Kantian autonomy and the moral self

Review of Metaphysics, The, Dec, 2008 by Eric Entrican Wilson

While Kant defines "humanity" as "the capacity to set oneself an end--any end whatsoever," (58) he thinks of moral personality as "the idea of humanity considered wholly intellectually." (59) So we can say that the idea of a moral person is the idea of an individual who sets ends and reasons about how to achieve them on the basis of "formal" rather than "material" principles, someone who decides and acts on the basis of what practical reason recognizes as right, rather than on the basis of sensuous inclinations and idiosyncratic interests. This is the idea of who each of us would be if we had the strength and goodness of will (virtue) to regard the demands of morality as a sufficient and overriding guide to conduct. In short, this better person we believe ourselves to be when we "transfer ourselves in thought" to the standpoint of the intelligible world is a conception of ourselves as autonomous.

This concept of moral personality works together with Kant's notion of "respect" to solve the problem of heteronomy. Recall our earlier discussion of the internalism requirement on reasons for action. According to this idea, R can play the role of a practical reason for a rational agent, only if R could, to some degree at least, motivate that agent to act in light of it. Reasons for action, in other words, can count as genuine reasons only if they include some motivational component. Without this, R cannot function as a reason for the agent. Typically, the reasons that characterize heteronomous volition easily meet this requirement. They concern ends that are set by incentives that stem from familiar motivational sources such as desire and inclination. It is no mystery, for example, how my wanting a drink can furnish me with a reason to order a beer. Nor is it hard to see how my hoping for a comfortable retirement gives me a reason to invest wisely now. This picture does not assume that desires or inclinations cause the decision or action in question. On the contrary, it assumes that the Incorporation Thesis is true. We are "affected" but not "determined" by our sensible impulses; (60) we can step back from them and ask whether they provide considerations in favor of or against some course of action. But if we are only heteronomous then this is all we can do. I doubt that would make us slaves to our passions, but it certainly would limit practical reason to a narrower scope than we might like. According to Kant it would rule out the possibility of categorical imperatives and prevent us from fulfilling our "highest vocation." This is the sense in which empiricism threatens to "degrade" our humanity.

The difficult question for Kant's view is whether the reasons that characterize autonomous volition can also meet the internalism requirement. The question, in other words, is whether there really can be reasons of this sort. Can a consideration of pure practical reason really be a reason for someone like you or me? If not, then Kantian autonomy is impossible. Recall that, according to Kant's official definition, the autonomy of the will is "the will's property of being a law to itself." (61) Less technically, an individual is autonomous insofar as he or she is capable of self-legislation or self-determination. A person exercises this capacity by acting or deciding on the basis of reasons that stem from purely rational considerations--"formal" rather than "material" principles--regarding how one ought to behave. The motivational skeptic doubts that such considerations could possibly have a motivational component. The only thing that could motivate anyone, even a rational agent, is a feeling of some sort. Our cognitive grasp of a general principle, in other words, will not actually move us in any particular direction unless it is contains or is accompanied by some sort of affective component. What is doubted here is the idea that we could ever actually be moved to do anything once we have subtracted from our deliberations all inclination and desire. If the motivational skeptic is right about this, and the internalism requirement is true, then, even if we have the capacity to grasp the implications of the moral law for our behavior, that grasp could not actually provide us with genuine reasons for action.