Angela Zhou

Professor Pourciau

GER 210: Intro to German Philosophy

8 March, 2013

Kant begins his Groundwork Concerning the Metaphysics of Morals by first analyzing

"common sense morality" and delineating the true vocation of reason as a will good in itself,

rather than an individual’s mechanism for happiness. He suggests that "Now in a being that has

reason and a will, if the proper end of nature were its preservation, its welfare, in a word its

happiness, then nature would have hit upon a very bad arrangement in selecting the reason of the

creature to carry out this purpose." But in passage 4:430, while clarifying the characteristics of

necessary and contingent duties to oneself and others, Kant claims that "...the natural end that all

human beings have is their own happiness..." and that "there is still only a negative and not a

positive agreement with humanity as an end in itself unless everyone also tries, as far as he can,

to further the ends of others.” It appears that here Kant contradicts himself by asserting the

unsuitability of reason to the pursuit of happiness, and the contingent duty of the rational will to

further other's happiness. Untangling the Kant’s ideas about the role of individual happiness

reveals its complex and ambiguous relationship with Kant’s oppositions of duty vs inclination

and means vs. ends. These binary oppositions are at the heart of Kant’s framework for a

metaphysics of morality.

To resolve this seeming contradiction, I reconstruct Kant’s statements regarding duty,

happiness, and reason. He observes that more often than not, reason ultimately interferes with the

individual’s pursuit of happiness and an individual’s instinct could provide better guidance to the

same end. Kant argues that the true vocation of reason must therefore be a greater cause than

something as subjectively contingent as happiness – rather, reason is destined to pursue the good

will, will good-in-itself. He conceives of this will good-in-itself as also condition for any other

good thing, including demands for happiness. Kant establishes his concept good will as he de-

emphasizes reason directed towards happiness, proceeding from concrete, “common sense”

morality deeper to its conditions of possibility in reason and the good will.

Kant again considers the role of happiness when in passage 4:399 he describes the

characteristics of acting in accordance to duty rather than mere inclination. He first argues that

actions have moral worth when they are not performed out of inclination but only from duty,

thereby opposing duty and inclination as significantly distinct. He considers happiness as the

sum total of all inclinations. Therefore, even though happiness may oppose some individual

inclinations by its multitudinous nature, it ultimately remains the individual’s object of deepest

inclination. This qualifier of “deepest inclination” seems to also foreshadow the concept of a

“weak duty”; Kant acknowledges that the individual pursuit of happiness is also indirectly a duty

in a negative sense. He notes that the individual’s dissatisfaction would be a great temptation

from fulfilling further duties. Finally, he distinguishes that one’s conduct in promoting one’s

own happiness can have moral worth when the individual acts in accordance with duty, rather

than mere inclination. Thus, at the same time that Kant delineates the consequences of the

distinction between duty and inclination, he also introduces a perspective where happiness can be

pursued, morally, not through reason but through a duty. Happiness is itself a pre-condition for

further moral accordance with duty. He resolves the personal relationship with the natural end of

happiness by considering the satisfaction of total inclination (happiness) as itself facilitating the

individual to fulfill further duties. Happiness therefore occupies an ambiguous liminal space

between inclination and duty.

Kant’s descriptions of happiness seem to contradict or challenge each other when viewed

in the context of his dichotomy between means and ends. This is by no means trivial, since one

of Kant’s formulations of the categorical imperative states the moral law as the universal law to

treat humanity as an ends, and he formulates an ideal state as itself a “kingdom of ends” rather

than a kingdom of means. The distinction between means and ends must therefore be more

closely examined in relation to happiness. Throughout the Groundwork, Kant identifies the ends

as that which may be brought about by a certain action (ends of a will), or something’s functional

purpose. Kant employs this notion of the ends when he identifies that the will without regard for

the ends is the space of moral worth, and again when he distinguishes the hypothetical from the

categorical imperative by the former’s contingency on a practical purpose. Kant firmly situates

happiness as the one purpose, one end “presupposed surely and a priori in the case of every

human being” that therefore clarifies the hypothetical imperative, the “practical necessity of an

action as a means to the promotion of happiness [4:416]”. Set in contrast with this definition, the

categorical imperative is that which “represents an action as objectively necessary of itself,

without reference to another end [4:414].”

Kant further complicates this conception of happiness, however, when during his second

practical principle of the will he discusses the meritorious, or contingent, duty to others and

states that “the natural end that all human beings have is their own happiness.” Kant concedes

that “…humanity might indeed subsist if no one contributed to the happiness of others but yet

did not intentionally withdraw anything from it…”, and soon after identifies this as a negative

fulfillment of humanity as an end in itself. He considers a positive recognition of humanity as an

end in itself to be the situation where everyone tries to further the ends of others, that is, their

happiness. However, a tension arises between Kant’s affirmation of happiness as the “natural end

that all humans have” or the “one end that can be presupposed as actual in the case of rational

beings”, and Kant’s earlier identification of happiness as an indirect duty, and therefore itself a

means to fulfilling the good will.

This tension between happiness as a means vs. ends arises again with the hypothetical

vs. categorical imperative. Kant describes the categorical imperative, evacuated of any

consideration of the ends, as the source of all derived imperatives of duty. He adds that duty can

be expressed “by no means” of any hypothetical or contingent imperatives [4:425]. However,

this consideration of duty as derived from the categorical imperative is problematic with his

notion of happiness as endgoal of a hypothetical imperative. Kant, having identified happiness as

the a priori natural end of rational beings, considers the act of furthering the ends of others in

accordance with the notion of treating humanity as an end in itself, consistent with the second

formulation of the categorical imperative. Again, happiness occupies a liminal space between

hypothetical and categorical imperative, simultaneously the ends of a hypothetical imperative

and the means by which one may act in accordance with the categorical imperative, treating

humanity as an ends-in-itself by furthering the ends of others by contributing to the happiness of

others.

Though Kant recognizes the at times opposition of reason and its “true vocation to the

good will” to happiness, Kant considers happiness as duty in the negative sense, in the

prevention of temptation from fulfilling further duties. Therefore, within Kant’s moral system, it

is conceivable that ideally, reason drives the good will in accordance with duty while also

furthering the individual’s happiness and the happiness of others as helping them achieve their

natural ends. Yet, this analysis yields yet another complication in that considering happiness to

indirectly be another duty, it is itself also a means to fulfill other duties, while at the same time

remaining, according to Kant, the “natural end of human beings”. Happiness therefore may

challenge Kant’s binary notion of means and ends and demand an expansion of the concept.

What is happiness if it is simultaneously a means to fulfilling moral duty and the natural end of

the individual?