We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2009
For a long time, it seemed that Aristotelians and Kantians had little to say to each other. When Kant the moralist was known in the English-speaking world primarily from his Groundwork and his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant's conceptual vocabulary of “duty,” “law,” “maxim,” and “morality” appeared quite foreign to Aristotle's “virtue,” “end,” “good,” and “character.” Yet ever since philosopher Mary Gregor's Laws of Freedom, published in 1963, made Kant's The Metaphysics of Morals central to the interpretation of his ethical thought, it has become clear that such “Aristotelian” terms as virtue, end, good, happiness, and character are also central to Kant. Aristotelians and Kantians now see that they have plenty to say to each other, and they have gone from being adversaries to sharing a sometimes unprincipled urge to merge central aspects of Aristotle's and Kant's ethical thought.
1 Gregor, Mary, Laws of Freedom (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963).Google Scholar
2 Listed below are the abbreviations I use for references to Kant's works and translations of those works. Throughout this essay, bare numbers refer to the page numbers of the standard Prussian Academy edition of Kants gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1902-)Google Scholar. For the Lectures on Ethics, which takes up more than one volume of the Academy edition, I provide the Academy volume number with the page references. I use “p.” with page numbers if the translation I use does not contain the Academy page numbers; this occurs for several works that are not yet included in Guyer, Paul and Wood, Allen's ongoing Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel KantGoogle Scholar. Finally, I refer to the Critique of Pure Reason in the standard fashion, by the Academy page numbering of the first (A) and second (B) editions.
Anth. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View [1798], trans. Gregor, Mary (The Hague, The Netherlands: Nijhoff, 1974), Ak. vol. 7Google Scholar
I Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose [1784], in Reiss, Hans, ed., and Nisbet, H. B., trans., Kant: Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), Ak. vol. 8Google Scholar
G Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals [1785], in Gregor, Mary, ed., Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 37–108, Ak. vol. 4Google Scholar
KpV Critique of Practical Reason [1788], in Gregor, , ed., Practical Philosophy, 133–272, Ak. vol. 5Google Scholar
KrV Critique of Pure Reason, 2d ed. [1787], trans. Smith, Norman Kemp (New York: St. Martin's, 1975)Google Scholar
KU Critique of Judgement, 2d ed. [1793], trans. Meredith, James (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), Ak. vol. 5Google Scholar
MS Metaphysics of Morals [1797], in Gregor, , ed., Practical Philosophy, 353–604, Ak. vol. 6Google Scholar
Rel. Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason [1793], in Wood, Allen W. and Di Giovanni, George, eds. and trans., Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Religion and Rational Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 39–216, Ak. vol. 6Google Scholar
TP On the Common Saying: That May Be Correct in Theory, But It Is of No Use in Practice [1793], in Gregor, , ed., Practical Philosophy, 273–310, Ak. vol. 8Google Scholar
VE Lectures on Ethics, in Heath, Peter, ed. and trans., and Schneewind, J. B., ed., Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Lectures on Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Ak. vols. 27, 29Google Scholar
VP Education [1803], trans. Churton, Annette (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960), Ak. vol. 9Google Scholar
3 Thus, Nancy Sherman rightly warns: “Rapprochement can be dangerous, however, especially when it obscures important demarcating lines. To a certain extent this has happened in the present debate, with the rush to mutual accommodation eclipsing the structural and foundational integrity of each theory.” See her Making a Necessity of Virtue: Aristotle and Kant on Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 2.Google Scholar
4 Louden, Robert, in his recent book Kant's Impure Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar and Wood, Allen, in his recent Kant's Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, have shown the deep grounding of Kant's ethics in his moral psychology, anthropology, and philosophy of history. Perhaps this helps to explain why these interpretations of Kant so strongly underscore the contrasts, rather than the similarities, between Kant and Aristotle. In this regard, compare Wood's contribution to the other Kantian perspectives in the excellent collection edited by Engstrom, Stephen and Whiting, Jennifer, Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics: Rethinking Happiness and Duty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).Google Scholar
5 See Anscombe, G. E. M., “Modern Moral Philosophy,” reprinted in Crisp, Roger and Slote, Michael, eds., Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 26.Google Scholar
6 I will use the abbreviations below in my references to Aristotle's works; except for Irwin's translation of the Nicomachean Ethics, all of these translations have been reprinted in Barnes, Jonathan, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle, 2 vol. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984)Google Scholar. Barnes's edition reprints, with some modifications, translations that previously appeared in Ross, W. D., ed., The Works of Aristotle, 12 vol. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908–1952)Google Scholar. For these works, the dates in the listings below give the year of the translation's publication in the Ross series.
