CREATING the KINGDOM of ENDS Christine M. KorsgaardCopyrighted materialChristine Korsgaard has become one of the leading interpret- ers of Kant’s moral philosophy. She is identified with a small group of philosophers who are producing a version of Kant's moral philosophy that is at once sensitive to its historical roots while revealing its particular relevance to contempo- rary problems. She rejects the traditional picture of Kant's eth- ics as a cold vision of the moral life which emphasizes duty at the expense of love and value. Rather, Kant’s work is seen as providing a resource for addressing not only questions about the metaphysics of morals, but also practical questions about personal relations, politics, and everyday human interaction. This collection of thirteen essays is divided into two parts. Part One offers an exposition and interpretation of the moral philosophy, and could serve asa commentary on The Ground- work of the Metaphysics of Morals. Part Two compares and contrasts Kant’s philosophy with other influential moral phi- losophies, both historical (Aristotle, Sidgwick, Moore, and Hume) and contemporary (Williams, Nagel, and Parfit]. Two particular focal points of her interpretation are Kant’s theory of value and his widely misunderstood doctrine of the “two standpoints.” When these ideas are fully explained, according to Korsgaard, many of the traditional problems with and puz- zles about Kant’s ethics disappear. This collection contains some of the finest work being done on Kant’s ethics and will command the attention of all those involved in teaching and studying moral theory.Copyrighted materialCREATING THE KINGDOM OF ENDSCopyrighted materialCreating the Kingdom of Ends Christine M. Korsgaard Harvard University 4 CAMBRIDGE » UNIVERSITY PRESSPUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, United Kingdom 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA. 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1996 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1996 Reprinted 1997, 1999, 2000 Printed in the United States of America Typeset in Trump Mediaeval A catalogue record for this book ts available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available ISBN 0-521-49644-6 hardback ISBN 0-521-49962-3 paperbackTo my parents Marion and Albert Korsgaard with love and gratitudeCopyrighted materialContents Introduction page ix Abbreviations for Kant’s works xvii PART ONE KANT’S MORAL PHILOSOPHY t__An introduction to the ethical, political, and religious thought of Kant 3 2__Kant’s analysis of obligation: The argument of Groundwork I 43 3_Kant’s Formula of Universal Law Pad 4_Kant’s Formula of Humanity 106 §_ The right to lie: Kant on dealing with evil 133 6_ Morality as freedom 159 Creating the Kingdom of Ends: Reciprocity and responsibility in personal relations 188 PART TWO COMPARATIVE ESSAYS 8 Aristotle and Kant on the source of value 235 Two distinctions in mess. 2, 10_The reasons we can share: An attack on the distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral values 275 11 Skepticism about practical reason git viiviii CONTENTS 12 Two arguments against lying 335 13__ Personal identity and the unity of agency: A Kantian response to Parfit 363 Bibliography 399 Sources 40° Other publications by the author 411 Index 403 Index of citationsIntroduction This volume contains the thirteen essays I published on Kantian ethics between 1983 and 1993. Part One consists of seven essays which are devoted primarily to the exposition, interpretation, and, in some cases, reconstruction, of Kant's moral philosophy itself. Part Two consists of six essays in which I compare and contrast Kantian ideas and approaches with those of other important moral philoso- phers, both in the tradition and on the contemporary scene. The first essay in Part One provides a general survey of Kant’s ideas about morality, the political state, and the ethical basis of religious faith, situating those ideas within Kant’s general project of providing a critique of reason and in the historical context from which that project arose. The remaining six essays together consti- tute a short commentary on Kant’s moral philosophy, following the order in which Kant himself presents his ideas in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morais, but bringing in material from his other ethical works. Two themes dominate the interpretation of Kant which I offer in these essays. The first is the theory of value that I associate with Kant's Formula of Humanity. Kant differs from realists and empiri- cists not merely in the objects to which he assigns value, or in the way he categorizes different kinds of value, but in the story he tells about why there is such a thing as value in the world. According to Kant, we confer value on the objects of our rational choices. He argues that the conception of ourselves as “ends-in-ourselves” is a presupposition of rational choice. To choose something is to take it to be worth pursuing; and when we choose things because they are important to us we are in effect taking ourselves to be important. ixx INTRODUCTION Reflection on this fact commits us to the conception of our human- ity as a source of value. This is the basis of Kant’s Formula of Humanity, the principle of treating all human beings as ends-in- themselves. In one way this account resembles empiricist theories of value. The objects of value are just the things that are important to us, the objects of natural human interests. But the resulting values are not “subjective” or given directly by those interests. Value springs from the act of rational choice. Our commitment to the value of human- ity constrains our own choices, by limiting us to pursuits which are acceptable from the