inscrutability and self constitution1

7/27/2019 Inscrutability and Self Constitution1

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Radical Evil, Inscrutability, and Moral Self-

Constitution

The goal of this paper is to analyze the system of inferences Kant uses in the Religion to

demonstrate the presence of an evil Gesinnung. Kant introduces here two important innovations

with respect to his foundational project in the Groundwork : he recognizes the groundlessness of

freedom and is led to postulate a transcendental structure, analogous to the unity of apperception,

in order to unify all of an agent’s volitions and make the initial use of freedom possible. The first

innovation opens a new set of questions regarding the justification of maxims; the second entails

a theory of moral self-constitution Kant left largely undeveloped in his practical philosophy.

Together they conspire to present a voluntaristic picture of Kant, which puts into question his

earlier assimilation of freedom and morality. Since these conceptual innovations are connected, I

will begin with the system of inferences and work my way to the question of self-constitution.

Kant says:

In order, then, to call a human being evil, it must be possible to infer a priori from a number of consciously evil actions,

or even from a single one, an underlying evil maxim, and from this, the presence in the subject of a common ground,itself a maxim, of all particular morally evil maxims. (Rel. 6: 20)

The predicate “evil” is the result, then, of a double abstraction. From a manifold of

consciously immoral actions one must be able to infer an evil maxim whose form determines

these actions’ wrongness; and from the manifold of evil maxims, one must infer their common

ground, namely, a second-order maxim whose form determines the evil of discrete first-order

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maxims. I call “first-order maxims” those subjective principles containing a determination of the

will that is connected with observable action; a maxim of “second-order” is one that determines

the form of willing which informs first-order maxims.1 This latter is the principle of maxim-

selection that decides how an agent chooses her principles of action (i.e., the maxims of the first-

order). According to Kant, there are only two principles of maxim-selection, autonomy and

heteronomy, whose adoption decides whether the agent’s Gesinnung is good or evil.2

Two main features characterize Kant’s reasoning here. The path of inferences moves

steadily away from the domain of experience. It proceeds from observable actions to their

immediate maxims; and, from this level, which still lies within the limits of experience (since

those maxims have been adopted with “consciousness of their evil”), the inference moves a step

further into the domain of transcendental freedom. It postulates here an act through which the

agent constitutes her second-order maxim, but which itself lies beyond experience.3 Furthermore,

the path of inferences leads to instances of increasing unification: the form of the second-order

maxim comprises the manifold of discrete first-order maxims within a single principle, which in

turn informs the evil character of the manifold of observable actions. Thus, the search for the

1 This terminology follows closely Nelson Potter’s distinction between “action-maxims” and “fundamental maxim,”

to which Paul Guyer also appeals. As it will become clear in the discussion below, the truly “fundamental maxim” is

not the one located in the Gesinnung , as these interpreters suggest, but the one we must presume characterizes the

transcendental volitional structure that lies at its basis. To avoid confusion, I refer to the Gesinnung as a “second-

order” maxim, the “first” act of transcendental freedom, and reserve “fundamental” to designate the activity of the

volitional structure that accounts for what makes the second-order maxim possible. Cf. Nelson Potter, “Kant and the

Moral Worth of Actions”: 232, and Guyer, Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness, 295.2 As I interpret Kant, the “goodness” of autonomy resides in the fact that it guides moral deliberation according to

universalizable principles. Since these principles are based on moral reasons, they can be shared by all agents andallow them to constitute a common world of value experience–what Kant calls the “kingdom of ends”. The “evil” of

heteronomy, on the other hand, resides in the fact that self-love ultimately resorts to feelings (pleasure and

displeasure) as the criterion for selecting maxims of action. Since these feelings are utterly subjective and private, no

common world of moral experience can be based on them. This generates what I call “jungle of means,” a situation

where values are decided by the might and cunning of the contenders.3 Although the act escapes consciousness, the demands of moral imputation lead us to consider it as if it were

deliberate. Kant tries to capture this flickering status by calling the second-order maxim “innate” (angeboren) (Rel6: 25). I deal with this question below (§3.1).

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unconditioned drives both moves–away from experience, toward the condition that completes the

series of conditions and is independent of it.

(1.1)The Problem of Discernment

Given the strict dualism prevalent in Kant’s practical philosophy, there are (at least) three

objections that need to be addressed in order to get the inferential system off the ground: 4

(I) If the agent acts in conscious opposition to the law, the evil character of her action isexperienced in inner sense (as guilt, remorse, feelings of impunity, etc.) and therefore

has a temporal dimension. Such an experience, however, cannot disclose thefundamental tenor of moral evil, which consists in the transcendental (non-temporal)choice of rejecting the law as the will’s incentive. According to Kant, there is a strict

separation between the domain of nature and the domain of freedom. Moreover, since

the relation of the will to the law must be determined a priori, i.e., independently of experience, an action done in conscious opposition to the law is not suitable to

provide evidence of an evil Gesinnung, because such an action is itself an experience.

(II) It is clear that if the agent acts according to the letter of the law, the rightness of her

action cannot justify any conclusion about her Gesinnung. The action she performs

could still be done out of inclination and its legality be just a veneer of the agent’s

basic immorality.

(III) Even if the action is wrong (i.e., contrary to what the moral law commands), this does

not automatically make the Gesinnung evil. The action could still be the result of unfortunate circumstances or an error in the actor’s judgment, i.e., a mistake in the

typic or schematism of what is asserted in the law (in abstracto). This mistake may

reflect an agent’s cognitive shortcomings, but does not necessarily impair her moralcharacter. Circumstances beyond the agent’s control, needless to say, do not tarnish it

either.

