Kant seems to say, to think of this link beyond our observation as a necessary link between our intelligible moral disposition and sensible happiness, brought about with the help of god. Kants language is very modest at this point and he claims that all he has shown is the conceptual possibility of a causal link between morality and happi-ness. but why should we believe this link to exist? We should believe it, because the highest good is the necessary object of a practically rational will, and as such it needs to be achievable. and in order to account for this achievability, we need to believe in this sort of causal linkage between morality and happiness. at least two problems arise at this point. The first problem centres around the question in which world the sensible happiness, which is caused by the intelligible moral disposition, is to be enjoyed. even if this problem can be solved, there is the second problem of why we need to believe in the causal linkage between morality and happiness in order to pursue the highest good. The first problem arises when one starts to think about this possible link between sensible happiness and intelligible morality more clearly. it is possible, or so Kant claims, that we think of our moral dispositionas it is in itself and not as it is experienced by usas necessarily causing, with gods help, a happiness we can experience. Now, we know, and Kant knows, that in the world of our experience there is no necessary connection between moral behaviour and happiness. This means that either the sensible world regularly deceives us about the true nature of our dispositionsfor if our dispositions were truly moral, then we would be happyor Kant talks about a sensible world not in this life, but in the next. and indeed, we can observe that towards the end of the resolution of the antinomy Kant suddenly does speak of a necessary connection between the consciousness of morality and the expectation of happiness proportionate to it (5:518, italics ours), which seems to suggest that happiness is an expected reward in the afterlife for moral behaviour in this life. This, however, entails the question of what hap-piness in proportion to virtue would look like in the afterlife. Happiness, after all, is our natural end, the sum of the satisfaction of our final, physical naturescan there be such a happiness in the afterlife? There seems to be a conceptual difficulty here.4 but if Kant sticks to happiness in this life, the old empirical truth that so many people with good moral dispositions end up unhappy remains an unsolved problem unless we believe that, as suggested above, we are very often deceived about the true nature of our dispositions. let us look at the second problem, which is the question why Kant thinks that we need to believe in a causal connection between morality and happiness in order to be able to pursue the highest good. The dialectic of the second Critique does not have to offer much of an explanation here, but Kants reasoning towards the end of the Critique of Pure Reason seems to be that if the connection was not necessarily causal, then it would be merely contingent and in that case the highest good itself would turn into a matter of luck. Put differently, without the neces-sary causal connection between moral disposition and happiness, then try as you

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morally might, there is no guarantee that you end up happy and that a perfect proportion of happiness and virtue ever obtains. if we believed that, Kant seems to say, the moral laws would never get off the ground:

Such a ruler [god], together with life in such a world [where there is happiness in exact proportion to virtue], which we must regard as a future world, reason finds itself constrained to assume; otherwise it would have to regard the moral laws as empty figments of the brain, since without this postulate the necessary consequence which it itself connects with these laws could not follow. Hence also everyone regards the moral laws as commands; and this the moral law could not be if they did not connect a priori suitable consequences with their rules, and thus carry with them promises and threats. (a 811, b839)

The argument here seems this:

(1) We regard moral laws as commands.(2) The condition of the possibility of (1) is that moral laws are a priori

connected with rewards (promises) in the case of our obedience, and punishment (threats) in the case of our disobedience.

(3) We must think of the obedience of moral laws as necessarilythat is, causallyconnected with rewards.

if Kant was right here, then we would think of the moral person worthy of happiness in the sense that the moral person stands in a causal relation to the reward of happiness in proportion to his morality. That is simply part of how we cannot but understand obedience to the moral laws; namely, as actions necessarily rewarded. To be worthy of happiness then means justifiably to expect happiness in the future. but is Kant right here? We think that he is not, and that is because premise (2) is mistaken. it is possibleconceptually, rationally, and psychologicallyto think of the moral laws as commands without believing that moral actions will be rewarded. it is conceptually possible, because we can fully understand what a commanding moral law is without having to think of a reward system attuned to it. it is rationally possible, because, as Kant himself tells us often enough, it is not irrational to regard the moral law as binding, even though it promises no pay-off. on the contrary, it is in giving ourselves the moral law, in regarding the moral law as binding, no matter what the consequences, that we are our most rational selves. Finally, it is psychologically possible, because people actually think that way. We keep promises that are a burden, without hoping for a reward. We dont lie, without thinking of being repaid for it. and we respect someone elses opinion, not because we like it or think that at some point we are honoured for our high-mindedness, but because it is right. We thus conclude that it is perfectly possible to understand the moral law as binding, even though we do not believe that our moral endeavours will be rewarded with happiness. The highest good might be a matter of luck, but that should not stop us from trying for it.

