1 Introduction
For without philosophy, nowadays only criminals dare to hurt other humans.
L’hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend à la vertu.
So convenient it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.
The key thing with resolutions is not to keep them. It’s how to revise them once you fail.
This Element combines two of my long-standing philosophical interests: the ethics of Immanuel Kant and misuses of rational capacities. The significance of the latter phenomenon stretches far beyond Kant scholarship. For instance, one of the most memorable moments of my student days was when one of my professors claimed that ‘Ethicists are the worst people in the world because they know all the excuses’. I think this is a somewhat pessimistic – though, as we will see, very Kantian – thought.
According to Immanuel Kant’s biographer Manfred Reference KuehnKuehn (2001: 222), Kant ‘had formulated the maxim for himself that he would smoke only one pipe [a day], but it is reported that the bowls of his pipes increased considerably in size as the years went on’. Kant’s implementation of his own maxim is here in tension with the aim incorporated into this maxim, which presumably was to limit tobacco consumption. Kant treats the maxim as an externally imposed constraint that must be obeyed to the letter, but not in spirit. The implementation undermines his end without formally renouncing it. Kuehn’s anecdote, though it concerns matters of prudence rather than morality, nicely illustrates the subject matter of this Element: quibbling with rules, trying to outsmart one’s better self or, as Kant calls it, vernünfteln/‘rationalizing’, understood as the use of rational capacities to undermine reason, or an exercise of reason that weakens agents’ readiness to do the right thing while they yet deem themselves committed to morality.
Kant was a keen psychological observer of this phenomenon, and the dangers it poses are a major theme in his moral philosophy. Consequently, his discussion of rationalizing will help us to better understand a number of important aspects of his philosophy. First, practical philosophy is supposed to function as an ‘antidote’ (Reference WoodWood 2002: 28) against rationalizing. Understanding rationalizing will illuminate the purposes that moral principles and theories serve, and will help us to understand what the role of the philosopher is for moral improvement.Footnote 1 Second, the concept of rationalizing is central for our understanding of Kant’s engagement with his academic colleagues and the popular philosophers whom he considers to advocate sophisticated forms of rationalizing. Moreover, he criticizes religious institutions and practices because they propagate and encourage mistaken beliefs about moral responsibility.Footnote 2 Third, Kant’s discussions of concrete examples of rationalizing offer instructive case studies for how our moral reasoning can go wrong. A detailed look at these examples will enhance our understanding of Kant’s conception of the workings as well as deficits of our rational faculties. Fourth, throughout his discussions of the various dialectics that our reason is subject to and that necessitate critiques of our rational capacities, Kant describes fundamental mistakes in reasoning labelled ‘rationalizing’.Footnote 3 Kant is interested in the impact of rationalizing on all aspects of our use of reason. However, due to constraints of space, I will focus on the practical dimension.
In this Element, I will take a detailed look at the examples Kant provides of rationalizing, at his own explanations of the underlying process and at the effects rationalizing has on agents’ grasp of morality, and will discuss the necessary conditions for rationalizing to be possible and to appear as a promising strategy to agents for dealing with moral commands that can require great sacrifice from them. In doing so, I aim to shed new light on Kant’s philosophy in a number of ways.
(1) The main contribution of this Element is to challenge the widely shared assumption that rationalizing in Kant only extends to questions of motivation and specific maxims. By drawing on the full breadth of examples of rationalizing presented by Kant, I will show how rationalizing can lead to a systematically distorted sense of right and wrong which Kant labels ‘corruption’. When I rationalize, I undermine the grasp that the supreme principle of morality has on me, while I still believe myself fully committed to morality, albeit to a less demanding moral principle or more lenient conception of morality. There is much more to rationalizing than misrepresenting the strength or source of motives.
(2) I explain in what sense rationalizing is a rational activity. Empirical practical reason devises pseudo-justifications and finds excuses to promote an agent’s sensuous ends at the expense of morality. Paradoxically, the interest in these pseudo-justifications is rooted in rational agents’ recognition of the authority of morality. Only agents who recognize the authority of morality are tempted to look for excuses or apparent justifications for their morally dubious actions. My discussion will reveal that Kant is not an arch-rationalist who believes in the power of reason without qualification.Footnote 4 Kant understands that moral failings are not simply the fault of inclinations and of our sensuous side (in fact, they are never simply that). Many instances of moral failure are expressions of fallacious (but not always obviously incorrect) reasoning and even of forms of pseudo-rationality that can be extremely sophisticated. Kant is aware that rationality is a double-edged sword; it is the source of morality and of our dignity, but it also enables us to seemingly justify moral transgressions to ourselves and others, and it creates an interest in such justifications in the first place.
(3) I explain how it is possible for a rationalizer to think that committing a moral violation can be excused and even justified, even though this rationalizer has not completely lost touch with the moral law. This will allow us to maintain that rationalizers are still moral agents and are morally responsible for their actions. It will also demonstrate that Kant does not think that corrupted agents are merely in a state of confusion in which they feel a need for urgent philosophical help. They can be in a state of false (though never complete) certainty.
(4) I will close with a critical discussion of the scope and underlying assumptions of Kant’s conception of rationalizing. Such a critical discussion is pivotal, since Kant criticizes competing ethical theories for being rationalizations and for reinforcing and encouraging rationalizing. Understanding whether charging a philosopher with rationalizing is a valid criticism, and understanding whether Kant is in a position to level this criticism against other theorists, will help us gain a better general understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of Kant’s ethics.
2 Rationalizing in Context
I begin with a few remarks about the term ‘rationalizing’ (Section 2.1) and about common themes in the literature on rationalizing and self-deception (Section 2.2); I then outline why rationalizing is an important concern specifically in the context of Kant’s practical philosophy (Section 2.3).
2.1 Vernünfteln
The nouns Vernünfteln, Vernünftelei and Vernünftelung, as well as the verb vernünfteln, were in much more frequent use in the eighteenth century than they are in contemporary German, where the term is largely out of use. Vernünfteln is composed of Vernunft (reason), and the suffix eln. This suffix indicates that Vernünfteln is an activity. It is also a diminutive (see Reference AdelungAdelung 1811: vol. 3, col. 1785), which gives Vernünfteln negative connotations in the sense of using reason in a deficient manner. According to Reference Grimm and GrimmGrimm and Grimm (1889: vol. 25, col. 936–9), Vernünfteley (noun) is an ‘incorrect and inappropriate use of reason’, and vernünfteln (verb) means ‘presenting something as seemingly correct, which is in itself pedantic and incorrect’ (my translations).
Kant himself explains the meaning of the term twice. According to the Third Critique, Vernünfteln is the act of claiming a priori universality for one’s judgements, which can lead to a dialectic of opposing judgements (CJ, V: 337.5–8): ‘A rationalizing judgment (iudicium ratiocinans) is any judgment that declares itself to be universal’ (CJ, V: 337fn.). Vernünfteln here is a necessary but not sufficient condition for dialectical reasoning. Only judgements claiming a priori universality can give rise to a dialectic. However, many judgements claiming a priori universality do not lead to a dialectic.Footnote 5 After all, their claims might be justified. Vernünfteln here seems to not be inherently problematic. By contrast, in the Anthropology, ‘Vernünfteln (without sound reason)’ is defined as ‘use of reason that misses its final goal, partly from inability, partly from an inappropriate viewpoint’ (Anth, VII: 200.5–7). Vernünfteln, if not constrained by sound reason, is here presented as a use of reason that, by definition, produces incorrect results. Moreover, Vernünfteln is presented as of a much broader scope, since it is not necessarily tied to claims to (a priori) universality and it can result in all kinds of mistakes, not all of which have to be dialectical.
Kant’s actual use of the term is even broader than what the Anthropology’s definition indicates. He sometimes uses the term to simply mean ‘reasoning’ or ‘reflection’ without any negative connotations. This is presumably the case when Vernünfteln is constrained by, or in the service of, sound reason.Footnote 6 In many cases, Vernünfteln does, however, indicate a deficient use of rational capacities,Footnote 7 and I will discuss in Section 3.1 whether this deficiency involves a dialectics in the terminological sense. Furthermore, Kant sometimes uses other terms to mean the same as Vernünfteln, occasionally using vernünfteln and räsonniren interchangeably (Anth, VII: 200.10),Footnote 8 and he stresses that humans ‘artificialize’ [künsteln] in order to represent moral transgressions as an ‘unintentional fault’ or mere ‘oversight’ (CPrR, V: 98.13–21)Footnote 9 and that they can ‘bully’ [chicanieren] their conscience (G, IV: 404.21; see also Eth-V, XXVII: 620.3).Footnote 10 Moreover, Kant refers to a vain or pointless exercise of rational capacities as herausklügeln (Rel, VI: 26fn.), which literally means ‘to prudentialize something out of something’. Kant, while not usually known for his literary style, clearly shows great enthusiasm for the creative use of language when describing misuses of reason.
Vernünfteln has been translated in various ways.Footnote 11 I will follow Reference TimmermannTimmermann (2011) and use ‘rationalizing’, as it makes clear that Vernünfteln is an exercise of rational capacities. ‘Rationalizing’, as I will use the term, is self-deception about moral matters. There are other kinds of self-deception, such as about what is prudent, one’s capabilities and social standing and maybe even about purely theoretical questions. Self-deception about these issues, however, requires a framework different from the one that explains rationalizing in my sense, since these other forms of self-deception are not driven by a rational interest in being morally justified (see Section 4.3).
I should note that ‘rationalizing’, as I will use the term, is broader than the rational-tail-wagging-the-emotional-dog manoeuvre of finding post hoc justifications for decisions driven by emotions.Footnote 12 That rationalizing is post hoc and preceded by judgement is a frequent assumption especially in psychological approaches to the phenomenon (see, for instance, Reference CushmanCushman 2020: 1).Footnote 13 Rationalizing in Kant is not merely a matter of finding post hoc justifications. Misconceptions about morality can inform ex ante reasoning and can influence judgements and overturn agents’ decisions – but not change them for the better (see Sections 4.5 and 5.2). Moral judgements, for Kant, are never merely driven by emotions, since a judgement is always a cognitive act. Yet, moral judgements can be incorrect and rationalized. Moreover, agents rationalize not merely to feel better about their judgements or to make their own actions comprehensible to themselves, but because they genuinely do acknowledge the authority of reason (Section 4.3).
2.2 Rationalizing in Kant: The State of the Art
Kant’s frequent use of the term VernünftelnFootnote 14 is in stark contrast to the neglect this term has received in the literature until recently. Reference CaygillCaygill’s (1995) and Reference Holzhey and MudrochHolzhey and Mudroch’s (2005) Kant dictionaries lack any entry on Vernünfteln, Reference EislerEisler (1930) only quotes a single passage (namely, CJ, V: 337) and König’s article on Vernünfteln in the recent Kant-Lexikon (Reference Willaschek, Stolzenberg, Mohr and BacinWillaschek et al. 2015) does not even mention Kant’s practical philosophy.Footnote 15
More recently, however, there has been increased interest in rationalizing, and a number of publications have presented sophisticated textual and systematic reconstructions of rationalizing in Kant and highlighted the significance of this concept for Kant’s philosophy. Among these publications, three approaches are especially noteworthy for my own.
First, Laura Reference PapishPapish (2018: ch. 3) stresses that rationalizing centrally involves phenomena such as quibbling with things for which we have overwhelming evidence (74–9). For her, rationalizing is a violation of epistemic norms and it primarily impacts questions of justification.Footnote 16 I agree with Papish’s focus on matters of justification and, in fact, one of my main quarrels especially with older literature on the topic (see below in this section) is the widespread assumption that rationalizing is merely or mainly a matter of misinterpreting one’s motivation rather than of judging incorrectly about what one ought to do.
Moreover, Papish claims that it is one of the ‘most important features of Kant’s approach to self-deception […] that reason is constitutively incapable of’ rationalizing such that a rationalizer forms ‘a particular belief according to which laxness and impurity are permitted’ (Reference Papish2018: 84). Rather, laxness and impurity enter indirectly ‘by means of the diversion of attention toward some pleasing alternative cognition’ (Reference Papish2018: 84). In contrast to Papish, I do think that it is possible that rationalizers explicitly endorse a lax and impure conception of morality. In fact, I believe that this is what Kant suspects has happened to many of his academic colleagues who postulate happiness as the source of morality. I will present a theory of rationalizing that seeks to fully account for the potentially devastating impact that this activity can have on our understanding of morality and that can explain how agents can come to confidently assert overly lenient conceptions of morality and to even defend them against reasonable criticism.
I suspect that the differences between Papish’s and my take on rationalizing are due to our respective focus on different paradigms of rationalizing. Papish approaches the phenomenon from relatively everyday cases that we find in the political and social sphere.Footnote 17 By contrast, I focus chiefly on more extreme cases that we can find in Kant’s discussion of eudaemonists and of religious practices. In these cases, it becomes apparent that Kant does allow for the possibility of very corrupted agents who are more than merely confused about morality. My reading, I believe, can make better sense of the way Kant seeks to address rationalizing, namely via his ethical theory. If rationalizing was primarily a violation of epistemic requirements, then we would expect Kant to present guides to good thinking in order to combat this failing. However, Kant thinks that specifically ‘practical grounds’ compel us ‘to take a step into the field of a practical philosophy’ (G, IV: 405.22–4). We need ethical theory to address rationalizing, because rationalizing, in its most dangerous form, involves false beliefs specifically about morality and lack of commitment to the correct moral principles. Having said this, however, I should note that I regard Papish’s and my approach largely as complementary in the sense that we focus on different paradigmatic cases of the same phenomenon. Moreover, Papish’s discussion of the epistemic dimensions of rationalizing constitutes a major contribution to our understanding of the phenomenon.
