Kant on Emotion and Value

A. Cohen

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137276643
• eBook ISBN: 9781137276650
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

Distinguished international scholars discuss the connection between emotion and value in Kant's philosophy, from his ethics to his philosophy of mind, aesthetics, religion and politics. Through a mixture of interpretation and critical discussion, this collection demonstrates the continuing relevance of Kant's work to philosophical debates.

1

The Place of Emotions in Kantian Morality

Nancy Sherman

The image of the cold, heartless, duty-bound agent is yielding, in certain Kantian circles, to a portrait of an agent who values and cultivates the human gesture.¹ Similarly Kant’s notorious impatience with Romanticism and his eagerness to expose the unreliability and natural lottery in the distribution of emotional temperaments finds itself poised against a view of the emotions as supporting moral interest. To a large extent I am sympathetic with this more congenial portrait and see my task in this chapter as one of surveying the evidence. The more humanistic picture emerges from Metaphysics of Morals, as well as from less formal ethical writings, such as the Lectures on Moral Philosophy and Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint. I believe the view can also find its way into the Groundwork, although I don’t formally argue the point. Though sympathetic, I am cautious and well aware that concessions to the emotions are primarily a matter of moral anthropology, for Kant a way of applying the Categorical Imperative and its a priori motive congenially to the human case. This forces the question of just how tolerant Kant would be of human agents who act from the motive of duty but without appropriate affect or emotional comportment. The fact that for Kant nothing may be morally amiss may raise certain objections to his views and question the adequacy of his account in the human sphere. I raise these worries at the conclusion of this chapter.

The chapter divides into three sections. In section 1, I begin with some commonsense intuitions about the role of emotions in moral life. My hope is at least to make plausible the general claim that emotions often play a significant role in the expression and cultivation of moral character. In section 2, I turn directly to the place of emotions in Kantian morality. I suggest that Kant did not view the pathological emotions as necessarily beyond control or cultivation and that we can distinguish several interrelated claims regarding their supportive role in the expression of moral character. In the final section I assess these claims in the context of the general question of how heteronomous Kant’s account becomes once we give ample room to the emotions. It may be that moral anthropology needs to be the central and ‘accepted’ focus of Kantian ethics or, if it is already, that its boundary with an autonomous ethics be more sharply defined.

1 Emotions matter in moral assessment

Before I can usefully talk about Kant’s accommodation of the emotions, I need to become clearer about some basic issues, such as why emotions should play a role in morality. From the point of view of commonsense morality, it is plausible to suppose that the emotions have an important place in an account of moral character. Even if we think of morality as having primarily to do with the rightness of action, a necessary condition for acting rightly will include recognition of the morally relevant features of situations, or what has been called moral salience.² Often this will involve a sensitivity cultivated through emotional dispositions. Not only do we notice, but we notice with a certain intensity or impact that would be absent if emotions weren’t engaged. We focus in a way we wouldn’t otherwise. And once focused, we bring to bear further considerations that are relevant; we make inferences that would otherwise not have arisen or be thought of in as compelling a way. Sensitivity thus becomes more than a purely perceptual or cognitive matter. Of course, any notion of attending or noticing presupposes some degree of affective interest in the subject matter. It is no different in moral matters, but here specific sorts of emotions such as sympathetic sorrow or joy, indignation, fear, or anguish typically draw us in and help us to fasten onto matters where moral intervention may be required.

In addition to this perceptual role, the emotions play a role in communicating to others an agent’s interest and concern. Even if action is to have a predominant role in moral theory, the emotional tone of one’s action may make a moral difference. Action that is unfeeling may simply not be received in the same way as action conveyed through more gentle care. Of course, emotional tone is not always to the point. If someone is bleeding profusely, then helpful action might simply be action aimed at stopping the bleeding, whatever its emotional tone. The communication of emotion is neither here nor there. But there are clearly other cases where it matters, and matters a lot. It typically matters in how we comfort a child, how we volunteer services to a student, how we show our willingness to help a colleague who needs our resources. The point of helping in many of these cases is to reassure another that we care – to show patience, loyalty, considerateness, empathy. Here the quality of the emotional interaction is inseparable from the act of helping. In the case of a parent or teacher, it is part of how we define the notion of assistance. Mutual aid is partly emotional tenor. (There may be an objection to the use of the term ‘tone’ here in that actions with different tones are simply different actions, and that consequently, what we need to talk about is not the tone of the action but the different actions. I am not bothered by this correction. Even if we grant that it is more natural to say ‘the “unfeeling” action was the wrong action’ as opposed to ‘the right action with the wrong “tone,”’ the reason it is wrong, I am suggesting, is because of its emotional expression. It is the attitudinal aspect of action that we sometimes need to draw attention to and assess.)