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iV. good-maKiNg ProPerTieS

in the last section we tried to show that between the worthy object and that of which it is worthy there need not be a causal connection. but even though we cannot justifiably expect, or perhaps even justifiably hope, for the future reality of the highest good, it is nevertheless an ideal that guides us in this life. at the end of the first section we argued that something like the highest goodthat is, a world in which there is a perfect balance between endured hardships and fulfilled duties on the one hand, and happiness in the form of satisfied desires and inclinations on the otheris an ideal that we use to express our estimation for good actions and characters. When we say of someone that he is worthy of happiness, we say that if things were as they ideally should be, then he would be happy. We say that he has done something very valuable that deserves to get an at least as valuable reward. The question that remains to be answered is: can Kant say this, too? Kant can claim that the highest good, the ultimate end of practical reason, is a combination of moral behaviour and happiness, because these are the two objects that rational, finite creatures like us strive for. but why should they be proportion-ally distributed? How can happiness be so good as to be on equal terms with, if not of higher value than, moral behaviour, so as to strike an ideal balance with it? at this point we are coming back to the oddity that struck us at the very beginning of the paper. by talking of a moral character as one that is worthy of happiness, Kant suggests that happiness is something very valuable. This is somewhat contrary to the common picture of Kantian ethics, which often seems busy with lowering the value of happiness in the agents eyes, so that he is able to see clearly that which is of absolute worth, which shines like a jewel even if it brings about misery, which grounds our dignity: our rational, and therewith moral, nature (4:394 etc.). admittedly, Kant acknowledges that we are not perfectly rational agents but have a finite, physical nature as well, one that is driven by needs and inclinations and that sets us our natural end. but given that Kant talks of this natural end as something that a rational creature, if only he could, would completely dispense with, it does come as surprise that this natural end should be thought of as valuable to a degree that the moral person who is also happy has got his due according to an ideal world. When talking about god as one of the postulates of pure practical reason, Kant describes why it does not diminish gods masterplan of a thoroughly moral world if we add to this a proportionate state of happiness:

nothing glorifies god more than what is most estimable in the world, respect for his command, observance of the holy duty his command lays upon us, when there is added to this his magnificent plan of crowning such a beautiful order with corresponding happiness. (5:131)

on the one hand, it almost feels like Kant wants to apologize here for burden-ing god with such trivial tasks as seeing to our happiness in the afterlife, but on the other hand, it is remarkable to see what words Kant uses to describe the state

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of the highest good: it is a state of beautiful (moral) order that is crowned by cor-responding happiness. For one thing to crown another must mean that this thing is of very high value. unlike that of which one is worthy, that which crowns some-thing need not be of equal or higher valueit is more like the icing on the cake, something that makes an already very good thing perfect. but what is it that makes happiness the icing on the cake? it seems that there are two candidates, either its being the object of a rational or good will or its being the object of our desires. We will discuss both in turn. First is the suggestion that is located in the tradition of theories that say that something is good in virtue of being right. in our case this means that happiness is good in virtue of being the object of a good will. The following quote may be read in support of this suggestion: While such a will [a good will] may not indeed be the sole and complete good, it must, nevertheless, be the highest good and the condition of all the rest, even of the desire for happiness (4:396).5 Kant can be interpreted here as saying that although the good will is the best of all things, it is not the only thing that is goodbut all the other things that are good are good because, or in virtue of, their being the object of a good will. a similar point, albeit from a different angle, is made by christine Korsgaard in her reading of Kantian axiology.6 let us assume, in the following, that a good will and rational choiceat least in the way Korsgaard uses the termcome to the same thing. Korsgaard says