DA De Anima, trans. Smith, J. A. (1931)Google Scholar, reprinted in Barnes, , Complete Works of Aristotle, 1:641–92Google Scholar
EE Eudemian Ethics, trans. Solomon, J. (1915)Google Scholar, reprinted in Barnes, , Complete Works of Aristotle, 2:1922–81Google Scholar
Met. Metaphysics, trans. Ross, W. D. (1908)Google Scholar, reprinted in Barnes, , Complete Works of Aristotle, 2:1552–728Google Scholar
MM Magna Moralia, trans. Stock, St. George (1925)Google Scholar, reprinted in Barnes, , Complete Works of Aristotle, 2:1868–921Google Scholar
NE Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Invin, Terence (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1985)Google Scholar
Pol. Politics, trans. Jowett, Benjamin (1921)Google Scholar, reprinted in Barnes, , Complete Works of Aristotle, 2:1986–2129Google Scholar
Rhet. Rhetoric, trans. Roberts, W. Rhys (1924)Google Scholar, reprinted in Barnes, , Complete Works of Aristotle, 2:2152–269Google Scholar
I have occasionally modified Irwin's excellent translation of the NE and Stock's translation of the MM.
7 As John Cooper says, “Aristotle holds that moral virtue, which is a certain condition of the desires, and practical intelligence [phronêsis], a condition of the mind, are in every way parallel to, and indeed interfused with, one another: one does not have either the moral virtues or practical intelligence unless (a) one desires a certain ultimate end and judges that it is the correct one to pursue; (b) one judges that certain things — states of affairs, actions, and so forth — will serve to achieve this end, and desires to produce them; and (c) one recognizes occasions for action as they arise and desires to act and, in consequence, does act on those occasions.” Cooper, John, Reason and Human Good in Aristotle (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1986), 63.Google Scholar
8 Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologiae, I–II, q. 18, a. 8–9Google Scholar. Aristotle recognizes “things indifferent” mainly in a legal context; see NE 1134b20.
9 Kant calls this “fantastic virtue” because it is concerned with every detail: “the human being can be called fantastically virtuous who allows nothing to be morally indifferent” (MS 409).Google Scholar
10 Thus Kant, just when he pronounces the duty of self-perfection, reminds us that we can never know the goodness of our motives (MS 393).Google Scholar
11 See Wood, , Kant's Ethical Thought, 68–69Google Scholar, for an argument why the counsels of prudence do not constitute imperatives.
12 In ibid., 193–95, Wood shows how Kant's understanding of the relation of these two parts of moral philosophy shifted from the position of the Groundwork (G 388–89) to that of the Metaphysics of Morals (MS 217).
13 The religious language employed by Kant in his discussion of the moral law reveals its suprahuman character: “The moral law is, in other words, for the will of a perfect being a law of holiness, but for the will of every finite rational being a law of duty, of moral necessitation and of the determination of his actions through respect for this law and reverence for his duty” (KpV 82).
14 In many passages, one cannot be sure whether Kant is referring to a pure motive or a pure will (VE 27:258; Rel. 48).
15 Both Christine Korsgaard and Julia Annas compare Aristotle's “acting for the sake of the fine” to Kant's “acting from duty.” About Aristotle's conception of acting “for the sake of the noble,” Korsgaard says: “This isn't a judgment about whether doing this action will serve some further purpose, about whether it is useful.” True, but Aristotle, unlike Kant, sees no problem with doing the noble also because it is useful and pleasant. Annas says of Aristotle: “Doing the virtuous action for its own sake excludes doing it for some ulterior motive; insofar as the action is a virtuous action, the action is then done for the sake not of what is useful or pleasant, but what is fine.” In her note to this astonishing claim, Annas cites no textual evidence and weakly says: “Although this connection is not spelled out, it is, I think, fairly obvious.” Korsgaard, Christine, “From Duty and for the Sake of the Noble,”Google Scholar in Engstrom, and Whiting, , eds., Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics, 217Google Scholar; Annas, Julia, “Morality and Practical Reasoning,”Google Scholar in Engstrom, and Whiting, , eds., Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics, 242.Google Scholar