In these ways, then, affective attitude appears to have something to do with the moral assessment of action. It seems to make a difference in how one helps but also in how one says ‘no’. Suppose you decide not to help someone because you doubt their real need (you think they may be trying to take advantage), because you think ill of their cause, or perhaps because you just do not have time. Here whether the tone of your refusal is arrogant or civil, churlish or kind makes a difference to the moral assessment of your response. Even if your refusal is not objectionable, that is, it is a permissible omission, the attitude that expresses it may be. That way of saying ‘no’ is not acceptable. Again, whether we say a different action type is required or the same action with a different tone is for the moment not central. What is at issue is the attitude we convey when we act.

In some cases the presence or absence of regret may crucially affect the moral assessment of a response. Here what we evaluate is not so much what a person has done but what a person has not done and how she responds to not acting. Such cases are often conflict situations, where an agent is faced with two competing claims that contingently conflict. To do one is to leave something of equal moral weight undone. Though in such circumstances one may make a choice, the choice is not necessarily rational or justified. The sensitive agent is aware of a ‘moral remainder’. And this moral remainder is experienced emotionally as regret, or in Bernard Williams’ term, as ‘agent-regret’ (1981). It indicates that though one may not be at fault for failing to meet a claim, one nonetheless feels some degree of responsibility.³ Its presence tells us something additional about the agent’s moral character over and above how and what she chooses. It signals an awareness of the complexity of moral life and the difficulty of making wise choices in constrained circumstances.

In other cases of moral conflict what is required is not merely that a claim go unheeded but that an agent actively do something base in order to promote the competing claim. To free my family held hostage by a tyrant, Aristotle tells us, I may have to agree to perform a heinous act.⁴ To allow the naval ships to set sail, Agamemnon must violate his duty to his daughter. These are cases of dirty hands where an agent must harm to help, kill innocents to save other innocent lives, violate one unqualified duty to fulfill another. The deontological considerations that might prohibit such actions are not my present concern. Rather, what interests me is the more limited point that if under certain conditions a dirty action is, practically speaking, required, the agent who experiences no regret or loss in performing such an action seems to lack an adequate moral appreciation of the complexity of the circumstances. This is not to say all agents must face these or lesser conflicts with a tortured soul. Even in conflict cases there may be no question in an agent’s mind about what course of action must be taken. But still, though there is no ambivalence, there may be loss. And not to feel that loss is to fail to take seriously a moral claim. It is to assume that the claim can be wiped out by an act of mental balancing. But the point of regret is that it marks a cost that is not canceled out by a corresponding benefit. In this sense, conscientious deliberation and decision-making do not exhaust everything that matters in the expression of moral character. To make a decision yet not to feel any residue from an unmet claim that tugs with equal moral force may be the sign of a morally deficient character.

Now it might be argued in reply that regret of this sort is morally commendable in only a secondary way insofar as it sensitizes an agent to the sort of claims that can typically be fulfilled by action. Though I may violate a duty in a conflict situation, my regret signals that I can typically fulfill that requirement and am aware of the force of the duty. As such the moral value of regret is ultimately parasitic upon action. It plays the role so many other emotions play of marking an occasion for moral action. The only difference is that it alerts us to a type of occasion, not a particular token. However, this reply does not go far enough. For even apart from the contribution to prospective action, there is a dimension of moral character revealed directly by the emotion. The presence of regret tells us that this claim matters here and now, however one goes on to formulate an appropriate intention next time round or even to make amends now. Just as those intentions to act will reveal character, so does the emotion. They both have their common source in character. Put another way, regret is a way of showing commitment (what you care about) when action is impossible. As such it is a mode of response valuable in its own right apart from any contribution it makes to future action.