The first difficulty questions the possibility of an inference from first-order evil maxims

to a second-order maxim operating as their ground. The Gesinnung, which is the result of a

single act of transcendental freedom, cannot be inferred from the effect of maxims of action in

4 These objections are inspired by Wimmer’s interpretation. See Reiner Wimmer, Kants kritische Religionsphilosophie (Berlin-New York: W. De Gruyter, 1990), 116-118.

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inner sense. The consciousness of having performed actions contrary to the law is itself a

temporal experience and can be explained by the laws governing causality in nature. Since

maxims are adopted by an agent’s act of freedom and are not observable (not even one’s own),

and since we know of evil maxims only through our consciousness of their immorality, this

temporal phenomenon is incapable of establishing the necessity of a noumenal (non-temporal)

state of affairs.

The second and third difficulties, on the other hand, question the possibility of gaining

insight into the moral quality of even first-order maxims. Neither right nor wrong actions seem to

provide reliable evidence of intention. From the spectator’s point of view, a “man of good

morals” and a “morally good man” are indistinguishable (Rel. 6: 30). If the observable action

contradicts the letter of the law, however, we are in no better position to establish the motive

than we are when the action was right. The transgression may well be explained by an

unfortunate combination of circumstances or by a non-culpable mistake in the agent’s judgment. 5

Such a mistake clearly affects the moral status of her action, but does not necessarily nullify her

ultimate intention of acting out of duty. Although the action is overtly wrong ( pflichtwidrig), the

motivational structure can still be said to be good.6

The sum of these difficulties seems to undermine the very possibility of Kant’s system of

inferences. For, if the moral quality of first-order maxims cannot be determined without

hesitation by simply evaluating observable actions, and if we know of the maxim’s evilness only

through actions done with consciousness of their being wrong, all we have is a temporal

phenomenon incapable of sustaining inferences about the agent’s Gesinnung. Neither the path

5 This conclusion could be reached, say, by a disingenuous reading of Groundwork I : “A good will is not good

because of what it effects or accomplishes, because of its fitness to attain some proposed end, but only because of its

volition […]” (Gr. 394, 8).6 This is the type of situation Patrick Frierson denounces in “Kantian Moral Pessimism,” in Anderson-Gold andMuchnik eds., Kant’s Anatomy of Evil , 33-56.

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from observable actions (right or wrong) to non-observable maxims, nor the path from maxims

experienced as evil to the Gesinnung from which they supposedly stem, seems able to provide

the a priori criterion Kant needs to support his reasoning.

(1.2) Moral Cognition

The predicament we are describing rests on the assumption that we must know the moral

quality of an agent’s manifold first-order maxims in order to make a judgment about her

Gesinnung. But since this knowledge is not available, inferences built upon it are doomed to be

unreliable. A brief examination of Kant’s views in the second Critique, however, shows that this

conclusion trades on an obvious mistake: it interprets the moral knowledge of maxims according

to the requirements of speculative reason.7

The moral law is not something we know as we do objects of experience. The

consciousness of the law is a fact of reason (Faktum der Vernunft ) (KrV 5: 31). It cannot be

ferreted out from any antecedent data, nor can it be constructed with the cooperation of the

understanding and the forms of intuitions (as speculative reason requires for objects of

experience). Rather, it is something with which we are immediately acquainted as an inherent

feature of our practical rationality. Since we are immediately conscious of the law, Kant

believes, we can determine a priori what conditions maxims must fulfil in order to be objective.

The criterion does not depend in any way on the observable features of the action, as the

objections raised above presuppose, but inheres in the moral law as a fact of reason.8

7 Kant’s views about the objective validity of the categorical imperative registered important changes since the

Groundwork III, where he attempted to derive the bindingness of the moral law from an independent proof of transcendental freedom. For an insightful summary of the state of scholarship on this question, cf. Kosch, Freedom

and Reason, 29-37.8 In the Religion, Kant makes a similar point about the factuality of the moral incentive in connection with the

predisposition to personality. He claims that “the susceptibility ( Empänglichkeit ) to respect for the moral law as of

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That the first subjective ground of the adoption of moral maxims is inscrutable can be seen provisionally from this:Since the adoption is free, its ground (e.g., why I have adopted an evil maxim and not a good one instead) must not besought in any incentive of nature, but always again in a maxim; and, since any such maxim must have its ground as

well, yet apart from a maxim no determining ground of the free power of choice ought to, or can, be adduced, we areendlessly referred back in the series of subjective determining grounds, without ever being able to come to the first(ersten) ground. (Rel. 6: 22 note) 11

The inscrutability surrounding the Gesinnung, however, introduces a dimension of

intrinsic opacity in the use of human freedom. Kant realized that, in the process of giving and

taking reasons, we must represent the agent as choosing a mode of deliberation that informs this

process but cannot be justified by reasons of the same kind. Although the question “what should

I do?” receives a definite answer in Kantian ethics, the answer to “how should I deliberate?”

must remain inevitably elusive. For, it depends on whether the agent recognizes the moral law as

the supreme determining ground of her will. Since that recognition, however, is not determined

by morality as a fact of reason (all that fact means is that duty is a necessary and irreducible

incentive for the human will), the choice of how to deliberate has reasons that reason cannot

grasp.

This is not accidental. In order to explain the accession of the moral law into the

motivational structure, Kant needs more than what the moral incentive can provide, namely, he

needs to account for the incorporation of that incentive as the determining ground . This

incorporation, however, is an act of freedom that cannot be enforced by an external power nor

induced by reasons of self-interest (e.g., one’s happiness or utility). While external enforcement

would destroy the agent’s autonomy, the appeal to self-interest would be self-defeating, since it

invokes non-moral reasons to justify moral deliberation. In both cases we lose, in the very

11The appeal to some kind of antecedent cause (education, genetics, environment, etc.) in order to explain the agent’s

choice of Gesinnung would cancel the freedom and responsibility Kant considers essential in it. Causes play no role

at the level of justification –they are not reasons, and if they become so, it is with our willful collaboration, not ontheir strength alone.

