reflective judgment and the problem of assessing virtue in kant

205REFLECTIVE JUDGMENT AND THE PROBLEM OF ASSESSING VIRTUE IN KANTThe Journal of Value Inquiry 36: 205–220, 2002.© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Reflective Judgment and the Problem of Assessing Virtue inKant

RUDOLF A. MAKKREELDepartment of Philosophy, Emory University Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA

Kant opposes the Aristotelian definition of “virtue” according to which it is amean between two vices. He writes in The Metaphysics of Morals that the“distinction between virtue and vice can never be sought in the degree to whichone follows certain maxims; it must rather be sought only in the specific qualityof the maxims (their relation to the law).”1 This suggests that the way a sub-jective maxim of action is related to the law is essential for assessing its moralworth. But to determine what attitude toward the law is embodied in an agent’smaxim is difficult. How is the moral agent’s attitude to be judged? At timesKant seems to totally despair about having knowledge in this regard. Thus inthe Critique of Pure Reason he writes:

The real morality of actions (their merit and guilt), even that of our ownconduct, therefore remains entirely hidden from us. Our imputations canbe referred only to the empirical character. How much of it is to be ascribedto mere nature and innocent defects of temperament or to its happy consti-tution (merito fortunae) this no one can discover, and hence no one canjudge it with complete justice.2

Yet some kind of judgments about virtue and moral worth are clearly calledfor. Since the feeling of respect as Kant later develops it in the Critique ofPractical Reason reflects our attitude to the moral law, it would seem that weno longer need to claim that our moral worth remains “entirely hidden fromus.” After exploring respect as a possible clue to moral worth, we will turn tothe other problem raised by Kant, namely, that our imputations of worth canonly be referred to our empirical character, not to our fundamental intelligi-ble character. The reference to imputation anticipates his subsequent use ofimputation as the limited mode of attribution that characterizes reflective judg-ment in the Critique of Judgment. Just as we cannot ever be sure that we havegood taste, so we cannot determine whether we have really acted out of re-spect for the moral law. Perhaps all we can expect here is something like areflective judgment based on a feeling of respect or sublime awe. Reflectivejudgments differ from determinant judgments in that their claims cannot be

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demonstrated, but merely imputed. Since Kant himself points to the role ofreflection in the Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason when attempt-ing to establish a moral-religious link between his ideas of empirical and in-telligible character, it is reasonable to think that judgments about virtue areultimately reflective judgments about moral character.

1. Respect for the Law and Moral Worth

Kant opens chapter 3 of the Critique of Practical Reason by questioning therole of feeling in morality. He writes:

What is essential in the moral worth of actions is that the moral law shoulddirectly determine the will. If the determination of the will occurs in ac-cordance with the moral law but only by means of a feeling of any kindwhatsoever, which must be presupposed in order that the law may becomea determining ground of the will, and if the action does not occur for thesake of the law, it has legality but not morality.3

The objective determination of what is in accordance with the law cannot haverecourse to anything other than reason and may not appeal to feeling to gainour acceptance. Yet in explicating what it means for an action to occur for thesake of the law, Kant begins an extended examination of the feeling of re-spect. It seems that for the moral law to become an incentive to action in asensuous being it must exert an influence on its feeling sufficient to checkother possible influences. This moral influence manifests itself not in anyordinary feeling, but in a special feeling of respect that has no pathologicalorigin. The feeling of respect for the moral law is an effect of reason. It is anegative feeling in that it checks other feelings and produces displeasure.Rather than having its source in the body, respect for the moral law is describedas a subjective by-product of reason. Consequently, many philosophers re-gard Kant’s theory of respect as a kind of psychological addendum usefulmerely in providing a finite will with an incentive to act on what the law de-mands of it.

But if we examine a later formulation of Kant’s contrast between an ob-jective and subjective agreement with the law, we see that the feeling of re-spect is not merely a subjective incentive. It goes much deeper than that andis essential for judging a person’s moral worth. Kant writes:

The concept of duty thus requires of action that it objectively agree withthe law, while of the maxim of the action it demands subjective respect forthe law as the sole mode of determining the will through itself. And thereonrests the distinction between consciousness of having acted according to

207REFLECTIVE JUDGMENT AND THE PROBLEM OF ASSESSING VIRTUE IN KANT

duty and from duty, i.e., from respect for the law. The former, legality, ispossible even if inclinations alone are the determining grounds of the will,but the latter, morality or moral worth, can be conceded only where theaction occurs from duty, i.e., merely for the sake of the law.4

This contrast makes it apparent that respect for the law does not just providea psychological confirmation of what the objective determination of reasonaccomplishes. The objective determination shows that it is our duty to act onlyon those maxims which can be universalized. If we examine a particular maximand find no contradiction in universalizing it, then we know that the action isjustified. But as Kant notes, it is possible nevertheless to then undertake theaction for non-moral reasons. The action could be in conformity with the morallaw and so legal, but undertaken because we like the consequences. In thatcase, our inclinations or self-love would be the determining ground of our will.It is not enough then to act merely according to duty, but from duty or respectfor the law. When Kant writes “it is of the utmost importance in all moral judg-ing to pay strictest attention to the subjective principle of every maxim,” hemeans for us to consider whether the maxim is based on the feeling ofrespect.5 A maxim is only truly moral for Kant if it is adopted out of respectfor the law.