16 This is how Irwin puts it in his edition of the NE, at 401.
17 For example, Aristotle argues that for a tyrant, to govern like a king is to choose what is fine as well as expedient: “For then his rule will of necessity be nobler and happier.” (Pol. 1315b5–9).
18 Bentham lists intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, and extent as the dimensions of pleasure. See Bentham, Jeremy, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (London: Athlone Press, 1970), 39.Google Scholar
19 This is the case, Allen Wood says, because “the pursuit of happiness could not possibly arise from mechanical self-love, or from natural inclinations by themselves. Happiness is an idea we make for ourselves through imagination and reason. Put otherwise, the desire for it is a second-order desire for the satisfaction of a certain rationally selected set of first-order inclinations.” Wood, , “Self-Love, Self-Benevolence, and Self-Conceit,”Google Scholar in Engstrom, and Whiting, , eds., Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics, 145.Google Scholar
20 Wood, , Kant's Ethical Thought, 24Google Scholar; here, Wood is paraphrasing G 393.
21 Kant, Immanuel, “Lectures on Anthropology,” in Kant, Kants gesammelte Schriften, 25:1081Google Scholar, cited in Wood, Allen, “Kant vs. Eudaimonism,” unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
22 “For if everyone alike in the town is eating rotten cheese, I eat it too, with satisfaction and a cheerful mind, whereas if everyone else were well-fed, and I alone in sorry circumstances, I would deem it a misfortune” (VE 27:367).Google Scholar
23 On the whole question of “unsocial sociability” in Kant, see Wood, , “Self-Love, Self-Benevolence, and Self-Conceit,” 147.Google Scholar
24 “Without these asocial qualities … all human talents would remain hidden for ever in a dormant state, and men … would scarcely render their existence more valuable than that of their animals” (I p. 45).Google Scholar
25 This is how Terence Irwin summarizes NE 1098a16–18 in his “Kant's Criticisms of Eudaemonism,” in Engstrom, and Whiting, , eds., Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics, 72.Google Scholar
26 As Kant says: “The Stoic believes that inner worth is already happiness. But in that case the wicked man would have to be always unhappy, and yet he is not. He is often in full enjoyment of happiness” (VE 29:623).Google Scholar
27 “Virtue … contributes much to human unhappiness” (VE 29:623)Google Scholar; “For virtue … also involves sacrificing many of the joys of life” (MS 484).Google Scholar
28 Leibniz, G. W., Nouveau Essais sur l'Entendement HumainGoogle Scholar, in Leibniz, , Die Philosophischen Schriften, ed. Gerhardt, C. I. (Hildesheim, Germany: Olms, 1966), 6:175Google Scholar, quoted in Elster, Jon, “Self-Realization in Work and Politics: The Marxist Conception of the Good Life,” Social Philosophy and Policy 3, no. 2 (Spring 1986): 103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
29 Elster, , “Self-Realization in Work and Politics,” 104.Google Scholar
30 Kant on the duty of self-perfection: “This duty can therefore consist only in cultivating one's capacities (or natural predispositions), the highest of which is understanding, the capacity for concepts and so too for those concepts that have to do with duty. At the same time this duty includes the cultivation of one's will (moral cast of mind), so as to satisfy all the requirements of duty” (MS 387).Google Scholar
31 Constant, Benjamin, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns” [1819]Google Scholar, in Constant, , Political Writings, ed. and trans. Fontana, Biancamaria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 327.Google Scholar
32 As Irwin argues in “Kant's Criticisms of Eudaemonism.”
33 “The direct opposite of the principle of morality is the principle of one's own happiness” (KpV 35).Google Scholar
34 On Aristotle, see NE 1174b24–25, 1174b33, 1175a16. On Kant, see KpV 110–11Google Scholar; VE 27:247.Google Scholar
35 Aristotle thus says that the young are not suitable students of political science because they tend to be guided by their desires. As we mature, however, we learn “to be guided by reason in forming our desires and in acting” (NE 1095a10; cf. NE 1128b17).
