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The Dear Self Rity of Human Motivation

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The Dear Self Rity of Human Motivation 1. At the beginning of the Second Section of his treatise entitled Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Im- manuel Kant reflects upon the fact that, as it seems to him, it is practically impossible for us ever to know with any real assurance that what a person does possesses genuine moral worth. He is struck by how irredeemably uncertain we must always be concerning whether someone is properly to be re- garded as having actually been virtuous. The difficulty that troubles him in this connection does not arise out of any doubts as to our ability to identify the particular sort of ac- tion that, in the circumstances under consideration, the laws of morality prescribe. For Kant, that is the easy part. The se- rious problem in arriving at judicious moral evaluations of what people do lies, as he sees it, in the impenetrable obscu- The Dear Self rity of human motivation. Even when it is clear that what a person has done con- forms exactly, so far as his behavior goes, to all pertinent moral requirements, it may remain quite unclear whether the person acted virtuously. Indeed, however fully his ex- Harry Frankfurt plicit conduct satisfies the commands of the moral law, it may not earn him any moral credit at all. The mere fact that he has behaved in just the way that duty demands does not of itself warrant a judgment that he was morally worthy in what he did. Reaching a judgment of that kind is not war- ranted simply by what a person has done. It must take into account what was actually moving the person as he did it. According to Kant, there is no virtue in performing an action when the performance is decisively motivated by nothing more than what you yourself happen to want. If the desires that move you are desires by which you are moved Philosophers' Imprint simply for reasons of your own, it makes no difference <www.philosophersimprint.org/001000> whether those desires are directed benevolently towards the Volume 1, No. 0 January 2001 © 2000 by Harry Frankfurt Harry Frankfurt is Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. Harry Frankfurt The Dear Self well-being of others or whether they are greedily aimed at own as well. So it is only very rarely (if ever) that we can le- some vulgar personal advantage. In either case, the critical gitimately be confident that someone is really acting for the point is that you are doing what you are doing just because sake of duty—in other words, that he is being moved to act you happen to be inclined to do it. by respect for the rational authority of an impersonal moral People with generous inclinations are certainly preferable imperative rather than by some private inclination or desire to people who tend to be selfish. It is also true that animals of his own. that are naturally gentle and affectionate are nicer to have around than animals that are characteristically hostile and 2. In fact, Kant thinks that we can never really be confi- aggressive. Kant insists that our preferences concerning dent of this. In the first place, he considers it to be "abso- such differences in natural tendency have no greater moral lutely impossible by experience to discern with complete significance in the one case than in the other. He does seem certainty a single case" in which a person acts solely for the to have a point here. Why should you be awarded any sake of duty.1 Other considerations are always at work. genuine moral credit for doing something that you do just Furthermore, we can never completely rule out the possibil- because you are naturally disposed to do it—in other words, ity that it is certain of these other considerations—rather just because you feel like doing it? There may be nothing than the claims of duty—that are truly motivating the person wrong with pursuing personal goals. However, it does as he acts. seem that success in governing your conduct in accordance To be sure, sometimes it looks as though it must be mo- with your own desires can hardly be counted as a notable rality that is playing the decisive role. There are cases occa- moral achievement. Kant is making just the rather plausible sionally in which it seems that we cannot find anything but claim that people cannot sensibly be regarded as morally moral considerations that could plausibly account for a cer- admirable for simply doing as they please. tain action. But Kant warns that "from this we cannot by any His view is that real moral credit can be earned only by means conclude with certainty that a secret impulse of self- doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do. An love, falsely appearing as the idea of duty, was not actu-ally action is not morally worthy, he believes, unless it is per- the true determining cause of the will." People are not only formed in a deliberate effort to meet the requirements of mo- elusive and obscure. They are also deceptive, and in certain rality. In order to reach an accurate moral evaluation of things they can deceive themselves even more read-ily than someone on the basis of what the person has done, he there- they deceive others. fore considers it essential to know what were the person’s Kant is not cynical, but he wants to be realistic. In his motives in doing it. For Kant, and of course not only for opinion, a "cool observer…[is bound] to be doubtful some- Kant, that is the hard part. It is very difficult to be certain times whether true virtue can really be found anywhere in about just what actually has moved someone, on a certain the world." In saying this, Kant is not being derisive. His occasion, to act as he did. People are elusive, and the sources of their actions are obscure. We are frequently mis- 1 Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. L. W. Beck, taken, not only about the motives of others, but about our in Immanuel Kant: Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), 67. 2 Harry Frankfurt The Dear Self basic attitude towards people is not one of dismissive con- other hand, I think that what he says about the self, and tempt. As he tries to understand what people are up to, he is about our attitudes towards our selves, is in certain impor- quite willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. But only tant respects substantially out of focus. up to a point. "Out of love of humanity," he says, "I am Kant has a reputation for an uncompromisingly rigid willing to admit that most of our actions are in accordance moral austerity. It must be said, however, that in the pas- with duty; but, if we look closer at our thoughts and aspira- sages from his work that I have quoted he does not give the tions, we everywhere come upon the dear self, which is al- impression of being either indifferent to ordinary human ways salient, and it is this instead of the stern command of feelings or unsympathetic to familiar aspects of human duty (which would often require self-denial) which supports weakness. Indeed, there is something appealingly poignant our plans." and rather sweet in his sorrowful allusions to the inherent It is clear enough what Kant has in mind. He doubts that frailties of human character and to the anxious maneuvers of we can ever thoroughly divert ourselves from the domi- self-deception with which we attempt to conceal and to deny neering salience of personal inclination. We may tell our- them. selves—in what we suppose to be all sincerity—that our at- But while Kant’s regret concerning the inescapable ten- titudes and our actions are, at least at times, conscientiously dency of human beings to be dear to themselves may be designed to respond compliantly to the commands of duty. warm-hearted and benign, what reason is there to suppose Kant suspects, however, that in fact they always respond that any attitude of regret is at all appropriate? When all is primarily to the pressures of desire. said and done, what is so unfortunate or so embarrassing It is not morality but our own dispositions, he believes, about our propensity to love ourselves? Why should we re- that uniformly enjoy the higher priority and that exert the gard self-love with any sort of righteous distaste, or consider more conclusive influence. What we care about most dearly it to be somehow a formidable obstacle to the attainment of are our own desires and our own inclinations. We are inex- our proper goals? Why should we think of it as a dangerous tricably immersed in them, and it is invariably and most ur- threat to the sort of life at which we ought reasonably to gently by them that we are driven. aim? After all, are we not told by an Author whose moral 3. In Kant’s view, the fact that the impulses of self-love authority is quite favorably comparable to Kant’s that we are so ubiquitous in our lives, and so compellingly salient, should love our neighbors as we love ourselves? That does undermines the possibility of any genuinely virtuous sub- not sound much like a warning against self-love. It does not mission to the dictates of morality. I do not propose to say that we should love others instead of loving ourselves.
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