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attempt to grasp, what we are trying to justify.12 The only way to preserve it is by recognizing

that the authority the moral law gains in the Gesinnung relies on the fact that the agent has

already been swayed by moral considerations. But such a presupposition is what Kant means by

having a good Gesinnung (Rel. 6: 24)–hence, it cannot explain how this character itself came

about. Since, in order to be imputable, the primacy of the moral point of view must nonetheless

be represented as the result of a choice, Kant rightly concludes that the reason a mode of

deliberation prevails in the Gesinnung is necessarily unfathomable–either morality is self-

justifying, for “no amount of subtle reasoning on our part would produce it or win our power of

choice over it” (Re. 6: 27 note), or it is not justifiable at all .13

Kant realized in the Religion, then, that what an agent takes to be motivating in the choice

of her “first subjective ground” (either the incentive of duty or of self-love) presupposes the

mode of deliberation of that Gesinnung and cannot justify it. Why the law becomes motivating

(or fails to do so) is equivalent to the question of how the free will is possible: we reach here “the

extreme boundary of all practical philosophy” (Gr. 4: 455), the very limits of intelligibility.14 All

we can legitimately do is to give a phenomenology of respect, i.e., of the effect the law has a

12 See H. A. Prichard, “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” Mind , 81 (Jan., 1912): 21-37. Prichard interprets

this issue in the context of the question “why should I be moral?” and argues that all answers are in fact question begging. Kant’s response to this problem in the second Critique is to recognize the moral law as a fact of reason.

The “mistake” Prichard condemns is endemic to the moral point of view –a constitutive feature of the moral

perspective, and hence no “mistake” at all. Morality is self-justifying and does not require an argument in the style

Prichard is expecting –indeed, this is the style of argument Kant tried and subsequently abandoned after

Groundwork III. See Dieter Henrich, “The Concept of Moral Insight and Kant’s Doctrine of the Fact of Reason,” in

ed. Richard Velkley, The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant’s Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1994), 74-82.13 Gordon Michalson detects still a further tension: “What becomes evident here is the possibility that Kant is using

the claim that the source of moral evil is freedom as a premise in generating the further claim that the source of moral evil is unknowable. The peculiarity of this line of argumentation gradually becomes clear: the peculiarity is

that the conclusion of Kant’s train of thought appears to deny his ability to know his own major premise. If the

overriding epistemological issue here concerns a demand for agnosticism regarding the ultimate source or ground of

evil, then Kant can hardly argue this case on the basis of a claim about what the source of evil is. If the conclusion

flatly states the unknowability of P, then P forfeits any chance for candidacy as a remise in the argument designed to

reach that conclusion” (Michalson, Fallen Freedom, 64).14 See Evgenia Cherkasova, “On the Boundary of Intelligibility: Kant’s Conception of Radical Evil and the Limits of Ethical Discourse”, The Review of Metaphysics 58 (March 2005): 579 ff.

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priori in our mind. Yet, this account cannot explain why the agent effectively took an interest in

morality and considered duty motivating to begin with. Taking such an interest involves a leap

of volition no argument can bridge.15

Kant gives a formal account to explain why the moral law is the most suited expression

of human freedom. As Seirol Morgan succinctly puts it: “Kant’s reasoning is that since all the

will is is freedom, the only thing that can possibly provide the will with a reason is spontaneity

itself. As freedom is its inner nature, the will has reason to choose the principle which best

preserves and expresses it. Of course, according to Kant this principle is the Categorical

Imperative.”16

The crucial point, however, is that such an account does not touch the core of the

existential problem: accepting the moral law as a fact of reason is also accepting that there is no

non-question-begging reason to justify that fact. A “faith” of sorts is required for its adoption in

the Gesinnung: we are supposed to subjectively hold true an original interest in morality on the

basis of insufficient objective grounds. That the feeling of respect ensues a priori once the moral

law has been given accession does not explain why the agent takes (or does not take) a practical

interest in the first place. Since the objective grounds are insufficient, the justificatory gap calls

for an exercise of the will to fill it in. But that exercise prefigures the type of Gesinnung that is

going to result from it, and consequently cannot explain why it came about. Kant himself says

that much: ”evil can have originated only from moral evil” (Rel 6: 43, 64). The reverse, of

course, applies to the good, which must also have proceeded from the moral good. Just as the

feeling of respect makes us aware of a moral law already somehow effective in us (KpV 5: 75-6),

the primacy of self-love presupposes the mode of deliberation it is supposed to generate .17

15 “Leap of volition” is Seirol Morgan’s language. See, Morgan, “The Missing Formal Proof of Humanity’s Radical

Evil”: 77.16 Morgan, ”The Missing Formal Proof of Humanity’s Radical Evil”: 77.17 Kierkegaard explores this paradox in relation to the notion of “original sin. Cf. Søren Kierkegaard , The Concept of

Anxiety, trans. by R. Thomte and A. Anderson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).

