Kant on Moral Feeling and Respect

Abstract

Although in his earlier ethical writings Kant explains the concept of moral feeling, inherited from the British sentimentalists, as a peculiar feeling of respect for the moral law that functions as an incentive for moral actions, the Doctrine of Virtue seems to add complexity to the issue. There, Kant discusses two similar aesthetic predispositions, moral feeling and respect, whose relationship to the feeling of respect is far from clear. This article offers a much needed elucidation of the relationship between these three concepts. In the first part, I show that Kant, in the writings before the Doctrine of Virtue, transforms the British sentimentalists’ construal of moral feeling into that of the feeling of respect as the sole moral incentive. In the second part, I argue that, although in the Doctrine of Virtue Kant distinguishes, for a specific reason, between the aesthetic predisposition of moral feeling and that of respect, they are both ultimately identical to the feeling of respect. The conclusion is that nothing of substance changes between Kant’s earlier thinking and his views in the Doctrine of Virtue; for Kant there is just one feeling that properly deserves the name of moral feeling, the feeling of respect.

1. Introduction

As widely acknowledged, Kant’s conception of ‘moral feeling’ as our capacity to experience morality by means of our sensibility was inherited from the British sentimentalists, notably from Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. However, as frequently occurs in Kant, his adopted conception (not of his own making) underwent a series of modifications, such that his conception of moral feeling differs significantly from the original traceable to the British sentimentalists. Moral feeling, as Kant states in the Groundwork, cannot be ‘the standard of our moral judging’ as ‘some have falsely proclaimed’; ‘it must rather be viewed as the subjective effect that the law exercises on the will’ (GMS, 4: 460). ¹ Accordingly, Kant treats moral feeling in the Groundwork as a special feeling of respect (Achtung) ‘which signifies merely the consciousness of the subordination of my will to a law’ (4: 401n.). In the Critique of Practical Reason (where he fully develops in chapter 3 what was only briefly mentioned in the Groundwork), he also identifies moral feeling with the feeling of respect (e.g. KpV, 5: 76), as he does a little later in the Critique of Judgement (e.g. KU, 5: 267), and again in the Religion he states that the ‘susceptibility to simple respect for the moral law within us would thus be the moral feeling’ (RGV, 6: 27). However, four years later, in section XII of the introduction to the second part of the Metaphysics of Morals, the Doctrine of Virtue, dedicated to the so-called ‘preliminary aesthetic predispositions of the mind’s receptivity to concepts of duty as such’ ² – moral feeling, moral conscience, love of man (Menschenliebe) and respect (Achtung) – Kant appears to forgo the identity position in treating each of respect and moral feeling in separate subsections (as though distinct concepts demanding individual attention). What should we make of this apparent retreat from the identity view, and the apparently new way of dealing with the issue? Is moral feeling in the later Kant something different from the feeling of respect? What does it consist in? And is there indeed a genuine shift in Kant’s thinking; or rather, should we be moved to reinterpret the previous writings in light of the Doctrine of Virtue?

One might tend to simply dismiss the issue as a pseudo-problem because, as some assume, the feeling of respect from the previous writings corresponds to the aesthetic predisposition of moral feeling while the aesthetic predisposition of respect is in fact referred to a feeling of self-respect and is therefore a different, new concept. ³ Indeed, in the enumeration of all the aesthetic predispositions at the beginning of section XII of the Introduction to the Doctrine of Virtue Kant calls it ‘respect for oneself (self-esteem)’ (MS, 6: 399; emphasis shifted) and then in the short description dedicated exclusively to this aesthetic predisposition also speaks of ‘respect for [one’s] own being’ (6: 403). However, if we interpret the aesthetic predisposition of respect as an entirely different concept, we face a different problem: how should we interpret it? What is it and what is its function within Kant’s philosophy? The description of the predisposition is very brief and incomplete, and the interpretation would be too speculative. In any case, if one carefully reads Kant’s description, it is clear that the aesthetic predisposition of respect shares with the feeling of respect from the previous writings at least some of its main characteristics and that it cannot be so simply reduced to self-esteem or respect for one’s own being. ⁴ Despite growing interest in Kant’s views on the role of feelings in ethics, Kantian scholars remain largely silent about this interpretative problem. They often refer to some of the aesthetic predispositions, in order to emphasize the importance of feelings in Kant’s ethics, ⁵ sometimes they also quote from Kant’s description of the aesthetic predispositions of moral feeling or respect to support their corresponding interpretations of the feeling of respect, ⁶ but they usually do not address the underlying problem of the relationship between these three concepts. ⁷ Now, it is clear (and the confusion in the secondary literature adduced in n. 3 corroborates this) that a resolution of this problem is much needed. We can only elaborate Kant’s full conception of the role of feelings in ethics if we first know whether (and if so, how) Kant in his later writings modified his doctrine of the feeling of respect and added other moral feeling(s). In this article, I propose a solution. To this end, in section 2 I briefly sketch the conception of moral feeling in the tradition predating Kant, and Kant’s own interpretation of it as the feeling of respect in the main ethical writings before the Doctrine of Virtue. In that section, I also address the question of the status of moral contentment (moralische Zufriedenheit), which follows from doing one’s duty, because Kant in the Critique of Practical Reason interestingly also refers to it as ‘moral feeling’. In section 3 I turn to moral feeling and respect as aesthetic predispositions, explaining their relation to Kant’s prior conception of moral feeling, that is, to the feeling of respect.