standpoint of others, and extending our concern to the things which others choose. This confirms the basic intu- itions behind realist theories of value: that we can’t value just any- thing, and that there are things which we must value. But these requirements are not derived from metaphysical facts. What brings “objectivity” to the realm of values is not that certain things have objective value, but rather that there are constraints on rational choice. The second theme concerns Kant’s famous, or infamous, doctrine of the two standpoints, and the bearing of that on moral philosophy. In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant argues that a rational being “has two standpoints from which he can consider himself and recognize the laws of the employment of his pow- ers..." (G 452), We can consider ourselves, in the language of the Critiques, as noumena or as phenomena. This view is not, as so many have supposed, an ontological or metaphysical theory accord- ing to which we exist simultaneously in two different “worlds,” one somehow more real than the other. As [ understand it, it goes like this: In one sense the world is given to us, it appears to us, and we are passive in the face of it. We must therefore think of the world as generating the appearances, as giving them to us. The world insofar as it appears to us is phenomenal; the world insofar as it generates the appearances is noumenal. We can only know the world as phe- nomenal, that is, insofar as it is given to sense, but we can think of it as noumenal. So there are not “two worlds,” but rather one world which must be conceived in two different ways, And all of these points apply above all to ourselves. When we view ourselves as phenomena, we regard everything about ourselves, including inner appearances such as thoughts and choices, as parts of the naturalIntroduction xi world, and therefore as governed by its laws. But insofar as we are rational, we also regard ourselves as active beings, who are the au- thors of our thoughts and choices. We do not regard our thoughts and choices merely as things that happen to us; rather, thinking and choosing are things that we do. To this extent, we must view our- selves as noumena. And from this standpoint, we recognize laws that govern our mental powers in a different way than the laws of nature do: laws for the employment, for the use, of these powers; laws that show us how thinking and choosing must be done. There may be problems with this way of looking at the homan situation, but it does not commit us to a belief in a mysterious form of supersensuous existence. It does, however, have important impli- cations for the way that we approach moral philosophy. The basic task of moral philosophy, for Kant, is to answer the question “What should I do?” This task is set for us by our practically rational na- ture, which brings with it both the capacity for and the necessity of choosing our actions. Choice is our plight, our inescapable fate, as rational beings. The project of critical moral philosophy is to deter- mine what resources we can find in reason for solving the problem which reason itself has set for us. Since we are looking for laws for the employment of our powers of choice and action, we do net, in this investigation, regard ourselves as natural, causally determined beings —as the objects of scientific understanding. We regard our- selves as free, as the authors of our actions. This is not because there is any reason to deny that we are natural, causally determined be- ings, but because for the purpose at hand, that conception of our- selves is irrelevant. Moral philosophy proceeds from what I call the standpoint of practical reason. These two themes come together in the essay from which I have derived the title of this volume, and in which I describe the account of human relationships, both personal and moral, that follows from Kant’s philosophy. Treating others as ends-in-themselves is not a matter of discovering a metaphysical fact about them — that they are free and rational, and so have value — and then acting accordingly. When you respect the humanity of others you do not regard them as the objects of knowledge — as phenomena — at all. Instead you regard them as active beings, as the authors of their thoughts and choices, as noumena. To respect others as ends-in-themselves is to treat them as fellow inhabitants of the standpoint of practical reason. It isxi INTRODUCTION therefore to make your choices with them or at least in a way that is acceptable from their point of view - that is, to choose maxims which can serve as universal laws. To respect the humanity of others is to think and act as a legislative citizen in the Kingdom of Ends. If] am right about this, Kant approaches moral philosophy in a very different way than the British Empiricists and their heirs in the analytic tradition do. The basic problem, set by the plight of rational agency, is “what should I do?” The approach is to raise practical questions as they are faced by the reflective moral agent herself. Moral philosophy is the extension and refinement of ordinary practi- cal deliberation, the search for practical reasons. This makes Kant’s enterprise very different from that of philosophers who talk about morality and the moral agent from the outside, third-personally, as phenomena that are in need of explanation. Kant’s arguments are not about us; they are addressed to us. Failure to grasp this difference or to grasp its depth and signifi- cance has bedeviled the English-speaking world’s reception of Kant. Where the goal is not to explain but to address, the very standards af success are different. First-personal questions require first-personal answers. Misguided emulation of science has been