The Standpoint of Practical Reason The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Korsgaard, Christine. 1981. The Standpoint of Practical Reason. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Citable link https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37366804 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA THESTANDPOINT OF PRACTICAL REASON A thesis presented by Christine Marion Korsgaard to The Departmentof Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Philosophy Harvard University Cambridge,Massachusetts August, 1981 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS More people than I can possibly mention here have helped me with their questions, comments,criticisms, and encouragementin the various stages of this project's development. Myoriginal intention was to write a thesis that covered the treatment of practical reason by Aristotle as well as Kant, and a numberof people have read and helped with parts of the thesis that was to have been as well as the one that finally is. I would especially like to thank Hilary Putnamand Amelie Rorty for commentson the Aristotle chapters. Someof the ideas in Chapters Four and Five appeared in a much briefer form in a paper entitled "Practical Reason and Rational Faith 11 which was read to several philosophy departments early in 1979. On those occasions I received manyuseful commentswhich have contributed to the more ex­ tensive presentation of those ideas here. Almost everything in the thesis has been tried out on the students in my seminars on Kant at Yale in the Spring of 1980 and at the University of California at Santa Barbara in the Winter of 1981, and I owe a great deal to the questions and to the commentsand to the patience of those students. WayneBuck at Yale and Susan Purviance at Santa Barbara wrote papers for those courses which I have profited from reading. In the early stages of writing Peter Hylton was a constant reader, and set a standard for philosophical friendship, amongother things by his extensive, useful, and immediate comments. His criticisms and his ii encouragementhave been invaluable throughout. In the spring tenn of myyear at Yale, Charlotte Brownand I spent long Friday afternoons talking about Hume,Mill, Ross, and the foundations of ethics generally. To those conversations I owe muchof what I say about these philosophers in Chapter One and muchof the way in which I now conceive that issue. The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation provided me with a year of support in 1978-1979for work on this thesis, for which I am deeply grateful. The final draft was typed by June Kelley, Meredith Sedgwick, and AnnWitkower, and proofread by Susan Purviance, and the vigilance of all four has saved it from a great manyerrors. I would like to thank my Mother and Father, whose confidence and encouragementhas been a source of support that I could always rely on. Myadvisors, John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum,have contributed to this project in very manyways. Martha Nussbaumhas given me extensive and valuable written commentson large portions of what I have written. I would especially like to express my thanks for her commentson the teleology section of Chapter Two, which helped me greatly to clarify my thinking about that topic. Of the very manyessential things that I have learned about moral philosophy and about Kant from the teachings and writings of John Rawls, there is one for which I am especially grateful and from which I most aspire to benefit: an attitude, which his work inspires, of respect for and a willingness to be instructed by the tradition of moral philosophy. Fromthe first beginnings of this project Timothy Gould has been both its keenest critic and its most comprehendingsupporter. He has taught me to believe that since philosophy is knowingwhat one is doing, the presuppositions of a philosophical project are always as important iii as the assumptions behind a philosophical argument. For this, as well as the careful reading and detailed criticism that every page of this thesis has received from him, I would like to express my most grateful appreciation. iv Note on Citations Citations of Kant's works are given in the text, using the following abbreviations. G Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Beck translation. Cl Critique of Pure Reason, KempSmith. C2 Critique of Practical Reason, Beck. C3 Critique of Judgment, Bernard. DV Doctrine of Virtue, Gregor. DJ Metaphysical Elements of Justice, Ladd. MM General Introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals, Gregor. Page numberscited are from Gregor's Doctrine of Virtue. R Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, Greene and Hudson. In this \'Klrk, the translators have used 11 11 11 will II to transl ate Wi11 e and have indicated in the text where an English word or phrase such as 11 11 11 11 will , choice , "power of choice", etc., is used 11 11 to translate