2. Kant’s adoption of ‘moral feeling’

The term ‘moral feeling’ (properly ‘moral sense’, but translated into German as moralisches Gefühl) ⁸ was introduced by Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury. ⁹ Shaftesbury was speaking about a special ‘sense of right and wrong’ that ‘consist[s] in a real antipathy or aversion to injustice or wrong and in a real affection or love towards equity and right for its own sake and on the account of its own natural beauty and worth’ (Shaftesbury [1711] 2000: 178). Nevertheless, Shaftesbury never provided a detailed conception and it was another philosopher who elaborated and disseminated this idea. The philosopher who most developed the theory of moral sense and undoubtedly was the greatest influence on Kant’s thinking on the subject was Francis Hutcheson. On Hutcheson’s account, we have a special sense that enables us to distinguish between good and evil. Still, interpreters diverge in its description. The common interpretation is that moral approbation and disapprobation, based on the moral sense that we experience in relation to morally good and bad actions, is a peculiar pleasure and displeasure. For example, when we perceive an unselfish, virtuous action (performed either by others or ourselves), it pleases us and we consider it virtuous on the basis of this pleasure. Although such an interpretation seems to be inaccurate, ¹⁰ this was apparently how Kant himself interpreted it, and that is our focus too. Kant, for example, in the university lectures taught probably in the winter semester 1782/83 states that ‘nobody has explained the system of moral feeling more than Hutcheson. He says one can perceive many characteristics of objects through feeling (Gefühl) that one does not know through the mere understanding’ (V-PP/Powalski, 27: 108; my translation). Nevertheless, as Kant also clarifies in a reflection dating from around 1772, ‘we can even approve or disapprove of something without any perceptible feeling on our part, and we can experience abhorrent actions as worthy ones. The abhorrence itself will be finally generated through practice’ (Refl 6760, 19: 152; my translation); as a result, as Kant concludes in another contemporaneous reflection, ‘moral feeling succeeds the moral concept, but does not produce it; all the less can it replace it, rather it presupposes it’ (Refl 6757, 19: 150).

Moral feeling as moral incentive

Kantian criticism of moral sense theorists is amply discussed, and for reasons of space I will not expand on this well-known topic. ¹¹ What is important for my purposes here is that Kant, even in his mature philosophy, acknowledges that there really is something like moral feeling, but thinks that the moral sense theorists were mistaken about its proper origin and role. As Kant states in the already cited passage from the Groundwork, moral feeling cannot be ‘the standard of our moral judging’ as ‘some have falsely proclaimed’; ‘it must rather be viewed as the subjective effect that the law exercises on the will’ (GMS, 4: 460). However, this ‘subjective effect’ is a crucial element to note in Kant’s philosophy, because it serves as an incentive for moral action. Kant put the matter very clearly already in his university lectures from the mid-1770s:

The moral feeling is a capacity for being affected by a moral judgement. When I judge by understanding that the action is morally good, I am still very far from doing this action of which I have so judged. But if this judgement moves me to do the action, that is the moral feeling. (V-Mo/Mron, 27: 1428; see also V-Mo/Collins, 27: 274–5 for a similar passage)