a recurring source of confusion in the philosophy of the modern world. One manifestation of this is that so many philosophers suffer from an unreflective tendency to pose all philosophical questions in episte- mological terms, How do we know that anything has value, and which things have it? This way of looking at ethical problems sug- gests from the start that their solution will turn out to be, in a broad sense, technological: a matter of finding some piece of knowledge which we can then apply. But there is no need to assume that rea- son’s guidance of practice must look like that. It may lie instead in the provision of principles of practical reason — principles that gov- em choice in the same way that the principles of logic govern thought in general and the principles of the understanding govern the formation of our beliefs about nature. Since such principles are in the first instance addressed to us, the philosophical question about them is not so much how we know them as why we have to conform to them, Or rather, those two questions become one. In answering the second we will already have answered the first. The misunderstandings of Kant's ideas which have resulted fromIntroduction aati misconstructions of his project have been unusually extreme. But this general form of misunderstanding is common in philosophy. I believe that most philosophical views that have gained any currency in the tradition either are extremely plausible or can be made so by a little generous reconstruction. Views that have been held and devel- oped by intelligent people over long periods of time are unlikely to be infected by logical errors and elementary mistakes, or to be re- futed by local arguments. Usually the “standard objections” that one school of thought raises against another are question-begging in deep and disguised ways; in fact they presuppose the first school’s way of looking at things. Philosophers are at their best when the task is the internal development of a philosophical position into a plausible and systematic view; the criticism of an opponent’s posi- tion is normally the weakest part of a philosophical work. Deep disagreements among good philosophers spring from large-scale dif- ferences of approach and outlook; these are what are really at stake. This conception of the subject makes determining the choice among opposing philosophical positions both more difficult and more interesting. The philosophical tradition — and, in my view, the contemporary philosophical scene — present us with a true embar- rassment of riches. We are or should be perplexed at being con- fronted with so many seemingly contrary and plausible views. Our perplexity begins to dissipate when we come to see that the propo- nents of different views are raising and therefore answering some- what different questions. We will only know what to think, how- ever, when we can find once again the common human plight or worry that motivates them to ask these different questions. The correct view is not going to be the one left standing when the contra- dictions and absurdities of all the others have finally been exposed. It is going to be the one that answers best to the human concerns which motivate the study of philosophy in the first place. I would like to think that this conception of the subject is illus- trated, even if imperfectly, by the second set of essays. These essays are comparative, and their general aim is to show that the more obvious disparities between Kant’s view and some of the more pow- erful philosophical alternatives can be explained in terms of deeper differences in approach and outlook, Of course I also think that once these differences are correctly understood, Kant's views emerge as the more compelling.xiv INTRODUCTION The first three essays are linked by a concern with issues in value theory. | compare Kant with philosophers who, at least as far as value theory is concerned, represent the rationalist tradition: Aris- totle, G. E. Moore, and Thomas Nagel. There are in fact important similarities between Kant’s account of value and the accounts given by these three philosophers, but there is also, in each case, an essen- tial difference. The work of each essay is to bring out the similarity and then to show where the difference lies and why it matters. Aristotle’s idea of a good that is “final without qualification,” Moore's idea of an “intrinsic” good, and Nagel’s idea of an “agent- neutral” value are all designed to do work which in Kant’s theory is done in a rather different way by the idea that humanity is the “unconditioned condition” of all value. When the similarity in the function of these concepts is brought into focus, we can then ask which succeeds best at the job. Or, in the case of the essay on Aris- totle, perhaps I should say best for us, for there I trace the ethical difference to a larger difference in the metaphysical views possible in the ancient and modern worlds. The last three essays also have a common theme, but it is a litde more difficult to articulate. These essays contrast Kant’s views with those of philosophers who — again, so far as the issues under discus- sion are concerned — represent empiricist strains in moral philoso- phy: David Hume and Bernard Williams, Henry Sidgwick, and Derek Parfit. These philosophers argue, in various ways, that the content of the principles of practical reason is shaped and controlled by facts about the world. Hume and Williams argue that the possible content of rational principles is limited by our motivational capaci- ties. Sidgwick argues that rational principles must employ concepts which can be applied to natural objects without vagueness or ambi- guity, and that only the principle of utility meets this criterion. And