36 For examples of the ruling metaphor, see Pol. 1254b6–9, 1260a5–6, 1254a28. Aristotle's full account of the relations between the rational faculties (including nous, logismos, aisthêsis, phronêsis, prohairêsis, etc.) and the nonrational faculties (hormê, thumos, pathos, epithumia, orexis, etc.) is very subtle and complex, and it shifts throughout his various treatises. (I omit from my list here boulêsis — rational desire — which bridges the rational and nonrational parts of the soul and hence becomes the basis for deliberation and decision.)
37 “It is not that being angry makes us view the object of emotion as insulting, but being angry involves viewing the object as insulting.” Leighton, Stephen, “Aristotle and the Emotions,” Phronesis 25, no. 2 (1980): 147.Google Scholar
38 On passions and judgments, see Rhet. 1378a20–23Google Scholar; on passions and perceptions, see NE 1149a24–31Google Scholar; DA 460b1–16.Google Scholar
39 For an argument that Aristotle strongly distinguishes appetite from the passions, see Leighton, , “Aristotle and the Emotions.”Google Scholar
40 As Leighton puts it in ibid., 164.
41 Halliwell, Stephen, “Pleasure, Understanding, and Emotion in Aristotle's Poetics,” in Rorty, A. O., ed., Essays an Aristotle's Poetics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 254.Google Scholar
42 Here I borrow from Herman, Barbara's “Making Room for Character,”Google Scholar in Engstrom, and Whiting, , eds., Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics, 36–60.Google Scholar
43 “One may see this from the case of children and those who live without reason. For in these, apart from reason, there spring up, first, impulses of the passions towards right, and reason supervening later and giving its vote the same way is the cause of right action. But if they have received from reason the principle that leads to right, the passions do not necessarily follow and consent thereto, but often oppose it” (MM 1206b21).
44 “For we assert that there is excellence when reason being in a good condition is commensurate with the passions, these possessing their proper excellence, and the passions with the reason; for in such condition they will accord with one another, so that reason should always ordain what is best, and the passions being well disposed find it easy to carry out what reason ordains” (MM 1206b17). Aristotle's authorship of the Magna Moralia is disputed, but the passages I cite here and in the text explicate the notion of a “deliberative desire” found in the Nicomachean Ethics.
45 “Speaking generally, it is not the case, as others think, that reason is the principle and guide to excellence, but rather the passions. For there must first be produced in us (as indeed is the case) an irrational impulse to the right, and then later on reason must put the question to the vote and decide it” (MM 1206b17).
46 “Reason does not teach the origins either in mathematics or in actions; [with actions] it is virtue, either natural or habituated, that teaches correct belief about the origin” (NE 1151a17).
47 “For each of us seems to possess his type of character to some extent by nature, since we are just, brave, prone to temperance, or have [other features], immediately from birth. … [T]hese natural states belong to children and to beasts as well [as adults], but without understanding they are evidently harmful” (NE 1144b4–10).
48 Sherman, , Making a Necessity of Virtue, 39–52.Google Scholar
49 On Kant's understanding of the affects and passions, I have relied on Wood, , Kant's Ethical Thought, 250–53.Google Scholar
50 Despite Kant's repeated insistence that feeling cannot have a cognitive role, Nancy Sherman thinks that emotions might play a cognitive role for Kant in presenting information about both the world and ourselves. See Sherman, , Making a Necessity of Virtue, 145–46.Google Scholar
51 Ibid., 143; cf. 150, 157.
52 Throughout her discussion of Kant, Sherman speaks of “cultivating” the emotions without ever distinguishing between the mere cultivating of a power (for whatever end) and cultivating a power into a state (either a virtue or vice).