We can see that this account of the feeling of respect is not incompatiblewith Kant’s initial attack on feeling. Respect is not a feeling that influencesthe will to accept the moral law. It is a feeling that confirms that the will hasfreely assented to the law. What Kant worried about at first was the will beinginfluenced “only by means of a feeling.”6 Respect, however, is a feeling thatis at the same time a consciousness of the law. What Kant is rejecting as hav-ing mere legality is precisely an action which meets the universalizability test,but is chosen by a feeling of liking grounded in inclinations.

The feeling of respect can move us toward the heart of morality, yet thefact that it is an effect of the moral law on human sensibility continues to re-inforce a derivative interpretation of subjective determination. In the Foun-dations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant accentuates a two-track image ofmoral determination by calling the “objective ground of volition . . . the mo-tive [Bewegungsgrund]” and the “subjective ground of desire . . . the incen-tive [Triebfeder].”7 A Bewegungsgrund is a motivating ground or reason thatis “valid for every rational being,” while a Triebfeder of action is merely adriving impulse that moves human beings.8 A Triebfeder or incentive is con-sidered to be material and has no moral merit because it derives from self-love. What distinguishes the feeling of respect as explicated three years laterin the Critique of Practical Reason is that it is a Triebfeder or incentive thathas moral worth. The moral law as a formal Bewegungsgrund becomes at thesame time a Triebfeder that overwhelms all other possible material Triebfedernor incentives based on self-love. Kant writes that “respect for the law is not


the incentive to morality; it is morality itself, regarded subjectively as an in-centive, inasmuch as pure practical reason, by rejecting all the rival claims ofself-love, gives authority and absolute sovereignty to the law.”9 Instead ofsettling for a compatibilist account of a noumenal realm where moral reasonproduces intelligible effects and a phenomenal realm where impulses or in-centives cause sensible effects, Kant suggests that respect is the moral lawitself operative as a felt incentive.

By thus demystifying the relation between the noumenal moral law andthe phenomenal decisions of the moral agent, we can use the feeling of re-spect as an index to the moral worth of the person. To the extent that respectis a phenomenal effect of reason, it can be regarded as an incentive to action.In this sense, Kant speaks of the objective determination as being prior to thesubjective determination.10 But at the same time respect reflects somethingabout the way the subject assents to the moral law at the most fundamentallevel. The feeling of respect intimates the moral disposition of the agent. In-deed, Kant goes on in the Critique of Practical Reason to define virtue as “themoral disposition that struggles” to attain goodness, which is to be distin-guished from holiness or the possession of goodness.11 Virtue is measured interms of success in struggling with inclinations that tend toward self-love. Howthis success is to be measured is problematic. In his earliest critical writingon ethics, namely in the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and theCritique of Practical Reason, Kant suggests that success in dealing with theinclinations of self-love lies in extirpating them in an effort to attain holiness.The later writings, however, may make this unnecessary.

2. Virtue as Overcoming Evil

The problem of judging whether a person is virtuous is complicated in theReligion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, because here Kant proposesthat human nature is on the one hand predisposed to goodness, and on theother hand manifests a propensity to evil. The “original predisposition [An-lage] to good in human nature” involves three tendencies: “a predispositionto animality,” such as the natural self-love that expresses itself in a concernfor self-preservation, self-propagation and community with others; “a predis-position to humanity” still based on self-love, but which uses reason to com-pare oneself with others; and “a predisposition to personality,” which is “thesusceptibility to respect for the moral law as of itself a sufficient incentive tothe power of choice.”12 It is the predisposition to personality that makes itpossible for each of us to develop what we have already called the moral dis-position. The respect for the moral law which was considered as an effect ormanifestation of reason on the will in the Critique of Practical Reason isrecharacterized as a susceptibility of the power of choice. The predisposition


to personality is “original” to human nature, yet each human subject can ac-quire a “good character” only if through “the free power of choice [it] incor-porates moral feeling into its maxim.”13

Whereas all three predispositions lead us to the good, only the predisposi-tion to personality entails responsibility for the good. Here it becomes clearthat natural inclinations, which guide us in the predisposition to animality,are accepted by Kant as being inherently good. The view that Kant rejectsour inclinations is just too simple. The predisposition to humanity which usesreason to compare ourself to others and “to gain worth in the opinion of oth-ers” is also good, even if it leads to competition.14 Kant suggests that natureuses this predisposition to further human culture. These two predispositions,which of themselves are good, readily allow vices to be grafted onto them.Thus the natural inclination to eat in order to preserve life can degrade into“gluttony,” and the human predisposition to compare oneself to others canlead to “envy.”15

