agency and autonomy in kants moral theory selected essays apr 2006

[...]... the authority and motivating in uence of moral considerations In order to understand how respect for morality counteracts the in uence of inclination and non -moral interests, as Kant thinks that it can, one needs an appropriate understanding of the motivating in uence of the latter I argue that since moral considerations motivate through an agent’s recognition of their authority, non -moral desires... philosophical understanding of the conception of morality found in ordinary thought must present the basic principle of morality as a principle of autonomy The special authority that moral requirements carry, according to ordinary thought, can be explained and can be substantiated only if moral principles originate in our rational will, or to use Kant’s preferred locution, if we are, in some sense, their... begin by looking at what Kant says about the moral feeling of respect This feeling is most easily explained as the experience of constraints that the moral law imposes on our inclinations Thus, Kant stresses that it originates as a ‘negative effect’ of our moral consciousness When the moral law determines the will, it frustrates the inclinations, and ‘the negative effect on feeling is itself feeling’... modified the essays accordingly, while in others I have offered a brief response—mainly in notes and the appendices Any modifications to the original text that verge on being substantial are flagged with an endnote 1 Kant’s Theory of Moral Sensibility: Respect for the Moral Law and the In uence of Inclination This essay is concerned with two parallel topics in Kant’s moral psychology— respect for the moral. .. for the law limits the in uence of inclinations, since it exerts no such force This indicates the need for a different account of how inclinations in uence choice There must be enough common ground between motivation by inclination and moral motivation to show how the moral incentive can limit the in uence of non -moral incentives Here we can see how Kant’s views about specifically moral motivation have... the moral incentive In attempting to explain how the feeling of respect is an incentive in good conduct, he stresses that there is ‘no antecedent feeling in the subject that would be attuned to morality’ (KpV 5: 76) In other words, Kant is careful to make it clear that he is not adopting any sort of moral sense theory Since his aim is to show that the will is directly responsive to practical reason, and. .. restricted by moral concerns In this case, many of the original inclinations may be retained and their ends adopted, though now on different grounds It is in this sense that the moral law need only ‘infringe upon’ (limit) self-love, and ‘exclude altogether the in uence of self-love on the highest practical principle’ When it does so, self-love can become good In contrast Kant claims that inclinations for... (KpV 5: 73) In short, the feeling of respect is an emotion that is the effect of, and follows from, the determination of the will by the moral law, when the latter limits the inclinations Kant also tries to spell out a sense in which this feeling is an incentive in moral conduct by showing how this originally negative effect is at the same time a positive source of motivation In us the inclinations present... reasons that resemble moral reasons in form, in the sense that they provide justification for the action in question How the moral law checks inclinations may be explained roughly as follows Since inclinations in uence the will through the value that the agent supposes them to have, the moral law can limit their in uence by showing that they do not have this value, and by presenting a higher form of... satisfaction of one’s inclinations, which is indifferent to the interests of others.¹⁶ In this section I will offer an interpretation of the two kinds of motivational tendencies that it comprises: self-love (either Selbstliebe or Eigenliebe), on the one hand, and self-conceit (Eigendünkel).¹⁷ Self-conceit in particular is pertinent to an understanding of respect The points to bear in mind are that self-love .