Second, Jeanine Reference GrenbergGrenberg (2013) presents an innovative new reading of the methods and aims of Kant’s ethics, which she claims is centred on the first-person perspective of an agent experiencing respect for the moral law. As part of her investigation into the perspective of the agent, Grenberg extensively discusses rationalizing and corruption as the main threats to an agent’s grasp of morality. One of her central claims is that even the corrupt person must still retain ‘some sense of the superior authority of moral principles, at least enough to realize she needs help maintaining that authority’ (Reference Grenberg2013: 93). I agree with her that rationalizing would not make sense for an agent who does not recognize the authority of morality, and in Section 4 (especially 4.3) I will explain why this is so. However, I will also argue that while corrupted agents can be brought to doubt their mistaken views, Kant is not committed to the claim that all rationalizers acknowledge or feel the need for philosophical help. Rationalizing is dangerous because it can result in false certainty. Understanding this false certainty will help us understand why external help is important for agents, and the kind of help required.
Third, in a paper on the objection of ‘moral overdemandingness’, Marcel van Ackeren and Martin Sticker (2014: sec. 3) propose that Kant would consider it ‘a model case of a rationalizing attack on our ordinary understanding of morality’ that ‘some contemporary philosophers consider high demandingness of a theory as something that calls for revision of this theory’ (86).Footnote 18 They suggest that Kant could respond to an overdemandingness objection by showing how those who level the objection are, in fact, engaged in rationalizing. In Section 6, I will critically discuss whether rationalizing can indeed function as a response to objections of overdemandingness and as a criticism of lenient moral theories.
In addition to the current interest specifically in the concept of rationalizing, there is also ongoing discussion of this phenomenon under the more general label of self-deception. Literature on this topic has done much to stress the significance of this phenomenon particularly for Kant’s framework,Footnote 19 especially with regard to self-deception about motives. In fact, it is a widespread assumption that self-deception in Kant is a matter of misrepresenting the motivation of one’s actions. For instance, Nelson Reference PotterPotter (2002: 386) points out the ‘centrality and overwhelming significance of self-deception’ as ‘a subterranean theme in Kant’s moral philosophy’, where self-deception takes the form of either deceiving oneself about the strength of moral motives (387) or as ‘the self-deception by which we tell ourselves that we are acting for high and purely moral motives, when our real motives relate to self-love’ (388).Footnote 20
Associating self-deception with misrepresenting one’s motives, of course, makes a lot of sense in the context of a philosophy that both stresses the importance of the right motivation for moral worth and maintains the ultimate opacity of our motives (see Section 4.3). However, I think it is very significant that rationalizing does not merely pertain to presenting oneself as having acted for high and mighty reasons. Since Kant’s theory of rationalizing is scattered throughout his works, it is easy to miss the full extent to which he analyzes different forms of rationalizing, as well as its moral, psychological and social dimensions. That rationalizing, besides motivation, affects an agent’s reasoning and general understanding of morality is pivotal for Kant, as rationalizing is supposed to function as an explanation for how it is possible that rational agents, capable of moral cognition, can have false beliefs about morality, think that their moral violations are justified and even advocate mistaken moral theories.
Finally, I should mention that it is telling that Kant himself does not discuss a rather obvious strategy to seemingly get around moral commands: phrasing one’s maxims in such broad or specific ways that they always pass the universalization test.Footnote 21 I do not think that Kant means to deny this phenomenon. He is, however, more interested in strategies that go beyond specific actions or maxims and that impact an agent’s conception of core features of morality (such as purity and strictness), as these strategies undermine an agent’s competence to reason about many or all other moral cases.
2.3 Common Human ReasonFootnote 22
To understand the role rationalizing plays for Kant, we need to look at the overall aim of Kant’s ethics: clarifying, systematizing and vindicating the common rational cognition of duty. Kant believes that agents endowed with common human reason, meaning the capacities and insights all rational human agents share simply insofar as they are rational, do not need any special training or academic education to know what they ought to do. In a footnote at the beginning of the Second Critique (CPrR, V: 8), he claims that he does not aim to introduce a new principle of morality, and he doubts that pre-theoretical reasoning could be ‘ignorant’ or ‘in thoroughgoing error’ about duty (CPrR, V: 8). Indeed, philosophical remarks may ‘seem superfluous’ (CPrR, V: 36.6) as the requirements of morality can be ‘seen quite easily and without hesitation by the most common understanding’ (36.28–9). It is the threat of rationalizing and the potential corruption of agents’ initial grasp of morality that necessitates a philosophical systematization of the common cognition of duty and a role for practical philosophy in moral development. Let us look briefly at this initial grasp of morality to get a sense of the dangers of rationalizing.
The most central moral insight of common human reason is that duty commands unconditionally and has to be obeyed for its own sake.Footnote 23 This acknowledgement of the unconditional authority of morality becomes most apparent in the Second Critique’s Gallows Case.
But experience also confirms this order of concepts in us. […] [A]sk him whether, if his prince demanded, on pain of the same immediate execution, that he give false testimony against an honourable man whom the prince would like to destroy under a plausible pretext, he would consider it possible to overcome his love of life, however great it may be. He would perhaps not venture to assert whether he would do it or not, but he must admit without hesitation that it would be possible for him. He judges, therefore, that he can do something because he is aware that he ought to do it and cognizes freedom within him, which, without the moral law, would have remained unknown to him.
If we present an agent with this Gallows Case, the agent, Kant believes, ‘will perhaps not venture to assert’ whether he would have the strength to refuse the prince’s unjust demand. He will, however, judge ‘without hesitation’ that it is possible to do so, revealing that he believes that he can act in a certain way because he is aware that he ought to. According to Kant, when confronted with cases that require action for the sake of morality and against their self-interest, agents admit that morality compels them differently from and independently of all other incentives. This reveals that they acknowledge the authority of morality.
Moreover, in order to determine what morality demands of them, Kant believes that all rational human agents, including common agents, those lacking academic training and familiarity with philosophical theory and whose understanding of morality is based on common human reason, can avail themselves of universalization tests. Kant even claims that agents ‘always actually have before their eyes and use as the standard of judging’ (G, IV: 403.36–7) the principle ‘never to proceed except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law’ (G, IV: 402.7–15).Footnote 24 However, we will see in Section 5.2 that this strong claim only holds for uncorrupted agents. Be that as it may, the principle of morality is, in a different form, already employed in non-philosophical reasoning, for instance, when agents wonder ‘what if everyone did this?’, or when they reflect on whether they are consistent in their assessment of self and others, or whether they exempt themselves from moral requirements they expect others to follow.Footnote 25 However, common agents do not think of these ways of reasoning ‘as separated […] in a universal form’ (G, IV: 403.36; see CPrR, V: 155.16) or in the guise of a philosophical formula, such as the Formula of Universal Law. Their grasp of moral principles is obscure.Footnote 26 They can reason about and correctly assess concrete moral cases but without understanding underlying abstract structures and without knowing the source of morality.
Furthermore, Kant claims that rational human beings are aware that ‘a rational nature exists as an end in itself. That is how a human being by necessity represents his own existence’ (G, IV: 429.2–4). Human beings think of their own existence as well as of the existence of other rational creatures as ends in themselves. This imposes constraints on their actions. Kant’s Formula of Humanity systematizes how humans understand themselves and others as rational beings who are owed treatment different from non-rational entities. Given that there is more than one way for agents to cognize their duty (universality and the special standing of rational agents), it is a central task of the critical philosopher to construct a theory that accommodates different pre-theoretical ways to cognize duty and that shows how they can be part of an ethical system ultimately grounded in autonomy.Footnote 27
At the end of Groundwork I, Kant wonders whether practical philosophy is necessary at all (G, IV: 404.28–30; see also CPrR, V: 36.7–8). After all, a common agent, even without any practical philosophy, ‘stands just as good a chance of hitting the mark as a philosopher can ever expect; indeed is almost more sure in this than even the latter’ (G, IV: 404.22–5). A philosopher, by contrast, ‘can easily confuse’ reasoning ‘with a host of alien and irrelevant considerations and deflect it from the straight course’ (404.27–8). In the penultimate paragraph of Groundwork I (G, IV: 404.1–405.19), Kant explains why a systematization and vindication of the common or pre-theoretical way of reasoning is necessary; common agents are caught in a ‘natural dialectic’ (G, IV: 405.13) and they are ‘easily seduced’ (G, IV: 405.1) to prioritize happiness over duty. Kant believes that ‘morals themselves remain subject to all sorts of corruption as long as we lack that guideline [Leitfaden] and supreme norm by which to judge them correctly’.Footnote 28 This guideline has to come from critical practical philosophy. The practical concern to avoid corruption motivates Kant’s transition from common rational cognition of duty to a philosophical system grounded in a pure and rational principle (G, IV: 406.2–4).Footnote 29
Kant’s assumption that there are moral insights that all rational humans share reflects an ‘egalitarian ideal of enlightenment’ (Reference AmeriksAmeriks 2000: 102), namely that ‘what is expected of, and most significant about, human beings must be in principle equally accessible to all and should not depend on the accident of particular external conditions’ (228).Footnote 30 All rational agents are, at bottom, committed to the same conception of morality, since morality is grounded in their shared rational nature.
Kant’s assumption raises at least two problems. First, Kant cannot simply concede that rational agents, if they rationalize too thoroughly, lose their grasp of the moral law entirely and need external help from an ethical expert. This would constitute a form of elitism that Kant is sceptical of. Instead, Kant must explain how practical philosophy can remedy forms of irrationality that can be very serious but that still do not completely undermine an agent’s capacity to obtain correct moral insights and do the right thing. According to Kant, even corrupted agents still have what it takes to be regarded as moral agents and as responsible for their actions and their rationalizing.
Second, as a matter of fact, agents frequently do exhibit forms of ethical reasoning, such as consequence-driven evaluations, that seemingly contradict Kant’s conception of pre-theorical rational cognition. Kant must therefore provide a plausible account for how it is possible that agents adopt views about morality that deviate from what they are committed to qua rational agents. Karl Reference AmeriksAmeriks (2000: 150) provocatively claims that Kant has to engage:
in all sorts of quasi-religious considerations about radical evil and techniques of self-delusion to try to explain how so many people manage to hide from themselves the basic claims of morality that [Kant] believes are as clear in themselves as are the basic claims of our theoretical common sense.
In contrast to Ameriks, I do not regard Kant’s discussions of ‘self-delusion’ as a weakness of his account, but rather as aiming to capture important elements of the psychology of fallible humans. Kant’s conception of rationalizing and corruption, if convincing, allows him to reconcile forms of moral error with his (at times highly idealized) description of the insights and capacities even of common agents.
3 Rationalizing and the Natural Dialectic
3.1 The Natural Dialectic
Kant introduces rationalizing in the dense penultimate paragraph of Groundwork I.
Innocence is a glorious [1] thing, but then again it is very sad that it is so hard to preserve and so easily seduced [2]. Because of this even wisdom – which otherwise probably consists more in behaviour than in knowledge – yet needs science too, not in order to learn from it, but to obtain access and durability for its prescription. The human being feels within himself a powerful counterweight to all the commands of duty [3] – which reason represents to him as so worthy of the highest respect – in his needs and inclinations, the entire satisfaction of which he sums up under the name of happiness [4]. Now reason issues its prescriptions unrelentingly, yet without promising anything to the inclinations [5], and hence, as it were, with reproach and disrespect for those claims [6], which are so vehement and yet seem so reasonable (and will not be eliminated by any command) [7]. But from this there arises a natural dialectic [8], i.e., a propensity to rationalize against those strict laws of duty [9], and to cast doubt on their validity [10], or at least their purity [11] and strictness [12], and, where possible, to make them better suited to our wishes and inclinations [13], i.e., fundamentally to corrupt them and deprive them of their entire dignity [14], something that in the end even common practical reason cannot endorse.
Common agents, agents whose understanding of morality is based on their common human reason alone, are in a state of ‘innocence’ [1] and ‘fortunate simplicity’ (G, IV: 404.34). They understand what matters morally (universality and humanity) and that morality is of supreme authority. However, their grasp of morality is obscure. They lack a reflected understanding of it that would allow them to see through spurious justifications for immoral actions. Innocence is therefore difficult to preserve and common agents are ‘easily seduced’ [2]. Seduction here indicates that typically an agent is not forced by their inclinations to act against their better judgement, though we will see in Section 5.2 that weakness of will plays a role in the story of corruption. When inclinations present an impermissible course of action as attractive, an agent acquiesces and alters their judgement. The sources of seduction are an agent’s needs and inclinations, the satisfaction of which is summed up ‘under the name of happiness’ [4]. The grip of inclinations will ‘not be eliminated by any command’ [7]. An agent can never switch off the appeal of objects that promise happiness.Footnote 32 Inclinations thus constitute ‘a powerful counterweight to all the commands of duty’ [3], and these commands in turn are issued ‘without promising anything to the inclinations’ [5].Footnote 33
The tension between unconditional commands of duty and personal happiness gives rise to a ‘natural dialectic’ [8]. This dialectic is natural in the sense that it is rooted in the tension between our rational and our sensuous nature. In contrast to the Groundwork, dialectic in the First Critique appears in the form of antinomies constituted by mutually exclusive propositions that both rest on a false assumption, namely on transcendental realism (A/B: 502/530).Footnote 34 In the Groundwork, the tension is not one between propositions, a thesis and an antithesis, but between different determining grounds of an agent’s will (happiness and morality), or between their natures in which these determining grounds originate. Kant tries to frame this as a propositional contradiction when he speaks of the contradictory ‘claims’ [Ansprüche] of happiness and morality ([6]; see also G, IV: 405.28). The foundation of the Groundwork’s dialectic, however, is not a false philosophical assumption, but the double nature of human beings. The Groundwork’s natural dialectic should therefore rather be called a ‘natural dialectical tension (between duty and happiness)’ to avoid confusion with a dialectic in the terminological sense used in the Critiques.Footnote 35
According to the Groundwork, the natural dialectical tension is identical to – Kant uses the strong ‘i.e.’ [d.i.] [9], ‘this is’, to characterize the relation – ‘a propensity to rationalize against those strict laws of duty’ [9].Footnote 36 Rationalizing ultimately amounts to challenging the ‘validity’ [10] of the moral law. This, however, does not mean that a rationalizer renounces commitment to morality. Rationalizing only makes sense for agents committed to morality.Footnote 37 Rationalizers ‘transform’ (G, IV: 424.31) their conception of morality into one which better suits their ‘wishes and inclinations’ [13]. Any such modification, Kant fears, would fundamentally ‘corrupt’ [14] the strict laws of duty, ‘and deprive them of their entire dignity’ [14]. Kant here once more uses the strong ‘i.e.’ [d.i.], this time to indicate the relation between transforming one’s conception of morality and corruption [14]. He thinks that this transformation is not merely an activity that can result in corruption, but corruption itself.