The predisposition to personality stands apart from the other two predis-positions to the good in two ways. The first difference is that it alone is di-rected at a good that is moral. Although the predisposition to humanity alreadyinvolves reason in comparing possible incentives to act, it does not yet re-quire us to regard reason as itself an incentive to act, indeed “the highestincentive.”16 The predisposition to personality makes it possible to become amorally responsible being and could also be called the predisposition to re-sponsibility. It gives us access to the moral law and through respecting it wefirst recognize that the moral law requires us to determine ourselves fromwithin. Kant writes, “this law is the only law that makes us conscious of theindependence of our power of choice from determination by all other incen-tives (of our freedom) and thereby also of the accountability of all our ac-tions.”17

The second difference is that “nothing evil can be grafted” onto the predis-position to personality. 18 Whereas the other two predispositions can readilybe corrupted from without, this predisposition cannot be so debased. Oncethe moral law is inscribed in the human heart it cannot be eradicated, accord-ing to Kant. It will always be a reference point for us even if we deceive our-selves into ignoring it. If the predisposition to personality has a relation toevil it will be a different relation. Here evil will be found to have a more radi-cal root. It is not merely something grafted onto a predisposition as it devel-ops and branches out. In light of this contrast, we might consider whether thevices associated with the predispositions to animality and humanity are merelybad, in Nietzsche’s sense, as distinct from evil. But we cannot decide thatwithout first examining how Kant defines “evil.”

Kant goes on to make the claim that in addition to the three predisposi-tions to the good in human nature, there is a propensity to evil in humannature. A propensity seems to be weaker than a predisposition. Kant gives


inclinations with conscious objects of desire as examples of predispositions,but indicates that propensities need not require us to be acquainted with theirobject. Certain people can have a propensity to the vice of alcoholism with-out ever having desired to drink alcohol. But if they should by chance drinksome wine or beer, then “there is aroused in them an almost inextinguishabledesire for them.”19 Thus Kant suggests a spectrum of tendencies beginningwith propensities, leading to instincts, inclinations, and finally passions, wherewith each step our behavior becomes more definite and fixed. A propensity toevil is innate in human nature, yet whether individuals allow themselves tofall prey to it is contingent. Although we may blindly fall into a vice, the evilof acquiescing to it pertains to our free power of choice and thus entails cul-pability.

Kant says we can think of three different grades of the natural propensityto evil: weakness in complying with an adopted maxim; adulterating moralincentives with immoral ones; and placing immoral incentives ahead of moralincentives. Kant calls the first frailty, the second impurity, and the third de-pravity or perversity. It is the final mode that gets to the heart of evil. Kantdefines it as “the propensity of the power of choice to maxims that subordi-nate the incentives of the moral law to others (not moral ones).”20

It is not clear, however, that the evil of impurity is really evil, for Kant goeson to claim that “the difference, whether the human being is good or evil, mustnot lie in the difference between the incentives that he incorporates into hismaxim (not in the material of the maxim) but in their subordination (in theform of the maxim): which of the two he makes the condition of the other.”21

A person who places the incentive of self-love ahead of respect for the morallaw is evil. But someone who makes respect for the moral law the primaryincentive of action is good. The question is whether this priority of respectcancels out self-love altogether to become the sole incentive. Kant’s languagehere is confusing. On the one hand, he speaks of making one incentive thecondition for the other, which would allow both to co-exist. On the other hand,he says that the moral law should be “the sole incentive.”22 If a person de-cides to do something primordially out of respect for the law or a sense ofduty, does that prevent other incentives from also being operative and affect-ing the way he carries out his original decision? If not, does this make hismotivation impure?

One way to resolve the issue would be to admit that a good person whoacts by placing the moral law ahead of self-love is in effect only incorporat-ing the moral incentive into her maxim. The other incentives would still bethere, but the moral incentive is sufficient by itself. However, Kant clearlyallows various incentives of action to be incorporated into a maxim of action.Henry Allison suggests that to incorporate incentives of action into a maximmeans to make them part of a Bestimmungsgrund, to justify them by areason.23 This takes care of our problem, but it does so by collapsing Kant’s


distinction between objective and subjective determination. It reduces a maximor subjective principle of action to an objective principle of justification, andthereby tends to undermine the human element of striving and self-discoverythat is so characteristic of Kant’s account of morality.