We find the same claims in Kant’s own reflections from the same period (or perhaps even earlier, from the late 1760s): ‘The moral feeling is not an original feeling’; instead ‘it rests on a necessary inner law’ (Refl 6598, 19: 103) and ‘is the capacity to be moved by the moral as an incentive’ (Refl 769, 15: 336). And, in my opinion, Kant maintains this view on moral motivation by means of feeling in his ‘critical’ writings as well. ¹² Although many Kantian scholars deny it, the feeling of respect he first introduces in the Groundwork (1785) as the equivalent of the moral feeling of British sentimentalists serves as an incentive to moral actions precisely because it is a feeling. ¹³ As Kant says in the Groundwork, ‘in order to will that for which reason alone prescribes the ought to a sensuously affected rational being, a capacity of reason to induce a feeling of pleasure or of delight in fulfilling duty is admittedly needed, and hence a causality of reason to determine sensibility in conformity with its principles’ (GMS, 4: 460). That is also the reason why Kant treats the feeling of respect in the third chapter (the so-called incentive chapter) of the Critique of Practical Reason. In the previous chapters he had already shown that pure reason is practical, in the third chapter it becomes necessary to show how it occurs. Kant thus explains what the moral law ‘effects (or, to put it better, must effect) in the mind insofar as it is an incentive’ (KpV, 5: 72). Accordingly, he describes a special feeling that ‘does not serve for appraising actions and certainly not for grounding the objective moral law itself, but only as an incentive to make this law its maxim’ (5: 76). Note that if the feeling of respect were a mere byproduct of the determination of the will, as some interpreters hold, Kant would not have discussed it so extensively in the Critique. He discusses it so extensively there precisely because he has to show how pure reason is practical, and for that it is necessary to invoke feeling. ¹⁴ Therefore, we may conclude that, in his mature philosophy, Kant considers moral feeling, as he did in the mid-1770s, as being essential to moral motivation. Moral feeling is not the objective principle of judging, as Hutcheson and others thought, but it is the only moral incentive.

Moral feeling as moral contentment

Before we proceed to the Doctrine of Virtue, we ought to address an important terminological issue. In Remark II of Theorem IV of the Critique of Practical Reason Kant also refers to the moral contentment (moralische Zufriedenheit) ¹⁵ which follows from doing one’s duty as ‘moral feeling’:

[A]s the human will is by virtue of its freedom immediately determinable by the moral law, I certainly do not deny that frequent practice in conformity with this determining ground can finally produce subjectively a feeling of contentment with oneself (Zufriedenheit mit sich selbst); on the contrary, to establish and to cultivate this feeling, which alone deserves to be called moral feeling strictly speaking (eigentlich), itself belongs to duty; but the concept of duty cannot be derived from it. (KpV, 5: 38)

This passage poses a problem for the interpretation of Kant’s conception of moral feeling. Is it necessary to revise the interpretation of Kant’s theses about moral feeling in light of this explanation? In my view, it would be difficult to justify a sudden change of terminology at this point (as far I know, this is the only place in his critical writings before the Metaphysics of Morals where Kant calls moral feeling anything other than the feeling of respect). Moreover, Kant also clarifies elsewhere in the Critique that moral contentment is not an actual feeling, but ‘only a negative satisfaction (Wohlgefallen) with one’s existence, in which one is conscious of needing nothing’ (KpV, 5: 117). And finally, Kant says here that this is the only feeling that properly ‘deserves to be called moral feeling’, while it is quite clear that the feeling of respect is also a moral feeling. Therefore, we should look at the passage in its context and see whether there is any reason to connect the two feelings (i.e. moral contentment and the feeling of respect); perhaps Kant is ultimately referring here to the feeling of respect.

Kant argues in the second Remark against taking happiness as the determining ground (Bestimmungsgrund) of the will and in this connection also mentions the theory of moral feeling, or more precisely of moral sense:

More refined [than the pretense of those who make the principle of one’s own happiness the determining ground of the will], though equally untrue, is the pretense of those who assume a certain special moral sense which, instead of reason, determines the moral law and in accordance with which consciousness of virtue is immediately connected with contentment (Zufriedenheit) and pleasure, and consciousness of vice with mental unease and pain, so that everything is still reduced to desire for one’s own happiness. (KpV, 5: 38)

This passage is thought-provoking. Although Hutcheson was trying to argue with his theory of moral sense precisely against such a view, ¹⁶ Kant interestingly interprets it as a variant of eudaimonism: because doing one’s duty produces pleasure, one does one’s duty because of the pleasure it promises. ¹⁷ In such a scheme, the moral feeling that works as the determining ground of the will is the pleasure that results from the dutiful action (i.e. moral contentment). However, that is impossible; Kant explains that ‘one cannot feel such contentment … prior to cognition of obligation and cannot make it the basis of the latter’ (KpV, 5: 38). Similarly Kant argues against Epicurus (and ‘many morally well-disposed men of this day who nevertheless do not reflect deeply enough on their principles’: 5: 116) further on in the Critical Resolution of the Antinomy of Practical Reason. However, in that further passage he also connects moral contentment to the feeling of respect. According to Kant, Epicurus, but implicitly also the moral sense theorists (after all, Kant puts them both under the same heading in the table of the possible material principles of morality, see 5: 40), could consider the pleasure that results from dutiful action (i.e. moral contentment) as the determining ground of the will just because when they were acting morally they felt the feeling of respect and considered it erroneously an effect of that pleasure. They succumbed to ‘the illusion that takes the subjective side of the intellectual determinability of the will [by a pure rational law] as something aesthetic and the effect of a special sensible feeling (for an intellectual feeling would be a contradiction)’ (5: 117). ¹⁸