what makes the object of your rational choice good is that it is the object of a rational choice. That is, since we still do make choices and have the attitude that what we choose is good in spite of our incapacity to find the unconditioned condition of the objects goodness in this (empirical) regress upon conditions, it must be that we are supposing that rational choice itself makes its object good. His idea is that rational choice has what i will call a value-conferring status. When Kant says: rational nature exists as an end in itself. man necessarily thinks of his own existence in this way; thus far it is a subjective principle of human actions (g 429), i read him as claiming that in our private rational choices and in general in our actions we view ourselves as having a val-ue-conferring status in virtue of our rational nature. (Korsgaard 1996, 122 ff.)

Kant, in the penultimate quote, can be read as saying that the good will is the only thing that is good in itself and everything else that is good is so only qua being the object of such a good will. Korsgaards way of putting this can be summarized thusly: when we make rational choices, we necessarily regard the chosen object as good, and since we could otherwise ask the question of what makes it good ad infinitum, it must be the very fact that it is the object of a rational choice that makes it good. The same point, again in a slightly different way, is made by allen Wood:

in Kants argument rational nature is not being viewed as the source of good things (of their existence, for example), but rather as the source of their goodness itself, of the very fact that they are good The right

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parallel here is with our attitude toward an authority as a source of recommendations or commands. it makes sense for us to take some-ones advice or prescription as authoritative only to the extent that we respect and esteem the authority itself as their ground. Hence we have reason to regard as good the ends we ourselves set only to the extent that we (at least implicitly) respect and esteem our own rational nature as that which sets them. (Wood 1998, 176)

let us take for granted the thought that, when we make a rational choice, we must regard the object of our choice as goodotherwise the choice would not be rational. The question that Korsgaard and Wood ask is with what justification we regard the objects of our rational choices as good. Korsgaards answer is that it cannot be that we regard them as good because they gratify particular desires of ours, because if this were the case, we could keep asking, but why is that good?, and therefore it must be the very fact that they are objects of rational choice that makes the chosen ends good. Wood, on the other hand, draws an analogy: we regard as authoritative only those commands that come from a source we respect as authoritative also. Similarly, we regard as good only those choices that are made by an instance we regard as good also. luckily, we do not need to evaluate these arguments here. We can simply take the suggestion that the rational, or good, will functions as the good-maker for happiness and see whether a kind of happiness that is good in this sense can be the one that we make ourselves worthy of by behaving morally. Happiness is made good here because the objects of some inclinations end up being the objects of rational choice. Not all happiness is made good, since there can still be inclinations whose objects would not be picked by rational choice. but the objects of inclina-tions that do get picked together form a happiness that is good. on first glance it seems that this kind of happiness is a good candidate for our understanding of moral behaviour as being worthy of happiness, as Kant would not have to give up his general notion of rational nature, and therewith morality, as being the only thing that is good in itself and the only thing that can confer goodness onto any-thing else. but if we look more closely, we will find at least a couple of difficulties. it is one and the same good will, or one and the same rational choice, that makes moral behaviour good and that makes happiness good. in the example of edward Ferrars, it is his good will that makes good his choice to stay with lucy, and it is his good will that makes good the objects his of inclinations it allows to be pursued. We encounter two problems at this point: the first is a conceptual one according to which two things with the same good-maker cannot stand in a relation of worthiness to each other, and the second is that in edwards case the happiness we think him worthy of is such that is impossible to be made good by his good will. We will look at both problems in turn. if it is one and the same thing that makes moral behaviour and happiness good, then it does not make sense anymore to say that moral behaviour makes us worthy of, or deserve, happiness. We need two instantiations of good-makers