A modified conception of morality conditions obedience to the moral law on non-moral factors, such as one’s own and others’ inclinations and personal ends, though the moral law is still a point of reference for the rationalizer. Rationalizing alters the way an agent thinks about morality and assesses herself. Even if a rationalizer acts for the sake of the (supposedly) moral principles that she accepts, these principles themselves might be too different from the moral law to confer moral worth on actions. Corruption is thus a twofold problem. First, false principles might lead an agent to judge incorrectly. Second, actions no longer express unconditional commitment to duty.Footnote 38
I should flag already that the way Kant describes the mechanism of rationalizing – transforming one’s conception of morality into one that is more in line with one’s pursuit of personal happiness, without renouncing morality altogether – can only explain why agents would buy into overly lenient moral theories. There is a converse excess, though: adopting an overly rigorous and excessively demanding theory. Rationalizing seems unable to help us understand why agents would ever come to accept such a theory. I will come back to this in Section 6.
3.2 Purity and Strictness
Rationalizing divides into two main strategies: casting doubt on the purity [11] and strictness [12] of duty.
(i) Purity represents the idea that agents are to abstract from their personal ends and inclinations when reasoning about what their duty is and when acting on the outcome of their moral reasoning.Footnote 39 Purity first requires that nothing empirical – that is, inclinations, an agent’s personal ends, consequences of actions and so on – functions as criteria for moral evaluation. This is the cognitive component. Second, purity requires that obligatory actions and omissions are motivated by respect for the moral law, or at least that an agent commits themselves to duty unconditionally.Footnote 40 The cognitive and motivational components are closely related, since agents treating something empirical as a criterion for moral evaluation will likely perform actions motivated by this empirical concern. An agent who assigns moral significance to their own inclinations will likely be motivated by these inclinations rather than by the moral law.Footnote 41
In the preface to the Doctrine of Virtue, Kant provides a detailed example for a case of rationalizing against the purity of morality. After having done his duty, Kant explains, an agent can find himself in a state ‘that could well be called happiness’ (MM, VI: 377.21–2).Footnote 42 This experience can be misinterpreted as support for eudaemonism. Eudaemonism, according to Kant, is the position that every action, including moral action, requires the prospect of reward or punishment.Footnote 43 Agents might interpret happiness resulting from moral actions as a necessary driving force of these actions and even convince themselves that duty is only a means to achieve happiness.
According to eudaemonism, we can ‘recognize’ that something is our duty only if we ‘can count on gaining happiness by doing it’ (MM, VI: 377.21–378.5). A eudaemonist in this sense is still committed to obeying moral commands, but only because they see this as the best way to pursue happiness. In fact, for them it is the hallmark of duty that it yields happiness. Kant calls the eudaemonist’s inference from the existence of happiness that succeeds moral actions to the thesis that personal happiness is the goal of morality ‘rationalizing’ (MM, VI: 378.1) a ‘rationalizing trifling’ (TP, VIII: 284.5) and ‘as it were, […] an optical illusion in the self-consciousness of what one does as distinguished from what one feels – an illusion that even the most practiced cannot altogether avoid’ (CPrR, V: 116.22–5).Footnote 44
Eudaemonism is the ‘euthanasia (the gentle death) of all morals’ (MM, VI: 378.18; see also CPrR, V: 88.21–89.8). Interestingly, Kant here translates ‘euthanasia’, which more literally means ‘good death’, as ‘gentle’ or ‘easy’ [sanft] death. Corruption does not occur as an abrupt and voluntary rupture with the authority of the moral law. It is the result of a slow and subtle process. An agent deems herself fully committed to morality throughout this process but, in the end, true morality has (almost fully) passed away without the agent noticing. In the example presented by Kant, it is the satisfaction that a moral agent feels upon believing to have done the right thing that subsequently becomes material for rationalizing. Perversely, it seems that particularly those agents are prone to rationalizing who greatly value morality and for whom moral action is a source of personal fulfilment, since these agents cannot face the prospect of failing to live up to moral commands. I will discuss this in more detail in the next section.
(ii) Strictness represents the idea that (perfect) duties never admit of exceptions.Footnote 45 Agents disregard this requirement when they reason as if the normative force of moral commands can be outweighed by non-moral factors, or as if duty is only to be obeyed if it falls below a certain threshold of sacrifice. For these agents the moral law is transformed into a principle of merely general validity, that is, one which admits of exceptions (G, IV: 424.25–33).Footnote 46
Kant draws examples for rationalizing against strictness mainly from the social sphere, more specifically from the ‘religion of rogation (of mere cult)’ (Rel, VI: 51.27), or ‘fetish-faith’ (Rel, VI: 193.21; see also Eth-V, XXVII: 729.16).Footnote 47 Praying and attending church, as well as rituals such as baptism, communion, public sacrifice, penance, castigation, pilgrimage and so on, are supposed to function as a ‘shortcut’ or ‘hidden path’ [Schleichweg]Footnote 48 (Rel, VI: 193.28) to divine grace (Rel, VI: 192.1–202.5).Footnote 49 According to Kant, ‘[t]he more useless such self-inflicted torments are, the less aimed at universal moral improvement of the human being, the holier they seem to be’ (Rel, VI: 169.17–19; see also Eth-K: 153).Footnote 50 Performing supposedly ‘holy’ actions commended by religious authorities and in plain sight of others can make an agent feel more moral than actually performing actions of genuine moral worth, especially if they receive public recognition for it. Moreover, the teachings and practices of the cult suggest to agents that God can make them better human beings without active contribution on their end (Rel, VI: 51.22–37). This can easily become material for rationalizing as it seemingly allows agents to shift responsibility for their moral improvement away from them.
An even more direct example of disregarding strictness is the notion of a last confession, which suggests that a moral disposition does not require exceptionless adherence to duty. Instead, one can confess one’s sins at the last possible moment to escape eternal punishment (Eth-K: 192–3; see also Rel, VI: 77.26–78.2). Kant expresses similar concerns regarding the proverb ‘All is well that ends well’ (Rel, VI: 70fn., 77.26–78.2), which suggests that only the last disposition of an agent matters for the assessment of her entire life.
The common element of all forms of rationalizing against strictness is that an agent is aware that what they do is against duty or at least morally questionable, but they also believe that they can wash away the stain on their character or that God can rid them of sin. They feel excused in their wrongdoings. Kant does not say whether such an agent explicitly believes that morality admits of exceptions or merely reasons about morality as if this were so. I think both can be the case. Rationalizers can explicitly endorse overly lenient conceptions of morality, according to which laxness and also impurity are features of moral principles.Footnote 51 Presumably, an agent who explicitly believes that morality admits of exceptions is more corrupted than an agent who merely reasons as if this were the case. The latter might still acknowledge their mistakes once they clearly understand that their reasoning conflicts with one of the central tenets of morality, whereas the former has given up on this tenet.
Rationalizers always retain a commitment to morality, but this commitment is no longer unconditional. Either they are unconditionally committed to an impure principle, which combines elements of morality and inclinations (no-purity), or they are committed conditionally to a pure principle, thinking that (or reasoning as if) there can be exceptions and excuses to a law that abstracts from all inclinations (no-strictness). In the case of no-purity, impure elements are part of the supposedly moral principle itself. This is particularly dangerous, since even when agents do what they think is morally required, they act from a principle that gives undue weight to their own inclinations in the sense that supposed moral commands are (partly) determined by inclinations or personal ends. In the case of no-strictness, agents can still act from a pure principle but their obedience to duty is conditioned on non-moral factors, and their disposition not entirely moral (see also Reference StickerSticker 2016a: 90–1). Moreover, agents can even think of moral principles as sensitive to their inclinations (no-purity), and as also admitting of exceptions (no-strictness). They are then conditionally committed to an impure principle. They believe that morality is (partly or entirely) determined by their inclinations and personal ends, and if their conception of morality nonetheless requires them to do something they find inconvenient, they might also think it legitimate to make an exception to their already lenient principle(s). An important difference between purity and strictness is that an agent who has abandoned purity believes that they are morally justified in what they are doing, because impure elements supposedly affect questions of moral permissibility. An agent who has abandoned strictness, by contrast, merely assumes that there are grounds of excuses for not heeding the pure commands of morality. The latter agent will still ‘at the same time detest his transgression’ (MM, VI: 321.38) at least to some extent, since they are aware that their actions lack full moral justification.
For the ensuing discussion it will be important to distinguish explicitly between justifications and excuses. An agent is morally justified when they did what duty commanded or permitted them to do. An agent is excused when they acknowledge that one of their actions was not (fully) morally justified, but their responsibility is mitigated.Footnote 52 Excuses, in turn, can represent genuinely relevant factors that make a wrongdoing less imputable, such as that an agent faced extraordinary obstacles (MM, VI: 228.11–22). They can also be based on flimsy grounds and merely serve to make the agent feel better about themselves or to deceive others. It is part of our ordinary conception of excuses that they can genuinely exculpate, as well as be mere attempts to make oneself look better. In the latter case, we might say something like ‘You are just making excuses’, which, in a sense, is odd, given that excuses can have a legitimate impact on moral assessment. Kant is sceptical even of excuses that actually mitigate responsibility, because he worries that once we take ourselves to be excused, we might also appeal to the excuse in ex ante reasoning about what duty requires. This would be incompatible with the purity of duty as it would introduce non-moral concerns into moral deliberation (see Section 5 for more).
In what follows, three points will become important. First, for Kant, rationalizing primarily interferes with self-assessment. The rationalizer presents their own, past or intended, actions as better than they are and they do so to themselves.Footnote 53 Self-assessment is usually concerned with justifications, and excuses are typically something we give to others. It is possible, though, that upon realizing that I did something wrong, I wonder whether there is anything to excuse my action to myself. In addition, while it is normal to wonder about the justifiability of one’s actions retrospectively as well as prospectively, excuses are usually sought only in retrospect. There is something odd about an agent who knows that their intended action is morally unjustified, but nonetheless looks for ex ante excuses. It rather seems that this agent lowered the bar for what counts as a justification.Footnote 54
Second, we will see (Section 4.3) that the goal of rationalizing is to avoid pangs of conscience and to make ourselves believe that we deserve happiness. For these purposes, justifications are more potent than excuses. After all, the former suggest that the agent does not need to improve at all, whereas the latter imply an admission of behaviour that was, at least, non-ideal. However, particularly in early stages of corruption, when the agent still has a relatively clear grasp of right and wrong, it might well be the case that the only venue of rationalizing open to them is to acknowledge that they did wrong and to find or invent an excuse.
Third, it becomes apparent in some of the strategies of rationalizing discussed by Kant that there is more to rationalizing than misrepresenting the strength or source of one’s motives, such as the last confession and appeal to religious authorities. Here rationalizers aim to make room for exceptions to duty and rationalizing might even result in an altered understanding of what matters for moral deliberation. Furthermore, rationalizing is more than the attempt to deceive oneself about the moral permissibility of specific maxims or actions. Kant’s discussion of rationalizing at the end of Groundwork I as well as many of his examples are focused on strategies that transform one’s conception of morality into one which better suits one’s inclinations, and undermine an agent’s competence to reason about many, maybe all, morally relevant cases.
4 The Cunning of (Empirical Practical) Reason
I will now look at the structures that make rationalizing possible. I first explain why the framework Kant himself suggests as a blueprint for understanding self-deception, the inner lie and the distinction between homo noumenon and homo phaenomenon, is inadequate for understanding rationalizing (Section 4.1). I then elaborate on a better framework that draws on the distinction between different aspects of reason (Sections 4.2–5). My investigation will reveal how a number of rational faculties contribute to rationalizing. Clarifying the exact nature of these contributions will help us understand how rationalizing can be a rational, yet flawed, activity.
