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An Overarching Defense of Kant's Idea of the Highest Good Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2010 An Overarching Defense of Kant's Idea of the Highest Good Alonso Villaran Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Ethics in Religion Commons Recommended Citation Villaran, Alonso, "An Overarching Defense of Kant's Idea of the Highest Good" (2010). Dissertations. 139. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/139 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2010 Alonso Villaran LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO AN OVERARCHING DEFENSE OF KANT’S IDEA OF THE HIGHEST GOOD A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PROGRAM IN PHILOSOPHY BY ALONSO MANUEL VILLARAN CONTAVALLI CHICAGO, ILLINOIS MAY 2010 Copyright by Alonso Manuel Villarán Contavalli, 2010 All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all of the people who made this dissertation possible, starting with the Fulbright Program, and specifically Mr. Henry Harman, Executive Director of Fulbright Perú. Without their help, this dissertation would simply not exist. I also want to thank many people from Loyola University Chicago. To begin with, thanks to the chair of my committee, Dr. Victoria Wike, whose immediate responses and sharp comments to my drafts made possible for me to never lose the motivation and set a new record in the philosophy department. Also, thanks to Dr. Adriaan Peperzak, who not only taught me philosophy during my years at Loyola University Chicago but, more important, how to become a philosopher. Also, thanks to Dr. David Ingram, whose critical view of the religious features of the highest good in Kant’s philosophy challenged me to make a strong case for the ethical importance of this concept. Thanks in addition to Dr. Jessica Horowitz and Dr. Dina Berger for their guidance and inspiration during the Dissertation Boot Camps of 1998 and 1999. My thankfulness is also extended to Dr. Daniel Hartnet S.J. and Dr. Thomas Wren, for all their wise advice and help during these years. Thanks to Dr. Vicente Santuc S.J., from Universidad Ruiz de Montoya, for his teachings, mentoring, and especially for his recommendation of having me coming to this great university, Loyola University Chicago. Finally, thanks to Jorge Villarán S.J.; without him I would not have even found this calling that is for me philosophy. iii For my parents. Nothing glorifies God more than what is most estimable in the world, respect for his command, observance of the holy duty that his law lays upon us, when there is added to this his magnificent plan of crowning such a beautiful order with corresponding happiness. Immanuel Kant TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii ABSTRACT vii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I: THE HIGHEST GOOD THROUGH KANT’S OEUVRE 6 The Highest Good in the Critique of Pure Reason 8 The Highest Good in the Critique of Practical Reason 19 The Highest Good in the Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone 40 References to the Highest Good in Other Works 50 Kant’s Idea of the Highest Good 55 CHAPTER II: CRITICS AND DEFENDERS OF KANT’S IDEA OF THE HIGHEST GOOD 60 Back to the Roots: The Beck-Silber Controversy 62 The Critics 66 The Revisionists 78 The Secularizers 84 The Call for a “Maximalist” Interpretation 98 Transition Towards a New “Maximalist” Defense 106 CHAPTER III: AN OVERARCHING DEFENSE OF KANT’S IDEA OF THE HIGHEST GOOD 108 The Highest Good as Determining Ground of the Will 113 The Moral Law is the Highest Good in its Embryonic Stage 116 The Duty to Crown Virtue is a Fallible One 126 Kant’s Ethics is an Ethics of Intentions 140 The Ethical Importance of Kant’s Idea of the Highest Good 143 Kant Did Not Abandon his Idea of the Highest Good 157 Conclusions 158 BIBLIOGRAPHY 163 VITA 168 vi ABSTRACT The main goal of this dissertation is to develop an overarching defense of Kant’s idea of the highest good, against the criticisms pointed out in the English-speaking world, within the framework of the so-called “Beck-Silber controversy.” As it is known, since the second half of the last century, when the “Beck-Silber controversy” started, Kant’s idea of the highest good has been subject to a massive attack. These attacks motivated, in turn, the emergence of a counterforce of defenders, a group that I attempt to join through this work. Particularly, I have identified six criticisms against Kant’s idea of the highest good, which I have labeled as the problems of heteronomy, unsuitability, impossibility, injustice, irrelevance, and abandonment. Thanks to this, we know what a complete defense of Kant’s idea of the