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to be able to talk about Ss deserving X in the sense of a reward, just as we need two instantiations of bad-makers to be able to talk about Ss deserving X in the sense of a punishment. The general ideas behind the concepts of reward and pun-ishment seem to be that in the case of a reward, we have one good thing that is supplemented with another onetwo positive values add up, if you will, whereas in the case of punishment we have one bad thing that is, at least to some extent, neutralised by another bad thingtwo negative values added up, if you will. a reward is meant to be a bonus, an extra, something over and above that which is already there. a punishment is the same thing in the negative. because these ideas of added value, positive or negative, are implicit in the concepts of reward and punishment, we need two different instantiations of good-making properties in the case of reward, otherwise we would not have anything to add up in the sense required. Perhaps a Woodian analogy with authority might help at this point to make the problem clearer: different pieces of advice coming from the same source of authority cannot add up to a piece of advice that is more authoritative stillwe would need a piece of advice from a different source of authority, which, when added to the first, would result in something that is more authoritative than its parts. even though we might create multiple bearers of authority from one source of authority, these bearers, when added up, do not amount to something that is more authoritative than any of its individual parts. and it is just like that when it comes to bearers of value from one source of value. Perhaps, one might object at this point, it is not true that, according to Korsgaards and Woods reading, moral behaviour and happiness have an identical good- making property. Perhaps the expression moral behaviour is misleading. What really makes us worthy of happiness is having a moral disposition, and a moral disposition consists in having a good will. Thus, a moral disposition is not made good by the very same thing that makes happiness good, but instead it is the thing that makes happiness good. a moral disposition is good as the source of value; its being the source of goodness is its good-making property. Happiness is made good by this source; its being the object of a moral disposition is its good-making property. does this reading help us out of difficulties? We might get around the identity issues, but we find it still as hard as before to talk about happiness, when it is made good by a moral disposition, as a reward for the very same moral dis-position. again, what is lacking here is that the reward brings something extra, a bonus. The second problem we mentioned was that in edwards case, his happiness cannot possibly be made good by his good will, because it is precisely his good will that disallows him to seek his happiness in marriage with elinor. He has to give up the prospect of this happiness precisely because, as things then stand, it would be immoral, as it would necessitate a broken promise. The interesting point to make now is that this is not a freak case, but rather the common one. We talk of people as worthy of happiness very often exactly when they are forced to give up pur-suing that which would make them happy for moral reasonsbecause it would

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be founded on immoral choices. if, in these common cases, happiness is thus founded on immoral choices, it does not make sense anymore to talk of the good-ness of such happiness as grounded in being the object of a good will. Happiness is precisely not, painfully not, the object of a good will. This does not mean that it is necessarily bad. it simply means that this piece of happiness may not be pursued under the current conditions. That it is still valuable we see in edwards example: his happiness, which consists in a marriage to elinor, is precisely what we think him worthy of, even though this means that, tragically, edward cannot be worthy of happinessthat is, maintain his moral standards and be happy at the same timeunless the circumstances change. if edwards happiness is not made good by being the object of a good will, what is it that does explain its high value? We said earlier that happiness seems to have two possible good-makers, either being the object of rational choice or being the object of our accumulated desires. The second option fares better than the first insofar as there is no danger of the good-making properties of moral behaviour and happiness being identical. Suppose moral behaviour is good in a moral way, whether its good-maker is its being the object of rational choice, or its being the source of all (morally) good things. Happiness, as the sum of satisfied inclinations, is good because it is desired. let us go back to the quote from the beginning of this section. Kant says that While such a will [a good will] may not indeed be the sole and complete good, it must, nevertheless, be the highest good and the condition of all the rest, even of the desire for happiness (4:396).7 So far we have read the condition of all the rest in the sense that the good will is that which confers value on everything else that is goodit is the necessary and sufficient condition for everything elses goodness. let us read it differently now: the good will, as the will that determines all actions according to the categorical imperative, is a necessary condition for the goodness of all things, but it is not a sufficient condition. Things are only good if they pass the categorical imperative, but things are also good because they fulfil desires, because they meet our needs, because we enjoy them. This reading of the goodness of happiness generally fits together with Kants rather negative picture of happiness. morality is of absolute value, and happiness, as the product of our inclinations, is everything that morality is not: dependent on empirical factors, changeable, elusive. This may explain why happiness is nothing worth striving for in itself, why, if it is to be admitted into the highest good, it must meet the demands of morality as a condition, and why the purely rational man would choose to be rid of his inclinations altogether:

all the objects of inclinations have only a conditioned value; for if there were not these inclinations and the needs founded on them, then their object would be without value. but the inclinations themselves, being sources of needs, are so far from having an absolute value such as to render them desirable for their own sake that the universal wish of every rational being must be, rather, to be wholly free from them. (4:428)