To return to the terminological issue at stake, when Kant refers to moral contentment as ‘moral feeling’, he is ultimately thinking of the feeling of respect because it is precisely this (as ‘an impulse to activity’: KpV, 5: 116.34) that is, according to Kant, wrongly considered by Epicurus (and moral sense theorists) as being produced by moral contentment. Indeed, Kant in the passage also speaks of the duty to cultivate this moral feeling (5: 38.36–8); in the parallel passage on Epicurus he speaks of the duty to cultivate the feeling of respect (5: 117.7–10). ¹⁹ Moreover, moral contentment could in fact be considered an aspect of the feeling of respect as described in the second Critique. When Kant speaks in the incentive chapter about self-approbation (Selbstbilligung) as attributable to a person who ‘cognized himself as determined solely by the law and without any interest, and now becomes conscious of an altogether different interest subjectively produced by the law, which is purely practical and free’ (5: 81), the description comes to strongly resemble moral contentment. As we already said, moral contentment is ‘a negative satisfaction (Wohlgefallen) in one’s existence, in which one is conscious of needing nothing’ (5: 117). Inclinations (even good ones), Kant explains, ‘are always burdensome to a rational being’, because they ‘change, grow with the indulgence one allows them, and always leave behind a still greater void than one had thought to fill’ (5: 118). Therefore, if one acts independently of inclinations (acts for the sake of the moral law), it ‘produce[s] a negative satisfaction (Wohlgefallen) with one’s state, that is, contentment, which in its source is contentment with one’s person’; ‘freedom itself becomes in this way (namely, indirectly) capable of an enjoyment’ (5: 118). Thus, it seems that moral contentment is an aspect of the complex feeling of respect as described in the incentive chapter. Although, strictly speaking, moral contentment and the feeling of respect are two different phenomena (the feeling of respect is the incentive to act morally, felt even by ‘the boldest evildoer’ (5: 80) who does not act according to the moral law, moral contentment arises only when one cognizes oneself as determined ‘solely by the law and without any interest’ (5: 81)), Kant treats them both in the incentive chapter without distinguishing them carefully – he simply describes the broad and complex phenomenon that the moral law produces in our mind. ²⁰ So, when Kant speaks in the second Remark about the feeling ‘which alone deserves to be called moral feeling strictly speaking’ (5: 38.37–8), he is referring, in my opinion, to the feeling of respect. ²¹ His use of the terminology is not very accurate, but the inaccuracy can hardly be said to occur for the first and only time. We may take it therefore that Kant at least until the Doctrine of Virtue uses the term ‘moral feeling’ to describe the feeling that cannot work as the objective principle of judging (as Hutcheson and others thought), but which is the only moral incentive. In sum, at least until the Doctrine of Virtue moral feeling seems to be identical to the feeling of respect.

3. Moral feeling as aesthetic predisposition

Due clarification of Kant’s reinterpretation of the concept of moral feeling out of the way, we come to the question of primary interest: how should we interpret the aesthetic predisposition of moral feeling? Is it the incentive for moral actions identical to the feeling of respect? And if so, how should we interpret the aesthetic predisposition of respect? Let us begin with the explanation of the term ‘aesthetic predisposition’. Kant states that the preliminary aesthetic concepts ‘are natural predispositions of the mind (Gemüthsanlagen) (praedispositio) for being affected by concepts of duty, antecedent predispositions on the side of feeling (ästhetisch)’ (MS, 6: 399). These aesthetic preliminary concepts are, therefore, innate capacities of the human being that enable ‘receptivity to the concepts of duty’ (6: 399.2–3) on the side of feeling. ²² In general, they are capacities to experience feelings caused by our consciousness of the moral law. However, at least in the case of the predispositions of moral feeling and respect, Kant refers in their description not to the capacities themselves, but directly to the feelings (see also Falduto 2014: 237–8 for the distinction between the proper capacity or faculty to experience moral feeling and the realized feeling as a ‘sensible state’ (ästhetischer Zustand) (6: 399.24)). ²³ What matter are the sensible states of feeling, although it is obvious that without the predisposition (i.e. the capacity) to experience them they would not be possible. Therefore, in the following (but not e.g. at the beginning of the next paragraph), I will sometimes for the sake of brevity write ‘predisposition of moral feeling’ (or respect), when I mean the sensible state of moral feeling (or respect) experienced by means of the predisposition.