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2.1 Justification Reconsidered

This feature points at an important difference between the justification of first and

second-order maxims. In the Groundwork , Kant showed that the categorical imperative (in the

formulae of universal law and end-in-itself) contains a procedure for evaluating first-order

maxims and the particular actions ensuing from them. Although the details of the procedure are

complicated and can be understood in various ways, the fundamental goal is clear: the test offers

an exercise for expanding one’s moral imagination. The agent must be able to will that (1) the

maxim of her action become a universal law, and (2) that she be member of the world created by

her action if it were to take place by a law of nature. The imaginary act of giving universal law

confronts her with two of her intentions, namely, the one embodied in the original maxim (which

is subjectively valid) and the one she assumes as a universal legislator (which is objectively

valid). Contradictions at this level help the agent decide how to act in a given circumstance.18

The test for maxims of action, however, remains notoriously silent aboutwhy

an agent

should engage in this kind of exercise to begin with–why she should embrace autonomy as a

principle of maxim-selection. In order for the test to succeed, Kant concedes, the agent must

“still [have] enough conscience to ask [herself]” (Gr. 4: 422) whether what she intends to do is

right. Yet, were she to lack such decency, had she gerrymandered the moral horizon to dismiss

crucial signs of danger, in short, had she adopted heteronomy as her second-order maxim, no

matter how contradictory the universalized first-order maxim might be she could still find ways

to convince herself of her entitlement to “an exception…(just for this once) to the advantage of

18 This way of construing the test shelters it from Mill’s famous criticism, i.e., that, in final analysis, it is the

disutility of the consequences of the universal adoption that the agent rejects in her mental experiment (J.S. Mill,

Utilitarianism, in The Basic Writings of J.S.Mill: On Liberty, The Subjection of Women, & Utilitarianism ( NewYork: The Modern Library, 2002), 236).

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[her] inclination” (Gr. 4: 424). Kant is fully aware that the universalizing procedure does not

make people moral–it only elucidates the mode of thinking of those who already are. To an

agent like the “fool” of Hobbes, who “hath said in his heart: ‘there is no such thing as justice’,”

only the fear of consequences would deter from wrongdoing.19 What moves the virtuous will

leave the “fool” impassive: both agents would understand the meaning of moral reasons, but

their effect would be purely intellectual in the agent with an evil Gesinnung. For, “from the fact

that a being has reason does not at all follow that, simply by virtue of representing its maxims as

suited to universal legislation, this reason contains a faculty of determining the power of choice

unconditionally, and hence be ‘practical’ on its own” (Rel. 6: 26 note).

In the Religion, then, Kant draws a wedge between rationality and morality–notions that

were indistinguishable in the Groundwork . The reason an agent is receptive to moral reasons is

not itself justified by rational deliberation. This receptivity requires the agent to have given

motivational accession to the fact of reason in her Gesinnung. But such accession presupposes

the agent’s goodness and cannot explain its genesis.20 Since the “ground” of all maxims is

groundless, what matters for morality is not so much how an individual acts, but how she

constitutes herself as an agent–how she wills her “original act of willing.” Thus, in his later

writings, Kant’s attention changes from action to virtue, from duties to character. These changes

are expression of the same totalizing drive of reason that gives rise to the doctrine of radical evil

in the Religion.21

19 See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. by Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994), chapter

xv, 90.20 As Gordon Michalson Jr. puts it, “moral selfhood in the deepest, Kantian sense consists of something more like

‘agency’ than like a static ‘essence’. The definite feature of the moral self is already a kind of willing, and not an

essence that is logically prior to an original act of willing” ( Fallen Freedom, 57).21 In an architectonic of practical reason, the Tugendlehre should be placed side by side with Kant’s first thesis about

the locus of moral corruption in the Gesinnung . In spite of appearances to the contrary, they are conceptualcounterparts in the Kantian ethical system. Cf. Silber, “The Ethical Significance of Kant’s Religion”, cxiv-cxv.

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This shift does not mean that Kant severs all ties with the structure of obligation he

presented in the Groundwork . He remains always committed to the view that morality

necessitates the agent to be autonomous and that duty is what we have most reason to do. Yet,

Kant comes to accept that there is a choice involved at each stage of the process, a leap of

volition that only the individual can make–and this, in turn, implies that the reasons that

determine the direction of the leap presuppose, but do not really explain, the type of Gesinnung

the leap will generate. Once freedom is radicalized and projected to the choice of a meta-maxim,

it is impossible for Kant to evade this voluntaristic consequence.

(3) Unifying Principles

Despite its importance, the question of moral self-constitution has received little attention

in the Kantian literature.22 In order to shed some light on it, we need first to recall the

fundamentals of Kant’s conception of agency. The passage Allison uses to support his

Incorporation-Thesis is illustrative:

Freedom of the power of choice has the characteristic, entirely peculiar to it, that it cannot be determined through any

incentive except so far as the human being has incorporated it into his maxim (has made it into a universal rule forhimself, according to which he wills to conduct himself; only in this way can an incentive, whatever it may be, coexistwith the absolute spontaneity of the power of choice (of freedom). (Rel. 6: 24)

According to this view, the form the will gives to itself is the result of a synthesis that

involves various elements: the material of volition, the incentives, and the motive. The material

of volition consists in the manifold of the agent’s desires ( Begierde). Kantian “desires,” however,

should not be understood in a narrowly sensuous way; they comprise also the non-empirically

22 Discussions have usually revolved around the problem of improving and preserving one’s character, not on how it

is constituted in the first place. See, e.g, Felicitas Munzel, Kant’s Conception of Moral Character: The “Critical”

Link of Morality, Anthropology, and Reflective Judgment (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999) andPatrick Frierson, Freedom and Anthropology.

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determined objects Kant calls “duties” (in the plural). The material of volition, then,

encompasses all the particular objects that give content to the conative power of the will, which

is always a will of something–“for in the absence of all reference to an end no determination can

take place in human beings at all” (Rel. 6: 4).

Incentives (Triebfedern), on the other hand, provide reasons for action, whose sources

Kant reduces to one of the two fundamental interests operative in the human will: the practical

and the pathological. These interests are channeled through two overarching organizing

principles: duty (in the singular) and self-love. The former shapes desires according to the

demands of morality, the latter according to those of self-interest. The outcomes of these

respective acts of synthesis are the objects Kant calls “the good” (das Gute) and “well-being”

(happiness) (das Wohl) (KpV 5: 62-3). In contrast to specific volitions (the ends of particular

actions), these comprehensive objects indicate the two basic goals we attribute to a finite

rationality.23 Happiness represents our final subjective end and morality our final objective end,

but they cannot be both incorporated at the same time as the determining ground of the maxim–

only one incentive can become motivating. Whether the Gesinnung is good or evil depends on

“which of the two [the agent] makes the condition of the other ” (Re. 6: 36).