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again we meet with the phrase conditioned. let us grant Kant that the inclina-tions are not valuable in themselves, but that they, somehow, manage to condition the value of their objects. an inclination for X confers some value onto X. We are, at least conceptually, able to say now that a person with a moral dis-positionsomething absolutely good and as such made good by itself, deserves happinesssomething not absolutely good and made good by inclinations. even though there is no conceptual problem anymore, we have to ask ourselves why, for the moral person, happiness would be something he makes himself worthy of. The value of moral behaviour and the value of happiness are, on this reading, immensely disproportionate, possibly even incommensurable. Happiness is por-trayed as a necessary evil that comes with the second, dirty part of our nature. For we are not only rational creatures, we are also finite creatures. We have a body that sets us happiness as a natural end. if we could, wed be without it, but we cant. and now this necessary evil is going to be the crowning feature of our practised dig-nity, moral behaviour? its the reward that should encourage more of that which, in itself, is disproportionately superior? its that which is good to a similarly high degree as is moral behaviour, which is why wed rejoice in the moral persons being happy? at this point, then, we face a dilemma: either, and this is the first horn of the dilemma, happiness is made good by being the object of a moral disposition. Such goodness is indeed great, but for conceptual reasons we seem to lose the ability to talk about such happiness as that of which having a moral disposition makes us worthy, and even if we didnt, we would not be able to account for cases like edwards. or, and this is the second horn of the dilemma, happiness is made good by being the object of inclinations. Such goodness is not great and talking of such happiness as that of which we make ourselves worthy by behaving morally is, though conceptually possible, ridiculous. So what can we do? There are two ways out of the dilemma. The first one is to bite the bullet, that is, accept the first horn of the dilemma, and say that speaking of moral behaviour as that which makes us worthy of happiness was a mistake. maybe Kant should take this route. Happiness keeps its place in the highest good, but only as that which makes our ultimate goal as finite rational creatures complete. Since hap-piness is not necessarily morally good, it needs to be conditioned by its passing the test of the categorical imperative to take its place in the highest good. moral behaviour does then not make us worthy of happinessrather, being willed by a moral disposition makes happiness worthy of taking a place in the highest good. The other way out of the dilemma, the one we favour and one which Kant, theoretically, could also take, embraces the second horn of the dilemma and tries to twist it so that it is made to work. The reason we favour this different way becomes clear when we look at the example of edward Ferrars again. That we think of the moral person as worthy of happiness is an irrefutable fact, and a Kantian should be able to make sense of it. What we need to do in order to make sense of it is to carry out a shift in perspective. We are rational and finite beings. as rational beings we