4.1 The Internal Lie
Kant himself most explicitly elaborates on the metaphysical and psychological conditions of self-deception in the Doctrine of Virtue, §9. According to Kant, lies can be ‘external’ and intended to deceive others, or ‘internal’ and intended to deceive oneself (MM, VI: 429.13–14). Kant stresses that self-deception happens ‘on purpose’ (MM, VI: 430.12–13) and ‘deserves the strongest censure’ (MM, VI: 430.35–6). However, to ‘intentionally deceive oneself seems to contain a contradiction’ (MM, VI: 429.12–13). Deceptive strategies normally cannot be employed against someone who knows about the deceptive intention. Nonetheless, self-deception seems to require just this. This problem is sometimes called the ‘Paradox of Strategy’.Footnote 55 As a response to this paradox some philosophers suggest a mental partitioning model; one cognitive system of an agent employs a deceptive strategy against another system of the same agent and unbeknownst to that latter system, much like when one agent deceives another.Footnote 56
Kant acknowledges that his model rests on a partitioning. Internal lies are difficult to explain, ‘because a second person is required’ (MM, VI: 430.11; see also Ref, XVII: 320.16–19). He suggests that the required partitioning is the distinction between ‘the human being as a moral being (homo noumenon)’ and ‘as a natural being (homo phaenomenon)’ (MM, VI: 430.14–15). Kant emphasizes that this distinction is made ‘in a practical respect’ (MM, VI: 439.31). It is one between different ways of regarding ‘the same human being’ (MM, VI: 418.17; see also MM, VI: 239.27–8).Footnote 57
While Kant frequently draws on this distinction to explain duties to self (MM, VI: 418.5–23; Eth-V, XXVII: 539.1–16, 579.8–23), as a framework to explain self-deception the distinction is unconvincing. Kant says that the homo noumenon ‘cannot use himself as a natural being (homo phaenomenon) as a mere means (a speaking machine)’ (M, IV: 430.13–16). This is puzzling as the homo noumenon cannot do anything immoral anyway, since it is our ‘legislating reason’ (MM, VI: 335.19; see also MM, VI: 439fn.34; P-M, XXIII: 398.11–12). It is thus simply a truism, not a normative constraint, that the homo noumenon cannot use the homo phaenomenon for immoral purposes. If anything, Kant here claims that all self-deception is impossible. Moreover, even if the homo noumenon could violate duty, it is difficult to see how Kant’s warning of using the homo phenomenon as a mere means can capture the phenomenon of self-deception. The metaphor of a ‘speaking machine’ [Sprachmaschine] (MM, VI: 430.16) rather sounds as if the homo phaenomenon communicates in a deceptive way with other agents.Footnote 58
It is important to bear in mind that Kant’s discussion of the internal lie is part of his discussion of perfect duties to self. Kant might believe that he can account for self-deception within the framework of the two homines, since they are central for explaining the possibility of duties to self. From being able to explain how one can put oneself under obligation at all, however, it does not follow that the homines must be part of an account of how specific violations of duties to self are possible. Kant has, I think, more promising ways to account for the divisions self-deception about morality presupposes. The most basic of these divisions is between a sensuous and a rational nature (see Section 3.1). This division is different from the one between the homines, since sensuous nature is, unlike the homo phaenomenon, without reason.Footnote 59 In fact, Kant characterizes the homo phaenomenon in MM, VI: 430.15 as a ‘physical being’, without mentioning any rational capacities. He might have an agent’s sensuous nature in mind here, rather than what he elsewhere calls the homo phaenomenon, a ‘sensible being endowed with reason’ but lacking pure practical reason (MM, VI: 439.30–1; see also MM, VI: 418.14–17).
Having a sensuous and a rational nature, however, only accounts for the dialectical tension between duty and happiness. It does not yet explain how it is possible for an agent to resolve this tension via rationalizing. In the Groundwork, Kant stresses that the natural dialectic unfolds when common practical reason ‘cultivates itself’ (G, VI: 405.31). Rationalizing is committed by the ‘thoughtful man’ (MM, VI: 377.18; see also CB, VIII: 120.28–121.1). Rationalizing is impossible without thought and rational capacities and not even a desideratum for an agent who does not care about moral justification. The division we are looking for has to be one within our rational capacities.Footnote 60
In what follows, I cannot discuss in detail how Kant distinguishes between the theoretical and practical use or ‘application’ (G, IV: 391.28) of reason, and between the different criteria that can guide the practical use of reason (morality, prudence, means-ends rationality; see G, IV: 415.6–418.1; CPrR, V: 25.1; Eth-M2, XXIX: 607.1–4). I will focus on those aspects of reason that contribute to rationalizing: theoretical reason (Section 4.2), pure practical reason (Section 4.3), common human reason (Section 4.4) and empirical practical reason (Section 4.5). In doing so, I will also draw on the existing Kant literature’s suggestions concerning which rational faculties enable and even motivate errors and fallacious reasoning. I will assess and synthesize these suggestions into a comprehensive account of the (pseudo-)rationality of rationalizing.
I should note here that while I will discuss how our various rational faculties contribute to rationalizing, this is not meant to let the agent off the hook. After all, it is the agent who engages in rationalizing. My investigation is intended to explain how it is possible that agents can engage in rationalizing and why they are incentivized to do so, not to shift the blame for rationalizing away from them.
4.2 Theoretical Reason
Henry Reference AllisonAllison (2011: 350) believes that ‘common human reason for Kant, at least in the practical domain, is not intrinsically problematic, and only becomes a problem when confronted with a challenge from speculation’. Allison is certainly right that Kant is worried about the effect speculation can have on the common rational cognition of morality. After all, this cognition makes tacit metaphysical assumptions, such as that rational human beings are free to do what they acknowledge they ought to do (see the Gallows Case in Section 2.3). Calling these assumptions into question can undermine the effectiveness of moral commands, as an agent might gradually erode their own confidence that they are able to do the right thing. Kant is particularly concerned about denying human freedom and putting human beings in the same category as ‘the other living machines’ (TPP, VIII: 378.19–33; see also G, IV: 455.28–456.6). Furthermore, agents who cease to believe in God might think that moral actions are ultimately pointless, since there is no higher authority which distributes happiness according to desert. This can discourage them (CJ, V: 452.30–453.5).Footnote 61
These strategies, I believe, capture in particular the ways in which educated people rationalize, since they concern abstract metaphysical questions that agents without academic training or a tendency towards speculation might not worry about. Furthermore, these strategies are dangerous due to their indirectness. Rationalizers think that they have left their conception of what ought to be done untouched, and that they only ponder abstract matters. These abstract ponderings can, however, impact their readiness to do the right thing. Moreover, these strategies differ from many other forms of rationalizing in that the initial intention here might be genuinely innocent and even admirable, namely to get to the bottom of fundamental questions. Yet, Kant worries that even metaphysicians who start with the best of intentions might erode their commitment to morality.Footnote 62
Even though speculation and uncritical metaphysics can deliver material for rationalizing, for two reasons it cannot be the case that rational capacities in the practical sphere are problematic only because of challenges from speculation. First, theoretical reason itself is neutral concerning the determination of actions and matters of practical justification. These are simply not the kind of questions it engages with (see CPrR, V: 125.31–4). Second, the majority of rationalizing strategies Kant presents are not concerned with metaphysical principles, but, as we saw in Section 3, with excuses, assumptions about responsibility for moral improvement and the role inclinations, other agents and figures of authority play for moral evaluation. Metaphysical assumptions are in the background of some of these strategies, but rationalizing predominately leads to and exhibits practical misconceptions.
A noteworthy example for rationalizing in a circumspect way that does not require theoretical sophistication is presented in the Second Critique. Kant observes that there are conversations in ‘mixed company’ (CPrR, V: 153.13), that is, company not consisting merely of male scholars but also of academically uneducated men and women. These conversations primarily constitute examples for good reasoning. Kant assumes that in a conversation about concrete actions in morally relevant situations participants ‘are precise, refined, and subtle in thinking out everything that could lessen or even just make suspect the purity of purpose and consequently the degree of virtue in it’ (CPrR, V: 153.27–8). Making supposed examples of virtuous human character ‘suspect’ (CPrR, V: 153.29) by questioning the purity of motives can be an expression of ‘well-meant strictness in determining genuine moral import in accordance with an uncompromising law’ (CPrR, V: 154.4–5) and can serve to ‘lower self-conceit in moral matters’ (CPrR, V: 154.6). However, Kant also worries that in such conversations morality can be ‘rationalized away’ (wegvernünfteln) and virtue presented as an ‘empty name’ (CPrR, V: 154.3)’.Footnote 63 As a result any striving towards virtue would be ‘depreciated as vain affectation and delusive self-conceit’ (CPrR, V: 154.15–16; see also Eth-K: 132–5). When these conversations go wrong, when they are captured by rationalizing, rationalizers stress the purity of the moral law and the frailty of human nature. The combination of purity and frailty makes it supposedly impossible to fully comply with the moral law, and this is considered an excuse for not even trying to do so (see also RPT, VIII: 379.32–5). Rationalizers can deconstruct supposed examples of moral actions by giving alternative accounts of the actions in terms of self-interest. The result is a sceptical attitude towards those who profess to strive for virtue as well as scepticism towards the very command to strive for virtue itself. This attitude is not based on metaphysical speculation but rather on supposed life experience and cynicism. Moreover, rationalizers here believe themselves to be assisting morality when they reason that the demands of morality must be lowered to ensure that agents are willing to comply at all.Footnote 64
This example demonstrates that even non-philosophers can rationalize in circumspect and indirect ways, though standard forms of rationalizing are more direct. They proceed from an agent’s endeavour to excuse a moral mistake or to convince themselves that a concrete action they want to perform is morally permissible. Moreover, once more Kant indicates that certain forms of rationalizing are especially appealing to agents who take morality (including its core features) very seriously. This raises the question of how an agent’s regard for duty feeds into the process of rationalizing.
4.3 Pure Practical Reason
In contrast to Allison’s focus on speculation, Paul Reference GuyerGuyer (2000: 209) claims that ‘our practical reason is inherently liable to undermine our common rational cognition of morals by a dialectic that is entirely natural to it’. I think this a correct description of the natural dialectical tension on a very general level. However, ‘practical reason’ can refer to a number of different aspects of our rational faculties. Let us begin our discussion of practical reason by looking at pure practical reason.
Even though Kant seems to suggest that the homo noumenon could use the homo phaenomenon as a means (see Section 4.1), the deceptive aspect of our reason cannot be pure practical reason, as this is the source of morality. If it were deceptive there would be no right option an agent could deceive themselves about (see explicitly Rel, VI: 35.9–26).
However, pure practical reason does play a role for self-deception, as was already indicated in the case of the eudaemonist who is initially fully committed to morality and for whom moral action is a source of personal fulfilment (see Section 3.2). Moreover, Kant believes that a ‘righteous’ agent cannot enjoy their life if they are not aware of the ‘righteousness’ of their actions. Without this awareness moral self-condemnation will ‘deprive [them] of all enjoyment of the agreeableness that [their] state might otherwise contain’ (CPrR, V: 116.5–10). Kant describes in great length how the capacity to be moral is the source of self-esteem and ‘reverence’ for one’s own existence (CPrR, V: 87.11). Understanding oneself as being able to live up to the commands of the moral law is essential to an agent’s conception of themselves as a rational being. A rational agent ‘dreads nothing more than to find, on self-examination, that [they are] worthless and contemptible in [their] own eyes’ (CPrR, V: 161.20–1).Footnote 65
Kant explicitly claims that ‘pain one feels from the pangs of conscience has a moral source’ (MM, VI: 394.3–5), whereas doing the right thing results in ‘moral well-being’: being free of the pangs of conscience (MM, VI: 394.1–12). The latter is not ‘positive (joy) but merely negative (relief from preceding anxiety)’ (MM, VI: 440.31–2). According to Kant’s descriptions of the impact of negative outcomes of moral self-assessment, these can affect us in two ways. First, we cannot (fully) enjoy our life if we believe that we do not deserve happiness.Footnote 66 Second, we feel direct pain (irrespective of how good our fortune is) from pangs of conscience and loss of self-esteem. In terms of prudence the best an agent can do is to find a way that maximizes their satisfaction of inclinations, while at the same time minimizing pangs of conscience and the feeling of unworthiness, such that on balance the agent is maximally happy. This might sometimes require actions in accordance with duty (if otherwise the pangs of conscience would be too severe), but often the prudent course of action is to satisfy one’s inclinations and to try to find excuses and apparent justifications.
I suggest that we understand agents’ concern for moral justifications and excuses as expressions of a rational interest in being morally justified.Footnote 67 I use ‘interest’ here in the Kantian sense as ‘the combination of the pleasure with the faculty of desire […] so far as this connection is judged through the understanding to be valid according to a universal rule (if only for the subject)’ (MM, VI: 212.23–5). Interest in this sense always ultimately aims at pleasure. Unlike a mere desire or inclination, interest is principle-guided and reflected, and can have a source in pure practical reason (G, IV: 413–14fn., 459–60fn.). Respect for the moral law is a ‘moral interest’ (CPrR, V: 79.23), which functions as an incentive for moral actions. There are rational interests other than respect.Footnote 68 One such interest could be the rational interest in being morally justified. This interest is rooted in an agent’s acknowledgement of the authority of duty and pushes them to devise excuses and pseudo-justifications to avoid pain that they would not feel were it not for the effect of pure practical reason on them.Footnote 69
Thinking of pure practical reason as part of the process of rationalizing is certainly unorthodox, as Kant is usually unambivalently positive about this part of our rational nature. For instance, he stresses that, in contrast to speculative reason, pure practical reason does not stand in need of a critique, since its use is always within proper limits (CPrR, V: 15.1–16.12).Footnote 70 Nonetheless, pure practical reason is essential for rationalizing as the interest in being morally justified is an interest only of beings for whom violating duty can result in pangs of conscience and loss of self-esteem. Rationalizing would make no sense for an agent who does not acknowledge the authority of duty. Such an agent might still deceive others to avoid punishment and criticism, but there would be no need for him to deceive himself about morality.
Moreover, there is textual evidence that Kant accorded pure practical reason a more ambivalent role than is often assumed. In a reflection from the mid- to late 1790s in which Kant discusses political revolution, he argues that moral agents demand that their ‘innate rights’ be respected by political authorities. They will even make use of violent and morally prohibited means, such as revolutions, to secure their rights against these authorities. Kant concedes that such a ‘breach of law’ is rooted in ‘moral propensities’, namely in an agent’s awareness that they have inalienable rights. Being endowed with pure practical reason thus makes the agent prone to certain moral failings such as violent revolt in order to secure their rights (Ref, XIX: 611.12–25). We can find the same paradoxical structure in the Metaphysics of Morals’ ‘two crimes deserving death’: a mother murdering her child because it is born out of wedlock and a soldier killing a fellow soldier in duel. It is the attempt to preserve one’s honour that leads to both crimes, and honour ‘is incumbent as a duty’.Footnote 71 Kant is aware that agents may act immorally because they seek to protect their special status as moral agents. They would not be incentivized to do so were it not for the authority they accord to morality and consequently to (their own) rights and honour.