This view of agency yields a picture of human volition as a system of integrated goals,

without which the inferences in Religion I would have no traction. The movement from first to

second order maxims depends on the assumption that the principles of self-love or duty, having

received motivational priority in the Gesinnung, introduce a basic volitional form into the

23 Kant believes that these goals exist side-by-side, vie for precedence in the motivational structure, and are the

source of a “natural dialectic.” Indeed, the need to solve this “natural dialectic” leads Kant to formulate the doctrine

of the highest good in the second Critique. The highest good is the total object of practical reason, for it integrates

happiness and morality according to an objective rule. This total object, however, entails an even higher level of

synthesis than the one we are analyzing here. Our concern is with the conflict existing at the level of the determining

ground of the will, not with the way in which that conflict gets resolved and generates a more comprehensive practical object .

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maxims of the first order. The model is analogous to the one Kant used to describe the work of

theoretical reason: just as the categories of the understanding unify the manifold of intuitions

according to a priori rules that yield empirical objects, the unifying principles of practical reason

(self-love and the categorical imperative) provide the rules according to which the moral agent

organizes the manifold of her desires and constitutes moral objects. Dieter Henrich puts it this

way:

There exists an obvious analogy between Kant’s conception of the functions of the understanding and his formula of

the categorical imperative. The categories are basic concepts for the determination of objects. They create conceptualunity within the manifoldness of that which is given in space and time. They constitute in this context a connection in

accordance with rules that make objectivity as such possible. However, the categorical imperative is also a function of unity, namely, a function of the unity of the will. All moral actions are universal in accordance with their form. We can

recognize what is evil by its exclusion of rational universality in action, and by the fact that it leads the will tocontradict itself .24

There is at play, however, an important difference between these unifying functions.

Whereas in its cognitive employment reason relies on intuitions, which must be given to us from

an “external,” non-rational source (sensibility), in its practical employment reason deals with

self-prescribed principles. Thus, it has the capacity to determine its objects according to a form

that lies exclusively within itself. Although inclinations are given, they are not motivating unless

the agent makes them so. Through this act, inclinations are raised from their sensible origin and

become part of the rational nexus. The resulting object, happiness, is “an ideal of imagination”

(Gr. 4: 418), and as such requires the decisive contribution of reason for its formation. In contrast

to the understanding that cannot intuit, the will, even in this empirical employment, has the

capacity to supersede the receptive moment that limits the understanding to the conditioned . It

produces the ideal of a maximum of satisfaction–of a “sum total of inclinations.” In spite of

Kant’s dualistic terminology, then, self-love does not really pertain to our passive nature. The

24 Cf. Henrich, “The Concept of Moral Insight,” 74.

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integration of the material of volition into a harmonious whole requires reason to subordinate,

cancel, compound, postpone, etc., particular desires in terms of an overall policy. Drafting this

policy presupposes the capacity to detach oneself from the urgency of particular desires and,

therefore, is part of the agent’s spontaneity. Self-love is as much an expression of freedom as is

the categorical imperative.25

This distinguishes the products of the will from those of the understanding. Although

there cannot be nature without the categories, there can be a moral world without the categorical

imperative: this world is what I call a “jungle of means.” That is, while nature is possible only on

the condition that the logical connections between representations be further subjected to the

objective rules of connection of consciousness in general (i.e., the categories), the moral world of

values can subsist even when agents shape and organize them in idiosyncratic, subjective ways.

There is a single set of unifying rules that makes empirical objectivity possible–the moral world,

in contrast, relies on the dual set of duty and self-love. Although Kant considers the kingdom of

ends the world of objectively valid values, and in that respect, the highest expression of practical

reason, there is nonetheless a moral world in place when values are not shared. Whereas moral

objectivity can exist under subjective unifying principles, empirical objectivity cannot. Once

nature is constituted through the understanding, the will is free to reshape it according to the

objectivity of morality or the privacy of self-love.

Let us turn now to the question of moral self-constitution. The unique situation we face in

trying to conceptualize the choice of an evil Gesinnung is that a transcendentally free agent,

which must be represented as being outside the conditions of experience, is said to inaugurate her

25 See Reath, “Hedonism, Heteronomy and Kant’s Principle of Happiness”: 50.

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use of freedom by giving primacy to a unifying principle that presupposes an empirically given

content in order to operate. In this first use of freedom, however, self-love could find nothing

empirical to unify. Content can only arise in the subsequent uses, but these derivative acts

depend on the form the will has given to the second-order maxim, and cannot be appealed to in

order to explain how self-love was adopted in the first place.26 If self-love were construed in the

typical Kantian way, i.e., as an empirically bound unifying principle, the result would be

inadmissible: only duty would be available for choice at this stage. The absence of a counter-

incentive, however, would make the human will hallow: without a competing alternative, the

moral incentive would gain automatic primacy in the Gesinnung, and what is “cognized as

objectively necessary [would] also [be] subjectively necessary” (Gr. 4: 412). For, “the law

imposes itself on [the agent] irresistibly, because of his moral predisposition; and if no other

incentive were at work against it, he would also incorporate it into his supreme maxim as

sufficient determination of his power of choice, i.e., he would be morally good” (Re. 6: 36).

Kant hints at this problem when he claims, ”evil can have originated only from moral

evil” (Rel 6: 43). Yet, he did not develop the implications of this view. He appealed instead to the

“inscrutability” of the reasons that give rise to the first choice. In light of our reconstruction,

Kant’s appeal is lame as it now stands: even if we were to accept at face value the thesis about

moral self-presupposition, the self-love we attribute to the logically prior volitional structure

must differ in kind from the empirically bound self-love it gives rise to in the choice of an evil

second-order maxim.