Another possible way to resolve our problem is to look ahead to Kant’sconception of moral character. Kant speaks of both an empirical and an intel-ligible character, which allows him to judge human motivation from two dis-tinct perspectives. The demand that respect for the law be the sole and sufficientincentive of action could then be applied merely to our intelligible character.On this level, Kant speaks of a “revolution in disposition” or a “revolution inmode of thought.”24 But the act of thought that “incorporates the purity [ofholiness] into its maxims” is not yet tantamount to the deed of attaining ho-liness, for as Kant admits, “between maxim and deed there still is a widegap.”25 A revolution in thought on the level of intelligible character must betranslated into a “gradual reformation in the mode of sense.”26 It is on this levelof dealing with empirical obstacles to our being good or virtuous that we couldstill take other incentives into consideration as long as they are compatiblewith our respect for the moral law. The revolution in thought is thus like areligious conversion. Accordingly, Kant alludes to Colossians 3:10 in his re-capitulation: “If by a single and unalterable decision a human being reversesthe supreme ground of his maxims by which he was an evil human being (andthereby puts on a ‘new man’) he is to this extent, by principle and attitude ofmind, a subject receptive to the good; but he is a good human being only inincessant laboring and becoming.”27

This is a noteworthy passage because it indicates that however impor-tant the supreme ground of a person’s maxims may be for the determina-tion whether he or she is good, this index of intelligible character is notsufficient. For that we must consider a person’s empirical trajectory in time.The revolution of thought is really an attitude of mind or resolve by whichwe first become “receptive to the good.”28 The further test is how we carryout this initial attitude of openness to the good and actively struggle to over-come empirical obstacles and pathological temptations. Here again we do nothave the compatibilist problem of reconciling two modes of agency or cau-sality. The intelligible character is for us humans a mode of receptivity andby itself remains a sublime presentation that evokes a feeling, but can rep-resent nothing concrete. We can abstractly conceive of the change from evilto goodness as a revolution, but we can ascertain it only by “a gradual ref-ormation” and by a consideration of the various incentives still at work inempirical beings after they have resolved to be good.29 It seems that a re-solve with no subsequent reformative confirmation of improvement is tobe doubted.

Usually Kant is thought to judge the morality of human beings merely bythe goodness of their intentions. By contrast to utilitarians, he is regarded as


a philosopher who does not care about the consequences or results of action.We can now see that Kant is not totally indifferent to the working out of ourmoral decisions. Empirical reformative progress is relevant to the determina-tion of whether we really did resolve to make a revolutionary break with self-love. It is only through the correlation of intelligible and empirical characterthat we can judge virtue. In itself the idea of intelligible character makes senseonly “for him who penetrates the intelligible ground of the heart . . ., i.e. forGod.”30 This suggests a regulative use of the idea of an intelligible decisionto measure all reformative activity by a standard of holiness.

However, we can also apply the idea of a revolution in attitude through a“reflective faith” to orient our judgments about “empirical character.”31 Insteadof directing all reformative activity towards one transcendent goal, holiness,reflective use of the intelligible character allows a person to orient specificreforms immanently, that is, among themselves through a concern with vir-tue. Here goodness lies not in extirpating incentives other than respect, but inplacing respect first among the incentives.

This reflective interpretation is supported by a later discussion of the revo-lution-reformation contrast in the Religion within the Boundaries of MereReason, where Kant warns about the violence of revolution. He replaces thelanguage of revolution with that of revelation when he writes: “The basis forthe transition to the new order of things must lie in the principle of the purereligion of reason, as a revelation (though not an empirical one) permanentlytaking place within all human beings, and this basis, once grasped after ma-ture reflection, will be carried to effect, inasmuch as it is to be a human work,through gradual reform.”32 Such a reflective revelation can serve as the over-all principle of orientation for all our judgments about the relative worth ofspecific deeds done from a variety of empirical incentives. With this we re-turn to the tension Kant left us with, namely, between respect for the law be-ing the sole incentive of our moral maxims and it being the first of severalincentives. Respect for law as the sole incentive of our moral maxims wouldhave us seek a purity of incentives and regulates everything by the standardof holiness; respect for law as the first of several incentives allows us to ac-cept a plurality of incentives and reflect on which should be primary.

3. The Importance of Reflective Judgment for Interpreting Character

Judging moral worth seems to require either a regulative use of ideas or re-flection. In the Critique of Judgment, Kant speaks of the teleological judg-ment as involving both. Teleological judgment is reflective in proceeding fromparticulars towards a universal. In judging the moral worth of a person we alsoproceed from particular deeds to his or her overall character or Denkungsart.The idea of some intelligible act of conversion whereby we effect a revolu-


tion in our Denkungsart or mode of thinking about ourselves can serve as anorientational principle whereby the empirical Sinnesart of our life-course canbe teleologically ordered. The little reforms we make here and there can thenbe judged reflectively as contributing to the overall telos of character forma-tion. We know from the Critique of Judgment that teleological judgmentscannot be objective determinant judgments. Claims about purposes or finalcausality are not constitutive for experience – only claims about efficientcausality are. When Kant speaks of teleological judgments as both regulativeand reflective, it is commonly assumed that these predicates mean the samething, but this cannot be. Kant points to aesthetic judgments as being re-flective without being regulative, for they are constitutive for human feel-ing.33 Teleological judgments are regulative in that they apply concepts beyondtheir experiential bounds and they are reflective in that they are only valid for“us humans.”34 They reflect our human mode of thinking and can thereforebe intersubjectively valid without determining what an organism “is in itself.”35

