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Aristotle and Kant on Morality and Practical Reasoning

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Aristotle and Kant on Morality and Practical Reasoning CHRISTINE M. KORSGAARD essences of things unfolding in their activities; the person of practical wisdom sees the good, and opportunities to realize the good, in the circumstances in which 8 she finds herself. Providing textual evidence for this view would be an immense undertaking, so for now I will just state that I think: that's what he means. Aristotle and Kant on Morality and 28. I defend the claim that pain is the perception of a reason in The Sources of Normativity, § 4.3.4-12. In § 4.3.5, I cite some other philosophers on the pains Practical Reasoning of pity in particular, and it may be useful to repeat those citations here. Hutcheson says, "Ifour sole Intention, in Compassion or Pity, was the Removal of our Pain, we should run away, shut our Eyes, divert our Thoughts from the miserable JULIA ANNAS Object, to avoid the Pain of Compassion, which we seldom do: nay, we crowd about such Objects, and voluntarily expose our selves to Pain" {An Inquiry Con­ cerning Moral Good and Evil, quoted in Seltly-Bigge, British Moralists [Oxford University Press, 1897}, p. 93). The point is reiterated by Thomas Nagel: "Sym­ pathy is not, in general, just a feeling of discomfort produced by the recognition of distress in others, which in turn motivates one to relieve their distress. Rather, it is the pained awareness of their distress as something to be relieved" (The Until recently, it was common for philosophers to take Aristotle and Kant as Possibility of Altruism [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970], p. paradigms of ancient and modem ethical theories, and to claim that we find 8On). Wittgenstein says, "How am I filled with pity for this man? How does it striking and systematic differences between them. The contrast, of course, come out what the object of my pity is? (Pity, one may say, is a form of con­ has generally not been made solely to achieve disinterested historical under­ viction that someone else is in pain)" (Philosophical Investigations, trans. O. E. M. Anscombe [New York: Macmillan, 1968), § 287, p. 98). standing. Often it has been made in the interests of contrasting our modem 29. Some might think that the view suggested - that there is such a thing as per­ way of looking at ethical matters with that foreign country, the past, where ceiving a reason - implies a form of realism about reasons that is inconsistent they do things differently. And this can go either with the view that we have with Kant's constructivist outlook. In The Sources of Normativity, I present a progressed, and may justifiably condescend to more primitive forebears, or version of Kant's view that may be characterized as constructivist, and in § 4.5.6 with the view that we should be dissatisfied with our outlook and can learn I explain the sense in which it can be harmonized with a form of realism. The from studying the insights of the past. The search to understand ancient ethics view of pleasure and pain sketched at § 4.3.1-12 is intended to show how the and the search to understand our own position are intertwined. This is not, 1 thesis that pleasure and pains are perceptions of reasons fits into that view. think, something to be deplored, nor need it stand in the way of rigorous 30. The type of work I have in mind is exactly that Barbara Herman undertakes in historical scholarship. Indeed, it underlines the urgency of achieving a proper Chapter 2, this volume. understanding of the contrasts that we are drawing. In recovering an accurate picture of the relationship between Aristotle's and Kant's ethics, we are po­ sitioning ourselves better to understand what is at stake when we set our own moral perspective against that of the ancients.' 1 shall defend what may at first look like a version of the traditional view: between Kant's theory and Aristotle's there is a large and important differ­ ence, at least in the area that this essay deals with - the role of morality in the agent's practical reasoning and the consequences of this for the agent's moral psychology. However, my reasons for defending my claim are differ­ ent from the traditional ones, and thus this essay is not a defense of the tradi­ tional view. 1 hope that this will contribute to a general tendency, already visible, to question the terms in which the traditional view is formulated, and I am grateful for heJpful discussion from a number of people at the conference on which this book is based, and also for comments from Edvard Petterssen. 236 237 j JULIA ANNAS MORALITY AND PRACTICAL REASONING to try to develop a more subtle and precise approach both to the comparison it is a difference, not between moral reasoning and something else, but be­ of Aristotle with Kant, and to the comparison of ancient with modern moral tween two conceptions of moral reasoning and its relation to other practical theories. reasoning. One handicap in this endeavor is the tendency to treat Aristotle as para­ It is obvious enough that Kant draws a sharp distinction between moral digmatic of ancient moral philosophy generally. I have argued at length in and nonmoral reasoning. This is the point of some of his famous distinctions: my recent book2 that ancient ethical theories have a distinctive common struc­ that between duty as "the necessity of an action done out of respect for the ture, and that Aristotle's particular theory is only one among many ways in law" and action done from inclination,S and that between the categorical and which that structure can be filled out; some features of Aristotle's theory the hypothetical imperative.6 The former clearly points to a distinct kind of should not be taken as typical of ancient moral theories in general. I shall motiVation, one that compels or necessitates compliance, as opposed to the contrast Aristotle's position with that of the Stoics; the point of this is to motivation provided by desires, which do not compel in this way; and such show that there is a position within. ancient moral theory which contrasts with a force belongs only to moral reasons. The latter distinction indicates that Aristotle's but which is reached within the same general framework as his the difference between moral and nonmoral reasons is to be characterized not and was thus conceptually available to him. Proceeding in this way enables as a difference of content but as a difference of standing with a rational agent: us to focus more precisely on the motivation for Aristotle's holding the par­ a categorical imperative compels regardless of the agent's own aims or pri­ ticular position that he does, rather than regarding it as a shared assumption orities, whereas a hypothetical imperative draws force only from the aims of all ancient moral thought. that the agent happens to have. And this marks a difference between moral Does Aristotle have a moral theory in the first place? It has often been and nonmoral reasons which is unlike any difference among nonmoral rea­ assumed in contemporary discussions that he does not, because ancient ethical sons themselves. Recent writers have stressed that it may be a Inistake to theories are not theories of morality at all, but rather theories of something regard these distinctions, or stress on moral rules and formal features of moral else (which Can perhaps be called ethics), while morality is a modern inven­ reasoning, as definitive of Kantian ethics, or as forming the starting point tion. This view can coexist with either of two opposed positions as to its from which the other features of Kant's ethics derive. Kant, after all, begins evaluation: on the one hand, it can be thought that modern, post-Kantian the Grounding not by stressing rules or duty, but (in a strikingly Stoic way) morality is a fundamentally flawed idea, so that Aristotle represents a refresh­ by stressing the distinctive goodness of the good will. I agree with writers ing alternative;3 on the other, it can be held that ancient theory is defective like Barbara Herman that to see Kant as a 'deontologist' in the traditional just because it does not accommodate a Kantian view of the moral. I have way may well be Inisleading.7 However, what I am discussing does not de­ argued elsewhere that ancient ethical theories are indeed theories of morality, pend on the centrality to Kant's ethics of his distinction between moral and and cannot do more here than indicate in general terms what the issues are. nonmoral reasoning. It is enough that Kant does draw this distinction in an Because it is so difficult, in the modern world, to come up with a character­ uncomproInising way.8 ization of morality which is not contested, it is better not to try to show that Aristotle nowhere draws a sharp distinction between two types of reason­ there is one definite modern notion which the ancients either had or lacked. ing, one of which we would regard as moral and the other not. This is often Rather, I point out that ancient discussions of virtue are naturally taken to regarded as completely unsurprising, since Aristotle regards practical reason­ express a concern with morality, as that is broadly understood and accepted, ing as concerned with achieving the agent' sfinal good, happiness,9 and it is and that arguments commonly brought to defeat this presumption do not sometimes thought to follow from this that there will not be a deep split work.
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