The interest which incentivizes rationalizing is, so to speak, respect’s evil twin, since both interests have their source in an agent’s acknowledgement of the authority of morality, but one incentivizes us to do what is good while the other seeks excuses for what is bad if we failed to do the right thing, and even to justify it.Footnote 72 Paradoxically, the interest in being morally justified also makes rationalizing a negative vindication of the authority of morality. This vindication is negative since it manifests itself not in actions of moral worth, but in an offender’s attempts to justify their behaviour to themselves. An offender seeking moral justification despite their transgressions demonstrates that morality still has a hold on them. Rationalizing damages an agent’s conception of morality and commitment to duty, and at the same time demonstrates the never (completely) fading authority of morality.Footnote 73
The pervasiveness of the interest in being morally justified is exhibited most clearly in Kant’s doctrine of Introspective Opacity. Kant claims that we can never know that our actions are morally worthy. According to a standard reading of Kant, we have to know an action’s motive in order to assess whether it was morally good, and we cannot know even our own motives with sufficient certainty to judge confidently that an action was motivated by duty.Footnote 74 To understand this claim correctly, it is important to note that Kant acknowledges that it is only morally good motives that are ultimately opaque,Footnote 75 and we can, in principle, know when an action lacked moral worth, for instance because it was not even in external accordance with duty.Footnote 76
Kant worries that it is always possible that an action is motivated by an undetected, ‘covert impulse of self-love’ (G, IV: 407.9; see also G, IV: 419.25–31), but that the agent ‘gladly flatters’ themselves ‘with the false presumption of a nobler motive’ (G, IV: 407.11–12).Footnote 77 When an agent reaches the conclusion that they did something morally bad, they are warranted to believe that this is true, since they do not have an interest in thinking of themselves as morally bad (see Rel, VI: 37.18–23). If, however, they reach the conclusion that they acted from duty alone, they might always be deceiving themselves, since they do have an interest in being morally justified, and this interest biases self-assessment. Even an agent who always acted from duty cannot know for certain that they are morally good, since they can never fully trust their introspection. Kant thinks that an agent is not only interested in moral justification after the voice of conscience warns them not to commit an action, or after conscience reproaches them. The interest in being morally justified is present independently of past moral violations, and it endangers all of our attempts of self-assessment.Footnote 78
4.4 Common Human Reason
Sally Reference SedgwickSedgwick (2008: 81) suggests that common human reason ‘has the tendency to forget or even deceive itself about what it already knows’. Her view has textual support in G, IV: 405.30–1: ‘in practical common reason […] a dialectic inadvertently unfolds’ (first emphasis mine), that is, common human reason is the medium in which the dialectic unfolds. It has a tendency to ‘forget’ in the sense that agents endowed only with common human reason and without further instructions lack the means to effectively resist rationalizing (see also Section 3.1). However, I do not think that common human reason ‘deceives itself about what it already knows’, as Sedgwick suggests. After all, if common human reason was itself deceptive, then why would Kant aim to systematize and vindicate the common rational cognition of morality (see Section 2.3)?Footnote 79
Without professional help common agents lack a systematic understanding of morality and of its underlying metaphysical assumptions and its source. They are thus unable to develop advanced strategies to defend their insights. Kant believes that the question as to what is the nature of the source of moral commands is, on the one hand, ‘solely speculative’ (RPT, VIII: 405.14–15). Lack of an answer does not change the fact that we have to obey moral commands. On the other hand, as long as it is not clear to agents that the source of morality is reason, they will represent the moral law as an ‘oracle’ (RPT, VIII: 405.34).Footnote 80 The metaphor of the oracle reveals the problematic nature of common human reason. An oracle pronounces verdicts of great authority, but these verdicts often stand in need of ‘interpretation’ (RPT, VIII: 405.35). Frequently, their verdicts are ambiguous and can result in incorrect interpretations, though oracles do not straightforwardly lie.Footnote 81 Interpretations always run the danger of reading one’s own preferred views into the object of interpretation. This is particularly dangerous when applied to morality, since an agent often has strong sensuous incentives to give moral commands a more lenient interpretation. If morality appears as an oracle, then there are plenty of occasions for misinterpretation and error.
In the Religion, Kant characterizes as ‘inward deceit’ a ‘profession of reverence for the moral law which in its maxim does not however grant to the law preponderance over all other determining grounds’. Inward deceit is a ‘lie to oneself in the interpretation of the moral law’ (Rel, VI: 42fn.). It is the act of exploiting obscurities of one’s conception of morality to interpret moral commands in a way that makes more room for inclination. Common human reason is not deceptive itself, but it is an enabling condition of self-deception as agents will sometimes believe that there is room for interpreting moral commands and even a need to do so. Moreover, a merely obscure grasp of morality makes it difficult to identify spurious interpretations. Hence, the natural dialectical tension unfolds within the obscure understanding of common human reason.
Explicit Categorical Imperative formulae can help agents understand that the moral law, when it issues perfect duties, is not an oracle that stands in need of interpretation. Perfect duties, according to Kant (MM, VI: 411.6–9), are always sufficiently clear and can be applied to specific cases without any quibbling about the role of inclinations. Furthermore, a systematic grasp of the system of duties and of how duties are grounded in different forms of contradiction (G, IV: 424) will help agents understand the differences between perfect and imperfect duties, and that only the latter, not the former, admit of latitude. The clearer it is to an agent what ought to be done in a situation, the easier it will be to resist seduction, since there is less room for ambiguities that can be exploited.
Pure practical reason, theoretical reason and common human reason are enabling conditions for self-deception, albeit in different ways. Without pure practical reason agents would see no point in engaging in rationalizing. By contrast, shortcomings of theoretical reason and common human reason make rationalizing easier. Speculation usually endangers the reasoning of the educated and philosophers, whereas the shortcomings of common human reason affect everyone who lacks insight into the correct moral theory and source of morality.
4.5 Empirical Practical Reason
Empirical practical reason is more than just an enabling condition. It is the faculty to seek out and present supposed excuses and justifications. According to Henry Reference AllisonAllison (2011: 143), empirical practical reason is of pivotal importance for the natural dialectic, as ‘empirically conditioned practical reason creates the deceptive illusion of usurping the proper place of pure practical reason’.Footnote 82 Allison’s focus on the role of empirical practical reason for rationalizing seemingly stands in tension with his focus on the role of speculation (see Section 4.2). We should keep in mind, though, that empirical practical reason can be interpreted as a part or aspect of theoretical reason, since it is concerned with ‘technical’ advice concerning means-ends relations in the causal world of appearances.Footnote 83 Insofar as theoretical reason encompasses empirical practical reason it is indeed pivotal for rationalizing.
Empirical practical reason covers two different notions (G, IV: 415.6–418.1). First, imperatives of skill are imperatives to seek means to given ends. These ends might be obligatory, natural or personal. Second, empirical practical reason covers the capacity to harmonize one’s inclinations ‘into a whole called happiness’ (Rel, VI: 58.5) and to promote specifically the ends conducive to one’s personal happiness. Prudence is always ‘in the service of the inclinations’ (CPrR, V: 25.1; see also Rel, VI: 45.30–1), never in the service of obligatory ends, and it recommends external conformity to duty only as a means to avoid punishment, loss of self-esteem or pangs of conscience. This second aspect of empirical practical reason is central for rationalizing.
Inventing excuses and apparent justifications for immoral actions that further one’s happiness is within the scope of prudence, since these excuses and apparent justifications can have three functions for an agent’s happiness: (a) Prospectively, apparent justifications are sometimes necessary conditions for performing an action that one deems conducive to one’s happiness but that one also takes to be immoral or at least open to moral criticism. Apparent justifications can serve to convince oneself that a prudent action is morally permissible after all. (b) Retrospectively, apparent justifications or excuses may restore one’s self-esteem when they serve to convince oneself that a supposedly immoral action was excusable or even justified. (c) Prospectively and retrospectively, deeming oneself morally justified will make one feel deserving of the happiness one has obtained or is striving for.
On my interpretation, prudence is not merely concerned with discovering external means that would further happiness, but also with internal means, such as excuses and justifications. Kant himself stresses that we have a ‘legal adviser (defence counsel)’ before the internal court of conscience.Footnote 84 Since the verdicts of the court of reason affect an agent’s happiness, it is plausible to assume that prudence is this advocate. Prudence is not only ‘a servant of natural inclination’ (Rel, VI: 45.30–1), but it is also its advocate. In the Kaehler Lecture Notes, the internal advocate is called a ‘twister of the law’ [Rechtsverdreher] (Eth-K, 201; see also Eth-C, XXVII: 359.14). This derogatory term is a fitting metaphor. Rechtsverdreher are lawyers who stick to the letter of the law but who make use of loopholes and ambiguities in order to further the interests of their clients. They thus ‘make use of the letter of the law’ to undermine its spirit (Eth-K: 201). This approach, according to Kant, is ‘sin’ when applied to the moral law (Rel, VI: 30.29–34).Footnote 85
The deceptive aspect of our rationality comes closest to what Kant sometimes refers to as homo phaenomenon: a finite rational agent whose reason is in the service of inclinations (see MM, VI: 439.30–1). We can see now that Kant gets it almost completely the wrong way around when he suggests in MM, VI: 430.13–16 that the internal lie could be performed by the homo noumenon who uses the ‘natural being (homo phaenomenon) as a mere means’. The homo noumenon or pure practical reason is a necessary condition for rationalizing, but the activity of rationalizing itself, if any rational sub-faculty can be said to be active in this process, is one of empirical practical reason or of the homo phaenomenon. Prudence makes use of the rich material provided by an agent’s social surroundings and religious doctrine, metaphysical speculations as well as of the shortcomings of common human reason in order to promote an agent’s sensuous ends at the expense of morality. Rationalizing is thus truly an ‘abuse’ (UPT, VIII: 161.27) of rational capacities and a turning of reason against itself.Footnote 86
5 Apparent Justifications, Ideology and Uncritical Philosophy
We now understand how rationalizing is a use and an abuse of reason. Two important issues still remain, though. First, we saw that rationalizing would be pointless for an agent who completely renounced morality. How can agents engage in rationalizing without losing their grasp of the moral law entirely and without ceasing to be morally responsible and concerned about moral justification? Second, how can a rationalizer ever hope to successfully think of a moral violation as justified? No matter how subtle the rationalizing, a morally forbidden action can never come out as truly justified. But if rationalizing would always be in vain, then why would agents be in constant danger of engaging in it? We rather would expect that agents, at some point, realize that rationalizing is pointless and that, from then on, they reason according to the full strictness and purity of the moral law and suffer deserved pangs of conscience for their transgressions. This, however, would be in tension with Kant’s belief that the danger of succumbing to rationalizing always remains.Footnote 87
Kant clearly thinks that rationalizing is not completely futile. Conscience can be ‘stunned’ and ‘put to sleep’ temporarily (MM, VI: 438.13–23), and we can administer ‘opium’, a sedative, to it (Rel, VI: 78.32–5) and provide it with ‘a cushion’ on which it is meant to ‘sleep quietly’ (Ped, IX: 495.13–15).Footnote 88 However, even the most thorough self-deceiver cannot avoid ‘waking up from time to time’ and hearing the voice of conscience (MM, VI: 438.13–23). Kant also states that a wrongdoer can ‘consider himself to be justified before the law’, and that there can be undeserved ‘peace of conscience’ [Gewissensruhe] (Rel, VI: 38.11–23). These passages also show that rationalizers do not merely seek to excuse themselves. They ultimately aim for full justification, and this can be seemingly achieved at least temporarily.Footnote 89
I will now argue that we should understand corruption as adopting a form of ideology that superimposes itself onto one’s original grasp of morality. Corrupted agents deem themselves justified in their moral violations, but they are still able to see through their spurious reasoning and thus do not escape moral commands and responsibility (Section 5.1). I will then sketch the development from innocence to full-fledged corruption and misleading ethical theory (Section 5.2). This will establish that Kant acknowledges that rationalizers can be in a state of false (though not complete) certainty, and it will illustrate in what sense rationalizing can achieve its goal.
5.1 Apparent Justifications and Ideology
Moral transgressions, for Kant, can never be justified. In this sense, all rationalizing is in vain. Agents can, however, find ‘subjective reasons’ (Eth-V, XXVII: 617.2–3) and ‘subjective grounds of consolation’ (Eth-V, XXVII: 618.38–619.1) for moral violations. These reasons are ‘subjective’ because they cannot withstand thorough scrutiny by other agents or the agent themselves if they think about them in an unbiased manner.
Apparent justifications (as well as excuses) are psychological means to cope with one’s failure to live up to the demands of the moral law. They share important structural properties with genuine justifications; they are meant to apply to all agents in relevantly similar circumstances, and they cover a multitude of similar cases. When we (actually, or merely apparently) justify an action, we believe that others, if they are unbiased, would accept this justification, and others can, in principle, appeal to this justification as well. Furthermore, we believe that what justifies our actions in one situation will also justify (or at least count in favour of) similar actions in relevantly similar situations. Deeming oneself justified implies to ‘at least implicitly […] believe that there is some sort of general point to what one is doing’ (Reference AmeriksAmeriks 2012: 158).Footnote 90 Apparent justifications therefore do not merely seemingly sanction one-off transgressions, but potentially condone systematic violations of the moral law.
This element of systematicity is succinctly captured by Andrews Reference ReathReath (2006: 20) when he states that, in the act of rationalizing, the agent adopts an ‘ideology […] which enables individuals to view their maxims as objectively acceptable reasons’. An ideology is not simply a set of false beliefs but a system of beliefs devised to promote an agenda, in this case the agenda of one’s sensuous nature.Footnote 91 An ideology has to be systematic at least in the sense of being internally consistent and comprised of propositions that support each other to some extent.Footnote 92 After all, a mere collection of unrelated claims (let alone contradictory ones) could hardly confer an apparent justification. It is more difficult to correct an agent who has adopted an ideology than to correct someone who merely holds an aggregate of discreet incorrect beliefs (see Eth-K: 157–8). The former has constructed a pseudo-rational protection against rational criticism. This is especially so if the ideology provides explanations for why others would object to it (‘Of course, the Man would want me to believe this…’). The rationalizer thus can avail themselves of replies to potential criticism.
Importantly, Kant believes that ideologies cannot be all-encompassing. Completely denying the validity of the moral law ‘before one’s reason […] is impossible for a human being’ (MM, VI: 321.40–322.20), and even the worst human being ‘does not repudiate the moral law, whatever [their] maxims, in rebellious attitude (by revoking obedience to it)’ (Rel, VI: 36.1–7).Footnote 93 Even the most hardened scoundrel in Groundwork III still at least ‘wishes’ to have the right disposition, and acknowledges the higher status of their rational self (G, IV: 454.20–455.9). However, while rational agents always acknowledge the importance of being moral, they might develop conceptions of morality that seemingly make it easier to be moral than a strict and pure moral law does.