Things look quite different in the case of the moral incentive. After all, duty is a strictly a

priori principle, purged from anything empirical, and with some ingenuity could be tweaked to

26 Needless to say, these choices are “subsequent” only in the order of explanation, not in a temporal one––allchoices are acts of freedom beyond the temporal conditions of sensible intuition.

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fit the needs of a transcendental first choice. But there is no room for tweaking in the case of

self-love. According to the official Kantian, “all practical principles which presuppose an object

(material) of the faculty of desire as the determining ground of the will are without exception

empirical” (KpV 5: 21); and, “all material practical principles as such, without exception, of one

and the same kind and come under the general principle of self-love or one’s own happiness”

(KpV 5: 22). If the choice of an evil second-order maxim is to make any sense, then, Kant must

have had a different sense of self-love in mind.

(3.1) Will-and-Object-directed Intentions

To get at this sense, let me first try to determine how, given the Kantian model of

choice, one might conceive of a use of self-love independent of external affectation from already

existing objects of desire. This independence would put the sensible and the moral incentive on

the same footing, making them amenable to the a priori conditions of a transcendental use of

freedom. Without this transformation, the troublesome consequence of assimilating the human to

the holy will seems hard to avoid.

Since the human will is structurally heterogeneous, when it reflects upon itself it

encounters an internal manifold: the sensible and the rational incentives. The manifold it

encounters can be roughly construed along the lines Kant assigns to inner sense in his theoretical

philosophy, i.e., as providing a “matter” a higher rational faculty needs to unify in order to

produce objectivity. This “matter,” of course, is not to be identified with “intuitions of our self

and its inner states” (KrV A33/B49). The unifying principles of the will, associated with the

ethical incentives, squarely belong to reason’s spontaneity; hence, they have already superseded

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transcendent claim about the moral self as a thing in itself. It is, rather, a necessary consequence

of our finitude–an analytic proposition entailed by the fact that the human will is neither animal

nor holy. The act of unification of this manifold, however, is synthetic: by ranking the incentives

in an ethical order of priority, the will gives to them a form that was not already present. This

form determines the agent’s motivational structure and constitutes her self as an object of choice.

The immediate product, then, of adopting a second-order maxim is the Gesinnung, an object

whose form, in turn, contains the pattern of choice exhibited by the agent throughout her moral

life. For, first-order maxims and observable actions draw on the content of outer desires, but are

shaped according to the form the will has given to its internal manifold. Again, the relation in

question is analogous to the one Kant establishes between inner and outer intuitions in his

epistemology: as determinations of the mind, all spatial representations of outer sense are also

temporal, and hence shaped according to the form of inner sense. “Time,” as Kant puts it, “is an

a priori condition of all appearances in general, and indeed the immediate condition of the inner

intuition (of our souls) and thereby also the mediate condition of outer appearances” (KrV

A34/B50). The same relation holds between inner and outer directed intentions.

Kant resorts to the metaphor of innateness in the Religion to capture the unique character

of the act of moral self-constitution. The choice in question is “innate” (angeboren), because,

although we must represent the will as being its author, the Gesinnung “has not been acquired in

time”–the one who harbors it has always been good or evil “ from his youth on” (Rel 6: 25).27

Interpreting it as an event (Geschehen) in the conscious life of the individual would throw the

choice back into the mechanistic net of nature. It is, then, from the traces in empirical moral

27 Gordon Michalson detects two different criteria for innateness in connection with the propensity: “innateness

entails something that ‘cannot be eradicated,’ and innateness involves something for which we cannot ‘assign a

further cause’” (Michalson, Fallen Freedom. 66). He dismisses the second as a genuine criterion, for it is an

indication of ignorance on our part, and “it is not clear how Kant can legitimately make a claim about something ascrucial as innateness on the basis of an appeal to agnosticism” (66).

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consciousness, left by the transcendental activity of her own will, that the agent recognizes

herself as the author of her Gesinnung. As Yovel points out:

The human self is not given beforehand, as simple, finished, self-contained primary datum. It rather constitutes itself asits own result through the (non-vicious) circular process, in which it imparts its rational structure (the categories inknowledge, the Categorical Imperative in morality) to the objects of natural or moral experience, and becomes capable

of recognizing itself in them.28

To emerge as an object of choice, the Gesinnung must have been organized according to

a unifying principle that informs the internal manifold the agent encounters a priori in her will.

The manifold is a priori, and hence pliable to a transcendentally free act of constitution, for it is

present in the human will independently of the affectation from external objects of desire. By

examining the form of her subsequent choices, the agent can retrospectively discover the form

she must have introduced to her inner manifold in that primordial formative act. This form

establishes immediately her moral character, and, derivatively, the principle according to which

her moral identity will be displayed throughout her life. This, I take, is the gist of the moral side

of the circle to which Yovel refers: while in the act of self-constitution the organized manifold

proceeds from a will-directed intention, the subsequent acts of choice are world-directed , i.e.,

they result from a unification of inclinations and objects of desire that are empirically given.

Kant believes that these two different types of act refer to one another, because a will-directed

intention underlies and accompanies all of our world-directed intentions. That is, the way the

agent constituted her Gesinnung is reflected by the way she constitutes objects of desire in

general. The will’s self-relation sustains and determines the relation an agent establishes with the

outer world of objects, i.e., with her empirically bound desires and with other agents. Bereft of

28 See Y. Yovel, “ Kant’s Practical Reason as Will ”: 292. What Yovel overlooks here is that also self-love is a

unifying principle that gives rise to moral character. Limiting this to the categorical imperative would make

unintelligible the existence of evil Gesinnungen. This points at a fundamental difference between practical andspeculative reason, which Yovel does not seem to consider in this passage.