53 For Sherman to treat Kant's account of social imitation as similar to Aristotle's is misleading because she cites Kant's discussion of the need to seduce our emotions as evidence that Kant is speaking of the need to “cultivate emotions.” See Sherman, , Making a Necessity of Virtue, 170.Google Scholar
54 Sherman says that Kant's view of emotions as mere “psychic sensations” is implausible and “undercuts the very roles he assigns emotions in moral practice.” See ibid., 183. But for emotions to play an important supporting role in moral practice is quite consistent with Kant's claim that they lack cognitive value, so long as we do not suppose that the emotions are a part of virtue.
55 Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed., s.v. “egoism.” According to the OED, Thomas Jefferson was the first to use egoism in a moral sense in English; he did so in 1795.
56 Indeed, Kant gives “solipsismus” as the Latin equivalent of his “egoism” (MS 433).Google Scholar
57 “Now a rational being's consciousness of the agreeableness of life uninterruptedly accompanying his whole existence is happiness, and the principle of making this the supreme determining ground of choice is the principle of self-love” (KpV 22).Google Scholar
58 See Kant, , Lectures on Ethics, trans. Infield, Louis (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1963), ix.Google Scholar
59 Similarly, at NE 1179b20: “Now some think that we are good by nature, others by habit, others by being taught [didakê].”
60 “Virtue is needed, in fact, precisely to the extent that good conduct is hard for us, since it consists in the strength we need to perform a difficult task. A person whose temperament is happily constituted so that virtue is less often necessary, may still be virtuous, but virtue is a quality of character, not of temperament.” Wood, , Kant's Ethical Thought, 331.Google Scholar
61 Allen Wood strongly emphasizes the connection of Kant's doctrine of virtue to his understanding of character and temperament; it is surprising that in Making a Necessity of Virtue, Nancy Sherman entirely neglects this connection, since she wrote a book about virtue and character in Aristotle. See her The Fabric of Character: Aristotle's Theory of Virtue (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).Google Scholar
62 “Klugheit [prudence] is a matter of temperament. Morality is a matter of character” (VP p. 96)Google Scholar
63 Allen Wood curiously neglects Kant's distinction in senses of character and simply says that Kant “regards gender, national, and racial differences as matters of character — that is, as the results of free agency.” See Wood, , Kant's Ethical Thought, 205–6Google Scholar. But Kant clearly distinguishes the study of physical (including psychological) character (i.e., physical characteristics) from that of man's (moral) character. Indeed, these two senses of “character” derive from the two Greek words for “character”: charaktêr and êthos.
64 Kant says that the word “virtue” designates “courage and valor (in Greek as well as in Latin) and hence presupposes the presence of an enemy” (Rel. 57)Google Scholar. While this is true of the Latin virtus, it is not true of the Greek aretê, except in its Homeric usage.
65 As Sherman argues of Kant: “To take the perfection of oneself as an end is to cultivate one's agency and the supportive structure of one's agency in one's nature.” Sherman, , Making a Necessity of Virtue, 346Google Scholar. Sherman simply neglects Kant's fundamental distinction between our active relation to our character and our essentially passive relation to our nature and temperaments. As Robert Louden observes, “Still, the strong dichotomy between natural temperament and moral character that Kant often defends in the Anthropology lectures is hard to swallow. Among other things, it would seem to follow from this position that agents are not ultimately responsible for many of their most basic moods and emotions.” Louden, , Kant's Impure Ethics, 81.Google Scholar
66 Gert, Bernard, Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 181–83Google Scholar. Gert sounds very Aristotelian in his confidence that even personality traits can be shaped by education: he advocates that “children be raised so as to develop a personality such that they come to enjoy acting morally.” Ibid., 183.
67 True, Kant does say that a virtuous person will act from duty with a “cheerfulness of mind” (VE 27:656Google Scholar) which he calls the “aesthetic constitution, the temperament so to speak, of virtue” (Rel. 24Google Scholar). But Kant speaks here only of one aspect of temperament, and he appeals to temperament by analogy.
68 “It is not unimportant, then, to acquire one sort of habit or another, right from our youth; rather, it is very important, indeed, all-important” (NE 1103b23; cf. NE 1104b12, 1105a1, 1180a15).