Similarly, we saw that judgments about character are regulative insofar as theyproject an infinite telos of holiness or purity of motive. They are reflectiveinsofar as they acknowledge the coexistence of several incentives and aim atthe more limited virtue of setting the right priority.

We have considered reflective judgment to be interpretive as distinct fromthe explanative goals of determinant judgment. Recently, such a sharp wayof distinguishing them as suggested by the Critique of Judgment has been ques-tioned by Béatrice Longuenesse in her book Kant and the Capacity to Judge.She claims that the determinant judgments generated in the Critique of PureReason already involve reflective judgment. What distinguishes reflectivejudgment in the Critique of Judgment in her view is that they are “merelyreflective” whereas ordinarily such judgments are “determinative as well.”36

It will be worth looking at Longuenesse’s theoretical claims concerningreflective judgment, if only to bring out more clearly its potential moral role.For her main support she refers to a passage in the First Introduction to theCritique of Judgment where Kant writes:

With regard to the universal concepts of nature . . . judgment requires nospecial principle by which to reflect: the instruction for this reflection isalways part of the concept of nature as such, i.e., in the understanding. . . .Here judgment not only reflects but also determines, and its transcenden-tal schematism also provides it with a rule under which it subsumes givenempirical intuitions.37

This is a reference back to the Critique of Pure Reason where judgment issubsumed under the schematizing rules of the understanding. If reflectioninvolves relating universals and particulars, in the Critique of Pure Reason itis done by spelling out the rules implicit in the universal concepts of nature,


by demonstrating that the particulars of sense are governed by the categoriesof the understanding.

Reflective judgment proper, however, as Kant then goes on to develop it isnot subservient to the rules of the understanding. It is concerned with howempirical representations can be related to each other to form generic con-cepts. Here judgment proceeds not schematically, but technically: “it does notdeal with appearances mechanically, as it were, like an instrument, guided bythe understanding and the senses; it deals with them artistically, in terms of. . . the principle of a purposive arrangement of nature in a system.”38 This dis-tinctive principle of reflective judgment is artistic in the sense of requiringskill. It looks for systematic order by making comparisons among our con-cepts and is really a principle of classification whereby we become capableof ordering our empirical concepts of classes of things into genera and spe-cies.

Longuenesse claims that there is reflection involved in all concept forma-tion. That that reflection need not yet be reflective judgment can be seen ifwe examine the passage in Kant’s Logic appealed to by Longuenesse. ThereKant writes:

To make concepts out of representations one must thus be able to compare,to reflect, and to abstract, for these three logical operations of the under-standing are the essential and universal conditions for generation of everyconcept whatsoever. I see, e.g., a spruce, a willow, and a linden. By firstcomparing these objects with one another I note that they are different fromone another in regard to the trunk, the branches, the leaves, etc.; but nextI reflect on that which they have in common among themselves, trunk,branches, and leaves themselves, and I abstract from the quantity, the fig-ure, etc., of these; thus I acquire a concept of a tree.39

Reflection as here examined in §6 of the Logic is a comparative operation ofthe understanding necessary for the formation of empirical concepts like tree.This is still far removed from reflection as an operation of judgment whichKant does not treat until §§81–84. Reflective judgment is not a mode of con-cept formation, but is defined as a mode of inference. Reflection in the caseof concept formation does not go beyond the available representations, butmerely allows us to find what is common to them. Reflection in the case ofjudgment does go beyond the given representations and is guided by a sub-jective principle of inference. In the case of aesthetic judgment, Kant allowsreflection to expand a privately felt response to an object into a common re-sponse. Here the commonness is not given, but projects a sensus communisor an ideal human community. Kant also allows the aesthetic mode of reflec-tive judgment to be oriented by abstract ideas of reason which are then speci-fied or filled in.


Longuenesse tries to use Kant’s problematic notion of a judgment of per-ception in the Prolegomena to bridge the gap between reflective concept for-mation and reflective judgment. This may seem plausible at first becausejudgments of perception, like aesthetic judgments, are both subjective andfeeling-oriented. But when someone utters the judgment of perception that aroom is warm, or feels warm to her, she is making a claim that is only sensi-ble for her. By contrast, Kant defines aesthetic and teleological judgmentsintersubjectively for the human mode of thought in general. They are sensi-ble for all human beings.

