Choice, Wille, and Respect: My First Reaction To "Respect for the Moral Law"

This is my final paper for PHILOS 151B taught by Prof. Dewitt at UCLA.

In Respect for the Moral Law: the Emotional Side of Reason, Professor DeWitt illustrates how respect, as a feeling, can at the same time be the source of moral motivation in Kantian ethics. She does this by first offering a cognitive theory of feelings (emotions), and then giving an interpretation of the Kantian structure of mind for sensibly affected (i.e. imperfect) rational beings, so that how respect can motivate could be explained. While I agree with Professor DeWitt for the most part of her paper and admire her unique and important contribution to Kantian moral psychology, there are still several points in the last section that I am not comfortable with, especially regarding the structure of mind proposed. Some of them could likely not be her fault, but Kant’s, as there is ample evidence from Kant’s writing that supports her interpretation. In this paper, I will try to explain why I find them not fully convincing, and argue that there needs to be a “unity” between the wille and choice, with references to her and Kant’s work where necessary.

To begin with, I shall introduce the convention of terminology in this paper: by “choice” I mean the lower power of desire, and “wille” the higher power of desire. For clarity, I would refrain from using the noun “will”, unless when trying to discuss something that applies to both, or when talking about something that contains both choice and wille (if there is such a “thing”). Then, I shall briefly sketch the relevant part of the Kantian picture of mind for imperfect rational beings interpreted by Prof. DeWitt, by focusing on the “pipeline” of feelings and maxims: First, lower feelings¹ are presented to the choice, and the choice generates an maxim such that the action according to it would be expected to (most efficiently) yield the desired outcome/object of the lower feeling. Then, this maxim would be presented to the faculty of higher feelings, which, after judging, would generate respect, an a priori feeling that represents the necessary relationship between the wille/pure practical reason and the maxim (RML), if acting from that maxim is moral. Though this is not mentioned in her paper, let us call the higher feeling generated when acting from the maxim is immoral “disrespect.”² Since respect and disrespect are feelings, they can be a source of motivation, and this solves the moral motivation problem. However, as pointed out by Prof DeWitt, since in this picture there are two potentially conflicting sources of motivation, i.e. the lower feelings and the higher ones, there must be an ordering between them, so that one of them can be subordinated to the other, allowing “a single unified principle of action.”

And here comes the first problem(s): How is the maxim generated by choice presented to the faculty of respect for judgment? And, how is the ordering between the higher and lower feelings made? Though this is not explicitly stated, it seems that they must happen somewhere on the pipeline between the generation of maxims and the actual action, as otherwise the action would have been already done before respect could do anything, despite that respect/disrespect is expected to be capable of commanding a person to refrain from acting from a certain maxim. They could be done either by the choice, or something else (if there is) that (1) receives “input” from the choice, and (2) is required for action to be possible. First, consider how the maxim is presented to the faculty of higher feelings: If it is done by the choice, then it is the choice that actively submits the its maxims to the judgment of respect/moral law, and the choice must be free in deciding whether to do this or not, as in the Kantian picture self-deceit is possible. And now there are yet another two branches we can go: If the choice can directly result in action, the ordering has to happen here as well. Thereby, the choice can generate action/inaction from the maxim and the respect/disrespect, solving both problems. On the other hand, if the choice doesn’t directly result in action, it is possible that the ordering is done afterwards by something other than choice before the actual action, yet it would still only make sense if this is done by the choice, as otherwise why would the choice even bother to ask the faculty of respect about this if it’s not going to do anything with the higher feeling at all and just pass it through to the next faculty? That is to say, if it is the choice that submits the maxim to the higher faculty of feelings, then it would only make sense if it is also the choice that decides the ordering of feelings. This seems to be what Kant has in mind, at least to the best of my limited understanding, as he said in the second Critique that “That is to say, the sole principle of morality consists in [...] and at the same time in the determination of choice through the mere form of giving universal law that a maxim must be capable of.” (KpV 5:33) when he talks about autonomy. But this appears to be problematic to me: if the deciding of ordering (and thus whether to adopt the principle of morality) is done in the choice, and the moral law the form of wille, then how is it the case that this is really autonomy? It seems that in that case the consciousness “I” making the decision would be submitting my determination that is not in the “I”, unless the wille is a part of the choice. But that picture is not satisfying either: This would make it impossible for the wille to work independently from the choice, unless we claim that in every imperfect rational being there are two “copies” of wille, one of which is inside the choice, which gives an even less appealing picture.

Thus it seems that we have to go the other way around: That is to say, it is something else that (1) submits the maxim to the higher faculty of feeling, (2) decides the ordering between higher and lower feelings (for the same reason as argued above), (3) takes place before the actual action, and (4) has wille as part of it. It also would be the consciousness “I” that makes moral decisions regarding whether or not to follow the moral law. The only candidate that satisfies these requirements in the Kantian framework, as far as I can see, would be a unity of the two wills (wille and choice), as there are only three major divisions of faculties in the Kantian framework, and neither of the other divisions nor any of the each individual faculty in the desire division could satisfy these requirements. Let us call this unity “the I will”, so as to mirror the naming convention in the first Critique. If the picture has the I will, then these problems can be solved perfectly: the choice generates the maxim, and the I will submits this maxim to the judgment of the higher faculty of feeling, the result of which represents the principle of the wille, which is part of the I will itself. Then the I will can decide the ordering between the higher and lower feelings, which results in a unified action/inaction. ³