Let us now turn to the predisposition of moral feeling. Like all the other predispositions, by virtue of being a natural predisposition, i.e. an innate capacity, it is ‘such that anyone lacking [it] could have no duty to acquire [it]’ (MS, 6: 399). However, in this case, duty to acquire it would also be absurd because it is a subjective condition of duties. There cannot be a duty to have moral feeling, ‘since any consciousness of obligation depends upon moral feeling [as a sensible state] to make us aware of the constraint present in the thought of duty’ (MS, 6: 399). ²⁴ This is important because it shows clearly that moral feeling as aesthetic predisposition cannot be the contentment that follows from doing one’s duty, also called (as we saw above) by Kant ‘moral feeling’, although rather by mistake. ²⁵ The aesthetic predisposition of moral feeling cannot be a mere epiphenomenon of our consciousness of duty; it is intrinsic to that consciousness. In this regard, Kant’s description of moral feeling as an aesthetic predisposition resembles quite closely the characterization of the feeling of respect in the second Critique. Kant states in the incentive chapter:

The consciousness of a free submission of the will to the law, yet as combined with an unavoidable constraint put on all inclinations though only by one’s own reason, is respect for the law. … An action that is objectively practical in accordance with this law, with the exclusion of every determining ground of inclination, is called duty, which, because of that exclusion, contains in its concept practical necessitation, that is, determination to actions however reluctantly they may be done. The feeling that arises from consciousness of this necessitation is not pathological, as would be a feeling produced by an object of the senses, but practical only, that is, possible through a preceding (objective) determination of the will and causality of reason. (KpV, 5: 80)

As a law dictated by our own reason, the moral law has the peculiar characteristic that whenever we recognize it, in virtue of our nature as both rational and sensible beings, we recognize it as a law that we should obey unconditionally despite our inclinations, which quite often go against it (as Kant notes, ‘in human beings all good is defective’: KpV, 5: 77). That is what Kant calls ‘necessitation’ (Nöthigung), and to be conscious of such necessitation just is to respect the law. That is why Kant states in the Groundwork in his note on the feeling of respect that ‘what I recognize immediately as a law for myself I recognize with respect, which signifies merely the consciousness of the subordination of my will to a law, without mediation of other influences on my sense’ (GMS, 4: 401n.). Therefore, when Kant later in the Doctrine of Virtue writes that ‘any consciousness of obligation depends upon moral feeling to make us aware of the constraint present in the thought of duty’ (MS, 6: 399), there is every reason to think that he is speaking about the feeling of respect. Moreover, it is not hard to find additional evidence to support this hypothesis. After laying out his initial definition of the aesthetic predisposition of moral feeling (to which I return below), Kant goes on to assert that:

Every determination of choice proceeds from the representation of a possible action to the deed through the feeling of pleasure or displeasure, taking an interest in the action or its effect. The state of feeling (der ästhetische Zustand) here (the way in which inner sense is affected) is either sensibly dependent (pathologisch) or moral. The former is that feeling which precedes the representation of the law; the latter, that which can only follow upon it. (MS, 6: 399)

Kant makes it clear that every determination of choice proceeds through the feeling of pleasure or displeasure to the deed (zur Tat), which means that he is not concerned with a mere consequence of good action. He is here saying that feeling is necessary for action to take place. As sensible beings, we need feelings that prompt the action. However, two types of feeling need to be distinguished: one that precedes the representation of the moral law and is caused by a prior object; and one that follows from the representation of the law and is caused by reason itself. The former is a pathological feeling; the latter is a moral feeling, i.e. the feeling of respect, associated with the corresponding aesthetic predisposition. Only action that takes place by means of moral feeling can be moral.

This interpretation is further confirmed at the very end of the section dedicated to moral feeling. There Kant argues against the British sentimentalists that we cannot understand moral feeling as ‘sense, for by the word “sense” is usually understood a theoretical capacity for perception directed toward an object, whereas moral feeling (like pleasure and displeasure in general) is something merely subjective, which yields no knowledge’ (MS, 6: 400), and then adds:

We no more have a special sense for what is (morally) good and evil than for truth, although people often speak in this fashion. We have, rather, a susceptibility on the part of free choice (Willkür) to be moved by pure practical reason (and its law), and this is what we call moral feeling. (MS, 6: 400)

For Kant, our capacity of choice (Willkür) requires feeling to be moved by pure practical reason. As it happens, this formulation recalls Kant’s earlier descriptions of moral feeling as moral incentive, discussed in the foregoing. But even if we restrict our focus to the Doctrine of Virtue, this interpretation perfectly fits another statement occurring in the same paragraph, which directly follows the claim that moral feeling is not a sense directed to an object but something merely subjective. Kant states:

No man is entirely without moral feeling, for were he completely lacking in susceptibility to it he would be morally dead; and if (to speak in medical terms) the moral vital force could no longer excite this feeling, then humanity would dissolve (by chemical laws, as it were) into mere animality and be mixed irretrievably with the mass of other natural beings. (MS, 6: 400)

Without the capacity to excite moral feeling, a person could not act according to the moral law, because this feeling is necessary in order to move the capacity of choice. In sum, the description of the aesthetic predisposition of moral feeling agrees with that of the feeling of respect encountered in the writings before the Doctrine of Virtue. And since it describes moral feeling as a feeling necessary for moral action to take place, we can say that it additionally confirms the affectivist interpretation of respect in Kant’s mature moral philosophy which interprets it precisely in this way and not as a mere epiphenomenon (see n. 13).