As I explained (Section 2.2), both Papish and Grenberg assume that rationalizers acknowledge the need for help and that rationalizers can never be certain in their incorrect views. I sympathize with this view insofar as it emphasizes that rationalizing can never lead to absolute certainty and can never completely eclipse one’s original conception of morality (see below in this section). However, I also think that this assumption underestimates the danger of rationalizing. The reason for this underestimation might be rooted in an ambiguity in the term ‘certainty’. There is a sense in which a rationalizer can never be certain and one in which they can be. Certainty can be rationally warranted, namely if it is certainty in the truth of a well-justified proposition that can withstand rational scrutiny. A rationalizer indeed cannot have this type of certainty, since rationalizing cannot produce justifications that survive unbiased scrutiny. Certainty can also be merely subjective, namely the kind of unwarranted certainty that a fallible and imperfect agent might have in a belief even though this belief is, in fact, unjustified. Certainty of the latter kind can be the result of rationalizing or of other mistakes in reasoning, and such a certainty can be psychologically powerful, action-guiding and difficult to overcome.
I should note that one reason why I emphasize that Kant acknowledges that agents can be subjectively certain of their mistaken views is that I regard this as a charitable interpretation. My interpretation allows Kant to account for important and widespread phenomena; rationalizers often do not give up their views easily, they assert them with great confidence, they try to convince others (and might succeed in doing so) and they even form group identities around their rationalizations.Footnote 94
This interpretation, however, raises the question of whether a rationalizer who is certain and steadfast in their false convictions can still be subject to deserved criticism. Importantly, there are degrees of certainty and Kant maintains that rationalizers are never completely certain, not even subjectively so. Rationalizers, even in a state of false certainty, are still agents who have not entirely lost their connection to the moral law. Such agents can still judge correctly, but it is much more difficult for them, as there are additional epistemic hurdles that they themselves have put in their way.
Unfortunately, Kant provides few detailed descriptions of the reasoning of thoroughly self-deceived agents. To understand how even very corrupted agents can never be absolutely certain, let us look at the two cases that most clearly exhibit corruption at work.
First, we already saw (Section 3.2) that the kind of reasoning that can lead agents to eudaemonism is a paradigm of rationalizing. It is instructive how Kant describes one of the chief advocates of eudaemonism of his time, Christian Garve. Garve denies that duty can be independent of the prospect of personal happiness (TP, VIII: 284.9–285.22).Footnote 95 He does not hear the voice of reason as a voice of pure practical reason, but as a recommendation for how to attain happiness. According to Kant, this mistake is primarily a theoretical one. The moral law still speaks to Garve and he can find in his ‘heart’ (TP, VIII: 285.13) the motivation to follow its commands. The mistake is in Garve’s ‘head’ (TP, VIII: 285.15), or one of ‘speculation’ (TP, VIII: 285.18). Garve cannot conceive of a motive for actions other than personal happiness and thus he falsely assumes that this must also be the motive for moral actions. He has adopted the wrong metaphysical framework to understand the possibility of acting from duty. This does not mean that he denies the authority of duty, but merely that his philosophy is incapable of accounting for this authority.Footnote 96 While Garve stands in need of correction, Kant maintains that his eudaemonist ideology does not strip him of moral agency.
Garve, like other academically educated and sophisticated people, has bought into theoretical misconceptions (see Section 4.2). However, Kant maintains that Garve has not completely given up on the commitments he holds qua being rational. Kant presumably assumes that if confronted with scenarios such as the Gallows Case (see Section 2.3), Garve can be brought to admit that he could do what he acknowledges he ought to do, even though he might initially be certain that sacrificing one’s life merely for the sake of duty is impossible. Garve still has in his ‘heart’ the right insights, and if we put him in a situation that allows him to abstract from his theoretical misconceptions, we can elicit moral responses from him that he cannot account for in his own theory and that prove his eudaemonist framework wrong.Footnote 97
Second, we also saw (Section 3.2) that the religious cult is a source of ideology par excellence. It creates supposed grounds of excuses, apparent justifications and means to seemingly escape one’s responsibility. In the Religion, Kant describes an extreme case of an agent influenced by such an ideology: an ‘inquisitor’ [Ketzerrichter] (Rel, VI: 186.21) who is ‘firm in the belief’ (Rel, VI: 186.30) that he ought ‘to take a human being’s life because of his religious faith’ (Rel, VI: 186.36–7). However, even this inquisitor ‘could not have been entirely certain’ (Rel, VI: 186.29) that putting to death the heretic is right. According to Kant, the inquisitor can still be criticized for violating the principle ‘that we ought to venture nothing where there is a danger that it might be wrong’ (Rel, VI: 186.23–4). This safety principle would not apply if the inquisitor were absolutely certain and unaware of the moral danger of his course of action.Footnote 98 After all, the principle is best understood as requiring that we refrain from doing something if we are aware of even a small danger that it is wrong, since it is difficult to see how agents could be required to be cautious without any awareness on their part of potential wrongness. Thus, Kant maintains that even in extreme cases of being in the grip of a murderous ideology an agent can never be absolutely certain. The inquisitor is in principle still able to see through the ideology he adopted and thus does not escape all responsibility.Footnote 99
Both cases demonstrate that Kant thinks that while rationalizing can lead to false beliefs about duty and even to ideologies that agents advocate publicly and that they defend against objections and act on with great conviction, rationalizing cannot be all-encompassing in the sense that the moral law is completely replaced and it becomes impossible for an agent to act from duty. Rationalizing can only lead to modifications of one’s initial conception of morality. An ideology is not adopted instead of the moral law, but as an addition. An agent in the grip of an ideology will still treat the moral law as a point of reference, but they will also treat factors other than universality and humanity as relevant for their deliberation. As a result of this, an agent’s moral deliberation becomes more complex than the supposedly easy and straightforward universality- and humanity-based reflections outlined in Section 2.3. For Kant, as we will see in the next section, there is something deficient about an agent who stands in need of too much reflection about a moral case – one might call this the Kantian version of Bernard Williams’s famous One Thought Too Many problem.
5.2 The Story of Corruption
We can now tell the full story of the corruption of common agents. As a finite being with needs and inclinations an agent will not always comply with the commands of duty, even if these commands are clear to them and they are aware of the commands’ authority. Kant acknowledges that agents can act without taking themselves to be morally justified at the time of acting. He calls this phenomenon ‘frailty (fragilitas)’ (Rel, VI: 29.24–30), the first of three grades of evil in the Religion;Footnote 100 an agent is aware of what they ought to do and has ‘incorporated the good (the law)’ (Rel, VI: 29.26) into their maxim but their motivation to act on this maxim is too weak. This phenomenon is more commonly referred to as weakness of will.Footnote 101
Besides frailty, Kant acknowledges two slightly different ways in which agents do something without deeming themselves justified. An agent can be overwhelmed by an affect, a precipitate or rash feeling, and fail to think about justification at all. Affects lead to temporary loss of one’s rational capacities and can ‘at once’ make rational deliberation impossible.Footnote 102 In addition, passions can ‘remove’ one’s ‘freedom of mind’.Footnote 103 They are lasting and habitual sensuous inclinations, and they remove an agent’s capacity for self-determination because an agent, when in the grip of a passion, considers situations only as opportunities for or hindrances to the satisfaction of their passion. Affects even undermine means-ends reasoning (Anth, VII: 253.31–3), whereas passions can be in place together with instrumental uses of reason to determine the best means to satisfy the passion.Footnote 104
In both of these cases, the agent did not consider the morality of what they are doing.Footnote 105 These failings are different from frailty. They rather constitute a failure to act in the strict Kantian sense (in the case of affects)Footnote 106 or to morally reflect about one’s actions (in the case of passions). Still, in all three cases agents lack a proper justification, because they either act against what they are aware they ought to do, or what they do lacks any concern for (moral) justification. Agents are either aware of their lack of justification at the time of acting (frailty) or can become aware of it retrospectively (affects and passions).
Frailty, affects and passions alone cannot corrupt, since they leave one’s conception of morality untouched.Footnote 107 Nonetheless, they can give rise to the attempt to retrospectively find excuses for one’s unjustified behaviour. If upon critical reflection an agent realizes that their action was morally unjustified – and presumably even more so if they were aware of this during their action – they will experience pangs of conscience and loss of self-esteem. The agent will be tempted to ‘hide’ from ‘the voice [of reason] which makes even the boldest evildoer tremble’ (CPrR, V: 80.1–2). They will enter a process of ex post rationalizing. Rationalizing thus usually begins with calling the strictness of morality into question to retrospectively find excuses.Footnote 108
At this point, an agent’s commitment to morality has already become conditional in an important sense; the agent thinks that certain external factors or grounds of excuses can mitigate moral violations. However, empirical factors are not yet part of the agent’s conception of what morality commands. Nonetheless, excuses can become more numerous and more elaborate and, at some point, the agent will deem certain transgressions not only excusable but will stop seeing them as transgressions. They believe that what excused their behaviour in retrospection also must have an impact on the question of whether they are under a particular obligation at all. After all, if they truly believe to have found a sound excuse, then they will at least suspect that they have uncovered a morally salient factor, such as that there are certain sacrifices morality cannot reasonably expect of them or that violating supposed moral rules is permissible if the overall outcome is a good one, and that these factors also should inform their ex ante deliberations. Anything that truly excuses actions in retrospection also seems to matter for moral deliberation. Kant acknowledges that there can be genuine excuses that mitigate responsibility (see MM, VI: 228.11–22). However, he is also concerned that agents are overly lenient with themselves and search for (and seemingly find) excuses instead of earnestly trying to improve themselves, and, even worse, that agents come to believe that supposed excuses can justify their actions.
An agent who has made excuses part of their very conception of what morality commands is confused. They still apply common universalization tests in their reasoning, and they are aware that certain ways of treating other rational agents are simply wrong, but they also have adopted convictions that can interfere with their moral reasoning. A system of pseudo-justifications has superimposed itself onto the rationalizer’s original grasp of morality. As I explained (Section 3.3), an agent who has allowed morally irrelevant considerations to enter their moral deliberation, even when they act from what they think is duty, is likely to act from the additional concerns that they deem significant. Performing the right external actions, but not from duty, is what Kant labels ‘impurity’ [Unlauterkeit], the second grade of evil.
I should note that the relation between rationalizing against purity in Groundwork 405 and impurity as a grade of evil is not straightforward, since Kant uses two different German terms: Reinheit [Groundwork] and Unlauterkeit [Religion], commonly translated as ‘purity’ and ‘impurity’ respectively. However, the latter is not simply the negation of the former. Reinheit is broader, as it concerns motivational and cognitive aspects of morality (see Section 3.2), whereas Unlauterkeit is merely a question of motivation. In fact, as we saw (see Section 3.2), the cognitive component of Reinheit precedes the motivational one. The Religion’s Unlauterkeit and the Groundwork’s motivational component of impurity presuppose that agents make empirical concerns part of their conception of morality.Footnote 109
The rationalizer has devised a system of caveats, qualifications and provisos that condition their commitment to the moral law. They will ultimately only obey the moral law if no other considerations, such as supposedly good consequences, their own projects that come with a supposed moral status and son on, present themselves as more salient than universalizability and humanity. Such a conditional commitment to the moral law can even result in plainly wrong judgements about duty and in believing themselves justified when committing externally wrong actions. Moreover, a conditional commitment to morality like this is called ‘wickedness’ or ‘perversity’ in the Religion, the third grade of evil (Rel, VI: 30.9–18), and ‘corruption’ in the Groundwork. Importantly, in the Groundwork, Kant introduces corruption not as an attribute of an agent, but of the strictness of the moral law (G, IV: 405.15–17).Footnote 110 Since the moral law itself cannot be corrupted, corruption must pertain to an agent’s conception of the moral law, or, more precisely, to their conception of ‘strict laws of duty’ (G, IV: 405.14). The immediate target of rationalizing is not the moral law as such, but laws (note the plural ‘strenge Gesetze der Pflicht’) of duty, or specific duties in specific situations. A rationalizer is still committed to morality as such, but does not want to accept the burdensome commands that follow from a strict and pure moral law. However, when they rationalize against some of their specific duties, they end up modifying their conception of morality, since they make assumptions that are incompatible with the strictness and purity of morality. This, Kant believes, ‘reverses the ethical order’ (Rel, VI: 30.13–14), an order that requires unconditional obedience to duty in all its strictness and purity.
Even though rationalizing primarily serves the purpose of making more room for an agent’s own inclinations and personal projects, it also jeopardizes the capacity to judge about cases not immediately involving oneself. This is important because it allows Kant to explain how agents can be mistaken even in evaluations of hypothetical scenarios with no prospect of loss or reward to themselves. The ideology that results from rationalizing ‘puts out of tune the moral ability to judge what to think of a human being’ (Rel, VI: 38.28–9). The metaphor ‘out of tune’ [verstimmt] is fitting, since an instrument that is out of tune consistently plays false notes, just as a corrupted agent’s judgements might consistently follow a false pattern. An ideology impacts the way an agent judges their own actions as well as the actions of other agents and of hypothetical cases, since it contains general claims about what is morally justifiable. In fact, an ideology is more convincing the more it appears to be based on unprejudiced, disinterested factors that seemingly pertain to all cases and all agents alike.