Reflective judgment need not be restricted to the two domains to whichKant applied it in the Critique of Judgment, namely, aesthetics and teleology.Hannah Arendt has attempted to extend it to the domain of political life aswell. Because Kant applied teleology not merely to nature, but also to historyconceived along the lines of human culture, reflective judgment can be de-veloped to provide guidelines for all modes of hermeneutical inquiry intohuman life.40 But the most important point to be made here for our inquiryinto moral judging is that reflective judgment is essentially a mode ofevaluation.41 The reflection that is involved in concept formation and in theschematic application of the categories is mechanical and direct. The reflec-tion proper to judgment is an evaluative skill and indirect.

It has been claimed that Kantian philosophy would have us assign a basichumility to human reason in that it requires us to deny a direct knowledge ofthe inner nature of things. From a theoretical perspective, we cannot knowthe inner core of the phenomenal objects we experience. We can make deter-minate scientific judgments only about the lawful relations of objects, but notabout things-in-themselves.42 The Critique of Pure Reason also makes it clearthat theoretically this incapacity applies to our knowledge of the subject: weknow ourselves as we appear to ourselves from the outside. Practical reasoncannot remain within this limit insomuch as we are expected to judge not justwhether we conform to the moral law externally, but also from within. Thisproblem is exhibited most acutely in judgments about moral character. In asense, this could be thought to require a regulative solution, because as Kantalready suggested, only a God can truly be said to penetrate the intelligibleground of our heart. Objective determinate knowledge of our inner disposi-tion is not possible for us. Nevertheless, Kant indicates that we can have asubjective, reflective cognition of ourselves. This is not direct introspectiveSelbstgewissheit, but an indirect Selbsterkenntnis oriented to the idea of adivine interpreter of the heart. Reflective judgment is our way of compensat-ing for our finitude, without relying on a dogmatic faith in religious doctrines.

Kant’s appeal to a perfect interpreter in relation to our self-evaluation isnot unique to the Religion essay. It recurs just as clearly in The Metaphysicsof Morals of 1797 where Kant’s discussion of conscience suggests a conver-gence of the regulative idea of holiness and a reflective sense of virtue.


4. Conscience as Self-Assessment

In the second part of The Metaphysics of Morals devoted to virtue, there is asection in which Kant attempts to conceive of conscience together with moralfeeling, love of our neighbor, and respect for ourself as aesthetic modes ofmoral receptivity. He writes: “there is no obligation to have these because theylie at the basis of morality, as subjective conditions of receptiveness to theconcept of duty, not as objective conditions of morality. . . . To have these pre-dispositions cannot be considered a duty; rather any human being has them,and it is by virtue of them that he can be put under obligation.”43 In this con-cluding section, it will be most relevant to discuss moral feeling and con-science. Moral feeling is what Kant earlier called respect for the law. No humanbeing can be entirely without this feeling. It is an aesthetic-moral “suscepti-bility on the part of free choice to be moved by practical reason (and its law).”44

As such it is a predisposition that we have no direct duty to acquire. Yet, wedo have an indirect duty to cultivate it. Such is the nature of duties of virtue.They leave some “latitude” to our reflective judgment.45

Conscience is considered next and defined as “practical reason holding thehuman being’s duty before him for his acquittal or condemnation in everycase that comes under the law.”46 To judge whether we have performed ourduty could be seen as the objective assessment whether deeds accord with thelaw. Such a judgment can be made in a court of law when it comes to dutiesof right. But Kant is here speaking of duties of virtue which have to do withour inner disposition. Conscience is really the consciousness of whether wehave paid heed to our moral feeling in performing our duties. There is a latersection entitled “On a Human Being’s Duty to Himself as His Own InnateJudge,” where Kant writes that “every human being has a conscience and findshimself observed, threatened and . . . kept in awe (respect coupled with fear)by an internal judge.”47

Conscience thus converts respect for the law as a moral feeling into awefor a court of law. What is paradoxical about the predisposition called con-science is that, “although its business is a business of a human being withhimself, his reason constrains him to carry it as at the bidding of anotherperson.”48 The other person must be thought of as an ideal and omnipotentmoral being or “a scrutinizer of hearts.”49 The godlike being who served as anideal interpreter of character, serves as an ideal judge of conscience. AgainKant adds that the use of the idea of a God as an ideal judge is not to be takendogmatically or doctrinally. We are not entitled “to assume that such a supremebeing actually exists, . . . for the idea is not given . . . objectively, by theoreti-cal reason, but only subjectively, by practical reason.”50 But there is one im-portant difference in that the regulative idea of a transcendent interpreter isinternalized as an ideal judge. The perfect judge is “distinct from us, yet presentin our inmost being.”51 The regulative dimension finds its baseline in the re-


flective. God as ideal judge is more clearly a product of what was called re-flective or symbolic cognition in the Critique of Judgment, which resultsfrom “following out the analogy with a lawgiver for all rational beings inthe world.”52 Although reflective judgments of conscience are oriented by anideal lawgiver, they are owed to no one but ourselves. Thus Kant warns thattreating all our duties as divine commands is not a duty to God, but is merely ahuman being’s duty to himself.53 To think otherwise is to commit an “amphibolyin moral concepts of reflection.”54