The ‘moral law vs. particular action’ objection

Now, according to some interpreters, moral feeling in the Doctrine of Virtue cannot be the same as the feeling of respect because they are related to different referents. As Geiger puts it, ‘moral feeling is not defined as related to consciousness of any moral law, but to the representation of the particular action enjoined by a specific moral duty: “Every determination of choice proceeds from the representation of a possible action to the deed through the feeling of pleasure or displeasure, taking an interest in the action or its effect” (MS, 6: 399)’ (Geiger 2011: 293; see also Vigo 2020: 93–4). Accordingly, moral feeling, related to a particular action, cannot be the same thing as the feeling of respect, whose object is ‘solely the law, the one that we impose upon ourselves and yet as in itself necessary’, as Kant explains in the Groundwork (GMS, 4: 401n.). Yet I respond that this objection is not justified, because usually we do not distinguish the moral law independently of particular circumstances. Consider, for instance, Kant’s first example in the Groundwork intended to illustrate the first formulation of the categorical imperative:

Someone who feels weary of life because of a series of ills that has grown to the point of hopelessness is still so far in possession of his reason that he can ask himself whether it is not perhaps contrary to a duty to oneself to take one’s own life. Now he tries out: whether the maxim of his action could possibly become a universal law of nature. (GMS, 4: 421–2)

It is clear that consciousness of the moral law arises from a particular situation. As human beings, we act according to maxims, and that means that we see our actions as actions of a certain type. When we carry out an action, we subsume it under a corresponding maxim; in this case, along the lines of ‘from self-love I make it my principle to shorten my life if, when protracted any longer, it threatens more ill than it promises agreeableness’ (GMS, 4: 422). Accordingly, if we have ‘enough conscience to ask’ (GMS, 4: 422), we come to see whether this maxim is universalizable. ²⁶ Only in this way are we confronted with the moral law, and the feeling of respect, as the only moral incentive for the corresponding particular action, arises in due course. ²⁷ The object of the feeling of respect is certainly the universal moral law, but the moral law related to a particular situation. ²⁸ The passage from the Doctrine of Virtue used by Geiger to argue that moral feeling and the feeling of respect are related to different referents (i.e. MS, 6: 399.21–3) fits perfectly into this scenario. We represent a possible particular action, come to see whether its maxim is universalizable and – possibly – through the feeling of respect take an interest in the action. In fact, many interpreters cite it precisely to support their view that the moral incentive is the feeling of respect qua feeling (see e.g. McCarty 1994: 424; Morrisson 2008: 141; Ludwig 2014: 134–5 or Cohen 2015: 10ff.). Therefore, in my view, this objection is not justified because there is in fact no difference in this regard between the feeling of respect related to the moral law and moral feeling as pleasure connected to ‘the representation of a possible action’ (6: 399; emphasis added): the feeling of respect is also connected to ‘the representation of a possible action’ because it is the incentive for that action.