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this interlocking set of references, moral identity would be such as Hume described it: “nothing

but a bundle or collection of different [choices]…a kind of theater, where several [decisions]

successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety

of postures and situations.”29

(4) The “I Will”

To avoid this Humean fragmentation, I want to suggest, Kant must have presupposed the

existence of a transcendental structure (analogous to the unity of apperception) to underpin his

system of inferences in Religion I. It must be one and the same will which, by constituting the

Gesinnung as an object of choice, also established the principle with which the agent henceforth

organizes her world-directed desires in general. If the choice of Gesinnung is to be possible,

then, the first use of freedom cannot also be the ultimate: we must presuppose, for the purposes

of imputation and evaluation, a logical subject to hold accountable for this initial formative

activity. This subject, of course, is not a substance (ares volens

), but a function of unity, the

epistemically empty agent of a volitional activity. For, if the constitution of moral objects is to

make sense, there must be a logically prior volitional unity that forms the agent’s Gesinnung,

and, through this act of self-constitution, introduces a basic form that shapes all subsequent

choices.

The analogy with the “I think” we are suggesting is not new in the literature. Henry

Allison, for instance, claims that there is a systematic relation between Kant’s conception of

rational agency in the Incorporation Thesis and his doctrine of transcendental apperception:

29 See David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2000), §1.4.6, 165. To make Hume’s view bear on my discussion of Kant, I changed his“perceptions” for either “choices” or “decisions.”

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Thus, in light of this thesis, one might say that just as it must be possible for the ‘I think’ to accompany all myrepresentations in order for them to be ‘mine’, that is, in order for me to be able to represent anything through them, sotoo it must be possible for the ‘I take’ to accompany all my inclinations if they are to be ‘mine’ qua rational agent, that

is, if they are to provide motives or reasons for acting.30

More recently, Jürgen Stolzenberg argues along similar lines:

Just as the pure ‘I think’ must be able to accompany all of my representations and contains a consciousness of rules of

synthesis a priori (which synthetically combines a manifold of given representations to form a uniform consciousnessof an object of knowledge), so, in a similar way, the manifold of desires and sensible drives of a subject must be inaccordance with those practical rules which are formulated in the categories of freedom if these desires are to count asdesires determined by pure reason, and hence if they are to count as moral desires for an object .31

The key intuition of these authors, however, needs to be supplemented in two important

directions: the analogy with apperception must be extended to comprise the process of moral

self-constitution, and should not be limited to the constitution of outer moral objectivity.

Furthermore, we need to break loose from the one-to-one correspondence between epistemic and

practically a priori unifying principles: in Kant’s morality, self-love, though clearly subjective, is

a principle that has equal power to constitute moral objectivity as the categorical imperative.

Before explaining some of the advantages associated with this view, let me first try to

substantiate the analogy.

Kant famously claims: “The I think must be able to accompany all my representations;

for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thought at all, which is

as much as to say that the representation would either be impossible or else at least would be

nothing for me” (KrV B 131-2). The unity of apperception is pure activity. It brings the cognitive

subject into existence and must be distinguished from empirical self-consciousness, whose

30 See Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom, 40.31 Jürgen Stolzenberg, “The pure ‘I will’ Must be Able to Accompany all of my Desires: The Problem of a

Deduction of the Categories of Freedom in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason,” in the Proceedings of the 10th

International Kant Congress (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 419.

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content is (passively) received through the forms of sensibility. We gather the presence of this

active self indirectly, through the mediation of inner sense. For, as in all other cases, the

knowledge of one’s own existence demands a manifold of sensible intuition, which proceeds

from a source other than the pure understanding generating the representation “I think” (KrV

note B 158).

The choice of unifying volitional principles, however, obeys different strictures than

those of knowledge: it has to do with the production of objects, not with their cognition (KpV 5:

55).32 In contrast to theoretical principles, then, practical principles presuppose empirical objects

as given, and their function is to subject “the manifold of desires to the unity of consciousness of

practical reason commanding in the moral law” (KpV 5: 65). Yet, it is the same reason, now in

relation to the faculty of desire, which brings unity to the manifold (just as the understanding did

in relation to the faculty of knowledge). “Pure practical self-consciousness,” as Stolzenberg puts

it, “like pure theoretical self-consciousness, has only functional significance as a criterion. By

analogy with the formula of theoretical self-consciousness–the famous “I think”–it could be

expressed in the form of a purely rational “I will.”33

It makes sense then to assume a transcendental structure, similar to the unity of

apperception, to account both for the relation between first and second order maxims and for the

constitution of the Gesinnung. As we have seen, maxims of first and second order relate to one

another because a single will forms them according to self-imposed rules of maxim selection,

i.e., rules that introduce unity and volitional continuity into maxims of action. The form of these

maxims, in turn, arranges the manifold of desires in terms of two overarching objects, happiness

32 As Kant insists, theoretical knowledge is relevant only for the application of practical principles, not for their

genesis.33 Stolzenberg, “The Pure ‘I will’ Must be Able to Accompany All My Desires,” 416.

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and morality. Thus, just as it must be possible for the “I think” to accompany all my intuitions,

the “I will” must be able to accompany all my volitions for them to be mine. Furthermore, the

pure activity of the “I will” constitutes the Gesinnung as an object of choice, generating the

susceptibility to certain type of reasons (moral or self-interested), which will henceforth

dominate the agent’s mode of deliberation. Though the “I will” brings the moral subject into

existence (i.e., shapes her intelligible character), it must be distinguished from both the

Gesinnung (the immediate product of the activity) and empirical moral consciousness (the homo

phenomenon the Gesinnung grounds).