highest good requires. Now, once with all these criticisms identified, I develop a response to each of them. In that way, I show how Kant’s idea of the highest good does not undermines the principle of autonomy; how the highest good has not only a place, but a privileged one in his moral philosophy; how it is possible to promote a world in which happiness is distributed in accordance to virtue; how the problem of injustice is both ungrounded and overestimated; how the highest good is actually relevant for morality; and finally, that Kant did not abandoned his idea of the highest good at the end of his life. In this way, I hope having saved the highest good as part of Kant’s ethics. vii INTRODUCTION The main goal of this dissertation is to develop an overarching defense of Kant’s idea of the highest good (that ideal world in which virtue is crowned with happiness) against the criticisms pointed out in the English-speaking world, within the framework of the so-called “Beck-Silber controversy.” As it is known, since the second half of the last century, when the “Beck-Silber controversy” started, Kant’s idea of the highest good has been subject to a massive attack. These attacks motivated, in turn, the emergence of a counterforce of defenders, a group that I attempt to join through this work. Now, considering the large amount of secondary literature produced in relation to this topic, and in relation to Kant’s philosophy in general, one may ask whether there is something else to say about it. Has not the topic been already exhausted? This I deny, mainly for three reasons. First, because many of the commentaries found in the secondary literature, instead of clarifying Kant’s idea of the highest good, distort it to the extreme in which one wonders whether there is some of Kant’s philosophy left. Kant’s idea of the highest good, therefore, is always at risk of being buried under these misleading interpretations. Some of the interpretations, for sure, are instead illuminating, working as a good way of access to Kant’s idea of the highest good, and to those I am thankful. Nonetheless, if it is still possible to develop a fresh close reading of Kant’s idea of the highest good, as I will try in Chapter I, then the risk of burying it is, at least, diminished. 1 2 Second, because even though the discussion around this topic is still unified under the umbrella of the “Beck-Silber controversy,” and although Mathew Caswell has, in addition, helpfully divided the interpreters in four groups (the “critics,” the “revisionists,” the “secularizers,” and the “maximalists”) , it is still possible to put more order over the discussion, concretely by identifying and labeling all the criticisms posited against Kant’s idea of the highest good, something that is lacking and that makes it harder, if not impossible, to elaborate not only a defense, but an overarching defense of it. As a matter of fact, in many instances the defenders seem to jump from one criticism to another, without clarifying if the problems at stake are reducible to the supposed irrelevance of the highest good for ethical purposes, or if each criticism deserves a separate response, as is finally the case. This lack of systematization of the criticisms has misled many to say that by responding to the problem of irrelevance the highest good is saved, which is not true. And this is precisely what I am offering in Chapter II: a systematization of the criticisms, a precondition for the referred to overarching defense. Particularly, I have identified six criticisms against Kant’s idea of the highest good, which I have labeled as the problems of heteronomy, unsuitability, impossibility, injustice, irrelevance, and abandonment. Thanks to this, we know what a complete defense of Kant’s idea of the highest good requires. Third, because although some of the criticisms have been already contested in a successful way by the defenders (that is, for instance, the case of the problems of heteronomy and abandonment), it is still possible to develop new responses to some of them, something that I undertake in Chapter III. 3 This dissertation, therefore, is divided in three Chapters: the first devoted to a fresh close reading of those sections of Kant’s oeuvre in which he talks about the highest good; the second to the identification and labeling of the criticisms found in the secondary literature in the English-speaking world (together with a historical and critical analysis of the defenses found in the same literature); and the third, to an overarching defense of the concept under discussion, a defense that the reader will hopefully find original, accurate, and complete.
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