The ‘pleasure and displeasure’ objection

Another objection to the interpretation I propose arises from a different quarter. As Vigo (2020: 96–7) emphasizes, while the feeling of respect is a special feeling with, so to speak, ‘a bittersweet taste’ that cannot be adequately described in terms of either mere pleasure or mere displeasure (Kant speaks about a negative and a positive aspect, see KpV, 5: 77–8), moral feeling in the Doctrine of Virtue is, according to the initial definition, positive or negative depending on whether or not our action conforms to the moral law: ‘[Moral feeling] is the susceptibility to feel pleasure or displeasure merely from being aware that our actions are consistent with or contrary to the law of duty’ (MS, 6: 399; see also 6: 221). ²⁹ I take this to be a legitimate objection. However, I believe we can explain Kant’s remark about pleasure and displeasure attending moral feeling as a residuum of the doctrines of the British sentimentalists. As we saw in section 2, for Hutcheson (at least according to Kant’s interpretation) it is owing to a special feeling of pleasure or displeasure that we recognize a good or evil action – moral feeling can thus manifest itself either as pleasure or as displeasure. Yet Kant insists that moral feeling is not ‘the standard of our moral judging’ as ‘some have falsely proclaimed’; ‘it must rather be viewed as the subjective effect that the law exercises on the will’ (GMS, 4: 460). So, while moral feeling exists, it ‘does not serve for appraising actions and certainly not for grounding the objective moral law itself, but only as an incentive to make this law its maxim’ (KpV, 5: 76). And as such an incentive, this feeling cannot be negative (i.e. it cannot be displeasure), even in cases when the possible action is contrary to duty and we should refrain from acting. ³⁰ As Beck puts it, ‘there is no moral pain in obedience to the law; there is at most a pain arising from the thwarting of pathological feeling’ (Beck 1960: 225). ³¹ However, the negative aspect of the complex feeling of respect, although present only insofar as we experience pathological feelings (as Kant explains, ‘sensible feeling, which underlies all our inclinations, is indeed the condition of that feeling we call respect’: KpV, 5: 75), is also important. In the incentive chapter Kant stresses the pain necessarily present in the determination of the will in order to emphasize the difference between the feeling of respect and other, pathological feelings. As he says, ‘we can see a priori that the moral law, as the determining ground of the will, must by thwarting all our inclinations produce a feeling that can be called pain’ (5: 73). The feeling of respect is therefore ‘hardly an analogue of the feeling of pleasure, although in relation to the faculty of desire it does the same thing but from different sources’; as Kant adds, ‘only by this way of representing things, however, can one attain what one seeks, namely, that actions be done not merely in conformity with duty (as a result of pleasant feelings) but from duty’ (5: 117). Displeasure is a necessary element of the feeling of respect, and, although Kant does not say so, it probably becomes stronger (and our experience confirms it) in cases where we want to perform an action contrary to duty, since in such cases there are present actual inclinations opposed to the law that must be infringed. In this sense, when British sentimentalists speak about a feeling of pleasure or displeasure connected with a good or evil action, respectively, they are partly right, or at least it is understandable why they make such a claim.

Therefore, I propose that when in the Doctrine of Virtue Kant defines the aesthetic predisposition of moral feeling as ‘the susceptibility to feel pleasure or displeasure merely from being aware that our actions are consistent with or contrary to the law of duty’ (MS, 6: 399), we should treat this remark lightly. It is a vague, not very accurate formulation in the manner of British sentimentalists which is, however, at least partially correct. ³² So, in my view, nothing changes about the fact that, on Kant’s account, moral feeling is the capacity to experience a peculiar feeling that serves as ‘an impulse to activity’ (KpV, 5: 116), that is, as an incentive of pure practical reason. It is true that, interestingly, in the description of moral feeling in section XII of the Introduction Kant does not use the term ‘incentive’ (Triebfeder), but he explicitly connects both terms elsewhere in the Doctrine of Virtue. ³³ To conclude, there is ample evidence that supports the interpretation of the aesthetic predisposition of moral feeling as the moral incentive identical to the feeling of respect. ³⁴

Does Kant identify two aesthetic predispositions with Achtung?

Having identified moral feeling in the Doctrine of Virtue with the feeling of respect (Achtung), there remains an important question: why does Kant in the Doctrine of Virtue (in a single section) treat as separate moral feeling, which is identical to the feeling of respect, and another aesthetic predisposition denominated Achtung which likewise seems identical to the feeling of respect? Before we try to answer this question, we must see if this, the fourth, aesthetic predisposition called Achtung is really identical to the feeling of respect from the second Critique. I quote Kant’s description of the predisposition of respect in full:

Respect (reverentia) is, again, something merely subjective, a feeling of a special kind, not a judgment about an object that it would be a duty to bring about or promote. For such a duty, regarded as a duty, could be presented to us only through the respect we have for it. A duty to have respect would thus amount to being put under obligation to [have] duties. – Accordingly it is not correct to say that a man has a duty of self-esteem; it must rather be said that the law within him unavoidably forces from him respect for his own being, and this feeling (which is of a special kind) is the basis of certain duties, that is, of certain actions that are consistent with his duty to himself. It cannot be said that a man has a duty of respect toward himself, for he must have respect for the law within himself in order even to think of any duty whatsoever. (MS, 6: 402–3)