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want to live a life completely determined by the moral law; nothing else is import-ant to us. as finite beings we want our inclinations to be fulfilled; nothing else is important to us. From the perspective of the finite being, happiness is of incredibly high value. Thus, from the perspective of the dual creatures that we are, both a life determined by the moral law and a life of happiness are incredibly important and as such they become commensurable. We can still see, from this dual perspective, that obedience to the moral law should trump our strivings for happiness, in case the two come into conflict. The moral law commands categorically. Nevertheless, that which we might have to give up for moralitys sakenamely, happinessis not a sacrifice that comes cheap. it is, after all, the fulfilment of our dearest desires. as such, it is no wonder that we value it very highly. We can connect these thoughts to what we said at the end of the first section about the best possible world we can imagine. The best possible world for the kind of creatures that we are, rational but with a body that makes us desire things, is one in which both sides flourish equally. in this world, rationality can unfold to the highest degree, demand obedience to the moral law from us and is complied with. at the same time, our dearest desires are satisfied and we are happy. The satisfac-tion of these desires does not stand in conflict with the demands of our rational naturehappiness is, just as Kant has it in the highest good, a morally sanctioned happiness and as such in perfect proportion to virtue. The perfectly virtuous are perfectly happy, and no ill luck prevents them from being so. How does this ideal now help us to explain the fact that we speak of edward Ferrars as worthy of happiness? When we say that, if things were as they ideally should be, edward would be rewarded with a happy marriage, we do not want to say that it would be acceptable to break a promise and edward should go ahead and do soon the contrary. We want to say that, if things were as they ideally should be, edward would not have met with all the ill luck he has met with. He would not have fallen prey to the cunning of a pretty girl, he would not have given her the fatal promise in the first place, and he would have been happy in exact proportion to his virtuewhich in his case is very happy. or, we want to say that, if things are as they ideally should be, edward will meet with better luck in the future. maybe something will happen that, without compromising his moral hon-our, leads to his release from his engagement. as fiction can create the best possible world rather more easily than reality, this is exactly what happens. lucy runs off with edwards younger brother and edward is free to marry elinor. Thus, edward gets the happiness of which he has proved himself worthy by his obedience to morality against all temptation to the contrary. Where does this leave us then? Kants mistake, if we can call it such, is that he never really takes up the dual perspective, but that he mainly evaluates happiness from the rational perspective. From there, happiness is indeed something with which we would ideally completely dispense. We need the finite perspective in order to appreciate the great value of happiness, and thus it is only from a dual perspective that comprises both the rational and the finite perspective that we can

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think of moral behaviour and happiness of value to an almost similar high degree. Kant does not seem overly fond of the dual perspective. if he wants to retain his evaluative outlook from the rational perspective, though, he cannot speak sensibly anymore of moral persons as worthy of happiness. To do so would be a sham. No, from the rational perspective the good will shines indeed like a jewel, no matter how dire the consequences, and happiness has not enough value to be considered something of which a display of good will makes us worthy. From the dual per-spective, however, we can speak of matters as they ideally should be for us, the dual creatures that we are, and that is a state of happiness in proportion to virtue, without the distorting factor of luck.

acKNoWledgemeNTS

We would like to thank robin dennis, anika lutz, marcus Willaschek, and an

anonymous referee for very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

NoTeS

1. Kant quotes are given according to the german academy edition, Kants Gesammelte Schriften, edited by the Kniglich Preussische akademie der Wissenschaften (berlin: georg reimer, 1902), apart from quotes from the Critique of Pure Reason, which are given according to the original a and b editions. used translations are listed in the bibliography.

2. For fairly recent discussions concerning these matters, see mariana (2000) and engstrom (1992).

3. This relation certainly does not always hold, however, as we would not say that praise is more valuable than that which is praiseworthy, or that a cringe is worse than that which is cringeworthy.

4. allen Wood refers to a discussion of this point by Theodore m. greene in Wood (2009, 131).

5. The highest good here refers to the supreme good and not, as he understands it in the main part of the dialectic of pure practical reason and as we have understood it heretofore, to the complete good. Kant makes this distinction between the highest as the supreme and as the complete at the beginning of the Dialectic 5:110.

6. We are referring mainly to two papers here, Kants Formula of Humanity and aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value, both published in Korsgaard (1996).

7. The highest good here refers to the supreme good and not, as he understands it in the main part of the dialectic of pure practical reason and as we have understood it heretofore, to the complete good. Kant makes this distinction between the highest as the supreme and as the complete at the beginning of the Dialectic 5:110.

reFereNceS

engstrom, S. 1992. The concept of the Highest good in Kants moral Theory. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52: 74780.

Kant, i. 1929. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. london: macmillan.

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Kant, i. 1993. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by James Wesley ellington. indianapolis, iN: Hackett Publishing.

Kant, i. 1997. Critique of Practical Reason. edited and translated by mary gregor. cambridge: cambridge university Press.

Korsgaard, c. 1996. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. New york: cambridge university Press.marina, J. 2000. making Sense of Kants Highest good. Kant-Studien 91: 32955.Wood, a. 1998. Humanity as an end in itself. in Kants Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals:

Critical Essays, ed. P. guyer. boston: rowman & littlefield Publishers.Wood, a. W. 2009. Kants Moral Religion. ithaca, Ny: cornell university Press.