Parfit’s famous attacks on some familiar dictates of practical reason depend not only on his unusual views about the metaphysics of personal identity, but also on his assumption that the content of rational principles depends on such metaphysical facts. I argue that these philosophers misconceive the relation between practical rea- son and the world. Practical reason is not shaped by the world but rather shapes it, by showing us how we must shape it. Against Hume and Williams | argue that the principles of practical reason, if there are such principles, give us motives. Against Sidgwick ! argueIntroduction xv that the concepts of ethics cannot be applied without ambiguity to natural objects because they are and must be ideal concepts if they are to shape our aspirations. And against Parfit [ argue that it is because we occupy the standpoint of practical reason, not because of our metaphysical constitution, that we are faced with the task of constructing a unified personal identity. The theme here is the famil- iar Kantian one: practical reason — in fact, reason — is not something we find in the world but something we bring to it. Philosophy is a cooperative enterprise. How could it be otherwise? Philosophical arguments can succeed only if their audience can recog: nize themselves, their plight, the human condition, in the way that those arguments are presented. Yet every person’s mind has a set of natural, almost primitive biases: towards the big picture or the intri- cate detail, towards similarity and system or distinction and differ- ence, towards the careful conservation of territory already mapped out and won, or the radical challenge to received ways of conceiving things. These biases are not bad in themselves, but left uncorrected, they threaten to turn your individual voice into a merely idiosyn- cratic one. The way to get on in philosophy is to let your natural mental proclivities do their utmost and then call in your teachers and friends and students and critics to correct the negative effects of your biases. I have been lucky in my teachers and friends and students and critics, and it is not possible here to mention the many people wha have helped me to write the essays that follow. But we owe a special kind of debt to the people with whom we regularly discuss our philo- sophical views, and to those working on the same problems, who give us confidence when they agree and spur us to further efforts when they don’t. [have benefited in these ways from the work and conversa- tion of Charlotte Brown, Charles Crittenden, Tim Gould, Barbara Herman, Tom Hill, Peter Hylton, Scott Kim, Arthur Kuflik, Onora O'Neill, Andy Reath, Jay Schleusener, and Tamar Schapiro, who helped me to prepare this collection. I would also like to take this occasion to express my deep gratitude for the regular and generous help I received from the late Manley Thompson. And finally I would like to thank my teacher, John Rawls.Copyrighted materialAbbreviations for Kant’s works References to and citations of Kant’s works are given parenthetically in the text, using the abbreviations below, and for most works citing the page numbers of the relevant volume of Kants gesammelte Schriften (published by the Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin), which appear in the margins of most translations. The volume numbers are listed at the end of the entries below. The Critique of Pure Reason, however, is cited in its own standard way, by the page numbers of both the first {A} and second (B) editions. The Lectures on Ethics are cited only by the page number of the translation. The translations from which I have quoted are listed below. ANTH Anthology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798), trans. Mary Gregor. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974. (VII) cr Critique of Pure Reason {1st ed. 1781, and ed. 1787), trans. Norman Kemp Smith. New York: Macmillan, St. Martin’s Press, 1965. C2 Critique of Practical Reason (1788), trans. Lewis White Beck. The Library of Liberal Arts, 1956. Formerly published in Indianapolis by Bobbs-Merrill, now published in New York by Macmillan. Hereinafter referred to simply as Library of Liberal Arts. (V) C3 Critique of Judgment (1790), trans. J. H. Bernard. New York: Haf- ner Library of Classics, 1951. (V} . CBHH “Conjectural Beginnings of Human History” (1786), trans. Emil L. Fackenheim in Kant On History, ed. Lewis White Beck. Library of Liberal Arts, 1963. (VIII) END = “The End of All Things” in Kant (1794), trans. Robert E. Anchor in Kant On History, cited above. (VII) G Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), trans. Lewis White Beck as Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Li- brary of Liberal Arts, 1959. (VI) ID On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World (The “Inaugural Dissertation,” 1770], trans, G. B. Kerferd and xviixviii 1UH LE MPI MPV PE PFM SRL ABBREVIATIONS D. E. Walford in Kant: Selected Pre-Critical Writings and Corre- spondence with Beck. Manchester; Manchester University Press and New York: Barnes & Noble, 1968. (II) “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View” (1784], trans, Lewis White Beck in Kant On History, cited above. {WIT} Lectures on Ethics (1775-1780). Drawn from the lecture notes of Theodor Friedrich Brauer, Gottlieb Kutzner, and Chr. Mron- govious by Paul Menzer in 1924, trans. Louis Infeld. Indianapo- lis: Hackett Publishing, 1980. The General Introduction to The Metaphysics of Morals (1797), trans. James Ellington in Immanuel Kant: Ethical Philosophy, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1983. The two main parts of the work are listed separately below. (VI) The Metaphysical Principles of Justice (1797), tans. John Ladd. Library of Liberal