WillkUr • Accordingly, in quotations from this book I have simply substituted 11Wi11 e 11 and 11Willkur11 (omitting the umlaut} for the English phrases as indicated. ANTH Anthropology Froma Pragmatic Point of View, Gregor. OH: Essay Title On History, edited by Beck. OH: CBHH 11Conjuctural Beginning of HumanHistory 11 in On History. SRTL 110n a Supposed Right to Lie FromAltruistic Motives", Beck. Theory and "On the ConmanSaying: 'This Maybe True in Theory, Practice But it does not Apply in Practice, 111 Nisbet. In citations of the Foundations, the Critique of Practical Reason, both parts of the Metaphls,cs of Morals, the Anthropology, 0 on a Supposed Right to Lie FromA truistic Motives," and the essays in On History, the second page numbergiven is that of the Prussian Academyof Sciences edition of Kant's works, as indicated by the translators. The Volume references to the Academyedition are as follows: V G IV C2 V MM VI ANTH VII OH VII-VIII SRTL VIII More complete infonnat1on is supplied in the Bibliography. vi TABLEOF CONTENTS Acknowledgements. • • • . • . ii Note on Citations ...........•.........•.... v Chapter One: Introduction: The Objectivity of Ethics ........ 1 I. The Objectivity of Ethics. • . ........ 1 II. Attempts at a Theoretical Foundation .... 7 III. The Idea of a Practical Foundation. ..•.... 16 IV. Kant on Practi ca1 Reason . 23 Notes . 28 Chapter Two: Universal Law ............•........ 34 I. The Argumentfor the Formula of Universal Law ....•.. 36 II. Interpreting the Formulaof Universal Law .......•. 39 III. The Theoretical Contradiction Interpretation .•...... 42 IV. The Terrible ConsequencesInterpretation .......... SO V. The Teleological Contradiction Interpretation ....... 57 VI. Teleology in Kant's Moral Philosophy ........•... 65 VII. Practical Reason and Instinct ......•......•. 77 VIII. Conclusion ......................... 84 Notes . .. 86 Chapter Three: A World for Action ................. 91 I. Practical Contradictions in Universalized Maxims...... 91 II. TwoObjections to the Practical Contradiction Interpreta- tion . 101 II I. Practical Contradictions in the Wi11 . • . 112 Notes ............................ 135 Chapter Four: The Leibnizian Interpretation ............ 138 I. Formal Implications of the Formula of the Lawof Nature .. 141 II. The Leibnizian Interpretation ............... 150 III. Practical Reason and Justice ............... 173 Notes . 181 Chapter Five: Humanityas an End in Itself ..••........ 183 I. TwoDistinctions in Value ....•.....•...... 185 II. The Argumentfor the Formula of the End in Itself ..... 189 III. Conferring Value ...•................. 204 Notes. • . ..... 214 Chapter Six: Acting FromDuty .....•..•.......•.. 216 I. The Division of Duties ..........•.•..... 221 II. Acting FromDuty I: Obligatory Ends .•........• 231 II I. Acting FromDuty II: Juri di cal Action . • . • 242 IV. Moral Perfection and Happiness ••.•.....•.... 255 V. Humanityas an End: The Duty to Tell the Truth ...... 265 Notes . • . • . 276 vii Chapter Seven: Conclusion: Autonomy....•••••..•.•• 278 Notes . • . • . • . • . • • • • . 302 Bibliography. 303 viii ... are we to say that absolutely and in truth the good is the object of wish, but for each person the apparent good; that that which is in truth an object of wish is an object of wish to the good man, while any chance thing may be so to the bad man,... since the good man judges each class of things rightly, and in each the truth appears to him? For each state of character has its own ideas of the noble and the pleasant, and perhaps the good man differs from others most by seeing the truth in each class of things, being as it were the norm and measure of them. Aristotle The noble type of man experiences itself as determining values; it does not need approval; 1t judges, 'what is harmful to me is harmful in itself'; it knows itself to be that which first accords honor to things; it is value-creating. Nietzsche And what is it that justifies the morally good disposition or virtue in making such lofty claims? It is nothing less than the participation it affords the rational being in giving universal laws. He is thus fitted to be a memberin a possible realm of ends to which his own nature already destined him. For, as an end in himself, he is destined to be legislative in the realm of ends, free from all laws of nature and obedient only to those which he himself gives .... Autonomyis thus the basis of the dignity of both human nature and every rational nature. Kant Chapter l Introduction: The Objectivity of Ethics This thesis is an essay into the most fundamental issue of moral philosophy, which might be called the problem of the objectivity or the foundation of ethics. Mypurpose is to elucidate and to defend a type of solution to this problem which is found in the ethical works of both Aristotle and Kant. The solution is that ethics is founded on practical reason, and it is Kant's version of the solution that I present.