Conscience sets the stage for Kant’s duties of virtue, which are never de-terminate, but reflective. One of the duties of virtue is to perfect oneself, butKant recognizes that “it is a human being’s duty to strive for this perfection,but not to reach it (in this life).”55 Because the depths of the human heart areunfathomable, and can only be plumbed reflectively as oriented by analogies,Kant is forced to express doubt that a person can really know “when he feelsthe incentive to fulfill his duty, whether it proceeds entirely from the repre-sentation of the law or whether there are not many other sensible impulsescontributing to it.”56 Here, then, we see Kant acknowledging the possibilitybroached earlier that as long as respect for the law is the primary or revolu-tionary incentive, other incentives can be cultivated as part of the reforma-tory trajectory of progressing toward perfection.

If human beings have heeded their moral feeling and consulted their con-science, this does not mean that they can be certain that they are virtuous, butthey have at least established the basis for respect for themselves. Of all thesubjective conditions of receptiveness to morality, it is conscience that strikesa special chord. Although it is sometimes said that some human beings haveno conscience, Kant insists that this is not really the case. He believes thatour conscience involves a susceptibility that cannot be eradicated. Those whoseem to have no conscience merely have a “propensity to pay no heed to itsjudgment.”57 They allow themselves to be distracted, as it were. Conscienceseems to be a predisposition to goodness like the predisposition to responsi-bility, and its suppression seems like a propensity to evil. Just as it is impos-sible to fully extinguish the voice of conscience, it is also impossible to havean erring conscience. Actually, he says an erring conscience is ein Unding,which can be translated as “absurdity,” as Mary Gregor does, but it could alsobe rendered as “monstrosity.” This would rule out an erring conscience andunconscientiousness from human nature, but not the possibility of monstrousexceptions.

To return to Kant’s general position concerning conscience: I can be mis-taken “in my objective judgment as to whether something is a duty or not,[but] I cannot be mistaken in my subjective judgment as to whether I havesubmitted it to my practical reason (here in its role as judge) for such a judg-ment; for if I could be mistaken in that . . . there would be neither truth norerror.”58 Paying heed to our conscience is an act of truthfulness which seems


to lie at the base of our ability to discern truth from falsity. In the essay “Onthe Miscarriage of all Philosophical Trials in Theodicy,” Kant finds this truth-fulness in the “formal conscientiousness” of authenticity.59 Doctrinal theodicyclaiming to be true must be replaced by authentic theodicy aiming at truthful-ness. Any attempt to interpret the meaning of existence authentically must besincere and may make no pretense to know more than what is known. Theheart of authenticity or formal conscientiousness is “not pretending to holdanything as true [that] we are not conscious of holding as true.”60

Conscience seems to deliver an ultimate subjective reference point for judg-ing our “guilt or innocence,” so that if a person has heeded it, “nothing morecan be required of him.”61 But is conscientiousness as the basis for self-re-spect tantamount to knowing whether we are good in the more robust sensesof being virtuous or becoming holy? If only God can truly know whether aperson has made the revolutionary decision to place respect for the law be-fore all other incentives, then the answer is no. Recognizing our virtue or ourpurity of incentive demands a truth about ourselves. It seems that conscienceonly provides a felt truthfulness. Conscience as a mode of feeling may onlygive us a nagging sense that what we have done so far is not enough, that weshould do more. If we listen to that reproachful voice and let it reform ourways, then we have started a gradual process of raising our consciousness.Perhaps this is all that Kant can ultimately demand of us in this life, but thiswould entail a spectrum of four phases of human goodness: conscientious-ness, self-respect, virtue, and holiness or purity of heart.

To argue for this hierarchy is not meant to endorse a mentality of makingquantitative comparisons among human beings. Such comparisons are futilefor it is impossible to measure the relative weight of the various incentivesoperative in another person’s maxim. Kant makes it clear that self-respectallows us to ascribe no greater worth to ourselves than to others. However,the view that this supports “strict egalitarianism” must be qualified by therealization that self-respect is only one grade of goodness. 62 As a person every-one is equal before the law, but questions of virtue and holiness pertain tocharacter, which is incomparable. Neither the view that we should measurethe relative goodness of human beings, nor a doctrine of full-fledged egali-tarianism makes sense. Each of these approaches leads us to compare humanbeings, the one to cultivate differences, the other to root them out.