Arts, 1965. |VI} ‘The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue (r797), trans. James Elling- ‘ton in Immanuel Kant: Ethical Philosophy, cited above. (VI) “An Old Question Raised Again: Is the Human Race Constantly Progressing!” trans. Robert Anchor in Kant On History, cited above. (VII} Enquiry Conceming the Clarity of the Principles of Natural Theol- ogy and Ethics (the so-called “Prize Essay,” 1763}, trans. G. B Kerferd and D. E. Walford in Kant: Selected Pre-Critical Writ- ings and Correspondence with Beck, cited above. (II) Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783), trans. P. Carus, revised by Lewis White Beck. Library of Liberal Arts, 1950. (IV) Perpetual Peace (1795), trans. Lewis White Beck in Kant On His- tory, cited above. (VII) Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone {1793}, trans. Theo- dore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1934. Rpt. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960. (VI) “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Altruistic Motives” (1797], trans, Lewis White Beck in Immanuel Kant: Critique of Practi- cal Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949. Rpt. in New York: Garland, 1976. [VII] “On the Common Saying: ‘This May Be True in Theory but It Does not Apply in Practice’” (1793), trans. H. B. Nisbet in Kant's Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 1970. (VII) “What Is Enlightenment?” (1784), trans. Lewis White Beck in Kant On History, cited above. (VII)PART ONE Kant’s moral philosophyCopyrighted material1 An introduction to the ethical, political, and religious thought of Kant -..teason has no dictatorial authority; its verdict is always simply the agreement of free citizens, of whom each one must be permitted to express, without let or hindrance, his objections or even his veto. (Cr A738-39/ By66-67) Critique of Pure Reason For Immanuel Kant the death of speculative metaphysics and the birth of the rights of man were not independent events. Together they constitute the resolution of the Enlightenment debate about the scope and power of reason. In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant shows that theoretical reason is unable to answer the questions of speculative metaphysics: whether God exists, the soul is immortal, and the will is free. But this conclusion prepares the way for an extension in the power of practical reason." Practical reason directs that every human being as a free and autonomous being must be regarded as unconditionally valuable. In his ethical writings Kant shows how this directive provides a rational foundation for morality, politics, and a religion of moral faith. Bringing reason to the world becomes the enterprise of morality rather than metaphysics, and the work as well as the hope of humanity. A CHILD OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT Immanuel Kant was born in Kénigsberg, Prussia, on 22 April 1724, into a devout Pietist family. His father was a haress-maker and the family was not well off. But Kant’s mother recognized her son's intellectual gifts, and the patronage of the family pastor Franz Albert Schultz [1692-1763], a Pietist theology professor and preacher, en- abled Kant to attend the Collegium Fridericianum and prepare for 34 KANT’S MORAL PHILOSOPHY the university. He studied at the University of Kénigsberg from 1740~47, resisting pressure to choose one of the faculties and taking courses eclectically instead.* He was influenced by his teacher Mar- tin Knutsen (1713~51), a Wolffian rationalist who taught philosophy and physics, and who took an interest in the developments of British philosophy and science. Knutsen introduced Kant to the works of Newton. From 1747-55 Kant worked as a private tutor in the homes of various families near Kénigsberg, and pursued his interests in natural science. In 1755 he was granted the right to lecture as a Privatdozent (an unsalaried lecturer who is paid by lecture fees) at Kénigsberg. In order to earna living Kant lectured on many subjects including logic, metaphysics, ethics, geography, anthropology, mathematics, the foun- dations of natural science and physics. We have testimonials to the power of Kant’s lectures throughout his life: his audiences were large, and his ethics lectures are reported to have been especially moving.* In 1770 Kant was finally appointed to a regular professorship, the chair of logic and metaphysics at Kénigsberg. He lectured there until 1797. He died on r2 February 1804. Kant never left the Kénigsberg area, but there are reports of his extraordinary ability to visualize, on the basis of written accounts, places and things he had never seen.‘ In a footnote to the preface of Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Kant complacently remarks: A city such as Konigsberg on the River Pregel —a large city, the center of a state, the seat of the government's provincial councils, the site of a univer- sity (for cultivation of the sciences}, a seaport connected by rivers with the interior of the country, so that its location favors traffic with the rest of the country as well as with neighboring or remote countries having different languages and customs — is a suitable place for broadening one’s knowledge of man and the world. In such a city, this knowledge can be acquired even without traveling. |ANTH ron} Kant’s parents died when he was young, and he had little contact with his family after that. He never married. The regularity of his habits, perhaps due to the poverty of his early life and to his poor health, is well known. He only once got into trouble with the au- thorities. The events of his life were those of his intellectual life, and the political events in which he took such interest. His reawakening