Kant warns that ‘dishonesty, by which we throw dust in our own eyes […] extends itself also externally, to falsity or deception of others’ (Rel, VI: 38.23–6). The sheer quantity of others’ immoral activities already suggests an excuse for not being moral; others are manifestly immoral, so why should I be (much) better?Footnote 111 In addition, agents demand justifications or excuses from each other for harmful or disrespectful actions. A self-deceived offender is likely to think that they have nothing to hide, and that a convincing justification for them will also be one for others, and they will present their apparent justifications to them. If an interlocutor buys into the rationalizer’s story, they might consider themselves justified in similar cases. By entering the practice of demanding and providing (pseudo-)justifications as well as (pseudo-)excuses, agents throw dust into each other’s eyes. This practice can inspire new strategies for rationalizing and agents can reinforce each other in this. A particular danger of the social sphere is that some agents are figures of (social and religious) authority and seemingly in a position to propose and validate justifications and excuses (see Section 3.2).Footnote 112
As the structure of the Groundwork reveals, rationalizing is, according to Kant, closely connected to one particular form of public ideology: popular philosophy. Following his discussion of the natural dialectical tension, at the beginning of Groundwork II Kant criticizes popular philosophy as an inadequate response to the natural dialectic. Popular philosophers promise help to those who have become confused about duty. However, they present a ‘disgusting mish-mash of gleaned observations and half-rationalizing principles’ (G, IV: 409.30–2; see also G, IV: 426.18–19; JL, IX: 148.11–18). They combine various elements from virtue ethics, theology, moral-sense theory, perfectionism and so on, but they do so without providing a unifying rational principle (G, IV: 410.3–18).Footnote 113 Even worse, their teachings amplify confusion because they make an agent ‘waver’ (G, IV: 411.7) in their reasoning between the various elements that they present. Kant is concerned that popular philosophy, as a form of collective rationalizing, reinforces rationalizing and inspires new strategies thereof, rather than helping agents to overcome it.
Kant is aware that philosophers have the training and skills to earnestly inquire into the foundations of morality, but the same training and skills can be used to please the taste of the public and to seemingly justify moral transgressions.Footnote 114 In the Second Critique, Kant claims that common agents hear the voice of reason clearly, and only the ‘head-confusing [kopfverwirrende] speculations of the schools […] are brazen enough to make oneself deaf to that heavenly voice’ (CPrR, V: 35.16–18; my trans.),Footnote 115 and that ‘only philosophers’ can make ‘doubtful’ the question ‘[w]hat, then, really is pure morality, by which as a touchstone one must test the moral content of every action?’ (CPrR, V: 155.12–18). However, Kant must be overstating his case here. We have seen that the natural dialectical tension is present within all finite rational agents (Section 3.1), not only those exposed to moral theory.Footnote 116
Kant here expresses two main concerns regarding the effect impure practical philosophy can have on agents and on philosophers themselves. First, it can foster confusion (see also G, IV: 404.28). Universality and humanity, on the one hand, and philosophical principles, on the other hand, might issue conflicting verdicts and thus make it more difficult to judge correctly. For a confused agent, moral deliberation requires an additional level of intellectual effort to weigh genuine moral concerns against misleading philosophical advice.
Second, impure practical philosophy can make one deaf to the voice of reason (see CPrR, V: 35.16–18). ‘Deafness’ does not mean that the voice of reason itself is silent. Kant believes that his colleagues, even Christian Garve, still hear this voice in their hearts (see Section 5.1). A practical philosopher who is deeply entangled in a false moral theory might not hear the voice of reason qua practical philosopher, but qua rational human being he can still hear it. Reference AdelungAdelung (1811: vol. 4, col. 537–8) and Reference Grimm and GrimmGrimm and Grimm (1889: vol. 21, col. 162) note that the German taub (deaf) can mean that someone does not want to hear or understand something. Adelung also notes that deafness can be self-inflicted and intentional. Kant indeed assumes that deafness is self-incurred (‘to make oneself deaf to that heavenly voice’; CPrR, V: 35.16–18; my emphasis). Deaf agents, even if they were to deliberate based on purely rational criteria – though they are likely also confused and buy into impure principles – conceive of their moral judgement not as an unconditional command, but as merely providing defeasible reasons for actions and as standing in need of external motives. They think that there is no categorical difference between moral commands and counsels of prudence, social mores and so on. When they act from what they take to be their duty, their actions do not exhibit commitment to duty alone.
Confusion and deafness are both aspects of the phenomenon of disregarding purity (see Section 3.2). Confused agents might judge incorrectly about what is morally justified because they have allowed morally irrelevant considerations into their moral deliberations. Deaf agents have false priorities and do not accord duty its proper place. Deafness presupposes some sophisticated theorizing to supposedly justify the diminished status of moral commands. However, this sophisticated theorizing can be disseminated among the less-educated public by educators and public intellectuals. In fact, that is what Kant believes is happening when he laments that the public has a ‘taste’ (G, IV: 388.25) for popular philosophy.
My discussion raises the question of whether Kant thinks that rationalizing and corruption happens to all of us. Do we all start as innocent common agents, guided by the insights of our common human reason, and rationalize away our grasp of morality? I think that Kant’s account is not intended to explain individual development. We are born into a social world already shaped by some of the ideologies Kant warns against. Material for rationalizing is thus already imparted on us during our socialization. Kant’s account is highly idealized and rather answers the transcendental question of what the conditions of the possibility are for rational agents to falsely deem themselves justified and judge incorrectly about morality, as they sometimes do. For this purpose, Kant discusses agents largely in abstraction from their social surroundings. He believes that the danger of rationalizing is part of the human condition, yet, to understand how individuals under current conditions acquire wrong conceptions of morality, a look at beliefs and values imparted on us by our upbringing and our social surroundings will often afford a more straightforward answer than an idealized story of individual rationalizing.
We should also bear in mind that even though agents are necessarily caught in the natural dialectical tension between their sensuous and rational natures, it is not necessary that agents solve the tension via rationalizing. Agents can refuse to uncritically believe convenient stories that seemingly absolve them of guilt. While most agents are somewhere in between innocence and full corruption, agents can preserve their innocent conception of morality (almost) entirely, if they withstand their propensity to engage in rationalizing. If an agent makes the purity and strictness of the moral law the focal point of her deliberation, she can see through the spuriousness of the considerations her internal lawyer advances.
6 Whose Rationalizing?
Kant’s conception of rationalizing allows him to explain why rational agents would find elements of his philosophy ‘strange’ and express ‘suspicion’ towards them and his philosophy in general (G, IV: 394.34–5), as he admits they might. He suspects that those who object to his theory aim to devise or defend a conception of morality that is supposed to make more room for their self-interest while allowing them to avoid pangs of conscience and deem themselves worthy of happiness. Having such a response available is important for Kant, because he owes us an explanation for how ‘so many people manage to hide from themselves the basic claims of morality’ (Reference AmeriksAmeriks 2000: 150) that, Kant believes, are apparent to everyone.
Moreover, recently Kant’s conception of rationalizing was proposed as a systematically attractive response to the overdemandingness objection. Van Ackeren and Reference StickerSticker (2015: sec. 3) argue that from Kant’s perspective levelling an overdemandingness objection against an ethical theory would be a paradigm case of a self-love-driven attack on a fundamental property of morality. In fact, the overdemandingness objection is more overt and brazen than many of the attempts Kant himself discusses. In a standard overdemandingness objection the very notion that morality can demand actions exceeding a supposed threshold of acceptable sacrifice becomes the object of criticism. The rationalizer here starts off with the assumption that there are certain agent-relative goods morality may not interfere with and that this constrains what morality can legitimately demand. This is a straightforward denial of purity.Footnote 117
To assess whether it is fair to criticize the overdemandingness objection as a rationalization, and whether Kant can explain why so many people manage to hide ethical truth from themselves, we must now discuss the philosophical viability of Kant’s conception of rationalizing. I begin with an initial problem that Kant can overcome, and then turn to what I take to be the real issue.
As we have seen, rationalizing helps us to understand how rational agents who acknowledge the unconditional authority of morality can come to adopt more lenient moral principles. Furthermore, rationalizing allows Kant to criticize ethical theories, institutions and cultural practices, if they propose and seemingly validate excuses and delegate responsibility to supposed authorities. These cases have in common that agents come to conceive of moral commands as less onerous. The driving force behind rationalizing is self-love in a direct form (making space for one’s pursuit of happiness) and a more indirect form (avoiding loss of self-esteem and pangs of conscience and deeming oneself worthy of happiness). As an activity driven by self-love, rationalizing can only offer straightforward explanations for why rational agents would take morality to be less rather than more onerous on them.
While Kant’s ethics might be stricter and more demanding than the eudaemonist theories he frequently criticizes, his theory is arguably not the one that is most detrimental to an agent’s self-interest. Take, for instance, a form of Act-Consequentialism that postulates a duty to impartially maximize the happiness of all sentient creatures. Such a theory would, in many instances, be extremely demanding on (relatively) affluent agents as it would require that they donate all their resources (up to the point of marginal utility) to charities that effectively help the global poor, victims of natural disasters and maybe also non-rational animals. In addition, they might also have to dedicate their spare time to volunteering and fundraising for these charities or work a second job to make even more money to go towards the maximal promotion of the good. Kant’s ethics, by contrast, does not impose demands like these on behalf of others’ happiness. At the very least, we can say that beneficence, as an imperfect duty, is trumped by perfect duties and that it has to be balanced with one’s duty of self-perfection. In addition, not helping others when one could constitutes lack of merit rather than guilt or vice (MM, VI: 390.18–29),Footnote 118 whereas on the Consequentialist theory I sketched it would be morally wrong to do anything short of the maximum.
Now, the question is whether Kant’s conception of rationalizing can account for why some rational agents would buy into such a very demanding Consequentialist theory.Footnote 119 According to Kant, agents’ moral reasoning is tacitly guided by universalizability and the special status of rational agents (see Section 2.3), not by consequences. Moreover, due to the sacrifices impartial maximization would require this notion is not appealing to the self-love of relatively affluent agents, and maybe not even to those not terribly well off, as they would still be forced to view all their decisions through the lens of impartial maximizing (‘Is this really the impartially best use I can make of my scarce resources, or could I do more good elsewhere?’).Footnote 120 Kant’s framework seems to lack the means to explain how agents could ever err on the side of more demanding principles or theories, such as impartial Consequentialism.Footnote 121
As a criticism of ethical theories rationalizing puts more demanding moral principles or theories seemingly in a better position than less demanding ones. From the perspective of the more demanding theory we can tell a story as to why the less demanding theories or principles originated in rationalizing rather than unbiased inquiry, but not vice versa. However, the mere fact that a theory is highly demanding does not make this theory more defensible. Even Kant, who is frequently criticized for supposed excessive rigorism, agrees with this. He criticizes the ‘fantastically virtuous who allows nothing to be morally indifferent (adiaphora) and strews all his steps with duties, as with mantraps’. ‘Fantastic virtue’ can even ‘turn the government of virtue into tyranny’ (MM, VI: 409.13–19). He also praises the Epicurean idea of an ‘ever-cheerful heart’ (MM, VI: 485.5) as an important part of a moral life and criticizes the Stoics for straining ‘the moral capacity of the human being, under the name of a sage, far beyond all the limits of his human nature’ (CPrR, V: 127.2–4).Footnote 122 Kant does not think that between two courses of action the one that is more detrimental to one’s self-love must be the morally correct one. It should thus not be the case that the more demanding theory is automatically more defensible than the less demanding theory, even though this is what seemingly follows from Kant’s conception of rationalizing.Footnote 123 However, while agents typically err on the side of their self-love, it is perfectly conceivable (and can be observed in everyday life) that agents are too hard on themselves and can feel compelled to do more than what can reasonably be expected of them or feel guilty for failing to do so.Footnote 124 Rationalizing, it seems, cannot account for this aspect of our moral (mis)judgements.
To see whether there is a way out for Kant, we need to look at his conception of self-love. According to the Second Critique’s Theorem II, all material, that is, non-moral, principles and ends, ‘come under the general principle of self-love or one’s own happiness’ (CPrR, V: 22.6–8; see also CPrR, V: 34.2–11, 35.7–11). Anything that is not motivated by respect for the moral law is thus self-love-driven. The corresponding theory of non-moral and immoral actions has been the target of heated criticism, as it is often considered to represent an overly simplistic form of hedonism concerning non-moral actions.Footnote 125
However, according to Kant, agents can adopt other-directed ends. Some of these are obligatory ends, such as others’ happiness, whereas others fall under self-love; the friend of humanity is ‘attuned to compassion’ and finds ‘even without another motivating ground of vanity, or self-interest […] an inner gratification in spreading joy around them’ (G, IV: 398.9–12; see also CPrR, V: 35.37–8). Kant clearly ‘recognizes that we can have inclinations that are straightforwardly other-regarding’ (Reference ReathReath 2006: 49).Footnote 126 Moreover, ‘Kant recognizes a category of inclinations that develop from a natural “aptitude for culture”, whose objects include pursuits in the arts and sciences or the increase of one’s knowledge, as well as social values or goods’ (Reference ReathReath 2006: 39–40; see also CJ, V: 429–34). The object of these inclinations is not pleasure and these inclinations should not be understood as egoistic, even though they are self-directed.
We thus must distinguish self-love from self-interest or egoism in a narrow, self-directed sense. It is possible that agents adopt among their personal ends other-directed ends, such as philanthropy or altruism, and that they promote these ends even at the expense of other personal and self-directed ends. Agents might adopt these other-directed ends for a number of reasons. They might consider them a source of personal satisfaction; they might think that these ends supplement and complement other ends they hold; people they admire might care about these ends. Ends such as philanthropy and altruism, even though they require sacrifices in terms of self-directed ends, can thus fall under self-love. In fact, Kant is very clear that acts of charity do not necessarily reflect a good moral disposition but might rather be purely emotional or pathological responses driven by self-love (G, IV: 398.8–399.2).