From the perspective of the law, which can merely make external det-erminations about individuals, equal treatment is required. Moral and legaldeterminant judgments only relate human beings in formal and external ways.The virtue of an individual must, however, be assessed from within and thisrequires reflective judgment as has been shown. Kant introduced reflectivejudgment as an aesthetic mode of comparing various subjective assessmentsof beauty, but ultimately it exposes something incomparable, namely, thesublimity of individual character. Judging virtue involves not just a formal


determination, but demands reflection on the inner worth of character-con-tent. With this we reach the heart of morality, but even here Kant keeps ushumble by insisting on the indirectness of reflective judgment.63

Notes

1. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge, England:Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 163; Kant, Kants gesammelte Schriften, ed.Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902–97), vol.6, p. 404, abr. Ak 6: 404.

2. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and eds. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cam-bridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 542; A551/B579.

3. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. and ed. Lewis White Beck, 3rd ed. (New York:Macmillan, 1993), p. 75; Ak 5: 71.

4. Ibid., pp. 84–85; Ak 5: 81.5. Ibid., p. 85; Ak 5: 81.6. Ibid.7. Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Lewis White Beck (Indianapo-

lis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), p. 52; Ak 4: 427.8. Ibid.9. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. altered, p. 79; Ak 5: 75.

10. Ibid., p. 82; Ak 5: 79.11. Ibid., p. 87; Ak 5: 84.12. Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, trans. Allen Wood and George di

Giovanni (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 50–52; Ak 6:26–28.

13. Ibid., p. 52; Ak 6: 27.14. Ibid., p. 51; Ak 6: 27.15. Ibid.16. Ibid., p. 51n; Ak 6: 26n.17. Ibid.18. Ibid., p. 52; Ak 6: 27.19. Ibid., p. 53; Ak 6: 29.20. Ibid., p. 54; Ak 6: 30.21. Ibid., p. 59; Ak 6: 36.22. Ibid.23. Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom (Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, 1990), p. 189.24. Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, p. 68; Ak 6: 47.25. Ibid., trans. altered, p. 67; Ak 6: 47.26. Ibid., p. 68; Ak 6: 47.27. Ibid., p. 68; Ak 6: 48.28. Ibid.29. Ibid.30. Ibid.31. Ibid., p. 72, 67; Ak 6: 52, 47.32. Ibid., p. 128; Ak 6: 122.33. Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), “In-

troduction,” p. 37; Ak 5: 197.


34. Ibid., §90, p. 355; Ak 5: 463.35. Ibid.36. Béatrice Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge: Sensibility and Discursivity in

the Transcendental Analytic of the “Critique of Pure Reason,” trans. Charles T. Wolfe(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press), p. 164.

37. Kant, “First Introduction,” in Critique of Judgment, p. 401; Ak 20: 212.38. Ibid., p. 402; Ak 20: 214.39. Kant, Lectures on Logic, trans. and ed. J. Michael Young (Cambridge, England: Cam-

bridge University Press, 1992), p. 592; Ak 9: 94.40. See Rudolf Makkreel, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant: The Hermeneutical Im-

port of the “Critique of Judgment” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), ch. 7,and Makkreel, “Differentiating Dogmatic, Regulative, and Reflective Approaches toHistory in Kant,” Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress, Memphis 1995,ed. Hoke Robinson (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1995) vol. 1, pp. 123–137.See also G. Felicitas Munzel, Kant’s Conception of Moral Character: The “Critical”Link of Morality, Anthropology, and Reflective Judgment (Chicago: University of Chi-cago Press, 1999).

41. See “First Introduction,” in Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 400; Ak 20: 211.42. See Rae Langton, Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1998).43. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, p. 159; Ak 6: 399.44. Ibid., p. 160; Ak 6: 400.45. Ibid., p. 156; Ak 6: 393.46. Ibid., p. 160; Ak 6: 400.47. Ibid., p. 189; Ak 6: 438.48. Ibid.49. Ibid., p. 190; Ak 6: 439.50. Ibid., p. 190; Ak 6: 439–440.51. Ibid., p. 190; Ak 6: 440.52. Ibid.53. See ibid., p. 193; Ak 6: 443–444.54. Ibid., p. 192; Ak 6: 442.55. Ibid., p. 196; Ak 6: 446.56. Ibid.57. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, p. 161; Ak 6: 401.58. Ibid.59. Kant, “On the Miscarriage of all Philosophical Trials in Theodicy,” in Religion within

the Boundaries of Mere Reason, p. 27; Ak 8: 268.60. Ibid.61. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, p. 161; Ak 6: 401.62. Allen W. Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University

Press, 1999), p. 133.63. I would like to thank Manfred Baum, Christel Fricke, Felicitas Munzel and Eric Wilson

for having made comments on an earlier draft that helped me improve the final version.

reflective judgment and the problem of assessing virtue in kant

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