Abstract
Barbara Herman offers an interpretation of Kant’s Groundwork on which an action has moral worth if the primary motive for the action is the motive of duty. She offers this approach in place of Richard Henson’s sufficiency-based interpretation, according to which an action has moral worth when the motive of duty is sufficient by itself to generate the action. Noa Latham criticizes Herman’s account and argues that we cannot make sense of the position that an agent can hold multiple motives for action and yet be motivated by only one of them, concluding that we must accept a face-value interpretation of the Groundwork where morally worthy actions obtain only when the agent’s sole motive is the motive of duty. This paper has two goals, one broad and one more constrained. The broader objective is to argue that interpretations of moral worth, as it is presented in the Groundwork, depend on interpretations of Kant’s theory of freedom. I show that whether we can make sense of the inclusion of nonmoral motives in morally worthy actions depends on whether the ‘always causal framework’ is consistent with Kant’s theory of freedom. The narrow goal is to show that if we adopt an ‘always causal’ framework for moral motivation, then Herman’s position and her critique of the sufficiency-based approach fail. Furthermore, within this framework I will specify a criterion for judging whether an action is determined by the motive of duty, even in the presence of nonmoral motives. Thus, I argue Latham’s conclusion that we must accept a face-value interpretation is incorrect.
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Notes
The Groundwork is cited throughout as ‘G’ and the Critique of Pure Reason as A/B. I use the Prussian Academy page numbering.
Henson offers a variety of approaches that are more nuanced than I indicate here; however, since Herman targets all sufficiency-based approaches with her critique, this gloss is adequate.
Nonmoral motives may aid the motive of duty in defeating contrary motives, but under SC the motive of duty must be strong enough to defeat these contrary motives without the help of the nonmoral motives.
Guyer (2000, p. 292) reads PM as an interpretation where ‘the morally worthy agent is one who allows herself to be moved to act on and by an inclination as long as doing so is consistent with the requirements of duty, but would reject acting on the inclination if so doing would violate those requirements’. On this reading, the motive of duty acts as a limiting condition on the agents actions. However, this is a misreading. Herman’s remarks on the motive of duty as a limiting condition (1981, pp. 371–75) show the role duty plays in defining morally permissible actions. As Herman states, permissible actions ‘performed on the condition that the motive of duty is effective as a limiting condition cannot have moral worth’ (1981, p. 375).
I am guided here by Weber (2007, p. 72) who observes that the debate between Herman and Latham is ‘at bottom a debate between just these competing theories of mind and action’.
Or vice versa: if one of two possible causes is removed and the effect still occurs, then we can conclude that the remaining cause is the true cause of the effect.
See Baron (1984) for a more detailed account of such a case.
I am admittedly sceptical about the plausibility of the Frankfurt-style solution. As Herman notes in personal correspondence, it seems to merely stipulate the very thing that is in question. Nevertheless, I include it here for two reasons: first, it does offer one possible approach to dealing with the problem and second, the responsibility problem does not seem to be as crippling for Herman’s approach as the relevance problem, which, as we will see below, remains regardless of whether we accept the always causal framework.
This, I take it, is Weber’s criticism of Herman applied to the specific case of PM within the always causal framework.
Sven Nyholm has suggested that if the always causal framework is indeed true, then the agent is always, at least, partially influenced by nonmoral motives and, therefore it is not true that they act without any (nonmoral) inclination. Strictly speaking this is true. But counterfactual analysis shows us why the mere presence of the nonmoral motives need not trouble us: provided SSC is satisfied, these motives could never suffice to bring about the action. Of course, the response to this claim then, is that nonmoral motives that are so weak are not what we really care about. This much, too, is true. Nevertheless, we cannot have it both ways; nonmoral motives cannot be both altogether excluded and robustly included. The SSC account, I contend, offers the best possible compromise.
Although he would likely also agree that the critique Herman provides is equivocal.
It should be noted that under this interpretation the noumenal realm is that which imbues an action with moral worth since it is from this perspective that the agent can be seen as freely incorporating the motive of duty in her maxim. The phenomenal realm is devoid of moral content.
Also see Vilhauer (2004) for a discussion of Hudson’s interpretation as well as an alternative incompatibilist approach.
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Acknowledgments
Versions of this paper were presented at the LSE, CUNY, and the University of Colorado, Boulder. I thank those present for their comments. I also thank Katrin Flikschuh, Barbara Herman, Sven Nyholm, Alice Obrecht, and especially Alex Voorhoeve for helpful feedback.
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Ferguson, B. Kant on Duty in the Groundwork . Res Publica 18, 303–319 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-012-9191-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-012-9191-5