Besides, a similar conceptual grid accompanies both transcendental structures: just as the

unity of apperception underlies the categories, empirical concepts, and empirical objects, the “I

will” underlies the Gesinnung, first order maxims, and observable actions. The Kantian

constitution of the world (of natural and of moral objects) seems to require the presence of

elementary transcendental structures, i.e., instances of a pure activity of which we have only

indirect awareness and no real knowledge. To preserve the analogy with the first Critique, let me

call the “I will” the “unity of acknowledgement.” Like the unity of apperception, the unity of

acknowledgment is an analytic proposition. It is contained in the idea of a will that sets its own

purposes, and says no more than that the manifold of desires must be subject to the conditions

under which I can identify them as my own.

(4.1) Key to Some Puzzles

There are significant heuristic advantages to postulating the unity of acknowledgment.

First, the “I will” helps us avoid “moral schizophrenia,” a pathology that consists in the agent’s

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incapacity of recognizing herself in her Gesinnung.34 A healthy moral life requires not only

grasping the pattern that connects the discrete exercises of one’s will, but also conceiving oneself

as the author of such a pattern. An agent suffering from “moral schizophrenia,” however, cannot

recognize herself in her choices. Although she might be able to discover, in an intellectual

exercise of abstraction, a volitional pattern connecting her manifold acts of willing, she would

nonetheless be unable to own those acts–they would appear, to her, as expressing the will of

another. Such an agent would adopt a third-person perspective with respect to her own choices.

But this makes any attempt at imputation futile: I cannot be held accountable for volitions that

are, in my own eyes, not mine.

The pathology we are envisioning represents the flipside of the Humean fragmentation

mentioned above: while the variegated self Hume has in mind could still acknowledge each one

of the gliding instances of her volition, the schizophrenic moral agent perceives the continuity

between the choices, but is incapable of recognizing the pattern as being her own. In the first

case the self is many, but this plurality is compatible with owning each of its particular acts; in

the second, the choices are one but they are not mine. The unity of acknowledgement solves both

problems with a single stroke: the choices by which the agent recursively discovers her

Gesinnung exhibit the same volitional pattern that must have already been present for her

Gesinnung to exist. Thus, this transcendental volitional structure can help explain both the

abidingness of the moral self and the ownership we presuppose the healthy moral agent takes for

her different choices. It is one and the same will, which, for the purposes of evaluation and

imputation, we presume underlies them all.

34 For a different understanding of “moral schizophrenia”, see Michael Stocker, “The Schizophrenia of Modern

Ethical Theories,” The Journal of Philosophy 73, no. 14 (1976): 453-466. In this famous paper, Stocker used “moral

schizophrenia” to describe a split between motives and values he attributed to all modern ethical theories, and whichcondemned agents to internal disharmony and precluded the pursuit of a “good life.”

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More importantly, the unity of acknowledgment helps account for the problem of moral

self-presupposition: the type of reason the “I will” incorporates in the process of self-constitution

generates a mode of deliberation whose adoption informs the agent’s general use of freedom.

The same “I will” underlies will-and-world directed intentions, i.e., the volitional pattern that

gives rise to the Gesinnung and which henceforth is exhibited in the various instances of choice

(i.e., first-order maxims and observable actions). By recognizing the traces of her own activity in

all these acts, the agent acknowledges herself as their author. This is important because it allows

us to appreciate the integrity of the Kantian corpus: the empirically bound exercise of self-love

requires a more fundamental volitional structure for it to be possible, just as the categories

referred to a higher function of unity in Kant’s epistemology. This half-stated assumption is the

cornerstone of Kant’s practical philosophy– without the “I will,” the moral life of an individual

would be patchwork of disjointed choices, and the system of inferences in the Religion crumble.

Finally, the unity of acknowledgement helps elucidate the aprioricity of self-love. Just as

the “I think” brings about the cognitive agent into existence, the unity of acknowledgment

generates the moral agent. Since the latter is an act of practical reason, not concerned with the

intuition of an external (non-rational) manifold but with a manifold that is already existing in the

heterogeneous will as such, the “matter” the “I will” has to organize lies within itself and does

not require empirical affectation. An priori volitional “matter” is necessary to envision the

possibility of an evil Gesinnung: in the Kantian model, even before receiving empirical content

from particular desires, the will must choose the principle of self-love as its basic modus

operandi. This choice of will-directed intention defines the agent’s moral identity by introducing

an order into the incentives. To be possible, however, it requires presupposing a logical subject

to which to impute it–otherwise, there would be an act without an actor. The activity of this

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The passage from the empirical consciousness of the activity of the “I will” in the first-

order maxims to the form that activity must have had in order to constitute the Gesinnung is

made possible by an assumption Kant states in the opening sections of the Anthropology:

Even if [the human being] only wants to study himself, he will reach a critical point, particularly as concerns his condition

in affect ( Affekt ), which normally does not allow dissimulation (Verstellung): that is to say, when the incentives are active,he does not observe himself, and when he does observe himself, the incentives are at rest. (A 7: 121)

Kant intends this remark to indicate one of the difficulties accompanying knowledge of human

nature (homo noumenon): at the moment of transcendental choice, when the incentives are

active, we are not conscious of them; when we are conscious, however, the choice has already

taken place. Consciousness always arrives too late. But Kant’s remark does more than to point at

our theoretical limitations: Kant is also saying that the phenomena encountered in moral self-

scrutiny bear a mark that does not “normally” allow “dissimulation.” That is, the emotional

condition ( Affekt ) one finds oneself in is the result of an activity of which we are not conscious,

but are nonetheless entitled to presuppose–at least, when the agent’s Gesinnung is evil and

adopted first order maxims with full consciousness of their being contrary to the law

(gesetzwidrig). This practical piece of knowledge points, with a priori certainty, to the existence

of the “I will,” an activity that is as hard to get a hold of as that of the “I think” for the

consciousness of the epistemic subject.

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inscrutability and self constitution1

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