In making this point, I do not wish to deny that there is a likely psychological correlation between recognizing a claim that must be left undone and acting on that sort of claim in the future when circumstances are more favorable. Moreover, even in the cramped circumstances of conflict, regret may issue in some measure of compensatory action here and now. Yet still, I want to make the stronger claim that even if the practice of regret led to no payoffs in present or future action, an agent who experienced regret at having to leave a claim undone because of competing claims is, other things equal, morally more admirable than one who does not. What is valuable is not that she loses sleep, feels tortured inside, or feels emotionally wrought on the outside. It is not sentimentalism that is at stake. Rather, it is that she is able to see and emotionally express concerns that are relevant here and now. She has a kind of moral vision. She is aware that the best one can do at a given moment does not always balance the claims on all fronts.

From this brief survey there appears to be intuitive evidence for the claim that emotions are relevant to our assessments of moral goodness. We are prone to find something morally lacking in the individual who acts from the right principles but with an inappropriate attitude or emotional comportment. The action is missing the right texture and tone. Other times we look to the presence of emotions, such as regret, not as something that enhances the action but as something that reveals the background choice and the moral compromise that has to be made. In this last case, to argue against the relevance of the emotion in moral assessment is either to eliminate the real possibility of moral conflict (as some have) or to argue that even if there are conflicts, what matters is that one act and choose, not that one also acknowledge the inadequacy of one’s actions to reflect the moral demands. Yet to exclude this as relevant, I have implied, is to take too narrow a view of moral character.

I shall be assessing the Kantian position with these preliminary observations in mind. I should note now that I am not interested in the phenomenon of agent regret per se or in whether Kant can in fact allow for genuine conflicts of duties.⁵ I mention regret as primarily a way of exposing the intuition that certain aspects of moral response (and moral character) are not easily conveyed by a decision to act. Granted, it may be that many emotions are actually captured by the complete description of the chosen action and that to look at the action is itself to look at emotional comportment. But regret is a case where the two seem to pull apart, where we can see more perspicuously that how we morally respond may not be exhausted by what we choose to do. I should also make clear that I by no means view these various judgments of commonsense morality as bedrock for moral theory. Nor, of course, would Kant. Still, I shall argue that there is a concerted effort on Kant’s own part to accommodate the emotions in a way that is not fully at odds with our commonsense judgments about their role in the moral life and that there certainly is a wish and a hope on the part of neo-Kantians that he be able to do this. In what sense Kant can successfully do this within the rubric of his own rationalist theory is the question I will need to press.

2 The Kantian accommodation

For Kant, what is of unconditioned moral value is the purity of a good will and its capacity to be determined by a motive unconditioned by inclination. Such a motive is duty. To act from duty is to act from the thought that one must act only on maxims that can be universalized by a will. It is to act from the idea of a will as legislating laws or to act from the Universal Law formula of the Categorical Imperative. That principle and the motive to act from it are said by Kant to be valid for all rational beings as such. Consequently, contingent inclinations and pathological motives are quite independent of the goodness of a will and indeed often appear to be its natural foe. The following passages make this point:

Virtue is the strength of man’s maxims in fulfilling his duty. Strength of any kind can be recognized only by the obstacles it can overcome, and in the case of virtue these obstacles are natural inclinations, which may come into conflict with man’s moral resolution. (MS 6:394; cf. 445)

Impulses of nature, accordingly, involve obstacles within man’s mind to his fulfillment of duty and (sometimes powerful) forces opposing it ... Now the capacity and considered resolve to withstand a strong but unjust opponent is fortitude (fortitudo), and fortitude and, with respect to what opposes the moral disposition in us, virtue (virtus, fortitudo moralis) (MS 6:379).

But though here and elsewhere an adversarial relation is often portrayed betw...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1   The Place of Emotions in Kantian Morality
• 2   From Duty and for the Sake of the Noble: Kant and Aristotle on Morally Good Action
• 3   Kantian Moral Maturity and the Cultivation of Character
• 4   The Place of the Emotions in Kants Transcendental Philosophy
• 5   Kants Pragmatic Concept of Emotions
• 6   Kant on the Pleasures of Understanding
• 7   Debunking Confabulation: Emotions and the Significance of Empirical Psychology for Kantian Ethics
• 8   Affective Normativity
• 9   Love of Honor as a Kantian Virtue
• 10   All You Need Is Love?
• 11   The Heart as Locus of Moral Struggle in the Religion
• 12   Kant and the Feeling of Sublimity
• 13Enthusiastic Cosmopolitanism
• Bibliography
• Index