Of course, philanthropy and altruism can also be genuinely moral, that is, non-self-love-driven. Agents might interpret their duty to make others’ ends their own as morally requiring acts of philanthropy or charity and adopt corresponding principles for moral reasons. Other, more demanding principles such as doing as much good as possible are somewhat more difficult to capture as part of a Kantian imperfect duty, though, since Kant would presumably maintain that it is the maxim and motivation that is important, not the outcomes of actions.Footnote 127 Yet, it seems that a maxim of helping when and where one can do most (or much) good could in principle fall under imperfect duties to others.Footnote 128
Depending on the grounds for adopting philanthropy and altruism, these ends can either fall under self-love or under the duty of beneficence. In the latter case, these ends are not the result of rationalizing but simply constitute one way to fulfil one’s imperfect duties to others. In the former case, rationalizing might serve to make more room for the promotion of these ends, since self-love is not restricted to self-directed or egoistic ends. Presenting apparent justifications and excuses for promoting personal but other-directed ends is rationalizing, if there is a danger that agents will neglect duties, such as self-perfection, or even come to believe that perfect duties admit of exceptions, for instance, for the sake of acquiring more money to donate to charity. This can transform agents’ original grasp of morality in much the same way as making excuses for one’s self-directed ends can; the agent might deem themselves excused or even fully justified because they acted for a supposed higher good, and they might, in the future, apply similar considerations to assessment of themselves and others. Moreover, they might come to believe that even perfect duties can and should be ignored in certain cases and must be weighed against other factors such as the consequences of actions.Footnote 129
Rationalizers can come to adopt and defend principles of altruism that demand more than the imperfect duty of beneficence does and that might even interfere with morality. Such rationalizing is still self-love-driven insofar as agents aim to make more space for one of their personal, albeit other-directed, ends at the expense of duty. This form of rationalizing is in some senses similar to the eudaemonist (Section 3.3) who starts off as someone who greatly values morality and cannot face the prospect of not living up to his rational self. Adopting demanding principles of philanthropy or altruism, and making morality supposedly more demanding than it really is, is tempting in the sense that an agent does not engage in a crude attempt to make space for selfishness. Rather, it seems that they hold themselves to higher standards than others. This, however, misses the crucial point that there is one and the same moral standard for everyone, pure practical reason, and that it is dangerous to tamper with this standard and to think that one knows better than reason.
Finally, we might also wonder whether philanthropy or altruism can be an object of rationalizing if an agent adopted them from duty as part of their obligatory end of furthering others’ happiness. For instance, what if an agent always prioritizes these aspects of their imperfect duties over their self-perfection or even over perfect duty? Since I have assumed throughout my investigation that rationalizing is driven by self-love, I have to deny that such a mistaken prioritization can be the outcome of rationalizing, if an agent is really committed to philanthropy and altruism on moral grounds. We should bear in mind, though, that not all mistakes an agent makes have to be the outcome of rationalizing as I described it. An agent might make honest mistakesFootnote 130 when prioritizing certain duties over others and Kant would presumably think them blameless if they are genuinely committed to duty and seek to earnestly follow the guidance afforded by universalization tests and the special status of rational nature.
One might very well wonder at this point: isn’t it a good thing to do more good for others rather than less? In what sense would an agent who dedicates their life to helping the worst-off be a rationalizer at all, even if they make morality more demanding on them than universality and rational nature prescribe? They might be acting out of self-love in a wide and technical sense. However, as we have seen, self-love is not necessarily a form of egoism but a structure that motivates an agent to act on personal ends that they have adopted possibly as the result of earnest and critical reflection. Could Kantian theory, if it criticizes as a rationalizing transformation of morality the command to do as much good for others as one can, be the real rationalization that plays down the true extent of our obligations to the worst-off?Footnote 131
This is not a moot challenge. After all, ethical theories other than Kant’s can come up with their very own theory of rationalizing. For instance, Consequentialists might want to describe as idle rationalizing all philosophizing about who or what really is responsible for causing an emergency situation or ongoing absolute poverty (consumers, corporations, capitalism etc.) and for alleviating it (those who caused it, those who benefit etc.), when there is an acute need that you could alleviate and no one else is doing enough. It is, according to most Consequentialists, clearly you who ought to act in this situation. Fundamental questions concerning who is to blame for creating this situation are potentially distracting, and must come second. Moreover, Consequentialists might level a rationalizing charge specifically against Kant, because his philosophy suggests that we have latitude concerning some duties that might be a matter of life and death for victims of natural disasters and the global poor,Footnote 132 and that inflexible absolute prohibitions might unduly restrain our actions in acute emergencies.Footnote 133
This reveals the real problem for Kant’s conception of rationalizing: how can Kant be certain that it is not he who is the rationalizer who, in his heart, knows that he and everyone else must maximize overall happiness (or maybe strive for personal eudaemonia) but whose head has convinced him otherwise? Or, more generally: how can we identify rationalizing without already making substantive and controversial assumptions about what correct moral reasoning is?Footnote 134 After all, if rationalizing is to be a plausible explanation for the existence of (widespread) beliefs that deviate from the correct ethical theory (whatever this theory might be), then we need theory-independent criteria for what counts as rationalizing, not criteria based on contentious features of morality. Only criteria remaining neutral regarding the specific content of the correct ethical theory can adjudicate between the Kantian and Consequentialists (and other theorists) when they accuse each other of rationalizing. These criteria would provide a philosopher with the opportunity to critically diagnose moral reasoning by picking out features that should be suspicious on any plausible moral theory. I can here only hint at what such criteria might look like.
One plausible theory-independent criterion is consistency across principles. It should make us suspicious if an agent switches between ethical principles in such a way that their interests always ‘happen’ to be favoured, for example, the agent is a latitudinarian about their duties to those worse off than them, but an Act-Consequentialist when the impartial perspective of the universe would favour their own happiness.Footnote 135 Behaviour like this should strike anyone as suspect (unless, of course, the agent can provide a plausible rationale for why different ethical theories or principles must be combined in the way they do), and indicates rationalizing. Consistency across principles can help us spot particularly egregious misuses of rational capacities. This criterion alone, however, is too thin to pick out many of the more sophisticated forms of rationalizing, given that reasoning that consistently sticks to just one or a few principles can still be false. Presumably, there are many false ethical theories that do not wildly jump between principles.
A second criterion is hypocrisy, inconsistency between the standards an agent professes to hold and the standards they act on, or between the standards they use to evaluate themselves and those they use to evaluate others. Again, avoiding hypocrisy is a rather basic requirement. In addition, it might of course be true that different areas (politics, business, the private sphere) call for different standards of assessment and all kinds of dicey issues can arise concerning the question of which cases and situations are alike and call for being adjudicated according to the same principles.Footnote 136
Generally, we should be suspicious if an agent’s self-interest always seems to come out on top. However, as I argued, we should certainly not dismiss an ethical theory simply because it is not maximally detrimental to an agent’s wellbeing. How demanding morality should be is a substantive question that cannot be settled by discussions of rationalizing. This makes it difficult to evaluate whether someone is a rationalizer based on just one or a few judgements. Rather, we have to look at patterns of judgements and see whether an agent employs the same principles consistently, and whether these principles are such that they seem to make room for the agent’s own desires and personal pursuits to an extent that should be suspicious no matter what specific theory we buy into.
A third theory-independent criterion that indicates rationalizing is if an agent exhibits confirmation or myside bias by never considering objections and only ever looking for arguments and reasons supporting their own position. This, once more, is a pattern and not something we can identify in a single judgement. Moreover, even if we notice such a pattern, we have to be careful. Just because an agent does not consider objections does not mean that the conclusion of their reasoning is wrong. They could get it right by chance. Their reasoning is, however, at least suspicious.
It would be fruitful to think more about these and potentially other theory-independent criteria for rationalizing in order to understand the plausibility of the charge of rationalizing – against eudaemonism, impartial Consequentialism and Kant himself. I hope to have at least demonstrated why working this out would be a desideratum for our understanding of rationalizing, as well as for working out who rationalizes: Kant’s critics, Kant himself, neither or both?
Abbreviations
Kant’s writings are cited by volume: page.line of the Academy edition, using the following abbreviations.
- A/B:
Critique of Pure Reason
- Anth:
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View
- CPrR:
Critique of Practical Reason
- CJ:
Critique of Judgement
- CF:
The Contest of Faculties
- CB:
Conjectural Beginning of Human History
- TP:
On the Common Saying: That may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice
- OAD:
On a Discovery, according to which any new Critique of Pure Reason is made Superfluous through an Older
- WIE:
Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment
- FI:
First Introduction to the Critique of Judgement
- G:
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
- JL:
Immanuel Kant’s Logic: A manual for lectures edited by Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche
- LB-Prog:
Lose Blätter zu den Fortschritten der Metaphysik
- Eth-C:
Moral Philosophy: Collin’s Lecture Notes
- Corr:
Letters
- L-F:
Die Vorlesungen des Wintersemesters 1775/76 aufgrund der Nachschriften Friedländer 3.3 (Ms 400), Friedländer 2 (Ms 399) und Prieger
- Eth-K:
Kaehler’s Lecture Notes on Moral Philosophy, edited by Reference StarkStark (2004)
- Eth-M1:
Lecture Notes Mrongovius 1
- Eth-M2:
Morality according to Prof. Kant: Mrongovius’s second set of lecture notes
- L-Men:
Die Vorlesung des Wintersemesters 1781/82 [?] aufgrund der Nachschriften Menschenkunde, Petersburg
- Eth-P:
Praktische Philosophie Powalski
- Eth-V:
Metaphysics of Morals Vigilantius
- MM:
The Metaphysics of Morals
- Men:
Einige Bermekungen zu Ludwig Heinrich Jakob’s Prüfung der Mendelsohn’schen Morgenstunden
- MFNS:
Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science
- OP:
Opus postumum
- P:
Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics
- Ped:
On Pedagogy
- P-F:
Preparations for The Contest of Faculties
- P-M:
Preparations for The Metaphysics of Morals
- TPP:
Toward Perpetual Peace
- P-PR:
Vorredenentwürfe Religionsphilosophie
- PCT:
Verkündigung des nahen Abschlusses eines Tractats zum ewigen Frieden in der Philosophie
- PM:
Prize Essay on the Progress of Metaphysics
- Rel:
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone
- Ref:
Reflections on Anthropology
- RE:
Zur Rezension von Eberhards Magazin (II. Band)
- Ref:
Reflections
- RO:
Remarks on the Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime
- RPT:
On a New Superior Tone in Philosophy
- UPT:
On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy
- MPT:
Miscarriages of all Philosophical Trials in TheodicyUnless otherwise noted, translations follow the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, edited by P. Guyer and A. W. Wood (1992ff.). Translations of as-yet-untranslated passages and of German secondary literature are my own.
Acknowledgements
Over the years I have had many productive discussions about self-deception and rationalizing with a number of outstanding philosophers and/or friends. I wish to thank especially Jens Timmermann, Adrian Piper, Joe Saunders, Anna Wehofsits, James Camien McGuiggan, Kate Moran, Seiriol Morgan, Brian McElwee, Sarah Broadie, Marcia Baron, Stefano Lo Re, Andre Grahle, Laura Papish, Oliver Sensen, Max Jones and Thomas Sturm. I am fully aware that I have subjected some of these individuals to a great deal of rationalizing about my supposed vegetarianism (I used to eat quite a lot of meat for a vegetarian) and other matters. I hope that some of it at least helped them to better understand the depths of human pseudo-rationality. Listening to my own internal laments about the difficulties of being a half-way decent person was certainly an important source of inspiration for this Element.
I am also grateful to Allen Wood for helpful suggestions based on an outline of my project and to Andy Jones for facilitating the review process with exemplary efficiency. Furthermore, I am grateful to the University of Bristol, Brandeis University, the North American Kant Society, the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University and the Kantian Rationality Lab based in Kaliningrad for providing me with opportunities to present my material. I am especially grateful to Laura Papish and Jessica Tizzard for a very productive exchange during an ENAKS panel organized by Kate Moran at Brandeis University. Finally, I am grateful to Laura Papish, Anna Wehofsits and Joe Saunders for providing detailed feedback on a draft of my manuscript.
My research was supported by a two-year Irish Research Council Fellowship at Trinity College Dublin (GOIPD/2016/244), a one-term German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)-funded Guest Chair at the Ruhr-University Bochum and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation grant no. 075–15–2019–1929, project ‘Kantian Rationality and Its Impact in Contemporary Science, Technology, and Social Institutions’, provided at the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (IKBFU), Kaliningrad.
Desmond Hogan
Princeton University
Desmond Hogan joined the philosophy department at Princeton in 2004. His interests include Kant, Leibniz and German rationalism, early modern philosophy, and questions about causation and freedom. Recent work includes ‘Kant on the Foreknowledge of Contingent Truths’, Res Philosophica 91 (1) (2014); ‘Kant’s Theory of Divine and Secondary Causation’, in Brandon Look (ed.) Leibniz and Kant, Oxford University Press (forthcoming); ‘Kant and the Character of Mathematical Inference’, in Carl Posy and Ofra Rechter (eds.) Kant’s Philosophy of Mathematics Vol. I, Cambridge University Press (2020).
Howard Williams
University of Cardiff
Howard Williams was appointed Honorary Distinguished Professor at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Cardiff in 2014. He is also Emeritus Professor in Political Theory at the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, a member of the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol (Welsh-language national college) and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. He is the author of Marx (1980); Kant’s Political Philosophy (1983); Concepts of Ideology (1988); Hegel, Heraclitus and Marx’s Dialectic (1989); International Relations in Political Theory (1992); International Relations and the Limits of Political Theory (1996); Kant’s Critique of Hobbes: Sovereignty and Cosmopolitanism (2003); Kant and the End of War (2012) and is currently editor of the journal Kantian Review. He is writing a book on the Kantian legacy in political philosophy for a new series edited by Paul Guyer.
Allen Wood
Indiana University
Allen Wood is Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. He was a John S. Guggenheim Fellow at the Free University in Berlin, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the University of Bonn and Isaiah Berlin Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford. He is on the editorial board of eight philosophy journals, five book series and The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Along with Paul Guyer, Professor Wood is co-editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant and translator of the Critique of Pure Reason. He is the author or editor of a number of other works, mainly on Kant, Hegel and Karl Marx. His most recently published books are Fichte’s Ethical Thought, Oxford University Press (2016) and Kant and Religion, Cambridge University Press (2020). Wood is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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