The beginning of the passage proceeds similarly to the descriptions of the other aesthetic predispositions. As in the case of moral feeling (1), conscience (2) and love of man (3), Kant wants to stress that we have no duty to acquire the predisposition of respect (4). Moreover, in perfect correspondence to the case of moral feeling (1), a duty to acquire respect (4) would be absurd, because respect is a subjective condition of duties. In fact, Kant’s reasoning is almost identical for both predispositions (1) and (4). The supposed duty ‘to bring about or promote’ respect (4), ‘regarded as a duty, could be presented to us only through the respect we have for it’ (MS, 6: 402), and ‘there can be no duty to have moral feeling (1) or to acquire it’, ‘since any consciousness of obligation depends upon moral feeling to make us aware of the constraint present in the thought of duty’ (6: 399). As this holds precisely for the concept of respect from the second Critique, it seems that the fourth aesthetic predisposition (more precisely, the corresponding feeling also called reverentia) ³⁵ is identical to the feeling of respect too. We find yet another argument to support this conclusion at the end of the paragraph where Kant says that ‘[a man] must have respect for the law within himself in order even to think of any duty whatsoever’ (6: 403). As it stands, the argument is merely a restatement of the claim that ‘what I recognize immediately as a law for myself I recognize with respect, which signifies merely the consciousness of the subordination of my will to a law, without mediation of other influences on my sense’ (GMS, 4: 401n.), and that ‘any consciousness of obligation depends upon moral feeling to make us aware of the constraint present in the thought of duty’ (MS, 6: 399). Therefore, we have to face the corresponding question: why does Kant explain in the same section of the Doctrine of Virtue two aesthetic predispositions identical to the feeling of respect from the second Critique? In my view, it is possible to provide an answer, albeit not an incontrovertible one. In the section on aesthetic predispositions, Kant treats elements that are traditionally considered the basis of virtuous actions and, according to Kant, are related to feelings (according to Kant, they are predispositions ‘on the side of feeling (ästhetisch)’: MS, 6: 399). We saw in section 2 which role it is that Hutcheson and others ascribe to moral feeling. Kant revises their conception and explains what moral feeling really consists in. The same transpires in the case of moral conscience. Moral conscience had on the traditional account been taken to be a crucial element, itself a feeling or at least connected to feelings, that enables us to act morally (see e.g. Baumgarten 1760: §200). Following a similar strategy, Kant explains what it is and explicates its proper role, revising the previous accounts. It seems that in the case of love of man and respect (more precisely, self-esteem) the same dialectic unfolds once more. According to the prevailing account, love is the basis of virtuous actions towards others; Kant explains how the Gospel commandment of love – ‘You ought to love your neighbor as yourself’ – is possible despite the fact that love towards others cannot really be commanded because it is a feeling. ³⁶ In the passage devoted to the last aesthetic predisposition Kant explains that self-esteem, the basis of virtuous actions towards oneself (see e.g. V-Mo/Collins, 27: 347), in fact cannot be commanded because it is a feeling. Moreover, such a duty would be absurd because this feeling of self-esteem or respect for oneself, as a feeling of respect for the law within himself (MS, 6: 403.5), is a condition of duties – not only of duties to oneself, but of all duties because one ‘must have respect for the law within himself in order even to think of any duty whatsoever’ (MS, 6: 403). Thus, I argue that when Kant treats the aesthetic predisposition of respect separately from moral feeling, he merely intends to explain what self-esteem, considered as the basis of duties to oneself (just as love is considered as the basis of duties to others), consists in. It is, at bottom, the same as the feeling of respect for the law, yet insofar as this law is the law of my own reason, it can also be considered as self-respect. That is, incidentally, the most likely reason why the description of this last concept is unaccountably brief at first glance. Kant cannot add anything new to his analysis: everything has already been said. He merely draws consequences from his theory of respect, stressing in this regard that it is impossible to have a duty to feel self-respect. ³⁷

4. Conclusion

I have endeavoured to show that for Kant there is sensu stricto just one moral feeling, namely, the feeling of respect, identical to the aesthetic predisposition of moral feeling and respect, despite a number of inaccurate, vague or unclear formulations appearing in his writings that seem to claim the contrary. Because of these inaccurate formulations, it could certainly be objected that my interpretation is not conclusive, but this could be said of any interpretation and with even greater emphasis because any alternative interpretation (or at least all the interpretations mentioned in n. 3) has to face many more textual objections (or lack of textual basis) than the one I propose here. This interpretation also has the great advantage of maintaining continuity with all previous ‘critical’ works. Therefore, I conclude that, contrary to what is often claimed lately (see the interpretations mentioned in n. 3), Kant was not advocating the involvement of several different moral feelings in moral action, such as the moral feeling of respect, moral feeling sensu stricto, the moral feeling of self-esteem or moral contentment. Besides recognizing moral discontentment (TP, 8: 283n.), which seems to be identical to the pang of moral conscience (see V-MS/Vigil, 27: 618), Kant certainly speaks about moral contentment but, strictly speaking, this moral contentment is not an actual feeling, but merely negative satisfaction; and although Kant once calls it ‘moral feeling’, he does so rather by mistake. For Kant, not just in the writings before the Doctrine of Virtue, but in the Doctrine of Virtue as well, there is just one feeling that properly deserves the name of moral feeling, the feeling of respect. Both the aesthetic predisposition of moral feeling and respect are in fact identical to it. That does not mean, however, that in Kant’s ethics feelings are not crucial, because this moral feeling is the only incentive for moral action and therefore indispensable.